CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Though normally he did not notice changes in temperatures, the Morningstar was suddenly very aware of the cold.
“I’m actually going to miss all this when it’s over,” the child said over his shoulder, as Lucifer followed the little boy deeper underground.
“Where are we?” Lucifer asked, amazed by the vastness of the subterranean chamber, and disturbed that something with the propensity for so much evil could be hidden there … waiting for so long.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” the child asked, gesturing with his tiny hand at the immensity of it all. “We’re beneath an Antarctic lake, which is in turn located twelve thousand feet beneath the polar ice cap.”
The child turned.
“I’ve actually heard a rumor that some Russian scientists are very close to piercing Antarctica’s frozen crust in order to reach the lake.” He smiled, a nasty twinkle dancing in his eyes. “Can you imagine what they’ll think if they ever find my family?”
He giggled, the sound strangely ominous as it echoed about the icy chamber.
“But we need not worry about that, am I right?” the child said. “My brothers and sisters should be up and around long before the scientists can find them.”
Lucifer felt his pulse quicken. Just the thought of those things he’d seen imprisoned in the ice walking the earth was enough to send him into panic.
But he had to remain calm. He needed the evil child to trust him with his secrets. He thought briefly of Aaron and the others, but quickly pushed those thoughts aside. They would deal with Wormwood while he handled this monster. He only hoped he had the strength to see this through.
Lucifer found himself suddenly alone. He raised the Light Giver, its crackling glow illuminating yet another trapped monstrosity. But this one was different.
He felt drawn to this one, pulled by twin yellow eyes that glowed eerily bright, even from beneath feet of solid translucent ice. He was the Morningstar, once the Lord God’s most powerful angel, and what he saw froze him as still as the petrified figure he now looked upon.
It was huge, its flesh the color of blood. Two enormous horns sprang from its head. Its eyes glowed like two searchlights, and its muscular, fur-covered legs revealed not feet but black cloven hooves. A thick muscular tail snaked out from behind the creature, and, seen on closer examination, leathery wings, like those of a bat, were folded at rest upon its back.
Devil.
The word sprang to the forefront of Lucifer’s mind, for there was no other way to describe it.
This was how the world believed the ultimate evil should look, how earth’s old legends and myths had portrayed him.
Lucifer was both fascinated and repelled by what he saw.
The child was suddenly beside him, staring up at the frozen Devil with rapt attention.
“What is this thing?” Lucifer demanded.
“It’s me,” the child said. “Or, what will be me as soon as everything is in place.”
Lucifer stared at the frozen nightmare and then at the child.
“I made this,” the child explained, pointing to the frozen Devil. “This will be the form I wear when I emerge to rule.”
“You … made this?” Lucifer asked, eyes locked on the monster’s yellow gaze.
“I gave up my corporeal form millennia ago, choosing instead to exist in spirit,” the child explained. “But now that the time grows near for my plans to reach fruition, I shall need a body again.”
All Lucifer could do was stare at the monstrous horned shape within the ice.
“I wanted to give them a shape that was familiar,” the child continued. “Something that would put fear in their hearts.”
He looked at Lucifer again and smiled.
“I will give them the Devil they know.”
Kraus could not communicate with him like the Nephilim could, but Gabriel knew that the human healer understood how important it was that he accompany him.
He’d even brought along his bag of medicines.
Kraus hurried to keep up with him, walking beside the dog as he led him to Lorelei.
There was a distant rumble of thunder, and Gabriel could not help but pause. Milton moved nervously from the top of his head down his neck, then back to his head again. The mouse was frightened, and Gabriel wished he could have reassured the small animal, but even he wasn’t too sure anymore.
The Labrador lifted his snout to the air, sniffing, and he did not like the scents he found there. Without really knowing why, he began to growl, a low rumbling sound that ended in a kind of anxious whine.
“What is it, boy?” Kraus asked, still standing beside him.
Gabriel knew that the healer was only human, but he wondered if Kraus could feel what he did, sensing that there was something bad in the air.
Gabriel started off again, and Kraus obediently followed. At the front door to the science building, Gabriel barked impatiently.
“All right, I’ve got it,” Kraus said as he reached for the handle and pulled the door open so they could enter.
The building smelled funny. It always did. That was just how magick smelled, Gabriel guessed.
“It’s Lorelei, isn’t it?” Kraus asked worriedly.
Gabriel barked, and the mouse squeaked, but the man did not understand. So Gabriel quickly trotted down the hallway to where he had left his friends.
At the classroom Gabriel paused, looking around. No one was there.
“Lorelei?” Kraus called out as he entered the room.
Gabriel warned the mouse atop his head to hold on, then dropped his nose to the floor. Finding her scent almost immediately, he began to follow it through the doorway and down the hall. He stopped at the door that stank of magick and led to the room filled with books.
If Lorelei had gone through the special doorway, then that’s where they would need to go.
Gabriel barked at the door, signaling for the healer to hurry up and let them in.
“Ah,” Kraus said. “She’s in the library.”
The healer opened the door, and Gabriel bent his nose to the ground and started to track the missing Lorelei. He sneezed, the magick—mingled with the aroma of old paper, parchment, and leather—making the inside of his nose tingle and burn.
He turned around to make certain Kraus was following, which he was, the older man walking along the rows upon rows of books.
Gabriel managed to get ahead of the man but barked once to let him know where he was, then continued on in search for Lorelei, and the source of the strong magickal odor.
At the end of the row, the Labrador stopped, looking from left to right. The stink was strongest down the left-side corridor, disappearing into a shadowy area that he was certain he had never explored before.
“Any luck?” Kraus asked, coming to a stop beside him.
Gabriel peered down the corridor and started to growl. There were sudden flashes of bright light, followed by the moans of someone in obvious pain. Milton grew even more nervous, the mouse’s repetitious track up and down Gabriel’s back becoming more frantic.
The Lab turned left, barking three times for Kraus to follow, then he bounded down the corridor, not sure exactly what he was getting himself into but not really caring. If Lorelei needed him, then so be it.
It didn’t matter what was waiting.
The magickal smell grew stronger as he ran full tilt toward the searing flashes. It reminded him of the lightning and thunder he had been frightened of before Aaron had changed him, made him better.
The flashes lit the corridor, helping to direct him.
Gabriel barked once again, a loud, frantic sound to let Lorelei know he was coming.
Slowing down at the end of the long hallway, he cautiously peered around the corner into an alcove. It had been a very long time since he’d last peed out of fear—he’d probably still been only a pup—but what he saw then almost caused him to revert to the habits of his younger days.
Gabriel turned the corner,
his hackles raised. Even Milton had stopped moving, the little mouse frozen by the disturbing sight.
Lorelei floated above a circular table upon which was an unwrapped scroll. Other books and pieces of parchment orbited around her as she hung in the air, held in the grip of something Gabriel could not see but could smell quite strongly.
There was a strange song inside Dusty’s head, playing over and over again—the same song on a continuous loop. And even though he had never heard the haunting song before in his life, he knew that if he were to play it, he would usher in the End of Days.
The instrument was growing stronger again, insisting that he pay attention to its demands.
It was taking everything he had to fight it.
He had run as fast as he could to get away from the wreckage of the farmhouse, hoping that those who wanted him to obey the instrument had been destroyed.
But he knew better.
His entire body ached as if his every muscle had been beaten by a hammer, and the fact that it was cold and rainy did little to make him feel better.
The farmhouse had been in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a tiny road, surrounded by trees. Dusty had decided to leave the road, heading into the woods. He leaned against a tree to catch his breath, remembering the three figures and the dog that he’d seen while unconscious. Had they actually been there, or were they just another form of manipulation by the instrument?
The song played over and over again inside his mind, and Dusty found himself on the verge of humming the simple yet complex tune, stopping himself as he came close to the final notes. He didn’t want to take any chances, not knowing what disasters merely humming the song might cause.
His body—and the instrument—protested his every step, but he needed to keep moving. Dusty pushed off from the tree, proceeding deeper into the woods, listening over the sound of the song inside his brain for any hint that he was being pursued.
The song ceased momentarily as he ran, and he became aware of strange rustling sounds. Believing them to be only small animals stirred by his presence, he didn’t think of them as anything to be concerned about, but the instrument did not feel the same.
It warned him of an impending threat, trying to convince him that now was the time to make a stand.
Now was the time to call down the end.
Dusty fought the instrument. He stumbled over something in the dark, and fell hard to his knees, pitching forward onto his chest—the wind knocked from his lungs with the impact.
He lay there coughing, trying to catch his breath. The rustling grew louder in the patches of shadow around him.
Rolling over, Dusty began to stand, and was startled to see he had stumbled into a small cemetery. He rose to his feet amid a crop of gravestones. The instrument inside his coat pocket continued to warn him, and he thought he saw something slithering beneath the leaves on top of one of the graves.
Something other than the insistence of the instrument told him that maybe being in a cemetery wasn’t the wisest thing, and he spied a path through the early morning light that he hoped would lead him out of the graveyard. He hurried his pace, but tripped and fell on his face.
“Damn it,” he hissed, thinking he’d caught the toe of his boot on a protruding root. He rolled onto his side and reached down to pull his foot free, and then he was met with the most disturbing of sights.
A hand was sticking up from the dirt of a grave—a pale, withered hand that grasped the ankle of his boot with a powerful grip.
He remembered the slithering, eel-like things that liked to inhabit dead bodies. And here he was, in a used-car lot of dead bodies.
Dusty quickly reached down, attempting to pry the fingers from his boot, the thumb of the corpse’s hand breaking away like a dry twig. He managed to get his foot free, but the ground around the hand started to buck and heave as something larger tried to force its way to the surface.
Scrambling to his feet, Dusty saw the dirt around other nearby graves begin to churn as well, and he started to run. But it was like running in a minefield, hands exploding up from the damp soil to try to seize him.
And all the while the instrument whispered a tune inside Dusty’s head.
Up ahead on the path, Dusty saw a figure and was about to call out a warning, but the words caught in his throat like a piece of jagged glass as the tattered figure lurched from the shadows into the early morning light. It was a large man, more recently dead, his flesh deathly pale and loose but still holding on to his bones.
Dusty came to a stumbling halt, started to turn, and saw another corpse—a woman in a bright turquoise dress—coming up behind him, and there were still others behind her. All around him corpses in various stages of decomposition were rising up from their graves.
Dusty stuck his hand down into his coat pocket to grip the harmonica. The song became even louder in his mind, and he found himself growing dizzy as the instrument exerted its powerful influence.
He wanted to use it as a weapon to clear a path in order to get away, but he wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to do only that … wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to deny the instrument’s desire.
The corpse of a little girl, her face withered and shrunken like that of a mummy, grabbed hold of his arm in a surprisingly strong grip.
“You … will … stay with … us,” she said in an unlikely gravelly voice as she held him tightly.
Dusty was trying to pull his arm away when other corpses caught up to them, each of them taking hold of him. He tried to throw them off, but there were too many.
“You will … stay … with … us!” they all cried in their horrible voices.
Bony hands from beneath the dirt tugged at his ankles, holding him in place. There were so many of them now, and he couldn’t use the instrument, even if he had wanted to.
The song blared louder and louder inside his mind, drowning out the corpses’ awful chants. It was so loud and incessant that he felt his resolve slowly begin to crumble. He had to make it stop.
The corpses had hauled him off his feet, pinning him on the wet, muddy ground.
Suddenly there was a flash that illuminated the cemetery. Dusty knew who the corpses were holding him for, and he hoped that he was strong enough to face the angels, as well as the instrument.
He closed his eyes tightly, using all that he could muster to hold on to his will, to keep the instrument from taking control of his actions.
There came a series of sudden screeches, and the corpses’ hold upon him lessoned. Dusty opened his eyes to see the zombies moving to attack a group advancing amongst the headstones.
The newcomers had wings, like the angels from the farmhouse, but each carried a weapon made of fire. The corpses didn’t stand a chance, most of them exploding into flames as the weapons cut into them.
Dusty carefully got to his feet, ready to flee the cemetery, when a powerful voice called out.
“Dusty.”
He turned slightly to see the guy from the scene inside his head. The attractive girl was with him as well, standing at his side, along with six others.
“I’m Aaron,” the guy said, the shiny black wings upon his back gleaming in the light of the blazing sword at his side. “I’m here to take you to someplace safe.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lorelei could not wait any longer to try the powerful Archon spells to communicate with Heaven and ask the Creator for help.
She could sense that they were running out of time—that the world was running out of time. If she was going to do something, she had to do it right away.
Even though her body protested, so much weaker after locating the instrument, she managed to make it to the library, where the Archon writings she required were kept, separate from the rest. Scholar had explained that these particular writings were special, even to the Archons, for communication with the Almighty was not something to be taken lightly. One did not call to chat with God unless there was something incredibly important to say.
&n
bsp; Lorelei believed that she had something to say, and so she removed the scrolls from their special cabinet, probably for the first time in more than a millennium.
Just touching the ancient writings was an experience. Her hands tingled as if live voltage was running through them.
The spell was particularly grueling. The words were painful to speak, every syllable uttered like a tooth being pulled from her gums. A few times she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to remain conscious, but then she thought about the repercussions of failure, for herself … the others … the world, and she managed to battle through. And the spell kicked in.
Magickal energies, the likes of which she had never before experienced, coursed through her body, like molten lava being pumped through every vein and artery, followed by five hundred thousand volts of electricity.
And then it really started to hurt.
Her mind was afire as flashes of the cosmos exploded before her eyes, and she caught glimpses of the most magnificent sight she had ever seen … a city … a city made from the golden rays of the sun … a city that sang a song so beautiful that she thought she might die.
But Heaven was not without its defenses. The forces of Heaven berated her arrogance. How dare she think that she could talk to God?
Lorelei felt herself picked up from the floor, preternatural energies leaking from her body to form a swirling maelstrom around her. Heavenly forces surged into her in an attempt to destroy her, but there was too much at stake.
She screamed as she was filled with the glory of Heaven, filled with a power not meant for one such as she, but she did not hide from it—she allowed the power to flow, using it to cry out for God’s attention. Using it to beg for the lives of the Nephilim and the world they so desperately sought to protect. She begged the Creator to send someone to help them in their hour of need.
Did the Lord of Lords hear her pleas? She did not know, but as quickly as the heavenly energies were upon her, they were gone, and she found herself falling from the air—discarded—crashing down upon the tabletop, and rolling off to land in a heap on the floor.
She lay there, her body numb, fighting the inexorable pull of unconsciousness; then she sensed Gabriel’s presence.