A Hundred Words for Hate (18 page)

Still, she wanted to know, and decided she’d get what she needed from the horse itself.

He seemed surprised that she was even talking to him, and now as she stood before him, hand out, waiting for him to reply, she wasn’t sure if he was just rude or touched.

“I’m Pearly Gates,” he said finally, taking her hand in his.

The moment was special beyond words.

The moment that Eliza Swan fell in love.

Zophiel flew just above the sea of clouds, a shark swimming the ocean waters following the scent of blood.

One moment it was strong, taunting him with its proximity, and the next it was gone, driving him to the brink of madness.

But he did not stop searching; this was what he had come to this world to find.

What he had sworn to destroy.

It was there again, wafting in the atmosphere. He took the scent into his being. This time it was strong, and growing stronger.

His powerful wings, sheathed in the armor of God, beat the air with increasing fury, his speed intensifying as he followed the trail. The smell of it had become even more intense, his preternatural senses aroused to the brink of overload.

Zophiel was so close.

But he mustn’t become careless, for he had been this close before. . . .

The memory bubbled up from the morass of his subconscious, reminding him of his folly.

Zophiel had no recollection of how long he had been in the world of God’s man, or why, until he’d sensed the power.

It called, teasing him with its poisonous taint. He did not know why he hated it so, only that he had to destroy it.

Circling the land from above, the Cherubim found the source of his rage, and descended upon it with the combined shriek of his three faces.

He landed in a crouch before the fragile wooden structure, the scent of his prey driving him forward. A sentry and its faithful four-legged beast attempted to bar his way, the human firing a noisy weapon that spit fire and flecks of metal, but to little avail.

The Cherubim briefly admired the bravery of the human and his animal before turning the fires of Heaven upon their fragile forms, wiping away any evidence that they’d ever existed.

The power continued to cry out from within the structure, and the Cherubim threw himself upon the closed wooden doors, taking them and most of the front wall down as he made his entrance.

Screams of terror erupted from the human bugs inside, their frenzied attempts to escape a distraction from his purpose. The fire leapt from his fingertips, igniting the room and its scurrying inhabitants as it searched for the source of his outrage.

The Cherubim’s three faces sniffed the air, the smell of forbidden power prevalent over the choking aromas of wood smoke and burning flesh.

“There,” Zophiel proclaimed.

His quarry stood, staring wide-eyed at his awesome visage. She was a woman, a human woman with a power so dangerous that it threatened Heaven itself.

And nothing would stop him from destroying her.

But something had stopped him.

Zophiel hovered over the world as the memories flooding his brain became a trickle, and then trailed off to nothing.

Something had prevented him from carrying out his duty, but the memory of what it was eluded him. The Cherubim was frustrated, and that quickly turned to anger. He turned his attention toward the Earth below, knowing that the answers he sought would be found there, amongst the hairless monkeys that had captured the love of the Heavenly Father. Strangely enough, this thought calmed him, the knowledge that he would soon have answers to temporarily sate his fury. The Cherubim returned to the hunt, finding the elusive scent again, and flying toward it.

This time he would not be stopped.

The woman had agreed to take them.

Remy sat across from Jon in the boat, the woman at the back, steering with the craft’s outboard motor. Behind them, the little girl stood on the wooden dock watching them leave, kitten still clutched in her arms.

“I don’t know how she’ll feel about this,” the woman said as she piloted the craft through the thick, brackish waters, between twisted, primordial-looking trees hanging thick with moss.

“We’ll just explain ourselves like we did with you,” Jon said, slapping at the bugs that were trying to feast upon his blood.

“Huh,” the woman responded, taking them deeper and deeper into the swamp.

Remy let his senses wander. There was something here, something ancient and powerful. He could feel it emanating from the trees, from the animals that hid as they approached, from the water.

“It’s beautiful,” he said as the boat moved deeper into the swamp’s embrace.

“It is,” the woman replied. “But that beauty’ll kill you if you’re not careful.”

“I’m sure it would.” Remy watched an alligator, at least eight feet long, slither from a mud-covered bank into the still, oily water, where it disappeared.

“How much longer?” Jon asked, still slapping at bugs that seemed intent on eating him alive. The bugs didn’t bother Remy—he had lowered his body temperature so as not to be all that enticing.

“Not long,” the woman said.

The swamp grew thicker—denser—almost completely blocking out the rays of the hot sun as if night had suddenly fallen.

“There,” the woman said, pointing through the thick mist rising from the water at something in the distance ahead.

At first Jon and Remy couldn’t see anything, but then they saw . . . something.

It was a single, tiny ball of orange, and then there was another, resembling a set of fiery eyes peering out through the darkness, but that illusion was dispelled by the appearance of another, and another after that. Multiple orbs of light hung in the mist, like stars in the sky, before Jon and Remy could figure out what they were seeing.

Before the thick, smoky mist pulled apart like a delicate spiderweb, and they saw the stilt house, looking like some large, prehistoric beast standing in the midst of the swamp on tree trunk-sized legs. Burning lanterns hung from the structure.

“It’s almost as if she knows we’re coming,” Jon said, his eyes never leaving the house.

“Oh, she knows,” the woman said.

Remy’s sense of an ancient power was even stronger here. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end as they drew closer.

A wooden ladder hung from the elevated platform, and the woman piloted the boat as close as she could before cutting off the engine.

“This is as far as I go,” she said.

Jon stood, grabbing for the ladder. “Maybe you should join us,” he said. “Help explain that we don’t mean her any harm.”

“She doesn’t need to hear anything from me,” the woman said. “She’ll make up her own mind about you.”

Remy stood carefully so as not to tip the boat, and joined Jon at the ladder.

“Thank you for this,” he said.

“It’s all right,” she answered. “Whatever happens from here on is out of my hands.”

“Thank you for not shooting me,” Jon said, starting to climb the ladder.

The woman laughed. “You might be wishing I did after you’ve dealt with Izzy.”

Remy followed Jon up onto the platform, the two of them watching as the woman piloted her motorboat back into the embrace of the thick swamp mist. Not only did it swallow her up, but it swallowed the sound of the outboard as well, leaving them alone in an eerie silence.

“I suggest we get this over with,” Jon said, reaching up to adjust his hearing aid as he turned and walked toward the front door of the house. “The sooner we do this, the sooner we can reconnect with Adam and Malachi and . . .”

A woman stood in the open doorway.

Jon noticed her with a start, jumping back and bumping into Remy.

She was older at first glance, but exactly how old was tricky. She looked forty, but could have very easily been sixty, considering her pedigree. She had smoky skin and piercing, light-colored eyes. She was wearing a loose-fitting cotton top and a flowing peasant skirt in multiple colors. She was exotically attractive, but what really stood out was her hair, long and frizzy with streaks of white—like lightning bolts shooting from her scalp and running through the length of her wavy curls.

“Well, hello,” Jon said, recovering quickly. “I’m Jon, and this is Remy, and we’ve come to—”

“I know why you’ve come,” she said. Remy didn’t like her tone and immediately went on full alert. “I’ve been waiting for a long time.”

Her eyes gave the first sign that they were in trouble. In less than a second, they changed from a light shade that could have been the palest green to something dark and murky, like the swamp waters surrounding them.

The many bracelets adorning her wrists jangled noisily in the stillness as her hands shot out to either side of her, supernatural energy leaking from the tips of her fingers. Remy could feel the power start to surge, permeating the air as it intensified. It was all happening too fast.

The magick was loose, charging the very air around them with an aura of danger. Remy pushed Jon aside, moving to the forefront in an attempt to quell their growing predicament, but it was too late for that, and she told him so.

“You’re too late, angel,” she said, with a smile that showed off pearly white teeth and bands of magickal energy squirming across their ivory surface. “I’ve prepared for the likes of you two.”

The winds began to howl, and the still waters seethed. The trees seemed to be moving—snaking closer to converge on the stilt house. The wood beneath their feet began to vibrate, and Remy was forced, yet again, to call upon the power of the Seraphim. But again he wasn’t fast enough.

Something surged up, something sculpted from the mud and water and wildlife of the swamp.

The monster was in human form, mouth like a swirling vortex opened to roar its might, but it was like nothing Remy had ever seen before. It towered above the platform, then flowed down in a tsunami of thick, foul-smelling mud, to snatch them from their perch.

Dragging them down into the murky depths.

Louisiana: 1932

Francis was totally smitten by Eliza Swan.

He had never felt anything like this before. Certainly he’d had his dalliances with human women over the numerous centuries he’d been on Earth cleaning up God’s messes, but none had ever managed to touch him so precisely . . . so deeply.

It was like magick.

He was at the Pelican Club again, listening to Eliza sing, and this time he knew that she sang to him.

Her voice made him feel more alive than he had in forever. It made him forget the dark days of war, when he slew his brothers in the name of a cause that he eventually came to realize was insane. She made him truly feel.

As if he were loved by God again.

But no matter how loved he was feeling, it didn’t change the fact that he’d been given an assignment, and the Thrones weren’t all that crazy about insubordination.

Eliza Swan was supposed to die, and he was the one who had to see to it she did. The Thrones wanted Eliza’s blood for whatever reason, and they would not be denied.

She was singing one of his personal favorites, a beautiful, melancholy tune called “Searching for Paradise,” and he let her sweet, sweet voice wash over him.

This one is something special
, he thought, wondering why the Thrones would want her dead. Maybe it was the spell she seemed to have over anyone who heard her voice.

She finished her song to wild applause, and flashed Francis an amazing smile from the stage, leaving no doubt she’d sung that song for him.

There had to be a solution to this problem that didn’t involve killing her. Part of him argued to just do the job and move on—that nothing, and no one, was more important than being able to pass through the gates of Heaven again and bask in the glory of the Almighty.

He imagined that was the same part of his nature that had been beguiled by the words of the Morningstar. He shouldn’t have listened then, and he wasn’t going to now.

He picked up his drink, and it was about halfway to his mouth when he felt it, a strange tingling in his spine. He’d heard humans make reference to the sensation as someone walking over their grave, and he couldn’t have said it better himself. Although it was just the feeling he got when others of his kind were around.