An old woman and an out-of-shape homicide cop—how much fucking easier could it be?
And suddenly their pursuer passed over them in a powerful rush of freezing air, leaving torn branches and withered leaves from the winter trees in its wake. It was moving so fast that Mulvehill couldn’t even see it, but he could hear it, the sound of its powerful, flapping wings as they ravaged the air.
Fernita slowed, cowering against him as she searched the open air above them.
“Keep moving,” Mulvehill ordered, pulling her along.
The angel dropped heavily into the woods, landing in a disturbance of fallen leaves.
Fernita gasped as they looked upon it, and Mulvehill found that he had stopped breathing, a terrible tightness forming in his chest reminding him that he’d be dead all the sooner if he didn’t take oxygen into his lungs.
Would that have been the better way to go?
It was like no angel that he had ever imagined, more monstrous than heavenly.
It crouched on all fours, but he could tell that it was huge. Its powerful body was covered in filthy armor that hinted at something once beautiful to behold. Mulvehill could just about make out intricate etchings beneath the layers of grime on the tarnished, golden metal plates that covered its large body.
But it was the face—faces—that made that terrible feeling in his lower regions return, and he had to make a conscious effort not to embarrass himself. The angel had one large head, but three faces—an eagle, a human, and the face of a lion, all side by side, forming one nightmarish appearance.
And they were all looking at him and Fernita with murder in their gazes.
The monster angel tensed, and Mulvehill could see that it was about ready to pounce. He reacted instinctively, reaching beneath his arm to draw his gun, chamber a round, and fire four times into the many faces.
“Go!” he cried to Fernita, not sure how far the old woman could get on her own, but wanting at least to give her a chance.
The angel reared back, one of its armor-covered hands wiping at its faces. The bullets must have at least annoyed it.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
He glanced quickly over his shoulder to see how far Fernita had gotten, and was surprised and happy to see that her old legs had taken her into a more densely wooded area.
About to take off himself, he turned back to find the angel directly in front of him. He hadn’t even heard it move, and there it was, as big as life, looming over him and smelling like an overheated truck engine. Mulvehill raised his weapon, aiming for the human eyes.
But the angel had had enough of that, thank you very much.
It bellowed, a deafening sound, before reaching down with one of its clawed, metal-covered hands to rip away the gun and toss it above the treetops.
Mulvehill cried out as two of his fingers snapped like twigs.
If somebody had described this scenario to him, he would have imagined himself curled in the fetal position on the ground, but instead he felt more angry than anything else.
Angry that two of his fingers had been broken . . . angry that his favorite gun had been tossed away into the woods . . . angry that he was probably going to die at the hands of something that he had been taught as a child was a thing of beauty and a loving servant to God.
And more specifically, he was angry at Remy Chandler for kicking open the doorway and exposing him to a world that he shouldn’t even know existed.
The anger boiled up inside him, and he reacted, hauling off and punching the monstrous thing of Heaven in the faces as hard as he could with his unbroken hand.
The angel recoiled, its many eyes at first expressing surprise, but then the lion pulled back the flesh of its maw, showing off fearsome teeth, and Mulvehill was sure he was about to be eaten.
When there was a voice.
“Hello, Zophiel, what do you have there?”
The monster angel spun around, its multiple sets of wings unfurling in a defensive posture.
As the heavenly creature moved, Mulvehill could see who had spoken. It was an older guy, maybe someone who had seen his wrecked car from the road and come down to help.
Mulvehill almost screamed for the man to run away, but something about his appearance stopped him. Something told Mulvehill that this probably wasn’t just a normal man. That he was something else entirely . . . something of this strange new world that Mulvehill had been unceremoniously thrown into.
“You’ve been on the hunt for too long, Cherubim,” the man with the white hair and beard said, a sly smile spreading across his face. “Wasting your time menacing a helpless human—is that not below you?”
“Malachi,” the Cherubim said in an unearthly growl as it tensed and sprang, even more furious now than when Mulvehill had shot it in its faces.
“You are the cause of this,” the monster angel roared, landing upon the stranger and driving him back to the frozen ground.
Mulvehill clutched his injured hand to his chest and stumbled back, away from the impending carnage.
The stranger appeared helpless beneath the bulk of the armored attacker, but then the homicide cop heard the oddest of things—laughter.
As the angel lay upon the man, armored claws reaching down to tear and rend its prey, the stranger was laughing.
The sound of merriment only proved to enrage the angelic beast all the more. Its body glowed with an unearthly light, and liquid fire began to drip from the tips of its hooked fingers and its three open mouths.
“And you have been a thorn in my Master’s side long enough,” the stranger announced, his expensive suit already starting to smolder and burn, but it seemed to have zero effect upon the person inside it.
Mulvehill was catching snippets of their heated debate. It was obvious that these two knew each other, and weren’t the best of buds.
“Your fetid touch has brought me to the brink of madness,” the Cherubim wailed, struggling to hold the stranger down. “For millennia I have fought the aftereffects of your influence, and only now am I able to see what must be done for Heaven to be saved.”
The stranger was laughing all the harder now, even as his body began to change.
“Do you think my Master would sully his touch upon a worthless creation such as yourself?” asked the old man, who wasn’t an old man anymore. “You’re nothing more than a stupid beast . . . a guard dog that outlived its usefulness a very long time ago. . . .”
The stranger had become another creature, and Mulvehill hadn’t a clue whether this was another kind of angel . . . or something more demonic.
Its skin was a dingy white, and covered with strange markings, like some of the tribal tats that he’d seen on many of the scumbags he’d arrested over the years.
“What madness is this?” the Cherubim hissed. “You are not the traitorous elder.”
“I am what should have been,” the pale, tattooed thing said, its body almost like liquid as it flowed around the now struggling Cherubim. “And what will be very, very soon.”
“You are an abomination!” Zophiel bellowed, panic clearly in its voice. “The Lord God would never allow you to exist, Shaitan!”
The pale-skinned thing had wrapped multiple limbs around its foe, powerful, knifelike fingers attempting to make their way between the seams of the angel’s armor. Zophiel’s movments were frenzied, its four wings flapping wildly as it attempted to flee the battleground, but its equally monstrous attacker would not allow it, the liquid flesh of the shape-changing foe slithering onto the Cherubim’s wings, preventing flight.
“Then we shall need to do something about the Lord God,” the new aggressor spoke. “But first things first.”
The pale-skinned thing spread across Zophiel’s body, constricting the Cherubim’s four mighty wings and wrapping around its throat.
Mulvehill knew that he should be getting the hell out of there, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the epic struggle before him. He had no idea whom to root for, sensing that either of the
se creatures would be the death of him—and Fernita.
It didn’t look good for the Cherubim. The shape-shifting thing had almost completely enveloped the angel’s armored form. At that point Mulvehill decided that he should probably move along, and had just started to turn when the Cherubim let loose a deafening cry, equal parts scream and thunderous roar. The angel’s fury echoed through the winter woods, the tormented sound shaking free the dead leaves that still clung to the trees.
Zophiel tore away the liquid flesh of its attacker, the Cherubim’s armored form now glowing white-hot with the heat of its divine body.
The pale, tattooed thing writhed upon the frozen ground, steam rising from its smoldering body, but within only seconds it appeared fine, returning to its more human shape to taunt its Cherubim foe.
“You have met your better, sentry,” the shape-changer said. “Accept your fate now, for your kind, and all the hosts of Heaven, will soon bow before my brothers and sisters. The Almighty will be made to see the error of His ways, and a great change will be brought upon the Shining Kingdom and all the worlds that bask in the light of its glory.”
Mulvehill started to back away as muscular tentacles shot out from the tatooed beast’s body toward the angel, whose form still glowed like white-hot metal.
“What now?” he said, running in the direction he’d last seen Fernita go, a battle of monsters still raging behind him.
Dreading what new insanity would be waiting ahead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The dead man moved.
Fernita had been making her way through the woods, trying not to slip and fall, when she came across the body.
It was wrapped in an old red blanket, propped up against the base of a birch tree. She wanted to run past it, knowing she had to get as far away as she could from the monsters behind her, but she could not.
It was as if it were calling out, beckoning for her to come closer.
For a moment, Fernita hesitated, trying to force herself to go on, but her mind was filled with the images of a wondrous place of green, a jungle unlike anything she had ever seen.
The old woman stepped closer to the body.
And suddenly the memories came flooding back.
She remembered the place she saw when she opened her mouth and bared her soul in song. She remembered who she really was.
Pearly had tried to hide that too, but now Fernita Green was just another fading memory. She was Eliza Swan, and always had been.
Eliza could feel a song bubbling in her heart as she climbed over the mounds of frozen leaves and broken branches toward the body, a song starting to move from her heart—her soul—up through her chest and into her throat.
How long had it been since she had sung?
It started as a hum as the words came to her.
A song of Paradise, a song of the place she saw so vividly inside her head.
She stumbled then, her slippered foot catching on half-buried roots, and sprawled on all fours in front of the corpse. She reached out to steady herself, brushing against the dried, almost mummified flesh of the body’s foot.
And the images that filled Eliza’s head were explosive.
They came at her all at once, a sensory rush of pictures and emotions, and in the course of a moment she lived a lifetime, born into the Garden from the rib of a man. . . .
This man before her.
She saw and felt it all: the temptation, the sin, the loss of innocence.
She could taste it in her mouth . . . the taste of the fruit.
The taste of their fall from grace.
The sin had become part of them, following them from the Garden, growing in the hearts and souls of their bloodline. Never to be forgotten.
Never to be forgiven.
Until . . . now.
Eliza recoiled, pulling her numbed hand away from the body. She had no idea what had just happened, but she understood what was on the horizon.
Eden was returning for him . . . this corpse. . . .
This man.
Eliza understood whose body it was that lay before her.
“Adam,” she said, staring at the withered remains wrapped in the red blanket.
The corpse tilted its head ever so slightly toward the sound of her voice; its eyes slowly opened to look upon her.
And she began to scream.
He had worn the guise of his master for so long that Taranushi had actually started to believe that he was the elder angel Malachi.
But as he took his true form, he was reminded of the truth, and his purpose.
Taranushi was the first of the Shaitan: the beings of darkness and fire that would soon replace the angels of Heaven.
He looked down upon his foe, tightening his grip upon him. The Cherubim was tired, the fight nearly drained from him.
The Shaitan momentarily took his dark eyes from the angel, and gazed off in the direction of the scream he had heard moments before. It was the one out there whom he wanted: she was the reason he was upon this Earth . . . waiting.
Waiting for the Garden to arrive.
Taranushi turned his black-orb eyes back to the Cherubim. Still the angel pathetically struggled.
“Why can’t you just die?” the Shaitan asked, aggravated now.
Heavenly fire leapt weakly from Zophiel’s hands but it had no effect on the shape-shifter.
Again Taranushi looked off into the woods. If he did not act, she might elude him again. He knew that he should go.
In a display of savagery, Taranushi shaped his malleable form into something distinctly terrible, with claws and teeth so fierce that not even God’s armor would protect. The Shaitan ravaged his foe, biting and clawing, ripping and tearing away pieces of the Cherubim’s armor and the divine flesh beneath.
The blood of the angel was like the strongest of acids, but Taranushi used the pain as his fuel, maiming the heavenly sentry to the point where it struggled no more.
The Shaitan looked down into the faces of its foe, seeing in the many eyes expressions of failure. The Cherubim knew that his end was here, that he had been brought to the edge of death by his better.
His eyes begged for release, but the Shaitan did not know the meaning of mercy. Instead. he left the angel to die slowly as his life force poured from his torn flesh.
Once again the Shaitan assumed the dignified form of Malachi.
An appearance far less frightening to the human whom he sought.
The human who would grant him access to the Garden and bring about the birth of his people.
And the fall of Heaven.
Zophiel knew that he was dying, but it did not stop him from attempting to rise. The pain was great, but it did not compare to the agony he felt at the core of his being at the failure that had come to define him.
As he struggled to stand, his mind wandered back to the time when he’d discovered the threat to them all.
The threat to Heaven and to his Lord God.
If there was but one thing for which he could thank the monster that had mauled him, it was this moment . . . this clarity of thought. Impending death had cleared the fog from his damaged mind, and he saw what had brought him to the brink of madness.
He had been in the Garden of Eden after the fall of the humans, guarding the sacred place as the war with the Morningstar raged in Heaven. There had been rumors that Lucifer would try to take the Garden as his own, and Zophiel remembered his bravado. As long as he was sentry, nothing would dare threaten that holy place.
He had sensed a disturbance not far from the Tree of Knowledge, and upon investigating, had discovered several strange, fetal creatures writhing in the dirt at the base of the Tree. Zophiel was familiar with all the beasts in the Garden, but he had never seen the likes of these. They were pale, hairless, their bodies adorned with black sigils of power . . . sigils that caused the fire of his sword blade to ignite ominously as his six eyes passed over their odd shapes.
What are these . . . things? the Cherubim wondered, instinct
s attuned to danger already beginning to thrum.
And then an angel stepped into the clearing from the dense forest, holding one of the mewling life-forms lovingly in his arms. He was the elder Malachi, the one to whom God had given the gift of creation.
“What is this?” Zophiel remembered asking.
And the elder angel had explained that they were his attempts to create a better servant for the Almighty—a better angel—that he had been secretly working on his Shaitan, as he called them, for quite some time.
Zophiel recalled his own reaction to the word secretly, and when prodded, Malachi explained that the Lord knew nothing of his experiment . . . that it would not be wise for Him to know about the creatures that would one day replace His Heavenly hosts.
The Cherubim was about to demand that Malachi explain himself, or be brought before the Thrones, when the elder did the unthinkable.
Malachi suddenly dropped the infant life-form to the ground and lunged at the sentry, dagger of light in hand.
Zophiel had no chance to react.
He remembered the pain as the blade slid through the middle of his faces, and how everything, in a matter of seconds, had turned to madness. The thoughts would not come; there were only pain and confusion. The need to retaliate, to strike back at the one who harmed him, who had threatened the Creator and all that He had built, was all a-jumble.
The dagger had brought about the insanity, and Zophiel was nothing more than a wild beast trying to remember the purpose of its rage.
But now he remembered.
Now, in time to die, he remembered.
Zophiel painfully spread his wings, blood leaking from his ravaged body to pool upon the frozen ground. He had to get away; he had to do something to stop Malachi.
The Cherubim leapt skyward, flying above the clouds.
Not sure how much longer he, or the Kingdom of Heaven, had left.