A Hundred Words for Hate

  “You take care of yourself, Fernita Green,” he called out, using her new name.

  Then he opened the door and stepped out into the New England cold. He liked this part of the world, the change in seasons. He hoped that Eliza . . . Fernita . . . would like it too.

  Francis took one final look at the house in the quiet Brockton neighborhood as he stood upon the walk.

  He had never imagined that he could feel such pain, and not even have a sword plunged through his chest.

  Malachi had been very specific that they meet after he had hidden Eliza away. The abandoned church in Italy’s San Genesio seemed just as good a place as any.

  Francis pushed open the door and stepped into the run-down structure to see the elder sitting in one of the pews, gazing up to where a crucifix had once hung. There was a stain against the yellow wall over the altar in the shape of the cross.

  “Is it done?” Malachi asked, not even turning around.

  “Yeah,” Francis replied, the weight of the word nearly exhausting.

  “And nobody knows her location but you?” The elder angel turned his head ever so slightly.

  “That’s right,” Francis said. “Only me.”

  Malachi left the pew and came to stand before him.

  “Then everything is as it should be,” he said.

  Malachi then reached into the inside pocket of the suit jacket he wore and removed a scalpel. The light from the blade was momentarily blinding, and Francis reflexively stepped back.

  “What’s that for?” he asked.

  “The final step,” Malachi answered.

  Francis didn’t quite understand.

  “It’s to take that very important memory away,” the elder explained.

  “You’re going to cut out my memory?”

  “Not exactly,” Malachi said. “I’m going to take it and move it to someplace else in your mind. Someplace where it will be waiting when we need it.”

  Francis considered that.

  “Will I still remember her?”

  Slowly, Malachi shook his head.

  “All your memories of her will be put away,” the elder explained. “That way no one will ever know where to find her . . . until it’s necessary.”

  “And when will that be?”

  Malachi turned back to the altar, gazing at the cross-shaped stain upon the wall.

  “When it is time,” he said. “When all the pieces have fallen into place.”

  Francis was suddenly afraid. He wanted to know exactly what all of this meant. He wanted to know exactly what role he and Eliza played in Malachi’s vision of the future.

  The questions were just about to flow when Malachi turned back to him, scalpel of light still in his hand.

  And before the words could leave Francis’s lips, the blade shot toward him.

  Cutting away the brightest light he had ever known, and leaving behind only the darkness.

  Hell

  Malachi dug deeply within the angel’s brain, allowing the flow of memories to bleed out, flowing into and up through the scalpel and into the elder’s own mind.

  “There you are,” the angel said with a joyous grin, digging deeper beneath the gelatinous folds to find—at last—what he had been seeking.

  “Just a little bit deeper,” he said to Francis, who twitched about on the verge of death beneath the elder’s ministrations.

  “And I should have it all.”

  “You have me,” the angel said, opening his palms to show that he was unarmed.

  Francis blinked wildly, momentarily unsure of what had just occurred. He had completed a side job in Italy when he had sensed the nearly overpowering presence of one of his own.

  An angel of incredible power somewhere close by.

  He had found the angel in the church: Malachi, he believed he was called, an important angel of the highest order that had betrayed the Lord of Lords during the Great War.

  Malachi had sided with the Morningstar, but fled to Earth after the rebellion was squelched. If Francis’s memory served him correctly, the Thrones wanted this one very, very badly.

  Francis had a gun in his hand, and it was pointed at his quarry.

  He wasn’t sure whether the Thrones wanted this one dead or alive, but he was more than willing to use the Colt .45 loaded with special bullets made from lead mined from the resources of Hell, bullets that could end an angel of Heaven despite its divinity.

  “Are you going to kill me?” the angel asked.

  Francis was tempted, but at the same time could feel little malice for the betrayer, for he too had fallen under Lucifer’s spell.

  Although Francis had realized the error of his ways.

  “All depends on how hard you want to make this, or how merciful I’m feeling at the moment.”

  The angel just stared.

  “I could end it now for you,” Francis said. “One shot to the head would take it all away.”

  “Yes,” Malachi said. “Yes, it would.”

  “They’ll put you in Tartarus,” Francis told him. He had seen the prison, and had often been threatened with a cell there by the Thrones. He wasn’t certain which would be worse: death or time spent in the Hell prison.

  “They will,” Malachi said, seemingly resigned to the idea.

  “And that’s all right with you?”

  “It’s how it is supposed to be,” the renegade angel said.

  And suddenly there was a sound like the loudest thunder, and the air behind them began to tremble and bend as a passage was opened from the other side. The Thrones were again upon the world of God’s man.

  Four of the flaming, eye-covered orbs floated from the opening out into the church, lining up in a row behind Francis.

  “Thought you might be interested,” he said, pistol still pointed at the angel called Malachi.

  “We are,” the Thrones answered as one.

  Malachi stood with his hands crossed before him, eyes upon the Thrones.

  “Didn’t know if you wanted this one dead or—”

  “No,” the Thrones hissed. “This one must be made to suffer,” they said as one.

  The four floated around Francis and encircled the renegade.

  “What have you been doing?” they asked the elder angel directly, their voices eager. “Share with us, and your penance will be less . . . harsh.”

  “It’s as if you believe I’ve been up to no good,” Malachi said, and chuckled.

  “Tell us,” the flaming orbs covered in bulging eyes demanded.

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  Tentacles of fire shot out from the bodies of the Thrones, enwrapping the elder angel in their fiery grasp.

  The angel was burning, but he did not scream.

  “What do you think he did?” Francis asked, disturbed by the sight of Malachi’s flesh bubbling—melting—as the Thrones’ fiery appendages continued to entwine and caress.

  The Thrones ignored the question, converging on the elder as his body began to tremble from the agony he was experiencing.

  But still he did not cry out.

  Francis had seen a lot of terrible things in his long life, and this had to be right up there with the worst. The Thrones must have had a serious mad-on for this guy for them to be paying this much attention to him.

  Malachi had dropped to his knees, head drooping to his chest. His hair was on fire now, his blackened scalp starting to show the seared bone of his skull.

  Francis still pointed his weapon, feeling his trigger finger begin to itch. He was tempted to fire, to put one shot in the angel’s head to end his torment. Nobody deserved this.

  “Keep it up and there won’t be anything left for Tartarus,” he called out.

  The Thrones’ multiple sets of eyes darted quickly to him, bulging at his insolence. He half expected to feel those tentacles wrapping around him at any second.

  “The fallen Guardian is correct,” the Thrones said, withdrawing their hold on Malachi as he crouched there, smoldering from their t
ouch.

  The air behind them began to vibrate and blur as a passage for their departure was summoned. Francis could see the forbidding shape of the icy prison fortress, Tartarus, behind them, stepping back as the acute smell of brimstone and despair wafted out from the opening.

  The Thrones again took hold of the charred and still-smoking angel, dragging him toward the passage and a fate more horrible than an eternity of death.

  Malachi’s head bobbed as he was pulled through the pulsing rip in the fabric of time and space, slowly lifting his chin to look at him just as he passed over the threshold from the realm of Earth, into Hell.

  “It’s how it is supposed to be,” Malachi said through cracked and blistered lips, seemingly accepting his fate.

  Then the doorway began to waver, the passage to Hell’s prison closing up behind them.

  Hell

  Malachi admired the glint of his blade.

  The information he had been seeking for so very long, extracted from the brain of the fallen Guardian, dangled wetly from its tip.

  “Hello, lovely,” he purred.

  How long had he waited for this moment? The elder truly couldn’t say. The time spent confined within an icy cell in Tartarus had seemed like an eternity. But he’d had his transgressions to keep him company, and his plans for the future of the universe, while he patiently waited for the inevitable to occur.

  The fruit of the Tree had shown him a possible future; he just needed to have the patience to wait for it to happen.

  “Eliza,” Francis hissed from the stone table below him.

  Malachi glanced down at the former Guardian, whose gaze was locked upon the drop of hidden knowledge hanging from the edge of the scalpel.

  “Oh, yes,” the elder agreed. “It’s all about the lovely Eliza . . . without whom I would never be able to enter the Garden.”

  Francis struggled to speak. “Hidden . . .”

  “Yes . . . yes, she was, but now she is found,” Malachi said happily. “I would thank you for keeping this for me, but I seriously doubt you’d accept my gratitude.”

  He watched as Francis’s mouth moved fitfully as it attempted to shape more words.

  “What is it?” Malachi asked. “Are you going to prove me wrong?”

  “K-kill you,” Francis managed, eyes blazing with a repressed rage.

  “You would try, wouldn’t you,” Malachi told him. “The only hope for the future and you would see it dead.” He shook his head in disgust. “It’s how we have come to this,” Malachi proclaimed. He motioned toward the passage from the cave. The howls and rumbles of Hell were all the louder.

  “The Morningstar is free, and here we are at the precipice of war once more . . . all of creation hanging in the balance. It’s time for a level head to prevail.”

  Malachi held the scalpel up to his face and studied the thread of knowledge, careful not to let it fall. His servant in the world beyond needed it. With a quick jab, he plunged the razor-sharp instrument, and the retrieved information resting on the tip, through the flesh of his forehead and on into his skull.

  Malachi gasped aloud as he felt the scalpel blade—and the prized knowledge—enter his mind in a heated rush that was not too far from pleasurable.

  “There,” the elder said, yanking the surgical tool from his head with nary a drop of blood. “He should have everything he needs.”

  He returned his attention to Francis.

  “And we are that much closer to success.”

  The former Guardian glared up at him weakly, hate shooting from his eyes. Malachi hadn’t expect him to understand. Francis was part of the old ways, averse to change, even though it was all for the better.

  Malachi leaned closer, the dim light of the cave reflecting off the scalpel in his hand. He could see Francis tense, but instead of cutting his flesh, Malachi cut through the leather straps that bound the fallen angel.

  Malachi stepped back, watching as Francis slowly—painfully—sat up.

  “I—I don’t understand,” Francis squeaked, his voice dry.

  “Of course you don’t,” Malachi told him. “You’re really not supposed to.”

  Francis carefully slid his bare legs over the side of the stone platform, letting his feet dangle.

  “What now?” he asked, far too weak to do much of anything else.

  “Now, that’s the proper attitude,” Malachi said with a nod and a grin. “There is actually one more thing you must do for me.”

  Mulvehill wasn’t at all familiar with the back roads of Brockton, but that didn’t prevent him from driving like a bat out of hell.

  He thought about asking the old woman where they were, but doubted that she was in any mental state to tell him.

  Christ, I’m barely in the mental state to drive.

  The road was empty, and that was good. He hated to think his speed would hurt anyone. He risked a quick glance at Fernita, buckled into the passenger seat next to him. She appeared to be in a kind of catatonia, staring ahead through the windshield, mouth slightly agape. He considered asking her whether everything was all right, but figured he already knew the answer to that.

  The image of something huge dropping from the sky and crashing through the old lady’s roof flashed before his eyes again, and he got that awful tickling sensation in his crotch that told him if he wasn’t such a big boy, he would have been pissing himself.

  It was nice to see that he at least had control of that.

  There was a turn up ahead and Steven took it—big mistake. It turned out to be a private drive, leading to what appeared to be an unfinished housing development.

  “Ah, shit,” he grumbled, bringing the car to a complete stop, and then throwing it in reverse. He thought about giving Remy a call again, but decided that he didn’t want his blood pressure getting any higher. When—if—Mulvehill ever saw him again, Remy would be buying the homicide cop twenty-five-year-old Scotch every week for years, taking him out to Morton’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then to the nearest Kappy’s for more Scotch just for good measure.

  That would fix him.

  Mulvehill backed out of the dead end and slammed the car into drive, hitting the gas just as the sky—or at least a piece of it—fell into the road in front of them.

  It landed with an explosion of asphalt and dirt, but it didn’t slow him down. It couldn’t. Mulvehill knew deep in his gut that he had to keep going forward, to get them out of there before . . .

  His thinking stopped. It had no experience with things like this, so it had nowhere else to go. All he knew was that they had to escape or something very bad was going to happen to them.

  “Hold on,” he told Fernita, trying to sound calm, as if this were something he did all the time, but he was sure it came out high and squeaky, like some fucking cartoon character.

  The air was filled with thick, choking dust, but Mulvehill swerved to the left and drove right through it—only to come to an abrupt stop. Both he and Fernita pitched forward before their seat belts snapped them back. Mulvehill’s foot was still on the gas, and he could hear the engine screaming—feel the tires spinning, but they weren’t going anywhere.

  Eyes darting up to the rearview mirror, he tried to see through the dust behind them. Something—something huge—had the bumper in its grip and it wasn’t going to let them go.

  Mulvehill put the car in reverse and gunned the engine, sending the car rocketing backward to hit something horribly solid. He snapped the gear to drive and stomped on the gas pedal. This time the car shot forward, but the damage to the back end made it difficult to control and they fishtailed off the road and careened down an embankment.

  Fernita screamed as branches whipped at the windshield and boulders tore at the underside of the car, their out-of-control descent coming to an abrupt and violent stop when they hit the base of an old oak tree. The front of the car crumpled like an accordion.

  Now Remy owes me a fucking car, Mulvehill thought just before his forehead bounced off the soft center o
f the steering wheel, making the horn toot briefly and his brain vibrate painfully inside his skull.

  He thought he might like to grab a little nap, but frantic hands were shaking him.

  “Hey,” Fernita called. Mulvehill was going to tell her to leave him alone, but the sound of sheer panic in her voice roused him more fully, and he remembered their situation.

  “I’ve got it,” he said groggily, having no real idea what that meant, but he was already on the move, undoing his seat belt and pushing open the driver’s-side door. The ground was at an incline, and he dropped to his knees, sliding a bit toward the front of his car before regaining his footing. Steam hissed from the obliterated radiator, and he again cursed the name of Remy Chandler as he hauled himself up and around the back of the car to get Fernita. Pulling open the door, he leaned inside to help her undo the seat belt.

  “Leave me here,” she said quietly, and he stopped, staring through the thick lenses of her glasses into her deep brown eyes filled with panic.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It doesn’t want you,” she said. “Leave me and get yourself away from here.”

  “Like hell I will,” he said, and practically pulled her from the seat. “Be careful here,” he told her. “The ground isn’t level and . . .”

  A roar from the direction of the road interrupted him. It was like the blast of an eighteen-wheeler’s air horn, only with more of an I-want-to-kill-and-eat-you kind of vibe to it.

  Mulvehill had never heard of an angel who did anything like that, but he also knew there was quite a lot he didn’t know about angels and the like.

  That he didn’t want to know.

  Fernita looked at him hopelessly, and he felt a shiver go through her thin frame.

  “C’mon,” he said, helping her down into the wooded area. He had no idea where they were going, but figured the farther away from this particular spot they were, the better off they’d be.

  The old woman was doing far better than he would have expected. Mulvehill held her arm as they traversed the uneven terrain. He didn’t hear the horrible roaring again, and wondered if perhaps whatever it was that was chasing them had given up and gone after easier prey.