Aaron could feel the tension between the two and attempted to defuse it.
“Then why wouldn’t Verchiel know about them?” he asked. “He’s been on the earth a good many years. Why wouldn’t he have encountered the Architects?”
Mallus smiled briefly. “Probably because they didn’t want him. To allow him to be aware of them would have interfered with their grand schemes.”
“Which are?” Lorelei asked, leaning heavily upon her cane.
Mallus looked down at the floor, shaking his head ever so slightly. “They didn’t share that with me. They simply expected me to carry out my assigned tasks.
“At first they seemed to be random acts, but when I began to figure into other Agents’ assignments, patterns began to emerge.” Mallus paused, making certain that they all were listening. “The Architects have led the world to this,” he said, gesturing toward the world beyond the infirmary windows. “This is all part of their plan.”
Verchiel scoffed. “Madness,” he said, folding his arms defiantly. “Why would any being of a divine nature plan for a fate such as this?”
“Perhaps a greater plan is in motion here,” Mallus answered. “I had yet to figure it out before I left their service.”
“And why the change of heart?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah, for somebody who liked to see towns covered by volcanic ash, why would you care about destruction now?” Cameron followed through.
“Perhaps I saw something of this world and its inhabitants that made me realize I had made a mistake,” Mallus said, focusing his gaze on Aaron.
Aaron was suddenly uncomfortable. It felt as though the fallen angel were looking right into him. It was weird, and it was the second time Mallus had done it.
“How do we know that this isn’t all some sort of clever deception?” Verchiel asked, distracting Aaron. “How do we know that Mallus doesn’t still serve these mysterious Architects and isn’t just using us to further their agenda?” He smiled slyly, and Aaron was reminded again why the angel was such an asshat.
“I don’t think being seriously injured in a subway station was part of a master plan,” Cameron responded.
Mallus stood up from his chair, and faced Verchiel.
Aaron and Gabriel were already on the move, positioning themselves between the two.
“All right, guys. Why don’t we—” Aaron began.
“If I were still in service to them,” Mallus said, ignoring them, “would I have done this?” He turned his bare back to them, revealing the angry scars upon his shoulder blades.
Where his wings had once been.
“You cut off your own wings,” Melissa gasped in a horrified whisper.
“If I were to leave the Architects, I had no choice,” Mallus said, the pain of his loss obvious in the timbre of his voice and the sorrow in his eyes.
“Every angel’s wings are distinct, like a person’s fingerprints,” Lorelei explained to the group. “Each gives off its own unique magick.”
“Aye,” Mallus agreed. “They would have been able to find my trail whenever I used them. I had to be sure that I would not be followed.” He then looked down at the elaborate tattoos on his chest. “The loss of my wings and these sigils have rendered me nearly invisible to my former masters.”
“Until you were injured,” Aaron added.
Mallus nodded. “Until I was injured. One of the sigils was interrupted, sending out an invisible alarm to those whose only purpose was to watch for me.”
He gestured toward the corpse on the floor.
“His sole task was to find and eliminate me. And now that he is gone, I’m sure another has been given the same task. But we are in luck.”
Mallus produced the Agent’s knife. “We have its Gleaning Blade.”
Lorelei hobbled forward for a closer look. “May I?” she asked.
“Careful of its point,” Mallus said. “Just a prick is enough to devour everything stored in your brain.”
She admired the weapon, turning it in her hands. Dusty came to stand beside her.
“The Agent was going to use it on me,” Mallus said. “To find out everything I’ve learned, seen, and heard since leaving the service of the Architects. But the Agent never got the chance, ending up a victim of its own weapon.”
“You killed him with this?” Dusty asked the angel.
“I did.”
“Then everything he knew… ,” Dusty began, staring at the dead Agent.
“Is now stored within this blade,” Lorelei finished.
“It is,” Mallus agreed. “And that is a very good thing for us.”
Verchiel stalked toward Mallus and then stopped, his face inches from the fallen angel’s.
“Verchiel, stand down,” Aaron ordered, although he expected his words would have little effect on the stubborn angel.
“It’s all right, Aaron,” Mallus said, staring straight into Verchiel’s eyes. “What is it now, Verchiel?”
“Why do you tell us this? You’ve been on the run for centuries. You’ve known of the Architects’ plans for far longer than that. Why share all of this with us now?”
“Until now I didn’t think that the world had any chance of surviving what the Architects had in store,” Mallus said.
“But something changed your mind.” Verchiel had a curious gleam in his eye.
“Yes,” Mallus answered with a nod. “He changed my mind.” He pointed at Cameron. “I’d heard that some Nephilim had survived the Powers’ crusade to exterminate them, but I never gave it any more thought than that… until that one saved my life and I saw the Nephilim’s potential.”
Mallus turned to Aaron again.
“And then I discovered who was leading them, the son of my former commander, the angel for whom I fell from the grace of Heaven—Lucifer Morningstar.”
Aaron immediately felt uncomfortable.
“You have given me the courage to act as I should have acted long ago,” Mallus said. “There have been others fighting this fight, but their victories were few and far between. It all seemed so very pointless.” His shoulders slumped in regret. “It was easier to do nothing and remain invisible than to protect what time humanity had left.”
“But now that you’ve met us, you think there might be a chance to fight back?” Aaron asked, not really sure he believed Mallus. “Have you seen how many of us there actually are? This is it.” He gestured around the room.
Mallus nodded. “Although I believed there was no hope before, now I see a glimmer of possibility. Just a glimmer, mind you, but a glimmer nonetheless.”
“So you’re saying that we haven’t even met the real enemy yet,” Cameron said.
“Exactly,” Mallus replied. “And that’s how they prefer it. The Architects are guiding actions from the shadows to eventually realize their goal.”
“Which is?” Melissa asked, arms folded nervously across her chest.
“That I cannot answer,” the fallen angel said. “But from what I could gather while in their service, it does not bode well for humankind.”
Aaron felt his anger begin to rise. This was all getting to be too much for him. Wasn’t it bad enough that they’d failed to prevent the earth from being cut off from Heaven, that they were paying the price as daylight steadily diminished and humanity was at the mercy of the monstrous things that had emerged from the shadows to lay claim to the planet? Now there was more?
Aaron just couldn’t take it anymore.
“This is bullshit,” he said, shocking the others with his outburst.
Vilma looked at him, fear in her eyes. “Aaron?”
“I said this is bullshit,” he repeated. “How much more can we do? We Nephilim were supposed to be God’s greatest achievement, but we’ve been hunted down to near extinction, and now we can barely perform the function we were created for.”
Vilma grabbed hold of his arm. Her touch brought him a certain amount of solace, but not enough to silence his rant.
“Now we’re being asked to
stop godlike angels that have been crafting their will behind the scenes since before creation?” Aaron continued. “It’s just too damn much, and I’m beginning to believe that your not killing me”—he pointed to Verchiel, who seemed startled by the attention—“was the worst thing that could have happened to me.”
Aaron suddenly stopped, stunned by what had just poured from his mouth, but feeling no regret.
“I need some fresh air,” he said then, leaving the room, and leaving the fate of humanity—the fate of the world—hanging in the balance.
But at that moment he just didn’t have the energy to care.
* * *
The Morningstar had never imagined that he would care so much.
As he watched the vision, he was again reminded of the depth of emotion that he’d experienced in the presence of Taylor Corbet.
How was this even possible? he wondered, observing snippets of the life they had started together. He had once been a self-centered monster who had allowed his feelings of jealously to spread like a cancer through the hierarchy of Heaven. How could he have fallen so deeply in love with a human woman? How could he possibly have been in love with one of the creatures that had stolen away God’s love for his kind?
But perhaps in growing to love her he had learned something that the Almighty had tried to convey. Humanity was something special, and to love them was to truly love Him. For the spark of God was in each and every person, although it seemed that Taylor Corbet had more of Him in her than many of the others.
Lucifer could never really say for sure what it was that set her apart from everyone else, but whatever it was, the Morningstar embraced it. And in doing so, he embraced the world. With Taylor Corbet’s love he was able to set aside his anger and see the grave mistake of his actions.
And begin his journey on the long road to redemption.
Other than when he was with the Almighty Himself, Lucifer had never been more happy in the presence of another being. The life he had with Taylor was simple but whole. He lived not as the Morningstar but as a human, and his admiration of God’s greatest achievement grew.
But the way to atonement was not an easy path. It was filled with great pain, and sacrifice. Lucifer still had a great price to pay.
He had been with Taylor for little more than three years when he had begun to sense that those he had wronged, those who hunted him, were close. And for the safety of the woman he’d grown to love, he’d had to leave. He knew that these Powers would show her no mercy. They would derive great pleasure in taking her from him.
So Lucifer left in the early hours of the morning, without saying good-bye, without telling Taylor how much he loved her.
She had become his universe. She had saved him from himself, and for that he would be forever in her debt. But he never had a chance to tell her that, for his sins were catching up with him, and he’d had to flee.
Lucifer watched, and remembered the sinking feeling of despair he had experienced as he’d left the life he’d made for himself with Taylor. But that despair was even worse now, for he knew that it was not only Taylor Corbet whom he had left that fateful morning.
But his unborn son as well.
* * *
Mallus started to follow Aaron out, but the other female stopped him with a firm hand on his arm.
“Maybe you should give him a minute,” Vilma said.
The fallen angel considered this, then withdrew his arm from her grasp.
“I need to speak with him further,” he said, again starting to follow.
A sword of fiery red suddenly blocked his way.
“And I asked you to give him a minute,” she said in a semi-threatening tone.
He liked the spirit of these Nephilim, and the more time he spent with them, the more hope he had. He knew the Architects would have prepared for every contingency, but there was something he admired about these young half-breeds that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Something that made him believe in the impossible.
“Please,” he said to Vilma. “I think I might be able to help him.”
“You’ve done an awesome job so far,” she said angrily.
So he waited for her approval, as the others watched. Mallus knew that if he went against her wishes, he would not only have to deal with the female’s wrath but the wrath of all the others—including Verchiel.
Again he briefly wondered how the former leader of the Powers had come to be here amongst those he had once called abominations. But who was Mallus to question, for here he was attempting to save humanity.
“Take it easy on him,” Vilma finally said, and her sword disappeared in a searing flash. “We’ve been burning the candle at both ends these days, and we’re all a little fragile.”
“Fragile,” Mallus said, sensing their potential for ferocity. “That couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
Then he strode from the room in search of their leader.
Mallus found Aaron perched atop a swing set in an old, decrepit playground. He watched the young man sitting perfectly balanced across the metal bar, staring off into space.
The angel wanted to tell him that the answers were to be found within oneself, in the choices that one made.
He was transported back to the time when it had all changed for him, when Mallus had observed the Morningstar and Taylor Corbet together in the park. How long he had watched them, Mallus could not remember, but it was long enough to have instilled a change in him, although he’d been unable to admit it at the time.
The Architects had wanted Lucifer Morningstar in their ranks, and it had been up to Mallus to approach him with the request.
Aaron interrupted Mallus’s thoughts. “I know you’re there,” he called out.
Mallus pushed the memory aside and approached the Nephilim.
“If you’ve come out here to tell me more stuff that I should be fighting you can forget it,” Aaron said, refusing to look at him. “I’ve got way too much on my plate right now.”
Mallus decided to dive in headfirst. “It was seeing you, and realizing who you were, that gave me the notion that there was still a chance for the world.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Aaron said, jumping down to the ground. He picked up a handful of pebbles at his feet and threw them at the rusted merry-go-round in the center of the play area. “I’m the savior… the Chosen One… yadda, yadda, yadda.”
A pebble hit the old ride with a metallic clatter.
“I wasn’t even sure that you had survived,” Mallus said.
Aaron looked at him, confusion in his gaze. “Survived?” he asked. “What, the Powers’ attacks?”
Mallus stepped closer, shaking his head. “After you were born, I made sure that you were safe by putting you into the system.”
Aaron turned toward him, the weight of Mallus’s words starting to permeate. “You put me into the system?” he asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“At that time, your mother was in true danger,” Mallus explained. “She was the one who needed my help to survive.”
“My mother?” Aaron stepped toward him. “My mother died giving birth to me.”
Mallus smiled. “That’s what I wanted everyone to believe.”
“What are you saying?” Aaron demanded. His wings of ebony stretched from his back, and angelic script appeared upon his taut, muscular flesh. Mallus stood in awe, reading the names and remembering those whom he’d fought alongside, those who had fought for the beliefs of the Morningstar.
Aaron was even more of a spectacle than Mallus had originally believed.
“What do you know about my mother?” Aaron demanded, his voice raging with suppressed angelic might.
“I knew that it was only a matter of time before they came for her, the human woman who had tamed the Morningstar,” Mallus explained. “And then when I found out she was with child—his child—I knew what had to be done.”
“You knew my mother?” Aaron asked incredulously.
Mal
lus laughed softly. “Let’s just say I admired her from afar. I saw a power in her… and the more I saw, the more I was changed as well.”
He had the young man’s rapt attention.
“It was she, your mother, who swayed me from serving the Architects,” he continued. “If the Morningstar could live amongst them, love one of them, then who was I to want them dead?”
“You… you’re saying that she didn’t die?” Aaron asked.
Mallus shook his head. “Not then,” he explained. “Fearing for her safety, Lucifer departed before learning that she was with child. I felt a certain responsibility to my former commander, as well as the woman he had come to love—and besides, I knew how valuable she and her unborn child could be to the Architects.”
Mallus went to sit upon the merry-go-round, and Aaron followed eagerly.
“I watched her through her pregnancy, shielding her from danger, and when it was time, I was with her.”
“What did you do?” Aaron asked, desperation in his tone.
“She did die giving birth to you,” Mallus said.
“But you—”
“My concern at first was for you,” he said. “I knew that at birth you would be just a normal child, and I made sure you were put into the foster system, where you would be cared for.” Mallus looked at him then. “I knew that once you reached maturity, problems would arise. But that was a worry for another time.”
“My mother… she was dead?”
“She was,” Mallus acknowledged. “But not for long. Her body was taken to the hospital morgue, but there was still enough of a spark within her for me to work with. I fanned the flame of her life. I restored her.”
“But if you were afraid that the Architects might—”
“I was afraid, but I also saw the benefit of keeping her alive,” he said. “After all, she was the human woman who’d tamed the Morningstar.”
“Where did she go?” Aaron demanded. “What did you do to her?”
“The Architects had enemies. They still do. I contacted those enemies and told them who she was. They took her away.”
“Somebody took her? Is she still alive?” The boy was growing frantic.