by Nic Widhalm
Then the cold finally broke through, his teeth began to chatter and his anger dissolved, sloughing off like a second skin. The cylinder of smoke disappeared in a sudden haze of gut-wrenching nausea. Hunter dropped to the ground, his shins barking painfully against the rough stone, and spilled the remains of his ham dinner on the floor. Karen ran over and knelt, pulling Hunter’s head up to meet her eyes.
“It’s nothing,” he croaked. “Just not used to this stuff.”
Karen studied his face, brow furrowed. “What are you?” She whispered. “What did you do?”
“It’s too soon. He shouldn’t be this close to a Ladder,” Oriphiel leaned against the granite wall, watching the two from across the room.
Karen stood, helping Hunter to his feet. He turned to the Throne. “No more secrets,” he said. “I’m so damn tired of being led around by the nose, I just want something real. Get straight with me, Oriphiel, or I’m not walking another step. And don’t,” Hunter held up his hand to stop the Throne from protesting, “give me a riddle or some half-truth. I want answers, starting with what in the name of Holy Fuck is a Ladder?”
Karen had stepped back during Hunter’s rant, leaving him alone with the Throne, but Oriphiel only shook her head and flashed him one of those infuriating half-smiles that said I know everything, and you’re just a dumb beautician.
“Ladder is a nickname,” Oriphiel said. “Some of the Apkallu call it ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ but that’s not much better,” as she talked she moved away from the wall, slowly circling center of the room in a counter-clockwise direction. Hunter could no longer make out the vortex, but he was sure the Throne was barely skirting its edge.
“The humans have a legend of a man named Jacob who was crazy enough to wrestle an angel,” Oriphiel paused in her circuit and rolled her eyes. “Silly goose. Anyway,” she continued walking. “The legend goes he wanted to climb a ladder to heaven. The angel wasn’t having it, so they decided to wrestle, and—because humans are telling this, remember—the crazy old man actually won. Cowed, the angel allowed him to ascend the ladder and get a peek of the beyond. After that, the name ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ stuck.”
“So…it’s an agioi?” Hunter asked.
“In a way,” Oriphiel placed a nail against her lip and nibbled. “But not really,” She examined the nail and nodded to herself. Hunter watched her make two more circuits around the room, still walking in a perfect counterclockwise circle, then finally spoke again. “An agioi is a thinning of worlds. A place where the realm of the physical can peer through the screen of reality and glimpse the beyond. Like looking through a flawed window.”
“But,” Oriphiel stopped and turned to Hunter, holding up a finger like a teacher giving a lecture. “Try all you want, you can’t pass through a window—you can only look.”
“Well, you can break—”
“You know what I mean,” Oriphiel stuck her tongue out at Hunter. “If an agioi is a window—a flawed window—a Ladder is a doorway. A doorway locked within a safe, hidden in a tomb, buried twelve miles beneath the surface—on the Moon.” She grinned.
“You can cross through it?” Hunter asked. “To the beyond?”
“If you have the right key.”
“No,” Karen suddenly spoke up. “It’s not worth it.”
“Oh I don’t know about that. Everyone has their price” Oriphiel said.
Hunter suddenly realized what they were talking about, and turned to Oriphiel in horror. “There’s no Principality, is there?”
Oriphiel only looked at Hunter, her eyes sad.
Hunter shook his head and stepped forward, not sure what the Throne was about to do but intent on stopping her, when he heard a high voice pierce the room.
“My, my, my. You've found us a Throne.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Hunter roared and the sky turned a dark, coppery red.
Without thought, his reflexes kicking in so fast it bordered on precognition, Hunter turned and leapt at where he thought the voice stood. His eyes didn’t even have time to focus, he was nothing but a blur of speed and strength, his arms extended before him like spears, his legs jackknifed behind. The shapes before him weren’t human, they weren’t Apkallu—they were just enemies. His ears rang with the clash of steel in the distance, the red-haze of blood swam in his vision as his world narrowed to him and his foe.
He didn’t even make if half way.
His enemy disappeared from view, appearing at his side. Hunter barely had time to make out the perfectly manicured nails of Mika’il’s fist before she slammed it into his gut and threw him against the wall. Hunter flew backward, flailing at thin air, and before he hit the wall Mika’il was there again, a blur, her arms reaching around him and cushioning him from the blow.
“Not yet, boy. I’m not close to being done with you.”
“Run,” Hunter screamed, but over Mika’il shoulder he could see Karen wasn’t going anywhere. Three other figures accompanied the Seraphim, one the slim, feminine form of Bath, and the other two Apkallu Hunter recognized from the stronghold of the Elohim. Karen had already done her “Flash” thing, and was raining a thousand blows on one of the unfortunate Elohim. Bath watched, a thin smile on his lips.
Hunter scanned the room, trying to ignore his rising panic, and relaxed slightly when he saw Oriphiel standing alone. He’d been worried Mika’il might—
What is she doing?
The Throne walked past Karen and her assailant, ignoring Bath, Mika’il and the other Apkallu, and placed herself center in the stone room. She raised the hand covering the wound in her stomach, scattering bloody beads across the gray floor, and ran it across her opposite shoulder. Taking her other hand, Oriphiel swiped it across her wound and marked the opposite shoulder the same way. Then she turned and gave Hunter a bright smile that made his breath catch. Her eyes were clear of pain.
Mika’il’s arm suddenly slipped from Hunter’s shoulder, and she sprang toward the Throne, a scream on her lips. Again, without thinking, Hunter followed his instincts and did the only thing he could—he grabbed her retreating leg. His fingers slipped under Mika’il’s gray pant-suit and touched her ankle for just a moment.
Fire roared from the Seraphim’s skin, engulfing Hunter, racing through sinew and bone. The world was fire. The sky was flame. There was nothing but the pain, the white-hot agony of blackening skin, dying nerves.
The world shattered.
They are standing on a great overlook, the distant peaks of craggy mountains laid before them like forgotten children’s toys—disparate, unorganized, without plan.
He stands with his brother/sister on his right and his sister/brother on his left, studying the land from the height of a slim mountain peak. He knows what they have created—the mountain they look down from—is unable to form naturally on this world, but it is of no concern to him. It will collapse when he and his brothers/sisters retire, but for now it serves its purpose as a meeting place. There is a strange change in his body when he thinks of the mountain collapsing. For a moment he sees the damage it will cause, the thousands of lives it will claim, then he shakes his head, all three faces, front, back and side.
It is of no importance.
“We will come to an agreement,” his sister/brother says, her/his face crackling in this sun, light reflecting from its perfect surface like thousands of tiny crystals. Mika’il has always been a beautiful creature, no matter the shape. In the beyond her/his radiance is muted, like the sun behind a cloud, but in the mortal world it takes on a splendor without peer.
“It is unwise to offer threats when one cannot deliver them,” his other brother/sister says, stepping up to look over the edge of the cliff, frowning at the distant mountains. Gavri’el, the poet. Gavri’el, the artist.
His older brother/sister, younger than Mika’il, the middle of the three, does not possess his sister/brother’s transcendent beauty. Instead, Gavri’el’s visage is one of quiet contemplation, like still water on an ocean surface. He ha
s seen his brother/sister spend millennia in solitude, Gavri’el’s face turned from his siblings as he contemplated a single note from a vast symphony.
“I am the eldest,” Mika’il says, and her face clouds over, the brilliance of the sun darkening to a deep, burnished crimson.
“I am the best equipped to govern,” Gavri’el counters, his still features refusing to betray any hint of frustration or anger.
He says nothing as his brothers/sisters squabble, focusing instead on the world stretched beneath them. They were not involved in the making of this world, as they were in so many others. But this one is different. After all, hadn’t the one called ‘Yahweh’ left after its creation?
Or been consumed by it?
“Luk’faer,” Mika’il’s voice turns his head. “Join me. It is my turn to rule.”
“Ignore her,” Gavri’el says, his voice soft and pensive. “I have studied the workings of the universe for time without measure. Join me, and we can find a way to perfection.”
He rubs his chin as his brothers/sisters entreat him to take sides in the fight he knows will eventually become war. It is inevitable, now that Yahweh is fled; Mika’il and Gavri’el have been destined to love and destroy each other since the first moment they saw the other’s face. But he…perhaps he doesn’t have to pick sides.
Perhaps there’s another way.
And down below, nestled in the cracks and corners of this new world, he can see the beginnings of something. Something new. There, those creatures walking on two legs…they look so cold.
Perhaps he will bring them some fire.
The world swam back into focus as Hunter opened his eyes. For a moment he still saw the cloudy peaks of distant mountain tops, superimposed against the rough gray of the stone walls. Shaking his head, Hunter looked up and met Mika’il eyes. She had turned as soon as she felt Hunter’s hand on her leg, his touch temporarily holding her in place. Mika’il’s eyes flared when she saw his fingers wrapped around her ankle, but before she could act words sprang unbidden from Hunter’s lips:
“You were wrong about them, Mika’il. They’re stronger than we could have imagined.”
The Seraphim’s eyes clouded, her anger fading to confusion. She cocked her head sideways and her lips parted as she started to say something, then she stopped herself and shook her head. Hunter saw her mouth the word “impossible.”
He released her foot and stood, ignoring the swirl of combat roiling around Karen as she tried to fight off the two other Apkallu. The noise of their battle dimmed, the walls appeared to expand, and Mika’il and Hunter were suddenly alone. Mist swirled at their feet, a haze of soft, muted light spreading from their bodies and illuminating the surrounding fog.
“You shouldn’t have stood against me,” Hunter heard himself say. “Humanity isn’t a plague or a cancer. Neither are they slaves or broodmares. Your way is that of the sword, sister. Mine may be slower, but all swords rust with time.”
“Luk’faer?” Mika’il breathed, the word barely escaping her lips. Her eyes went wide, and she stretched out a trembling hand as if she would touch him. Her beauty was magnified ten-fold by the simple, honest confusion echoed in her face. Then Mika’il’s eyes narrowed, her arm stopped moving toward Hunter, and she did the last thing he expected.
She ran.
Pushing past Bath, the Seraphim fled the stone chamber, disappearing out the door and around the corner before Hunter had a chance to stop her. Part of him wanted to run after her—the part still alien to him—but the other half told him to stay, to try and save Karen and Oriphiel. Before he had a chance to do either, however, a massive shape hurdled into him, knocking Hunter to the ground.
Rolling on the floor, gasping, trying to catch his breath, he only had a moment to make out his assailant—one of the Apkallu that had entered with Bath and Mika’il—before the man was screwing his thumbs into Hunter’s eyes. He tried to catch the Apkallu’s hands, struggling to find his Paradox, to summon a shred of anger, anything that would manifest his gift, when an ear-splitting crack rang through the room and Hunter’s attacker collapsed against him. Rolling the large man off and onto the floor, Hunter saw that the back of his head was opened wide like a rotten melon, bits of soft gray matter splattered down the back of his shirt. He looked up and saw Jackie standing in the doorway, a large revolver in her hand. It looked strange in her hands, large and ungainly compared to her black Beretta.
She smiled at Hunter, relief in her eyes, and then her face clouded over and she dropped the revolver to the ground. She pointed at something behind Hunter and he turned to look, but there was nothing but empty wall. Turning back he saw Jackie’s eyes had turned a clear, bright white and she was stepping backward, waving her arms in front of her.
Directly behind stood Bath, his lips moving slightly, watching as Jackie tried to ward off a waking dream. Hunter recognized the look in her eyes, and his lips curled back as he threw himself at the little man who was singing in a voice only Jackie could hear.
He aimed for the legs, knowing it wouldn’t take much to bring down the petite Apkallu. He might be a Cherubim, but Hunter had at least fifty pounds on Bath and knew how to use it. But just before he would have made contact, Bath looked down at him, his eyes full of disgust, and the world around Hunter exploded in light. He felt himself hit the ground, the sharp stones cutting his knees as he crashed onto the cold floor. Eyeless in the blinding light, Hunter squeezed his eyes shut, trusting he could find the Cherubim without sight. But even closed, covering his eyes with both hands and pressing until tears streamed down his eyes, Hunter couldn’t block out the light.
He knew the Cherubim had to be close—he couldn’t have missed him by more than a foot or two—but no matter which direction Hunter flung his arms, he found nothing but empty stone floor. He was blinded, but it was more than just sight. The tang of blood and sweat filling his nostrils a moments ago was fading, replaced by a stuffy, dry scent that reminded him of a library.
Sound followed. The scuffling feet and outcries following Karen and her attacker, the ringing of the gunshot, they all dimmed to a distant buzz as Hunter flailed against the ground. Then a sharp crack broke through, and a flare of pain ran up his side. Hunter snarled and rolled across the floor, landing against the wall. Taking a quick second to run a hand down his left side, he winced as his fingers found his ribs—at least two were broken. Before Hunter could collect himself, however, there was another flare of pain, this time from his right arm, and he roared as his forearm snapped in half. Fighting back tears, Hunter swung his remaining arm in an arc, trying desperately to reach his assailant.
“Give up,” Bath’s voice filled the surrounding light, assailing Hunter from all sides. “You’ve lost.”
Hunter swung again, trusting he’d picked the right direction, but it was like trying to catch air. Gasping, his good arm flung before him like a drowning man reaching for shore, he heard another crack and screamed as his three middle fingers twisted backwards.
“Bath!” Hunter screamed, his voice cracking. He wanted to issue a challenge, to tell the Cherubim he couldn’t have him, not like this. He wanted to roar and wail and taunt Bath into a confrontation, anything that would distract the Adonai, but the words refused to come. He was tired. So tired of running, of fighting impossible battles, of surviving on nothing but luck and the skin of his teeth. Adrenaline was retreating, and in its wake all Hunter wanted to do was lie down and sleep.
Then the surrounding light gave a brief, final flare and disappeared.
The steel-gray of the stone room snapped back, and Hunter blinked in the sudden dimness, trying to gather his bearings. To his left stood Karen, still fighting with the Elohim Power that Hunter recognized from his time at the fortress. The Elohim seemed to have taken the worse of the battle: hundreds of small, dripping cuts ran along his face and peeked through rips along his torso and legs. Large tufts of hair were gone, and one of his eyes had swollen shut and was already turning a deep shade of purple. But Kar
en hadn’t escaped unscathed—her lip was split, a long red line dripping down her chin and settling at her feet, and one of her shoulder’s drooped in an unnatural angle, suggesting dislocation. Compared to her enemy, though, Hunter thought she looked pretty good.
In the corner lay Jackie, eyes closed, slumped against the wall with her feet drawn up and her mouth slightly agape. Next to her was the crumpled form of her Apkallu assailant; a large, tattered hole occupying most of his forehead, blood-pooling around his vacant eyes. Even though she was only a dozen feet away Hunter couldn’t tell if Jackie was alive or dead. He wanted to run to her, to verify she was okay, that she still lived. He would have, he planned to…but then he saw the center of the room.
There, bathed in a discordant, light-bending vortex of what looked like dust and gas, stood Oriphiel. Blood streamed from her torn abdomen and battered face, and her remaining free arm was wrapped around Bath’s waist. A look of utter horror filled the Cherubim’s wide eyes. Hunter didn’t know what had caused Bath’s fear—the Throne was hardly an intimidating figure—but something in Oriphiel’s face had changed. It was grim, sad—determined. It looked like someone getting ready to say goodbye.
“No!” Hunter yelled, throwing his hand forward, body still prone and frustratingly far from the Throne. He didn’t know what she meant to do, but Bath’s look of dread mixed with Oriphiel’s stoic resignation didn’t speak well for either of them.
Hunter tried to push himself off the floor, and screamed in agony as his broken arm collapsed. Oriphiel turned her gaze from Bath and met Hunter’s eyes. She smiled once, that infuriating grin, then wiped a long streak of blood from her stomach and drew a pattern on her face. She did it quickly, in rough, quick stripes, but Hunter still recognized the letters of the Celestial Alphabet.
Bath opened his mouth, finally freeing himself from whatever compulsion Oriphiel had laid on him, but the Cherubim never got a chance to sing. Oriphiel drew her bloody hand from her face, slapped it over Bath’s mouth and winked at Hunter. She opened her mouth then, but before Oriphiel could say a word the vortex surrounding the two suddenly brightened and the Cherubim and the Throne were consumed in a whirl of dust and smoke.