by Wendy Alec
Only Jesus stood. Tears falling down His cheeks, staring ... staring into the beautiful noble face. For His beauty was indescribable, and to those few who had ever looked upon His face – they could not but hear His name and weep. His hair and head were white like snow from the very radiance of His glory, Yehovah’s eyes were burning luminous black orbs that reflected His infinite tender compassions, His unending mercies, the gentleness and the beauty of truth. Of justice. Of holiness. Of indissoluble love.
‘This is My vow.’ Yehovah’s words issued from His being like ripples of golden radiance. ‘My solemn promise from age to age – from the eternity of eternities.’
And then He smiled. A brilliant tender smile. The understanding of the ages in His smile.
‘For the Race of Men is exceedingly beloved by Me.’
Yehovah disappeared back into the mists.
Heaven was silent.
Finally, Jether stepped forward and motioned the angelic host to rise.
‘Let it be recorded by the scribes of the First Heaven: the decrees of Yehovah as Eternal Law. The First Judgement reads thus: All members of the Race of Men, past, present, and future generations, who receive the seal of the blood sacrifice of Golgotha, are released from the rule of Satan, son of destruction. All are released from the defilement of the fall of man. All who are sealed have access to Yehovah’s courts beyond the Rubied Door and are saved from the flames of the Lake of Fire.’
The angelic host erupted in a jubilant roar.
Jether looked to where Lucifer stood, his head cast down, shielding his eyes from the brilliance of Yehovah.
‘Yehovah calls to account Lucifer, son of destruction – Satan, tempter, Adversary of the Race of Men.’
Lucifer lifted his hate-filled eyes towards Jether. Michael clasped his shoulders with both arms. Lucifer shrugged him aside.
‘I can walk,’ he spat.
Slowly, determinedly, he walked. His eyes were downcast as he placed one foot before the other on the polished sapphire path. Michael walked behind him. Lucifer walked, trembling in terror and rage until he stood directly before the throne. Raphael unshackled his hands.
‘Christos...,’ Lucifer whispered in dread.
The King spoke in a voice at once soft and filled with the authority of the universe. ‘Son of destruction.’ Lucifer’s head was bowed, his arm shielding his face from the light that blazed from Jesus, Great King of Heaven.
Lucifer lifted his head, inch by inch until he was staring directly at Jesus.
‘Ceased is Lucifer, the golden one. Yehovah has broken the staff of the wicked, the sceptre of rulers.’ Jesus reached out His hands and removed Lucifer’s sceptre. ‘Thy pomp is brought down to Sheol.’ He looked straight into Lucifer’s eyes. Severe. Forbidding. He nodded to Gabriel. ‘Complete the Judgement, then deliver him back to the fallen. He walked back to His throne and disappeared into the thick swirling mists with Yehovah.
Raphael and Ariel stripped Lucifer of his white ceremonial garments until he stood before the altar clothed in only a white loincloth.
‘You have lost, brother,’ Gabriel said. ‘You no longer have authority over the Race of Men.’
Lucifer grasped Gabriel’s tunic and pulled him towards him. ‘Unless men give it to me...’ Lucifer hissed. He drew Gabriel closer until their faces touched.
‘My brother Gabriel,’ he whispered, ‘your fallen brother, Lucifer, is yet also a prophet.’ Lucifer raised one hand to where the righteous dead sat. The entire assembly fell silent. Michael turned from his position at the Gate exchanging a glance with Jether. Jether nodded.
‘I foretold you, compatriots, before my unmerited banishment, that we would see our angelic sanctuary desecrated by these replicated mewling, inferior beasts.’ Gabriel felt Lucifer’s hot putrid breath on his cheeks. ‘Here they are in your midst! It is a travesty!’ Lucifer flung Gabriel away, then raised his arms to the angelic host. ‘Mark me well, my revered angelic compatriots...’ His eyes flamed with an unholy fire as his voice rose in decibels.
‘If truly we serve Yehovah, we will protect Him against His splendid and overwhelming love for them.’
‘Bind his mouth!’ commanded Michael striding towards Lucifer, ‘that his odious words fall to the ground, not on our ears.’ Michael seized him by the neck and bound his mouth. Uriel marched towards him, his dagger sharpened and ready. Lucifer struggled violently. Michael seized his head in a vicelock. With six deft swipes of Uriel’s blade, Lucifer’s long raven locks fell to the floor. He was shorn. ‘How art thou cut down to the ground...,’ whispered Jether.
Lucifer stared into Michael’s eyes with a shocking violent hatred.
‘...and the noise of thy viols; the maggot is spread under thee,’ Michael said through gritted teeth. ‘And worms cover thee. Deliver him back to the kingdom of the fallen!’
Raphael and his generals dragged Lucifer up the nave towards the gates, struggling violently. With his one freed hand, he ripped the binding from across his mouth.
‘You shall pay for this, Michael!’ he cried. ‘Nazarene!’ he screamed, ‘You shall pay for this for eternity-y-y-y-y...’
The great pearl gates of the white plains closed behind Lucifer forever.
‘It is over,’ murmured Michael wearily. Shaken. Suddenly emotional, Lucifer’s cry ringing in his ears.
‘It is over,’ Gabriel echoed in relief.
‘He is the master of resurrections.’ Jether turned from the gate to the brothers, his expression guarded. ‘Only when Lucifer lies burning in the Lake of Fire on the eastern shore, then and only then shall it be truly over.’
* * *
2021
Manhattan, New York
Lilian surveyed the vast open-plan living room of Jason’s Manhattan penthouse. It was stark, almost utilitarian – its one redeeming feature, the plush white ‘Nina Campbell’ sofa that Julia had fallen in love with when they had first moved to New York City. Strange, Lilian reflected, Jason had rigorously erased every memory of Julia ... except this one glaring omission.
Lilian smiled. It had been she who coerced Lawrence into introducing his young niece, pretty fledgling London journalist Julia Cartier, to her stubborn young son freshly out of Harvard and attending film school in New York. And how she had loved Julia instantly, the fiery, talented young writer. Julia was so good for Jason – that she was sure of.
They had married young. On Julia’s nineteenth birthday. Jason was just twenty-two. And on his twenty-third birthday, his portion of the De Vere trust fund became his to do with as he wished – 200 million pounds at his disposal, to be released in tranches of ten million by the De Vere Foundation board of trustees every five years until he turned forty, when the remainder would be his.
And the world had become Jason and Julia’s proverbial oyster.
Jason and Julia’s divorce had shaken Lilian badly. Jason had never fully recovered from Lily’s accident. Lilian knew that he drank too much. Never – never enough to jeopardize his work, but quite enough to affect his marriage.
He had used his vast personal fortune to leverage the New York merchant banks in his quest for new media companies. His personal media empire, Vox Media, was funded by one of the more than nine thousand active hedge funds of the trillion dollar (and growing) industry. Most of the funds were based in New York, and the hedge fund board was made up almost entirely of his father, James De Vere’s closest friends. Charles Cussler, Jason’s godfather had been an invaluable ally.
Media Acquisition had become Jason’s sole obsession. Jason was stubborn ... as stubborn as his father James De Vere had ever been. Oh, yes – how alike they were. Both prickly, selfish, driven, irascible, and, most of all, stubborn, but both Jason and James were true, Lilian had concluded. There was no guile in Jason.
Lilian walked over to the drinks cabinet, and picked up the one of the two solitary photographs in the apartment. Jason and Adrian at Adrian’s recent presidential inauguration.
She smiled. Jason was starti
ng to look like that actor from the previous decade – what was his name...? Harrison Ford. Jason would loathe that comparison.
And Adrian. Handsome, gifted, generous Adrian. Lilian replaced the photograph.
He had been such a sunny toddler. Always smiling. A people magnet since the age of two. He never sulked. Never pushed for his own, never pouted or fought to get his way. What an easy child he had been! And he was funny. Lilian smiled to herself. Side-wrenchingly funny. A joy.
Adrian had entered his teens and suffered through some of its the awkward phases, but otherwise he had sailed through school at Gordonstoun, achieving first class grades at Oxford University, completing a faculty exchange year at Georgetown University in D.C. specializing in Arab studies, before entering the world of British politics. At twenty-nine, Adrian De Vere had become one of the youngest British Prime Ministers in the history of the British Isles. He had served two full terms and resigned last spring to concentrate on his bid for the European presidency. James would have been so proud. Lilian sighed.
But James De Vere never lived to see Adrian invested. He had collapsed from a fatal heart attack in his study at their home in the Oxfordshire countryside. He was dead even before the ambulance arrived. And then less than eighteen months later, Melissa ... and the baby. Lilian shivered.
Adrian and Jason had always been close. Very close and since James De Vere’s death, they had grown even closer. But even Adrian couldn’t persuade Jason to forgive Nick.
Nick. Lilian’s expression softened. Her beloved youngest son. Her baby. She believed in her heart that he was the greatest victim of the accident. He had never recovered from the crippling guilt and Jason was determined that he never would if he had anything to do with it.
Nick had been a glorious child. A quiet, handsome boy with a gentle spirit, an honours student, a first-rate archaeology student at Cambridge – but then came the accident. She had watched as her blue-eyed boy had drunk the nights away to forget, dissipating his substantial trust fund on cocaine, heroin and God knows what else. He was beautiful enough to become prime celebrity fodder for the ruthless British paparazzi, and he gave them plenty of material. Then he got AIDS.
Lilian moved to the penthouse balcony and stared out at the view across the water, deep in thought.
Eighteen months before James De Vere died, he had frozen Nick’s trust fund in horror at discovering Nick had broken his engagement to his glamourous British model fiancée – Devon – for a fling with a German archeologist – Klaus von Hausen. James was old school. And frozen it would remain, for when James died, Jason, as eldest son, joined the foundation’s board of directors. And he refused to sign.
‘Mother,’ Lilian turned. Jason stood at the drinks cabinet, freshly showered. He poured her the tomato juice she loved, then himself a whisky. He came up beside her and passed her the glass. They stood in silence for several minutes. At ease. Finally Jason spoke.
‘I saw Julia.’
Lilian nodded. She waited.
‘At Adrian’s event in Aqaba.’ Jason slugged down the whisky.
Lilian gently removed the whisky glass from her eldest son’s grasp and took his hand. ‘I miss Lily.’ He shrugged.
She looked deeply into his eyes, then over to the only other photograph in the apartment. A holiday photo. Jason, Julia and Lily on the beach together in France – laughing, relaxed – a family. Jason followed her gaze.
No words passed between them, but Lilian read her son completely.
Chapter Forty-six
The Dread Councils of Hell
Lucifer limped through the great bronze portico of the eastern wing of his chambers, out into his ornamental tropical gardens. His hair had grown back in a dark stubble on his scalp. His sapphire eyes were clouded with a thin, opaque film. His wrists and ankles were still bruised and scabbed from the shackles of past events.
‘Cerberus,’ he crooned, feeding his pet hellhound a sweetmeat from his palm.
He moved his palm across the horizon, resting his weight on his silver cane, then leisurely massaged his bruised wrists, surveying his newly erected fortress, which lay light years beyond hell and the shadowed regions, beyond the southern polar caps of Mars, in the Second Heaven under the escarpment of the brooding ice-capped crags of Vesper.
It was a monstrous structure, constructed entirely of molten silver and alabaster. He stared out at the great portcullis and battlements, then smiled. The ice citadel of Gehenna was almost complete – his winter palace. Not a trace of hell’s fires would ever cross his threshold again to humiliate him. He must embrace eternal winter until his allotted time was up according to Eternal Law, until the final judgement. The Lake of Fire. He shuddered.
Marduk stepped over the threshold, bowing low before him.
‘Sandor ... Diablon,’ Lucifer spoke without turning. ‘All of my warriors who surrendered to the Nazarene and Michael’s armies – they are delivered to the Abyss?’
Marduk smirked.
‘All the fallen that were conquered are delivered to the Abyss, sire. To the molten core. As are the insurgents among the ranks of the wicked dead.’
‘My edict has gone out?’ He turned.
‘Your edict has gone throughout the penitentiaries of hell, great Majesty. There will be no whisper of the Nazarene’s visit to the courts of the damned. It is punishable by the Abyss.’
‘Well and good, Marduk. The missives are sent?’
‘The stygian missives are circulated to all the dread fallen, sire. The satanic princes of Babylon and Grecia – the principalities of Belphegor. To the fallen archangels of Astaroth ... The Thrones of Folcador, the Warlocks of Ishtar.
All the great principalities of evil and terror above the earth and under the earth gather for the dread assembly of vengeance, my lord.’
‘Tell Charsoc my winter palace must be prepared for their coming.’ Lucifer looked down at the lapis floors beneath his feet.
‘As soon as it is prepared, demolish this palace, that there be not one stone left standing – that there be no trace of the Nazarene’s presence remaining in my kingdom.
‘It shall be done, my lord.’
Lucifer put his hand to his head, running his fingers over the new growth of hair. They gleamed black with a malevelant evil. Vengeance.
‘Every trace, Marduk. When the council is over, the Nazarene will have ceased to exist!’
* * *
Jether and Michael looked up from the waterfalls of nectar, far beyond the horizon, to a lone figure who stood in the gardens of the labyrinths outside the seventh spire, gazing out towards Earth. ‘He is returned again from Earth,’ said Michael.
Jether nodded.
‘It draws Him continually.’
Jesus stood silent, watching the earth as it spun slowly on its axis. The lightnings and thunderings from the spires at the top of the mountain struck continually all around Him. His face betrayed a deep yearning.
‘He is torn,’ Jether murmured. ‘By two worlds – ours in the First Heaven, and the world of the Race of Men.’
‘We cannot feel what He feels,’ Michael whispered. ‘We have not been one of them.’
Gabriel knelt in supplication under the great willows. He raised his head.
‘I have watched each dusk as He leaves,’ he murmured. ‘He returns each dawn.’
‘He visits those who accept His sacrifice, who long for His appearing. He yearns for His subjects; He is their King.’ Jether’s voice was soft.
They watched in silence as Jesus walked towards the rubied lightning bolts that flashed from the secret portal that led from the seventh spire directly before the Great White Throne.
‘He goes to requisition Yehovah. He is touched by their infirmities.’
Jesus walked into the glorious source of the thunder and lightnings, His head raised, surrounded by an unearthly radiance, His face exultant with the rapture. Then vanished.
* * *
The Great Silver Battlements of the citadel of Gehenna gli
stened in the nine magenta ice suns that rose from the murky, cold skies above the ice-capped crags of Vesper in the Second Heaven.
The wild, barren ice wastelands stretched for miles, surrounding the great forbidding fortress. Freezing arctic blizzards and tempests from Mars circled the citadel continually, venting their fury on the alabaster battlements of Lucifer’s winter palace.
Gargantuan white vultures circled the bleak plains, their wingspans reached a hundred feet, their mangy feathers grimy with dried blood.
The menacing satanic princes arrived one by one in their chariots of the damned, each pulled by twenty dark-winged griffons. From Babylon and Ethiopia, Grecia, and China they came. From Siberia and from Persia. From Gog and Magog. Their great and terrible armies assembled on the ice plains of Gehenna to execute their bidding.
Thousands of the sinister Black Magi rode across the plains on their headless three-humped camels. Close behind flew the Witches of Babylon and the dread Warlocks of Ishtar on the backs of werewolves and dragons, their faces raised in ecstasy to the ice blizzards.
From above the skies they came – thousands of dauphin scribes with cloven hoofs, flying towards Gehenna, and from under the earth they came, Hera and the Banshees of Valkyrie, riding on Leviathan and giant serpents. The Wort Seers of Diablos and the Necromancer Kings. All across the plains, as far as the eye could see, the fallen were gathering.
Answering the call. To hold high court in the Dread Councils of Hell.
Lucifer turned from the window facing the great hall and smiled.
‘The disciples of hell are assembled,’ he said. ‘Let the gathering commence.’
* * *
Lucifer stood under the vast open dome in the centre of the Great War Chamber of Gehenna, his eyes closed, his robe blowing violently in the dark blizzards that blew in from the White Dwarf Pinnacles. The nine magenta ice suns were setting, and in their place rose the seven comets of Thuban, their flaming hoarfrost tails blazing above the bleak ice plains of Gehenna. Hundreds of ferocious snow hellhounds, each with six heads and glowing red eyes, patrolled the plains in packs.