Aaron held out his arm and thought hard about the markings. The bare flesh began to smolder ever so slightly as the archaic shapes rose to the surface. He remembered Scholar making sketches of them at Belphegor’s urgings on that first day in Aerie. Now he examined them in the flesh. “Okay, so what do they mean?” he asked.
“They are special symbols representing the names of the elite soldiers that swore their allegiance to your father and his cause,” Scholar explained as he traced the shapes on Aaron’s arm with the tip of his index finger. “Soldiers that died during the battle in Heaven.”
Suddenly it all made sense to Aaron as he recalled the bizarre inner journey he had made with the assistance of Belphegor and a poisoned cup of tea. Within his mind, he had seen the consummation of the power that resided within him, represented by the most magnificent of angels as he bestowed his gift upon his gathered troops.
“I … I saw this,” he stammered, looking into Scholar’s intense eyes. “I saw Lucifer…. I saw my father….”
Scholar nodded slowly, encouraging him to accept the truth. “Before the fighting began, the Morningstar gave each of his soldiers a special mark to show how important they were to him. It was with a piece of himself that he adorned them—a piece of his power.”
Feeling suddenly weak, Aaron let go of the symbols and allowed them to fade from his flesh. “But why do I have them?” he asked, sitting down on the floor as his head swam with dizziness. “Why are they on my skin?”
Scholar turned away. “Belphegor and I were trying to figure that out right before Verchiel attacked,” the scholarly angel said. “We believe that if Lucifer is indeed seeking absolution for his sins, then you represent his apology to God—and to all those who died for his insane cause.”
Overwhelmed, Aaron buried his head in his hands as visions of the most splendorous angelic entity he could ever imagine again filled his mind. “How could anything so beautiful be responsible for so much horror?” he asked.
Scholar stood over him as Aaron sat on the floor, awash in the raw emotion of revelation. “He was afraid that he was no longer loved,” he said softly, gazing off into space.
“As were we all.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Where would we go?” Lorelei asked the angel that she had come to know as her father. The two walked down the center of the street toward the place that they called home. It was a little past noon, and on either side of them the citizens of Aerie were going about their usual business. Some were maintaining small gardens, bringing life up from the toxic soil; others simply sat in old lawn chairs, staring off into space, reflecting on all that had befallen them and what was to come.
Lehash puffed on a cigar, blowing a nasty cloud of smoke from the corner of his mouth. “What, Aerie?” he asked. “Hell if I know. Probably some abandoned wreck of a place like all the others we’ve picked over the millennia.” He took another puff on the cheroot. “I don’t know why we can’t go someplace nice, like Montana, or maybe even Texas,” the gunslinger said, waxing poetic about places he had lived long ago.
“Hasn’t it been a while since you’ve been to either of those places, Dad?” she asked, the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“It’s only been a couple’a hundred years or so,” he commented, his eagle eyes scanning the streets of Aerie for any signs of trouble. “How much could they have changed?”
Lorelei couldn’t help herself and laughed out loud. As far as Lehash was concerned, mail was still being delivered by Pony Express, and Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch were still robbing banks and escaping on horseback. Lorelei shook her head. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the changes beings like her father had seen on Earth since their exile after Heaven’s war.
“I don’t want to leave here,” she proclaimed, any trace of humor now gone from her voice. She motioned toward the others around them. “And I’m sure that they share my feelings as well.”
The constable scratched the side of his face with his finger; it sounded as if it were made of sandpaper. “It ain’t the side of an active volcano or the hull of a sunken ship, but it’s served its purpose.” Lehash looked about the desolate and forgotten neighborhood that was his responsibility to protect. “But if the boy manages to pull it all together, we won’t be needin’ to worry about whether we’re gonna be stayin’ here or not.”
It seemed odd to hear her father talk of such things. For years Lehash’s only concern had been the protection of Aerie and its people, no matter the location. Aerie was his life and his world; there was no other place for him. Heaven was something he’d given up on a long, long time ago, but that was before Aaron Corbet. The Nephilim had made him believe that the prophecy was true, that there was a chance the fallen would be forgiven, that he would be forgiven.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, bumping her shoulder against his. “You go off to Heaven, and we’ll get along just fine without you.”
The prophecy was vague about the fate of the Nephilim, only hinting at a special purpose for them upon the world of God’s man. Lorelei felt a strange combination of fear and excitement when she thought of her own future, knowing full well that there was much to be dealt with in the present, before that long, unknown road could be traveled.
They had reached their house and were casually walking down the concrete path that led to the front door.
“I’m going to make myself a quick bite and check on Vilma. Do you want a cup of coffee or—”
Lehash had suddenly stopped, and he stood at the beginning of the path, eyes squinted as if sensing something in the air.
“Is everything okay?” she asked cautiously, moving a strand of her snow-white hair away from her face. She was beginning to feel something as well.
The door to the house blew off its hinges in an explosion of roiling fire, taking the screen door along with it. Lorelei was blown backward by the force of the blast, her ears ringing as she struggled to get to her feet.
Lehash was already moving in slow motion toward her, weapons of golden fire taking shape in his hands. Then she saw Gabriel bound through the gaping hole where the door used to be, his yellow coat black in spots and smoldering, eyes wild in panic.
“Gabriel!” she screamed as the dog ran toward them.
“Run!” he barked, falling to the ground and rolling to extinguish his burning fur. “There was nothing I could do to stop it,” the Lab cried, panting wildly. “It’s out—it’s taken control of her!”
“Son of a bitch,” Lorelei heard her father mutter beneath his breath, and she looked up at the front of the house.
Vilma Santiago stood there stiffly, a corona of unnatural flame radiating from her body. “Help me,” she hissed as she slowly raised her hands, watching in the grip of terror as the fires of Heaven danced upon her fingertips. She was trying to hold it back, but it had already tasted freedom and clearly wanted more.
Then Vilma’s body went suddenly rigid, her eyes a glistening black, like two shiny marbles floating within a contorted expression of misery. And then that too was gone, and Vilma Santiago was suddenly no longer with them, replaced by something else altogether.
Something wild and dangerous.
* * *
Now that he had the gift of vision, Kraus half expected that his other senses, augmented by a lifetime of blindness, would begin to decline. But that wasn’t the case at all. They were all just as sharp as they had been, perhaps even a bit more so with the addition of sight.
And something else had taken its place among his five senses, another feeling that warned him of dire times to come, a sensation of foreboding had become the sixth of his senses.
The healer moved about them unnoticed, still beneath their regard. He stopped to check the stitches he had sewn into the arm of a Powers soldier that perched atop the ledge of the orphanage roof. Eight others were there as well, staring silently out across western Massachusetts with dark, unwavering gazes.
“Do you feel them, brothers??
?? asked the warrior whose arm Kraus carefully examined, his voice leaden, as if drained of vitality. “Stirring to be born, a bane to our holy cause.”
The angel was talking of Nephilim. How the Powers hated these half-breed progeny, but as of late, they had not been allowed to hunt the accursed offspring of the fallen.
“Our master tells us that there are more important concerns these days, but I, too, feel the threat of the Nephilim on the rise,” said another. “I ask you, what could be more important than the extermination of these abominations?”
Infection had found its way into the angel’s wound and Kraus could smell the pungent aroma of decay.
“Verchiel has ordered us to stand down,” an angel of the flock said, tilting his head strangely to one side as he addressed his brethren. “It is not our place to question.”
“It is not our place to sit and allow the offenders of His will to go unpunished,” another replied.
They all ruffled the feathers of their wings menacingly. Dissension was brewing in the ranks of the Powers, the likes of which Kraus had never perceived. Is this the reason I feel such dread? he wondered. Or is there something more? He thought of the enigmatic Archons and the mysterious prisoner they still held in the abandoned St. Athanasius Orphanage.
Then a shudder passed through the healer as he recalled the moment his new eyes first beheld their master—his master. Kraus felt ashamed, for here was the being that had given his miserable life purpose, given him the gift of sight, and rather than feeling love and gratitude, he experienced only an inexplicable revulsion and fear.
There came a disturbance in the sky above the rooftop, and Kraus watched in wonder as the air began to shimmer like water, growing increasingly darker as Verchiel appeared. The angel leader touched down upon the tar roof, opening his expansive wings to reveal the blind Archon, Katspiel, huddled within their folds. The magick user was bent over, his body twisted with fatigue. Kraus could hear him gasping for air, fluid rattling in his lungs. He was about to go to the Archon, to see if he could help, when Verchiel began to address what remained of his army.
“Rally yourselves, my brethren,” their leader proclaimed, “for I have need of your warrior skills!”
The roosting angels spread their wings and leaped into the air to circle about their master, agitated cries of anticipation issuing from their mouths. The Archon raised his arm, a tremulous hand weaving the fabric of a magickal spell in the air, coalescing like drifting cobwebs to affix to their bodies.
“The last two Malakim have been found,” Verchiel bellowed as the air around them began to distort. “The final fragments of the rite we seek will soon be in our grasp.”
“Know as I know,” Katspiel pronounced, still casting his spell. “See as I see.”
One by one the angels nodded, knowing where they must go to obtain their master’s prize. With nary a question, they wrapped themselves in their wings and were gone. Verchiel was the last to depart, closing his eyes and smiling as his feathered appendages slowly closed about him and the Archon.
“Closer and closer still,” he said, his voice tainted with the thrill of anticipation, and then they, too, were gone.
The sense of foreboding was with Kraus again, stronger than any of the others, and a small part of him longed for the way things used to be, before he was given sight and truly began to see.
Things seemed so much clearer then.
* * *
Aaron sat on the cluttered floor and thumbed through a book of art. The book depicted various interpretations of Heaven and Hell by artists with names like Blake, Doré, and Bosch. He was paying close attention to the artists’ renditions of Hell.
“So let me see if I understand this,” he said, looking up from a particularly disturbing take on the underworld that showed the damned being mauled by demons and eaten by mutant animals in a landscape of mind-boggling chaos, painted by the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch. “According to you, there is no Hell.”
Scholar was in the process of preparing himself yet another cup of tea. Aaron had noticed the many small tables set up throughout the expansive library so the fallen angel could enjoy his hot beverage wherever he happened to be working.
“Let’s try this again, shall we? Hell is not a place, per se,” the angel said, removing the dripping bag from his cup and dropping it onto a plate on the table. “It is more a state of being—an experience, if you will.”
Aaron closed the heavy volume and climbed to his feet to return the book to its shelf. “But there is a Heaven?” he asked, just to be certain.
Scholar intercepted him before he could reach the bookcase, probably worried that the boy would put it back in the wrong place or maybe topple the bookcases. “Of course there is a Heaven,” he answered sharply, exasperated that Aaron could even ask such a question. “Otherwise the whole reason for your conception wouldn’t even exist.” He pointedly returned the art text to its proper place.
Aaron shrugged, leaning back casually against one of the packed shelves. “I thought that one couldn’t exist without the other.”
Scholar returned to his steaming brew, picking up the mug to drink. “Humankind has been fascinated by the concept of an underworld, a Hell, since first leaving the trees—sitting around blazing campfires, speculating about the fate of their souls after death.” He took a sip and closed his eyes, the warm fluid passing over his lips, seeming to bring the high-strung angel a certain amount of calm.
“They wondered what would happen when they were no more, struggling to unravel the vast mysteries of life in a strange and unknowable world. The early humans wove all manner of fantastic tales about underworld deities and perilous journeys to the afterlife. The stories were passed from parent to child by word of mouth, with every generation adding a little of its own spice to the mix. Organized religion fine-tuned these theories into elaborate cause-and-effect scenarios, but it always meant the same: good behavior meant salvation; evil, damnation.”
“So if Hell isn’t a place, what is it really?” Aaron asked.
Scholar chuckled, but there was no amusement in his response as he stared off into space. “If you asked each of us who has fallen, you would likely receive a different answer from each,” he said. “To some, being banished from Heaven was the ultimate damnation.” The angel paused and caught Aaron’s eye before continuing. “But it was your sire, the son of the morning—Lucifer Morningstar—that experienced, and probably still endures, a level of Hell in which all others pale in comparison.”
“It was his punishment,” Aaron stated firmly, “for what he did to Heaven.”
Scholar nodded slowly, and Aaron knew he was reliving the moment God bestowed His punishment upon the angel that was his own father. “All the pain, all the violence that he was responsible for, was collected in one seething mass of misery.” The angel’s face twisted. He held up his empty hand as if clutching a ball of something terrible. “And it was put inside him so that he would forever feel the extent of the suffering he caused.” Scholar touched his chest, acting out Lucifer’s fate. “He was the first of the fallen, and those who had taken up his cause followed him to Earth, sharing in his banishment from Heaven.”
“Where did he go?” Aaron asked. If there is no Hell, where does the Devil live? he wondered, recalling some neighborhoods in his hometown of Lynn that the Devil would have been quite comfortable in.
“Lucifer wandered the globe. Some say he was so bitterly angry with God that he turned to evil, doing everything in his power to corrupt the world of which the Creator was so proud.” Scholar finished what could have been his tenth cup of tea since Aaron arrived and set the used cup down on a tabletop.
“And what do you think?” Aaron asked. “Was he evil or was that just a bad rap that followed him because of what he did in Heaven?”
“If he was a creature of evil,” Scholar began thoughtfully. “If he was the unrepenting scourge that your popular culture suggests, would it have been possible for him to conceive a being who
se sole reason for living is to bring redemption not only for himself, but for all who were tempted by him? I think not.”
“I can see why Verchiel and his Powers aren’t so thrilled with me,” Aaron said as things began to tumble into place in his mind. “If everything goes according to the prophecy, I’ll be responsible for granting forgiveness to the ultimate sinner, one that Verchiel feels should suffer for his crimes for all eternity.”
Scholar nodded in agreement. “Verchiel still believes in his mission, no matter how foul and twisted it has become. He still believes in the ultimate punishment for those who questioned the Word of God.”
The enormity of his responsibility to the fallen angels, to his father, to God Himself, landed upon Aaron’s shoulders like a ton of bricks. He was finally getting used to the idea of reuniting the fallen with God, but to repair a rift between God and the Devil? That was another thing entirely.
“Do you think he deserves to be forgiven?” Aaron asked Scholar.
The fallen angel smiled sadly and shrugged his shoulders. “That’s not for me to decide.”
“But if it was,” Aaron persisted.
“Then yes, I would forgive him,” Scholar said. “If we pathetic creatures can receive absolution, then so should he, for he did only what the others of us were not brave or strong enough to do ourselves.”
Aaron thought for a moment. “Guess I’m going to have to find this Lucifer and see for myself,” he said with a hint of a smile. “But not before I deal with a certain Powers commander.”
He was about to ask Scholar if they had learned anything more about Verchiel’s whereabouts, when from somewhere far off in the room he heard a door thrown violently open and his name being called. Aaron recognized the sound of Lehash’s voice as well as the intensity in it and hurried to find Aerie’s head of security, with a curious Scholar close behind.
Aaron ran around the corner of a wall of bookcases and nearly head-on into the gunslinger. “What’s wrong?” he gasped, not liking the look he saw in Lehash’s eyes.