“Well, at least one of them was,” Jon reminded him.
“Yeah,” Remy said, remembering what he had seen from Zophiel’s memory of Eden: that Malachi had left something in the Garden. He saw the rich, fertile soil as if he were there, sensing that something very wrong had been planted there.
Something that was growing . . . maturing.
“At least one . . . for now.”
“For now,” Jon repeated. “Are you suggesting that there might be more of these things . . . these Shaitan?”
“I believe as Zophiel did,” Remy said. “That Eden . . . and eventually Heaven itself, could be in great danger.”
Jon looked at him with eyes desperate for answers, the events unfolding traveling far outside what he was capable of comprehending.
The Seraphim knew what had to be done, and this time Remy did not seek to argue, or squelch his bourgeoning emotion.
If the Garden and Heaven itself were threatened, there could be only one response.
“We need to go to Eden and destroy the threat,” Remy said, gripping the sword all the tighter.
“Do we have a chance?” Jon asked nervously. “Do you think you can take on Malachi and the Shaitan?”
Remy did not answer his question, letting the silence of the moment say all that was necessary.
Izabelle Swan pulled her bare feet up underneath her and took a long swig from her third beer of the hour, and continued the conversation with her parents.
“How was I to know he was your friend?” Izzy said to her father as she held the photo of the nightclub in one hand, the bottle of beer in the other. “Alls you said was to watch out for an angel that wanted to do Mama harm, and that’s exactly what I was doin’.”
She took another drink from the bottle, feeling emotions swirl around inside her that she hadn’t felt in many, many years.
Izzy barely knew her parents, having been just a little girl when they left, but there was still some sort of connection. She felt them out there in the world somewhere, and wondered if there would ever be a day when . . .
Her anger flared, and she set her beer firmly down on the floor beside her, grabbing the wrinkled paper bag and shoving the photograph back inside.
Those were foolish thoughts. She used to have them when she was a little girl growing up alone. They hadn’t seemed quite so foolish then. Izzy had always hoped that they would come back for her, that they’d all be together someday.
Protecting one another against anything, and everything, that might try to harm them.
But a lot of years had gone by, and that hope had become pretty silly, and she had to wonder how she could even think about it with a straight face.
Must’ve been the beer, she thought, wrinkling the top of the paper bag closed and preparing to hide the photos away again.
She got up from her chair, heading toward her bedroom, when she felt it.
It was like somebody had taken a dull screwdriver to her soul, plunging it in and giving it a good twist. Izzy gasped, the paper bag of photos falling to the wood floor beneath her feet.
She stood perfectly still, waiting for the intense pain to pass, when her mind became filled with visions of green.
Visions of the Garden.
She’d been having dreams lately about this place, but never as vivid as this. Not only could she see it inside her head, but she could smell the heavy dampness, the rich soil.
But also the smell of rot.
And she could feel something growing . . . stirring. Something that didn’t belong. The perverse sensations stirred her elemental power, and the magick churned inside her.
Outside the wind picked up, and she could hear the rumble of a forming storm.
And Izzy could sense that she was no longer alone.
A snarl played upon her full lips as she let her magick flow, arcing power jumping from the tips of her fingers, eager to be unleashed.
It had been quite some time since she’d used her powers this frequently, and she had to admit it felt really good.
She had no idea what she would find outside her home, but it didn’t stop her from striding across the floor, taking hold of the knob, and throwing the door open.
“All right, then,” she said, the pain in her chest—the pain of the Garden—making her all the more angry. “Who wants to play?”
She noticed the man called Jon first. He was leaning against the railing of the porch clutching at his chest—feeling Eden’s pain as well.
The angel was standing stiffly behind him, a nasty-looking sword that burned with an eerie, supernatural flame in his hand.
And then she noticed the swamp below her home, and the many rowboats and motorboats that bobbed there upon the water. The Sisters had come as well, drawn to this place . . . to her. And she knew that they could feel it as well. Feel the Garden . . . feel her pain.
“No playing,” Remy said to her. “Just some serious business.”
The magick was begging to be released, but she pulled it back inside her, where it squirmed unhappily.
“What the hell do you two want now?” she asked, fearing the answer. Knowing the answer.
“Your help,” Jon said. “Do you feel it? It’s almost here . . . just beyond the pale.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Izzy lied, starting to turn back to her home as the angel spoke.
“We have to go to the Garden,” he said. “You know it . . . and they know it too.” He motioned with his hand to the Sisters who had gathered around her home.
“Fine,” she spat. “Go. It don’t have nothing to do with me.”
“But it does,” Remy said. “Your mother will be there, and she could be in great danger.”
Izzy had turned her back to him, not wanting him to see how his words affected her.
“She probably doesn’t even remember who I am,” she said, those silly feelings coming back to haunt her.
“Then maybe it’s time to remind her by helping to save Eden, and quite possibly Heaven itself.”
She turned back around to face them.
“Knew I should have killed you both when I had the chance.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Garden was arriving.
Through space and time she surged, sensing a world thriving with life just beyond the veil, and pulling herself toward it.
Eden had been lost for so very long, moving from place to place—world to world—searching for what would make her complete again.
It had been so long since she was last whole.
Since she had last held her children.
This place—this world—sang as it approached; kindred sprits, they were, for both had been shaped by the Almighty.
But the closer she came, the more pain the Garden experienced. The illness at her core was growing, becoming more dangerous as the world of God’s man drew near.
She did not wish to endanger the world, but Eden had grown weak as she traversed a multitude of realities, and she did not know if she had the strength to move on.
The Garden reached out to the world, searching for a place where she could be, where none who lived upon her would be harmed. The planet Earth welcomed Eden, and guided her to an inhospitable place—an area mostly devoid of life.
A place where she had a chance to be saved.
For the Garden could sense beings of great strength walking upon the Earth, beings of unimaginable power.
Beings that could save . . .
Or destroy her.
The North Pole
Gregson Paul pulled himself tighter into a ball inside his sleeping bag and listened to the freezing winds howl hungrily outside his tent.
As he had done since joining this expedition, he shivered to the point that his bones nearly broke, and wondered about when he had turned into the world’s biggest fucking idiot.
He guessed, as he had guessed before, that it was when he first saw Marjorie Halt in her cutoff jeans shorts.
The tent undulated, battere
d by the relentless current of air. It wanted him to come out; it wanted to show him how fucking idiots were treated when they volunteered for a scientific expedition to the North Pole to provide the most accurate survey of the thickness of the Arctic ice.
There were three others in the expedition, lying alongside him, wrapped in their sleeping bags as well. There was Terrance Long, the expedition’s environmental scientist; and project leader Daniel Hiratsu, engineer in charge of the various pieces of high-tech equipment that they were using to survey the polar ice’s thickness; and then there was Marjorie, grad student and ecological savior. She wanted to be the one who told the world about how the Arctic ice caps were melting due to global warming, and he had hung upon every word that left her beautiful mouth on that hot—very hot—summer’s day at the University of Michigan, as they lounged in the grass out in front of the student center.
By the time she had finished talking he wanted to tell the world about the melting ice caps too, and anything else she might suggest . . . and possibly to see what lay beneath those ridiculously short but awesome cutoffs.
There were no cutoff shorts now—maybe beneath the layers of special thermal clothing that they were wearing, but he wouldn’t know. Marjorie had very little interest in him in that way.
She was as cold as the ice they were measuring.
When it was time to rise, they would be on day one hundred and twelve in their mission to reach the Pole. According to Professor Long, they and the ground radar unit that they were using to penetrate and take readings of the ice depth every eight inches would likely reach their destination today, and their mission would pretty much be complete.
Curled up and shivering inside their tent as the below-zero windchill mercilessly assaulted their shelter from outside, Gregson began to dream of another place, a warm place with thick, tropical growth.
A primitive jungle older than recorded history.
Gregson awakened with a yelp, the heady, humid stink of the jungle lingering in his nostrils. He could see that the others still slept, huddled against one another within their cramped confines. Listening to the relentless winds outside, he was about to lie back down, to perhaps escape again to the dream of that wonderful and warm tropical place, when he smelled it.
He sat up in his sleeping bag, a mummy rising from his tomb, and sniffed the frigid air.
Was he going crazy, or did he actually smell that thick, wet jungle? He’d vacationed with his parents in Costa Rica a number of times while growing up, and he remembered the aroma fondly, often thinking of the South American jungles to help him drift off to sleep at night after a long and grueling day of taking readings in below-zero temperatures.
But there was no mistaking it: Gregson could smell the jungle.
He considered waking the others, but, still doubting his sanity, decided against it. Squirming from his sleeping bag, he put on the protective clothing he had shed before going to bed, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to awaken the other members of the team. And even if they did wake up, they’d probably just think he was going outside to perform the uncomfortable task of relieving oneself in a subzero-degree environment.
As strange as it seemed, the jungle smell was stronger—thicker—the closer he got to the tent’s exit. He quickly unzipped the opening, temporarily allowing the howling, razor-sharp winds entrance as he crawled outside into the snow, turning around to seal up the opening behind him.
Standing, Gregson slipped on his protective goggles, looking through the tinted lenses in the eerie twilight of the Pole, searching for the source of the unusual smell.
He didn’t have to look for long.
Gregson thought that he had to be dreaming. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Exhausted from pulling sledges loaded with equipment across the ice, he often had bizarre and incredibly vivid dreams of being home in Michigan, or even back on campus.
But this was unlike anything he’d experienced before.
The wind had piled a few feet of snow just in front of the tent, and he pushed through the powdery drifts in order to get closer.
He half expected it to vanish: a mirage on the bleak, frozen landscape.
But it didn’t; it remained, its details becoming more precise the closer he got.
There was a jungle at the North Pole—not a chance they could have missed it, not even in a blizzard. Gregson was about to turn back and rouse his fellow explorers, but the jungle called to him, the warmth of the place radiating outward and enticing him forward.
The Garden drew him closer.
He pinched his leg through his thermal pants, wanting to be sure this wasn’t just the product of a dreaming mind.
Thick, billowing steam rose up from the mass of trees that spanned for miles in either direction. It became warmer the closer he got, and he swore that he heard the sounds of squawking birds.
How was this even possible? His mind wanted to know. It didn’t make the least bit of sense, but here it was, right before his eyes.
One second Gregson Paul was walking across ice, and the next his heavy rubber boots were falling on grass. The temperature becoming increasingly hot, he could feel the sweat pouring from his body beneath the layers of his clothes. Before he could even question the act, he found himself stripping away the layers, basking in the heat of this magickal place.
And that was exactly what it had to be, he thought, as he dropped his heavy jacket onto the ground . . . onto the thick green grass.
Magick.
He found himself drawn to the place, compelled to enter the jungle, but the man could see no discernible entrance, his passage blocked by thick, thorny vines, massive trees, and tangled underbrush.
Gregson looked for a way in, moving along the jungle’s edge until he found it.
It loomed above him, between two enormous stone pillars, intricately forged from what appeared to be iron: two ornate gates.
But the gates were closed.
Barring him entrance to the Garden beyond.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Before Taranushi knew himself to be Shaitan, he knew only that he had been shunned by God.
He dropped from the night sky down to the city rooftop in a swirling maelstrom of howling wind, dust, and dirt. In his multiple arms he still carried the nearly lifeless body of Adam, and the descendant of the first woman who, along with the ancient man, would complete the key, and allow him and his master access to the Garden.
And to his still-gestating kin.
The pale-skinned creature crouched upon the roof of the building, making sure that his charges were still intact; the use of magick often had diverse effects upon the frailer examples of humanity.
Adam was unconscious, but still among the living, and the woman was crying and trembling with fear.
How pathetic, he thought, observing the life-forms that the Creator had deemed worthy, while discarding one such as he.
Taranushi remembered as if it had happened only moments before being presented in his infant state to the Lord God by he who had fashioned him from the stuff of darkness: his master, Malachi.
He could not recall the Lord’s face, but remembered the feel of His eyes. He was to be the first of the Creator’s servants: the soldiers of His glory as He created the universe and all that existed within it.
But the Holy Creator cared not for what Malachi presented, deeming it unfit to exist, and brushing it aside to move on to the next.
The Messengers.
The angels.
But Malachi saw his potential, and refused to erase him from existence.
The Shaitan gazed up into the evening sky, sensing a presence in the pitch-black that surrounded the blazing stars in the sky. Sometime soon that darkness would be hungry enough to consume the stars.
And the Lord God would know the experience of being discarded.
Deemed unfit to exist.
The human woman looked at him with disbelief in her old eyes.
“If only your tiny mind could com
prehend the mightiness of the gift that He has bestowed upon you,” Taranushi said with a snarl, resenting the woman for everything that she was.
He shrugged off the rage he felt welling in his being, and flowed across the rooftop to the door that would allow access to the building below. Another muscular limb erupted from his torso, grabbing hold of the doorknob and pulling it with all his might. The knob disintegrated in his grip, and he found himself creating other limbs to tear the barrier from its hinges.
Standing in the now open doorway, the Shaitan sniffed the air, seeking the scent of what had brought him here.
“There it is,” he growled, his bottom half having become like liquid as he flowed down the stairs, his captives under a powerful arm each, to the levels below.
The building was quiet except for the rustling of vermin and the rumble of the structure’s heat source. No one currently resided in the building, but the scent of previous tenants caused his nose to wrinkle in disgust.
Fallen angels—they were the worst-smelling of their kind.
The Shaitan reached the apartment building’s lobby, his muscular neck extending outward, nose twitching as he continued his search.
“It is below,” Taranushi said with a sly grin, moving toward another door. He reached out, sensing that there had been defenses placed there. His fingertips tingled the closer his hand got, powerful angelic magicks infused within the wood to prevent unauthorized entrance.
The creature sneered at the pathetic attempt, throwing himself full force against the barrier and reducing the door to splinters. Angel magick was nothing against the power that had created him.
The disgusting smell of a fallen wafted up from the room below, but there was also another scent beneath it, a smell that made the black sigils upon his pale flesh writhe like maggots.
Taranushi descended to the basement apartment, eyes scanning the darkness for what he had been sent to find.
Though it was weak, and beginning to fade, the stink was unmistakable.
He placed the frail form of Adam down upon a nearby piece of furniture, while uncoiling his tentacle-like limb from around the old woman’s waist.
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