Armageddon (25 page)

“The Metatron,” Lorelei said, remembering what she had learned of the powerful angelic being that was an extension of God upon the earth. “Where is its power now?”

A’Dorial grew thoughtful, his soft, ghostly wings drawing about his body as if to protect him from the cold. “It is an
elusive thing, this power,” he said finally. “And sought by many; the good, as well as the evil.”

He paused. The scene again changed, and an image of the earth appeared. Lorelei was captivated by how tranquil it appeared from space, even though she was very aware of all that was happening on its surface.

“This power will determine the fate of the world,” A’Dorial stated. “The fate of the living, as well as the dead.”

Countless spectral shapes appeared before them.

So many had died with no place for their life energies to go.

“You will assist the forces of good,” A’Dorial stated.

Lorelei agreed. “I will.”

“You will help return things to the way they have always been. The energies of the dead must return to the source of all life . . . to the stuff of creation.”

It was a huge responsibility, Lorelei knew, especially for somebody who was dead, but now she truly understood the importance of why she was still here.

*   *   *

Melissa and Cameron decided they would follow the map.

“Ready?” Melissa asked. She was still seated at the tiny table with the old box. She had read Cameron’s father’s journals, marveling at the history that was expressed there, but the most fascinating aspect had been the map, and what they would find if they followed it.

Cameron stood in the center of the room, looking around the cabin as if memorizing every inch.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said. “Any idea where we’re going?”

Melissa stood, the map in her hand. She stared at the yellowed paper and pointed to an area near its center. “We’re going right here.”

“How are we going to get there?” Cam asked.

“Weren’t you paying attention in those classes with Aaron and Vilma, when they were showing our Nephilim powers?”

“I paid attention,” Cameron snapped at her defensively.

“Well, obviously not that closely when we were learning about traveling.”

“What’s to know? You picture where you want to go, or Lorelei would put an image in our heads.”

“That’s one way,” Melissa said, still studying the lines and drawings on the map.

“There’s another?”

“See, not paying attention.”

“Screw you.”

She laughed, and closed her eyes to see the surface of the map in her mind. “Aaron said that there were other ways to travel. Like reading maps and studying photographs.”

Cameron made a disgusted face. “How do we do that?”

“Well, maps are made to show us where something is in the world, and photographs are moments frozen in place and time,” she explained. “Look, the map shows a particular place
in relation to the world. We know of it by looking at where it is.”

“I’m not sure that I . . .”

Melissa sighed, striding toward her friend. “Well I’m willing to give it a try,” she said firmly.

“Have you ever done this before?”

She could not help but smile. “I wanted to go to China,” she said.

“And did you?”

“I ended up at a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco.”

“What went wrong?” Cameron asked.

Melissa shrugged. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“And you do now?”

“No.” She shook her head. “But I’m willing to try. There’s too much at stake not to.”

That seemed to sink in.

“You’re right,” Cameron agreed. “So, what do we do?”

Melissa moved closer to him, flexing the muscles in her back and calling upon her wings.

“Let me drive,” she told him.

She wrapped her wings around them both, while staring at the map to make sure she remembered every detail. She’d always known that those rainy-day recesses, playing with the world globe, would someday pay off.

“This makes me incredibly nervous,” Cameron said, avoiding Melissa’s gaze.

“What, the traveling or being this close to me?”

Their eyes locked for a second, before he looked away again.

That was interesting, Melissa thought, before quickly taking control of the moment.

She closed her eyes, picturing the ancient map. Closing her wings tighter about Cameron, she felt that odd sensation that she experienced when traveling great distances.

When traveling from here—

—to there.

They appeared in a rush of warm, tropical air, the ground beneath their feet loose.

Melissa opened her wings and gasped at the beauty of it. They were on the side of a rocky mountain island, surrounded by nothing but white, billowing clouds and deep-blue sea.

Cameron tried to maneuver for a better view.

“Where are we?” he asked, just as a large section of the rock he was standing on crumbled, and he fell.

Melissa grabbed for him, but only brushed her fingertips against his before he disappeared from view, obscured by the clouds that drifted about the mountain.

“Cameron!” she cried out. She waited, listening past the rushing winds and water, searching for a sign of her friend.

Something moved below, exploding upward at a tremendous speed.

She couldn’t help but smile as she watched Cameron bank around, his powerful wings beating the air.

“For a minute I thought you might’ve forgotten how to fly,” she said, as she moved to give him space on the ledge beside her.

“I wasn’t asleep during all our classes,” he teased. “This place is beautiful. Any idea where it is?”

“Tristan da Cunha,” Melissa said. “It’s in an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean.” She squinted her eyes, looking out over the water. “The nearest land is South Africa.”

Cameron stared at her.

“What?”

“How do you know all that?” he asked, admiration in his tone.

Melissa considered the question, realizing that she had no idea. She just did. “Special Nephilim powers,” she said with a wink. There was still so much to learn about what they were. She just hoped that between saving the world and keeping it from being consumed by darkness, they would get the chance.

She glanced at the map, then up the mountain. “I think we have to go up there,” she said. “There should be an entrance.”

“Meet you there.” Cameron spread his wings and took flight.

Melissa followed. Together, they surveyed the rocky surface for an opening that would take them inside the mountain.

“Is that it?” Cameron asked, flapping his powerful wings as he hung in the air.

She didn’t see it at first. The entrance was thin, like so many of the other cracks and crevices in the mountainside.

“I think it is,” she said as the two flew in closer.

There was no place to perch this time. The entrance to the cave would have been accessible to only the most experienced mountain climbers, or those who could fly.

“After you.” Cameron gestured for her to go in first.

“When did you become such a gentleman?” she asked, ducking her head.

“When I realized that there might be booby traps.”

Melissa smacked him as she passed. “Jerk.”

She pretended to be annoyed, but it was good to be with someone. She liked having another person to watch her back and share in the adventure. She’d missed that since the Nephilim had disbanded, and wondered if they would ever be close like that again.

There were no traps inside the cave, but there was a pretty substantial drop. Melissa peered down into the darkness. “Well, shall we?”

“We’ve come this far, might as well.”

“Shall we go together?” she asked, hoping the closeness wouldn’t scare him away.

“Sure,” he said. “Ready?”

They leaped at the same time, their wings fanning out behind them to slow their descent, flames of divine fire in their hands to light the way. After a moment, a bridge of stone appeared below them, and they touched down upon it.

Cameron looked around. “Which way?”

Melissa listened. At first she thought she heard the sound of running water, but as she tuned in, she became convinced that it was something altogether different.

Something mechanical.

“Do you hear that? Like the hum of a machine or something,” she said. “Sounds like it’s coming from down here.”

She started to walk along the bridge, Cameron right beside her.

It was dark up ahead, and she held out her hand to create a weapon of fire, primarily for illumination, but also just in case.

Cameron also created a weapon. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“I missed this,” he said, almost shyly. “Y’know, getting into things with somebody else. Being alone surrounded by monsters was getting kinda boring.”

She was going to tell him how glad she was that they had found each other again, and that maybe—

Cameron’s arm shot across her middle, stopping her cold.

“Why did you do—,” she began, lifting her sword to light the path before her—or lack there of. The stone bridge came to an abrupt stop.

“Sorry to hit you in the stomach,” Cameron said.

“That’s all right,” she answered. “I would have looked pretty stupid falling.”

“Yeah, you would have.” Cameron held his sword up to
illuminate what was above them. “I think there’s something up there.”

Melissa used her divine fire to shape a bow and arrow. She shot a flame into the air above them. The arrow stuck in a section of the stone, and the flare shed light on a metal door in the wall at least fifty feet above them.

“Would you look at that,” Cameron said.

“This has to be it,” Melissa said excitedly, allowing the bow to disintegrate, though the divine arrow continued to burn.

“Just like the entrance,” Cameron said, flexing his wings. “Only way to get there is to fly.”

Melissa jumped, her wings carrying her up to flutter before the door.

“Doesn’t seem to be any way to open it,” she said.

Cameron joined her, darting around, inspecting every aspect of the heavy door, but realizing that she was right.

Melissa laid a hand on the metal. Cameron followed suit, placing his own hands against the cold metal surface.

They heard it first, the grinding of gears, and they flew back as the circular door swung open on its own.

“Did you do something?” Cameron asked, bewildered.

“I think maybe we both did,” she said.

Melissa flew through the entryway, landing just inside. The mechanical humming became all the more prominent inside the stone cavern.

“Last chance to leave,” Cameron said, watching as the door slammed closed behind them. “Too late.”

“Wouldn’t want you in here all alone anyway,” Melissa said to him. “You might get into trouble.”

“I was thinking the same about you.”

It was dark, and Melissa again called upon a sword of fire to light their way. “Might as well have a look around.”

They’d gotten maybe five feet inside, when the chamber was illuminated by rows of small circles of white light.

A scene of past carnage lay before them.

Melissa and Cameron stopped, their eyes locked on the skeletal remains. Desiccated bodies were strewn about the floor. There were at least six of them, their bones yellowed with age and covered with the dust of time and cobwebs.

“What . . . what happened here?” Melissa asked.

“A fight,” Cameron said. He approached the corpses, walking slowly around them. “Some of the bones have been broken, like they’ve been cut with a sword.”

Melissa drew closer to Cameron as he reached for something amidst the bones.

Cameron pulled a large feather from the remains. “I think they were angels.”

Melissa looked around. There were many feathers amongst the bones. She shuddered, giving the pile of the dead a wide berth as she continued farther into the chamber.

Which revealed yet another startling sight.

A large chair, a throne really, dominated the space. Sitting in the chair were the remains of an armored angel, slumped forward, his armor filthy with the passing of time. His wings, furled tightly upon his back, looked as though they’d been draped with sheets, spiders having wrapped them in thick white webbing.

“Who do you think this is?” Melissa whispered.

“I don’t have a clue,” Cam answered. “But he is in one piece, and sitting in the big chair.” He turned his gaze back to the pile of dead. “I’d say he was the winner of the fight.”

The corpse shifted. Melissa thought it was a trick of the eye, the soft lighting playing upon the armor. But then the corpse sprang from the throne, its web-enshrouded wings opening with a powerful rush as his armored form flew at them.

A sword of fire came to life in the ancient angel’s hand as he landed, slashing first at Melissa—who barely had the time to create her own sword to block the savage strike—before he launched himself at Cameron.

“Melissa!” Cameron cried out, already locked in battle with the armored angel.

“I’m all right,” Melissa answered, rushing to his aid.

The armored angel was relentless. He slashed at them, putting them on the defensive. There was no doubt now that this being was responsible for the pile of corpses.

The skin of the angel’s face was practically translucent, like parchment paper, with a gray mustache and beard, but it was
his eyes that truly captivated her attention. They were like two LED lights floating in pools of oil.

Cameron sprang into the air, and as he did, wished his sword into an enormous battle mace. He brought the spiked mace down upon the attacking angel’s weapon with a thunderous clamor, driving the angel back.

Melissa saw her opportunity and lunged. She drove the tip of her sword into the angel’s armored side, causing an explosion of energy that hurled her and Cameron back.

Dots of multicolored Christmas lights danced before her eyes as she fought to regain her composure. She had landed atop the pile of skeletal remains, but she was determined not to meet the same fate. Jumping up, she called out to Cameron.

“We can’t let him recover,” Melissa said, already wielding another sword of fire and making her way toward their foe, who had been knocked onto his back beside his throne.