A Hundred Words for Hate

  “I don’t fucking understand,” Francis said as the angel tossed the ladle back into the bucket.

  “And you shouldn’t,” Malachi said. “But it will all become clear as we progress.”

  The scalpel was in his hand again, and Francis began to thrash in anticipation of what he knew was to follow.

  “Let us continue,” Malachi said with cold efficiency.

  And Francis steeled himself against the incredible agony, eager to know what this was all about.

  Desperate to remember.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The swamp is trying to kill us, Remy thought as he was dragged deeper and deeper beneath the thick, muddy water.

  But Remy was having none of that, thank you.

  He called upon the Seraphim, but the essence of Heaven that resided inside him did not respond.

  Swamp grass reached up from the silt-covered floor, wrapping around his ankles and drawing him down to the bottom of the swamp. Remy struggled in its grip as supernaturally invigorated currents swirled about his face, trying to force him to breathe.

  Just take a deep breath, he imagined the swamp water saying in a thick Louisiana accent. Suck it in deep, boy, and all your troubles will be over.

  He commanded the Seraphim to manifest, but somehow it denied him. He could feel it deep in the darkest part of his being, watching as his human nature struggled with its newest plight.

  So weak and fragile, he heard it growl. But still you cling to it.

  This is not the time, Remy said, oxygen deprivation starting to take its toll.

  I have nothing but time, the Seraphim replied. Time to lie here buried deep within the darkness of your being, waiting to be called upon when needed . . . imprisoned and hated when not.

  The grass was drawing him down, catfish and snapping turtles stirred by his presence, hearing the siren call of the swamp to attack.

  Perhaps it would be better to die, the Seraphim continued. To allow the fragile guise of humanity that you wear to choke upon the black water, to suffer no more.

  His lungs were about to burst, explosions of color blossoming in the darkness. There was nothing Remy could do other than call the Seraphim’s bluff.

  He opened his mouth, foul water pouring in to fill the cavity, and for a moment, he knew what it might be like to drown.

  For a moment.

  The Seraphim flew up from the darkness, filling his every fiber with the power of its being, chasing away the opportunity for death. Remy’s body burned with the fires of Heaven, the heat from his armored flesh causing the water that surrounded him to boil with such intensity that nothing could live near him.

  So glad you decided not to die, Remy chided, wrestling with his angelic nature so that it could not assume total control. Beneath the churning waters, he spread his powerful wings and sprang from the bottom of the swamp in a roiling cloud of silt, dead fish, and turtles.

  The world had turned to muffled chaos.

  Jon thrashed, trying desperately to keep his head above water as the swamp tried to pull him under. He could feel things around him, beneath the stinking water, things that bit at his clothes, trying to get to the flesh beneath, things that wrapped about his ankles, trying to yank him below.

  “Please!” he screamed, moving his head away as a wave rushed at him, trying to enter his mouth to silence his voice and steal his life. “We don’t mean you any harm.”

  He could see Izzy still standing on the platform in front of her house, hands glowing with supernatural power that flowed from her fingertips down into the water.

  “My daddy said you’d be coming someday,” she cried over the groans of the swamp bending to her will. “You’d be coming here to try to find out about my mama, and nothing good would come of it.”

  Something in the water tugged hard upon his ankle, and Jon screamed once before being pulled beneath the surface. His hearing aid buzzed and whined as it was submerged. Frantically Jon reached for his foot, feeling the slimy blades of grass wrapped around his shoe. Before his lungs could explode, he tore the shoe from his foot and struggled back to the surface.

  Jon broke the surface, gasping for air, and found himself gazing up into the face of the woman using the swamp as her weapon.

  “Just . . . just let me talk to you.” He gasped, struggling to keep his head above the thrashing water.

  “You’re not dead yet?” Izzy asked, her voice filled with annoyance. Then she raised her hand, sending a writhing blast of magickal power out into a wooded section of the animated swamp. “I can fix that.”

  The waves grew, breaking over Jon’s head, their weight trying to push him down again. He fought the watery onslaught, arms flailing, desperate to grab onto something, anything that could keep him afloat.

  Through stinging, bleary eyes he saw something floating in the water not too far from his reach, but as he reached out to take hold of what he thought was a thick branch, he caught sight of two yellow eyes.

  Alligators, his brain screeched in full panic. I’m about to be eaten by alligators.

  Jon spun in the water, and began to swim as hard as he could away from the approaching predators, but Izzy wasn’t going for it.

  “Where are you going?” she called out from the deck. “Don’t you want to meet some of my babies?” She started to laugh, directing even more of her magick into the water surrounding her stilt house.

  Jon imagined he could hear the sound of the gator swimming closer, its hissing breath as it anticipated its next meal, its jaws creaking like an old hinge as it opened its mouth wide for the first bite.

  A wave of black water dappled with dead fish and God knew what else rushed at him, throwing him backward into the path of the advancing alligator.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Jon heard Izzy say over the whine of his water-damaged hearing piece.

  At least I’ll be with Nathan soon, he thought as he slowly turned, looking into the cold stare of reptilian death.

  But then the alligator came to an abrupt stop as the water around them became suddenly hot.

  It began to froth, and glow an eerie yellow as something rapidly rose to the surface.

  The angel erupted from the swamp in an explosion of blazing light and clouds of steam, his mighty wings flapping powerfully, holding his majestic form above the frothing waters.

  Remy scanned his surroundings with the eyes of a warrior, searching out the nearest threat.

  He saw Jon bobbing in the water below, an alligator too close. Remy angled his body down toward the water, and reached down to snatch Jon from the water.

  A bolt of magickal force struck the metal of his chest plate and he cried out, almost dropping Jon back into the swamp. He quickly recovered, shrugging off the pain and flying toward the stilt house, where he released Jon and turned to face Izzy.

  “Get away from my house,” she cried, more and more magickal energy leaking from her body. The sky had begun to rumble; the trees swayed with winds that had begun to pick up. “I’ll bring something worse than Katrina down on your heads,” she spat.

  Remy looked at her intensely, furling his powerful wings.

  “I don’t want to fight you,” he said.

  “I tried to tell her,” Jon said between gasps, but Remy held up a hand, silencing him.

  “Look at me,” Remy ordered Izzy. “Really look at me. . . . I know you can feel my intentions. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  The magick continued to swirl around her. “I swore I would stop you,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Stop us from what?” Remy asked. “All we want to do is talk to you.”

  Izzy held out her hands palms up, showing him the magickal power that swirled there.

  “If you’re lying, I’ll make you eat this,” she said with a sneer.

  “Deal.” Remy pulled back on his angelic essence with little difficulty, and returned to his very wet but human form.

  Jon was looking down at his bare foot.

  “I lost my shoe,” he
said.

  “Maybe one of the gators has it,” Remy said. “Want to go ask?”

  This got a laugh from the woman, who was staring at Remy with a tilt of her head.

  “There’s something about you,” she told him.

  “I’ve heard that,” Remy joked.

  “No,” she said seriously. “There’s something familiar about you . . . something that I trust.”

  “And that’s a good thing,” Remy said.

  “Yeah,” she agreed with a nod, pulling open the screen door and gesturing for them to follow her inside.

  “If it wasn’t, the two of you would be dead right now.”

  Steven Mulvehill tried to reach Remy again, and again he got nothing.

  “Son of a bitch,” he hissed beneath his breath, sliding the phone back inside his jacket pocket.

  “He did this,” Fernita said, waving a rubber-gloved finger at the writing upon the wall. “He did this to protect me.”

  This whole situation was going from bad to worse. He thought it was crazy enough that angels were trying to kill her; now she was telling him that somebody wrote on her walls to keep her safe. God bless Remy and his weird shit.

  “Who did, Fernita?” Mulvehill asked with a sigh.

  “Pearly,” she screamed. “My husband . . . Pearly Gates.”

  Her expression changed from one of anger to one of complete surprise, as she slowly raised a shaking hand to her gaping mouth.

  “What is it?” Mulvehill asked. “Are you all right?”

  “My husband,” she repeated. “He was my husband. . . . I forgot that too.”

  She began to rock from side to side and Mulvehill moved to put a comforting arm around her shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” he said, his compassionate side making a surprise appearance. “I think you’re probably just a little confused right now,” he told her. “Why would your husband want to make you forget him?”

  Mulvehill would have loved to forget his marriage and the subsequent divorce, but that was another story entirely.

  “He didn’t do it to be mean,” she said, sniffling. “He did it to protect me. He did it to hide me away from it.”

  “From the angel that was trying to kill you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “If I couldn’t remember who I was, then it couldn’t find me.” She tentatively looked back to the wall she’d been cleaning. “I’m afraid,” she said.

  “You don’t need to be afraid,” Mulvehill told her. “I’m here with you.”

  “I’m afraid of what else I might’ve forgotten.”

  At first Steven thought it was a plane he heard flying overhead, low and rumbling.

  And getting louder.

  Closer.

  And then the air itself seemed suddenly charged. He felt as though bugs were crawling on the back of his neck, and he quickly reached up to make sure that wasn’t true. There were no bugs on his neck, but the hair was standing on end.

  Every instinct he’d developed in his twenty years as a homicide cop was screaming.

  Screaming for him to get the hell out of there.

  The sound from outside was louder, and there was no mistaking that steady, rhythmic beating of the air.

  Wings.

  “Fernita, we need to get out of here,” he urged, gazing up at the patterns on the water-stained ceiling.

  “I can’t go,” Fernita said, spinning around to return to her work. “I need to see what else I’ve forgotten. . . . I need to remember.”

  Mulvehill’s senses were shrieking.

  “No, we’re leaving.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her along as he headed toward the door.

  She struggled for a moment, but then noticed the sound also.

  “Oh, no,” she said, her voice a fear-filled whisper. “Is it him?”

  “Let’s hope it’s not,” Mulvehill said, hauling her through the rubbish-strewn living room and down the the hallway. At the end, he quickly turned the knob, opening the front door.

  “Miles,” she said.

  “Who?” Mulvehill asked, and then he saw the large cat crouched in the doorway to the kitchen. Its eyes were huge as it looked all around. Then it suddenly bolted, disappearing with a snap of its bushy black tail.

  “He’ll be fine,” Mulvehill told the old woman, pulling her out the door.

  Roiling black clouds filled the sky above them as they hurried down the sidewalk to Mulvehill’s car.

  “It’s cold out here,” Fernita complained. “I should probably have a coat.”

  “I’ve got heat in the car,” Mulvehill told her.

  She started to argue, but a sound behind them interrupted her, and they both turned to look back at the house.

  Something large fell from the sky, punching an enormous hole through the roof and into the attic.

  They could hear the racket of destruction, and Mulvehill knew they didn’t have much time before whatever had just made its grand entrance realized they were no longer in the house. He pulled open the door on the passenger side of his car and practically threw Fernita into the seat, slamming the door shut.

  He raced around to the driver’s side, chancing a final look at the house before getting into the car. A piece of furniture—a love seat, or it could have been a couch—flew through the front window to land broken and burning upon the lawn.

  Steven Mulvehill got inside his car, turned over the engine, and put it in drive.

  Cursing the name of Remy Chandler as he screeched away from the curb.

  Malachi had never cared for humanity.

  There was just something about them that he despised; maybe it was their basic design. He saw flaws in just about every aspect—soft flesh, easily broken bones, internal workings that would eventually wear down and cease to function.

  And the soul.

  A spark of the Almighty present in each and every one of them.

  Malachi had balked at the concept, but was overruled by a much higher authority.

  God wished it, and so it was. He believed they would be His greatest creation, that this tiniest piece of His essence would enable them to do great things in His name.

  Malachi remembered how Lucifer had laughed, telling the Lord God that these creatures . . . these newest creations of His . . . would only bring Him sorrow.

  And the Almighty had said if that was what they wished to do, so be it. He would give them the ability to make decisions on their own; they would be the masters of their own existence.

  Free will, a magnificent gift that Lucifer was certain would be squandered by these hairless monkeys that had so captured the Allfather’s eyes.

  Malachi had been there when the first had been placed in the Garden created for them. The elder had felt his disdain grow as he watched the creature move through the lush jungle, asserting its mastery over the lesser life that already lived there.

  And then there were two, male and female, with the ability to create more of their own kind, to propagate a species in their garden habitat.

  Oh, how the Lord God had loved them, but Lucifer’s warnings had left their mark. The idea that these creatures would bring Him great sadness must have worried the Creator. And so to prove a point, He fashioned a test.

  In the Garden the Almighty had grown a Tree; and in this Tree He had infused His knowledge, and He forbade His creations from feeding from this Tree, telling them that no other fruit would be forbidden them—except for the bounty of this Tree.

  This Tree of Knowledge.

  Malachi was amused; having observed the humans and their innate curiosity, he knew it was only a matter of time before they disobeyed their Creator. But they did not partake of the Tree’s fruit, choosing instead to avoid the tree that God had forbidden them to feast upon.

  The elder angel wasn’t sure when the obsession had taken root, but he soon found himself thinking of the Tree, and the fruit that hung swollen and ripe from its branches. He could feel the power radiating from the Tree, and he could have sworn that it called out to him,
tempting him with its ripened promise of forbidden knowledge.

  Malachi knew that it was not only the humans who were forbidden to partake, but his kind as well.

  But try as he might, he could not forget the Tree’s promise, and became consumed with the idea of partaking of the fruit.

  Lucifer fit the plan that Malachi eventually formulated. Of course, he told the Son of the Morning about the Almighty’s test for His newest creations. Lucifer’s jealousy of God’s new humans made him desperate to have his prediction come true, and so, armed with Malachi’s tale of the Tree of Knowledge, the Morningstar walked the Garden in search of the humans. Clothed in his finest armor of Heaven-forged scale mail, the Morningstar found the pair—this Adam and Eve—and enticed them with a promise of godhood.

  He drew them to the Tree, telling them that they could sit at the right hand of God—all they needed to do was ignore His command.

  The humans were afraid of their God, and what might happen if they were to disobey Him, but the silver-tongued Lucifer reassured them that He would be unable to do anything, for they would be like Him.

  They would be His equals.

  Malachi remembered the joy he felt as he watched the female approach the Tree, reaching up with trembling hands to grab hold of one of the fruits, swollen with knowledge of God.

  Will she do it? he wondered. Had Lucifer managed to convince them to disobey their most Holy Father?

  He had.

  The fruit came away in her hands, and she stared at it with great longing before bringing it to her mouth. Adam was soon beside her, fear in his gaze, but her confidence won him over, so desperate was their desire to be like Him whom they loved so very much.

  So Adam joined his mate, and both partook of the forbidden fruit.

  The Lord God Almighty was not pleased.

  The Garden of Eden was besieged by a terrible storm reflecting God’s anger with His rebellious creations.

  The humans ran away in fear, chased by the fury of God’s wrath, dropping what remained of the special fruit.