THE FALL (Rapha Chronicles #1) (The Rapha Chronicles) (27 page)

“Abel!” Rapha called.

For a moment the boy increased his pace but then he stopped, his shoulders sagging with resignation, and turned toward Rapha’s approach.

“Are you looking for Cain?” Rapha asked.

“No,” the boy answered. Then he shuddered. “I hear his thoughts. I see what he sees. I know where he is.”

“Then we will go to him.”

“He would not hear us. His mind is filled with visions of power and… beautiful women.”

“Where were you going?”

“Please, I don’t know what to do,” Abel’s voice broke. “My heart is torn, I can hardly breathe. I feel the hold on him.”

Indeed, now that Rapha was close enough, he saw that Abel appeared pale and weak. His body was quivering and a thin layer of perspiration beaded on his forehead.

“It is all right, Abel,” Rapha soothed, “Adonai’s hand is heavy on you to intercede for Cain. Go ahead and do what you must. But I will go with you.”

Rapha followed Abel across the stream and into the dense trees onto a steep path. Higher and higher they climbed, chasing the waning sun’s light.

Abel led the way into a clearing. At the foot of a rocky precipice he removed the coverings for his feet and Rapha did the same. The need of this became clear as they began to climb, grappling carefully for finger and toeholds.

Rapha followed, gripping at barely sufficient chinks. But, when they finally heaved themselves atop a sharp outcropping and paused to catch their breath, the view of their valley was breathtaking, an artist’s palette of dusky rose, gold, and amethyst that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Abel stood and squeezed through an opening comprised of a tall, standing rock and the sheer mountainside that towered on to impassable heights above. After a few moments’ passage through the narrow cleft where Rapha’s broad shoulders threatened to become wedged, they emerged into the last golden rays of the setting sun.

“He’s been coming here often in the past few years, well, since our trip through the mountains when he… was injured.”

Abel stepped forward into the sun’s glow toward a monstrous stone chair. Its back stretched high into the rock and its seat appeared wide enough for their entire family to sit side by side. “He told me he felt the arms of his true father wrap around him when he sat there. He saw pictures of his future and knew our father was calling him.”

“And you,” Rapha asked, “did you ever sit there?”

“I did once, when Cain first brought me here, but I became sick and he laughed.” Abel gripped at his stomach. “I feel it again now.”

“Then let us leave this place,” Rapha urged.

“No. Adonai has directed me here. Here I sense Cain’s thoughts even stronger. Here I can… feel what torments him.”

Abel fell to his knees at the foot of the stone seat.

Something was stirring, a power so intense Rapha desired to escape… but it was not evil. For him, the scene that followed on that mountainside would be forever etched in his memory with holiness too pure for the temporal world.

Sobs wracked Abel’s body as he cried, “Adonai, have mercy.” The moments passed, Abel’s prayers for Cain becoming more passionate until he was reduced to garbled mutters as he rocked on his knees, gripping his shoulders. “His pain,” he gasped. “Adonai, ease his pain.”

The glory of heaven sparkled and hummed in the air and Rapha could see dim shapes in the mist as ministering angels gathered around the boy. As Abel shook with the violence of his grief, his countenance became brighter, the pain acting as a furnace to cleanse bitterness and sorrow.

Rapha sank to his knees and gripped the rocks under his hands, sensing the need to brace for a powerful storm.

Then he was given a great gift. Suddenly Rapha was not simply an observer, but was flooded by Abel’s thoughts and emotions, swept up in the flow from the throne of The Most High. He was no longer aware of the rocks beneath his knees or the sweet scent of mountain air as he was joined to Abel’s heart’s cry. At the same time, a living line of power also connected him to the tormented soul of Cain who grappled in desolate places with an ancient malevolence that drained all purity.

Thus Rapha was assaulted by empathy that threatened to rend his mind. Yet, since the flow originated from Adonai, Creator of all the living, even as strength was sapped and awareness of his own being faded, he felt more alive—a kinship to the hours he had spent as a celestial when he would go to restore his strength before heaven’s throne.

“AHHHHHHH!”

A shriek of venomous anger yanked Rapha to consciousness. Lucifer was there, fuming and striving to gain access to Abel but the presence of heaven was an impenetrable wall. In his fury he turned on Rapha, eyes boring into Rapha’s soul, hands like unsheathed knives groping toward the former angel. Rapha braced himself, knowing he had no power to resist but, to his surprise, Lucifer could not touch him. The evil one’s rage was deflected like a stone skimming the surface of a frozen mountain lake.

With a jolt of joy Rapha shut his eyes and rejoined Abel’s lament, crying and laughing at the same time, one for the depths of their grief, the other in response to Lucifer’s ineffective attack. So he aligned himself with Abel and, with a sense of power he had never felt toward Lucifer even when he bore heaven’s strength in his body, he asked Adonai to remove the evil one from his sight. Like a mist vanishing before a rising sun, Lucifer faded.

With all noise aside, Rapha could attend to Abel. Eventually, the fervency of the boy’s spiritual struggle eased, replaced by sweet comfort and peace.

“Please, Adonai, turn Cain’s heart back to Your ways. Help him see where this path will lead. Open his eyes to the evil that tempts him. May he long for the open arms of his family.”

On and on the boy’s words flowed from a heart made fertile by grief.

But Abel’s next words caught Rapha off-guard. “Whatever it takes, Father,” he prayed, his voice steady, his features bathed in peace. “I sense Your presence and Your favor. They are more precious to me than life. However,” and here the boy’s voice broke as he gasped in real pain, “please take my favor through sacrifice so Cain will not die in his sin. Yes.” The agonized whispers poured from lips pressed to the ground. “My father’s favor rests on me and I am heir to all. Your favor flows and Your blessing is assured for my future generations. But,” the young shoulders convulsed again, “Cain suffers. Evil consumes him.” His voice became a shout of travail.
“How can I dwell in comfort while he is in torment?”

For a few moments there was no sound in Rapha’s ears but the boy’s sobs.

Then Abel spoke these immortal words, “Everything that is mine by right—I reject. I count all gain as nothing if my brother would perish. I bequeath it all to Cain—even my life. Though I perish, even if I be cast from You forever,” again the voice broke, “I will trust You, Adonai.”

All was silent but Rapha could sense their Heavenly Father sigh with pleasure. The boy’s heart had conformed to the will of Adonai. His words carried eternal impact.

Wait. What had just happened? Was Adonai simply pleased with the prayer, or was He accepting its terms?

But Rapha’s ponderings were cut short by a flow of power so strong he felt his bones would melt. He gasped as he felt himself expand. His name, his past, his present, even the unending war with evil, meant nothing when compared with this overflow. Emotion was too small a word. All things were contained—love, joy, peace, hope, fulfillment, grief. Thirst and hunger did not exist. There was only that moment of breathing in as the Most High exhaled.

Abel and Rapha remained, forgetful of everything but Adonai’s embrace, until the sun looked down on a new day.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Brotherly Blood

They told Adam, Eve, and Kal about their time on the mountain, and the family took hope.

For forty days afterward, the family heard nothing. They mourned as they went about their tasks, each scanning the horizon for Cain’s return, each wondering what they could have done to keep his heart rooted in Adonai’s ways. Often, Abel would disappear into the hills, and Rapha knew he went to pray.

On the morning of the fortieth day, Abel joined them to break his fast, a wide smile on his face and cheerful greetings for all.

“Who needs the sun to rise with Abel around?” Kal quipped.

“Adonai… is,” Abel replied. “How can I remain in sorrow?”

“So you visited the mountain again?” Adam said, “Do you sense a change in Cain?”

“I believe so. His thoughts are turning toward home. And, father,” Abel leaned forward, childlike joy filling his eyes, “one message kept coming to me.
‘All will be well.’
Over and over Adonai’s words filled my heart. I think we may see Cain very soon.”

With an affectionate squeeze for his mother, Abel whistled on his way out the door to tend the livestock. For Rapha, it was as if the sun had been allowed to rise when Adam and Eve’s long-absent smiles lit their faces.

But later in the day, a growing unease made Rapha seek the solitude of the hill overlooking their land. He sat under the shade of olive trees trying to discern the truth, but it was as if the heavens were cloaked in fog. Even the sight of flourishing fruit trees and the orderly grapevines, laid out with Cain’s attention to beauty and function, did not calm him. But when Abel strode into the fields, still whistling as he picked a cluster of grapes, Rapha sighed, encouraged by the sight.

Grape harvest was upon them, a task usually overseen by Cain, but the elder brother had not been home since the day of sacrifice. Ever since, Abel had maintained that Cain would return to do his duty—but the fruit could not wait. They would bring in the rewards of his labor without Cain even though every inch of that fruitful ground was a testament to his hard work and expertise.

“Brother!” Cain’s shout echoed across the expanse of fields and up the hill.

“Cain!” Abel’s voice was filled with rapture and he broke into a run toward his brother whose head and shoulders also rose above the young fruit trees.

“Get out of my fields!”
Cain shouted.

Abel halted, hit by the wall of Cain’s fury.

“So it is true,” Cain said, “you continue to steal what is mine.”

Even from that great distance Rapha could discern Cain’s deranged, disjointed movements and wild appearance.

“No,” Abel answered, “you were not here….”

“Adonai has decreed all is yours.
Adam
has decreed all is yours. Can you deny it?”

“Adonai loves you. We all do. You will be restored….”

“Lies!”

Rapha could not hear Abel’s reply as the boy drew close to Cain with his hands outstretched, but he spied the sharp harvest tool in Cain’s hand and he could easily read Cain’s posture—a predatory beast ready to pounce.

Cain leapt toward his brother and both boys crashed down, out of Rapha’s sight. He ran, shouting their names as he hurdled the rows of vines and dodged tree branches that grasped at his clothing. He paused to listen, his own heart pounding in his ears. Silence, all the more deafening after his determined crash through vines and branches.

Then he smelled it. Blood. And more. A breeze brushed his cheek laced with the scent of fluids… gases… organ tissue….

A strangled moan escaped Rapha’s lips.

There was a rustling noise ahead as someone moved away. Rapha ran, the horrible smell leading him forward even as choking dread caused him to stumble.

“Abel!” he shouted. No answer. “Cain!” No reply.

Suddenly he broke through to a small clearing.

Immediately Rapha was on his knees beside the still form of Abel who was face down, one arm behind him. Too horrified to make a sound, Rapha gingerly rolled the huge boy onto his back. His eyes were wide and blood trickled from his nose and mouth. There was the harvest tool, imbedded to the tip of the handle within Abel’s chest. But the wound did not start there. Abel’s tunic was a red gash from abdomen to throat.

Rapha gasped and looked into Abel’s eyes. The boy’s lips moved soundlessly. He had no air. His eyes were wide with confusion and tears trickled toward the ground. With shocking strength he gripped Rapha’s arm, his mouth moving again.

“Forgive… him,” Abel mouthed, attempting another breath, the air hissing uselessly from pierced lungs, blood pulsing over the handle of the tool imbedded in Abel’s chest.

All else faded as Rapha’s only focus became easing Abel’s passage. Blessedly, the boy thrashed for only a few seconds before a slow smile spread over his features.

“That’s right,” Rapha assured in a soothing voice, “go with them. All you ever hoped for awaits.”

Abel’s hand relaxed and he was gone, leaving behind the empty shell of his handsome face and muscular body. How Rapha wished in that moment he could follow Abel out of this world to that place of Adonai’s perfection. How he wanted to escape the pain to come.

He was vaguely aware of howling. Eden. She knew. Soon the dog crashed through the stalks and bounded to Abel’s body where she first sniffed and licked his cheek, nosed his neck and ear as if to rouse him, and when this effort failed, lay beside the boy’s body and resumed her howls.

In a fog of unreality, Rapha eased the harvest tool out of Abel and gently pressed bowels and organs back into his chest cavity. As he was wiping the blood and dirt from Abel’s face with the sleeve of his garment, Adam and Kal broke into the clearing.

“Abel?” Adam ran and fell to his knees at the boy’s side, then looked to Rapha and whispered, “Cain?”

Rapha nodded.

“Is he… will he—” he lifted the torn edge of Abel’s tunic that covered the wound. “Aah! No! No!”

Adam placed his hands on Abel’s face. “Fix him, Rapha,” he sobbed. “Please! Just like you did for Eve. Now! Kal, go get what he needs.”

“Adam,” Kal said in a low voice, “a wound like that… it’s too late.”

“What?” Adam’s head whipped toward Kal. “You know nothing!” he shouted. “If Adonai lives it is never too late!”

Adam sat back and wiped his face, “Get stones. We will build an altar and….”

Rapha laid a hand on his shoulder, “Abel is gone.”

“Get away from me!” Adam shook off Rapha’s hand. “Faithless! Godless! Go!”

He turned from them and gathered Abel into his arms, weeping and crying out to Adonai.

“Stay with him,” Rapha instructed Kal. “I will go to Eve.”

She was already at the edge of the sheepfold and walking toward him when he saw her. Her face was pale and her eyes were wide with shock.

Something in Eve’s bearing, in the way she stumbled forward, eyes staring as if she beheld a dream, made Rapha remain silent.

“Abel came to me,” her tone was calm, though her movements were jerky, as if her body moved without her consent. “I was patting out the cakes when suddenly he was beside me, smiling. His face was so bright. He said,
‘All will be well, Mother. I love you.’
Then he was gone.”

She gripped Rapha’s arm, “What does it mean? What has happened? Why do I hear Adam shouting?”

When he told her, Eve’s knees gave way. Rapha caught her and tried to guide her back to the dwelling. “No,” Eve said, her voice quiet and steady. “Take me to him.”

Never had putting one foot in front of the other been so painful. Every step brought them closer to the scene of Abel’s slaying, closer to the horror he wanted to spare her, closer to Adam’s heartrending pleas to the heavens.

Then he was leading her into the clearing where Kal sat weeping while Adam yet clutched Abel to his breast, begging Adonai to come and mend.

Then Eve was sinking to the ground beside Adam and bending over Abel’s body. “Oh my son, my son,” she cried, stroking the boy’s cheek and hair as if to wake him as her tears washed the dirt from his face.

Kal was indispensable on that painful day. He was well-acquainted with death, and so took care of odious details Adam and Eve could not fathom in their grief. It was he who located a suitable cave for Abel’s grave and prepared the boy’s body for burial. Kal’s prayers and tears never ceased as he worked.

Rapha was consumed with those yet living. Where was Cain? His heart broke for the torment the young boy was enduring, a torment that allowed no peace for Rapha since the prayerful link had never been severed. So, as Kal ministered to Adam and Eve, Rapha gave himself over to the devastating empathy, conversing with Adonai as he connected with Cain’s soul, stripped of sanity by horror and grief.

The next day Rapha set off into the hills, drawn by a torment carried on the wind, stronger even than the boy’s bloody trail. Eden would not be left behind, so Rapha utilized her keen senses to aid his own. Soon the trail was unmistakable. When they were still not far beyond their fields, the blood became, not the hours-old flow from Abel, but fresh. Soon after, they were discovering fabric shredded from Cain’s clothing, and clumps of Cain’s hair rent from his head.

They heard him before they saw him. In a deep gully, carved like a gaping wound in the earth, his cries, mumbles, and shrieks echoed down the narrow canyon, bouncing against the dry riverbed.

“He fell. That’s right, he tripped and fell against the tool in my hand and when I tried to pull it out….” Fresh sobs exploded, “Oh, Abel!”

When Rapha rounded the last bend and caught sight of Cain, he halted in horror. Even Eden froze with a whimper and lay as flat as she could, repelled by the pungent evil pervading that gorge.

“Thank you for coming,
dear
friend,” a soft, young voice spoke in Rapha’s ear while Eden yelped and backed away, snarling. Startled, Rapha turned to view a young woman clad in clinging garments that draped provocatively on her blossoming body. A slow, knowing smile spread across her features as she relished his surprise. “I was so proud of the guise that hooked him on their way through the mountains, I thought you should see it. Quite fetching, I think.” The girl turned slowly to fully display her curves. “They saw me bathe in a mountain stream. Abel hid his eyes and ran—but Cain—” her eyes gleamed, “Cain was
fascinated
.”

Rapha shook with rage. “Your perversion knows no bounds—to utilize beauty to lead a boy to murder.”

“The desire was there, I simply met it.”

In his torment, Cain used sharp rocks to score his forearm again and again, his blood dripping onto the ground as his cries filled the canyon.

“Enough!” Rapha moved to intervene but unseen cords ensnared his feet and he fell accompanied by the girl’s tinkling laughter. Soon though, her proud expression hardened and when she spoke again, the voice was Lucifer’s.
“This one is mine.”

Rapha turned from the unholy specter. “Cain!” he called the boy who muttered, eyes staring into the gloom, darting with paranoia as he viewed terrifying scenarios racing through his mind.

“He can’t hear you,” Lucifer gloated. “Even if he did, my grip on his mind would twist your words before they reach his ears.”

“Cain!” Rapha strode toward the boy who leapt to his feet, teeth bared, muscles spring-loaded to defend himself. Abruptly, Rapha stopped and opened his hands. “I am here to help you.”

But Cain was lost in hallucination. He ducked and swatted at unseen foes, spinning to see all sides at once. With a quick request of the Most High, Rapha opened his spirit to view the scene through Cain’s eyes. Suddenly the narrow gorge was filled with gruesome warriors, hatred pouring from their flaming eyes as they advanced.

“Abba Adonai! Abba Adonai! Bring peace!” Rapha shouted, then slipped entirely into the language of the heavens to implore Adonai’s presence on Cain’s behalf, weeping to view the deranged expression on the beloved face. Fury erupted among the spiritual army but they were forced backwards, their murderous eyes fixed on this former angel who hobbled their powers with his words.

“See, Cain, how Adonai yet loves and protects you,” Rapha implored. But Lucifer, still wrapped in his female guise, whispered in the boy’s ear. As her words infiltrated his mind, Cain’s expression hardened.

“I am to be grateful you called off your dogs?” the boy snarled. “Finally I see you for what you are, a deceiver who turned my family against me!”

Rapha swallowed hard, steeling himself against the accusation. Instead, he spoke again to Adonai, asking that the boy’s mind be freed from Lucifer’s grip. At his words, the girl writhed in pain and Cain mirrored her movements until she shrieked in his ear, “Kill him!”

Then Cain was running at Rapha, fists flying, mouth hurling obscenities. His hands clutched Rapha’s throat, the nails biting into the flesh and shutting off Rapha’s air with frightening power. Rapha gripped Cain’s hands but they were locked tight.

In that moment, Rapha was overwhelmed by a surprisingly calm thought as he felt Cain’s hands, empowered with Lucifer’s strength, tighten as his vision grew dim. Perhaps he would die. Perhaps Cain would release his spirit back to Adonai. The thought filled him with joy and Rapha relaxed into the pain. But, through the pounding in his ears, Rapha heard a vicious growl as a furry blur flew through the air and hit Cain in the chest. Surprised, the boy released his hold on Rapha and grabbed the still-snarling Eden, throwing the dog against the canyon wall where she hit with a dull thud and crumpled to the ground, silent and still.