Entice: An Ignite Novella (14 page)

Why did they tie us up?
I ask him.

They don’t want us in their way. It’s time.

Man?

Before the sun rises, he will fall.

––––––––

T
HE
T
REE OF
K
NOWLEDGE IS
visible from where we lie. That was probably their intention when they left us here. They want Azael and me to see them win.

Botis is, once again, coiled at the base of the tree. Naamah, however, is standing over man, the stem of the apple pinched between her fingers.

We watched as they took a large branch and knock down one of the glowing, amber apples from the tree. Naamah held it in her hand wrapped in a large leaf, careful not to let the bright skin of the fruit touch her own. With one of the daggers I dropped after Botis crushed me into unconsciousness, she carved out a bite-sized chunk of the apple and tossed it aside. With all I could muster, I wished for her to touch the apple. Just once. Just a small brush of her knuckles across the shining fruit, enough to make her scream. Enough to wake Adam up so he could see the lies she was about to feed him.

But she was too careful. I don’t know why I believed I would come across such luck.

Now, her voice takes on that sickly sweet tone again as she tries to wake man. “Adam.”

Botis unwinds himself from the tree to slither around the sleeping man. His words join in with Naamah’s slow, sugary voice. They stretch his name until it is thin and delicate. “Aaaaadam.”

Man rolls over toward Naamah. She bends down, her knees sinking into the spongy Earth beneath the Tree. Again, she whispers his name, and this time, his eyes open.

He blinks slowly, staring up at her face, which is illuminated by the soft luminescence of the fruit. When he realizes she’s taken a bite, he jolts up, completely awake.

“NO!”

Naamah places her hand on his shoulder gently. “It’s all right.” She holds the apple out to him. “The angels were only half right. The apple—it’s filled with all the knowledge of Earth. But it’s not dangerous. Those words you read? I know them all now. Adam, they’re beautiful, intoxicating. You should hear them all. There are so many things we did not know, so much to this great Earth we haven’t seen yet.”

Adam looks beneath him, down at the scrawl of words he was sleeping on top of.
My words
.

A string of curses curl through my mind from Azael.

“I can be like the angels, Adam. With this knowledge, I can do anything. I can do everything!”

He appraises Naamah carefully, looking between the apple and her. Slowly, he reaches out a hand to take the fruit. He holds it gently, cupped in his hands as if it’s made of the thinnest glass that will break if he holds it even a little too tightly.

“Can it be a sin to know? Adam”—his name drips like honey from her lips—“can it truly be death? Why would they forbid you knowledge? You were made in their image. Would they not want you to know what they know, too?”

Botis snakes his way next to Naamah. “Why would the angels provide you with something evil, just out of reach?”

“One bite is all it takes.”

I can’t watch this
, Azael protests.

The man brings the apple closer to his face, inspecting it. He sniffs the soft, white center of the fruit, and I can only imagine the heavenly scents that lives within its glowing skin.

“There is no danger. I am unharmed,” Naamah says, spreading her arms wide for Adam to inspect. “Eat, Adam. Know what I know.”

“One bite,” Naamah and Botis say together so softly it may have been the wind whispering it.

Everything seems to slow down. Azael falls entirely silent as Adam brings the apple to his lips. The trees seem to bend closer to man, waiting, watching. The universe holds its breath...

But the apple comes away from his mouth without a bite. The garden sighs in relief. Azael cheers in our mind.

There is no temptation as strong as hunger. Once his hunger is too much to bear, we
will
succeed.
There’s a vicious edge to Azael’s words, each noun sharpened to a point, his verbs ready to attack.
If their plan falls through now, the next time he considers eating the apple, it will be because of us. It will be our victory to claim.

I’m not so sure.

Naamah and Botis still remain completely motionless. It’s as if they’re afraid any movement will startle man into abandoning the fruit entirely. He’s a wild animal, prey trapped under the gaze of two predators.

“Taste,” murmurs Naamah.

“Eat,” hisses Botis.

The man raises the apple back to his mouth, suddenly sure of his decision. His teeth puncture the thin flesh of the apple and its golden juices run down his chin.

NO.

Within moments of his bite, the apple shrivels, the gold darkening to the bloody red of the tree’s leaves. The inside rots, blackening and churning with worms. He drops the apple and fumbles away from the spoiled fruit, getting himself to his feet with the help of the trunk of the Tree of Knowledge.

He looks around wildly, gaping at Naamah and Botis.

“No, no, no,” he stammers over and over again. “I’ve made a mistake. I was tricked... This was not my doing, not my choice!”

He seems to notice his nakedness for the first time, running around the tree to hide himself behind a collection of bushes. Before, his ignorance protected him from the harsh realities of the world. He was unashamed of nudity, unaware of the eyes of the garden that follow his movements. Awareness makes him suddenly anxious.

Botis rears up. His red skin shivers over his body and he transforms back into the figure he held before we entered Eden. Legs, torso, arms. Adam bends over and throws up.

Naamah smiles pleasantly. “Perhaps it
is
a sin to know.”

The bronze day breaks, cold and vengeful. Angel wings beat heavy on the horizon. Silently, Naamah and Botis slip away from man, leaving him alone, trembling under the rising sun.

––––––––

L
EAVING
E
DEN
,
ONLY SMALL SCENES
flash into my awareness. I’m too numb—worried about Azael’s anger over our failure—to fully understand what’s happening. He’s already begun brooding.

Naamah and Botis untie us, vicious grins plastered on their arrogant faces. They won’t give me my daggers back; if they did, I might seriously consider carving in new expressions for them to wear. Or maybe I’d slice them apart and leave tiny bits of them throughout the garden for the angels to find. I wish I could stop thinking things like this. I wish the images of them mutilated didn’t bring me a small sense of satisfaction. I wish Azael and I didn’t fail.

I wish a lot of things.

The light of the sun appears watery in the sky and it makes me sick. I’m suddenly too eager to return back to the depths of Hell and hide from the watchful eye in the sky. The heat now seems suffocating. The death of the garden mocks me.
Near success, absolute failure.
The animals flying and scurrying and scratching everywhere are irritating, their heartbeats deafening.

Man wails, but even Azael cannot enjoy the sound now. It only reminds him of the source of Adam’s pain—
not us
.

Before I disappear into the thick, twisting forest of trees, forever leaving man in my past, I see Uriel. It’s been decades since I saw him last, and he is still every bit as fearsome. His caramel complexion seems to blaze from within, burning with tempestuous rage. It would appear his temper is still as turbulent as ever.

He raises his voice and his flaming sword against Adam.

“Paradise was yours, Adam. You had domain over the animals of land, sea, and sky. As man, you were given permission to eat from every tree in Eden except for one. The only restriction placed upon you was to not eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Forbidden.” Uriel’s voice booms. “We warned you.”

“And I heard, angel. I heard—I listened!”

“Until now.” The fire on his sword flames hotter. I imagine I can feel its stifling heat from where I stand. How does it not throw Adam at Uriel’s feet? “Why cast aside our warning now?”

“My wife insisted it was a falsehood, that I could eat of it and know what the angels know without harm. She, herself, ate of the fruit, but where has she gone?”

“You have no wife. Lilith left.”

“Not Lilith, the next. Her skin was like night itself, the darkness of eve.”

“We’ve given you no second wife.”

Adam falls to his knees, clawing at the black soil beneath him, mangling my words with his fingers. He destroys our stories with his grief. “A trick. A lie. I was deceived...” He looks up at Uriel, pleading. “Eden is destroyed. I was given no choice. Surely I did not sin? It was not intentional. I believed—I wanted to be like you, the angels.”

“You will never be like me,” Uriel says with a sneer. “Disobedience, regardless of intention, is unforgivable.” With a wave of his sword, he parts the blackness of the trees, hedges, and shrubs. It cuts from the center of the garden to the eastern edge, where there lies a great golden gate. “Banishment is the consequence for such dissent.”

“Please...”

His pleading fades to nothingness as the four of us leave. Azael clenches his fists to his side and grinds his teeth. Eventually, the warmth of Earth is sapped away by the icy coldness of Hell.

Eden is far behind us, but the consequence of our time there is just beginning.

––––––––

G
US REFUSES TO LOOK AT
us, and his silence tells us everything we need to know. We have failed him, fallen lower than I could even imagine. A part of me is furious at his disappointment. He
knew
we would fail. The idea of anything else—of succeeding with whatever plan we conjured—was just a fantasy, a lie we were fooled into believing. I keep my dissent silent, though. It’s too dangerous to start this fight in such a public arena. We are dismissed to our dormitory with only a curt nod.

Together, Azael and I leave the celebration at the gates of Hell. The crowds aren’t for us; we are not welcome there. The festivities will be in congratulations of Naamah and Botis’s success, and our failure excludes us from the ceremony of naming them as members on Lucifer’s council. Not that Azael and I would want to be there for that anyway.

Our actions in Eden will not be spoken of—except in hushed whispers of gossip—or remembered. The story that will be written in history will be the one of the temptation of a siren and the whispered enticements of a snake. My words and Azael’s poisons will be forgotten by everyone but us. Our story will die with us.

The halls of Hell are much longer than I remember. It seems to take forever to get back to our small, secluded room. It’s the only place we have to hide from the vindictive glares of the others. Everyone, it seems, was waiting for us to fail—rooting for it, even.

When we finally reach our room, Azael throws open the door. His weapons hurtle through the entry before he does, his scythe thrown across the room to clatter against the wall. The sound echoes across the ice.

I stand in the doorway, waiting for him to explode. Instead, he moves to the center of the room, just standing and staring. It’s unsettling, really, to see him immobilized with anger. I’d rather he yell, destroy something. At least when he becomes violent and loud, his rage has an outlet. Eventually, he exhausts himself. But when he’s still, his fury builds. Motionless, he’s terrifying. Deadly.

“Azael—”

He shakes his head, raising his hand. “Don’t start.”

“Start what?”

He pivots, agonizingly slow. “Don’t try to rationalize what happened in Eden.”

“I wasn’t going to rationalize anything. We were cheated.”

His fingers flex. “Yes.”

“Our plan was better than theirs. We had no direct contact with man—or the fruit. We were as discreet as we could be. We did what we were told. Their plan—it shouldn’t have worked.”

“And yet, it did.”

“No, Azael, listen to me.” I move into the room now, close the door behind me so our conversation can stay sealed inside with us. “It
should not
have worked. At all. We were set up. Naamah said there was no way we would have walked away victorious. The only chance we had was to work with them as a team, like Gus said, but that never would have happened. They wouldn’t have let it happen. We were expected to fail, There was no other way.”

He shakes his head. I can see denial wrapping him up in armor; I’m too familiar with the weight of refusing to accept the truth. One day, it’ll become something too heavy for him to continue carrying, and the truth will break through.

I can’t tell him of Lucifer’s words, but I attempt the small bit of honesty I can provide him. “It was a test we were never expected to pass.”

“We would not be placed in a situation where the only outcome was failure. Lucifer respects me.
I
do not fail.”

Except for now
, I conclude silently, but I don’t dare point that out to him. I’m not sure what will make him snap; I don’t know what is to happen to us now that we were unsuccessful in Eden. How will Azael spend his time if not under the thumb of Lucifer? What will he do to prove himself again? Images of centuries of brutality and violence wash behind my eyes. We’ll never be clean of blood if Azael has any say in it. He will stop at nothing to be seen as someone strong, unflinching, triumphant.

I try to subtly change the subject, pulling out the smooth onyx stone from my now empty belt.

“This,” I say, holding it out to him, “was supposed to be in celebration of...” I let the words die. “Anyway, I wanted you to have it. The ground in Eden holds power. Your spells could make something useful of it.”

He laughs mirthlessly but takes the stone.

“What’s so funny?”

“Even without saying anything, we’re almost always on the same page,” he says.

I doubt we’re even in the same book, but I let him continue. He reaches into the pocket of his dark, leather pants, pulls out a jagged stone, and hands it to me. It’s an amethyst—a bright and clear crystal that darkens into a violet nearly the same color as my eyes.