by Vox Day
From the west, men will fear the name of the Lord, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere His glory. For He will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along.
—Isaiah 59:19
The policeman’s words shocked her out of her silent, internal debate. He knew! And when she met his eyes, she saw that whatever was lurking behind them wasn’t human. There was a wild dark cruelty in them, a whirling, maddened glee that belied the calm professional look on the policeman’s face.
“Who are you,” she demanded, even as her knees were shaking. Wallace had seen Khasar! He had seen Khasar, and it wasn’t the cops who were after him after all, it was the Fallen! “Name yourself!”
“What?” the policeman blinked at her, confused.
“Name yourself!” she shouted at him. “Tell me your name, by the Blood of the Lamb!”
The policeman recoiled from her, throwing up his hands in alarm, but a sneering look appeared on his face as he recovered himself. “You won’t get rid of me that easily,” he snarled, frothing at the mouth like a dog. “You have no power over me!”
“Get out,” she shouted right back, pointing away from the house. “Get away from here, demon, and don’t you dare come back, or I’ll order you into the bottom of the sea!”
She nearly fainted when his eyes rolled back in his head, showing nothing but white, and he gave a moaning, wordless cry of thwarted rage. But when they rolled back and she saw that the demonic shining was still there, she pointed her chin and jabbed her finger at him. “Fine! In the Name of the Lord Jesus—”
“No! Stop! Please!” the demon interrupted hastily, backing away from her. “Look, I’ll leave, I’ll leave!”
She stared at him for a moment, and relented. “Are you going to leave this guy you’re possessing alone too?”
“Yes, yes, of course!”
She nodded and pointed her finger down the street. Her heart was pounding so hard she hardly dared speak. But before the demon left, he wrinkled his lip and snarled one last bit of defiance.
“If you won’t give him up of your own free will, believer, then they’ll come get him, mortal. And they’ll take you with him!”
It felt a little anticlimactic to watch the demon-possessed man stomp off to his car and slam the door before he drove away, but it was a relief to her all the same. She waited until the brake lights disappeared before going back into the house and locking the door behind her.
“They’re after you,” she called out to Derek. “And I don’t mean the police, I mean demons! I believe you now. Did he tell you anything? I mean, Khasar, did he tell you what was going on?”
“Who’s after me? What was that all about?” he asked with wonder in his voice, as he emerged from his hiding place. “I thought it was a cop, and then all of a sudden you started screaming at him.”
“It was a cop. And I know this may sound weird, but it’s true. He was possessed. And they seem to want you bad.”
“Possessed by demons?”
“Demon. Just one, I think.”
Derek had a strange expression on his face. Then he nodded slowly. “Yeah, that happened to me once. That night… it was really strange. It was like watching a movie, but from inside your own head. I knew what was going on, but it was like I was just along for the ride.”
Holli didn’t trust herself to answer. His words recalled memories with which she could not deal, and she had to look away before she said something she’d regret. But as she looked to the side, something caught her attention outside the window. It was hardly possible, but the night appeared to be growing darker. Had the power gone out? No, because they still had lights inside.
“Hang on a second.” She went to the window, and gasped. It was as if her vision had suddenly shifted from black-and-white to three-dimensional color. A sudden roar from out of nowhere made her clutch at her ears. To the south was a shimmering black-purple wave, darker than the night, lurking on the edge of the horizon. There was something overwhelmingly malevolent about it, something worrisomely powerful. The they of whom the demon spoke? It seemed all too likely.
Holli spun around the room, looking wildly about. Surely her guardian angel wouldn’t leave her to face this alone. “Aliel, are you there?”
Her beautiful guardian materialized, still holding her burning sword unsheathed. Her wings were furled tight, too, and her face was uncharacteristically grim.
“The borders are thin, tonight, Holli. That demon spoke the truth. There is something on its way, and soon.”
Derek was gaping at Aliel, who nodded to him. “He is the one they want. I suspect they caught wind of Prince Uriel’s machinations. Khasar isn’t always as clever as he thinks, but to give him his due, it was a difficult task. He must not have gone unnoticed.”
“Wait a minute.” Derek stepped in front of Holli and forced the angel to look at him. “What’s going on here? I’m the one who wants? And who are you?”
“Her name’s Aliel,” Holli answered first. “She’s my guardian angel. Didn’t Christopher ever tell you about this stuff?”
Derek nodded slowly. His eyes were like blue diamonds, intensely sharp and suspicious. “Yeah, but I didn’t really believe all of it. I figured it was mostly metaphorical or something.”
“Well, it isn’t. It’s for real. And something’s happening tonight, right now. Christopher and I saw four angels with swords at church tonight, and then all this started happening.” She glanced at Aliel. “If they’re coming, shouldn’t we get out of here? Can’t you take us with you?”
“We were told to wait here.”
“Where’s my angel?”
Aliel smiled faintly at Derek. “The idea was to mislead them as to your whereabouts. So, he’s still at the prison, although that aspect of the plan seems to have failed.” Then, without warning, she whipped her head around and brought her sword up.
“What’s that?” Derek leaped up, looking wildly around him. There was a wild howling in the distance, but closer still was a crazed cackling of a hundred infantile voices. It was as if a pack of rabid wolves on nitrous whippets were surrounding them.
“The little ones, the petty ones, they sense the coming of the Great Ones. It excites them.” Aliel kissed Holli on the forehead. “Be brave, daughter of the King. Remember the words of the Prince. And my gift!”
Without further ado, she took two steps, then unfurled her wings and flew through the door.
“Holy….” Derek wisely left his thought unfinished. “So, that’s an angel.”
“That’s my angel,” Holli said, a little proudly. Then she remembered what Aliel had said. “A Great One. Ones. Oh, that’s bad.”
“Are they really that bad?”
She stared at him, eyes narrowed. “One of them put you up to, um, to the prom thing.”
“Oh.”
There was a long moment of silence. Finally, he broke it. “So, what do we do?”
She shrugged. “Wait and trust in the angels. They know what they’re doing. God sent them here to protect us, so we should probably let them do that.”
“Can’t we at least watch?”
She folded her arms and shrugged. It was pretty amazing, after all, to be able to see Heaven’s angels in action. Now that she knew they were really there, she had no doubt whatsoever that they’d kick butt all over whatever Fallen Great One was on its way. Why not? As Aliel had shown, a mere closed door wasn’t going to keep them out.
It was growing even darker outside, and it was impossible to see anything from the window so she unlocked the door and stepped out onto the concrete steps. Derek stood beside her, and he marveled at how the stars had simply disappeared into the inky blackness, as if some great beast had sucked them out of the sky.
“There!” he pointed, and she looked to the south. What she saw took her breath away. A vast cloud of darkness was rushing towards them from the horizon, so dark that the night sky appeared to be light grey by comparison. Four violet spirals were at the forefront, wreathing t
he black cataclysm that threatened to come crashing down upon her house. The wind suddenly picked up, hitting her so hard it made her stagger and reach out to Derek to keep her feet.
“What is it?” Derek shouted at her, over the sound of the onrushing wind. It howled like a demon-possessed hurricane.
“I have no idea!”
Holli looked about frantically to see where Aliel had gone, or at least one of the other guardians she knew, but she saw nothing. The black cloud approached, and she could see that the purple spirals were nothing more than raw power emanating from four great angels riding towards them, tearing and twisting the very air through which they traveled. Fallen angels, there was no question about it, even at a distance, their demonic nature was apparent. They rode beasts the likes of which had never before been seen by any mortal eye, two-headed wolves with wings as long as a school bus. The largest demon wore a crown of fire, and bore a red banner that lashed back and forth as he rode the evil wind.
Derek grabbed her wrist with such force that she could feel each finger leaving a separate mark in her flesh. “Christopher never said anything about this!”
“It wasn’t exactly like this before.” God, why me again? “Wait, there’s our angels! Can you see them?”
“Yes, yes!” Derek cried, pointing at the small white figures brandishing their fiery blades at the oncoming storm. “I see them! I see them!” There were four angels; Holli recognized Mariel’s gorgeous waist-length hair immediately and her heart leaped at the sight of one she guessed to be Khasar, in the form a golden lion with blue wings. But it was Aliel upon whom her eyes were locked, and she was inspired by her slender guardian’s fearlessness before the nightmarish foe.
Derek cheered with her as the angels spread their wings and leaped off the ground. They sped towards the demons, each holding their swords pointed before them, transforming their very beings into deadly missiles of Heavenly fury. They seemed like tiny figures to be set against such evil; the darkness filled the entire horizon now. And Holli could see that the darkness was alive, it was filled with the motion of hundreds, perhaps thousands of smaller beings trailing in the wake of the four great demonlords. Still, Holli had no doubt that her angels would triumph.
Khasar, with his greater wingspan, was slightly in advance of the others, but even as he was baring his powerful jaws to attack the lead wolf-thing, the beast’s rider swept his arm forward and some invisible force sent the five angels tumbling wildly through the sky. Holli screamed in horror as one demonic wolf’s head snapped at Aliel, barely missing her as she cartwheeled past, helpless to defend herself, completely out of control. All five of the guardians disappeared beneath the tree line just as a foul-smelling wind passed over their heads, and the stench of its passing caused her to double over, silencing her in mid-scream. She choked and gagged, but fortunately, in a moment it was gone.
Derek was racked with fear, and he collapsed to his knees next to her when the four demonlords shouted out in voices of thunder and steel, but Holli was too toweringly angry to be frightened. How dare they treat her angel like that! They were fallen, damned, cursed of God! How dare they! She should be afraid, the voice of reason whispered inside her, she should be quivering like jelly, but instead she gave herself over to the purity of her outrage. And as she did so, the words of Heaven’s great warrior-prince seemed to echo through her mind.
“Though the night grows dark, you will not know despair.”
Michael had promised her that. Only her. It was her gift, her special gift that the Almighty God had given her. And surely there was never a darker night than this, when the great lords of evil rode the night sky, black on black. The terrible demons came on fast, riding with a vengeance; they had tasted victory already and were less than half a mile away from her now. They rode with arrogance, as the monstrous wolf-heads snapped, snarled and howled, and she knew that if her angels could not stand before them, she did not have the faith to command them. She need help, and she needed it fast. Give me the words, God. Oh, God, I know you have them. Give me the words!
They came. From where, exactly, she did not know, but they glowed like neon lightning in her brain. She could see them as clearly as the raging demonlords in the sky. Raising her chin, she lifted her open hand as if opening a direct line to Heaven, summoning a divine storm to answer the terrible cloud sweeping down upon her.
“To me, warriors of the White Lion! To me, riders of the Silver Fire! To me, angels of the Most High God! I call you in the name of the Lamb that was Slain!”
Then she hurled the black stone to the ground at her feet.
A wall of fire erupted in front of her, hurling her back. Derek, too, fell backwards, struck dumb now with fear and awe. The fire roared towards the heavens, twenty, thirty feet high, and when it subsided, twelve angels stood before her, warriors all, with faces as hard and unyielding as they were beautiful. They glowed, with a cold silver light, and their wings were iron-grey.
“Well spoken, daughter of the King,” said the one standing over her, as he held out a hand to her and pulled her to her feet. He wore a mercurial circlet of flowing silver. “We have come, how may we serve?”
She pointed to the onrushing riders, barely a football field away now. “Destroy them.”
The Divine angels turned around, and she heard one of them hiss something about the cursed seed of Fenrir. Then, in a flash, six of the angels transformed into white unicorns, but with hooves of silver fire and the same grey wings as before, only larger. One looked at her and bared its teeth; she shrank back in alarm. Its fangs were twice the size of a lion.
“Show no mercy!” shouted the angelic captain, as he leaped astride one of the unicorns. Without waiting for the others, he urged his steed to take wing, which it did with great powerful strokes that fanned her face as they beat the air.
Beside her, Derek had found his feet again.
“Holy smokes, how did you do that?” he said as he pulled at her arm. “Are they angels too?”
“What do you think,” Holli answered impatiently. She was vaguely surprised that he was still there. Right now, nothing existed for her except the angelic battle. Two of the Divine were rising higher, falling slightly behind the others as they ascended, while the other four sped to meet the enemy in a straight line. The demons howled a challenge and one of the middle pair raised an arm wreathed by purple electricity. He hurled it at the angelic captain, but the Divine warrior blocked it on a shield of red-golden fire. The resulting explosion dazzled Holli’s eyes, and she was seeing nothing but black and purple dots when the two lines of angels came together.
But she heard it. There was an apocalyptic cacophony of screams and snarls that rained down upon them, accompanied by a thunderous roaring like a freight train. It was so loud, she was forced to cover her ears, blinking rapidly as she tried to see what was going on.
By the time her vision returned to her, one angel had disappeared, one demonlord was falling from the sky and one wolf-thing was missing a head, with great gouts of green fire flaring out of its neck. Holli shouted with glee as the rider-less unicorn transformed itself back into a warrior, then drove its flaming blade into the wounded wolf, finishing it off. The other three pairs were going hard at it, exchanging blow for blow as their monstrous steeds slashed, bit and kicked at each other.
One huge wolf’s wing dealt an angel a great buffet just as he blocked a sword thrust from the beast’s rider, and he tumbled from his unicorn. But before the demonlord could follow up his advantage, the lagging pair of angels descended violently upon him, pressing him back. The demonlord’s steed managed to slash at both unicorns with its pair of terrible jaws, but before it could do much more than worry at them, a golden lion struck from below, raking the beast’s belly with long claws. The thing roared as purple fire lit up the sky, and a flaming sword finally found its way past the demonlord’s defense. Thunder boomed, and both the demon and his monstrous steed were gone.
“Khasar!” Holli shouted.
“That had to hurt,” Derek commented gleefully. He seemed to be enjoying the spectacle now. “This is so cool! Hey, did you see the sky is getting lighter?”
And so it was. With the fall of the second demonlord, the unnatural storm began to break up. The smaller demons were fleeing, pursued by two of the mounted warriors and Khasar, who pounced on them like a giant cat slaying rats. The remaining angels were ganging up on the last two demonlords, who fought viciously in an attempt to withdraw. Desperate to escape, one demon spurred his wolf forward, then leaped off it in a backwards somersault, fleeing madly as the giant beast hurled itself howling upon the flaming swords of the surprised angels. Its savage attack sowed enough confusion in the Divine ranks to allow the second demonlord to escape too, and Holli unthinkingly exchanged a triumphant high-five with Derek as the oppressive cloud faded rapidly into the peaceful darkness of a normal summer night. And then, she remembered that the victory had not been won without cost.
“Aliel,” she shouted, rushing out into the front yard, towards the trees into which her angel had plunged. “Aliel, are you all right?”
She breathed a sigh of relief when a flash of white emerged from the little forest. It was her guardian angel, limping along with her arm around Mariel’s shoulder. She rushed to her and threw her arms around her. “Are you okay? I was so worried about you!”
Her guardian smiled wearily. “I was thinking the same thing about you. Oh, you did so well, sweetie! If you hadn’t done that, I don’t like to think what would have happened.”
“They were armed for bear,” said Khasar, as he transformed into his handsome human form. Holli shrieked with delight and ran to him. She hadn’t thought she’d get to see him again until she died and went to Heaven.
“Khasar! How are you! How is Jhofor? Is he still grumbly as ever? Why are you here? How are you still alive?”
Khasar and Aliel exchanged a look. When Aliel nodded, Khasar cleared his throat and pointed to Derek, who was sitting on the front steps looking pensive.
“We have need of the two of you. I don’t know if the Fallen caught wind of our intentions, or if this was simply a coincidence, but regardless, we have to get you out of here, now.”
