Armageddon

  “Stop,” he warned, directing the point of his blade at her.

  Janice smiled, continuing her advance.

  “The Darkstar pulled me from the void and gave me a purpose. He showed me how wrong we’d been to serve the light, to serve an Almighty who would cast us aside once we’d completed our service.”

  Cameron slashed his blade of flame across the ground in front of his one-time friend, creating a line of divine fire between them.

  Janice was repelled by the flames, rearing back with an animal-like hiss. The armored collar about her neck turned liquid and flowed up over her face as if to protect it.

  “I’d hoped to convince you,” Janice said, her voice strangely muffled by the helmet of shadow. “I wanted you to join me—to join the others.”

  Her words chilled him to the bone. Others?

  He thought of the other Nephilim who had died, and imagined them clad in black armor, sporting wings of shadow.

  “You’ve done this to the others?” Cameron asked, feeling a spike of nausea, as well as anger.

  “I’ve done nothing but accept the gift offered to me,” Janice said simply. “As have the other Nephilim who fell in battle.”

  Cameron seethed. “Out of respect for you—for what you once were—I’m asking you to leave.”

  “Or what?” Janice challenged.

  “Or one of us will be dying again.”

  Janice extended her arms to either side of her body, as claws of darkness grew from the tips of her gauntleted hands. “I’d hoped you would understand,” she said, flexing her fingers.

  Cameron didn’t even see her move, the attack was so swift. One second she was standing a foot away, the next . . .

  Barely evading her grasp, Cameron threw himself to one side, watching as Janice’s claws sliced through the bark on a nearby tree. She lunged, slashing at him again. He leaped into the air, but she anticipated his action, using her own batlike wings to leap as he did.

  Cameron spun, landing in a crouch.

  Then he felt it, an icy, tingling sensation in his midsection.

  “First blood,” Janice purred, bringing one of her hands to her face, as she squatted before him. The darkness of her helmet melted away to reveal her pale mouth, and she licked his blood from her claws. “What’s that I taste?” she asked, smacking her lips loudly. “Is that fear?”

  A chill raced up and down Cameron’s spine as he tried to focus. The pain from his stomach was intensifying, and he could feel the warmth spreading down the front of his body.

  It was his turn to bring her fear.

  Cameron launched himself with a roar, flapping his powerful wings with such force that he was upon her in an instant. The force of their collision sent them hurtling backward, the two of them digging a small trench in the forest floor before hitting the base of an ancient pine tree.

  Temporarily stunned, Cameron shook it off, bringing the pommel of his divine weapon down upon the armored face of his foe.

  Janice cried out, struggling beneath his weight. But Cameron ignored her cries, relentlessly bringing down the end of his weapon again and again.

  The Nephilim aspect of his nature knew his foe should be slain quickly, efficiently, for that was what was done with one’s enemies.

  But this was different, he rationalized. This was someone who had once been a friend. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t bring himself to deliver that final, decisive strike.

  “Please,” Janice begged, her wide, scared eyes looking up at him as he readied another blow.

  Cameron hesitated.

  It was all the time she needed.

  A twisted smile appeared on Janice’s pale, dead features. Before Cameron could react, she squirmed out from beneath him, slithered around his body, and crushed his mighty wings to his back, rendering him flightless.

  Cameron tried to shake her off, spinning around and slamming her against a nearby tree.

  Janice grunted with the impact, then began to laugh.

  “You know, there was still a part of me that sorta died when you didn’t surrender,” she whispered in his ear. “That same part would have given just about anything to be this close to you.”

  Cameron felt something cold and wet tickle his ear. Janice’s tongue. A numbness crept into his legs, and he found it difficult to remain standing.

  And still her grip intensified. She was crushing him.

  Gathering up what strength he had left, Cameron attempted to ram himself against the tree, but one of his feet became entangled in a root, and he crashed to the forest floor.

  Cameron lay on his back, looking up into the face of one he had once called friend, and instantly thought of the others, and how he was going to let them down.

  Janice studied him with eyes as black as pitch.

  “I want to remember you like this,” she said as she raised her claws to strike. “Helpless before me. Helpless before the blessed power of the Darkstar.”

  * * *

  Tarshish pulled the front of his jacket tighter about him, cowering in the frigid winds of the Himalayas.

  “Can you feel that?” the last of the Malakim asked.

  Mallus tilted his head back and closed his eyes, reaching out with his senses. “I feel something. Is it the shell?”

  Tarshish looked older now, frailer. The more he used his power, the more it damaged his body.

  “Not necessarily the shell,” Tarshish said. “But the residual horror of what we did.” He looked at Mallus, shame in his gaze. “Our actions were so contemptible that it left a permanent impression. A kind of stain.”

  Mallus tried to pick up more of what Tarshish was feeling. “I’m sensing something, but I’d never have guessed . . .”

  “Maybe I just feel worse about it than you,” the Malakim said. “Maybe I’m more sensitive to the fact that we murdered an extension of the Lord God.”

  “I feel pretty bad about that too,” Mallus insisted.

  Tarshish stepped away and spread out his arms. “The shell is somewhere around here. Just imagine what a few millennia of seismic activity does—all that shifting rock and accumulating ice.”

  “If it’s here, it’s buried deep,” Mallus agreed.

  The Malakim dropped to his knees in the snow. “Taken within the embrace of the mountain range, that which was divine hidden from lowly eyes.”

  “What are you doing?” Mallus asked him.

  “Gonna make us a passage.”

  “How are you going to—”

  There was a searing flash, followed by an intense explosion. Mallus hurtled through the air, carried by a shock wave.

  His fall was cushioned by several feet of snow, but his body smoldered, burned by the intensity of the heat thrown by the blast. He lay there for a moment, dazed, then carefully sat up to see that the ice- and snow-covered landscape they’d just been standing on had been cleared. The ground steamed, and a yawning hole gaped before him.

  “Tarshish!” Mallus called out.

  “Here,” answered a voice from inside the hole.

  Mallus trudged toward the pit, stopped at its edge, and cautiously peered down. “Where are you?” he asked, waving away clouds of steam rising up from below.

  “I think I might need some help,” a weakened voice announced.

  Mallus zeroed in on the voice and found Tarshish. He appeared even older, and more frail, than he had moments before. His clothes had burned away to reveal a nearly skeletal physique.

  “What have you done?” Mallus asked, carefully descending to help.

  “What was necessary,” Tarshish replied, allowing Mallus to assist him to stand.

  “So I’m guessing we’re supposed to follow this path you’ve made.”

  “It would be a waste not to,” Tarshish answered.

  Mallus felt a shiver pass through Tarshish’s body as he helped him along the circular stone passage that receded into the ground.

  “Are you cold?”

  “Quite,” Tarshish said, his sunke
n eyes locked on the curving passage before them. “Can you feel it now?”

  It took a moment, but Mallus did. “Yeah,” he acknowledged, nearly overwhelmed by the waves of despair that wafted over him.

  “It feels pretty awful, doesn’t it?” Tarshish noted.

  “It does.”

  “Think it’s time to lay these ghosts to rest,” Tarshish the Malakim said.

  “I think you’re right,” Mallus agreed, firming his grip on his companion’s frail body and continuing down the passage, deeper and deeper into the womb of the earth.

  * * *

  Gabriel and Dusty appeared on the darkened street in a flash of divine fire and a rush of air.

  Tilting his head back to sniff, Gabriel made sure there were no imminent threats in the area.

  Confident that they were safe, he turned to Dusty, only to find that his companion was gone.

  “Dusty?” the Labrador barked.

  He caught movement in a nearby storefront and padded toward it just in time to meet Dusty emerging, wearing a baggy pair of sweatpants and pulling an equally large, hooded sweatshirt over his head. Gabriel hadn’t realized until then, because dogs seldom thought of such things, that Dusty had been practically naked, his clothes shredded when the Abomination’s sword had exploded.

  “I was starting to get a little cold,” Dusty said.

  “Sometimes it pays to have a double coat of fur,” Gabriel said. “Why did we come here?”

  Dusty wandered off a bit, then paused, as if to get his bearings. “We need to go down here,” he said, heading down the sidewalk.

  Gabriel followed at his heels. “Is this how it’s going to be?” the dog asked. “I follow you around, without knowing why?”

  “It’s complicated,” Dusty said, his voice trailing off.

  “I think I can handle complicated,” Gabriel said, as his friend came to a stop. “What’s wrong?”

  “Hurry up or she won’t be on time,” Dusty ordered, ignoring the Labrador’s question and walking faster.

  “Who won’t be on time?” the dog whined.

  Dusty came to an awkward stop in front of what looked to be an old bookstore, its window shattered. “In here.” He climbed through the broken window, careful to avoid the shards of glass that protruded like sharks’ teeth from its frame.

  “Who won’t be on time?” Gabriel repeated, grumbling. He leaped through the window without waiting for an answer, knowing that one was not likely to come.

  He found Dusty at the back of the store, standing, head tilted to the side.

  “We’re good,” Dusty said. “She should be along in just a minute.”

  “I’m going to give you a good bite if you don’t tell me who—”

  Gabriel heard movement at the front of the store and immediately went on full alert. Someone, or something, had followed them in and was making its way to where they stood.

  “Get behind me,” Gabriel commanded, his voice dropping to a threatening growl.

  “There’s no need for that,” Dusty said. “And even if there were . . .”

  Gabriel couldn’t believe his eyes as a familiar shape stepped into view.

  “Right on time,” Dusty said with a chuckle.

  * * *

  Melissa thought she saw the things from her nightmare around every corner, and found herself jumping at shadows.

  She’d left the relative safety of Brideview Elementary’s bomb shelter, driven by an overwhelming sense that if she stayed, something horrible was going to happen to her and anybody who happened to be near her.

  Melissa couldn’t bear to think of innocents being hurt because of her.

  She stuck close to the shadows as she walked, the image of a sword poised on the periphery of her mind in case she needed to defend herself.

  But for now, the activity on the street was unusually calm, which was perfectly fine with her. As good as she was at killing monsters, she didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances.

  The thought caused an odd sensation in the depths of her chest, a burning, churning feeling that she’d grown to relate with her angelic nature. As a Nephilim, she thrived on killing monsters.

  As she passed the burned facade of her favorite used bookstore, Melissa stopped. She stepped up into the store through its broken window. Memories of the time she’d spent here, before she’d realized what she was and what she had to do, danced about her mind. She couldn’t help but smile.

  This was where she’d bought her favorite book of all time: Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. She so wanted to be Meg Murry. Melissa remembered being swept up into the fantasy of the novel, wishing that it was all real, never realizing what her own future held.

  She wandered into the area that had been reserved for story time and froze.

  Something was wrong.

  Something was there. . . .

  Without a moment’s hesitation, a sword of fire appeared in her hand. She was ready.

  * * *

  “Melissa!” Gabriel barked, but she didn’t even look in his direction. Instead, Melissa turned to an open area at the back of the store. He was about to follow when he felt Dusty’s hand touch his head, and a warm tingle spread through his back.

  “She doesn’t see us, does she?” Gabriel asked.

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “It complicates things,” Dusty said.

  He left Gabriel, moving toward the girl. Dusty was no more than a foot away when Gabriel saw Melissa tense, spinning toward him, burning sword at the ready.

  “Whoa!” Dusty said, stepping back a few steps. “She really is a sensitive one.”

  Melissa eyed every corner for a threat.

  “What are you going to do?” Gabriel asked.

  “I need to send her on her way or it’s going to be too late.”

  “Should I even bother asking?”

  Gabriel watched as Dusty carefully moved closer to the girl and rubbed his hands together vigorously. The Labrador was even more confused than ever. Then Dusty held his hand out toward the girl and gently blew on his palm into Melissa’s face.

  “Tiny particles of the sword,” Dusty explained, stepping back to where Gabriel waited. “They should take effect right about—”

  Melissa felt as though she’d been shocked. Staccato images exploded inside her head.

  Feeling dizzy, she dropped down to one knee, her weapon still at the ready, just in case.

  It took her a moment, but then she was able to process the vision. She saw Cameron in the woods. He was fighting one of those things from her nightmare.

  And he didn’t look as though he was winning.

  Melissa reacted before she could even consider what she was doing. Her wings erupted from her back and wrapped her in their feathery embrace, to transport her to Cameron’s side.

  * * *

  Dusty smiled. “That should do it,” he said, turning to leave the store.

  “Where did she go?” the Labrador asked, following at his heels.

  “Where she was needed most,” Dusty replied.

  “Which was?” Gabriel prompted, the annoyance in his canine voice reaching new levels.

  Dusty stopped, blinked his cataract-covered eyes, and then started through the broken window out onto the street. He viewed so many possibilities in his mind, but now, one path seemed more defined than the others.

  “Melissa is helping Cameron with the dark angel,” he said. He stopped, pointing at the dog just as he was about to leap.

  “Be careful,” Dusty warned. “There’s a piece of glass beneath your left hind paw. If it slices the pad, you could get a nasty infection. We wouldn’t want that.”

  Gabriel considered the floor beneath his paws and changed his position before springing to join Dusty on the sidewalk.

  “Excellent!” Dusty smiled, the possibility of infection fading from his mind. Fading from the future.

  “So Melissa has gone to help Cameron?” the dog said.

  “She has,”
Dusty said patiently. He hoped that Gabriel would eventually understand the enormity of Dusty’s gift—curse—and trust what he had to say.

  “How does she help him?” Gabriel asked as they began to walk down the center of the deserted street.

  Dusty concentrated on the possible futures spread out before his mind’s eye and focused on the one with the best outcome. “With Melissa’s help, Cameron will find the army.”

  “The army?”

  Dusty nodded. “The army that will fight in the final battle of Armageddon.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The mouse.

  So tiny and frail in the grand scheme of things, but yet, so mighty.

  Lucifer felt himself begin to rise up from the darkness, drawn toward the simple language of the rodent and its message.

  It said that he was needed—that Lucifer Morningstar, even though he had been responsible for much horror in Heaven and in the world of man—was needed.

  Oblivion pulled upon Lucifer, attempting to drag him down into the darkest void, where he would cease to be, replaced entirely by the imposter who had stolen his physical form.

  But the mouse repeated his message, and Lucifer found the strength to claw his way back from the brink.

  He was needed.

  The Son of the Morning sank his fingers deep into the environment of shadow that had tried so hard to claim him, using strength he didn’t know he had to haul himself up from the sucking miasma of extinction toward existence.

  He was needed.

  In the simplest of terms, the mouse regaled him with stories of the world since his disappearance. Things had not been going well. The earth had been cut off from the influence of Heaven, the school attacked, its charges, still alive, scattered to the world.

  The Morningstar again faced the agony of what he had done—what his body, controlled by another, had done.

  He remembered the look on Aaron’s face as a sword of darkness, wielded by his own hands, was plunged into his son’s body.

  Lucifer felt himself grow weaker, the tendrils of oblivion starting to pull him back.

  You are needed.

  The mouse squealed again, and though the Morningstar’s sadness was nearly incomprehensible, he listened to the mouse. For a part of Lucifer that saw beyond his sorrow and guilt knew that if he were to succumb to the sucking despair, the world would end.