“How could we ever have brought down such a being?” Mallus asked, awe tinged with shame in his voice.
“Isn’t the power of anger and jealousy amazing?” Tarshish asked. “That is what it was all about,” he reminded Mallus. “We were mad at our God, so we lashed out, siding with those who coddled us. Told us what we wanted to hear. We were a couple of fools.”
Mallus couldn’t argue. “So the power of God is in there?”
“It is,” Tarshish said. “Even though it has been tainted a bit over the millennia, I can still feel it.”
“Are you up for this still?” Mallus asked, as he leaned down to pull the Malakim to his feet.
“I think I can manage.” Tarshish shrugged off Mallus’s hand and walked toward the giant armored body.
Mallus followed, and together, they entered the shell of the Metatron through an opening near where the stomach would be. The interior of the armor was illuminated by an eerily glowing moss that covered its surface.
“It appears that the remains’ divinity has somehow affected some of the plant life,” Tarshish commented, pointing out the luminescent patches that spread across the ceilings and walls. “I wonder—”
His words were cut off by a distant sound from inside the remains.
The sound intensified, and the glow brightened as whatever was approaching drew nearer.
Mallus tensed, not believing what he saw.
“I don’t—,” he began, but never finished.
The creatures resembled the apelike yetis from back at the tavern, only smaller in size and with luminescent fur. They surged at the angels in a shrieking wave, obviously annoyed by the invasion of their dwelling.
“I wondered if any other life-forms had been affected by the divine radiation of the Metatron’s remains,” Tarshish said.
“I would guess so,” Mallus answered, backing up. “What do you suggest we do now?”
“Fight them,” Tarshish said simply.
“That is what I figured you’d say.”
The first of the yetis sprang at them, glowing fangs bared and long, muscular arms swinging.
Mallus hauled back and then, using his superior strength, punched the creature in the face. Its skull exploded as if filled with dynamite, and its corpse crumpled to the cave floor.
“Good one,” Tarshish acknowledged. It was his turn now. He unleashed a powerful flash of angelic magick that made the next four yetis explode in flames.
“Not bad yourself,” Mallus said. More yetis came at him, and he shattered the bones of their limbs, leaving them screeching at his feet. “But we can’t keep this up forever.”
“We want them to take us,” Tarshish announced, barely able to stand, but still unleashing gouts of destructive magick. “If my suspicions are correct, I believe they’ll bring us to their master.”
Mallus was horrified. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Then we’ll die, burdened by our own tremendous sin.” Tarshish unleashed one more wave of magick that shook the hollowed-out body of the Metatron.
“I hope you’re right,” Mallus grumbled, as the two fallen angels allowed the yetis to overwhelm them.
A wave of filthy fur and claws dragged them down.
* * *
Even though she had gotten Melissa to leave the fallout shelter, Lorelei had stayed behind.
But for what? The whole ghost thing was really starting to get on her nerves.
She watched tough guy Tyrone and security guard Scott arguing about scavenging for more food, while Doris and her daughter, Maggie, attempted to play referee.
It was as if a hand gripped Lorelei by the shoulder, pulling her over to where Loretta lay, her husband sitting on the cot beside her, holding her hand.
Is this it? Lorelei wondered. Is this why I’m still here?
Lorelei floated before the woman, reaching out to lay a ghostly hand on her arm in comfort.
Loretta seemed to shiver at her touch, turning her head slowly to look at the Nephilim.
“Can you see me?” Lorelei asked. The woman’s mouth quivered and then went slack, as the life left her.
Her husband brought her hand to his lips, kissing it lovingly. Then he laid his head on her chest, wrapped his arms around her, and began to sob.
“I wonder if he knows how much I love him?”
The voice startled Lorelei, and she turned to see Loretta now floating beside her.
“You’re like me!” Lorelei exclaimed.
“No,” Loretta said. “Not really.”
Lorelei looked at her strangely.
“You’re here for a reason,” Loretta said simply. “I’m just waiting for you.”
“Waiting for me?” Lorelei was even more confused.
“We’re all waiting for you.”
Before Lorelei could question her, the room was suddenly pulled away from them and replaced with another environment entirely.
The two women now stood in an open area of nothingness, but they weren’t alone. As far as the eye could see, there were people: men, women, and children of all sizes, colors, and shapes.
“Who are they?” Lorelei asked in amazement.
“They are the souls who have passed since the world was cut off from Heaven,” Loretta explained. “Their—our—energies have nowhere to go. We can’t return to the source of all existence.”
“So, let me guess, they’re waiting for me to do something.”
Loretta nodded.
“How am I supposed to help them pass on when even I couldn’t pass on?” Lorelei panicked. Sure, she had connected with Melissa to warn her of approaching trouble, but this? She was clueless. “I don’t know what to do!”
Loretta leaned forward and placed a hand on Lorelei’s arm. “No worries, dear,” the ghostly old woman said. “That’s why he had me bring you here.”
As if things weren’t already confusing enough.
“Who? Who asked you to bring me here?”
Loretta only smiled, joining the countless others.
“Loretta?” Lorelei called. “Loretta, who had you bring me here?”
She searched the crowd for the older woman, but she was gone. Instead, the crowd moved aside, and Lorelei watched as someone approached from the distance.
She did not know who he was, but as he drew closer, she knew what he was.
The angel had a gentle smile upon his face. “Hello, Lorelei,” he said, his ghostly, feathered wings gently fluttering behind him.
“My name is A’Dorial. Your father has sent me with a message from Heaven. He wants me to tell you about the Ladder.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Aaron had forgotten much as he traversed a seemingly endless region of shadow, but he also remembered.
Fiction dissolved away, leaving behind only truth.
“Where are we going?” he called to his foster parents, whose bodies were completely engulfed in flames, their skeletal remains moving within an aura of fire.
“This is where the poison has gone,” his mother said, her words making sparks dance from the yellow bone of her teeth.
“Where?” Aaron asked, joining them atop a hill. “Here?”
The shadows formed a large valley below them, and in the distance, he could see a wall of stone.
“Or behind that wall?”
His deep subconscious had become an annoying place, and he just wanted to be through with it. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, heading down the hill. Tom and Lori didn’t follow. “What’s the matter?” he called over his shoulder. “Aren’t you coming?”
They continued to watch him, and for a moment he was reminded of how gruesome this particular aspect of his subconscious was. It seemed so morbid to be hanging around with two very important people in his life who had died horribly.
Because of him.
And with that thought, his foster parents disappeared, as if they’d never been there. Balls of color danced before his eyes as the darkness rushed in to claim the illuminated spot where they h
ad stood.
Aaron sighed, reminding himself that they were only a manifestation of his memory. But it was still sad that they were gone again. He was painfully aware of how much he missed not having them in his life, and how dramatically everything had changed when his Nephilim birthright came into being.
He took a deep breath and focused on the wall in the distance, wondering how long it would take him to reach the other side of the valley. There was no way to really know, so Aaron just walked, curious as to what he would find once he got there.
He hadn’t made it all that far when he noticed the shapes ahead. One after another they appeared. He could see that they were people, but he couldn’t make out any more.
Aaron trudged on, eager to spend as little time as possible in this depressing place. As he drew closer, he could see that the figures were lining up a few hundred feet in front of the wall.
His curiosity outweighed his fear, and Aaron actually started to run, only to come to a sudden stop yards away from the long line of people.
They didn’t have any faces. They were wearing normal clothes: jeans, dresses, suits, but their faces were blank—smooth, featureless flesh.
Aaron studied them, wishing that his parents had stayed long enough to maybe explain who they were.
One of the figures, tall and wearing a deliveryman’s uniform, strode toward him. Aaron felt a tingling, then burning sensation in the palm of his hand as a sword of fire took shape there.
The faceless messenger continued, unhindered by the appearance of Aaron’s weapon.
“You might want to stop there,” Aaron warned, extending a hand, suddenly wondering if the person could even see or hear him, for he saw no visible eyes or ears.
The man walked a little faster.
Aaron started to back up, and the featureless figure began to run. Before Aaron could even think of evading him, the deliveryman leaped. He managed to raise his blade, but it wasn’t a deterrent. The messenger ran right into the flaming sword, impaling himself.
Aaron watched in shock as the blade pierced the faceless man’s chest. He started to pull back on the weapon, when his mind was filled with visions of the deliveryman, his truck, and the beasts of nightmare that besieged him as he drove down a lonely country road.
Aaron yanked the blade from the messenger’s chest with a gasp. The faceless figure continued to stand before him, swaying.
There was a sudden flurry of movement close by, and Aaron saw that others were running toward them now. Still numbed by what he’d just experienced, he glanced around for a place to hide, but the people closed in too quickly.
The faceless wave grabbed at his clothes and clawed his skin. Desperately, Aaron swung his sword, but as each foe was cut by the flaming blade, powerful visions exploded in his mind. Aaron cried out, afraid that his skull might split with the sudden deluge of imagery.
Housewives snatched from their yards as they hung laundry, pulled into the sky by flying nightmares; children taken from school yards by things that burrowed up from their sandboxes; people aboard a packed airplane, swatted down by what could only be a dragon.
The realization of who these people were hit Aaron with twice the savagery of the visions themselves.
These were the people that he—and the Nephilim—were supposed to be protecting. These were the people they hadn’t saved.
That he hadn’t saved.
The sorrow was almost too much for him to bear, so Aaron wished his sword away, hoping that dissolving his fiery blade would perhaps cease the onslaught.
But it didn’t.
Every touch was enough to cause multiple images to detonate inside his head.
And for his guilt to grow.
Aaron and the Nephilim had been put on earth to protect the human race, but they—he—had not done a very good job.
The faceless figures punched and kicked him, and he allowed it. He deserved everything that was being dealt him. He tried to say that he was sorry, but he was overwhelmed by their experiences.
A man was pulled beneath the sea, drowned by something covered in tentacles . . . an old woman had been dragged into the shadows of her basement by horrible, fur-covered things . . . joggers screamed in terror as they attempted to outrun a pack of slavering werewolves. . . .
It was all too much.
The images were as suffocating as the crowd. Aaron went down, the weight of the faceless assailants pushing him into darkness.
Drowning him beneath an ocean of guilt.
* * *
The Unforgiven installation was abuzz with activity.
Trench-coated, goggle-wearing angels rushed about as they prepared to embark on their most important mission yet—to find the child.
Vilma caught up with Taylor as the woman was coming out of the control room. “I want to go with them,” she said, rushing to keep up with Aaron’s mother as she strode toward the elevator.
“I’m not sure that’s wise,” Taylor said.
“A’Dorial called to me,” Vilma insisted, as they got into the elevator. “He said I was part of a plan, that I’m supposed to fight for God—for the sake of the world.”
The elevator brought them to the infirmary.
“I understand that,” Taylor said. “But I think you may want to stay here.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Vilma asked, immediately concerned. “Is it Aaron?”
“I’m not sure,” Taylor said, increasing her pace. “I received a call that I should come down.”
There was a commotion by Aaron’s room, and Vilma took off, racing down the hall and charging into the room. “Aaron?” she cried, as she entered.
Two Unforgiven angels stood over her boyfriend with odd-looking medical instruments. Aaron was thrashing about, his fists clenched as if to defend himself.
“What’s wrong with him?” Vilma practically shouted. She pushed past the angels to Aaron’s side and put her hand in his. His grip was incredible, almost hurting her.
The Unforgiven didn’t answer, continuing to coldly observe Aaron through the lenses of their goggles.
“Did you hear me?” Vilma asked angrily. “I asked you a question.”
“Answer her,” Taylor commanded, entering the room.
“We don’t know,” one of the Unforgiven said, as he looked at the boxy instrument he was holding. “His entire metabolic system has gone into overdrive, as if he were performing some great physical act.”
Vilma looked at Aaron’s mother and saw concern on her face.
“Can we give him something to calm him down?” Taylor asked.
“We did,” the other Unforgiven answered. “But his system burned it off in a matter of seconds.”
Vilma gripped her boyfriend’s hand all the tighter. Something was most definitely wrong. He was fighting with all his might.
The mechanical ring on his chest suddenly sparked and exploded, throwing off smoldering shards of glass and metal. Vilma reached out to grab the broken pieces of the device, throwing them off Aaron’s exposed flesh. His skin was blazing hot.
“He’s burning up,” she said, fearing some sort of fever, the sign of something worse.
Fire appeared around where the ring had been attached, and then started to spread down Aaron’s body. His wings emerged as he lay, and they, too, were alight with fire. The bed’s mattress was burning, and flames jumped hungrily to the floor and the walls. The Unforgiven angels were still attempting to discern data from their machines, but Vilma knew they were way beyond that stage.
She reacted on pure instinct. Her Nephilim visage surged to the surface, wings bursting from her back. She gathered Aaron up in her arms, the divine fire from his body attempting to burn her, but soon realizing that they were of the same species.
“Get him to the silo,” Taylor shouted, thinking as she did.
Aaron thrashed in her arms, but Vilma held him tightly as she soared from the room and down the corridor, passing several Unforgiven carrying fire extinguishers on their way to the room. She
burst through the stairway door at the end of the hall and headed for the lowest level. The heat from their bodies scorched the concrete walls black as they passed.
Just as they reached the bottom of the staircase, the door flew open to reveal four Unforgiven angels in protective suits.
“This way,” one said, motioning for her to follow.
Vilma could feel the muscles in her arms straining, but she endured it, not wanting to set Aaron down until he was safe. She raced behind the Unforgiven as they led her through the concrete corridor and down another stairway to the old missile silo that had once housed A’Dorial.
She entered the chamber and gently laid Aaron’s body on the floor. Stepping back, she wished that there was something she could have placed beneath his head to make him more comfortable, but she knew it would just burn.
“Let’s go. Time to get out of there,” one of the Unforgiven urged from the doorway. Eyes still fixed on her boyfriend, Vilma did what was asked of her, stepping out into the hallway as the two angels closed the heavy metal door, closing Aaron inside.
Through a small portal window, she watched him.
“What’s happening to you?” she whispered, wanting more than anything to be with him, to comfort him, but unsure if she would have been able to withstand the intensity of his heat.
Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she helplessly watched the man she loved, writhing on the cold concrete floor of the missile silo.
His body burning with holy fire.
* * *
Verchiel was amused by the stupidity of the dumb beasts, so stubborn they could not even see what was in their best interests. They could not fathom that pledging their allegiance to him would allow them to live another day.
The latest encampment of monsters came at him in an explosive rush of violence, choosing to fight with tooth, claw, sword, spear, knife, and ax—or whatever other instrument of murder they had at their disposal.
The angel met the onslaught with equal vigor, calling forth two swords of fire.
Wading in amongst them, he swung his weapons and watched the monsters fall, like chaff to the farmer’s scythe. He considered giving them another chance to forget their dark overlord, and to bow their heads to him, but by then, he had slain them all.
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