The Fallen 3 (8 page)

Geburah cut off its words as he pressed a burning finger down onto the bare skull of the demon, reveling in its pathetic wails.

“Why is it that what we ask has become so difficult?” the angel demanded, the smell of seared, dead flesh wafting up to assault his senses. “We have allowed you to live for this reason alone, and now you make us regret that decision.”

The Corpse Riders were a loathsome race of demonic beasts that found their way from their world of shadow to God’s earth through rips in the fabric of reality. Rips believed to have been caused by Verchiel’s attempts to unleash the Hell contained within Lucifer Morningstar.

It was an unfortunate side effect of their previous leader’s plan.

The Riders’ natural forms could not survive the harsh, sunlit conditions of this plain, and so they chose to hide themselves away in an environment more hospitable to their needs.

They chose to live in the bodies of the dead, something
that the world had little shortage of. They animated corpses as if they still contained the glimmer of life, but instead of a spark of divinity, they held a vile worm of darkness.

The idea of working with creatures as foul as these made Geburah nauseous, but their numbers were many, and they did have an uncanny ability to track items of vast supernatural power, even when those objects endeavored to remain hidden.

Besides, once the instrument was in his hands, their kind would not matter anymore.

Nothing would matter anymore.

“We still search,” the mewling creature said, face pressed to the floor of the basement chamber. “And our numbers are great,” the monster continued in an attempt to placate the angel.

That bothered Geburah as well. Things such as the Corpse Riders should have been wiped from existence as soon as their presence was detected, back when the Powers safeguarded the world, before the coming of the Nephilim, but now …

The Powers’ leader looked around the chamber and saw how the demonic beasts has assimilated themselves into human society. They had set up their nest in a mortuary, using the corpses that had been handed over to the funeral business for cremation and burial.

Monsters living right beneath the noses of humanity. It had gone too far, and it made him all the more confident that what he was attempting to do—what the great Verchiel had asked them to do—was the right thing.

“You will find the instrument for me, yes?” he asked the cowering demon, again touching the tip of his index finger to the creature’s flesh.

“Yes!” it screamed. “Yes! We will find it.”

“Our patience grows thin,” Geburah said.

His brothers had begun to glow, throwing blinding light and intense heat across the room. The cries of the Corpse Riders were like music to Geburah’s ears.

And if that brought him so much joy, he had to wonder how beautiful it would be when this entire blighted world was screaming.

O
NE
W
EEK
A
GO

Dusty had started to doze, even as the trucker droned on and on. He knew it wasn’t very polite. Jack had been nice enough to offer him a ride from Vermont to Boston, but Dusty was so damn tired he could barely keep his eyes open. The instrument had kept him moving west to east, now south. He hoped he wouldn’t start snoring. If he could at least keep up the appearance that he was listening, it might be okay.

But the instrument had more visions to show him.

Eyes closed, the harmonica nestled, warm and pulsing, in his jacket pocket, Dusty learned of its origins.

And of its dire purpose.

Jack kept on talking as Dusty’s mind filled with images he
could barely comprehend. He saw the creation of reality from nothing—a flash of brilliance when the Almighty gained consciousness and decided that the darkness would reign no more.

Dusty saw the creation of what could only have been Heaven, and the winged creatures that the Lord God had brought into existence to help Him with His chore.

From there it became a blur: he saw the Creator giving birth to the universe—the stars and the planets—and he witnessed the creation of all the life that would swim, slither, crawl, and walk upon the earth.

Dusty could feel the Creator’s love for this place, and it was this love that led to the creation of the instrument. The Lord God loved His world, and dared not see it tainted.

There were things that had lived—still lived—in the darkness that had been banished with creation, evil things that would see the Almighty’s world corrupted.

The Lord of Lords could not bear to think of this, and had fashioned a means to keep the world from falling into the clutches of evil. From deep within His being, the Creator took a portion of His wrath, and from it He fashioned an angel. He called this angel Wormwood. Wormwood would be called upon only in times of darkness and shadow, when the world He so loved was tainted beyond repair.

And then He fashioned an instrument—a trumpet—to summon this terrible angel … this Abomination of Desolation, for when the horn was blown, it would be too late.
The angel would come, and all that existed upon the world would end.

“So I ate ’em,” a loud voice boomed, awakening Dusty from his apocalyptic vision with a start.

The boy looked around the cab, taking a moment to remember where he was and how he had gotten there. He turned his attention to the truck driver, to Jack, who was staring at him.

“What?” Dusty asked. It was obvious that the trucker hadn’t known he’d been asleep.

“The doughnuts,” Jack said matter-of-factly. “I ate all of them.”

Dusty had no idea what the man was talking about, but he managed to put on a smile, pretending to be amused.

“Wow, that’s something,” he murmured, gazing out the eighteen-wheeler’s broad windshield at the night stretched out before it.

Jack nodded and fell silent, having finished his tale of mass doughnut consumption.

Dusty’s hand slipped into his jacket to find the warmth of the harmonica … of the instrument that could very well call down the apocalypse.

The end of the world right inside his pocket.

T
he first thing Aaron noticed was how pale Lorelei looked. She seemed sick, her blouse appearing too large upon her frail form.

The Nephilim magick user sat in a chair at the front of the room, bony hands clasped tightly in her lap. Lucifer stood at her side, glancing down from time to time, concern showing in his gaze.

Aaron felt Vilma’s hand on his arm as she pulled him toward some chairs. The look on her face as she stared at the front of the room told him that she had noticed Lorelei’s appearance as well.

The eight other Nephilim filtered into the room, choosing their seats. A nervous anticipation began to grow in the air. Jeremy Fox was the last to arrive, taking a seat against the wall, well away from the others. He glanced briefly over his shoulder
and grinned smugly at Aaron and Vilma before turning his attention to Lucifer.

Aaron felt his anger flare but was distracted when his father began to speak.

“We’re all here?” Lucifer asked, scanning the room.

Gabriel slunk in, head down, and went to where Aaron and Vilma sat.

“Sorry,”
the dog grumbled as he sat beside Aaron.
“Had to do my business.”

This got a laugh from the Nephilim in the room, but their mood quickly turned serious as Lucifer continued.

“We have a bad one, I’m afraid,” he said, his gaze touching each and every one of them, ensuring that he had their undivided attention. “And we don’t have time to waste. A group of miners in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, have been trapped by a cave-in. They’re running low on air, and it appears that they are not alone.”

Everyone seemed to sit a little straighter in their seats with Lucifer’s last statement.

“What kind of beastie are we dealing with this time?” Jeremy asked.

“For lack of a better name, I would say that they are trolls,” Lucifer responded.

Laughter flared again in the room as the Nephilim made jokes about cartoons and fairy tales.

“Guys,” Aaron warned, turning partially in his seat.

“Did I say something funny?” Lucifer asked sternly,
immediately quieting the room. “From what Lorelei has told me … shown me, there is nothing humorous about these creatures. These things are evil, and you’ll be in their environment beneath the ground,” he explained. “A creature is always far more dangerous when it’s in its own territory.”

He turned to Lorelei, who seemed to be looking a little bit better, a little color having returned to her fair features.

She rose to stand beside the Morningstar. “The vision came hot and heavy this morning; we’re not talking about a lot of time if we want to save the miners.” She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for what was to come.

“So, are we ready?” she asked.

Aaron could see that Lorelei herself was still shaken by the effects of the vision. But as with so much of their lives lately, what choice did any of them really have?

Aaron knew what was coming and mentally prepared himself for the confrontation that was sure to happen, and for that he needed to be thinking not as a man but as something more than that, something more than human actually—
Nephilim
.

He glanced around the room at the others as they, too, readied themselves. Janice, Kirk, William, Melissa, Samantha, Russell, Cameron: he was proud of this group, proud of how far they’d come, and that they had been able to step up to the responsibilities that life had so cruelly dropped in their laps. With the Powers gone, they were the protectors of the world from darkness. Sure, some of them were still a little raw—he
glanced at Jeremy Fox—but they were doing well. They were surviving. They were getting the job done.

At the front of the room, Lorelei closed her eyes and took another deep breath. Besides her ability to use the ancient Archon magicks, she was also able to psychically share her visions with the other Nephilim. Aaron wasn’t sure if he or any of the others would eventually be able to do the same, or if this was just another of Lorelei’s unique talents, but he did know that her ability had proven quite useful in carrying out their missions.

Aaron felt the girl’s presence in his mind almost at once. It started as a dull pain that gradually intensified, followed by a flood of imagery and knowledge. He heard some of the others cry out as the information flowed forcefully into their brains.

And then it was done. Aaron blinked, then looked about the room. The others were recovering; some were dealing with small nosebleeds, while others had headaches that would eventually fade.

Now they all saw what she had seen: the troll-like things emerging from the darkness of the underground, and the innocents that were threatened.

And they knew where to go to face off against this threat.

Lorelei looked the worse for wear, leaning against Lucifer as she attempted to pull herself together.

“Are we set?” Aaron asked as he rose from his seat.

The others almost visibly shook off the effects of the psychic connection and stood as well.

“Do we all know where we’re going?”

As one, they nodded, a certain grimness passing over them, not knowing if they would return from their mission.

Not knowing if they would survive.

“Then let’s do this,” Aaron said, wings beginning to unfurl from his body.

Wings of white, gold, brown, and copper began to emerge from the backs of the eight other youths. It was truly an awesome sight to behold, and it drove home to Aaron the importance of what they were doing on this world.

Vilma was ready beside him, her white wings slowly fanning the air. She gave him a wink, and he returned the favor with a smile.

“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” he told Gabriel, who watched him with serious eyes. “Look after things while I’m gone.”

“Be careful,”
the dog said.

Aaron promised he would, then wrapped himself in a cocoon of feathers, as did the others, and one after the other they were gone, traveling to the place of darkness they saw inside their minds.

K
EMEROVO
O
BLAST
: R
USSIA

Anatoli Olegushka always knew that working in the Ulyanovskaya coal mines would probably be the death of him, but a certain sense of invincibility was developed when
one descended into the bowels of the earth day after day and ascended again into the fresh air and gray Russian skies.

Certainly there were accidents—cave-ins, methane and coal-dust explosions—but those things happened to other people, and when they did, he knew he was safe for some short time, that the spirits that lived in the earth had taken their sacrifice and would be sated for a time.

For a time
.

Anatoli lay upon a bed of broken rock, the lantern on his helmet shining upward onto the curved ceiling of the chamber. He struggled to remain conscious in the thinning air.

The day had begun just like any other: Anatoli, Pavel, Nikolai, Olik, and other members of the crew descended into the tunnels 885 feet below the surface. They couldn’t have been working any more than twenty minutes—Olik had barely settled into his latest tale of woe about how fat his wife was becoming—when their world exploded in a flash of fire and the deafening roar of the end.

But it wasn’t the end for all of them. Anatoli slowly turned his head, the beam of light from his safety helmet shining through the choking, dust-filled air as he sought out his friends. Bodies were scattered about, some partially buried beneath crushing rock, all of them lying horribly still. The sight of his friends stirred him to move. He carefully rolled onto his side, then slowly pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Miraculously, he didn’t think he
had broken anything. He crawled across the rubble to the first of his comrades.

“Hey,” he said, nudging the man who lay facedown. “Hey there, are you all right?”

Anatoli rolled the man over. It was his closest friend, Pavel, who now stared up at him with empty eyes, dark blood streaming from his mouth and nose.

There will be time for mourning later
, Anatoli told himself, fighting back tears. For now, he had to concentrate on finding other survivors and holding on until he could be rescued.