Or at least those brave—stupid—enough to face him.
Verchiel was covered in the foul, stinking blood of his foes. He let the fire of the divine that coursed through his veins rise to the surface, heating his body and armor, baking the blood so it would flake to the ground.
He then turned, swords still in hand, to see if any more would challenge him. He hoped some would, but saw a small contingent of monsters huddled together. They immediately dropped their weapons and bowed in subservience.
Verchiel looked to the goblin, Ergo, standing with the other beasts that had decided they did not want to die—an army of foul creatures that now followed him.
What am I doing?
He thought of the three hags, and how they’d sought to entice him with an offer to serve the mysterious Architects.
Beings who supposedly had foreseen these dark times . . . who had helped make them happen.
Verchiel looked up at the cloud-filled sky, and then down at the corpses at his feet. The earth had become a Godless place, and he would do everything in his power to see it returned to its former glory.
What was he doing? He was forming an army.
Fighting fire with fire.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
She made him take his shirt off.
Cameron’s body was bruised and scratched, but he had no major injuries.
“Hold still,” Melissa ordered. She found a relatively clean rag and some bottled water. “Let me clean these up, just in case.”
She got in close to him, dabbing at his wounds.
“How did you find me?” Cameron asked her.
Melissa stopped what she was doing to seriously consider the question. “I really don’t know,” she said. “It was like I suddenly knew you were in trouble, and where you were.”
“Well, however you got here, I’m glad you did.” He smiled at her, and she could not help but smile back.
“Yeah, me too,” Melissa replied, returning to cleaning his cuts. She could see that he was already starting to heal. “That should do it,” she said, setting the rag and bottle of water on the counter. “So, this was your safe place?” she asked, eyes darting around the log cabin.
“It was until . . . ,” Cameron began. He’d grabbed a cleaner shirt from a pile in the corner, smelled it, and proceeded to put it on.
He looked as though he had more to say, so Melissa waited.
“That was Janice we were fighting,” he finally said.
Melissa shook her head.
“No,” she said emphatically. “Janice is dead. That thing just looked like her.”
“You said that you were inside her . . . its head. If it wasn’t Janice, what was it?”
Melissa was suddenly very cold. She wasn’t sure if it was the temperature in the drafty cabin, or a connection to the memory of what she had seen.
“It’s something wearing Janice’s body,” Melissa tried to explain. “Everything that made Janice a caring, loving person was gone—and something horrible, dark, and twisted has been put inside her body.”
“But it knew me . . . us,” Cameron said.
“Yeah,” Melissa answered. “I think it’s using Janice’s memories.”
“I think the same thing may have happened to the others,” Cameron said haltingly. “The others who died.”
“Yeah,” Melissa confirmed, remembering her strange dream, suddenly feeling much colder.
Neither of them said anything more, really not sure how to respond to the idea that their departed friends had been resurrected as monsters. Silence seemed the most appropriate response.
Leaning up against the counter, Melissa noticed an old box sitting on the table. Just the sight of it made the flesh on the back of her neck tingle. “What’s that?”
“Something that my father left for me to find. I didn’t remember any of it until I came here,” Cameron said, pulling the box closer. “It was like this place was the trigger to release the memory.”
Melissa moved to the table and peered inside the box at his father’s journal.
“Have you read that yet?” she asked.
“Some,” Cameron answered. “He talks about a place where something very important is hidden . . . something that the Architects hid.”
Melissa couldn’t help herself; she reached into the box. There was something at the very bottom, a liner of some sort.
But one of the corners had peeled up, and on the other side, she saw some writing. As if compelled, she emptied the contents of the box.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Cam asked, annoyed.
She was so engrossed, she didn’t answer. Melissa slowly peeled back the edges of the lining, careful so as not to tear it.
“What is it?” Cameron asked, reaching for it.
Melissa pulled away, claiming the discovery as her own. “I’m not sure, but there’s writing on it.”
She moved the wooden box and laid the paper on the table, gently smoothing the ancient parchment. Her eyes widened. There was writing on it, and so much more.
“It’s a map.”
“To what?” Cameron leaned in closer.
The writing was not a human language; it was angelic script, but Melissa could still read it.
“You said that your father wrote about something important,” she said, growing excited. “Something that the Architects had hidden.”
As Melissa looked at Cameron, she could see a similar spark in his eyes.
“What if it’s something that can help us, something that could restore the world to the way it was?”
“I think this”—she laid her fingertips on the surface of the map—“can take us to it.”
* * *
The glowing green yetis dragged Mallus and Tarshish by their feet through the seemingly endless passages within the shell of the fallen Metatron.
“You awake?” Tarshish asked.
“Yeah, I’m awake,” Mallus replied to the beaten and bloody Malakim. “You don’t look so good.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” Tarshish said, the back of his head bumping along the uneven ground. “I just need to hang on for a little while longer.”
“Just a little while?”
“We’re almost there.” A sad smile appeared on Tarshish’s bloody face. “A chance to make things right. Well, as right as they can be now. The rest will be up to you.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mallus asked, suspicion in his tone.
“Just don’t screw it up.”
And that was when Mallus felt it: The angelic sigils tattooed on his body, which had served him well throughout the centuries, warning him of danger, began to tingle.
Warning him of the presence of an incredible, supernatural power.
Mallus felt his legs drop unceremoniously to the floor, and then the yetis’ clawed hands were hauling him roughly to his feet. Tarshish was receiving the same treatment.
Mallus winced at the sight of the Malakim, his body so emaciated, and covered with cuts and bruises. He hoped that the angelic magick user could hold on long enough for them to finish their task.
Three heavily robed and hooded shapes emerged from the darkness.
“Are these the ones?” came a screeching voice from behind one of the hoods.
“How is this possible?” asked another. “Only a being of great power could have . . .” Her voice trailed off as if sensing something.
“A being of great power,” repeated the third, leaving her Sisters to draw closer to Mallus and Tarshish.
The hooded figure stopped before the two angels, studying them, then turned her focus to Tarshish. Mallus squirmed, but the yetis held him fast.
“Careful, Sister!” warned one of the two who hung back.
“Something isn’t right with that one,” said the other.
The Sister reached a spindly-fingered hand out from the sleeve of her robe, touching the center of Tarshish’s bare chest, then quickly pulled it away.
“There is something about you,” she sa
id, curiosity evident in her horrible voice. “Something . . . familiar.”
Tarshish laughed weakly. “Didn’t think you’d recognize me in this condition,” he said.
The other two Sisters moved a little closer.
“She is right, there is something strangely familiar,” verified one.
“But I do not know why,” added the other.
They huddled around the Malakim, his mystery drawing them nearer.
Mallus watched, not sure what Tarshish had planned.
“Looked a lot different way back when,” the Malakim began to explain. “But then again, so did the power inside the three of you.”
The Sisters recoiled with a gasp.
“It was pure then,” Tarshish continued. “Radiant with the splendor of the Creator.”
The Sisters of Umbra backed away from the mysterious stranger.
“You want to know why I seem familiar to you ladies?” Tarshish asked them. “I helped to place that power inside you.”
“Blasphemy!” screeched one of the three.
“Lies!” cried another.
“He speaks the truth,” admitted the third.
Tarshish nodded. “You see it now. Although I am nothing compared to what I was.”
His frail body started to smolder, and then to glow.
“All right, Tarshish,” Mallus said, struggling with his captors. “Time to let me in on the plan.”
Tarshish ignored him, as his human flesh burned away to reveal something composed of pure energy, which leaked into the air, forming a humming cloud that swirled above the Malakim’s head.
The Sisters had joined hands, their own magick emerging from their hooded forms.
“I was truly something back then, but so filled with arrogance that I couldn’t see the big picture.”
The Sisters extended their arms as one, casting a spell that screamed as it flew toward the Malakim.
“Do you get it now, Sisters?” Tarshish asked as he tossed off his yeti captors. His energy flowed to engulf their spell and consume it. “I—we killed the Metatron. We set God’s power, which ended up in your possession, free.”
There was an explosion of force, light, and sound from Tarshish’s body, and Mallus and his yeti captors were thrown back violently.
The Sisters of Umbra attempted to escape, but Tarshish would not have any of that.
The Malakim’s human form was gone now. Tendrils of humming, divine energy reached out, ensnaring the three. The Sisters struggled in the Malakim’s grasp, defenses of their own erupting from their ancient bodies.
Mallus managed to crawl over the wounded bodies of his primitive captors to make his way toward the struggle. There had to be something he could do to help Tarshish.
An awesome sight was suddenly before him, and Mallus threw his hands up to protect his vision. Through squinting eyes and splayed fingers, the fallen angel watched as the two conflicting powers battled, the light consuming the darkness, only to have the darkness expand outward to destroy the light from within.
For an instant, Mallus saw the Sisters emerge from within their shroud of protection. He saw the opportunity and took it. Removing from his pocket a knife that he had acquired from one of the Architects’ Agents, who had tried unsuccessfully to kill him, Mallus stared into the miasma, imagining where his foes were, and threw the knife with every ounce of strength available to him.
At first Mallus believed that he had failed to hit his target, but then there came the most horrible cry. The maelstrom of light and darkness parted with a rush of air to reveal their opponents. Tarshish’s barely recognizable form floated back and away, as two of the Sisters hovered over the fallen form of the third—the hilt of the Agent’s knife protruding from the front of her robe.
“Sister!” one screamed, as she dropped to kneel beside her.
The other did the same, reaching out to scoop the limp body into her arms. “You will be well,” she said.
“That’s what I was waiting for,” came a familiar voice from somewhere within the writhing mass of divine energy that was Tarshish. “Now don’t screw it up,” the voice told him.
Before Mallus could question the statement, a wall of energy propelled itself at the Sisters, engulfing them within its embrace. Above their plaintive shrieks, a rumble began that shook the enormity of the Metatron’s shell.
The surviving yetis howled in fear, many of them fleeing the chamber, as pieces of the ceiling rained down upon them. The floor beneath his feet bucked wildly, and Mallus dropped to all fours. There then came a searing flash of the whitest light, its purity marred with branching capillaries of darkness, before it collapsed in upon itself with an earsplitting report.
Suddenly, it was silent within the confines of the shell. Mallus rose, his eyes fixed on a sphere containing the power of God floating above the ground, where what remained of the Sisters writhed, their bodies having somehow been fused together in a writhing mass of flesh and limbs.
Mallus darted toward the sphere as a limb reached for it from the heap that used to be the Sisters.
“Give it back!” the twisted thing cried, multiple voices emanating from a cavernous maw in the lump of flesh that had once been three separate heads.
Mallus held the sphere in both hands, feeling the lingering presence of his friend. Tarshish had sacrificed himself to form a shell of supernatural energy that could contain the power of God for transport in order to re-create the Metatron.
“Please,” the voice of the three Sisters begged. Six eyes in a sea of melted skin stared pleadingly at him.
Mallus turned from the misbegotten thing and headed down a passage he believed would lead him to the surface. The Sisters wailed behind him, and Tarshish’s final words echoed in his mind.
Don’t screw it up.
Mallus hoped that he wouldn’t—but couldn’t offer any guarantees.
* * *
Jeremy felt helpless.
He stood in the hardware aisle, watching as Enoch trembled and shook.
“What’s the bloody problem?” he asked, irritation born of frustration in his tone.
All Enoch could do was cry and scream, then cry some more.
Jeremy knew that he had to do something for the child, but what?
He remembered one of the first times he’d tried to comfort the little monster during one of his tantrums. Jeremy had wound up with a tiny foot stuck in his bollocks. It wasn’t the least bit pleasant. He considered leaving the child to work out his problem on his own, but he sensed that he shouldn’t leave the boy alone.
“Enoch,” he said again. The toddler had curled his body into a tight ball, and for a moment, Jeremy thought that he might’ve fallen asleep.
Squatting down, he reached out to touch him. Enoch let out an ear-piercing shriek, his entire body going rigid as a plank. The child continued carrying on, and Jeremy began to panic.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he urged. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
Enoch writhed on the department store floor, his face scarlet from his continued outburst.
And that was when Jeremy noticed that the baby looked bigger.
At first he just believed it to be a trick of the light and shadows, but as he looked more carefully, he saw that he was right. Enoch’s clothes had become too small, the sleeves of his heavy sweater hiked halfway up his arm, his bare legs exposed below the cuffs of his heavy pants.
“Bloody hell, you’re growing!” Jeremy exclaimed.
A noise from somewhere in the store captured his attention over Enoch’s commotion.
“We have to go,” Jeremy said, reaching out to touch the child.
Enoch yelled as if he was being murdered, and Jeremy quickly withdrew his hand. The child continued to moan and grow larger before Jeremy’s eyes. He wished he had more of a chance to marvel at the transformation, but he heard more noise and knew they were no longer alone in the store.
Jeremy grabbed the child and started to run toward the shopping cart and their th
ings. Enoch wailed.
“Quiet,” Jeremy hissed. It’s like trying to hold on to a greased pig, he thought as he reached the cart at the end of the aisle where he’d left it.
He unceremoniously dropped the toddler into the cart and began to stuff the supplies he’d collected into his backpack.
Jeremy realized that the boy had gone silent.
“Better?” he asked, arranging the items in the pack so that he could fit more.
Enoch was staring behind him, and Jeremy turned to see four shapes emerging from the darkness. Four masked killers like the others who’d been hunting them . . . like the one who’d killed his mother.
Enoch looked at Jeremy with fear in his tear-filled eyes.
“I’ve got this,” Jeremy said, calling upon a sword of fire as he faced his enemies. More masked figures poured from the shadows behind the first, and Jeremy had a change of heart.
“On second thought,” he said, shrugging his shoulder to release his wings.
Jeremy reached into the cart to haul Enoch out and transport them both away, when he felt a sudden sting. A puff of feathers suddenly filled the air, and an excruciating pain raced down the Nephilim’s back.
Something had injured his wing. He dropped Enoch back into the cart.
The killers stalked carefully closer, the glint of knives in their hands.
Jeremy had no choice. “Hold on,” he told Enoch, grabbing the handle of the shopping cart and spinning it away from their would-be attackers. The pain in his wing was incredible, but he tried to focus. Legs pumping with all his might, Jeremy propelled them to the front of the store.
More hunters emerged from the concealment of nooks and crannies around them.
“I did this,” Enoch said. “I allowed them to find us.”
“Shut it,” Jeremy ordered, evading an attacker who sprang from the toy department, his knife slashing.
With one hand, Jeremy tossed a ball of divine fire into the face of his foe.
The killer sank to his knees, clawing at his face, which had become a raging inferno.
Jeremy was running with the cart again, taking a sharp left corner and smashing into two more attackers. They fell back in a tumble but quickly recovered, springing to their feet, brandishing their knives.