by KT Webb
“It will all turn out alright,” Lida told her. “For now, we have a few things to discuss with you, Keira.”
Whitley sat down and pulled Keira into her lap. The little girl began playing with Whitley’s long, golden hair while she leaned her head on her shoulder.
“Keira, your mother and the other Evolved are searching for a way to get into this plane. You are the only one who can help them. You have been able to come here out of desperation and fear, but I will give you the ability to come here at will. That is the only way they will be able to find our home and the Creator,” Lida told her.
“But I don’t really know how we come here. I didn’t mean to. I was just scared,” Keira told her.
“I know, dear one, but soon you will just need to knock and the door will open for you,” Lida whispered.
“What is this place?” Whitley asked Lida, unsure if she would receive an answer.
“You are in a realm that exists outside of time. It is simply your world, but a different plane of existence. This is the realm where the Creator lives. This is the realm where the Council of Immortals lived before we were banished for mating with humans.”
“But what do we call it?” Keira asked Lida curiously.
“This is Eternity,” Lida replied simply. “All souls pass through here on their journey to the light or damnation. This is where your daddy goes in his visions, but he has a special ability to see both realms at once.”
Whitley noticed that Keira was paying close attention to everything Lida said. Something inside this little girl was ready to learn everything and take on all the responsibility that would be hers when the Maladies had finished with Tahlia.
“Are you ready to learn?” Lida asked Keira.
The little girl nodded eagerly. Lida leaned forward and kissed her forehead gently. A blinding light surrounded them as Lida transferred her power to the small child before her.
“You have now been granted all the knowledge that will prepare you for what lies ahead,” Lida told her.
“Thank you, Lida. Whitley, let’s go help your mommy,” Keira told her.
Whitley let Keira take her hand and soon found herself standing in the park in the real world. There were bodies all around them, but relief flooded through her when she saw her father talking to a police officer with Romulus nearby.
“Daddy!” she yelled as she began running in to his arms.
“Whitley! Where have you been, baby? I was so worried. Oh, and Keira. Where did you guys go?” Eric said as tears ran down his face and into her hair.
“Dad, we don’t have a lot of time. We need to get to mom. She’s alive, but they’re going to do something to her,” Whitley whispered to him.
She now knew that the secret service agents who had attacked her parents were working under the influence of the Maladies. For all she knew, one of the men lying dead on the ground around them had been the one who pulled the trigger.
Her mother was gone, but they would get her back. She would be alive, but only the Creator knew what shape she would be in.
Chapter Twenty-Five:
Tahlia
Shortly after being tossed unceremoniously into the back of a van, Tahlia was blindfolded and knocked unconscious. The last thing that was burned into her mind was seeing Eric lying on the ground as the life oozed out of him. That had also been the first thing she remembered when she awoke.
She knew who had taken her. She knew the Maladies had finally found a way to get her away from her family. She didn’t know what became of her daughter or Keira during the attack, but Tahlia said a silent prayer that they got away.
Tahlia took a deep breath and instantly wished she hadn’t. The stench of Disease filled the air around her.
“Hey, Crusty, where are we going?” Tahlia taunted, hoping he could hear her.
“Shut up,” she heard the scratchy voice reply.
“No thanks,” Tahlia replied.
“Go ahead and let her talk. It’s not like she has much time left anyway,” the steely voice of Malice said from the darkness.
The van came to a rough stop and she was pulled from the now open door. Her blindfold was ripped off, taking some of her hair with it. She hated that her eyes watered from the sudden sting of her hair being ripped out.
She took the opportunity to look around her. Her heart fell when she saw that all the Maladies had graced her with their presence. They wouldn’t have gathered all together if they weren’t planning something big. She looked around her and found she was in an abandoned building. She didn’t know how long they’d driven while she was unconscious, but she hoped she wasn’t too far from home. There was sunlight streaming down from the ceiling, so she looked up to see a hole blasted from the inside out. Her stomach clenched as she made the connection between this location and the very place Malcolm had been tortured and nearly killed before their battle with Absalom. She looked back at the Maladies with a steely resolve.
Chaos winked at her. The young woman looked like your average teenager, with her pink and purple pixie cut and nose ring. She wore torn-up jeans and a patchwork halter top. Next to her was Avarice; she looked like she had everything together. Her perfectly highlighted honey-blonde hair was pulled neatly into a pony tail at the base of her neck, not a hair out of place. Her narrow blue eyes and turned-up nose gave the impression of a snotty soccer mom.
Vanity and Panic stood behind Avarice. Pain was crouched near the ground, and next to him stood Rage. Tahlia knew she had been brought to that place by Malice and Disease, as they were standing next to her.
“What’s this all about, guys?” Tahlia asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
Malice came to stand in front of her, leaning right into her face. “We’re going to snuff out that light you’ve been shining around all these years.”
“Unfortunately, we’ve discovered that we can’t infect you by touching you the way we have with the humans and your precious Evolved. Disease did his best while you were sleeping,” Rage told her.
Tahlia didn’t want to know what that meant. She prayed she would never find out what had happened while she was knocked out.
“Even though we can’t infect you, we can torture you. We can rip the spirit of hope right out of you, and then we can kill you,” Malice whispered.
“You can try,” Tahlia said in a steady voice.
“I’m looking forward to this,” Said Pain.
They dragged her to a chair and slammed her into it. Soon her arms and legs were bound and she steeled herself for what would come next.
“While Malice and Pain do their thing, I’m going to tell you a story,” Rage told her.
“Thanks, but I’m not in the mood for story time,” Tahlia told him.
Malice slapped her hard across the face. Chaos laughed and Avarice stuck her nose even higher up in the air as though the whole situation made her feel dirty.
“Once upon a time, there were some good little angels who did everything they were asked. They watched over the world and helped the Creator guide each of his creations as per his plan. But then the Creator decided he wasn’t done. He made a special group of beings who were allowed to interact with his most precious creation, man,” Rage began his story, each word dripping with disdain and anger.
Malice knelt in front of her and slowly pushed a pin under the nail of her index finger. Tahlia did her best not to cry out, but the pain was so intense she let a small gasp escape her.
“Now, Tahlia, it’s rude to interrupt a man when he’s telling you a story,” Rage scolded her like a child.
“My apologies. Please continue,” Tahlia said in a measured tone.
“Some of these angels wanted to help with those precious creations. But the Creator wouldn’t have it. He said no. So, they had no other choice, they went behind his back. They decided man was too clean. Man was too ‘perfect.’ And these Immortals that had been created to guide them were just too loving.” Rage paused as Malice pushed another pin under her middle finger nai
l.
This time, Tahlia had braced herself for the pain. She didn’t make a sound.
“Just when they were starting to make life more interesting for man, the Creator discovered what they were doing. And this loving and benevolent Creator banished them. He didn’t just strip them of their angel status, he just banished them to the deepest, darkest chasm he could find. He stuffed them into a hole and locked them away so they couldn’t mess up his perfect world,” Rage continued as a pin drove under the fingernail of her ring finger.
“All pretense aside, I’m sure you know that those angels are now standing around you. But we weren’t always like this. Oh no, the Creator did more than just banish us. He ensured that we would not be able to hide our true nature ever again. We took on the semblance of our ‘sins.’ Some of us got off pretty easy, but some of us, well . . . ” Rage gestured at Pain and Disease.
Despite the pain she was in, Tahlia felt like antagonizing him a bit more. She knew that whether she kept quiet or taunted the Maladies, her torture would continue.
“You think you got off easy? I can practically see the fury dripping from your sweaty brow. And Malice here, well, she looks like a total bitch. Vanity looks like a slutty cheerleader. Avarice, honey, you constantly look as though you’re smelling something foul, and I’m sure it’s not just Disease. Panic could easily pass for a strung-out cokehead, and Pain is just hideously disfigured.” Tahlia paused briefly to take a breath. “The only one who looks semi-decent is Chaos. But it’s not like she really affects that many people.”
Now she’d done it. She watched Rage’s nostrils flare. His face had always reminded her of a snake. He had strange wide-set eyes that looked red when the light hit them. His nose was wide, but the nostrils were narrow. Tahlia wasn’t sure if his tendency to over-annunciate the letter ‘s’ was natural, or a testament to his snake-like features. Avarice stepped forward and slapped Tahlia across the face hard enough that her head jerked to the left with the impact.
“Right now, the only foul thing I smell is you, Tahlia. You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” Avarice told her haughtily.
Tahlia hissed in pain as a sharp razor sliced across her arm. She looked over to see Pain smiling in wicked glee. It took everything in her not to let them see her discomfort through tears. She knew this was only the beginning.
“So, anyway, I’ll pick up where you left off,” Chaos told Rage. “Many strange things happened in the Underworld as you can imagine. It was like a place out of time. We began absorbing the souls of those who had committed the very sins we were being punished for. It was actually kind of cool. That Dante guy didn’t get it completely right. There aren’t really nine circles of hell. There are eight of us, and the souls of the damned don’t exactly go through tortures so much as hang out with others like themselves.”
“So you have some kind of support group?” Tahlia asked.
“Don’t be silly, Tahlia. The Creator thought he was punishing us while helping us see the error in our ways. He had intended for us to live out eternity amongst the souls of those who had committed sins similar to our own, and I believe he hoped it would show us the light.” Chaos laughed harshly. “What he must not have realized is that he was feeding us. He was sending those dark souls down to us to add to our collection of depravity.”
Tahlia was beginning to connect the dots. The Creator thought he could help his angels by showing them others who had suffered terrible fates as a result of their treachery. Somehow, these monsters in front of her had found a way to circumvent the Creator’s will and twist their punishment to benefit their evil deeds.
Pain proceeded to make small slices along the top of her breasts. She hadn’t even noticed that they’d ripped her shirt. She tried desperately to separate herself from the pain they were inflicting, but just as she’d gain control, Malice would stick another pin under a fingernail. Her hands felt like they were on fire, and the tender nerves were expressing their protest by shooting pain up from her finger tips to her shoulders.
“Why are you telling me all this?” Tahlia asked them angrily.
“We have our reasons,” Malice said through her teeth.
“Mostly because no one has taken the time to listen to us since Absalom. That was a great day. We still don’t know how long we were truly trapped down there, but one fine day someone literally burned a hole in the rocks that acted as our prison. We were suddenly free. But this man with these special powers intrigued us. We had never been given abilities of any kind,” Chaos said with a hint of regret.
“Absalom freed us, and in return we told him our story. I think he had been waiting for someone to validate the feelings that had been creeping up on him slowly. He took what we told him and built a plan. A masterful plan. He became a double agent, so to speak,” Rage said.
“He wanted more than what the Creator had given him. He wanted to be more powerful. He wanted to rally an army that would follow him. We wanted to be by his side when he did,” Avarice shared. It was clear that the idea of all that power affected her.
“So you teamed up with Absalom. I already know he trapped you in the golden sphere. Obviously he betrayed you,” Tahlia said breathlessly, the torture beginning to break her resolve.
“No, dear. He didn’t betray us. That was part of the plan. What you don’t understand is that the Creator had left us to rot in hell, but he had taken precautions to ensure that we could not approach man ever again. Man couldn’t even see us. We couldn’t touch him. We weren’t corporeal. We couldn’t leave the realm the Creator had created,” Rage told her slowly.
“The day we went with Absalom to meet the Council of Immortals and face our Creator once more, we already knew we would be stuffed into that wretched ball. The only possible way for us to have any effect on humans was for a human to allow us to enter the world once more,” Chaos said, watching something over Tahlia’s shoulder with great interest.
An icy torrent flowed over her body as Pain and Malice took turns pouring ice cold water over her. She shivered when the first wave stopped, her teeth chattering together. She heard them behind her again and braced herself for the cold water. Instead, she was hit with boiling water that seared her skin and left her feeling the sting all over her body. They repeated this sequence in silence three more times. Tahlia could feel the blisters forming all over her skin.
Tahlia couldn’t take the pain much longer. Her body was begging for respite. Her mind seemed to give in as the room grew darker before her and the voices faded away to silence.
Chapter Twenty-Six:
Dorian
Relief flooded through him when Romulus came through the door carrying a sleeping Keira in his arms. Whitley followed close behind with her father.
“Where have you been?” Hadley demanded from her sister.
“We were in Eternity,” Whitley said.
Eternity. The word was like a trigger for something buried deep inside his soul. Dorian looked at Romulus to find his confusion mirrored in his brother’s face. Eternity. Hearing the word was like a sweet song that called to him on his deepest level of existence.
“You don’t remember it, do you?” Whitley asked them both quietly.
“I don’t know. I can feel that it means something to me,” Dorian replied as he tried to grasp the memory.
“Eternity is your home, silly Papa!” Keira giggled. She must have awoken at the sound of their conversation.
The memories flooded back to him. He knew they had lived in many places throughout their lives, but he forgot that they were all one place. His home remained unchanged and protected throughout his entire existence. He recalled the large mountain that towered over them. He remembered entering at the base of the mountain that was really a vast, multi-level city built just for the Council of Immortals, angels, and the Creator.
“Eternity,” Romulus said, and the realization was evident in his voice.
“But why wouldn’t you remember it?” Thatcher asked them.
�
�They couldn’t,” Keira told them sadly. “They weren’t allowed to go back because they were no longer pure of heart.”
All heads swiveled in her direction. Her sweet voice seemed to hold a knowledge within it that belied her innocence. Kerr gently took his daughter from Romulus and looked into her eyes.
“What does that mean, sweet pea?” Kerr asked her curiously.
“They had babies with girls. God didn’t like that,” Keira said.
Dorian met Romulus’ eyes and saw the pain and regret etched in his features. They knew that mating with human women had been a pivotal moment in their existence, but they forgot it was the reason they had been banished to live amongst humans instead of staying with the Creator. Their sins were the reason for, not only the division amongst the Old Immortals, but also for their separation from the Creator himself.
“When we were identified as the Virtues by the Creator, we realized that he was giving us the opportunity to atone for our sins. Despite the Creator not supporting what we had done, he saw a future purpose for the children we created. By having children, we had unknowingly created the only weakness our race had ever seen. But, because the Creator saw that most of us were repentant, our ancestors would also be the greatest asset the world had in putting an end to the evil Absalom brought to the world. Sadly, we knew we would eventually be left with only five descendants, as per the prophecies we received,” Dorian told them with a mixture of pride and shame.
“Do you remember anything else about Eternity?” Nora asked them.
“It’s been so long,” Romulus told them.
“I can only remember bits and pieces. I do remember though that the Creator lived at the top of the mountain. The Great Hall was his home,” Dorian told them.
They were silent for a few moments. Dorian pushed aside thoughts of Eternity in order to bring the focus back to Tahlia. She was still missing.
“Any clue as to where Tahlia is?” Dorian asked Whitley.
“The Maladies. They took her. I’m guessing they infected the secret service guys while we were getting our ice cream. I saw someone grab mom and drag her away,” Whitley told them.