InsaneJournal

Current mood:	crushed
Entry tags:	*neil, death of innocence, gabriel, lucifer, michael, narrative, oh shit oh shit, that was my heart breaking

The search for Neil goes well into the night, and while it seems unlikely that he will ever be found in time to save him, Saint John has given them ideas for areas to focus on. The photo Lucifer has sent Saint Patrick is too dark to see any detail other than the horrifying things that have been done to Neil, but that alone is a clue. It has to be dark, and secluded enough for Neil to scream without being heard, a thought that makes Patrick want to vomit when he thinks of it, and it has to be somewhere Lucifer could get Neil in a day and set something so horrific up.

Michael the archangel is also a detective and he puts a description out to every cop walking a beat in the Big Apple. This turns out to be the best move they make, as Neil is not discovered by either angel nor Patrick, but a pair of uniformed officers who took the tip seriously and made it their business to check on an abandoned warehouse in a derelict area of the city. Patrick will later send them a potted shamrock each for their trouble.

By the time Patrick, Michael and Gabriel arrive on the scene, a medical team are taking Neil down from his precarious perch atop the upside-down cross. He has been bleeding freely for hours, and it is not know whether or not he will live. He needs an emergency transfusion of blood immediately. The barbs are taken from his ragged wrists and ankles by paramedics performing emergency rescue aid. His hands and feet have been broken and bloodied and they are puffed up to nearly double size from the nails that have been shoved through them.

The Saint Patrick's Day decorations, which the rescue team has not understood, have been cast aside, much like the saint himself is feeling. Cast aside by God who is letting an innocent suffer for his own sins.

Neil is unconscious. His skin is dull and clammy. Patrick has seen people pull through terrible injuries, but Neil is sickly and thin and Patrick doesn't hold much hope for him as he is loaded in the back of an ambulance and raced away.

And then Michael's hand is on him and Patrick is told he cannot go to the hospital and he fights until can't scream any more and then Michael calmly informs him that his presence will not change a thing, but it just might lure Satan and Lucifer to Neil's bed side to gloat. And only that makes Patrick accompany Michael and Gabriel back to Michael's apartment where he is once again placed under house arrest, knowing that his friend could die at any moment, and he will not be there.

[Saints and Angels]

Found Neil. Doesn't look good.

It's all my fault. I am such an idiot. Poor Neil.