Redemption: A Supernatural Action Adventure Opera (War of the Damned Book 8)

by Michael Todd

  Katie’s mouth dropped open slightly. “I’m sorry? I thought Eve was the first wife of Adam.”

  The Pope put his hands together. “There’s little we know about the Garden of Eden, but it is widely thought that Lilith was the first wife of Adam. She was created by God, perfect.”

  What have I been telling you? I’m perfect.

  “To be more accurate, I suppose, she was almost perfect. She was unruly and headstrong. She wished to dominate her husband. When this did not occur, she ran away. God sent three angels after her. The stories after that are strange and conflicted, but we Catholics believe she became one of God’s angels. Lilith was a fierce warrior for God until her fall from grace.”

  Katie was blown away as she listened to everything the Pope said. “I was not aware of her importance.”

  The Pope offered his hand, and after a moment Katie accepted. Together they strolled toward the huge columns of St. Peter’s Basilica. “She was the queen of the demons long before Lucifer took her to wife. We Catholics know she fought beside our trusted warriors in the Holy Wars.” The Pope looked up at Katie. “And some say she will sneak into a crib and steal children not protected by God.”

  Pandora scoffed. That is total bullshit. I don’t even like kids. And no, before you ask, I did not eat them.

  Katie was shocked to hear that Pandora had been involved in so many historic moments. She never would have believed it, although the dominance thing made perfect sense. You wanted to dominate the first man created by God?

  Pandora huffed. He always wanted to be on top. It was so boring. Missionary this, missionary that. I was like, come on, bro, let’s liven this party up. Plus, Adam wasn’t an especially giving lover. Not a cunning linguist, if you get my drift.

  The Pope paused at the bottom of the steps. “Although she is demonic, I appreciate the good she has done for our people and many others across the world.”

  Katie appreciated the Pope’s restraint. He could have started spouting off a laundry list of Pandora’s sins. They would have been standing there for the next century.

  The Pope looked at the basilica and sighed. “What is it that I can do for you?”

  Katie had almost forgotten why they were there. “Oh. We’re in need of historical research. The kind that’s not readily available to the public. We have a Leviathan who is seriously injured. I believe he is in a coma, and we’re looking for a cure. The angel Gabriel pointed us in the right direction, but we need help figuring out exactly what we’re looking for.”

  The Pope arched a gray eyebrow. “Gabriel speaks to you?”

  Katie nodded and patted her armor. “Kind of comes with the new job.”

  The Pope chuckled and put out his arm. Katie took it. “Please, come in. We’ll get you whatever you need.”

  Katie followed the Pope up the stairs and into the main portion of the basilica. The domed ceiling loomed high overhead in marble and gold, and grand statues decorated every corner of the sanctuary. It was more beautiful than she could have imagined. The Pope had a small army of people following him around, and he began barking orders in Italian. Katie had no idea what he was saying.

  Pandora listened carefully. He’s ordering a couple of people to grab one Father Okenhoff, someone who works in the secret museum beneath the church.

  The Pope beckoned to Katie and she followed him down the halls of the Vatican, around several corners, and through a door that shut quietly behind them. He put his hands out. One of the younger priests stepped forward and spoke in English. “The Pope is inviting you to the vaults. There’s all the history you would ever need to know in here. There are scrolls from the dawn of the written word. Some books were thought lost to the world, but we have the last remaining copies. I’m to order the others to search the entire library to find any hint of the information you need.”

  Katie felt incredibly special. She knew the church was very secretive, especially when it came to their historical texts and relics. She thanked the Pope profusely.

  Another priest scurried up and whispered into the Pope’s ear. The Pope nodded and spoke to the young priest in Italian. He translated for Katie. “He says that unfortunately, his historical relic expert is not in the church at this time, but everyone else will be more than willing to help you.”

  Katie nodded kindly at the Pope. She never imagined they would welcome her with such open arms. She hoped that together they would find the answer to her problems.

  The staff working with Katie spoke English, though some were more skilled than others. She had an entire team at her disposal to go through the books and scrolls, writing down pertinent information, and bringing their findings back to a large table in the center of the library. Katie went through each, hoping to find something of value.

  One of the priests pointed to a picture of a vase or water pitcher. “What about this? It was said to have some sort of healing powers. Drinking from it would make the person well again.”

  Katie glanced at the picture and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. What I’m looking for is a relic that contains some sort of power. Some sort of energy. The way it was explained to me, I need to find a type of battery. You have to remember that this being is not human. He’s not from this planet. They have different physiology, so they need different things to survive.”

  The Pope walked in, taking a seat at the table with them. Katie smiled at him and continued going through the mounds of papers. One of the priests stopped and looked up, obviously thinking. “What if it isn’t an object that we can see?”

  Katie looked at him strangely. “What do you mean?”

  The priest put down the papers. “What if it’s simply the energy of emotions? It may sound strange, but emotions are fluid in every living being. Whatever happened to him, he might need a specific emotion to wake up.”

  The Pope asked, “What was different about the last battle, the one where Juntto fell ill?”

  Katie thought about it for a moment. “We were in hell. We were fighting, and many were dying. Juntto saved several people. He sustained injuries, but nothing that bad.”

  Pandora sighed. It’s absolutely true that Juntto shouldn’t have died from what happened down there. He was hurt, but he heals even faster than the Damned do. There was no physical cause for what happened.

  The Pope nodded. “And what about his emotional state? Was it different? More intense? Complicated in some way?”

  Katie shook her head. She looked down at the table, trying to replay the whole thing in her head. There had been so many people there, and it had been so stressful. She had a hard time remembering exactly what Juntto went through. She had been in her own sea of emotions during that battle, but most of hers was anger, which wasn’t uncommon in the heat of battle. Not Juntto, though. If she recalled correctly, it was the calmest she’d ever seen him.

  Katie looked at the Pope. “He was feeling empathy. Compassion. Things I couldn’t remember seeing in him before that day.”

  The Pope nodded. The priest shook his head. “Fascinating. I wonder if the new emotions caused him to shut down? Especially if those weren’t emotions typical to his kind. That can be off-putting, even traumatic for some. Those emotions were not known to him, correct? Even as children, the beings on his planet don’t know those emotions. If I read the situation correctly, his people are almost totally devoid of human emotions. He learned anger and fear from humans but not empathy or compassion. Until, because of you, he did. It might have been a big enough shock to his system to cause him to shut down. He may still be processing those new emotions.”

  Katie handed the papers back to the priests. “You know, I think this might be the best answer to the situation we’ve found. I’m not sure what to do to help his body pull through it, but at least that gives me a starting point. Thank you so much.”

  The Pope got up with Katie and walked her to the door. “Katie, do you think you could stay for a few minutes and answer some questions?”

  Katie nodded. “Of
course. After everything you’ve done for me today, I owe you. I should warn you, I’m not positive I can tell you anything you don’t already know.”

  The Pope smiled and put his hand on her arm. “Actually, we wanted to ask Lilith a few questions about the past.”

  Pandora laughed and asked the Pope a direct question. “How are you going to know if I’m lying?”

  The Pope smiled. “I guess we’ll have to get your answers and then find out.”

  Pandora sank into the background, and Katie poked her. Do you want to do this? I mean, of course, you don’t, but will you? It would be a very nice gesture after all the help they gave us. But if you aren’t comfortable, I’ll tell him no.

  Pandora let out a deep sigh. How do I get myself into these situations? Yes, of course, I will. We may need these guys again one day, and the last thing I want to do is piss them off. They aren’t known for having the best temperaments. Besides, I already know what they’re going to want to know. People are so obsessed with history it just blows my mind. In the end, barely any of it made a difference to today’s society. Although I have to admit, they live like it’s still the eighteenth century at the Vatican.

  As long as you’re comfortable.

  I already know the kinds of questions he’ll ask. What’s God like in person? What do angels smell like? Do demons have buttholes? I can even do a little show-and-tell for that one.

  Pandora, sweetheart, please don’t show the Pope your asshole.

  Katie smiled at the Pope and followed him out of the room. Once Pandora took over, she hoped the demon would mind her manners. Katie really didn’t want to cause an international incident. She could only fight one war at a time.

  8

  The questions weren’t hard for Pandora, and they were incredibly interesting to Katie. She listened in the background, letting Pandora take over. Pandora wasn’t comfortable showing her true face to the Pope. To his credit, the pontiff understood and didn’t judge her for it. Three high-ranking churchmen sat next to him and watched intently as she spoke. It was obvious they’d never had the chance to speak to someone like Pandora in person.

  When they were done, the Pope thanked her profusely and walked her out. Waiting on the steps outside were all the priests who had helped her search for information. They wished her well, and a couple of them gave her their cards in case she needed more information.

  Katie stuck all the cards in her pockets, but Pandora scoffed. Right, like I’m going to call up some strange priest halfway across the world so I can ask him a question. I would call Damian first. He seems to have a bit more common sense.

  Katie looked around Vatican City. I feel bad for being so close to Damian and not being able to visit him, but I need to get home. I’ve been having this gut feeling that something’s going to happen soon. Hopefully we can figure out the secret to Juntto’s coma before it does.

  Pandora chuckled. Most people have emotional issues, and they go see a doctor. Juntto had to get all dramatic on us and curl up into a frozen coma. I swear he’s more of a diva than Timothy.

  Katie spread her wings wide. Don’t let Timothy hear you say that. He’ll take it as a challenge. We’ll never hear the end of it.

  Katie waved at everyone, and even the Pope waved back. Several of the priests snapped pictures as Katie rose off the ground. She ascended slowly, giving them a good view of her wings. None of them had ever seen an angel in real life, and several of the priests had tears running down their cheeks.

  Pandora chuckled. Look at you, showing off for the Church.

  Katie flapped her wings, soaring into the sky. Hey, maybe they’ll put a statue of me in St. Peter’s Square or something. They’ll make me look all demure with these beautiful feathered wings. People will put roses at my stone feet.

  Pandora laughed louder. I wonder if they’ll give you tennis shoes in the sculpture and make your tits as big as they really are. I bet they scale down those boobs and that ass. It’s a little too risqué for the Catholics. Lusting after a statue might get you taken down.

  Katie soared across the city toward her hotel. “You know what? The Pope was like, super-intelligent. Who would have known the Pope would be so knowledgeable about old Mesopotamian history?”

  Baal’s large claws tapped on the cold stone floor as he walked through an old building in the Greek hills. He went from room to room, holding a lantern over the bookshelves and boxes of old books, hoping to find the tomes he needed. He reached into an elaborately-carved wooden chest and grabbed a book, but the ancient thing turned to sludge in his hand. “This is just nasty.”

  He dropped the blob back into the chest and ran his hand across the wall, wiping it off. There was nothing useful in that room, just as there had been nothing useful in the four before, but he knew the tome was here. If he just focused, he would locate it. He still had three more sections of the massive compound to go through, so he wasn’t panicking quite yet.

  He exited that building and moved on to the next. There were fewer documents, scrolls, and books in that one. Against the wall was beautiful and ornate furniture that had degraded along with the building. No one had taken care of the items left behind. No one had cleaned the couches or organized the sculptures. That would have been up to the church, but he doubted they even knew of its existence. If they had, they would have plundered it long ago.

  The next room was stuffed with old rugs and tapestries, but the third building he explored was full of ornate boxes of tomes and scrolls. He rubbed his hands together and began going through each box. He stacked the papers carefully, trying to keep them off the soggy floor. Not only was there a plethora of very important historical accounts of human history there, but there were things valuable to the demons as well. Moving the documents would be Baal’s biggest problem. They would all combust in hell, and there was no one on Earth he could trust to guard them, so they remained in the Greek hills. They would be there until they either decomposed or someone else discovered them.

  He stayed in the third building the longest, carefully pouring over the ancient texts. In one of the middle boxes, he found an old scroll with the broken seal of Lucifer. The paper was singed on the edges, which was a good sign. If it was what Baal was looking for, the scroll was from one of the very few times Lucifer had actually walked the Earth. He carefully unrolled it and read the contents. When he was finished, he rolled it back up and clutched it to his chest.

  Baal had never been one to explore history, but recently he had become an avid student. He had a feeling that the contents of that specific scroll were going to become vital to his survival. Beelzebub had been right about one thing. The whole world operated on the premise that they had to be better if they were going to survive.

  Baal was no different. He opened a gate and disappeared.

  Baal stepped out of the gate into Moloch’s mansion and walked to the fireplace, holding the scroll in front of him. He had put protections on it so it wouldn’t combust when he got home.

  He stared down at the tiny souls writhing in the fire. He was wondering what to do next when the door opened behind him, and Moloch walked in with a slight limp. Baal slipped the scroll behind a large statue on the mantel.

  He smiled at Moloch. “You’re still alive! That’s fantastic!”

  Moloch barely glanced at him. Instead, he growled and limped over to the whiskey. He poured himself a glass and downed it quickly. “He beat the living hell out of me. He uses his power, his mastery of fear and pain, to manipulate even his inner circle. I didn’t think he was going to let me go. I thought for sure I would be strung up in his dungeon for the next millennium undergoing beating after beating. Did you know he slapped me with my own damned hand? Talk about humiliating!”

  Baal couldn’t figure out why he was bitching. “You have your leg and your arm back, though.”

  Moloch grumbled. “The leg is a bit short, so I have a permanent fucking limp. Just what I need—a goddamned limp. He kept pulling my limbs off, beating me with them, a
nd then putting them back on.”

  Baal stifled a laugh. “He beat you with your own limbs?”

  Moloch shrugged and walked to the chair, plopping down heavily. “He probably forgot I came to see him with the arm barely attached.”

  Baal walked over and sat down across from him. “What did he say? Was he too angry for words?”

  Moloch lifted his eyebrows. “Oh, no. The master was definitely not too angry for words. He let me have it.”

  “But he spared your life, so it couldn’t have been that bad,” Baal replied.

  Moloch nodded, staring at the fireplace. “He did spare my life…for now. He noted that I wasn’t the one who started the wars, so he is giving me a chance to fix it. He believes I was responsible for fucking it all to hell. He wants Pandora, and he wants that meatsack of hers. The meatsack will die a slow, painful death. He has plans for Pandora.”

  Baal nodded. “I can see that. It makes sense to me.”

  Moloch shook his head. “Oh sure, it makes sense to me, too. The biggest problem with it is that I have to be the one to do it. I have to make sure I kill Katie and bring Pandora back, or the next time he summons me the torture will be even worse. I’m going to end up thrown out of the inner rings. I’ll be exiled, living like a hermit in the outer ring. I wouldn’t survive it, I tell you.”

  Baal immediately thought about Beelzebub. “You won’t be expelled. We’ll get those two and take them down. If you kill Pandora instead of bringing her back, at least she’s out of the way. Besides, if you kill her, she’ll end up back in hell. Lucifer can still have his way with her. We’ll just have to retrieve her from the depths. I know a guy who’ll do that for a nominal fee—just a dozen or so souls.”

  Moloch looked stressed. “Sounds easy, but we both know that together, those two are a force to be reckoned with. By the end of it, they may harm me more than Lucifer ever could. I’m not quite sure how I’m supposed to kill her when I haven’t even been able to pin her down.”