Rapture Falls (19 page)

             
Lucifer
stood naked glaring
at the
priest who was now bleeding profusely and hanging by his ankles from the churches oak beams
with contempt
.
S
he had been slicing de Payens for what seemed like hours, her arm was tired with the effort, she had cut at his flesh with a thousand small cuts designed to create the greatest pain possible in order to illicit his confession. T
he Knights Templar were designated by God to protect the Cube but even they were not furnished with its location,
they were to hold the line bet
ween the
two warring
Archangels
factions
and mankind
. T
hey were charged with dispatching the angels wherever they discovered them,
this was not new information as
Lucifer had used this remit to whittle down the numbers of the 11
^th
Order
by surreptitiously
directing the Knights
wrath
to
ward
her enemies
by
them
feeding sly information over the years. One of de Payens duties was
to act upon the will of God and to dispatch those he deemed fit, however he had begun to use this weapon for his own ends
in order to secure his own small feeble kingdom, anyone who had fallen across
his path or incurred his wrath
had been
secretly
fed to Baine
via a network of servers
,
passing the victims off
to his followers
as Gods will
. A
fter a few hundred years his
genuine
messages
from on high
had become less frequent and his communications with God had finally dissipated completely leaving him alone and abandoned
.
De Payens took this as his ultimate testing and had come to believe himself a God among men, he’d gathered his flock unto himself with a zeal and vigour that
had
shamed his original intentions
. H
e had obtained the Book of Enoch a long time ago and the power that had seeped out of its pages had been corrupted by its supremacy over mortal men.
A
s he was not a desc
endant of Enoch the Book was never
truly open to him and thus he was unable to access
either
the whole of the story
nor find true understanding of just what he possessed and to make matters worse
t
his earthbound servant of God was by now far removed from the watchful eye of a God who seemed to have long since placed his attention elsewhere
leaving de Payens to garner his own corner of the earth
corrupting his once noble order
.
             

Lucifer had her
fingers in every dark corner of every lustfully wanton
immoral nook
in the city
and the
re
were many of her converts who seemed to be falling at another’s hand. Criminals
,
from drug dealers, pimps and rapists to petty shoplifters, burglars and thieves had been swept away, whilst there was always a thirst for criminality amongst mankind the city was becoming increasingly difficult to restock. The last of her brethren to fall was
Sinclair;
she had placed a lot of her time and energy into grooming the man and his appetites only to have him snatched from her in his prime.
S
he was
fully aware of Gods usage of warriors on earth to vanquish the worst offenders in order to maintain a balance, he had never interfered heavily
,
merely allowed mankind to run their own affairs
making their own mistakes. She had however
become
increasingly curious at de Payens influence and seemingly ageless ability that was
not
granted to mortals easily and
began
an arduous process
to insert some of her own followers into the now heavily altered Knights Templar
in order to unmask the assassin who was thinning her ranks too easily. D
e Payens had removed any of his fellow original Knights who did not fall in with his dic
ta
torial directions and selected
only the most ardent
followers;
finally
o
ne of
her
Watchers had been successful in penetrating the Knights
and
had
brought them
details of the a
ssassin Baine. Lucifer had deemed to
slaughter
this Baine until it seemed that Gabriel suddenly had a passionate interest in the man, it had been a long time since Gabriel had shown his face on this mortal coil and his very appearance at Baines’ apartment as they had waited for the assassin to return home had intrigued her, so they had watched and waited. Now this Baine seemed to be an
uncontrollable entity
, bouncing around
ruin
ing
her carefully laid
plans
and
throwing endless spanners in many works
. W
hatever Gabriel had told him
,
had caused massive ructions, she could feel
that the balance had shifted
sizeably
, something large was suddenly underway and fo
r the first time in eons God much just start
looking this way again.
Even after all of this time
his
hurtful casting aside of the Archangels for his favoured sacks of putrid flesh and bones still rankled hard, the placement of his human pet creations over his faithful angels had led to the rebellion that had torn apart the heavens and subsequently soaked the earth with rivers of blood. She and Gabriel had launched the plot to take the Cube and create their own world in which to live if God was to forsake them so vehemently, but Gabriel had been as fanatical in his ideals as God was,
he had wanted to take the Cube and create his world of Eden
an ideal that she and others did not share and so the civil war had erupted into bloody conflict. After Gods great and terrible flood cleansed the world of their kind leaving them scattered and few in numbers they had still sought the Cu
be for it was all they now knew and if Gabriel was here then Baine must hold the key.

             
The swinging gurgling mess of a man spilled bloo
d onto her sweat streaked glistening
naked form awakening
her from her thoughtful musings,
the church was cold
and she stared longingly at her folded clothes taunting her from the pew
but
crimson stains were a bitch to get out of Armani
and
some
abilities
escaped even her.

“BAINE!!” the voice boomed ear piercingly in his head shattering his thoughts, Baine was
sitting within the confines of the lofty central library in the rarified air of the large reference section, he had been sitting here since first light painstakingly dragging through Cardiff castles extensive history
.
The Book of Enoch had shown him the many corridors of its life, it was a guide and a key, but it was also a puzzle to be unlocked, it was now clear that his own emergence in
Cardiff
along with the approach of Gabriel and the discovery of the book were not
coincidence
.

“
WHAT ARE YOU DOING BAINE, DO YOU NOT THINK THAT I CAN READ EVERY TRECHEROUS THOUGHT BEFORE IT EVER PASSES THROUGH YOUR TINY MIND, YOU WILL STAND AND FALL WHERE I DECREE AND AT MY WILL CHILD, AND I WILL BEAR NO INSOLENCE”

Baine managed to
keep his meager breakfast from making a violent reappearance,
his head felt as though it was splitting his skull apart at the seams,
he looked around frantically to find the voices author but could not see Gabriel anywhere,
“Where are you Gabriel?” he asked aloud.

Several people within hearing range looked over at the
seemingly disturbed man dismissing him
as either a person with mental health problems or the usual drunkard
seeking the rent free warmth of the public building.

             
Baine struggled to preserve his composure as he had to remain
concealed beneath
the radar and nosily collapsing in a large public library was not going to work,
his nose had begun to bleed through the internal pressure.

             
“BAINE YOU ARE TO BRING ME MY BOOK AND YOU ARE TO MOVE WITH HASTE, I HAVE SCOURED THE WORLD AND WADED THROUGH OCEANS OF TIME TO SEEK THIS MOMENT OF TRIUMPTH, DO NOT TRY MY PATIENCE BOY
!!!
”

Baine took the book out from
out of
the stolen Travelodge pillowcase that he had committed it
to
, he hugged it fiercely to his chest and relaxed his mind into its pages
,
Gabriel’s voice gradually began to fade and the more it dimme
d the more homicidally it raged, e
ventually the voice had ceased completely, Baine wiped the blood from his nose with the sleeve of hi
s shirt stain
ing the cuff and returned to the library
.