Armageddon

  And the darkness would have won.

  Despite the temptation to give in to his pain, Lucifer could not stand the idea of the nightmare that possessed his body inflicting more anguish upon the earth. Lucifer would take back all that belonged to him.

  With a newfound vigor, the Son of the Morning pulled himself up from the pit of despair.

  You. Are. Needed.

  If he had been told that he had climbed from the mire of nonexistence for hundreds of years, Lucifer would have believed it. Never had he experienced such fatigue. But the Morningstar would not have it. He pushed through, for there was a purpose awaiting him on the other side.

  He would see the darkness of evil burned away by the light of the Morningstar.

  * * *

  The Darkstar paused as the odd sensation reverberated through his body. He’d never experienced its like before, but then again, he’d never had a body such as this.

  It was as if there was an irritation, just beyond his mental reach. He swayed slightly; then, as quickly as it came, the feeling was gone.

  “Are you well, good master?” one of the Sisters asked.

  “Perhaps you tire and are in need of rest,” said another, vigorously nodding her hooded head.

  “We will disturb you no longer,” said the last of the three Sisters, shuffling for the door, the others following.

  “You will stay where you are,” Satan Morningstar proclaimed.

  The Sisters stopped, staring intently at him, their eyes glowing eerily from the darkness of their hoods.

  “I’m fine,” Satan announced, standing tall and smiling at his servants. “Better than fine, actually.”

  The Sisters remained silent.

  “This world is mine,” he announced, spreading his arms and his black wings for effect. “There may be some out there in the desolation who would disagree, but I am in control.”

  Just saying the words brought a twisted grin to his face. Satan liked the feeling of the muscles in his face, his true form not able to perform such a function.

  His true form really didn’t have a face.

  “I know that there are pockets of resistance, but they consist of poor, deluded souls who don’t understand that their world has been stolen right out from underneath them.”

  Satan Morningstar paused, just in case the Sisters of Umbra had something to add to his assessment.

  They did not.

  “It’s only a matter of time before all forms of defiance are quelled and my dark reign falls over the world.” He paused, again waiting for a response that didn’t appear to be coming.

  “Don’t you agree?” he finally asked his audience.

  “Of course, Star of Darkness,” replied one Sister. “Of course.”

  “It is inevitable they will fall,” answered another.

  The third considered her words before speaking. “Your enemies will most assuredly fall,” she said. “But isn’t it admirable that they have lasted this long against forces so great?”

  Satan rankled at the words, rearing back.

  “Admirable, but pointless,” he said with a sneer. He liked sneering just as much as grinning—maybe more. “The poor souls don’t even realize that they’re already dead.”

  “Such an annoyance,” one Sister said, shaking her hooded head and rubbing her clawed hands together.

  “Even the tiniest of annoyances can ruin a day.”

  “Especially when these annoyances do not know they’re dead.”

  These were not the words of encouragement the Darkstar had wanted to hear. As far as he was concerned, the world was his, and it was time to move on to grander pursuits.

  Divine pursuits.

  Beyond the veils of earth.

  “Those annoyances are no longer my concern,” Satan Darkstar said, a certain finality in his voice. “It is time to consider what is to come,” he continued, not allowing an argument.

  He pulled the gauntlet of black metal from his hand. Darkness leaked from the tips of his fingers. It floated in the air like oil injected into water, then gradually coalesced into a rendering of the globe.

  “This is mine,” Satan said, admiring his prize. “I always wanted this world, desired it more than anything else, but now that I have it . . .” He let his facsimile explode, returning his dark power to its squirming, liquid state.

  “I can’t keep my mind from wondering: What’s next?”

  The Darkstar looked to the Sisters. He could practically feel them bursting to respond, but they held their tongues, perhaps realizing that his question was purely rhetorical. He knew exactly what he wanted.

  He guided the liquid shadow with his bare, outstretched hand.

  “I always wanted to see Heaven,” the Darkstar proclaimed wistfully. “The Golden City in which He resides.”

  The darkness attempted to re-create the great megalopolis, sprawling and elegant, awe-inspiring in its design. It tried, but it failed every time.

  “But why would something as loathsome as me ever be allowed to look upon something so magnificent?” Satan Darkstar closed his hand into a fist, and the shadow ceased its attempts to re-create the great city of Heaven. “It is that question that now drives me.”

  He opened his fingers again, and more pitch flowed forth. It formed new patterns, until the air before them was filled with beings of every conceivable shape and size.

  The darkness had made an army.

  “When I first hid upon the earth, I watched the comings and goings of divine beings between earth and Heaven.”

  With Satan’s words, the darkness started to create a ladder, and the shadowy army began to climb up toward Heaven.

  “I wanted to go where these beings of gold, fire, and feathers went. I wanted to look upon this place where I was forbidden to venture, then tear it down to nothing and drag it from the sky, sending it burning to the earth below.”

  The army of darkness still climbed the ladder before them.

  “That was my dream then,” Satan said to the Sisters. “But now . . .”

  The darkness dispersed, as if carried away by a powerful gust of wind.

  Satan stared at the Sisters. “I want to go to Heaven. I want to go to Heaven, leading an army of every nightmare conceivable. I want to march through the great gates into the Golden City, and into the halls of Heaven, where I shall rip the Lord God Almighty from his seat of power, claiming Heaven as my own.”

  One of the Sisters interrupted his rant, clearing her throat, which sounded as dry as the desert.

  Satan contemplated wiping her from existence for daring such an interruption, but decided to listen to what the ancient seer had to say.

  “The connection between the earthly realm and Heaven has been severed,” she reminded.

  “The surviving angels of the heavenly host Powers and the Abomination of Desolation saw to that,” said a second Sister.

  And the third, “But it would have been glorious to see.”

  The Darkstar spread his wings. “It will be glorious,” he announced.

  “But—,” one Sister began.

  “There will be no buts,” Satan roared. “This is what I ask of you. This is how you will prove your fealty to me. You will find a way to restore the passage, to create a ladder that will allow me to ascend with my army to the gates of Heaven.”

  * * *

  His purpose was right at the tip of his memory.

  Jeremy sat Enoch inside the metal shopping cart and wheeled him up and down the department store aisles.

  Enoch wasn’t really sure why they had come here. It had something to do with Jeremy’s jacket getting ripped while fighting a sea serpent or some such nonsense. Or maybe it was about food. Enoch couldn’t remember, because he hadn’t really been listening. He was too busy trying to recall his ultimate purpose.

  Why had he been sent from Heaven back to the world?

  His mind was filled with fragmented memories of the past, images that told of a previous time on the planet, before something truly
awful had occurred.

  “I’m heading down here for a second,” Jeremy said, snapping his fingers in front of Enoch’s face. “Hey!”

  “Leave me alone!” the toddler screeched, waving his arms and trying to slap Jeremy’s hand away. He probably would already have remembered his purpose if it wasn’t for Jeremy’s damnable interruptions.

  “Chill out, lad,” Jeremy said.

  Enoch turned away in an attempt to recapture his train of thought. But that train had left the station without him.

  “Damn him,” Enoch grumbled, gazing around the dark, empty department store. Something caught his eye off in the distance. A purple dinosaur! His heart began to flutter.

  He loved purple dinosaurs.

  Enoch quickly maneuvered himself out of the cart’s child seat.

  That’ll teach Jeremy for not buckling the safety belt.

  The toddler climbed over the side of the metal cart to the floor, far more gracefully than he had anticipated.

  Perhaps he was finally getting a handle on the coordination thing.

  Enoch set off down an aisle. He felt a twinge of sadness connected with his love of colorful dinosaurs, for it had been Jeremy’s mum who had first introduced him to them.

  “Enoch!” Jeremy called from the front of the store. “Bloody hell! I thought I told you to stay with the cart.”

  A nasty smiled crept across Enoch’s baby features, as he toddled all the faster down the aisle and turned the corner. This would serve Jeremy right for bothering him when he was so deep in thought.

  Enoch ran along the wall at the far back of the store, past rows of seasonal supplies—grills, garden hoses, lawn furniture, outdoor paint. He searched for that elusive purple dinosaur.

  And then he saw them ahead of him, against the back wall. They were of varying sizes, some leaning against the racks, some hanging from large hooks.

  He froze at the sight of them, as if each of his small, boot-covered feet weighed two hundred pounds.

  He stood and stared . . . and remembered.

  Enoch was the amalgamation of all that the Lord God was proud of: a mixture of supreme divinity, the angelic, and the human.

  He was the Metatron, the physical manifestation of the power and the glory of Heaven on earth.

  And Enoch remembered that there was a special place where the Metatron could communicate with his Holy Father.

  A place where Heaven and earth touched—connected by the image of a ladder.

  Enoch was staring at ladders: wooden ladders, metal ladders, ladders stacked on the floor and hanging from shelves.

  He remembered.

  And he began to scream.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Things became a little foggy when Vilma left Levi to return to Aaron’s bedside.

  She’d been trying to piece together everything she had learned from Levi, along with what she already knew. It was just too overwhelming.

  She barely recalled getting into the elevator, never mind what button she’d pushed. But when the elevator came to a jarring stop and the doors slid open on the lowest level, she was certain she had pressed the wrong number.

  Vilma.

  At first the voice was so soft, she thought she’d imagined it—until she felt the tickle of a whisper in her ear.

  Vilma.

  The voice drew her into the deserted corridor.

  Vilma.

  She tried to follow the sound. It seemed to originate from one of the grilled vents in the upper part of the wall.

  Vilma.

  The voice called to her as it moved to another ventilation grill farther down the corridor. She was compelled to follow, expecting an Unforgiven sentry to stop her at any moment. But they were nowhere to be found.

  Vilma.

  The voice led her close to where she’d been mere hours before. Only this time, she passed the observation booth and headed directly toward an old missile silo.

  To the place where A’Dorial was kept.

  She easily opened the security doors, entering the huge concrete launching tube that had once held a nuclear missile but now held a sickly angel of Heaven. The walls had been singed black from the heat radiated from his body as he strove to maintain a connection with Heaven.

  Vilma.

  She found him, not as she’d seen him last—unconscious—but sitting up, his eyes strangely alive.

  A’Dorial had been waiting for her.

  “Vilma,” he said again, his mouth barely moving.

  Slowly, she approached the angel. “You called me here?”

  He continued to stare, his gaze unblinking. “Yes.”

  “Where is everyone?” she asked him.

  “Elsewhere,” the angel whispered.

  “Did you have something to do with that?”

  A’Dorial just stared.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she nervously answered her own question. “Why do you need me?”

  The angel still did not blink, as his black eyes bored into hers.

  Cautiously, she moved a little closer. “Well, what is it? Why have you summoned me here?”

  The air around the angel’s body started to shimmer, and Vilma felt the temperature in the room begin to rise. The heat from A’Dorial’s body was intense, and she was beginning to wonder if she should leave, when—

  “You have always been His hope,” A’Dorial said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “His?” she asked. “Do you mean . . .”

  Her eyes darted upward, heavenward, and the ancient angel nodded ever so slightly.

  “I’m not sure how hopeful He can be now,” Vilma said sadly, her skin prickling with sweat. Standing near A’Dorial was like standing near an open oven. “We haven’t done the best job protecting His world.”

  “Birth throes . . . ,” A’Dorial said. “Birth throes of a new world.”

  Vilma tried to understand. “This world?” she asked him. “Birth throes connected to this world?”

  “Perhaps it will live, but perhaps it will not. . . .”

  Despite the intensifying heat, a chill ran down Vilma’s spine. “Are you saying—is God saying—that these changes, these birth throes might kill the world?”

  A’Dorial was silent.

  “What does this have to do with me?” Vilma asked, on the verge of panic, wishing yet again that Aaron was awake to deal with this. “What are you trying to tell me? Is there something that I—”

  The angel sprang up from where he sat; the wires attached to his body broke loose, and shrill alarms began to sound.

  A’Dorial threw his thin arms around her and pulled her tight to his blazing body. She struggled to keep her mind clear as her flesh began to blister.

  She had no choice. Calling forth her Nephilim visage, Vilma unfurled her wings and released her inner fire. The heat of her body merged with A’Dorial’s, and within moments, the two were surrounded by a divine fire that threatened to engulf the space.

  “He wants you to fight for Him,” the angel whispered in her ear. “For the sake of the world . . . for the kingdom of Heaven . . .”

  The words left Vilma’s mouth purely on instinct. “We will,” she promised, though she had no idea how she would accomplish that task.

  She could hear shouting from close by and looked up to see Taylor Corbet in the observation window. Then there came a whine and buzz from a nearby speaker, and Taylor spoke to her, anger in her tone.

  “Vilma, what’s going on?”

  As Vilma began to reply, she felt A’Dorial’s body go limp. His arms fell away from her, and he slid to the floor. Flames swirled around them.

  “We have to get in there,” she heard Taylor yell through the speaker.

  But Vilma knew it was too late.

  The heat from his form cooled immediately, and she drew back her own fire as she knelt beside the silent angel.

  Unforgiven angels spilled in through the door.

  “I think he’s dead,” Vilma cried as they pulled her away from him. She didn’t
want to leave him, but she knew there was nothing more she could do as the Unforgiven began to minister to him.

  She watched for a moment, then turned to join Taylor and Levi, who stood in the corridor outside.

  “He called me here,” Vilma said, wanting to explain.

  “It’s all right, Vilma,” Taylor said. She looked back to Levi. “When are they leaving?”

  “As soon as we check the coordinates against the maps,” Levi responded.

  “What is going on?” Vilma asked.

  The Unforgiven leader turned and strode away without a word, as Taylor focused her attention on Vilma.

  “I don’t know what was going on in there between you and A’Dorial, but he transmitted some important data to us before . . .” Her voice trailed off as her gaze moved to something behind Vilma.

  She turned to see that the Unforgiven angels had ceased their ministrations and were now staring helplessly at the still form of A’Dorial.

  “What kind of data?” Vilma finally asked, looking away from the sad sight.

  “A location,” Taylor replied. “We think we’ve found the child.”

  * * *

  Cameron figured that there must have been something coating Janice’s claws to numb his body, as if he’d been dipped in near-freezing water.

  She sat astride him, her claws ready to slash open his throat.

  But all he could do was watch.

  He tried to thrash his body in a last-ditch effort to avoid the swipe of her claws, but he couldn’t move.

  She laughed at his pathetic struggle.

  Cameron braced himself. Maybe if the pain was severe enough, his adrenaline would surge and he could shrug off the numbness and fight back a little. . . .

  Before she finished him for good.

  Cameron watched her claws begin their descent. They reminded him of black metal knives. He wondered if they were like the weapons the Nephilim made of divine fire.

  The stupid crap you think of when you’re about to die.

  Then something struck Janice, something moving incredibly fast that knocked her off him before she could do the deed. It was just the break he needed. He struggled to his feet, the effort taking far more than he could even imagine.

  And couldn’t believe his eyes.