The Fallen 4 (21 page)

She stood on the periphery of his connection to the sword, wielding the Archon magick and feeling the intensity of the power that radiated from the sword. In all actuality she wasn’t sure if she
was
strong enough, but she knew for certain that soon she wouldn’t be.

But now…

“As sure as I’ll ever be,” she told him.

Dusty accepted that, and she watched him change his stance, readying himself for what was to come.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked.

“Just hold on for a little longer,” Lorelei said. “And I need you to let me into your mind.”

It felt as though Lorelei were sticking her head into a rushing stream, only there were multiple currents, each traveling at about a hundred miles an hour along different routes. For a moment she hesitated, tempted to draw back, fearing for her
safety. But then she considered the safety of her friends and of the world, and then she immersed herself.

At first she thought she was going to be torn apart. Then she felt herself begin to slide into Dusty’s mind.

Oh, the sights she saw. Lorelei wanted to so look away, but there was no stopping now. The more she saw, the better she was able to let herself drift.

“Lorelei,” she heard her name called forcefully.

She chose to ignore it, knowing that whoever was calling her could do little to change the path of the world.

“Lorelei, it’s me,” the voice said again, and she remembered Dusty. “I’m not sure how much longer I’ve got. I’m getting tired and…”

Dusty
, she thought, remembering the young man and how his gift—
or was it a curse?
—was allowing her to see everything that the sword saw, every darkened pocket of the world.

Images that had been hidden from her magick.

And then she remembered why she was there in Dusty’s mind.

“Dusty!” she called out, hoping that she had strength enough to lend him. “Just a bit longer, Dusty.”

She pulled herself together. Her time was limited, so she tried to see as much as she could, scanning and discarding one nightmarish vision after another.

“Where are you, Lucifer?” she called out in frustration. “Where have you gone?”

Lorelei felt a powerful tug upon her psyche. Dusty was
weakening. Her time was up, but still she searched, exposing herself to sights that would have driven a lesser being to madness.

Dusty was screaming now, no longer able to contain her presence within his own. She was about to withdraw, when she saw a flash of darkness. A star of black twinkled amid a sea of nightmares.

“I’m sorry,” she told her agonized host, forcing herself toward the mystery.

Lorelei extended her already damaged and fragmented psyche, but she was running out of time. She could feel Dusty failing, the Instrument’s relentless pummeling driving him to destruction. All she needed was a moment more to see what was lurking inside this vision.

Lorelei pushed, and felt the fragile exterior of the darkened star shatter like an eggshell. She was disappointed to see that there was only more darkness within, and was turning to depart, when she saw it.

When she saw him.

Lucifer Morningstar, curled in the fetal position, floated in a sea of total black. She saw his face twitch, and his mouth grimace as if he were locked in a nightmare. Knowing that her time was precarious, Lorelei reached out to take hold of her friend and mentor, desperate to wake him from his slumber.

“Lucifer!” she cried. “Lucifer, we need you!”

And then the magickal tether that had held her to the visions of the Instrument yanked her back.

But not before she saw that Lucifer’s eyes had opened.

*   *   *

Lucifer’s life had returned to darkness once he’d left the woman he loved, but he did not let it control him as it had before. This love had changed him, and even though despair flowed through him, he did not let it affect him.

Lucifer remembered how it had felt, the torture of no longer having Taylor in his life, but he knew that it was for the best. His enemies were many, and they wanted nothing more than to wound him using that which he loved most.

As he had struck out against God and Heaven.

Lucifer had initially sought peace in the monastery of Crna Reka, in the Serbian mountains. He had hoped that removing himself from the world would be enough to please his enemies, but of course it wasn’t.

The fallout from betraying God had followed him like a rabid beast, dragging him from his hiding place, his place of solace.

What if Verchiel and his Powers hadn’t come for me?
Lucifer pondered, immersed in the memory.
What if I was allowed to hide, wrapping myself in the darkness like a cloak?

Like a protective cocoon.

Lucifer did not want to remember anymore, and forced himself to fall into a deeper subconscious world. This was where he belonged, where he could do the least damage to
those he had grown to care for, those he had dared to love. This was where he would stay, letting the chrysalis of shadow grow thicker and stronger, protecting him from the world.

And protecting the world from him.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep in that darkened embrace, but there came an insistent rapping as if somebody knew he was inside. Lucifer tried to ignore it, to return to the solace of sleep, but the knocking persisted.

And then, the unthinkable occurred.

Whatever—whoever—was outside his place of solitude cracked the exterior shell, exposing him, and he heard a voice that was strangely familiar.

“Lucifer!” it cried, temporarily rousing him from his numbed state, tempting him to open his eyes.

“Lucifer, we need you!”

An image of Lorelei filled his head, beautiful, powerful Lorelei. He’d almost forgotten her, forgotten all of the Nephilim. Visions of those who were trying to safeguard the world suddenly flowed through the cracks in his cocoon.

Then, as quickly as she had arrived, Lorelei was gone. But she had left a trail for him to follow back to the world from which he’d been taken.

It dawned on him then, a blow as crushing as when he’d realized the angels were no longer the Almighty’s favorite.

If he could follow the trail back to the Nephilim, then so could somebody else.

Something else.

Lucifer’s eyes snapped open, and Lorelei’s ghostly image reappeared for an instant before she winked away. He tried to warn her, to tell her to guard her location before it—the evil power that had stolen his body—could follow her.

But it was already too late.

The darkness that had been Lucifer’s solace was now filled with the laughter of his foe.

*   *   *

Satan’s eyes snapped open.

Since the Abomination of Desolation had severed the earth’s ties to Heaven, humanity had been gradually succumbing to the encroaching darkness. Their efforts to halt the onslaught of shadow that would eventually befall them were pitiful.

But there had been a wrinkle.

The Nephilim.

Satan did not fear the half-breeds, but he knew that they were striking out against his denizens of night, inspiring fear in those who should have been swearing their allegiance to him.

“You smile, oh lord,” said one of the Sisters who stood before him.

“What did you see, oh Darkstar? “questioned the second.

“Was the path to the Community’s fealty made clear?” the third Sister wanted to know.

Satan rose and fanned his wings.

“It was,” he told them. “The Morningstar has provided me with a gift to entice those who have yet to admit that I am their lord and master.”

He descended the marble steps from his throne to the court below, the Sisters fleeing from his path.

“Lucifer had attempted to hide them from me,” the Darkstar growled. “These children of the fallen, these Nephilim.”

“Horrible things,” commented one of the Umbra Sisters.

“Thorns in the sides of so many of your blessed Community,” said another.

“If only someone could exterminate them, remove this winged obstacle.”

Satan smiled. “If only,” he said, and began to laugh, a vision of the slaughter to come traipsing through the fetid fields of his mind.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
he despair was so heavy in the air that Aaron could almost taste it.

He parted his wings, to find himself in the center of a deserted street. Instinctively he knew that he had arrived in the city of Detroit.

“Is this right?” he asked Mallus, who stepped from the embrace of Aaron’s wings.

Mallus looked around. Cars burned in the road, with bodies strewn beside them. “Yes, this is where we’re supposed to be,” he confirmed.

“Something isn’t right here,” Aaron observed, unnerved by the boarded-up storefronts. “Where is everybody?”

“It wasn’t like this section of town was bustling to begin with,” Mallus said, strolling past abandoned buildings unhindered by foot traffic. “But evil has a tendency to lock on to
despair, and it made this part of the city its home.”

It was then that Aaron heard the first evidence of life. A scream of absolute terror carried on the night winds. He stopped, eyes scanning the area in search of the source.

Mallus’s hand took hold of his arm, urging him on.

“We’ve no time for—”

Aaron yanked away his arm, feeling the sigils of his birthright rising to the surface of his flesh. “There’s always time,” he protested, his wings splaying as he prepared to take flight.

Mallus looked as though he would argue, but then resigned himself to Aaron’s decision.

“That’s where we’re going,” he said, pointing to a rundown building, its windows shuttered with random pieces of wood. A peeling sign hanging from a metal post read,
BLESSED ANGEL NURSING HOME
.

“Of course it is,” Aaron replied, springing into the air, senses attuned to any further activity.

There were more screams, and he immediately found the source on the next street over. A tenement was burning. Flames and thick black smoke billowed out from broken windows. At first Aaron thought it would be a simple rescue mission, but then he caught sight of the street below.

People streamed from the burning building, believing they were running to safety, but there were things waiting for them—short, armored creatures with reptilian faces.

Goblins.

Some held burning torches in their clawed hands, and Aaron knew the goblins must have set the building ablaze. They leaped, snatched up their prey, and dragged them, screaming and struggling, into the shadows.

Soaring overhead for another look, Aaron could see a kind of swirling passage in the darkness behind the goblins. The building’s inhabitants were being forced through the portal to a fate he would rather not consider.

Aaron brought forth an awesome sword of fire. The light from his weapon alerted the beasts below, and their bulbous eyes glistened as he swooped down amongst them.

“Angel!” one of the goblins barked in the tongue of its species as it yanked a short sword from a leather scabbard at its side.

Aaron landed on the street between the burning tenement and the goblins. The foul creatures rushed at him, murder in their monstrous gazes, but he was ready. The pulse of the divine throbbed in his veins. The goblins screeched their battle cries, attempting to scare him with their ferocity, but Aaron felt no fear.

This wasn’t the time for fear; it was a time of battle.

Aaron counted nine goblins in the initial attack, all wearing filthy, blood-caked armor and wielding a variety of swords, knives, spears, and axes. Aaron propelled himself into the fray with his own battle cry, and collided with the first of the attackers, knocking them backward to the street. He swung his
blade, the sword hissing eagerly as if knowing it would soon bite deep into the flesh of its enemy.

The goblins were ferocious in their attack, but they were nothing before a soldier of Heaven. Aaron did not stop moving. He pushed through the opposing force, his sword hacking through the goblin armor as if it were made of paper. The ground became slick with goblin blood as the creatures dropped, piling up around him as he fought.

And then above the moans of dying monsters, Aaron heard something that did not belong, something that momentarily distracted him. He scanned the area and caught sight of a goblin soldier carrying a car seat by its handle. The goblin crept close to the shadows of the abandoned buildings as the creature made its way toward the passage.

A goblin knife bit into Aaron’s shoulder.

He cried out as his attacker laughed. Furious, Aaron pulled the knife from his shoulder and leaped into the air, fashioning his sword into a spear. While the goblins gazed up at him, Aaron threw the spear amongst them with all his might. The weapon detonated upon impact with the ground, and an explosion of divine fire cascaded outward, consuming the goblin horde and leaving only ashen bodies in its wake.

Aaron allowed himself a moment’s pleasure, then saw that the goblin with the baby was still hurrying for the shadowy passage. Aaron arced his body downward, flying mere inches above the filthy street. Goblins tried to catch him, but he was
moving too fast and scattered them like bowling pins.

The goblin with the baby saw Aaron’s approach, the creature’s bulbous eyes growing even larger as it realized that it was the angel’s objective. Aaron beat the air with his wings, increasing his speed, but the goblin charged ahead.

Aaron extended his hands as he drew near, watching as the goblin wrapped its arms around the car seat while the baby wailed in fear; and then the goblin jumped into the yawning blackness.

The goblin shape disappeared within the magickal passage, but Aaron would not give up—could not give up. He landed and reached into the darkness. It was cold in the void, and the feeling went out of Aaron’s arm, but he managed to grab hold of the metal collar of the goblin’s chest plate. Using all of his strength and the powerful flapping of his wings, he dragged the goblin, still clutching the car seat, from the abyss.

His arm painfully numb, Aaron released the struggling goblin’s collar and sent the beast and the car seat tumbling to the ground. He quickly scooped up the shrieking infant, still strapped tightly into the seat. Other than being scared, the child didn’t appear to be injured.