Releasing his foe, Jeremy watched him stumble about for a moment, his head bubbling over with blood and gray matter, before he fell sideways to the floor.
The other Agent wasted no time, lunging at Jeremy. The two tumbled backward, grappling for the upper hand. Jeremy flapped his wings powerfully, attempting to throw the knife-wielding killer off of him, but the assassin held tight, slashing and jabbing.
Their fight carried them down the hallway, rebounding off walls from one side of the corridor to the other.
Suddenly they were in an open space, and in that space, there was a large door.
Jeremy sensed something deep in the pit of his stomach, something that was calling to him. He intensified his fight, managing to get one of his legs beneath the assassin and kick him away. The Agent flew backward, bouncing off the door. Thinking quickly, Jeremy created throwing stars—he’d always loved kung fu movies as a kid—and let the weapons fly. The killer tried to leap from the path of the flaming stars but was too late. They penetrated the Agent’s leather suit and pinned him against the door, where his body burst into flames.
Jeremy cautiously approached the door but was interrupted by the sound of footfalls from the corridor behind him. He turned to meet a gaggle of at least ten masked Agents, running toward him with murder in their intent.
There’s no peace for the wicked, his mother had always said.
He was beginning to understand what she’d meant.
* * *
Lucifer Morningstar sat in the eye of the maelstrom, calmly stroking the soft gray fur of the mouse.
Hell raged about him; a simple name really, to describe the magnitude of what he had done so very long ago.
It had taken him many millennia to understand and accept his curse. It had been God’s will to saddle him with this burden, to make him carry it with him wherever he might go.
The Morningstar recognized the destructive capacity of the ultimate sadness and misery within him, and he guarded it well.
But now there was another in possession of his form, another who wished to unleash this power.
Lucifer would not stand for it.
Hell raged about the Morningstar’s psyche, but he exuded a sense of calm. Eventually, he would wrangle control, but for now, the cumulative effect of his crimes against Heaven raged unabated.
If there was one thing that the Morningstar had—
It was patience.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The voice of God cried out to the world.
Aaron Corbet, wearing the guise of the Metatron, stood in the control center of the Unforgiven’s base, armored head tilted back as the message flowed from his mouth in all the languages spoken on the planet.
“Hear me, citizens of the world. Let all who oppose the darkness come forth. Climb out from your hiding places and take back what has been stolen from you. Join the fight against the evil that has grown like a cancer across the land. Drive back the darkness from whence it came, and take light into your heart.”
The words reverberated throughout the room.
And the Unforgiven dropped to their knees, the Metatron’s message the first balm to their tortured beings since their fall from Heaven.
* * *
Vilma Santiago was mesmerized by the sight of the man she loved, and what he had become. The Metatron’s words brought her great comfort. Finally, she felt as though they had not been forsaken.
But what of her love? What of Aaron Corbet?
Was he still in there somewhere, overcome by the power of God, or had his usefulness been proven, and his individual light extinguished?
* * *
Taylor Corbet dropped to one knee and bowed her head before the Metatron.
She knew that it was her son, but at the same time knew that it wasn’t. Aaron’s body was being used as an instrument of a higher power. She didn’t know exactly how she felt about that, having waited for so very long to have her boy back in her life again. But this purpose that he now served . . .
Taylor could not help but be proud.
* * *
The message was nothing short of inspirational.
Levi had known that their chances of surviving against the forces of darkness and the plans of the Architects were rather slim, but he had accepted their fate. He and his brothers had chosen this as their penance. They had sworn to protect God’s world from any and all otherworldly threats, without hesitation.
No matter the outcome.
If they were to die in their endeavors, then so be it.
But now . . .
The words of God, as spoken by the Metatron, gave him hope. Their seemingly never-ending battle against God’s foes was not for naught.
They had a chance.
* * *
Gabriel was compelled to bark.
Yes, he cried out in his canine voice. Yes, we will emerge from hiding and fight the things that have crawled from the darkness.
We will make them fear us!
And we will triumph!
* * *
Still wearing the blood and viscera of his enemies, Verchiel pushed his way through the seemingly endless sea of monstrosities to the edge of the deep impression in the desert sand.
Having followed Satan’s army from the citadel to the desert, he was now compelled to see what new, terrible act the Morningstar was responsible for. It shook him to his core that Lucifer was again up to mischief.
Verchiel scowled as he pushed aside ogres, trolls, and demons of all shapes and sizes. To think he’d actually started to believe that the Son of the Morning had seen the error of his ways and now served the will of God. The Nephilim had been so sure of Lucifer’s reform that they’d been shocked when he went missing.
Missing. Verchiel would have chuckled if he wasn’t so thoroughly repulsed.
The Morningstar had remained true to at least one of his other monikers.
The Prince of Lies.
The largest of the foul creatures were crowded around the rim, and Verchiel was tempted to lash out with his divine might and smite them all, when he heard it. He froze. The nightmares around him paid no attention. They could not hear it, for they were not of the divine.
The voice of God was inside his head, and Verchiel could barely contain his joy. How long it had been since he’d heard the dulcet tones of the Creator’s voice.
The message was a call to arms against the forces of darkness.
“What’s wrong with you?” an ogre grunted, its loathsome body armored with the bones of fallen enemies.
Verchiel realized that he had dropped to his knees in reverence, drawing unwanted attention to himself.
The ogre loomed above him menacingly, as others of similar size and ferocity drew near.
Let them come, Verchiel thought. He rose to his full and impressive height. Let them come, for the Lord God Almighty had spoken to him—to him—and asked that he fight.
And it had filled Verchiel with great joy.
“What’s wrong with me, you vile beast?” Verchiel asked.
He let the fires of his divinity surge forth, their heat burning away the blood and whatever foul pieces of offal that clung to him after his endless skirmishes.
Revealing the angel beneath.
“There is nothing wrong with me,” he proclaimed, calling upon his blade of fire.
The monsters around him barely had time to react before Verchiel killed them. He leaped into the air, carried by wings no longer weighed down by the dried fluids of death. And when the former leader of the heavenly host Powers finally touched down upon the desert sand, a wide circle of death surrounded him.
If the Lord God wished him to stand against evil, he would be more than happy to comply.
But a mournful wail interrupted Verchiel’s thoughts and pulled him to the edge of the great desert hole, where the beasts still gathered there cowered in the shadow of his divine light.
Crouching at the lip, Verchiel’s gaze fell on the body of the first Cherubim, its head nothing m
ore than a stain upon the hard-packed sand.
Another wail of pain sounded from below, and Verchiel saw a sight that turned his fiery blood to ice. The Morningstar stood at the entrance to a temple of God, holding the throat of another Cherubim, lifting it to expose its belly and plunging a blade into the divine being.
The Cherubim wailed in rage and disappointment. It had not been able to stop the interloper from befouling this holy place.
Verchiel was compelled to action. He spread his wings and dove into the hole to do something that he wished he had done on the battlefields of Heaven: kill the Morningstar.
“Lucifer!” he bellowed, landing not far from the body of the other Cherubim.
“Are you talking to me?” the Morningstar asked, and released the flailing Cherubim, whose burning blood now covered his armored form. The angelic beast flopped pitifully on the top step to the temple, its every movement causing more of its life to spill out upon the ancient stone.
The more Verchiel saw, the more enraged he became. He stalked toward the bottom of the giant steps.
“Aren’t you a pretty little thing,” Lucifer Morningstar said.
And as Verchiel looked at him, he had the strangest of thoughts. This isn’t the Morningstar at all.
This is something worse.
Verchiel flew into the air, landing before the Morningstar and looking into the eyes of his foe. Where there had once burned the fires of righteous indignation, Verchiel saw only darkness, so deep and black that it threatened to suck him in.
“See something you like?” Lucifer asked.
Even his voice sounded wrong.
“You’re not him,” Verchiel said with stark realization.
“I’m something more,” the thing wearing the body of the Morningstar announced.
Verchiel braced himself as the being lunged at him, crackling black energy trailing from the assailant’s blade.
And then he felt a sudden, intense burning upon his arm. The arrowlike tattoo placed there by the three Sisters pulsed and throbbed, as if it would leap from his flesh.
And before he could even consider what it might mean, he was gone.
* * *
Enoch heard the call.
He knew it was the voice of God—the voice that should have been his—the human aspect of what was to be the new Metatron.
He sat up in his bubble, which still hovered over the Architects’ control center. Something was most definitely wrong.
He pressed the palms of his young hands and his forehead against the surface of the sphere.
Could the Architects have heard it also? he wondered. It was a possibility. After all, they were beings of God, even if they felt they could do better than He.
Multiple images showing great unrest on earth flashed across the large, concave walls. And they appeared to be making the Architects very uneasy.
“Is something wrong out there?” Enoch called from his bubble.
The Architects paid him no mind, murmuring amongst themselves, their attention directed on the Architect that Enoch imagined was their leader.
“Something not going according to plan, perhaps?”
The leader’s shape began to change. Suddenly, Enoch was looking at an incredibly tall figure clad in robes of scarlet. From his back sprang multiple sets of wings that were colored like a rainbow, but unlike a rainbow, their surface was covered in eyes.
“Everything is progressing as planned,” the head Architect, the Overseer, stated, the sound of his voice like the blast of a pipe organ within the confines of a church. “It is impossible for anything to go awry.”
“That’s good to know,” Enoch said. “Because from where I’m sitting, it appears that you all are a little nervous.”
“Nervous?” The Overseer removed himself from the others. “We are the Architects, the first of God’s beings, made to supervise the creation of what would have been His greatest achievement. What could possibly make us nervous?”
The eyes upon his many wings, and the single orb from within the hood of his robe, held Enoch in a paralyzing stare.
“He wanted to give you a chance,” Enoch said, finally pulling his attention back to the other, agitated Architects, and the myriad scenes that still flashed upon the wall. “But it seems you just don’t want to listen.”
“We heard nothing,” the Overseer replied.
Enoch smiled sadly, looking down at the angelic being. “First you disobey Him, ignore all that He asked of you, and now you lie about hearing His voice.”
The Overseer remained silent, drifting back toward the gathering of Architects.
“That’s what you were trying to prevent, wasn’t it?” Enoch continued. “Capturing me was going to prevent the voice of God from being heard again, the Metatron from being reborn. Doesn’t appear to have worked. The Metatron has found its voice anyway.”
“That will be corrected,” the Overseer stated.
A single image repeated itself on the walls of the chamber, and Enoch gasped as memories long buried floated to the surface of his mind.
He saw a desert inhabited by armies of monsters, and at their center was an enormous crater. And in that crater was . . .
“Beth-El,” Enoch whispered.
“The evil has reached the House of God,” one of the Architects announced, its usual dispassionate voice raised ever so slightly.
This sent a flurry of excitement through the others.
Enoch could see that there was something—someone—at the doors of Heaven. “Is this part of the plan?” he asked. “How are you going to manipulate this so it benefits you?”
The Overseer turned to the child once more. “We are the plan,” his voice boomed.
But as the Overseer spoke, each of the Architects turned their attention to their leader.
“I know that you believe that,” Enoch said. “But do they?”
The Overseer followed the child’s gaze and saw that he was being scrutinized by his brethren.
Enoch chanced a wry smile at the heavenly being, only to have it quickly disappear as the Architects began to advance on their leader. Are they attacking? the child wondered, but then it all became clear.
One by one, the Overseer absorbed the other Architects. They flowed toward him, effortlessly merging with his body.
“Who ever said that they had a choice?” the Overseer then asked.
Enoch was confused. “What have you done?”
“I have merely taken back what was mine to begin with,” the Overseer explained. “They were all aspects of me, as I was an aspect of God.”
“Was?” Enoch questioned.
The Overseer’s many wings spread wide. “I am so much more than what I was when I was first created,” he declared with great certainty. “And once I’ve achieved my goals . . .”
“After all that you’ve seen,” Enoch said, gesturing toward the walls, which were now blank, “you still believe that your plans will carry through?”
There came a tremendous racket from somewhere outside the chamber.
“What was that?” Enoch asked, moving about in his bubble.
“A minor annoyance,” the Overseer replied.
“Another aspect to be considered and absorbed?” the child taunted.
“Perhaps,” the Overseer acknowledged with a shrug. “Or maybe the disturbance simply needs to be excised.”
The commotion grew louder, and Enoch could see that it troubled the remaining Architect.
“A tool is needed,” the Overseer then said.
He turned his attention to an empty part of the room and raised a bony arm from within the scarlet robe. He kneaded the air with long fingers, creating a disturbance that grew cloudy, and then coalesced.
Where there had been nothing, a figure appeared, clad in the armor of Heaven. His powerful wings unfurled from his back, a sword of fire ready for battle clutched in one hand.
Enoch could do nothing but stare, another memory bubbling up from within him, a memory placed there by
a higher power.
And within that memory there was a name.
The angel looked about him, his eyes wild with fury and confusion.
“Verchiel,” Enoch whispered as he looked upon the angel conjured by the Overseer. “His name is Verchiel.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The clouds above him were thick and dark, and Dusty had no idea if it was day or night as he walked the lonely stretch of road away from the Unforgiven’s base.
The snatches of visions that he perceived were telling him that the world was reaching a critical moment in time. Many events were on the verge of coming together—to effect the outcome of the looming conflict.
To effect Armageddon.
Some of them he had set in motion himself, but others . . .
Dusty paused as a new, and particularly gruesome, vision invaded his thoughts. It did not show much hope for the planet’s survival.
At that, his body became racked with extreme cramps. He dropped to his knees, trying to muffle his cries of pain, so as not to attract the attention of any nightmarish creatures prowling in the area.
He could feel the metal—moving—encasing his body.
It had been spreading slowly, but now . . .
Dusty lifted his sweatshirt. His entire stomach was covered by the metal. With a trembling hand he touched where the warm flesh had once been, and felt only cold metal. There was a tingling in his fingertips, and he raised his hand before his face to see the metal spreading over the digits, across the back of his hand, and down his arm.
At first he was afraid.
Afraid of what was happening to him . . . afraid of what he was becoming, but a soft voice that he believed to be the spirit of the Instrument whispered inside his mind.
This will benefit the world.
Letting go of his fear, Dusty opened himself to the will of the Instrument, and it obliged him, spreading with greater speed over his remaining flesh.
His face was the last to change, metal traveling up his neck, over his chin, into his mouth, and beyond.
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