His fiery blade skidded off the shoulder of the Abomination, severing one of its person-size spikes. The angel reacted with an echoing roar, bringing its own sword of divine power around and nearly slicing Aaron in two.
Aaron barely evaded the giant blade, dropping beneath the pass and flying toward Wormwood’s covered face. Aaron quickly scanned for the targets before him: the throat, the eyes, places where if he struck—and struck savagely—he might kill his enormous foe.
But the Angel of Destruction would have none of that.
Again, the spines that adorned the armored angel came to life, humming with unbridled power. Aaron became trapped between two arcing discharges, and he felt himself immediately powerless. He fell to the ground like a rock, in pain like he had never experienced before.
Struggling to remain conscious, he fought to stand, retrieving his sword from the ground. As he was about to turn his attention back to the Abomination, Aaron was momentarily distracted by the sound of laughter.
The Powers’ leader lay with the corpses, his body severely burnt, his flesh nearly charred from his bones, but still he lived.
“Lay the sword down, boy,” the leader spoke in a strained whisper. “It is too late for you … for the world.… It is here now, accept your failure.… It is over.…”
That small piece of Aaron, that thread of angelic nature conditioned to accept the will of God no matter how awful, almost asserted control.…
Almost.
Aaron flapped his wings again, preparing to take flight into battle, but Wormwood’s actions froze him cold.
The giant angel turned its helmeted head to the heavens and emitted a mournful cry, as if bemoaning what it was about to do.
Before Aaron could act, before the thought could even register, the Angel of Desolation took the point of his great and terrible sword and drove it into the ground with one savage thrust.
And the earth cried out, for its end was at hand.
The earth was on its own now.
Like a limb poisoned with infection, the world was cut off—severed from the influence of Heaven, from the reach of the Lord God.
Everything that lived and breathed upon the earth could feel the change. They could not necessarily say exactly what had occurred, but they knew in their souls that the connection was no longer present.
A sadness and a desperation rippled out through the world, and the things that had lived in the darkness of shadow grew confident, for they knew that God was no longer present.
And the world, and every living thing upon it, belonged to those that slithered, crawled, flew, and stalked.
They could emerge to claim what had long been denied them, for the light of Heaven no longer shone upon the world.
Darkness was triumphant.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Aaron didn’t know what to do.
Wormwood stood there, clutching the hilt of the sword in its armored hands, as energy pulsed down into the earth. The monstrous things that had accompanied the remaining Powers—the trolls, demons, imps, and gargoyles—writhed upon the ground, the divine force emanating from the Abomination of Desolation’s sword killing their evil kind, as it began to kill the world.
Aaron felt eyes upon him, and he turned to see William, Melissa, and Cameron, their faces bloody and slack from battle. They looked to him for guidance, but this time he had nothing to give them.
They had failed … failed on so many levels.
All Aaron could do was watch as the world was gradually put down for the count.
“Is that it?” called a voice from somewhere nearby.
Aaron turned, along with the others, searching for the source.
Then they saw him coming up from the science building, wings gradually flexing, burning sword in hand.
“Is that all you have, Nephilim?”
Aaron felt as though he might be sick. First the end of world—and now this.
“After the fight you gave me, this is how the struggle continues?”
Vilma stepped up beside Aaron, and he glanced at her quickly to see that her eyes were fixed on the approaching figure.
“Aaron,” she said as though using all the air inside her lungs. “It can’t be him.” She squeezed his arm so tightly that her fingernails were on the verge of breaking the skin.
He didn’t know how to answer, wondering if it was some sort of hallucination caused by the Angel of Destruction as it brought about the End of Days.
“Maybe it was mere luck that you defeated me,” the figure said as he came closer.
“It is him,” Gabriel spoke up. “I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Aaron looked to the dog. “Gabriel, this isn’t exactly a good time for games. What have you been trying to tell me?”
The figure stopped, tilting his head ever so slightly as he studied them.
“Look at yourselves,” he said. “No wonder the world is on the brink.”
“Gabriel,” Aaron urged, two steps away from thinking he’d gone insane.
“Lorelei thinks she did it,” Gabriel explained. “She called Heaven for help and—”
“And this is how Heaven answered?” Vilma asked in horror.
“She asked for help, and this is what fell from the sky,” the dog responded.
Aaron squinted his eyes, taking in the horrific sight before him. The Powers’ previous leader, Verchiel, stood there in front of them looking perfectly healthy and quite untouched by God’s wrath, just as he had the day he’d murdered Aaron’s foster parents.
“God had nothing to do with this,” Aaron snarled, lunging at his foe with a roar.
Verchiel reacted to the attack, stepping back, but ready to fight.
“Now there’s the Nephilim that defeated me in combat, and sent me back to face the wrath of the Creator,” Verchiel said, blocking multiple strikes of Aaron’s sword.
Vilma had joined the fray, no doubt recalling Verchiel’s torturing as he attempted to destroy Aaron and keep him from his destiny.
“It’s too bad all this rage and fury couldn’t be put toward something a bit more useful,” Verchiel went on, continuing to parry their assaults. “Like stopping Wormwood from ending the world?”
Verchiel cut a swath of fire in the ground, creating a wall that separated him from Aaron and Vilma.
Aaron stepped back, and was readying his next wave of assaults when it struck him: Verchiel had been fighting defensively. The Powers’ former leader had not attacked Aaron and Vilma at all.
Vilma was preparing to spring at Verchiel when Aaron reached out to take hold of her arm. She looked at him with fury in her eyes.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “If we both attack, we can kill him.”
“We … we can’t kill him.”
Vilma looked as though she’d been stabbed, her startled gaze returning momentarily to Verchiel, who stood behind the line of fire with his sword poised.
Aaron wrestled with the concept that Verchiel had been sent to help.
“Are we done?” Verchiel asked.
Vilma spun at him with a snarl, jumping through the barrier of fire, swinging her sword toward the angel’s neck.
Aaron moved with the speed of thought, halting the blade, although he would have liked to see it land.
“Back off,” Aaron warned Vilma, saddened that he had to speak to her in such a way, but there wasn’t a choice.
With an angry glare, she lowered her weapon and stepped away.
Aaron turned to Verchiel, mere inches from the angel’s face.
“Why are you here?” he demanded.
“Perhaps this is my punishment,” Verchiel suggested, his stare never wavering. “Or perhaps I’m the only hope this world has of surviving after what you’ve done.”
“We’ve done nothing.”
“Exactly,” Verchiel said, and roughly pushed past him through the dwindling line of fire, their shoulders striking, causing Aaron to stumble. “But now is the time to change that.”
Aaron and Verchiel looked toward Wormwood. The giant angel knelt upon one knee. Its hands glowed with arcane energies that pulsed from the blade into the earth.
“Hopefully it’s not too late,” Verchiel continued.
“What do you intend to do?” Aaron asked, feeling ashamed, but hoping that the vile angel had something, because he was all out of answers.
Verchiel looked at him, eyes black and filled with anger.
“I intend to save this miserable ball of mud from total annihilation,” the angel said, followed by a disturbing smile. “What are your intentions?”
A monster of nightmare had shoved him inside its mouth.
Lucifer struggled in its awesome maw, jagged teeth biting down upon his armor in an attempt to crush him and masticate his form into more manageable bite-size pieces for digestion.
But the Son of the Morning was nobody’s … or no thing’s … easy snack.
Getting his feet beneath him atop a slime-covered tongue, Lucifer stood to his full size in the monster’s mouth, jabbing the Light Giver up through the roof of the great beast’s mouth.
The monster cried out its pain, clawed appendages attempting to dislodge the growing annoyance from its maw.
Lucifer had had just about enough of this particular fiend, radiating a blast of intense divine fire up through the hilt of his weapon and into the creature’s skull with spectacular results.
The monster screamed pathetically one final time before its head exploded, coating the underground chamber with whatever organ of thought existed within its malformed skull.
The Morningstar did not stop there. Still covered in the gore of the vanquished, he flew about the chamber in search of the next foe to obliterate. A creature resembling a giant armored snake coiled upon the icy floor, preparing to strike. Lucifer did not give it the opportunity, diving at the reptilian nightmare and swinging his great sword of fire through the thick muscle of the monster’s neck, separating its arrow-shaped head from its segmented body.
The ancient behemoths screeched and roared their disapproval over the deaths of their brethren, but their rage only fueled Lucifer’s own.
Lucifer saw the Devil standing back, watching with rapt fascination as his family attacked. But the great red-skinned demon did not come to their aid. It was almost as if he intended for Lucifer to cull their number.
Multiple tentacles exploded up from the shattered sections of ice, wrapping their muscular limbs around Lucifer’s body, attempting to drag him down beneath the frozen floor.
Lucifer would not have it.
Calling upon the divine fire that coursed through him, the Morningstar increased the temperature of his body, his armored form starting to throw off an incredible, blistering heat. The monster that held him emitted a horrible moan as it fought to hold on to Lucifer, but its slimy green flesh began to sizzle, blister, and then burn. It could keep him no more.
The Morningstar rose, wings spread, his radiant form causing the ice walls to begin to melt. But that did not slow the relentless assaults upon him. When one of the ancient monstrosities perished, three more shambled forward to try to claim his life.
Lucifer gave it everything he had. He could feel the world dying, and he knew that was exactly what the Devil was hoping for.
Lucifer had to escape this chamber of horrors and get back to the school. Otherwise his students would unknowingly do irreparable harm.
Tapping into the berserker fury that had served him well when fighting God and the hosts of Heaven, Lucifer dug deep within himself, summoning a part of his personality that he had long buried, and had once hoped was dead.
This was the side of him that had thrown Heaven into turmoil, and branded him as God’s adversary.
Lucifer did not welcome its freedom, but releasing it was necessary if he was to survive.
Lucifer Morningstar became a thing of unbridled rage. All rational thought was gone, and now only the fight remained. The only thing that mattered was to vanquish all that stood in his way. It was no easy feat to slay the legion of ancient entities that swarmed against him, and their attacks grew more savage as their numbers began to dwindle.
Armor dented, and ripped away in places, the Morning-star continued to fight. His brain was filled with the images of all those he had slain. It was their deaths … their cries for mercy … that fueled him. He was unstoppable. One after the other, the creatures fell. Blood stained the floors of the ice cave in a kaleidoscope of gore.
Though his body protested, the Morningstar fought on until he could barely remain upon his feet. The last of the beasts, a black-shelled thing, more insect than animal, came at him, scurrying across the blood puddle. Lucifer lashed out with his sword, swinging at the giant bug’s pincers as they snatched at him. The blade cut away the tops of the insect’s claws, but he did not see the tail, like that of a scorpion, extended over the monster’s back, plunging its hooked barb into the exposed flesh of the Morningstar’s side.
Lucifer raged, his wings lifting him into the air with a scream reminiscent of the most fearsome birds of prey. He descended upon the insect’s back, plunging the Light Giver, whose shine had dulled to murky gray, through the beast’s shell, pinning its dying body to the cold floor.
Falling from the insect’s back, Lucifer examined the bleeding wound in his side. He could feel poison starting to course through his frame but managed to halt its progress by tapping deeper into the fiery wrath that had turned him against his Creator so very long ago. The insect’s venom traveled no further, diluted by another even more deadly poison: the poison of arrogance and envy.
Lucifer’s body trembled with the recollection of how he waged a war against the One Who created him. Again he made an effort to suppress that offensive, monstrous side.
Then he sensed the awesome presence behind him.
Allowing the rage that defined the adversary to continue to exist for just a moment more, Lucifer spun to see the Devil rushing at him.
There was no hesitation as the Son of the Morning launched himself, missile-like, at his enemy, driving his still fiery blade into the chest of the blood-colored Devil.
Lucifer’s powerful wings strained as he put all he could behind his sword, pushing it deeper and deeper into the heart of his foe. It surprised him that the Devil did not attempt to escape. Instead it extended its muscular arms around the Morningstar, drawing him close in a nearly loving embrace.
The Devil continued to hold him as Lucifer struggled in his grasp. It brought its large mouth of many teeth closer to his ear. Lucifer expected to feel the bite of the beast, yellow teeth chomping down on the flesh of his throat, but he felt the Devil’s breath upon his neck, and heard the words spoken ever so softly.
“Thank you.”
And before Lucifer could question what the Devil’s thanks meant, the underground chamber began to quake in the throes of too much violence and death, and caved in upon them. The space filled with tons of ice and snow, and the corpses of things better left entombed and undiscovered.
The Abomination of Desolation had placed a sphere of divine protection about its kneeling form.
Aaron watched with cautious eyes as Verchiel flew out in front of them, heading toward the barrier of destructive energies that surrounded the giant angel at a breakneck pace.
Above the din of their flapping wings, Aaron called out for him to be careful, but it appeared as though the Powers’ former leader had not heard, or at least had chosen to ignore his warnings.
Verchiel struck the wall of energy with a flash, his angelic form seeming to catch fire as he was violently thrown to the ground, rolling around in the dirt to extinguish the voracious flames.
Aaron, Vilma, and the other surviving Nephilim all stopped before the barrier, flying around the humming sphere of energy searching for a way to penetrate it.
Aaron’s hair stood on end the closer he got to the bubble. Pulling back his sword arm, Aaron struck the shield, and the energy discharge repelled him.
Seeing t
hat the blow did little, Vilma halted her assault.
“How can we stop this thing if we can’t get at it?” she asked, hovering beside Aaron.
“There has to be a weak spot,” he said.
William struck at the barrier from another angle, but to similar effects. The boy was thrown to the ground with a flash.
Aaron heard the sound of struggle and looked down to see Verchiel crawling unsteadily to his feet, wings flapping away the dust and dirt that covered them.
“And if there isn’t one, we’ll make one,” Verchiel said, approaching the energy shield. He extended his hand as close as he could without touching it. “The barrier is of divine origins,” he stated. Then, turning his cold gaze to Aaron, he said, “As am I and as are you and your friends.”
His words seemed tainted with poison. Aaron knew it must have been difficult for Verchiel to admit something like that. It went against everything he’d once believed.
Aaron flew down to stand beside the angel.
“What are you suggesting?” he asked. It killed him to be asking anything of this monster, but the fate of the world was at stake, and time was of the essence.
Verchiel walked around the crackling sphere of power, peering in at the giant angel wreaking its havoc on the world.
“A collective strike,” the former Powers commander stated. “We should combine our efforts, striking the barrier with all our might in one devastating blow.” He fixed his stare on Aaron. “We just might be able to get inside, and once we’re in … that’s another story entirely.”
Aaron believed it plausible, and at the moment it was the only plan they had. He gestured to the remaining Nephilim to join them, and they obliged, flying down to land before the barrier.
He could feel their suspicion of the former Powers angel but hoped to rally them as a single force to breach the Abomination’s shield.
“Bring forth your weapons,” Aaron instructed.
And one by one their weapons of heavenly fire sprang to life in their hands.