* * *
Aaron suddenly realized he’d been staring at the pulsing, geometric shapes on his computer screen.
Well, that’s time well spent, he thought, rubbing his burning eyes.
He tapped his keyboard, and the screen saver vanished. He hadn’t quite finished the Saint Athanasius School’s income tax preparations, but better to finish it in the morning, rather than risk a mistake.
He saved his file, then noticed the time at the bottom of his screen.
8:36 p.m.
“Shit.” He had no idea it had gotten so late. He thought of calling Vilma, but decided it would be better to just head home. He didn’t want to waste any more time when he could be on the road.
He pushed back his chair, reached beneath his desk for his satchel, and stood. No one else was burning the proverbial midnight oil at Mallus, CPA, except for a cleaning crew. The sound of a vacuum cleaner could be heard coming from an office down the hall.
Aaron headed for the elevator, wondering if Jeremy would still be awake when he got home. Their four-year-old son had been having some difficulties sleeping: recurrent dreams about goblins, trolls, and an armored, winged giant with a huge, vibrating sword.
Aaron smirked. Jeremy was his kid, all right—what an imagination.
The elevator doors parted and he stepped into the empty cab, beginning his descent to the garage.
Aaron was exhausted. He had started working for Mallus, CPA, five years ago, after getting his business and accounting degree from Northeastern University. It was pretty much the job he’d hoped for: decent pay, providing an adequate life for his wife and child, even allowing for a small savings toward the house they wanted to purchase.
He was lucky.
No, he corrected himself. Not lucky. He’d busted his ass for the life he had—the only luck he’d had was in meeting Vilma.
Aaron’s heart fluttered and flipped whenever he thought about his wife. He still had no clue as to why she’d ever agreed to go out with him, let alone marry him. That was luck.
The elevator reached the basement and shuddered. The doors began to part, then stopped. What the hell? Aaron thought. He tried to push them apart.
Peering out to what should have been the well-lighted parking garage, all he saw was darkness.
Total darkness.
Aaron stepped back, unnerved.
He wondered if there had been a power outage, but the elevator’s lights were still on. And there should have been emergency lights above the rows of cars.
He grasped the doors once more and, grunting with exertion, shoved them apart. Standing in the doorway, he couldn’t make out anything, not even the shapes of the cars that should have been parked there, no matter how hard he strained his eyes. He pulled his car keys from his satchel and hit the button to start his car, watching for the flash of lights and listening for the sound of the motor.
Nothing.
Aaron hit the button again. Nothing. There was nothing out there.
How is that possible?
He double-checked the panel inside the elevator. PG was lit. He should have been in the parking garage.
But he wasn’t.
Part of him was tempted to go stumbling off into the darkness, but there was another part that warned him to be careful.
Something wasn’t right.
Aaron hit the button to close the doors. He’d exit through the lobby and let security know there was an issue on the lower level.
The elevator reached the first floor with a ping. The cab shuddered. The doors parted.
Total darkness.
Impossible!
Aaron poked his foot out of the elevator. The ground was solid. He reached out in front of him, hands searching for the wall, but finding empty space.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked aloud. “Hello?” he called out. “Anybody here? What’s going on?”
His questions were met with an eerie silence. There was absolutely no sound. No buses, no cars, no noise filtering through the lobby from the busy Boston street outside.
Aaron suddenly experienced an excruciating pain in his stomach. He doubled over at its intensity.
Great, he thought, breathing rapidly through his nose in hopes of lessoning the agony. I’m having a medical emergency in the middle of a blackout.
As the pain began to subside, he reviewed what he’d eaten that day. Vilma’s salad was super healthy; surely it wouldn’t make him feel so terrible.
He turned back toward the elevator, and the doors closed. The darkness wrapped around him.
“Shit,” he muttered, the all-encompassing black starting to make him feel a little bit dizzy and unsteady on his feet.
Again he took a deep, calming breath, trying to get a handle on the increasingly bizarre situation. He fished through his bag for his cell phone. He stared at its illuminated face, finding some comfort in its glow; then he hit the speed dial for home.
The call didn’t go through.
He tried three more times without success and was tempted to throw the phone away, but managed to keep himself together.
Aaron used the light from his phone to try and see around the building lobby. The light only went so far before it was eaten up by the inky blackness. A chill ran up and down his spine.
Where there should have been marble tile, there was only shadow.
“I’m close to freaking out here,” Aaron said aloud just to break the silence.
And then he saw a light, so faint that it must have been very far in the distance, but who could tell in this dark void?
“Hello?” he called, walking toward the pulsating beam. It almost looked like a flame, but what would be burning inside a Boston office building, and wouldn’t there be smoke?
Aaron stopped. The lobby wasn’t that big. Surely he should have hit a wall or a doorway by now.
“Hey!” he called out again, remaining perfectly still, eyes riveted to the light, which now seemed to be slowly—oh so slowly—moving toward him.
But the closer it got, the more it seemed that his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Two human shapes were making their way toward him.
But why does it look as though they’re on fire?
Aaron suddenly had the urge to run. But his legs wouldn’t move.
The figures walking toward him were burning.
Their clothes were charred, their exposed flesh melting like candle wax.
This is a nightmare. I need to wake up.
The figures were close enough now that Aaron could smell the awful aroma of their burning clothes and hair—
And he recognized their faces.
“Dad? Mom?” He started toward his foster parents but recoiled at the heat from their bodies.
“Tom . . . Lori, what’s happening?” Aaron began to panic.
A sharp pain shot through his stomach once more. He cried out, dropping heavily to his knees. Was the pain somehow causing him to hallucinate?
His parents edged closer. The heat thrown from them was incredible.
“Please,” he begged, looking up at their horrible, burning faces. “What’s happening?”
“Take my hand,” his father said. His voice sounded hoarse, choked with smoke.
The pain in Aaron’s stomach intensified.
“Is this . . . is this a dream?” he struggled to ask.
His mother and father exchanged a glance, then looked back to him.
“It is a dream,” his mother confirmed, her voice even more frightening than his father’s. “This perfect life you’ve built here is a dream.”
“Perfect life?” he asked, not understanding at all. “What do you . . . ?”
Aaron was ready to cry, the agony in his belly so bad that he could barely stand it.
“We’ve come to guide you,” his father said, smoke billowing from his mouth.
“Guide me? Guide me where?” Aaron wanted to know.
“Either back to life, or . . .” His mother bent down to take him
into her fiery embrace.
“Death.”
* * *
Vilma felt as though she’d been descending the stairs for days. She’d encountered many locked doors, and floors that hadn’t likely seen any activity since the installation had been abandoned.
On what appeared to be the lowest level, she found evidence of life; lights shone brightly through a thick glass window in a heavy metal door. Vilma peered through the glass at the shadows on the other side.
She pounded on the locked door. She needed to get somebody’s attention so she could get back to Aaron.
What if he was taking a turn for the worse?
Pushing that disturbing thought aside, she pounded on the door some more.
“Hey! It’s me, Vilma. Please—it’s Aaron, he needs help!”
She waited for somebody to answer the door, but nobody came. Her frustration grew.
“Is Taylor in there? Hey! It’s Aaron! Something’s wrong!”
Shadows moved on the other side of the thick glass, but still there was no response.
“Hey!” she screamed, giving another powerful bang.
Nothing.
Anger flowed through her body as if liquid fire was being pumped into her veins. Vilma could hold back no longer. Stepping away from the door, she dropped her right hand to her side and imagined the weapon she’d need to break inside.
The sword was huge—a scimitar.
Vilma raised the flaming weapon with both hands and, with a scream of frustration, brought it down against the metal in an explosion of sound and fire.
The door melted, exposing a long hallway.
As Vilma withdrew her sword, multiple Unforgiven angels appeared, wings unfurled and weapons in hand.
“I don’t care to be ignored,” Vilma said, stepping through the opening, careful not to burn herself on the molten metal. “Especially not when the health of Aaron is concerned.”
The Unforgiven looked as though they didn’t know how to react.
Then Taylor Corbet appeared. “What the hell is going on?” she snapped at the Unforgiven. Her gaze traveled the hallway to the remains of the door. “Vilma?”
“Something’s wrong with Aaron,” Vilma said with irritation. “I was knocking, and nobody paid any attention, so I . . .”
Taylor looked to one of the Unforgiven. “Is he all right?”
The angel reached inside his coat and removed a square electronic device. “He’s in an unusually heavy REM state, but otherwise appears to be fine.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Aaron,” Taylor said, turning to leave. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”
Vilma felt it in the air. Something unnatural caused the muscles in her back to tingle. Her wings were poised to emerge.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Nothing of your concern,” Taylor replied. “Return to Aaron.”
“I can feel it,” Vilma said. “There’s some kind of disturbance here.”
Taylor looked at the Unforgiven, and then back to Vilma.
“You can feel something?”
Vilma nodded.
Taylor stared at her for a moment, then motioned her down the hall.
Vilma followed, willing her sword away so she wouldn’t accidentally burn anything. Around the corner, Taylor pushed open a set of double doors that led into a large room filled with complicated-looking pieces of machinery and multiple viewing screens.
Taylor stopped behind an Unforgiven who was seated in front of one of the screens.
“How’s he doing?”
“All his vitals are being taxed at the maximum levels,” the Unforgiven said.
From what Vilma could make out, they were watching an extremely thin man, who knelt inside another, rounded room. Wires trailed from his body into instrument panels hung upon the concave walls.
“Who’s that?” Vilma asked. She couldn’t take her eyes from the man on the screen.
As if at the sound of her voice, the man turned his gaze upward and raised his long, skinny arms to beckon to someone, or something.
“The angel’s name is A’Dorial,” Taylor said. “It was once his purpose to maintain the world’s connection to Heaven.”
“But that connection was broken,” Vilma said, looking away from the angel, who slowly stood. “The Abomination of Desolation cut the earth’s connection—didn’t it?”
“The connection was severed,” Aaron’s mother confirmed. “But somehow . . .”
Vilma stared as A’Dorial’s body exuded an unearthly light.
“He’s . . . he’s still maintaining a connection, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Taylor answered. “As small as it is, he’s somehow managed to keep the most fragile of links open.”
A’Dorial’s body suddenly dimmed, and he collapsed on the floor.
“Get in there,” Taylor commanded the Unforgiven who had gathered behind them. “Take care of him before his body temperature gets any higher.”
The Unforgiven swarmed from the room, some carrying strange mechanical devices. Vilma could only imagine their purpose.
“What’s wrong with him?” Vilma asked.
“He is straining to keep that link open. It’s killing him.”
“And if he should die?” Vilma asked, fearing the answer.
“Then our final connection to Heaven will be severed,” Taylor said, appearing to grow quite nervous. “And I guess we would truly be on our own.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lorelei died looking into the face of evil.
At first she had believed it was her friend and mentor Lucifer Morningstar, but just as his blade plunged into her body, she knew that it wasn’t him at all. It was someone—something—else. Pure evil had somehow stolen his form.
And that just pissed her off.
She wished that she’d had the ability to react, but as her life slipped away, she had been too damn weak to do anything but die.
Lorelei felt bad leaving behind her Nephilim friends to deal with the darkness that had befallen the world, but what could she do? She was dead, and that was that.
As she understood it, once one died, the energy that comprised the life force—the soul—was released back into the universe, where it would live on in the perpetual cycle of creation, in one form or another.
So why am I still around? she wondered. Why am I still able to think as me . . . as Lorelei?
For a moment, she panicked.
Oh crap, am I a ghost?
The idea scared her. Unless she was the kind of ghost that could actually help her friends. That would be all right, she imagined.
Lorelei was aware of herself, and what had happened to her, but her current reality was a question.
Maybe this was all part of the process.
Or not.
Where was she anyway?
She didn’t seem to have a body anymore, but . . .
It was as if she’d had her eyes closed, and suddenly they were open.
She could see blurry shapes standing before her. They—whoever they were—seemed to be watching her.
She tried to speak. If she could see, perhaps she had a voice, too.
Hello? Who’s there? What’s happening to me?
The sound wasn’t sound at all, but a kind of mental projection. She was speaking with her mind.
The silhouettes stood clumped together behind a large gate of some kind, the shape of what looked to be a great city barely visible in the distance.
Lorelei suddenly felt fear. Whatever was happening to her was unlike anything she’d ever experienced or read about.
The figures gradually began to fade.
What’s happening? she asked, not really expecting an answer.
But there was an answer nonetheless. One of the silhouettes broke away from the group to approach her. It moved as if in slow motion. And then it spoke to her in a voice that she knew, and loved.
We don’t have much time.
Dad? Dad, is that you?
Her
father, the fallen angel Lehash, had been forgiven his sins through Aaron’s redeeming powers, allowing him to return to the paradise of Heaven.
Lorelei had missed him more than life itself, but now that she was dead . . .
It is, darlin’, Lehash said.
A wave of intense emotion flooded her at the sound of his Southern drawl.
But we ain’t got much time.
What is it, Dad? What’s going on? Where am I and what—
Listen to me. You’ve got to help them.
Who? I’m dead . . . aren’t I?
Yes, you’re dead. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of the runnin’.
She felt herself suddenly begin to shake, the silhouette of her father becoming more blurred.
Dad?
Listen to me good, Lorelei; you’ve got to help ’em in any way you can.
Who, Dad? Who am I supposed to help?
Your friends. The Nephilim. You gotta help ’em.
What? Lorelei was frantic to understand. How can I help them if . . .
It’s too late. Her father’s voice dropped in and out. The link ain’t strong enough.
Dad! she cried out. Please tell me what you can!
Guide them to the place, Lorelei, Lehash said, his voice becoming fainter by the second. They’re the last chance we have. Lead them . . .
Dad! Her sight faded to black.
Lead them to the Ladder, were the last words she heard her father say.
* * *
The next thing she knew, Lorelei was standing, completely naked, in a pile of ash and what looked to be bones.
She looked around her. She appeared to be on the grounds of the Saint Athanasius School. The sky was gray and dismal, but she felt no cold—even though she wasn’t wearing clothing. Raising a hand, she scrutinized it. The skin appeared pale, and slightly translucent.
She could see the school through her hand.
What’s happening? Take it easy, Lorelei, she told herself. Deep breaths.
And then she began to laugh. “Ghosts don’t breathe,” she said, fighting the urge to cry. “Ghosts can’t do much of anything.”
Her resolve started to crumble. She couldn’t feel the ground beneath her feet, either. Panic crept over her as she focused on the pile of blackened ash and yellowed bone fragments that she was standing on.
Why am I here?
Slowly it dawned on her: She was standing on her remains. Her body had been burned after she had died.