Armageddon (23 page)

Most of the humans had found shelter, but two remained exposed. A younger man stopped to help an older woman who had fallen, despite the danger.

The thing that had been Janice eagerly watched the horror that was about to transpire, when she was stricken.

The memories that filled her head with what she’d been—what she’d done—surfaced again, like a viral infection.

Janice leaped. Her wings sprang open to capture the air, and she glided down the street to where the great serpent was about to feast upon the two human stragglers. She landed atop the snake’s speckled back, sinking her claws into its thick, muscular flesh.

The snake hissed, sending a stream of yellow venom from its fanged mouth out into the air.

Janice caught the eyes of the man and woman. “Run!” she ordered them. “You’ve cheated death this day.”

The serpent spun around, attempting to throw her from its back, but she held firm. Digging her claws deeper into the monster’s flesh, she tore away bloody chunks of meat until its bony spine was revealed.

The snake’s movements became so violent that Janice was finally sent sprawling, rolling across the street, to rise in a crouch, as the snake came at her.

Janice was ready. She sprang toward the giant reptile and delivered a killing blow, plunging her claws into the serpent’s lidless eyes.

She wriggled her knifelike appendages in its skull, feeling for the demonic animal’s tiny brain, as the monster twitched violently, and then went still.

Pulling her razored fingers from the reptile’s skull with a wet, sucking sound, Janice took a step backward, in awe of what she had done.

But panic quickly set in again. This was not what she had been reborn to do. Janice tilted her head back to call her brothers and sisters to her side. They would know what to do. They would help her.

“No need to cry out, sister,” came a soothing voice from behind her.

Janice spun away from the serpent’s corpse to see the most welcome of sights.

Her dark family was already there, striding toward her.

“Something has happened,” she began to explain, holding her blood-covered hands out for them to see.

The Void Angel that had once been the Nephilim William observed her with his head cocked oddly to one side. “It appears so.”

“I found two of the Nephilim. One of them . . . she did something to me . . .”

“What did she do?” Samantha asked from her place beside William.

“Did you kill them?” Kirk wanted to know. He stood by William’s other side.

Russell had wandered over to the serpent, bending down to look into its ruptured eye. “I don’t think she killed anyone,” he said.

Janice tried to figure out how to explain. “It was like she put things inside my head . . . memories of what I used to be before . . .”

“Before the Dark Father brought us back from oblivion,” William finished.

“Yes,” Janice agreed. “We were fighting, and my claws connected with her blade of fire and . . .” It was as if she experienced it all again.

William and the others circled her as she collapsed to her knees.

“Yes,” William said. “I can sense it in you now—a light where none should exist.”

Janice looked up at them. “Melissa did this to me. She . . . she infected me.”

“A disease,” Samantha confirmed.

“Yes,” Janice agreed. “She gave me a disease.” Her entire body trembled, but she was glad that her family had come. They would help her to overcome this affliction of light. “Do you think there is a cure for such an illness?”

“We do,” William said.

And before she could ask, to beg him to tell her what it was, he lunged at her, claws extended, and swiped them across her middle, tearing away her armor and the pale skin beneath.
Janice’s hands immediately went to the gaping wounds to keep her insides from spilling out.

“Is that the cure?” Russell asked him.

“It is,” William answered, without emotion.

And then they all attacked, claws ripping her flesh and spilling the darkness that gave her life upon the ground.

But their attack also released a light, the memories of her past as a force for good, as death came for her a second time.

A cure?

Yes, perhaps it was.

*   *   *

“We should have waited until she showed us where the Nephilim are,” Samantha said, licking blood as black as pitch from her fingers.

William considered that as he stared down upon Janice’s mutilated remains. “She said that she fought them.”

“Yes,” Kirk agreed. “She did at that.”

William knelt to retrieve one of Janice’s hands, which had been severed from its wrist. He examined the limb as the others watched him, fascinated.

“She fought them, tooth—and claw,” he said, raising the hand, and more specifically the fingers, to his nose. He sniffed beneath the claws, then brought one of the fingers close to his mouth, where his tongue darted out to lick the still slightly elongated nail.

William smacked his lips, tasting what had been left
behind from Janice’s struggles. Then he tilted his head back, sniffing the air, searching for, and finding, the scent.

“There you are,” he said, leathery wings unfurling from his back. He gave a powerful leap and took to the sky.

The other Angels of the Void followed in his wake.

*   *   *

Vilma found herself slipping into a kind of fugue, as she stared through the tiny window into the missile silo, at the man she loved.

She was worried for Aaron but found her mind wandering, her eyes slowly closing.

An image was suddenly, inexplicably in her head.

It was Jeremy Fox, swords of fire in each hand, mouth open in a scream of war as he charged.

Vilma’s eyes snapped open. Aaron no longer lay in the silo.

It was Jeremy.

Recoiling from the door, Vilma rubbed at her eyes, cautiously returning to see that it was still indeed Aaron Corbet inside the protective chamber, his body radiating with an unnatural light.

What was that all about?
she wondered. She was furious with her mind. Maybe it was a lack of sleep or her concern for Aaron. She would have been lying if she said that her thoughts had never wandered to the volatile British youth, and what might have happened to him since fleeing the school.

But to think of him at this time . . .

An uncomfortable sensation formed in the pit of her stomach the more she thought of Jeremy. Vilma felt ashamed. Aaron was her boyfriend. How could she even think of anyone else?

Vilma steeled herself, erecting a mental barrier inside her mind with Jeremy on the other side. Then she brought her Nephilim power forward. Her wings emerged, and divine fire coursed through her veins.

“Is everything all right?” asked one of the Unforgiven.

She nodded. “I’m going in.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” the angel protested. “With the levels of heat he’s throwing off, you might not be able to withstand—”

“I’ll be fine,” Vilma interrupted, pulling back on the metal latch and opening the door.

The heat drove the Unforgiven angel back, but Vilma slipped inside the silo. She let the blistering heat envelop her, closing her eyes and surrendering to it.

She lowered herself beside Aaron. Reaching over, she took his limp body and pulled him into her embrace.

Holding him tightly, their heat became as one, and Vilma’s prayers for Aaron’s recovery were all that she would think about.

*   *   *

Jeremy had heard it spoken of as the red of battle, a mental state one reaches when fighting to survive. It was said that a scarlet haze would color one’s vision in this state of combat.

Jeremy indeed saw red as he swung his swords, a relentless killing machine cutting down one attacker after the next. Except that the red staining his vision was the blood of his enemies that splashed his face.

He wanted to be sure that Enoch had escaped, just a quick look to satisfy his curiosity, but his attackers would have none of it. They came at him in droves, climbing atop the bodies of their fallen comrades to get at the Nephilim, cutting and stabbing him with their glinting daggers.

Jeremy did not stay in one place for long, constantly zigging and zagging across the parking lot. He used the abandoned cars in the lot for protection when he could, and jumped atop them to force his foes to climb to reach him. Their numbers were so great that they swarmed the vehicles like ants, so it gave him little advantage.

He couldn’t fly very far with his damaged wing. Short bursts allowed him to leap about, but he could feel himself growing tired. And the more tired he became, the more he found himself suddenly thinking of her.

Vilma.

If he needed an incentive other than Enoch to keep on fighting, to survive and live another day, he couldn’t think of anybody better.

Things couldn’t possibly be so bad in a world with her in it.

Jeremy jammed one of his swords into the belly of another assassin, while using a shorter blade of fire to sever his head.

Thoughts of Vilma spurred him on, the prize waiting for him at the end of the contest.

Yeah, he wished, knowing full well that her heart belonged to Aaron.

The muscles in his arms and chest strained with every swing of his swords. He couldn’t keep up his defense much longer. Their knives cut into him and drew blood. He healed quickly, but with all his wounds . . .

Jeremy called upon his inner divinity, creating a roiling ball of holy fire that he threw toward the attacking wave. The explosion tossed the aggressors away but propelled him back with its force.

He scrambled to his feet as he crafted his weapon of choice, an enormous battle-ax of hissing orange flame. He’d hoped that the explosion would buy him a little time to catch his breath, but he saw as the smoke cleared that an even larger contingent of foes swarmed toward the jagged crater he’d created.

His enemies came at him with vicious abandon. Unafraid to die.

As Jeremy fought, a strange, mechanical, whirring sound rose above the clamor of battle. Were his foes readying some new weapon? he wondered as he fought.

Jeremy turned and saw that he was no longer the only one fighting the black-garbed foes; others had joined the fray. They all wore long trench coats and circular goggles over their eyes.
From their backs large mechanical wings sprouted, which they used with deadly efficiency against their common foe. He had no idea who they were, or where they’d come from, but at that moment he couldn’t care less, for they were fighting with him, rather than against.

His guard was lowered for a moment, and Jeremy paid the price. Multiple knives were driven into his body, and he dropped to the ground, his vision already beginning to blur.

This was not the way he wanted to die. Jeremy surrendered his battle-ax and crafted a shield of crackling fire. His opponents sensed his weakness, and their attack on him intensified.

Jeremy wished he had the strength to call out to his mysterious benefactors, but it was all he could do to remain conscious.

All he could do now to stay alive.

*   *   *

The faceless throng flowed over Aaron, all demanding to know—

Why didn’t you save me?

Aaron tried to push them off, but there were too many, and he crumbled beneath the weight of them, their pleas making it impossible to think.

He wanted to tell them that he was sorry, that there was only so much that he—and the others—could do.

The Nephilim had done their best.

But it wasn’t enough for the crowd—or for him, really.

Aaron caved beneath the weight of his guilt. Perhaps it was the punishment he deserved.

With that thought, the weight disappeared. Aaron slowly—ever so cautiously—opened his eyes and unwrapped his body from its tight ball.

He wasn’t out in the darkness anymore, and knew that he was now behind the wall. Cautiously he climbed to his feet, soaking in his new environment. Aaron knew this place: Ravenchild Estates, a high-end housing development that had been abandoned after it was discovered that the homes had been built atop an illegal dumping site for hazardous chemicals.

Not too long after that, the fallen angels had moved in, using powerful magicks to keep themselves hidden from the angels known as the Powers, who were hell-bent on destroying them and their Nephilim offspring.

The fallen angels and Nephilim had made Ravenchild their home—their Aerie.

Aaron looked around at the abandoned houses and the empty streets. But he wasn’t alone. In the distance, he could see the figure of a child sitting quietly in the middle of the road.

He was drawn toward the figure, his mind racing. The child rocked from side to side, as if to the beat of some inaudible tune.

The realization hit like a shot from a gun. He knew this
child . . . this little boy.

“Stevie,” Aaron said in a choked whisper, overwhelmed with emotion at seeing his autistic foster brother again.

Stevie had died on this street.

And Aaron had been his killer.

He stopped just before the child, something keeping him from getting any closer. Stevie paid him no mind, soft moans escaping his mouth as he moved to and fro, lost in a world all his own.

Aaron squatted down on his haunches. They hadn’t been real brothers, not of flesh and blood, but Aaron had always felt that they’d had a deep connection, almost on a psychic level.

“Stevie,” Aaron said, his voice trembling as he struggled to hold back the tears.

Remembering what he had done.

It hadn’t been this defenseless child whom Aaron had struck down, but something far deadlier.

Stevie had been kidnapped by Verchiel and the Powers, when the angel warrior still believed that the Nephilim were an abomination to God. The Powers were determined to wipe them from the earth at any cost, and had transformed his foster brother into an armored killing machine called Malak.

“I am so sorry,” Aaron said, watching the rocking child.

Then Stevie stopped his movement, slowly raising his head to look directly at Aaron with clear, focused eyes.

“Sad,” Stevie said in his soft, unemotional voice.