Armageddon (18 page)

Satan contemplated wiping her from existence for daring such an interruption, but decided to listen to what the ancient seer had to say.

“The connection between the earthly realm and Heaven has been severed,” she reminded.

“The surviving angels of the heavenly host Powers and the Abomination of Desolation saw to that,” said a second Sister.

And the third, “But it would have been glorious to see.”

The Darkstar spread his wings. “It will be glorious,” he announced.

“But—,” one Sister began.

“There will be no buts,” Satan roared. “This is what I ask of you. This is how you will prove your fealty to me. You will find a way to restore the passage, to create a ladder that will allow me to ascend with my army to the gates of Heaven.”

*   *   *

His purpose was right at the tip of his memory.

Jeremy sat Enoch inside the metal shopping cart and wheeled him up and down the department store aisles.

Enoch wasn’t really sure why they had come here. It had something to do with Jeremy’s jacket getting ripped while fighting a sea serpent or some such nonsense. Or maybe it was about food. Enoch couldn’t remember, because he hadn’t really been listening. He was too busy trying to recall his ultimate purpose.

Why had he been sent from Heaven back to the world?

His mind was filled with fragmented memories of the past, images that told of a previous time on the planet, before something truly awful had occurred.

“I’m heading down here for a second,” Jeremy said, snapping his fingers in front of Enoch’s face. “Hey!”

“Leave me alone!” the toddler screeched, waving his arms and trying to slap Jeremy’s hand away. He probably would already have remembered his purpose if it wasn’t for Jeremy’s damnable interruptions.

“Chill out, lad,” Jeremy said.

Enoch turned away in an attempt to recapture his train of thought. But that train had left the station without him.

“Damn him,” Enoch grumbled, gazing around the dark, empty department store. Something caught his eye off in the distance. A purple dinosaur! His heart began to flutter.

He loved purple dinosaurs.

Enoch quickly maneuvered himself out of the cart’s child seat.

That’ll teach Jeremy for not buckling the safety belt.

The toddler climbed over the side of the metal cart to the floor, far more gracefully than he had anticipated.

Perhaps he was finally getting a handle on the coordination thing.

Enoch set off down an aisle. He felt a twinge of sadness connected with his love of colorful dinosaurs, for it had been Jeremy’s mum who had first introduced him to them.

“Enoch!” Jeremy called from the front of the store. “Bloody hell! I thought I told you to stay with the cart.”

A nasty smiled crept across Enoch’s baby features, as he toddled all the faster down the aisle and turned the corner. This would serve Jeremy right for bothering him when he was so deep in thought.

Enoch ran along the wall at the far back of the store, past rows of seasonal supplies—grills, garden hoses, lawn furniture, outdoor paint. He searched for that elusive purple dinosaur.

And then he saw them ahead of him, against the back wall.
They were of varying sizes, some leaning against the racks, some hanging from large hooks.

He froze at the sight of them, as if each of his small, boot-covered feet weighed two hundred pounds.

He stood and stared . . . and remembered.

Enoch was the amalgamation of all that the Lord God was proud of: a mixture of supreme divinity, the angelic, and the human.

He was the Metatron, the physical manifestation of the power and the glory of Heaven on earth.

And Enoch remembered that there was a special place where the Metatron could communicate with his Holy Father.

A place where Heaven and earth touched—connected by the image of a ladder.

Enoch was staring at ladders: wooden ladders, metal ladders, ladders stacked on the floor and hanging from shelves.

He remembered.

And he began to scream.

T
hings became a little foggy when Vilma left Levi to return to Aaron’s bedside.

She’d been trying to piece together everything she had learned from Levi, along with what she already knew. It was just too overwhelming.

She barely recalled getting into the elevator, never mind what button she’d pushed. But when the elevator came to a jarring stop and the doors slid open on the lowest level, she was certain she had pressed the wrong number.

Vilma.

At first the voice was so soft, she thought she’d imagined it—until she felt the tickle of a whisper in her ear.

Vilma.

The voice drew her into the deserted corridor.

Vilma.

She tried to follow the sound. It seemed to originate from one of the grilled vents in the upper part of the wall.

Vilma.

The voice called to her as it moved to another ventilation grill farther down the corridor. She was compelled to follow, expecting an Unforgiven sentry to stop her at any moment. But they were nowhere to be found.

Vilma.

The voice led her close to where she’d been mere hours before. Only this time, she passed the observation booth and headed directly toward an old missile silo.

To the place where A’Dorial was kept.

She easily opened the security doors, entering the huge concrete launching tube that had once held a nuclear missile but now held a sickly angel of Heaven. The walls had been singed black from the heat radiated from his body as he strove to maintain a connection with Heaven.

Vilma.

She found him, not as she’d seen him last—unconscious—but sitting up, his eyes strangely alive.

A’Dorial had been waiting for her.

“Vilma,” he said again, his mouth barely moving.

Slowly, she approached the angel. “You called me here?”

He continued to stare, his gaze unblinking. “Yes.”

“Where is everyone?” she asked him.

“Elsewhere,” the angel whispered.

“Did you have something to do with that?”

A’Dorial just stared.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she nervously answered her own question. “Why do you need me?”

The angel still did not blink, as his black eyes bored into hers.

Cautiously, she moved a little closer. “Well, what is it? Why have you summoned me here?”

The air around the angel’s body started to shimmer, and Vilma felt the temperature in the room begin to rise. The heat from A’Dorial’s body was intense, and she was beginning to wonder if she should leave, when—

“You have always been His hope,” A’Dorial said, his voice barely a whisper.

“His?” she asked. “Do you mean . . .”

Her eyes darted upward, heavenward, and the ancient angel nodded ever so slightly.

“I’m not sure how hopeful He can be now,” Vilma said sadly, her skin prickling with sweat. Standing near A’Dorial was like standing near an open oven. “We haven’t done the best job protecting His world.”

“Birth throes . . . ,” A’Dorial said. “Birth throes of a new world.”

Vilma tried to understand. “This world?” she asked him. “Birth throes connected to this world?”

“Perhaps it will live, but perhaps it will not. . . .”

Despite the intensifying heat, a chill ran down Vilma’s spine.
“Are you saying—is God saying—that these changes, these birth throes might kill the world?”

A’Dorial was silent.

“What does this have to do with me?” Vilma asked, on the verge of panic, wishing yet again that Aaron was awake to deal with this. “What are you trying to tell me? Is there something that I—”

The angel sprang up from where he sat; the wires attached to his body broke loose, and shrill alarms began to sound.

A’Dorial threw his thin arms around her and pulled her tight to his blazing body. She struggled to keep her mind clear as her flesh began to blister.

She had no choice. Calling forth her Nephilim visage, Vilma unfurled her wings and released her inner fire. The heat of her body merged with A’Dorial’s, and within moments, the two were surrounded by a divine fire that threatened to engulf the space.

“He wants you to fight for Him,” the angel whispered in her ear. “For the sake of the world . . . for the kingdom of Heaven . . .”

The words left Vilma’s mouth purely on instinct. “We will,” she promised, though she had no idea how she would accomplish that task.

She could hear shouting from close by and looked up to see Taylor Corbet in the observation window. Then there came a whine and buzz from a nearby speaker, and Taylor spoke to her, anger in her tone.

“Vilma, what’s going on?”

As Vilma began to reply, she felt A’Dorial’s body go limp. His arms fell away from her, and he slid to the floor. Flames swirled around them.

“We have to get in there,” she heard Taylor yell through the speaker.

But Vilma knew it was too late.

The heat from his form cooled immediately, and she drew back her own fire as she knelt beside the silent angel.

Unforgiven angels spilled in through the door.

“I think he’s dead,” Vilma cried as they pulled her away from him. She didn’t want to leave him, but she knew there was nothing more she could do as the Unforgiven began to minister to him.

She watched for a moment, then turned to join Taylor and Levi, who stood in the corridor outside.

“He called me here,” Vilma said, wanting to explain.

“It’s all right, Vilma,” Taylor said. She looked back to Levi. “When are they leaving?”

“As soon as we check the coordinates against the maps,” Levi responded.

“What is going on?” Vilma asked.

The Unforgiven leader turned and strode away without a word, as Taylor focused her attention on Vilma.

“I don’t know what was going on in there between you and A’Dorial, but he transmitted some important data to us before
. . .” Her voice trailed off as her gaze moved to something behind Vilma.

She turned to see that the Unforgiven angels had ceased their ministrations and were now staring helplessly at the still form of A’Dorial.

“What kind of data?” Vilma finally asked, looking away from the sad sight.

“A location,” Taylor replied. “We think we’ve found the child.”

*   *   *

Cameron figured that there must have been something coating Janice’s claws to numb his body, as if he’d been dipped in near-freezing water.

She sat astride him, her claws ready to slash open his throat.

But all he could do was watch.

He tried to thrash his body in a last-ditch effort to avoid the swipe of her claws, but he couldn’t move.

She laughed at his pathetic struggle.

Cameron braced himself. Maybe if the pain was severe enough, his adrenaline would surge and he could shrug off the numbness and fight back a little. . . .

Before she finished him for good.

Cameron watched her claws begin their descent. They reminded him of black metal knives. He wondered if they were like the weapons the Nephilim made of divine fire.

The stupid crap you think of when you’re about to die.

Then something struck Janice, something moving incredibly fast that knocked her off him before she could do the deed. It was just the break he needed. He struggled to his feet, the effort taking far more than he could even imagine.

And couldn’t believe his eyes.

Standing between him and Janice was the most amazing sight that he could have ever wished for—Melissa, her wings full and flecked with fire, her burning sword pointed at their former teammate.

“Janice?” Melissa asked.

“Hey, girlfriend,” Janice answered, climbing up from the dirt and spreading her own batlike wings.

“Watch out for her claws,” Cameron managed. The numbness was passing, but slowly.

“What’s happened to you?” There was genuine emotion in Melissa’s voice, but she didn’t let her guard down.

“Well, there was that dying business,” Janice replied, her wings of solid black fanning the air ever so slowly. “And then I got better.”

She leaped.

“Watch out!” Cameron screamed, attempting to maneuver between Melissa and her attacker, but stumbling.

“Get back!” Melissa commanded, lunging to meet Janice’s attack.

There came an explosion of holy fire, tinged with spots of
darkness, as claws of shadow met sword of divine flame. The former friends were thrown apart, repelled by the force of their clash.

Cameron lurched toward Melissa, practically falling at her side. “Hey.” He reached down and placed his arm around her. An unnatural black smoke snaked around her body as she tried to shake off the effects of the explosion. “You okay?”

Melissa blinked repeatedly and looked up at him, focusing on his face.

“Yeah,” she said. “You?”

“Good now,” he said, attempting to help her to stand. “Probably wouldn’t have been so good if it wasn’t for you.”

“Glad I could help,” she said, as they stood side by side.

Janice began to scream, and they turned their attention to their foe. Tongues of divine flame clung to her armor. She trembled violently, and sparks of golden fire fell like beads of water, to burn upon the ground.

Still screaming, the dark angel unfurled her wings and leaped into the sky, her cries slowly fading until she was gone.

Melissa suddenly leaned into Cameron. He grabbed her by the arm to steady her.

“You all right?” he asked, and she nodded. “What just happened?”

“I—I don’t know,” Melissa said. “I think it had something to do with the explosion. When my sword hit her claws, something happened. Some kind of connection was made. I
saw what was going on in her mind, and I think she saw inside mine.”

Cameron gazed up into the night sky, Janice’s mournful scream fading in the night making the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

“If that’s the kind of response a look around inside your skull gets,” Cameron said, “in the future, remind me never to do that.”

*   *   *

The power of God stirred within the shriveled breasts of the Sisters of Umbra.