Read Online The Six-Gun Tarot by R. S. Belcher - Free Book Online

endless chorus of pain.
    Behind them, Heaven’s first great arch groaned, shuddered and fell. The Darkness swelled and crashed all about them; massive waves of night threatened to crash upon the shores of light, drowning everything. All that was rippled, threatened to tear, to break like Heaven’s gate, but before that point of no return was reached the noise diminished, growing fainter and less expansive until finally all of creation was once again silent and still.
    “We should get back,” Biqa said.
    The angels turned toward the glittering dust settling over Heaven’s ruins. But before they could spur their Equina on, another rider appeared across the radiant plane. It became clear as he approached it was Jophiel, one of the highest of the Hosts. He did not look happy.
    “Rejoice,” the dour angel said. “Lo, I bring you glad tidings. While you two tarried and shirked your obligations, the rest of us have tasted sweet victory in the glorious name of our Lord. The last of the enemy has been vanquished.”
    “It has been destroyed?” Aputel said.
    Jophiel’s naturally bitter demeanor deepened before he replied. “The beast was overpowered and about to be slain when the Lord saw fit, in His infinite justice and mercy, to stay His hand of rightly deserved vengeance and to order the creature to be bound and imprisoned.”
    Aputel looked to Biqa, as if to see if this explanation satisfied the troubled angel’s mind.
    “How many?” Biqa asked Jophiel.
    “Pardon?”
    “How many of our brethren were destroyed before He realized you couldn’t kill it?”
    “What are you yammering on about now, Biqa? Perhaps it was best you were not in the fray—your judgment has been unsound as of late.”
    “I’m calling you a liar, Jophiel. Is that clear enough?”
    The Archangel darkened. His hand dropped to the hilt of his blade. “Remember to whom you speak, Biqa. To contradict my tale is to challenge the words of the Almighty Himself. The beast is to be imprisoned, locked away in chains of divine light for all time. Our losses are irrelevant. We exist to serve, to perish, as our Lord commands. Besides, if you were so concerned about your brethren you could have made your way to the battlefield.”
    Biqa shook his head. “You couldn’t kill it. It’s the oldest of them, the largest; the others seemed to suckle it like they drew dark nectar from its form. It was too old, too powerful, to ever end. What unfathomable arrogance makes you think you can keep it chained up?”
    The Archangel smiled for the first time. It was as disquieting as the turmoil earlier. “All has been attended to, you shall see. Now, I came to give you this news and to escort you, Biqa, into the presence of the Almighty, personally.”
    “Very well,” the dark angel said. “Why am I to be so honored?”
    “Do not dare to mock the privilege given unto you,” Jophiel snapped. “You are ordered to attend and you shall. That is all you need know.”
    “It is merely a question, Jophiel.”
    “Yes. You ask far too many of those for my taste, Biqa. Attend me, now. The Lord commands it.”
    Biqa brought his mount alongside the Archangel’s Equina, which was still snorting black ash from the battlefield. The dark angel regarded Aputel.
    “You should commend this one, Jophiel. He has been chastising me for my absence. Obviously he has been paying close attention to your sermons about duty and responsibility.”
    Jophiel narrowed his gaze at the fair angel.
    “As well he should. Be about your duties, Aputel. To tarry is to defy the Lord’s will.”
    “Yes, Archangel.”
    Aputel frowned as he watched the two angels depart toward Heaven. Biqa looked back, smiled and winked. Then they were gone, lost in the brilliant incandescence of the fields.
    Already, the Darkness was receding; the angelic hosts glittered in the indigo filament. A great shape, a shape that defied the newly christened concepts of color and dimension, mass and thought, was dragged