Shax leaned out from the line and took a look back at the rest of them, including his friend, who he thought for sure would never agree to such a thing. But he could see that even Aax was resolute in the decision. “Oh, Christ’s cock,” he said, “it’ll ruin him, it will. How’s he gonna…? It’s inhumane, it is.”
“Then it is fitting,” said Raum, “that no humans shall witness it.”
And then Lucifer did smell it. The vicious scent of bloodlust and hatred … directed at him. “Vicious intent?” he said. “You’ll not—I am Lucifer, not a paper angel to clip and cut finger with feather.” And flames started to rise from the tips of Lucifer’s wings.
But they were all ready for that. And the ten of them raced and flew at him, snarling and growling, and biting and kicking. And armored feathers pushed out and talons jutted, and they pinned Lucifer to the ground beside the lake. The entire vicious swarm of them rolled with him, and through wildly flapping wings and lion roars and terrible talons that drew blood from whatever they touched, none faltered.
Even Zepar, drunk on the excitement and the smell of the freshly spilled blood from one of the most notorious and nasty angels in Heaven or Hell, stood firm and did his part to secure Lucifer’s limbs from lashing.
When the blood and the lust cleared, Lucifer was face down next to the fiery lake, and there was a conspirator clawing and clinging desperately to each one of his six limbs—his legs, arms, and wings lie pinned. Lilith held a firm grasp on the whipping and wagging, angry pointed tip of the seventh.
“A treacherous snake,” said Lilith, struggling to hold Lucifer’s last limb, “has but two heads—a venomous and vile strike and bite for each. This I know. Of this I have seen and felt sting and tasted bittersweet poison of love’s venom as it devoured my hearts.” She raised one of her wings high above her head and stretched it to a taut steel blade.
Lucifer screamed out and growled like a rabid animal and his voice roared. “Whosoever violates me in this manner—”
“Hurry it up then!” Shax shouted. He could feel himself losing his grip. “I won’t be holding his hate if he gets much hotter!”
“Hold!” Rsoni yelled at them all. “You will hold fast or I will smite you beside him.”
Lucifer seemed to lose the tiniest bit of fight.
“You desire a throne?” Raum shouted, wrestling with the talons on one of Lucifer’s feet. “I will follow you to purpose’s end. And for that, you shall share fate and finger with me. For if Life is wicked, let her perish and I’ll not mourn or shed tear, but if she indeed be righteous, then God will repay each of us according to what they have done. And she will know us by the mark that we carry, and she will know our deeds and we will know her wrath.”
And at those words, Lucifer roared so loudly as to almost cause them all to lose their grip on his limbs.
“Do it!” Zarzi yelled. “For the eternal love of the Garden, cut it off!”
Lilith wasn’t finished airing out her own anger. The Garden had been harsh to her, and she knew it was this snake’s fault. “For the injurious poison of your two-headed snake”—she swept her wing down like a pendulum, swiftly slicing the tips of her flight feathers through the base of Lucifer’s long red tail—“need not add insult with whip!”
— CLXXXIV —
BARBARA CAME BACK down the student dormitory hall with the keys to my cell jingling slightly in her hand. Then she sprang me free with a few clicks and clanks of the lock, and then we were off down the dark rock-walled corridor. It was more tunnel than any hallway I had been in. And the cold from the damp drizzle outside made our breath puff steam like smoke.
Barbara held the skirt of her habit up with one hand and dragged me along behind her with the other.
Her hand felt good in mine and I stumbled along behind her, smiling and giggling. “Where we going, Sister?”
“Oh, don’t even start,” Barbara said. “You know I’m not no—just don’t.” She stopped for a second and we listened through the darkness to the languishing cries of … hundreds. “Be quiet.”
“Which one?” I asked
“Shh,” she whispered. “Any of these idiots see us and they’ll burn us for breakfast.”
I giggled. “I’m confused,” I said. “You want me to be quiet, don’t be quiet? Which one is it?”
“You are so—just shut up,” she said. “That J’s gonna wear off and you won’t be so stupid happy.”
I smiled at her back. “What is J?” I said, “I like it.”
She muttered to herself, “I don’t know which one’s worse—you whining or giggling like a idiot.”
When Barbara seemed satisfied we could keep going, she jerked my arm and she half ran, half tiptoed down the hall. I stumbled along behind her. When we got to the end of the corridor, Barbara stopped us by a huge mirror mounted on the wall. The students—all of us were supposed to use it every morning before we went out to formation. Our seminary sweats were tucked, zipped, and the hood strings were even and pulled just right—God liked tidiness.
“Why do you always call me…?” I glanced in the mirror, it was a habit by then. “Oh my God!” I said, louder than Barbara wanted, because she squeezed my hand and jerked at me.
I was … older … than I should have been, by two or three years at least. I rubbed my face, making sure it was me. “What happened … to my face?”
Barbara turned around and looked at me.
I barely noticed her because I was staring at my reflection. My face was thinner, my hair was thicker and my eyes… Glasses or not, my eyes were sunk in deeper than I remembered. And I was taller, but skinnier than when I got to Saint Samuels. “What did they…?” I turned and started to ask Barbara, but when I saw her, I knew I wasn’t dreaming.
Barbara’s face was older like mine, but her cheeks had filled to high plump pillows, and I knew it was a mortal sin if there ever was one, and I tried not to… I think I tried, but I couldn’t stop looking at them. “What are those?” I blurted.
Barbara dropped my hand, and put both of hers on her hips. “Now ain’t you just a genius,” she said. “No wonder they beat on you so much.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, but I kept staring. “Where did they come from? You never had—can I see them?”
“Lord Almighty Jesus, no,” she whisper-shouted at me, “you can’t!” She turned around and looked down the hall at some unseen threat. “You sure can’t handle your Judgment, can you? We’re gonna have to find something else for you to—” Barbara went dead silent when she heard the voice.
“Who did she go see?” the voice asked another. “Miserable little… I’ll teach her myself!”
Barbara’s entire body went rigid, anticipating the answer.
“I followed her this far,” the second voice replied.
I recognized both of them—the second voice was one of the PI’s—and even through the giddy goodness of what Barbara kept calling Judgment, I froze in fear. Because the first voice … was Father Dominic.
The second voice answered him, “I dared not follow, she would have discovered me.”
“Have no fear, brother,” Father D said. That’s who was coming down the hall! “I have a fair idea who it was. Have they come out yet?”
“I … I don’t think so,” the second voice said. “She has to… They have to be right around the corner.”
We were even closer than the PI knew. Barbara shoved us both up against the side of the corridor—as flat as we could stand on the darkest shadowed side of the barely lit tunnel. The dark corridor that would soon be our tomb. Because whatever memory I had lost between being barely ten years old when they burned me, and seeing myself in the mirror, and then Barbara’s breasts bumping up beneath her habit, both of us barely minted teenagers… Leaving your cell at Saint Samuels, let alone escaping the entire compound with one of its Sisters, would surely be worthy of much more than fire.
Fear, adrenaline and endorphins have a way of cutting through any kind of sensation
smothering that the human body can be subjected to. I had no idea how I knew that, but a little voice in the back of my mind woke up that very day—a guardian arose inside me that instant in that dark hallway—and it screamed the warning at my mind, Don’t cry out!
Because whatever painkiller Barbara injected me with was busy trickling its usefulness out of my system like the cold Seattle mist dripped its way down the downspouts from the roof over our heads. And a burning sensation began creeping its way from the nerves in my neck, slowly gathering agony and anger and sending it to the ganglia along my spine, like a slithering liquid lava inferno of acid burning into my back.
I mashed my chest and the side of my face as hard as I could into the wall next to the mirror, trying to flatten out enough that Father D would not detect me in the dark. I could tell that Barbara was doing the same thing with her back. And I squeezed three times into her hand on mine—a silent “I love you.” If this was the last time I saw her—felt her beautiful soft touch—I wanted her to know… No, I wanted her hand to feel that I did love her if nothing more than for her companionship during my abandonment at Saint Samuels.
On the third squeeze, a spike of lightning shot through my spine and I bit into my lip and I could feel the blood gush—copper taste and hot liquid oozed into my mouth, but I didn’t cry out.
I must have clamped down too hard on Barbara’s hand, because on the third squeeze, she let out a muffled chirp … and then the entire tunnel went completely still. No more voices wailed from the students’ cells, no more footsteps padded their way toward us from up the hall, and no more giggles escaped from an idiot who had just sealed the fate of two long-lost souls.
The corridor and the dark of the night plunged into nothingness. And time lost all meaning as Father D and the PI stood motionless, barely twenty feet away.
The only thing I moved was my eyes, rotating them in their sunk-in sockets just enough that I could see the outlines of the PI and Father D in the darkness. It was like being trapped in a cave with a great bear that your soul hoped would not rush across the tiny distance that separated you to sink its jaws into you as you screamed in futility to be set free. All the while your mind knowing and yelling at you that that was exactly what was about to happen.
Behind us was the door to my cell and the rock wall dead end of the terrible tunnel, barely ten feet beyond it. And in front of us was the hard and hateful bear that was Father D’s proven compassion.
The steady steel in Barbara’s nerves must have run out before the burning acid in mine turned my own will to jelly, because the silence screamed to a slamming halt when she yelled, “Run!”
— CLXXXV —
I STARE INTO the fire in the middle of Shannon’s shop. After all I went through with it at seminary, you would think that fire would scare the faith right out of me. But I chuckle at the flames, twisting up from the bottom of the pit, lapping at the air above them like big orange and red snakes. I look at my flask. “It’s a good grog, Shannon,” I say. And suddenly the heat from the fire isn’t bothering me as much, certainly less than when I walked inside. And everything about my day feels … better.
“Yes, she is at that, isn’t she,” he says. “Hotter than the underside of me Lucinda’s habit, it is.”
And my Shandian mind starts to connect the dots of the day. “You mean that lovely lady up the alley?”
“She’s lovely all right,” Shannon says. “Ain’t no lady though”—he laughs a bit—“if ya know what I’m—” He stops himself. “I … I apologize, friend,” he says. “It’s insensitive of me, it is. It’s just that … me Lucinda is the sole sinner I ever considered more than me pigs.”
And I think that’s more honesty than Shannon knows what to do with, because he calls for more grog and his minion quickly delivers. Then Shannon holds up his freshly filled cup at me as he says, “To them ladies what ain’t, eh Benito.”
I have no qualms drinking to that, so I do.
Shannon marks and minds time … differently than any man I’ve ever known. And of all the angels I’ve met in my sleep—dark, light, demon dream creature—he’s the most mindful of the proper place and time for all things in his world … or mine. So I don’t rush him as we get reacquainted. It wouldn’t do any good anyway—Shannon’s eternity runs on its own schedule.
But he gets down to business soon enough, and when I tell him about the events of my day… Well, now … business is all he’s got time for.
“That holier than thou benevolent bloody bastard!” Shannon shouts. “He’s sent him early, he has!” He looks at his bank of clocks. “I ain’t had time—you’re not proper prepared.” He rubs his mustache, and then stares back at the fire. “Rollin’ heads already, is he?” He looks up at me. “He’s still dead then … your angel?”
“Well,” I say, “he was certainly dead when I left this morning. I don’t think he’s going anywhere with his guts—”
“This morning!” Shannon shouts.
I just shrug and raise up my eyebrows and hands in apology.
Because when Shannon does speed up, he shifts through life’s gears pretty quickly. “Did ya get a gander at the geese behind the glass?” he asks.
“They never revealed themselves.”
“Cut ya loose, did they?” he mutters back at the fire. “Crooked cunts. That one’s still running his big .60 caliber, I’d wager. Overcompensating ogre that he is. He’ll be coming for your cock with his little arrogant assassin in tow, he will. Unless we beat him to his own bullet.”
My Shandian mind tells me something isn’t right—I can feel it—and it’s only a few seconds before Shannon senses it too. It’s strange to me, because that’s not normally how the order of our perceptions play out.
Shannon stands up, walks quickly between two huge wooden desks, shoving them like cardboard boxes to make room for his girth, and then he rummages around on top of a big tall wooden cabinet behind them. When his hand comes back down, it’s grasping the blade end of some sort of ancient … axe. “You’ll be needing this then,” he says.
“What, may I ask … is that?”
“Christ’s cross, Benito,” Shannon says, “you’ve manhandled your member so much it’s made your memory muzzy.” And then he flips the weapon up and catches it by the handle. Then he spins the handle so fast in his hand that the blades on the other end blur to a see-through circle. He squeezes hard on the handle—stops the spin—and then he swings it in a figure eight in front of him like a majorette in a parade. I can’t even imagine where … or how he learned to do that. He looks at me and grins. “This … be an axe, mate. Not no ordinary head hacker neither.”
Shannon has a taste for otherworldly fantasy and a flair that makes him sound mental sometimes. Believe me, I’ve heard the rants from the patients at the sanatorium. “I don’t think that’s going to help, old friend,” I say. “Bullets and batons and… Protection is a little better armed than that. How’s that going to save me?”
“Don’t you remember?” he says, bewildered when my face confirms that I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about. “Well”—he spins the blade again to satisfy himself that he can—“this here masher ain’t meant for you, me old friend. Your mashin’ has obviously ruined your recollection right along with your vision, because this here little sinner is the only thing that did save you.”
— CLXXXVI —
WHEN THE TEN, angel conspirators let Lucifer loose, he turned to a raging wraith, roaring and growling and spitting and screaming at them. And then he spun like a dog biting at its tail, only he wasn’t biting, he was yelping and wailing at where it used to be.
And the bloody stump at the bottom of Lucifer’s spine spurted the dark blood molasses—bittersweet sap nectar of the trees in Eden’s Garden—sugared goodness from his right heart, turned malignant and mean. The black ooze boiled and burned and baked over until all that was left of his tail was a charred black hunk of trunk where his once tree-tall tail used to be.
When Luci
fer was finished lamenting his loss, he turned to the ten of them. His ice-blue eyes had turned raging-fire red, and his wings stretched wide and caught fire and shot orange flames into the air above him and black sooty smoke rolled from the tops of them, and he roared, “Give tail to me!” he yelled at them. “And then I shall annihilate you all.”
Though to a single angel, they each knew better. An eternity’s Protector was the only one with such powers. And that was the exact reason that Lucifer still needed their help. For even though the Devil could put his own parts and pieces back together, melting and mending once-severed flesh, only a Protector—only God’s power—could destroy an angel for all the eternities to come.
The ten of them had steeled themselves—melded their own hearts and purposes together in attacking and taking Lucifer’s second favorite appendage. He would not be allowed to put himself above or beyond any of them in their crusade against Life.
Lilith held up Lucifer’s limp tail and smirked at him. And the rest of the ten drew closer to her.
“You dare detach demon from treasured tail?” Lucifer screeched. “Go no further in this mutiny, lest your actions become mind for murder!”
They would not be persuaded with threats nor the throes of a former follower in Heaven. Their journey to remove one greedy and vain tick-like god, sucking the blood and benevolence from the eternity for her own purposes and pleasure … would not take its first steps with the childlike fitful threats of a burning desire to rule from another. The great devil-dog, Lucifer, at the hands of his own conspiracy and deception, would have to finally learn to heel.
Rsoni spoke … to them all. “If righteousness and justice are to be the new foundation of the desires of thy throne,” he said to Lucifer, “your kingdom shall not start in venom. We shall all see truth in loving kindness as its birth … and your vanity shall vanish before thy face.”
“Noooo!” Lucifer shouted, because he knew what they were about to do.
Lilith dropped the tail at her feet—in front of five horrible hounds of Hell and five more benevolent brothers and sisters of Heaven. And the entire blended and blind raging pack of wild animals, turned ravenous and revenge-filled ravens, cawing and clawing and biting and baying, and screeching and screaming like mighty eagles as they tore and ripped and clawed and cut to pieces the entire length of Lucifer’s once treacherous tail. They ate like ravens raging for raw meat.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 72