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him again and growled nervously. Slowly, she began to back away, her tail bendingbetween her legs.
    Gabriel was confused. "What's the matter?"   heasked, advancing toward her. "You don't have to chase me if you don't want to— I could chase you instead."
    Tobie snapped at him with a bark, her lips peeled back in a fierce snarl as she continued to back towardthe playhouse.
    Gabriel stopped.   "What's wrong?"   he asked, genuinely concerned and quite disappointed. "Why won'tyou play with me?"
    "Not dog,"Tobie growled as she sniffed the air around him. "Different,"   she spat, and fled around the
    playhouse in the direction she'd come.
    Gabriel was stunned. At first, he had no ideawhat Tobie meant, but then he thought of that day when hehad almost died. He flinched, remembering the intensity of the pain he had felt when the car struck him. Aaron had done something to him that day, had laid his hands upon him and made the pain go away. That was the day everything became clearer.

    The day he became different?
    He left the play area, his mind considering the idea that he might not be a dog anymore, when he heard Aaron call. Gabriel quickened his pace and joined his friend and Camael. They were cleaning up theirtrash and getting ready to resume their journey.
    "Where've you been?" Aaron asked as they headed toward the parking lot.
    "Around,"Gabriel replied, not feeling much like talking.
    A car on its way out of the lot passed them as they waited to cross to their own vehicle. In the back, hesaw Tobie staring intently at him. It wasn't only the window glass that separated him from her, he thoughtsadly as he watched the car head down the road.
    "Are you all right?" Aaron asked as he bent to scratch under the dog's chin.
    "I'm fine,"Gabriel answered, unsure of his own words—recalling the truth revealed in another's.
    "Not dog. Different."
    interlude one

    This will sting, my liege."
    Verchiel hissed with displeasure as the healer laid a dripping cloth on the mottled skin of his bare arm.
    "Why do I not heal, Kraus?" the leader of the Powers asked.
    The blind man patted down the saturated material and reached for another patch of cloth soaking in awooden bowl of healing oil, made from plants extinct since Cain took the life of his brother, Abel. "It isnot my place to say, my lord," he said, his unseeing eyes glistening white in the faint light streamingthrough the skylight of the old classroom.
    The abandoned school on the grounds of the Saint Athanasius Church, in westernMassachusetts , hadbeen the Powers' home since the battle with the Nephilim. This was where they plotted—awaitingtheopportunity to continue their war against those who would question their authority upon the world of God's man.
    Verchiel shifted uncomfortably in the high-backed wooden chair, stolen from the church next door, asthe healer laid yet another cloth upon his burn-scarred flesh. "Then answer me this: Do these woundsresemble injuries sustained in a freak act of nature, or do they bear the signature of a more—divineinfluence?"

    He was trying to isolate the cause of the intense agony that had been his constant companion since hewas struck by lightning during his battle with Aaron Corbet. The angel wanted to push the pain aside, tobox it up and place it far away. But the pain would not leave him. It stayed, a reminder that he might haveoffended his Creator—and was being punished for his insolence.
    "It is my job to heal, Great Verchiel," Kraus said. "I would not presume to—"

    Verchiel suddenly sprang up from his seat, the heavy wooden chair flipping backward as his wingsunfurled to their awesome span. Kraus stumbled as winds stirred by the angel's wings pushed againsthim.
    "Igrant you permission, ape," the angel growled over the pounding clamor caused by the flapping of his wings. "Tell me what you feel in your primitive heart." His hands touched the scars upon his chest as he spoke. "Tell me if youbelieve it was the hand of God that