Tartarus: Kingdom Wars II (27 page)

Abdiel appeared in front of me so suddenly I nearly ran into him. Wouldn’t you know it? The moment I decide to be carnal, an angel appears. He appeared more glorious than normal.

“Wearing your Sunday suit?” I asked.

“Be not afraid, Grant Austin,” Abdiel said.

“Why? Are you going to bang my head against the wall again?”

Abdiel’s radiance increased. It was a fearful glory. Its weight fell heavily on me.

“I bring to you a message from the Father,” Abdiel said. “You are placing the mark of God’s favor in jeopardy. Should you choose to enter Sheol, you will enter without the protective mark of the Father, for you will enter it as a warrior.”

“A warrior? I’m no warrior. All I want to do is present a petition. Can’t I enter Sheol as a diplomat?”

Abdiel offered no reply. Several moments passed before I realized he was waiting for an answer.

“Oh—” I said. “If given the chance, I choose to enter.”

“So be it,” he said.

He lingered, his glorious glow softening until he was the angel I was accustomed to seeing. He spoke quickly and in earnest. “Think, Grant. Think on these things.”

He disappeared.

I looked down at my sword. The mark of favor was gone. I yelled at the ceiling, “I thought angels were supposed to deliver good news!”

A voice behind me said, “How about a good joke?”

I turned to see Belial. My carnal Thursday wasn’t off to a good start.

“Don’t you have a conference to attend?” I said.

“The conference starts tomorrow. Don’t you read the newspapers, Grant?”

“I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

I glanced at the ceiling, wondering if Belial had brought his boys with him. Without the mark I was vulnerable to demon possession. Not an attractive thought.

Belial saw where I was looking. “They’re in Orange County. I won’t lie to you, Grant. They’re doing what demons do. But if things go according to plan, they won’t have to do that anymore, will they?”

“Aren’t you afraid this is some sort of trap?” I said.

“Don’t you feel naked without the Father’s mark on your sword?” he countered.

It didn’t take him long to notice.

“Look, Grant, I was wrong the other day. After I left, I felt foolish about it. Please give my apologies to Jana and tell her I’ll be glad to reschedule the interview. But I’m more concerned about us. If this is going to work, we’re going to have to do it together. Frankly, you’re my last hope. Do you still want to go through with it?”

My first impulse was to tell him I needed time to think about it. But I didn’t, did I? I’d paid dearly to get to this point.

“I’m in,” I said. “When do we start?”

“Right now.”

“Now?”

“With all the attention in Geneva tempting and seducing the delegates in anticipation for the weekend, I was able to slip away unnoticed.”

“OK. What do we do first?”

“I take you to Sheol. We’ll look around. I’ll show you the portals to heaven. Once we get you there, we’ll have a better idea what we’re up against.”

My blood chilled. I’d planned to go to SDSU and a computer store today. Sheol wasn’t on the itinerary.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“I need your consent.”

“Do you want me to sign my name in blood?”

Belial laughed. “All I need is your word.”

I laughed. “I can’t buy a used car on my word.”

“We’re more trusting than used-car dealers.”

I hesitated. Was I really going to do this? I thought of all the Nephilim who shared my fate. They were once like me. I was the only one left. The only one able to speak for all of us.

In fatherly tones Belial said, “I’m not going to downplay the dangers. It’s a rotten deal, it really is. You asked for none of this. And if there weren’t so many lives on the line, I’d tell you to forget it. The outcome of heaven’s war is not going to hinge on Grant Austin. But you can bring good out of it. You have an opportunity to rescue innocents caught in the crossfire.”

“Take me to Sheol,” I said.

“That’s your choice?”

“That’s my choice.”

Belial sighed heavily. “Very well.”

He held out his hand, not to shake, but the offering hand of someone who is going to take you on a journey. I grasped it.

“Lesson number one, Grant Austin.”

His eyes blazed with black fire. He laughed.

“Never trust the devil.”

H
itting the membrane portal felt like running through a screen door at sixty miles per hour. The molecules of my body were ripped apart, their cohesiveness snapping like rubber bands stretched beyond their elasticity.

Belial ignored my screams. The louder I yelled, the harder he yanked. My screams turned to moans, then childlike whimpering as I begged for the pain to stop. The physical force of transit hammered my eyes and clawed at my cheeks and neck. Liquid fire poured down my throat. It was too much for me. Too much. My body’s only defense was to shut down. The last thing I remembered was tumbling onto a gritty, rocklike surface.

Voices, distant and unintelligible, roused me. My eyelids fluttered. Memories flashed, all of them painful. Fear and panic stirred within me. I willed my eyes to stay open. Shards of light stabbed them shut. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I forced myself to keep looking.

The light came from two sources a short distance away. They had human shape and stood against the deepest black I’d ever seen. Angels. Too bright to identify.

Rolling to my side I raised my head to get a better look. A mistake. The effort set off a series of blinding white explosions in my head. For a time all I could do was lie there, breathing heavily. Gradually, the pain subsided and I tried again.

My initial thought was that I was in a massive cavern. Its limits stretched beyond available light. However, there was enough light to illuminate a vaulted ceiling that appeared to be made of red rock, the same material upon which I’d landed.

A thick coat of dust—red like the rock and powdery—covered everything. The slightest movement stirred it. I could feel it on my skin. It covered my clothes. The air was saturated with it. I could taste it. Gritty. Bitter, like ashes.

Some of the dust had been scraped away where I’d landed, revealing the surface. It was rock unlike anything I’d seen before. Translucent. Beneath the surface, lightning flashed, yet without giving off any light. With each spark of lightning I felt energy go out of me. Weakening me.

Between the acrid atmosphere, which made breathing difficult, and the energy-draining rock, it was clear I wouldn’t last long here. I had to get out, and quickly.

“He survived the passage,” a voice said.

Belial? Possibly. It sounded like his voice but different. Harder.

“Fortunate for us, not for him.”

That voice I recognized. There was no mistaking it.

“Semyaza,” I croaked.

The face of my nemesis shone over me. “Welcome to Sheol, Grant.”

There’s nothing like the presence of a rival to get one’s blood stirring. I wrestled myself into a half-seated position, propping up on my elbows.

“Forget to pay the light bill, Myles?” I said. “Nice place, from what I can see of it. My compliments to your decorator. He’s captured the barrenness of your soul.”

“Spare me your adolescent sarcasm. And you will address me as Semyaza.”

I chuckled. “Can’t do that. You’ll always be little pimple-faced Myles Shepherd to me.”

With a grunt, he kicked my arm out from beneath me. My head hit hard.

His reaction was worth it. In high school Myles Shepherd had been the only kid on campus with a perfect complexion. Not until recently did I know why. Lucifer’s vain lieutenant wouldn’t stoop so low as to be seen with a common human zit.

Belial appeared behind him. I could see it was him now. All traces of the genial Joker Jesus were gone. They walked a short distance away and spoke to each other in whispers.

I struggled to my feet, my hands and clothes covered with the sticky, powdery dirt. Was this really Sheol, the realm of the dead? Despite the peril of my situation, the historian within me stirred. If this really was Sheol, King David had dwelt here after death. So had Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Noah. Abel had been its first resident, joined later by his parents, Adam and Eve. The dead population of the entire world until the cross!

To paraphrase a saying, “Oh, if these rocks could talk! The stories they’d tell!”

The place was vacant now. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for them to dwell here with no sun or moon to mark the passage of time. That is, if time even existed here. And I tried to imagine the day the Divine Warrior arrived. Fresh from the cross. A dead man among the dead. With one difference. He hadn’t come to be death’s victim, but its conqueror.

What a battle that must have been! Lucifer wouldn’t have given up his trophies without a fight. Man, what I wouldn’t give to be permitted to research that day and write an account of it. The shouts that must have echoed through this dreary place…the excitement as the Divine Warrior led them out of here to heaven!

Semyaza’s laugh cut into my reverie. The two rebel angels peered over their shoulders at me.

I didn’t have time to waste on imagining the past. The present demanded my full attention if I was to survive. Just standing here, my arms and legs felt as if they were filled with sand. I needed to implement a strategy.

Wait.

I didn’t have a strategy.

OK, it was time to formulate one.

Wait.

There was nothing to formulate.

My situation could be summed up in one sentence. I was toast. I’d been hoodwinked, bamboozled, swindled, tricked, and flummoxed. All that was left was to fold, spindle, and mutilate me.

It had been a setup from the beginning. They’d cut me off from my world. No one on earth knew I was here. How long would it take for someone to miss me? Weeks? Months? I’d managed to alienate everyone who cared for me. And even if they knew I was in Sheol, what could they do? I was on my own, left to my own resources. Somehow I had to find a way to escape. But how? Even if I could find the membrane portal, I didn’t know if I could summon the courage to step through it. I feared I wouldn’t survive another crossing.

Belial befriending me. All that sentimental talk of petitioning the Father on behalf of his sons. It had been a setup from the beginning. They had played me perfectly. And why not? They’d been doing this kind of thing for millennia.

Despair seeped into my heart. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been warned.
“The greatest evil comes with a smile.”
Those were the professor’s words. All the time I’d been scoffing at the world for believing the lies of the Joker Jesus, I’d been swallowing a different lie, one custom-made for me. I felt like a chump.

If I ran, where would I go? Darkness surrounded me. The air burned my throat. The rocks sapped my strength. Besides, how do you outrun beings who travel at the speed of thought? That left fighting. But was that really an option? It was two against one, and both of them had superhuman strength—not to mention an arsenal of weapons that defied imagination. I’d seen them knock a helicopter out of the sky with a blast of light. Had not friendly angels caught the chopper, everyone on it would have perished. Did I dare hope that friendly angels would rescue me?

The last time I faced Semyaza, Abdiel had been there with some of his buddies. They weren’t much help, but they didn’t like me then. Now Abdiel was on my side. At least I thought he was on my side. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

The only sure thing I had was my sword, and it had seen better days. I examined it. The blade was cloudy gray and the edges were dull and growing more blunt by the second as the hopelessness of the situation took root in my mind. It was no match for Semyaza’s and Belial’s swords, which were intimidatingly long, impressively thick, razor sharp, and black as the ace of spades.

“I’m a dead man,” I muttered.

Under different circumstances, being a dead man in Sheol would have struck me as funny.

I lifted my face heavenward—at least I thought it was heavenward. Who knew what direction heaven was in relation to Sheol? I was desperate for a glimmer of inspiration.

“If you’re praying for the cavalry,” Semyaza said, “it’s a wasted effort. Contrary to what you’ve been led to believe, good angels don’t frequent Sheol.”

A lie? Not likely. Semyaza enjoyed telling the truth when he could hurt you with it.

Standing beside him, Belial smirked. “Only once have the Father’s forces entered Sheol, and that was to assist the Son. You’re just not worth their effort.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” I taunted. “Reinforcements? Are you that afraid of me?”

Semyaza scoffed. “If bluster were a weapon, Grant Austin, you would be a formidable opponent. Forgive us if we are not intimidated by your witty expulsion of hot air.”

“So why the delay?”

“Even a minor spectacle such as this deserves an audience.”

Rebel angels began appearing out of nothingness. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Encircling us. Positioning themselves in layers until it appeared as though I was standing in the center of a grand coliseum.

If this was a coliseum, then two ferocious lions were in the arena with me. That made me the featured martyr.

The strange thing about the gathering was that I had never seen so much beauty assembled in one place. Every face was striking. If I lingered on any one of them, my jaw dropped in awe. The fact that they all wore black swords kept things in perspective. What struck me most was that the sheer number of attractive beings with weapons of evil went a long way in explaining the amount of wickedness in the world.

Before the arena was completely formed, the increased light from additional angels afforded me a better look at Sheol.

The red-rock sky stretched for as far as the eye could see, hanging there without pillars or support of any kind as effortlessly as earth’s blue sky. The terrain consisted solely of rock. There were no trees. No vegetation of any kind. No streams or lakes. Neither were there any buildings. About a half-mile distant there was an outcropping of craggy hills and cliffs pocked with dark recesses. Caves? Passageways? Or just shadows? I couldn’t tell from this distance.

With rebel angels in the vicinity, demons couldn’t be far behind, I figured. And I was right. The demons began arriving, taking up position overhead, packing themselves tightly together. They were wriggling, hideous, green ridge-backed creatures with jagged teeth. They snapped at each other unceasingly, stopping only long enough to leer at me in anticipation of what was to come.

I wondered if they were aware that I’d come to Sheol to present a petition to the Father on their behalf? If they were, none of them appeared to be eternally grateful.

The growing number of rebel angels grew restless with the clamor of a preshow audience.

“What, no concessions?” I asked Semyaza. “No peanuts? Popcorn? Cotton candy? No Lucifer bobble-head dolls?”

If he heard me, he ignored me. He had his game face on, his attention on the assembled force of hell.

Then the ground beneath my feet began to tremble, building in intensity. My knees buckled and I went down.

All around me, the ground fell away. No, it wasn’t falling. I was rising. I found myself atop a pillar roughly four feet in diameter thrusting upward ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty feet into the air.

Semyaza and Belial rose with me, one on each side. Only they didn’t need pedestals. They stood on air.

There were no preliminaries.

“Behold!” Semyaza said, his voice filling the chamber effortlessly. “The last Nephilim!”

You would expect the crowd to roar at this point, as they did in the Roman Coliseum when the Christians were led out in chains. But these former residents of heaven were eerily silent. What they lacked in noise, they made up for with expressions of loathing. The gaze of thousands of rebel angels bore into me as though they were examining something disgusting they’d scraped off the bottom of their sandals.

Their unblinking scrutiny chilled me when I realized that compared to the slimy, wriggling demons overhead, I was considered the repulsive one.

“You’ve all heard,” Semyaza continued, “how this despicable worm mocked Lucifer at an angelic tribunal, refusing to acknowledge his allegiance despite our impressive enlistment effort. How he chose instead to side with the Father, who would damn him for no other reason than that he is part angel.”

At this, the spectators became agitated.

“In my defense,” I said, my voice puny compared to Semyaza’s, “it should be pointed out that—”

An invisible hand clutched my throat, severing the sentence. Belial’s eyes flamed in warning. With a final squeeze for emphasis, he released me. I rubbed my throat and coughed.

“An injustice occurred at that tribunal,” Semyaza said. “In an act most capricious, the Father granted this Nephilim protected status, giving him license to flaunt his traitorous ways in our faces without fear of consequence or reprisal.”

The crowd became raucous. Their faces twisted with outrage. I had to give it to Semyaza; he knew how to work the crowd.

Semyaza spoke with the cadence of a revival preacher. “That which we have believed from the beginning, that which we have clung to with unswerving hope, that which we have fought for against superior odds, has today, at last, born fruit! Justice has won the day against a Father God who would play favorites!”

He motioned to me dramatically. “Behold the Nephilim!” he exclaimed in triumph. “Stripped of the Father’s protective mark!”