Falling (The Falling Angels Saga) (33 page)

The pungent fragrance of incense was heavy in the air, greeting me like an old friend. Zanti seated us in the front row on the bride’s side. The groom’s side was filling up with Satanists and demons. We were alone on the bride’s side. Zanti scurried away.

I didn’t know if it was cool in the chapel, but a chill settled over me as goose flesh began to rise along my arms. Roxanne was seated between Guy and me. I wanted to reach across her and squeeze Guy’s hand, use him as a touchstone. However, I suspected eyes were on us. We had to keep up the pretense that I was Erin.

I sat back, closed my eyes and began a breathing exercise. Today I was like an athlete before the big game. I needed to keep my mind sharp and clear.

“Hi,” a voice behind me said. I stiffened. I’d know that voice anywhere. It was Matt.

But was it truly Matt, or was this one of Satan’s tricks? And if it was Matt, once he got a look at me he’d surely know I wasn’t Erin. Would he blow my cover?

Before I could turn around, Roxanne spoke up. “Hi, there!” Her voice was friendly and full of warmth. “Who are you?”

“Umm… Matt,” he said. “Erin’s, umm… friend.”

“Hi, Erin’s umm friend. I’m Roxanne. Guy’s friend,” she said with an amused chuckle.

“I know who you are.” And then he called out to me: “Erin.”

I shook my head, refusing to turn around, worried that when he looked into my face he’d know the truth… and then what?

“I’m getting the impression Erin may not be too anxious to see you, Matt,” said Roxanne in an amused tone.

“I could understand that. I… I guess I deserve it. But after today I won’t get another chance to speak with her. I have to—”

“After the ceremony!” snapped Guy without turning around. “Okay?”

There was a long pause, and I knew Matt was staring at the back of my head, waiting for me to turn around, waiting for Erin to talk to him. “I… don’t know if I’ll be allowed,” he said haltingly, his voice a vessel of sadness. “I just wanted her to know I’m sorry, and I really did…
do
love her.”

How I wished Erin could have been there to hear Matt’s words. With all she’d been going through lately, I know they would have helped. I nodded, still not turning.

“Looks like she accepts your apology,” Guy said. “Why don’t you move along now?”

“Erin?” came Matt’s voice in a louder appeal that ripped into me, shredding my resolve.

Roxanne must have felt the change in me because she squeezed my hand hard, so hard it hurt. I didn’t move. I sat stiff like a chameleon trying to blend into the background. I could feel his presence behind me, feel his eyes on the back of my head beseeching me.
Go away
, I thought.
I’m not that strong. Go away, or I’m going to do something we’re all going to regret.

He let out a breathy, misery-filled sigh. “Sure,” he finally replied. “Maybe later,” he said softly and touched my shoulder. I could hear him moving away. My heart went out to him.

“You did good,” Roxanne said and again squeezed my hand, this time gently. To anyone looking on, it would appear as though she were squeezing Erin’s hand. I didn’t squeeze back.

The church was filling up. I glanced over at the groom’s side and was struck by the array of demons present. This was Satan’s big show, maybe his biggest ever, and he wanted everyone in his realm to know it. He knew that those who attended would spread the word of the marriage between darkness and light.

Pride goeth before the fall.

The music abruptly stopped mid-note. The sudden halt of the music created an electricity in the air. The murmuring crowd quieted as the last guests rushed to their seats. The show was about to begin.

I found myself holding my breath as Armando, in a stunning white tuxedo with a red boutonniere, appeared through a door at the side of the chapel. Señora Marisol stood at his side, wearing an exquisite black gown, similar to the one she’d worn when I visited the castle, but more formal. The marriage of light and darkness was about to begin.

Breathe, girl! Breathe.

Behind them stood a seven foot demon wearing vestments festooned with demonic symbols. The three of them moved toward the front of the chapel.

Slowly I blew out the breath. My show was about to begin as well. I looked down at my hands. They were resting in my lap. Somehow I was able to remain calm.

Once the three were in place up front, strange discordant music began to play. The rear chapel doors were flung open, echoing in the chapel with a loud boom. The bride stood in the doorway with Harrison by her side. Her maid and matron of honor were directly behind her. Gasps of delight were uttered throughout the room as the guests caught glimpses of me in the stunning red wedding gown.

After a few moments, the music shifted to something akin to a discordant wedding march. Megan began her death march up the aisle. The bride and Harrison arrived at the front of the church and the music ceased. Harrison placed the bride’s hand on Armando’s arm and stepped away.

Armando smiled at the bride and said, “Are you ready, my dear?” in his velvet voice.

“Yes,” she said and returned the smile.

I stiffened, certain Armando would see through Orthon’s ruse at any moment.
What a stupid, stupid idea
. I noticed Maudrina tensing as well, her hand moving to the small purse where she’d stored the charcoal.

Yet Armando seemed none the wiser. He faced the demon cleric and, with a smug expression, said, “Begin.”

And as the wedding began, tears welled up in my eyes. Orthon looked beautiful as me. I said a silent prayer for his soul, or whatever it is a demon possesses. The tears began running down my cheeks. I couldn’t help myself. Orthon’s sacrifice for love was the bravest thing I’d ever seen.

“You okay?” Roxanne whispered.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“It’s too late to turn back now.”

“I’m good,” I said. “What can I tell ya; I’m a sucker for weddings.” She chuckled.

The demon cleric began the ceremony with a long recitation in a dead language that none of us understood. The entire time he was talking, I stood ready to slip up to the front of the chapel, step inside Maudrina’s Hexagram, and begin the incantation that would free me from Satan once and for all.

“Megan, do you renounce this life and take Satan to be your husband for the rest of eternity?” The cleric was finally getting to the vows, the very end of the wedding ceremony, and yet Armando was still unaware he wasn’t marrying me.

“I do,” Orthon said in my voice. My heart did a dance as I toyed with the idea of Satan departing for hell with Orthon and not me. But we couldn’t allow that to happen. We had to finish this here.

“And do you, Satan take the mortal, Megan, to be your wife and the bearer of your children?”

“Yes, I do,” Satan replied. He smiled over at the bride. It was a smile filled with self-satisfaction. Then abruptly his expression shifted, became more serious. His nose twitched. A glint appeared in his eyes, and Orthon burst into flames.

A collective gasp rang out in the chapel. Orthon cried out as the flames began to devour him, a most deafening shriek. Maudrina and Aunt Jaz, stepped away from the flaming demon as he began to hop around and cry out.

The beautiful red dress burned up in seconds, and then the relentless flames lay claim to Orthon’s demon flesh.

“Noooo, Master,” he cried out. “Please!” The stench of his cooking flesh overpowered the incense. The sound of his flesh burning along with Orthon’s screams were almost too much to bear.

“Stop it!” I screamed and Roxanne slammed her hand over my mouth.

“You must allow this to play out,” she said in an angry tone. “The moment is at hand!”

“Y… Yes,” I stammered. “Sorry.”

I scanned the front of the chapel for Maudrina, who was now kneeling on the floor by the railing, charcoal in hand, attempting to draw the Hexagram. But each time she began to scrawl on the stone floor, the chalk in her hand sparked as if she were holding a piece of flint, and the circle disappeared. She glanced over at me with a sorrowful expression and shook her head. The floor of the chapel had been enchanted by a dark spell that was keeping the hexagram from being completed.

Orthon’s cries of pain grew weaker. In minutes he was a pile of stinking, steaming, demon ash on the chapel floor, yet even then, I could still hear him begging for his life.

It was a horror to witness, but Armando showed no mercy. He looked on as if he were at a college pep rally watching a bonfire, his eyes dancing with delight at the sight of the carnage. Before long, the flames dissolved, the smoke cleared, and the ash vanished as if into thin air. A hush fell over the chapel. Orthon was no more.

We stood in deathly silence for several minutes. No one was quite sure what had happened. Was this part of the ceremony?

“Do you think I’m a fool?” Armando bellowed, breaking the silence, his voice like a bell, clapping off the stone chapel walls. “Did you think I would not know?” He turned from the altar and glowered at us in the front row, an expression of anger splayed across his beautiful face.

A flash of light, like a laser beam, shot from his eyes and hit Guy square in the chest.

“Noo!” I screamed.

“Megan!” Roxanne cried out, as Guy collapsed into her arms. She was shooting me a look that said
Go on! Do it!

I couldn’t blurt out that the plan had been foiled. With no protective hexagram for me to stand in, I’d be incinerated like Orthon the moment I started the incantation. Instead, I nodded, allowing her to think I was about begin.

“That is the price one pays for lies,” Armando said calmly, his eyes flashing warning. He again focused on Guy and hit him a second time with an even more powerful blast that made Guy cry out. Guy’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head. They twitched a few times, and then Guy was still.

“Megan! Now!” Roxanne called.

There was nothing I could do. I was literally paralyzed. My eyes were transfixed to Guy’s lifeless body in Roxanne’s arms.

“NOOO!” I screamed, my cry echoing off the chapel walls.

The anger hit me like a freight train. I’d never been so enraged in my entire life. This monster was trying to destroy everything I cared about, everything I was living for. My vision became clouded with a wash of red, as if the world were suddenly covered in a reddish patina. I thought
this is what insanity must feel like
, because I, indeed, felt insane. My thoughts were being ripped to tatters. Like my world, my mind was falling apart.

My one clear thought was that this was so unfair.
God never promised the cost of love would be fair.

The next thing I knew, I was levitating in the air above the pews. I hadn’t planned on it. I don’t know how I did it. I was doing it on impulse. “I command you to stop this,” I cried out. It was my voice, and yet it was ten times more powerful than I can ever remember my voice being.

“Or what?” Armando bellowed, not to be outdone in the strong voice department. “I will kill your friends one by one until you agree to become my bride, Megan. And if you never agree, everyone you’ve ever loved will die. Either you will be my bride, or you will face a lifetime of misery. This is your only choice.”

His eyes were once again on Guy, and I could tell he was going to finish him. Roxanne positioned herself over Guy, shielding his body from Satan’s finishing blows as best she could.

It was then I noticed a tiny flame had appeared in the air, hovering just over my head. The flicker began moving through the air like a pencil, drawing, leaving a flaming circle in the air around me as it drew. The circle surrounded me. It took a moment for me to realize it wasn’t a circle that had been drawn. I was now hovering ten feet above the crowd, encased in a flaming hexagram.

“Begin the incantation,” Harrison called from below.

Armando’s malevolent expression shifted, turned wary, as his attention moved from Guy and was now focused on me.

“Ie n’ay cekt que toi,” I began.

“How do you know that?” Armando demanded, his eyes widening in disbelief, or perhaps it was terror. “It is not possible.
The Book of Calls
has been destroyed.”

A tremendous force of energy leaped from his eyes and slammed into the force field created by the hexagram that surrounded me. Armando was far stronger than I could ever be, and the force field was rocked by his tremendous power. I could sense it weakening.

“I don’t need
The Book of Calls
. I have the reversal incantation memorized. Semeck tous n’vrais,” I cried out, continuing the incantation, as Armando’s unrelenting attack ground away at the force field around me.

And then, it was as if Armando had been hit in the chest by the blow from a shotgun. The powerful words of the reverse incantation dropped him to his knees.

“No!” he called his voice weaker.

All of my attention was on finishing the incantation. I was rushing now. The air around me was getting hot. Sweat came pouring down my face in buckets as if I were in a sauna. I recited the words as quickly as I could. I needed to get to the end before Armando’s power broke through the force field and finished me.

“You!” he said, turning an accusing eye on Señora Marisol by his side. His voice had weakened even more. Before she could respond, she burst into flame, the black gown going up like tissue paper. She didn’t cry out.

“I have failed you, Master.” Her words were nearly lost in the hissing of her barbecuing flesh as it dripped from her bones onto the chapel floor.

By now the guests were fleeing. Even the demons were running because no one knew who or what might be targeted next. Screams of terror erupted throughout the chapel as they stampeded over one another, all running for the exit, demons and Satanists alike, all running for their lives.

Armando’s focusing on Señora Marisol was the break I needed. The fiery force field around me had nearly disintegrated under his attack. Had he continued, I wouldn’t have been able to finish.

But I did finish. As I reached the end of the incantation, Armando’s beautiful face began to blister as it cooked away, like a piece of bacon sizzling on the griddle. Beneath Armando’s handsome features was the horrible creature I’d seen once before with the twisted mouth filled with shark-like fangs—Satan, in all his hideous glory. His pupils were dark slits surrounded by irises glowing iridescent yellow. They were horrid eyes, and yet they were sad eyes as well.