Descent07 - Paradise Damned (31 page)

The sun touched the horizon.

Malcolm set off and slipped into the forest, which was already filled with a night-like gloom. He didn’t have a great sense of direction—north or south, he wasn’t sure which way he was going. But he didn’t think it mattered. That meadow had found him last time, and he trusted that it would find him this time, too.

He forged his own path through the trees, trying to walk as silently as possible in case the Union had already found the time to place cameras in the canopy. He didn’t see any red LEDs, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

The first signs of the Union appeared in the form of cabling, rather than actual equipment. Exposed wire carpeted the grass in the shape of a web. Malcolm stepped carefully over it. He wasn’t sure if they had it charged at the moment, but it was clearly meant to be electrified at some point, and he didn’t want to test their security with his feet.

Not far beyond the wire, the trees started to thin. He spotted a splash of bright yellow that meant he had found the harvester that he had used to kill the hybrid.

The meadow itself looked to be empty of personnel at the moment, but the Union had already positioned a few assault vehicles around the perimeter, all focusing inward to a central point that was marked with yellow tape. Those must have been the coordinates for Elise’s arrival that had been in Benjamin Flynn’s prophecies.

There were probably motion sensors. As soon as she blinked into existence, they would fire.

“How the hell am I going to warn you?” Malcolm muttered.

“Don’t move,” someone said behind him.

Something hard prodded his lower back, and he slowly turned to see a Union kopis holding an AK-47.

“Well, that’s just not fair,” Malcolm said.

He was rewarded with a hard kick to the back of his knees. He hit the ground.

More kopides emerged from the trees, seeming to melt out of the night. There were almost a dozen of them. Every single one had a gun pointed at him.

A blond woman stepped forward.

“Malcolm Gallagher,” she said in Russian. “We never would have dreamed that you would be stupid enough to come here, especially after you were spotted at the airport in Colorado. And then killed one of my units. And a guard.”

“Ah, Haldis. I haven’t missed you at all, either,” Malcolm said. They had hooked up once during officers’ training. Fine piece of woman. Terrifying, but sexy.

She gestured, and Malcolm’s heart sank to see Anthony and Lucas being dragged toward him. The men had found trousers, but no guns. They must have been caught attacking guards back at Oymyakon. “Are these Americans with you?” Haldis asked.

“No?” Malcolm ventured.

Lucas and Anthony were tossed to their knees beside him.

“Kill all of them,” Haldis said. “We’re too close to the Event to risk it.”

Malcolm attempted his most charming grin. It was a real challenge, considering how many guns were pointing at his cranium right at that moment. “Babe, can’t we talk about this?”

A shriek tore through the air.

It was loud enough to make the entire forest shiver. Everyone looked up at once, except Malcolm—it was terribly difficult to tear his gaze away from the guns that were still aimed at him. All it would take was a single twitching finger to make him have a really terrible night.

The cry was like a signal to the Union. They all moved at once.

“Get ready!” Haldis shouted as her team scattered, leaping into their vehicles arrayed around the meadow. They were armed with enough weapons and ammunition to kill an entire army of humans.

But they weren’t prepared for the two-dozen hybrids that soared into the clearing.

ARABOTH

When James had
first entered the garden, the distance between the wall and the gateway to Earth hadn’t seemed that distant. But the falling of the Tree seemed to have rearranged things. A wasteland stood between them and the exit now—a stretch of dead earth at least a mile wide.

The idea of having to walk that far made James despair. But then another fireball thumped into the ground behind them, and he somehow found the strength to match Elise’s brisk stride.

Plumes of smoke rose from the garden, circled by cherubim. Flakes of ash drifted through the air.

He watched her profile, framed by the gray mist beyond her.

Nathaniel had said that she knew everything. “Elise,” James began.

“Don’t talk to me.”

“I can explain,” he said.

Elise’s mouth worked, as if she was chewing on a response, but she didn’t say it out loud. She picked up her pace toward the gate.

Actual snow began falling by the time they left the walls of the garden behind. It collected rapidly, forming drifts around their ankles, and then their knees.

The slog through the snow was long and exhausting, but they soon neared the edge of the bridge leading to the gate.

James couldn’t go through that gateway without one last plea. “It’s not too late to get Nathaniel back.”

Elise stopped walking abruptly. She rounded on him.

“He’s not just some child,” she said.

“But he’s only twelve. He can’t make these kinds of choices.”

“Yes, he can,” she said. Her black eyes smoldered like coals. “I made life and death decisions when I was his age.”

“Isaac is hardly a shining example of fatherhood,” James said.

“He raised me, and he understood me. You didn’t raise Nathaniel. You don’t even know him.”

“And you do?”

Elise lifted her chin. “I don’t have to know him to trust him.” Her fists trembled. The points of the falchions wavered. “Trust, James. It’s what you do with people you respect. And especially the people you love.”

He blew out a sigh. “Look, Elise, I know you must be—”

“You don’t know anything,” she said, cutting him off. “Frankly, I don’t think I know you, either. You told me that you were an enemy of God. That we had to run and hide together. You never told me that you’d been in the garden before, or that you were some kind of…” Elise glared at the injury on his chest.

“I don’t really know what I am,” he said.

“I know what you are,” Elise’s voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. “I think I know you better than ever before. And I don’t think I like you very much.”

James felt like his heart was shattering in his chest. “I came to save you.”

Elise started walking again. “I didn’t need you to save me. You, or anyone else.” Her lips twisted. There was such anger in her eyes—almost loathing. “You should have stayed on Earth.”

“Elise—”

She spun on him, fists balled at her sides, black eyes flaming. “You
lied
to me, James. You lied for a long goddamn time. And when the time came, when I really needed you, you helped Him find me, and you walked away without even bothering to warn me. Why? Because you were afraid of what I would think of you?” Elise’s voice was cold, so much colder than the snow. “I could have come to terms with your past if you had been honest with me. But I can’t come to terms with the fact that you are such a coward.”

It was everything that he had feared she would say. He let the anger wash over him, trying to keep his features composed, but he couldn’t do it.

“I ruined everything,” he said. “Didn’t I?”

“That’s the understatement of the fucking millennium.”

She looked like she had more to say, but the words died on her lips when something behind James caught her eye.

Elise lifted the swords. James turned.

The cherubim that he had seen spiraling around the garden had followed them out into the wastelands. They landed one by one, ringing Elise and James.

James backed up until his shoulder bumped Elise’s. Back-to-back, they waited for the cherubim to attack.

A female cherub stepped forward. She was missing her eyes, just like every other cherub, but James felt her hollow stare deep within his chest. “My name is Aliel,” she said. “I am the commander of the cherubim.”

“I just killed God,” Elise said. “If you’ve come to stop me, I think you should reconsider.”

Aliel tilted her head to the side, as if studying Elise without eyes. “There are abominations through that gateway. On Earth waits the army Metaraon and Lilith forged together. The abominations were meant to seize the garden upon His death, but Metaraon is no longer there to lead them.”

“Hybrids,” James whispered. He had seen them in Hell.

“I’ll get rid of them,” Elise said, addressing all of the cherubim. “I won’t let a single one walk away, if you let me through.”

“There will be more elsewhere,” another said. “Metaraon scattered them across the world. He was preparing for war.”

“Then I’ll kill them, too.” Elise stepped forward, shoulders squared, and she spoke with such confidence that it would be impossible not to believe her. “How many did he make? Dozens? Hundreds? I’ll find them all, and I will tear through them. I will kill until there is nothing left to be killed, and then I will heal the wounds that allowed them to be made.” Every time she said “I,” James flinched. Even though she was facing away from him, it felt like she flicked each at him like throwing knives straight to the chest.

It was “I,” not “we,” and Elise knew exactly what she was saying.

“There is much to do,” Aliel said.

Elise turned back to her, hair blowing in her face, skin illuminated by the gray light pouring through the door. “I’ll take care of it,” she said. “I’ll restore balance.”

The first angel dropped to her knees, clapping her fist to her chest and bowing her head. The others followed one by one, bowing to Elise, accepting her control.

And then they vanished.

Alone, James and Elise crossed the bridge to stand in front of the gateway. It vibrated in recognition of their marks. It would take both of them to open the door.

She tucked both swords under one arm. He took her hand. The contact was enough to bring the bond to full strength.

He saw through her eyes—saw her contemplating the ethereal marks ringing the door, thinking about the way that she had been dragged through the arch unwillingly, but now prepared to cross through again of her own volition.

When James stepped in front of her, he saw himself as she did: handsome, familiar, and yet a total stranger. The surges of love and hatred were equally strong.

Above all else, she felt betrayed.

He didn’t have to say it out loud, but he did. “I’m sorry.”

Elise grasped his hand tighter. Their fingers were laced together, as tightly entwined as their destinies and souls.

She leaned toward him, and James’s eyes closed in anticipation of the kiss. But she only brushed her lips over his cheek. “If you love me, you’ll never speak to me again,” she whispered into his ear.

A fireball struck the ground beside them.

Elise reached out to push the door open without releasing his hand. Their combined marks opened the door easily, exposing gray light on the other side.

Together, they stepped through.

The shift between
dimensions felt like it could have taken hours. Elise held James’s hand tightly, pinning him to her side, and didn’t let go.

Emptiness yawned between Araboth and Earth.

For an instant, Elise could see herself suspended between the two points of light that marked each dimension. The garden was pale, flickering, and dwindling rapidly. As she watched, its light guttered for the last time.

Then it was gone.

Nathaniel had moved Araboth.

Elise knew the instant that she had arrived on Earth again, before she even had her eyesight and hearing back. The constant scorching that had tortured her in the garden lifted from her flesh. The shadows of night soothed like aloe on a burn.

When she could see again, it was not through her eyes. She sensed a forest, the plane of the world below her, the vast sky above.

She was everywhere. She was everything.

Elise opened her eyes to face the hybrids.

Bullets ripped through
the air over Malcolm’s head, and not a single one of them did a damn bit of good against the hybrids. They tore through the Union, and blood flowed like rivers over the earth.

In the chaos, Anthony and Lucas managed to escape. But Malcolm wasn’t about to run into the trees unarmed. He remembered the dead wolf that he had found—he wouldn’t be any safer under cover than he was in the meadow.

“Gun!” Malcolm yelled to the men guarding him. “Someone give me a fucking gun!”

But another cloven-hoofed hybrid swept over them. A single swing of its massive hand knocked the head right off the shoulders of his nearest guard.

Okay. Forget the guns
.

Malcolm bolted for the trees as the hybrid turned for a second attack, hunched over to keep his head below the line of fire—and the line of sweeping hybrid claws.

Running felt just as futile as fighting would have been. Two-dozen hybrids was about twenty too many for even the collective force of the Union to kill.

They were so fucked.
So goddamn fucked.

Malcolm caught a glimpse of Anthony and Lucas breaking away from their guards, too, but he completely lost sight of them when a BearCat rolled through his line of sight. A hybrid landed on the vehicle, crumpling it in the center.

I’m going to die
, Malcolm realized.

He couldn’t help but laugh at that, just a little.

His laughter was echoed by a clap of thunder that made his skull feel like it had split. Lighting struck the earth just meters away from Malcolm.

He threw himself behind a tree, protecting his head with his arms. The concussion shook him to the bone. His eardrums popped. Every hair on his body stood on end, and he smelled something burning.

The silence that followed was so deep that he thought he had gone deaf.

But someone gasped.

Malcolm looked over to see Anthony sheltering behind a nearby tree, with Lucas nowhere in sight. He stared around the side of his shelter, cheeks pale. He had dropped a stolen AK-47 to the ground, as though his fingers had simply stopped working.

“Elise,” he whispered. The silence was so thick that the name, uttered underneath his breath, reached Malcolm’s ears as clearly as a shout.