“Come on over here,” she called to Aaron and Vilma as she stepped into the circle, careful not to disturb the chalk lines. She sat down in the center, watching as they gathered round.
“Is this good?” Aaron asked.
“That’s fine,” she said. They had spread out before her, following the curved line of the circle. Lorelei took in a deep breath through her nose, getting comfortable before arranging the bowl in front of her. Believing herself ready, she opened the book in her lap. “The circle will focus the spell and you three—”
Milton squeaked to be heard.
“Sorry, you four will provide me with the additional strength I’ll need to maintain the spell.”
“So we just have to stand here?” Vilma asked.
“That and lend me some of your physical and mental vitality,” Lorelei said.
“I think we can do that,” Vilma said, smiling nervously.
“Okay then.” Lorelei focused on the pages of the book. “Just so you know, this spell allows me to psychically see objects of power. Each and every one of them gives off its own unique energy, and I’ll be able to focus on that signature and hopefully find the location of the one we’re looking for.”
She looked up from the book to stress this next part.
“Some of these objects might prove hostile, not appreciating that I’m attempting to find them. That’s when I’ll need you guys. Your strength will be necessary to keep me from being attacked.”
They all seemed ready, looks of nervous anticipation upon their faces. Even the dog looked prepared for anything, and Lorelei probably would have found it funny if she wasn’t so afraid.
From her shirt pocket she retrieved a pack of matches, lit one, and dropped it into the bowl with the two dove hearts. She’d already laced the copper container with the other ingredients, and the mixture immediately ignited, creating a heavy gray cloud of smoke that did not disperse but billowed around her head, forming a kind of crown.
A crown of sacrifice.
Lorelei looked down into the book. She could feel the power of the Archon words drawing her in as she began to read them aloud. The words filled her being, wrapping her in their meaning and power. The air around her began to crackle, and she felt the hair on her head stand on end, but the power stayed contained within the circle of protection.
From the corner of her eye she saw that Aaron, Vilma, Gabriel, and Milton waited to be needed. It made her feel a little bit better about what she had to do.
The words flowed from her mouth, seeming to grow incredibly loud within the circle, and suddenly she felt herself begin to float away. Below, she saw herself sitting cross-legged within the circle, and she saw the others watching her with cautious eyes. Then her very being—her essence—was propelled through the ether, hurtling off in multiple directions.
But with a single vision.
With one set of eyes, she scoured the world, Archon magick carrying her to the locations where objects of vast supernatural power lay hidden. Beneath the sea, a crown of gold and jewels pulsed with an unnatural desire to again control a king and raise an empire. Under the floorboards of a Serbian church, an ancient book, bound in the flesh of holy men, awaited a day when its forbidden text would be read again, and its master would rise. On a dusty shelf in a Portland thrift shop, a wooden chalice imbued with the power of healing sat forgotten. In an old farmhouse, a musical instrument sat nestled amongst the ashes of the dead, surrounded by angelic and demonic forces. In a crumbling Vietnam temple, the egg of—
Wait.
The objects—so many objects—continued to rush past her. Lorelei was caught in a current of power, but she believed that she might have found what they were searching for.
She struggled against the flow with great exertion, turning her attentions back the way she had come.
The old farmhouse … the musical instrument … the instrument … lying in the ashes. Are those angels around it?
The instrument felt her presence, and it did not care for it. She could feel its displeasure, like the growl of some great primordial beast. She tried to communicate with it, but it didn’t want to listen. It felt the pain of the world, and so Lorelei felt the pain of the world.
And for that pain to end, the world had to die.
For the first time ever, Dusty saw the world for what it truly was.
Lying in the darkness, curled up in a fetal position, he was bombarded by his thoughts. Nothing was held back, it was all revealed to him, and he was glad that he was safely hidden from the terrors that abounded. Ghastly things were everywhere, gradually emerging from their hiding places to claim a world that once stood as the Creator’s crowning achievement. Now it was a world tarnished and dirty, rotting from within. A world rife, not with the potential of good, but one exuding a noxious cloud of evil.
Dusty felt the warm tears spill from his eyes as he lay in the darkness. The world once held so much promise, but the taint of the monstrous had left it sick.
Dying.
He remembered his family’s dog, a mutt by the name of Spenser. He was sure there had never been a better dog, and none since. That dog was the closest he’d ever come to having a brother, and he’d loved him more than anything imaginable.
Loved him enough to know when it was time to put him down.
Spenser had become sick, and every day that he had struggled to stay alive had been an affront to the love that Dusty had for him. That poor sick animal wasn’t the four-legged friend he’d once run with through summer fields.
Spenser had become a shadow of himself … a shell.
Dusty hadn’t come by the decision lightly; it was probably the most painful one he had ever had to make, but he knew it was for the best—the best for Spenser.
He needed to be put out of his misery, and that was his job, as Spenser’s owner, Spenser’s brother, to be merciful and to take away his pain.
That was what Dusty had done for his dog, and what he now had to do for the world. The world had to be put out of its misery, before the evil could infect anything else of beauty. The earth needed to be put down, and Dusty had just the tool with which to do it—the right instrument for the job.
Dusty opened his eyes to the ocean of black around him, feeling the pull of the waking world. Far off in the distance he saw a pulse of light. It was calling for him to come nearer, for him to embrace his purpose.
Dusty swam through the shadows, fixated upon the light that grew stronger … brighter … as he moved closer.
The light praised him for what he was about to do, for making the right decision about the sickness of the waking world.
Hovering above the circle of light, Dusty gazed down at the instrument. He watched it as it refused to hold a particular shape, morphing from one musical instrument to the next—a flute carved from bone, a golden trumpet, a set of drums, the harmonica, another more ancient-looking horn—all the shapes that it had assumed throughout its many millennia.
Dusty listened to its soothing voice as it gave him instructions on how to begin the end.
Take me up, it called from its circle of light.
And Dusty regretfully did as he was told, for this was his job. He reached down, his fingers entering the warmth of the light that encircled the instrument.
And know in your heart, there was nothing more that could have been done to save this once holy place.
His fingers closed around the object as it continued to change in his grasp, and he pulled it from the warmth of the circle. Holding the means with which to call down the Angel of Destruction, Dusty felt his mind continue to fill with images of a devastated world, convincing him that he was doing the right thing. For the mercy of the world, and all the good people suffering upon it, there was no other way.
Holding the instrument to his chest, Dusty was about to close his eyes and will himself back to consciousness when he heard an unfamiliar voice. It echoed from the blackness, and he experienced a sudden shiver of fear that seemed to emanate from the ins
trument itself.
“You don’t have to do that,” said a woman’s voice.
The instrument grew hot in his hand—practically burning his flesh. It commanded him not to pay attention. But Dusty, desperate for another way, was willing to listen.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
An orange flame ignited, revealing the one who had spoken to him. She was not alone.
The woman drew closer, and he realized that she was no older than he was, though her hair was the color of snow. There were two others with her, a pretty, dark-skinned girl and a boy—and in their hands they each held a sword of fire.
There was a dog with them also, a yellow Labrador, and perched atop the Labrador’s head was a mouse. Dusty would have been amused if it all wasn’t so darn strange.
The instrument tried to show him that there was no other way. Horrible images cascaded through his mind, but there was something in the light thrown by the swords that calmed his panic. And made it possible for Dusty to wrestle control from the instrument, to hope—believe—that maybe there was another answer.
“Who are you?” he asked the mysterious figures invading his inner mind.
“Think of us as your conscience,” the woman with the white hair said. “We’re here to keep you from doing anything stupid.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lucifer had believed himself prepared for just about anything—but not this.
Remembering the ancient temple where he’d first encountered that ancient, prophetic evil, he had wrapped himself within his cloak of feathers and had departed the school.
He had doubted that the tiny island was even there anymore. It had likely been swallowed up thousands upon thousands of years ago by the same cataclysmic event that had submerged the kingdom of Atlantis. But he had had to see if there was something to his strange resurgence of memory.
Prepared to materialize beneath waves, Lucifer was stunned when he had opened his wings to find himself in a vast underground chamber. The walls, thick with ice, glistened in the warm glow thrown by the Light Giver. It was freezing, but as was the case for all angels, the Morningstar did not experience differences in temperature.
The original island had been but a tiny spot in the Aegean Sea, and Lucifer could sense that he was nowhere close to the Mediterranean. Somehow he had been transported someplace else.
The icy ground beneath his feet slanted downward, and Lucifer began to walk. Raising his sword of fire, he illuminated the ceiling of the chamber, marveling at the enormous stalactites, like teeth hanging down from above.
Lucifer held his burning blade close to the frozen wall.
“What is this?” he spoke aloud, reaching out with his hand to wipe away a thick layer of frost that partially obscured what was petrified within.
What he saw suspended there in the ice made him step back in revulsion. Lucifer had been on the planet for quite some time but had never seen anything quite so … monstrous.
He was reminded of the idol he had seen within the temple, only this was not a thing carved of stone but of twisted flesh. Its shape was barely human, its face—if that was indeed what it was—covered in round, bulbous eyes, a slash in the mottled flesh beneath the organs of sight filled with thousands of needle-like teeth. It had multiple limbs, some thick muscular tentacles while others resembled the segmented legs of an insect.
Lucifer had no idea what was imprisoned within the confines of ice, or where it had come from, but it was not of this earth. Its yellow eyes seemed to stare at him, boring into his being, silently commanding him to set it free.
The Morningstar slowly stepped away from the wall. Willing the weapon of fire to burn all the brighter, Lucifer saw more of the icy chamber and the horrors it held.
Monsters, even more horrible than the one he had just beheld, of every conceivable size and shape were frozen within the cavern walls. It was a chamber of horrors, and he wondered why he was there.
“Because you were looking for me,” said a child’s voice. “Because I brought you here.”
“Show yourself,” Lucifer demanded, experiencing a fear the likes of which he had not felt since standing before an angry God.
The child stepped out from behind a wall of ice, looking no older than he had a few millennia ago, only this time the robes that adorned his slight frame were far more elaborate and royal.
“Hello, Lucifer,” the child greeted. “I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to see you again, but I hoped that I would.”
“What is this place?” Lucifer asked. “Where have you brought me?”
“A place of waiting,” the child said. He rested a small hand upon the wall, gazing at the beast trapped on the other side.
“Waiting?” the Morningstar asked. “Waiting for what, exactly? The dark times you told me about when we first met?”
The child laughed. “Yes, the dark times. They’re almost here.” The little boy’s eyes danced mischievously, excited by the prospect.
It was as Lucifer had feared; this was the time that had been prophesied.
He was mesmerized by the horrors frozen around him. “What are they?” He gestured toward the walls of ice.
“They are my brothers and sisters,” the child explained as he advanced toward Lucifer. “When the Almighty brought His damnable light to the universe, my family and I fled to the pockets of shadow where the Creator’s light couldn’t reach, and we watched Him and all His light had wrought from afar.”
“You are far older than you appear,” Lucifer said, realizing that he was in the presence of a power older than creation itself.
The child admired his reflection in the icy wall.
“I like this shape,” he said, looking at his small hands, adorned with rings. “So small and innocent looking … but, really, so much more.”
The child smiled, and Lucifer was again treated to a brief flash of the creature before him, and its true form. It was even worse than he remembered.
“We watched as He created the stars, and the planets, and the earth.… We liked the earth.”
The child moved to another section of wall and gazed at the enormous figure frozen within.
“Didn’t we, sister?” he spoke to the thing. “We liked it so much that we came here to hide, and to plan our eventual return.”
The child returned his gaze to the Morningstar.
“The Lord of Lords didn’t even know we existed. He never bothered to consider that something might have existed before His light, and so long as we kept from His attention …” The child’s voice trailed off, and he spun playfully around to head back from where he had come.
“But my family was impatient,” he continued, “and every so often they would spread their malignant influence.”
The child faced Lucifer, putting up his hands as if claws and baring perfectly white teeth in a parody of a snarl. “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night … good Lord, deliver us,” the child recited in a singsong voice before breaking out in laughter.
“Your family created the monsters of the world,” Lucifer stated.
“Initially,” the child answered. “But then some of those monsters produced monsters of their own, and so on, and so on.”
The child cocked his head as if a thought had just come into it.
“It’s like your fallen angels,” he suggested with a smile, “creating the Nephilim.”
“The Nephilim are not monsters,” Lucifer snapped defensively.
“Really?” the child asked, a slight hand going to his chin. “That wasn’t what I was led to believe.” He clasped his hands behind his back and he began to pace. “I had a nice conversation a very long time ago with one of your brethren,” the child went on. “And we discussed these creatures. He was an angel of the Powers, I believe. What was his name again?”
The child looked toward the stalactite-covered ceiling, tapping his tiny chin, goading Lucifer.
“Verchiel,” Lucifer said quietly, a w
eight forming in the pit of his stomach.
“That’s it,” the child said, pointing happily. “Verchiel. I suggested he might want to focus on those Nephilim.”
“Instead of focusing on your brothers and sisters, and the creatures they created,” Lucifer said, as things suddenly became more clear.
The child nodded. “Exactly,” he said. “Having angels on the planet poking into every dark corner was becoming quite annoying. The Powers needed a distraction, and by whispering sweet nothings into their leader’s ear, I had found the perfect one.
“But, my family did not approve of my efforts,” he sighed. “They were tired of hiding. They wanted to wage war against the Creator and His angelic forces. I couldn’t allow them to do that. We weren’t ready … yet.”
He shook his head sadly.
“Which is why you see them like this,” the child said, gesturing to the creatures frozen about them. “I needed my siblings to be more patient than they were willing to be, so I put them to sleep, giving myself the chance to steer the world in a direction that would benefit me.”
“You?” Lucifer questioned.
“Me, and my family, of course,” the child offered quickly, but Lucifer saw who was the true master behind this scenario.
“Won’t they be angry with you?” the Morningstar asked. “For having imprisoned them? I know I would be,” he said, the Light Giver sparking brightly in his hand.
“Perhaps,” the child said, his gaze traveling over the ice walls that imprisoned his family. “But they’ll come to realize it was for their own good.”
“Or not,” Lucifer suggested.
The child fixed him in a stare far colder than the ice of the cavern.
“Why did you come here, Morningstar?” the child asked. “Have you come to accept my offer?”
Lucifer gripped his sword tightly as he regarded the horrors trapped within the chamber walls, horrors that would soon be unleashed upon the world if what the child said was true.
He saw no other choice. Lucifer dropped to one knee before the child and bowed his head.