Judgment (The Alternate Earth Series, Book 3) (15 page)

“Well… this should be interesting to watch,” I hear Lucifer say, immediately capturing everyone’s attention.

He’s standing on the rocky shore of the reservoir, watching the standoff between us and Lucian’s minions. He looks amused by the prospect of the fight to come. I don’t know why I always hope for more from Lucifer.

“Enjoying the show we’re putting on in our reality?” Mammon asks Lucifer tauntingly. “Are you feeling brave enough to try to match our accomplishments in the Origin yet?”

Lucifer lifts an eyebrow in Mammon’s direction. “Are you really that dimwitted?”

Mammon stiffens at Lucifer’s question, but remains silent.

“I guess that answers my question,” Lucifer says in a resigned voice, with a disappointed shake of his head. “Honestly, you people need to learn how to play with your food, not just gulp it down all in one swallow. The lack of self-control you have is truly mind-boggling. In fact, I think I’m getting a headache just trying to understand this idiotic plan of yours.”

“What’s so hard to understand?” Mammon asks sarcastically. “Who exactly is the dimwitted one here?”

Lucifer’s eyebrows rise after Mammon’s last taunt.

Mammon soon falls to his knees, holding his head with both hands as he screams out in pain. Lucifer stalks up to Mammon and grabs the angel’s head with both hands. I hear Lucifer quickly say some words before he twists Mammon’s neck, effectively breaking it.

I’m pretty certain that I just witnessed Lucifer use a favorite punishment of his. When I see Mammon’s body begin to twitch on the rocky shoreline, my suspicions are confirmed. Lucifer just trapped Mammon’s soul inside a now-dead human body.

“I suggest you think before you speak to me again,” Lucifer says, staring down at Mammon as he rolls over onto his back to look up at Lucifer. “As it is, why don’t you leave and take your little peons with you? Tell Lucian these people are under my protection now. If he wants to continue with his little party in this reality, he needs to leave them alone.”

Mammon sits up. “Sounds like an empty threat to me. It’s not like you can actually do anything to him.”

“Can’t I?” Lucifer says threateningly.

Mammon stands. “I’ll deliver your message, but I don’t think it’ll make any difference. It’s only a matter of time before he has everything he needs to make his plan work.”

“It won’t work,” Lucifer says with certainty. “It will never happen, no matter what he does.”

“You don’t know that!” Mammon shouts, like a madman.

“Watch your tone with me, boy,” Lucifer tells Mammon, like he’s speaking to a spoiled child. “I can’t help it if your glorious leader didn’t think things through first.”

From the scathing look Mammon is giving Lucifer, it’s obvious he wants to kill him.

Mammon looks over at us. “It doesn’t matter what you do. Go ahead and waste your time making the humans’ water drinkable. We have another way to get what we need anyway. It’s only a matter of time before things are set into place.”

Mammon phases, which seems to be the rebellion angels’ signal to leave also.

“What do you think he meant by that?” I ask Lucifer.

  Lucifer turns to look at me. “I have no idea.”

I’m not sure whether I should believe Lucifer, but I do. At this point, if he knows something useful, he needs to learn how to share.

“Well,” Malcolm says, “it seems obvious that Lucian has a back-up plan of some sort.”

“If he does,” Mason says, “then he’s probably keeping it a secret, and only telling his inner group. Maybe Xavier will be allowed in on the secret soon.”

I silently pray that he does learn what else Lucian has up his sleeve. Mammon sounded too cocksure of Lucian’s fallback plan. Whatever it is, I know it won’t do this world any favors.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

For two days straight, we travel around the world with Rafe. Fortunately, Lucifer’s threat to Lucian seems to have done the trick. We don’t meet with any more angelic resistance.

When we phase into the safe house in New York City, we discover the warehouse has been burnt to the ground in a firestorm that seems to have destroyed over half the city. The night sky isn’t the only thing that has been changed. The city skyline is now missing more than a few buildings. As I survey the destruction, I begin to wonder if this world will ever recover from what happened. The only thing I am certain of is that it would never be the same again. How could it be? Half the moon was gone!

Without the other half of the moon, the days on this Earth were becoming shorter. The planet’s rotation was almost twice as fast now without the moon’s gravitational pull.

Speaking of which, as I look up at the sky, it seems to me like the moon is getting closer to the Earth. It could just be my imagination, but, then again, maybe it isn’t.

“What are you thinking?” Mason asks as he comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my shoulders.

“Does the moon look…bigger?” I ask, wondering if my question sounds stupid.

Mason looks up and studies what’s left of our celestial partner for a moment.

“Now that you mention it,” he says, loosening his hold on me, “it kind of does.”

“What do you think it means?” I ask, worried over this new development.

“I’m not sure,” Mason says, “but I think I have an idea.”

Mason runs his hands down my arms. “Come on. Let’s get back to the castle and see if Josh has noticed anything out of the ordinary about its orbit. Hopefully, it’s just an optical illusion. Either way, we should check to make sure everything is ok.”

As we return to our friends, Rafe is pulling his staff out of the freshly-cleansed bay.

“You guys ready to head back to the castle?” Mason asks the others.

“Yeah,” Chandler says with a big yawn. “Sorry; I guess the last two days have taken more out of me than I thought.”

“I think we could all use some rest,” I tell him, stifling a yawn of my own. “Let’s return to the castle and get some sleep. I’m not sure what else we’ll have to deal with in the coming days.”

When we return to Boldt Castle, Mason and I seek out Josh in his computer room before retiring to our room for some rest. When Mason asks Josh if he’s noticed anything odd about what’s left of the moon, Josh looks confused.

“What do you think it’s doing?” he asks, turning back to his computer and punching some keys on his keyboard. He quickly pulls up the 3-D hologram of the Earth and what’s left of the moon on the Dragon Network’s radar.

“Hmm,” Josh says, looking at some numbers flashing across the screen on his desk. “That’s definitely not good.”

I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.

“You can’t just say something like that and leave us hanging,” I tell him, sounding more irritated than I intended to.

“Oh, sorry,” Josh says, spinning around in his chair to face us. “According to these numbers, the moon is slowly moving closer to Earth.”

“Yeah, that’s not good,” I say, agreeing with Josh’s earlier assessment. “What’s going to happen? Is it going to crash into us?”

“At its current rate of descent,” Josh says, “it won’t have enough momentum to crash onto Earth. It’ll hit the Roche Limit at too slow a speed to punch through it and stay intact.”

“Roche Limit?” I have to ask.

“Basically, it’s the point where the moon will get ripped apart by the Earth’s tidal forces. When the rest of the moon hits it, it’ll disintegrate, and the material will disperse to form a ring around the planet.”

“Like the rings around Saturn?” I ask, trying to visualize such an event.

“Yes, like those,” Josh confirms.

“How long before that happens?” Mason asks.

“I’m not sure. I can do some calculations to try and get an estimate.”

I sigh heavily as a thought occurs to me.

“What are you thinking?” Mason asks, having heard me.

“I’m thinking it sounds a lot like a countdown to the end of this world,” I admit.

Neither Josh nor Mason says anything for a moment as my words sink in.

“I’ll work on the calculations,” Josh says, turning back to his computer. “It might take me a while, though. I may even need to call Wayne to see if he can help me do the math. Some of this is just going to have to be guesswork. We have no idea what the mass is of what’s left of the moon, so my calculations could be
way
off. I’ll need to watch its descent for a while so I can get a better idea of how fast it’s moving.”

“Let us know when you have something figured out,” Mason tells Josh.

My husband places his hand on the small of my back and phases us to our bedroom. I slip my boots off while Mason helps me remove my baldric and jacket.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, massaging my shoulders.

“No. Just tired,” I say through a yawn.

Mason leads me over to the bed and pulls the covers back. I notice a slim silver- wrapped treat lying on my pillow. When I pick it up, I spot the word ‘
jouir de
’ written on it with a black marker.

“What’s this say?” I ask Mason, showing him the piece of candy.

“Enjoy,” he tells me.

“I don’t know why JoJo thinks I understand French,” I say, opening the thin chocolate mint and doing as JoJo directed.

Mason chuckles. “You understand some.”

“
Some
being the operative word in that sentence.”

I rest my head on the pillow and close my eyes while I chew the sweet treat. I don’t know how JoJo found candy in the middle of an apocalypse, but I don’t question the small miracle. I just enjoy it, as my friend told me to.

I feel Mason’s weight push the other side of the bed down as he lies beside me. When I turn to face him, he does the same, and we hold onto one another. With the soft comfort of the bed underneath me, and the warmth of Mason’s body infusing my own, sleep quickly follows.

I’m not sure how long we sleep, but, at some point, we’re woken up by a knock on our bedroom door. I say a silent prayer, hoping that the person on the other side of the door isn’t Lucifer again. I feel sure Mason would lose his head to madness if it were.

Mason disentangles himself from me and stands from the bed to walk over to the door. When he opens it, I breathe a sigh of relief to see that it’s Brand standing out in the hallway.

“I’m sorry to bother you two,” Brand apologizes, “but I thought you would want to hear what Xavier and Noel have to tell us.”

“They’re both here?” Mason asks, surprised by this news.

Generally, one of them would stay behind to cover for the other while he or she came to report anything important to us. The fact that they both decided to come seems to indicate that something big is going down.

“Where are we meeting?” Mason asks.

“In the library.”

“We’ll be there in just a minute.”

Mason closes the door and I reach for my shoes and jacket.

“Why do you think they both came?” I ask Mason as I zip up my boots.

“I don’t know, but it can’t be to tell us anything good,” Mason says truthfully. There’s no reason to sugarcoat things… not if you consider all the bad we’ve already seen in this world.

“I’m feeling a little apprehensive.”

“You’re not the only one,” Mason admits as he takes my hand. “Ready?”

“No,” I confess, “but we need to know what they came to tell us.”

Mason phases us directly into the library, where most all of our friends have gathered. Xavier and Noel stand together in front of the fireplace as they wait for everyone to take a seat.

“So, what’s happening?” Brand asks, taking his place behind Jai Lin’s chair to stand. “It must be important, or both of you wouldn’t be here.”

“Well, once I tell you what we just learned,” Xavier says, “I’m afraid neither Noel nor I will be able to go back home.”

“And what do you have to tell us?” Mason asks.

“For the past couple of days,” Noel begins, “the princes have been trying to repair the Dragon Network.”

“I didn’t realize there was something wrong with it,” I say.

“The fallout from the moon crashing to Earth caused an interruption in international telecommunication services. All of the fiber optic cables suffered some sort of damage, especially those buried in the seabed between the United States and Europe. They’ve been repairing the cables like madmen for the past few days.”

“Why?” Brand asks, looking confused.

Xavier takes a deep breath, and I know I’m going to hate what he has to say next.

“It turns out that the red dragon tattoos weren’t only to keep track of people’s movements,” he begins. “Apparently, the nanites were engineered to release a poison into the people who have them.”

A collective gasp can be heard in the room. I’ve seen some of the humans living here at the castle marked with Ravan’s tattoo.

“How is the Dragon Network connected to the tattoos?” I ask.

“The nanites can only be activated by playing a particular frequency over the Network,” Xavier explains. “Once they have it up and running, they plan to play it across all open channels. I think the original plan was to use the Network’s satellites to broadcast the signal, but all of those have been destroyed by one thing or another. Some people won’t be in range of the radio signal, of course, but many will. We’re probably talking millions, at the very least.”

“That’s why they weren’t worried about us decontaminating the water supplies,” I say, now understanding what Mammon meant by Lucian having a back-up plan.

“There’s really only one thing we can do,” Noel tells us. “We have to destroy the Network before they can use it.”

“How close is it to being repaired?” Mason asks.

“Very,” Xavier tells us. “That’s why we’re here. We both came because, once it’s destroyed, Lucian and the others will know that we told you where the core facility of the Dragon Network is housed.”

Josh practically jumps out of his seat.

“No way,” he says, looking stunned. “No one knows where the core facility was built. Every hacker in the world has tried to find its location.”

“Lucian took us all to it,” Xavier says. “I’m not sure if he was just trying to show it off, or what, but we know where it is now and can take you down to it.”

“Do you think this is a trap?” I ask, not trying to be pessimistic, just practical. “Maybe he showed it to you to lure us all there.”

Xavier shakes his head. “I don’t believe that’s the case, but, of course, I can’t be certain. I think he did it to show off and tell us the next step of his plan. Apparently, only a select few knew about the poison the nanites were engineered to carry. But we need to go as soon as possible to destroy the facility. We need to wipe it off the face of the map so Lucian can’t ever use it again.”

“I don’t think we need to physically blow it up,” Brand says thoughtfully. “We can just use a powerful EMP pulse to fry everything.”

“An EMP isn’t a permanent fix,” Xavier says. “The best thing we can do is take the facility out of commission by blowing its fusion reactor to hell and back. By doing that, we can permanently destroy Lucian’s ability to activate the nanites because he has all of his information about them stored on the computers there.”

“Too bad you’re not as smart as your counterpart in this reality, Malcolm,” Lucifer says, unexpectedly showing up to the meeting.

Lucifer stands leaned up against the doorway of the room leading into the foyer. With arms over his chest and legs crossed at the ankles, he looks rather comfortable in a room where most of the people despise him.

“Can’t you find someone else to push your unwanted attentions on, Lucifer?” Malcolm questions grumpily. “We don’t exactly have time to cater to your narcissism today. We’re a little too busy trying to save the people of this world.”

Lucifer smiles, but the expression never reaches his eyes.

“Narcissism,” Lucifer says, slowly rolling the world over his tongue. “Well, you should certainly know the meaning of that word, Malcolm. In fact, I’m surprised you can love anyone more than you do yourself.”

“At least I
can
,” Malcolm snaps back, heavily implying that Lucifer is incapable of such a selfless act.

“Oh, my God, Xavier,” Noel says, grabbing his arm as her eyes grow wide with realization. “I completely forgot they had their own Lucifer.”

Xavier’s eyebrows furrow, as if this fact brings new light to the situation.

“What do you think Lucifer can do for us?” I ask them.

Xavier looks over at our Lucifer before looking back at me.

“How much control do you have over him?” Xavier asks me, tilting his head in Lucifer’s direction.

“Helllooo,” Lucifer says. “I’m standing right here in the same room, you know. I
can
hear you. I don’t appreciate being talked about as if I’m Jess’s pet.”