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A bottle of whiskey in his hand, Lex stands where Sodom stood, a hollow graveyard, the perfect place for a cursed man to die. Even the sun can't stand the sight of him, hurrying west.
After a last bitter sip Lex anoints the dry ground, extreme unction. Nothing should happen, but nothing's unpredictable, and nature reacts: lightning flashes, a quick succession of jagged golds lines that leave behind the smell of burnt cherries. Blinking, the bottle fallen noiselessly at his feet, he peers into the dark, sees nothing at first, then hears what sounds like quickly-turned pages.
The shadows thin even as Lex reaches for his gun, though the moon's still trapped behind clouds. What emerges...At first he thinks the sand's shaken itself from a long-buried statue, or that an eagle's awoken from behind a swell earth. The thing begins to move, not in rhythmic parts like a man with the swing of arms and legs, but in one continuous flow like it's made of water.
Lex aims his weapon. "Another step, and--"
The gun is gone. Not taken or dropped, just gone, instantly, and the thing is moving closer. For a second he thinks it's Clark, that against all odds he's being rescued once again.
But it's not. Clark doesn't glow. Clark doesn't have--
"Jesus," Lex whispers.
"Blasphemy," it says without anger.
At least that's what Lex thinks it says. The voice isn't really a voice, more like the wind on slow speed, a sound that coils around his backbone.
Make sense of this. Only logic will bring control. Study, learn, command. So--it's shaped like a man, with skin that shimmers like a fish in a blue sea, eyes the same silver color, and hair so black it blends into the night. He's beautiful, but it's the wings -- Jesus, he has wings! -- that have Lex sinking to his knees. They're the colors of fall, covered in elemental patterns that seem alive. Fire burns, water runs, sky shifts, and this isn't a hallucination--no one drunk could imagine anything so vividly surreal.
This is beyond logic.
The thing--it--he is looking around. "I burned this place once. There were flames. Screams. The stink of sin."
"Are you going to kill me?"
"I'm here for two reasons. One is to know sin. Judgement without understanding is a greater sin than what I intend to experience."
His left hand moves, just a flicker of fingers, and suddenly there's no space between them: Lex, still on his knees, doesn't know where to look, what to think, how to think. Up close, the shimmering skin of -- is this Gabriel? -- looks engraved, faintly marked with pale symbols. The smell of burnt cherries is even stronger.
Gabriel stares down as if waiting, then his eyes flash. "Oh, yes. You need..." And as the cloth at his waist falls he touches Lex's cheek, one finger over a cheekbone. "Ethpeel."
There's a gold flare, then another, and another, but they're inside him now, lightning's inside him, burning inside him, everything ash except, ohgodohgodohgod, except the craving. He becomes the craving, becomes craving, becomes when his mouth is full and he's sucking, needs this, has to have it, tastes like the fruit of a thousand trees, the tree, apples, knowledge, eternity, sin, death, love, and he sucks harder, arms wrapped around Gabriel's waist, impaled through the mouth, crucified with this big hot cock.
Sounds above him, cries like a lament of swans, hands on his shoulders, cock thrust deeper, yes, deeper, like that, and he's filled, full, sucking like an animal, inhuman now, tears running down his cheeks, tears on Gabriel's cock as it slides in and out of his mouth, stone ready to crack.
The wings are spreading, wider than mountains, unearthly colors, sunset in Eden, while Gabriel's cock leaks juice and Lex drinks, tongues, laps, sucks, desperate for the flood, and knows somewhere deep, beyond language, how to bring it. He wets his finger in his own semen, which has been falling since Gabriel entered his mouth, and reaches behind, parting and slowly penetrating.
A sacred name hits the air, Gabriel trembles like the earth's splitting around him while Lex wordlessly begs, pleads with his mouth and his finger--
There's a rainbow above him in Gabriel's wings, a cry that's purest music, and the flood finally comes, a salty ocean, an apple rain down Lex's throat, on his face, down his chest, between his thighs.
He drinks and drowns.
Dies.
*
When he resurrects, Gabriel is, surprisingly, impossibly still there. So is the sun, low in the east.
"Thank you," Gabriel says in that slow-wind voice as he lies beside him. "I understand now."
"Does this mean I'm going to hell?"
There's a strange noise. Gabriel is laughing. "No." Then, "I told you I came here for two reasons. The first was selfish."
"And the second?"
"A form of retribution." He flows to his feet, and the light at his back begins to absorb him. "I came here to give you mercy."
The End