Messiah: The First Judgement (Chronicles of Brothers) (2 page)

His deranged screaming resounded through the darkness as the searing tongues of fire started to engulf Lucifer. He looked down incredulously at his hands. As he watched they blistered. His broad, manicured nails twisted into talons and yellowed with age. The chiselled alabaster features became pockmarked. The jet-black eyebrows grew together. The beautiful aquiline nose became misshapen. The passionate crimson mouth grew thin and cruel.

Frantic, Lucifer put his hands to his cheeks, feeling his mangled, misshapen features. The magnificent thick ebony tresses fell from his scalp in smouldering clumps. His gold and ruby ring burned deep into his flesh.

‘Hear me, Christos!’ he screamed. ‘I, Lucifer, Light-bearer, chief prince, holy angelic regent of the Royal House of Yehovah, do now become Your sworn enemy, and treachery and iniquity will I bear unto You throughout eternity of eternities!’

Gale-force wind blew through the chamber. The angels with Lucifer – themselves hideously transformed – clung desperately to balustrades, marble columns, and overturned marble tables as they were sucked away from the throne room. They screamed frenziedly as the lightning raged.

Then, propelled by some unseen gargantuan magnetic force, they and everything in their wake were sucked towards the swirling black vortex beyond the chamber entrance.

The shadows had fallen...

Prologue

1981
St Michael’s Mount, Marazion Cornwall, England

The dark, imperial figure stood on a jagged outcrop beneath the towering granite slopes of St Michael’s Mount. His indigo cloak billowed in the violent gales that blew up from the raging winter storm in the English Channel.

‘Our Father...’ Lucifer murmured, his soft, cultured tones barely audible. A bolt of lightning flashed, illuminating the soaring pyramidal mount crowned by its medieval castle.

‘...Who art in heaven...’

The heavens opened, and a driving, lashing rain hammered down.

Lucifer inhaled deeply, his face raised heavenward, bathing in the torrential downpour, and raised his hands in exhilaration to the darkening skies. Six monstrous black seraph wings rose behind him.

‘My kingdom come...,’ he cried, his steel blue eyes blazing with fervour.

The soaking strands of his matted locks thrashed against his face, masking the scarred imperial features.

‘
His
will be done,’ a soft voice echoed from behind him.

Lucifer smiled. A slow, satisfied smile.

‘Michael...,’ he murmured, his back to his brother, ‘you are late.’

Michael stood on the far side of the mount, his hand on his sword, silent. Lucifer pushed his long raven mane back from his face, turned, and studied his brother intently.

Michael wore the long white silk robes of his battalion’s ceremonial regalia. The sapphires on his silver breastplate gleamed, and his flaxen locks were tied back in two platinum braids. The handsome, chiselled features were set.

Grim, pondered Lucifer. No, not grim – earnest. Earnest, noble Michael.
Nothing has changed
, he reflected. He laughed sardonically.

‘You summoned me through the royal courts. What brings you here, brother?’ Michael strode to and fro impatiently. Lucifer grinned his old magnificent smile, relishing Michael’s frustration.

‘I was passing by the area,’ he said casually. He walked towards Michael, across the crests of the raging waves, in long, firm strides. ‘I was
curious
, brother.’ Lucifer drew his head close to Michael’s. ‘I would learn of the legends ... of the white rock in the wood,’ he whispered. Michael’s clear green eyes locked on to Lucifer’s inscrutable sapphire gaze. ‘Legends of Michael the Archangel...’

Michael flinched as Lucifer’s seductive dulcet tones penetrated deep into his soul. ‘The stuff of fairytales,’ Lucifer continued.

‘I traverse many lands.’ Michael replied.

‘Ah, but you reveal yourself to so
few
.’ Lucifer slowly, lazily, circled him. ‘They saw your apparition here in Cornwall, in the year 495.’ He gestured at a lofty crag in the distance. ‘You revealed yourself to a fisherman, a lone hermit ... a
monk
?’ Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who was he, Michael? Was he one of us?’ he hissed. ‘The angelic, or one of the Race of Men? Is Yehovah
compelled
to pre-empt my every move?’

‘You waste my time, Lucifer,’ Michael said coldly. ‘You summoned me with the royal seal, yet you speak of trivia.’

Lucifer observed him sceptically.

‘More than trivia, I think, brother. No matter, I will assuage my curiousity another time.’ Lucifer raised his hand to the skies. ‘Let us get to business, Michael – our Father’s business. And like Him, I, too, would converse of Messiah’s.’

He surveyed the craggy shores of southwest Cornwall. ‘And of this faded empire – this weakened lion ... this
England
.’ He swung around. ‘For she shall yet behold a king ... this year, maybe next...’

He grinned mockingly at Michael, as when they used to swordfight in aeons past, in worlds long departed. ‘Perhaps tonight, Michael, a messiah is born in Marazion.’

‘Speak plainly, Lucifer,’ snapped Michael, losing patience. ‘Enough of your parables.’

‘Ah, but do I speak the truth, or merely a fabrication?’ Lucifer needled. ‘Relay to our Father that I, too, shall send a messiah.’

‘Our Father is omniscient,’ Michael replied. ‘He knows your every conversation. Your every thought is preceded and beheld by Him.’

‘Ah, yes, but I stand by the legal process. I would have my thoughts on record in the royal courts in the codices of heaven. That is why you are here – so I meet the demands of “
His
” legal system.’

Michael indicated agreement. ‘It shall be recorded as you request.’

‘My strength ebbs from me...’ Lucifer scanned the heavens, strangely agitated. ‘The Nazarene is near...’

An uncharacteristic dread crossed his marred countenance. ‘You came alone?’

Michael nodded. ‘Time runs down, brother,’ he spoke softly, sorrow etched on his noble features.

Lucifer lifted his head, his breathing easing. ‘He offers repentance with one hand, yet, with the other, seeks my demise.’ Lucifer’s eyes filled with loathing. ‘Our Father is malicious.’

‘As you would have it, Lucifer.’ Michael looked at him, suddenly fierce. ‘Your brazen iniquity affects your judgement.’

‘As your shameless naïvety does yours,’ Lucifer sneered.

The two brothers glared at each other, severe, unyielding.

Finally Lucifer spoke. ‘My messiah shall rise from these isles,’ he whispered. ‘A king of politics and of industry, courted by kings and queens – a greater orator than Churchill – rises upon these shores.’ He stared out past the raging black waves to a lone star that glimmered through the rising mists. ‘I think I shall give him brothers,’ he declared. ‘Like
us
, he shall have a family.’

His mood changed abruptly. ‘They shall be three, even as you, Gabriel and I are three angelic brothers.’ He gave Michael a mercurial smile. ‘Three brothers of the Race of Men.’

An insane fire lit his gaze. ‘And
like
us’ – he bowed mockingly to Michael – ‘one shall be an insurrectionist, a renegade.’

Michael bowed his head. ‘You will lose, Lucifer,’ he murmured, ‘as you lost at Golgotha.’

‘
Golgotha!
’ Lucifer snarled, his countenance turning at once into a mask of hatred. He turned his back on Michael, looking out to the raging winter seas. His voice was hard. ‘Tell Jether when he sees the white rider in the heavens, my messiah will make his appearance in the Race of Men.’

And he vanished.

Michael turned as Gabriel strode out of the hanging Cornish mists, up the rocks and towards him. Gabriel’s flaxen hair fell loose over his kingfisher blue vestments. His flawless features were finer than Michael’s strongly defined ones ... gentler. But tonight his regal countenance was set.

‘His messiah will be born tonight in Marazion,’ Gabriel announced wearily. ‘It is certain.’ He stood on the rocks before Michael, the sword of justice hanging at his side. ‘Lucifer’s fallen angelic battalions already surround the area; our legions will do the same.’

Michael bowed his head. ‘He will lose,’ he said, ‘at Megiddo.’

Gabriel nodded. ‘Yes, Michael, he will lose – but at what cost to the Race of Men?’ Together the brothers stood in silence, staring out beyond the dark swirling mists rising off the west Cornish coast, to the blazing star that now rose in the heavens over the small village of Marazion.

* * *

2021
Monastery of Archangels Alexandria, Egypt

Two monks stood in the portal of St Michael the Archangel, the rotating telescope dome on the observatory of the Monastery of Archangels. Their features lay hidden by the grey cowled hoods of their Coptic monastic robes. They stared through the Coronado Solar Telescope directly into the Egyptian sun, transfixed by the unsettling apparition that hovered above the sweltering desert plain.

The older monk watched, mesmerized, as the spectre materialized into a sinister waxen form astride a magnificent white stallion. The form held a bow.

‘The white rider of the Apocalypse...,’ the younger whispered, fingering the cross at his chest. ‘The first seal is broken.’

‘The Son of Perdition comes forth to rule – one from the Race of Men.’ The older monk looked grimly up from the telescope into the shimmering crimson skies of the Egyptian dawn. ‘The Great Tribulation has begun.’

That dusk is still imprinted in my memory. The dusk when the sign of the White Rider of the Apocalypse hung in the Egyptian skies over the sweltering desert plains. The Son of Perdition coming forth to rule in the Race of Men. For the breaking of the First Great Seal was surely to herald the beginning of the devastations of the End of Days.

And as I stood with Jether, observing the waxen apparition, my mind raced back two thousand years earlier to a different dusk. And a different sign that had once blazed high in the Eastern skies. A sign that was to terrorize the soul of my brother Lucifer, King of the Damned. For the chilling events of the coming moons were about to change eternity in the world of the Race of Men as we still knew it. And plunge the armies of the First Heaven and the Fallen into a cosmic battle that would reverberate throughout a hundred aeons.

Beyond Megiddio.

Beyond the termination of the world of the Race of Men.

Culminating in one final battle. Between my brothers.

Michael and Lucifer.

A thousand years in the future.

At the White Gorge of Inferno, on the eastern shores of the Lake of Fire.

But it was here, aeons before, that our tale begins...