Operation Middle of the Garden 03 - Of Consuming Fire

by Micah Persell

  The lights went out completely.

  Emergency lights along the walls illuminated, casting Dahlia’s caramel skin in an unearthly glow as Grace stared at her in barely subdued panic. The others in the room began to mumble to each other, their voices rising in pitch. She felt her nails digging into the skin of her arms and realized she was hugging herself again.

  A man in a lab coat raced into the main room, skidding around the door and barreling toward Dahlia as soon as he spotted her. “He’s waking!” he yelled at Jericho’s wife. “Come quickly.”

  Dahlia took a quick step toward him, but then stumbled. She threw out an arm to catch herself against the wall. “Shit,” Grace heard her mutter.

  Dahlia spun around and pinned Grace with a wide-eyed look. “Earthquake,” she told Grace in an odd, disbelieving tone. “Big one.”

  Dahlia lunged forward and grabbed Grace by the arm, hauling her quickly to a nearby desk and shoving herself and Grace in the small area beneath it.

  Shooting pains emanated from the skin Dahlia’s fingers touched. Grace hissed and tried to wrench her arm from Dahlia’s grip as she spluttered, “What — how do you — ”

  “I can hear it coming,” she said impatiently. “Take cover!” she bellowed to all the gawkers.

  No sooner had the words left her mouth than the first wave hit the building. A sound, louder than the eardrum-cracking clap of thunder, ricocheted through the room like a freight train, and Grace watched with wide eyes as the floor began to ripple at the edge of the room and move toward them like oncoming ocean waves.

  And, even though paralyzed with fear, all Grace could think of was the scorching pain of Dahlia’s fingers where they still clutched her arm.

  Screams began to echo as the men and women who worked at the facility realized what was happening. Feet thundered as everyone sought shelter.

  But Grace scrambled away from Dahlia and out into the open as soon as the woman’s grip on Grace’s arm slackened.

  Dahlia’s arm snaked out and captured the back of Grace’s jacket. “What the hell?”

  “Don’t touch me!” Grace shrieked so loudly that Dahlia drew back in shock.

  A huge chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling to land right beside Grace. A cloud of white exploded from its impact and dusted both of them. Desks began to skitter across the floor.

  “Do you want to die?” Dahlia yelled, blinking the white powder from her lashes.

  Die or be touched? No contest. Grace didn’t move.

  The earthquake gained in intensity. The glass that made up the ceiling of the dome tinkled and Grace looked up as a crack spider-webbed from one end of the dome to the other.

  “Okay,” Dahlia said fast and low. “I won’t touch you. Just get your ass under here right now!”

  Grace dragged her eyes from the ceiling to look into the dim space beneath the desk. Dahlia pressed herself against the side, leaving more than enough room for Grace to fit without having to be against the other woman. And still she hesitated.

  Across the dome, bookshelves began to fall like dominoes, each one hitting the ground with a resounding boom. The tinkling of the glass ceiling increased and one or two shards escaped and plummeted toward the ground.

  With a deep breath for courage, Grace dove into the area beside Dahlia just as the ceiling gave way.

  The glass chimed like clock-tower bells as it fell. It tinkled off of every surface and bounced from the floor in glittering arcs. Grace watched in horror as a huge shard caught one of the soldiers as he tried to dive under a desk a few feet away. His scream cut off as the glass sliced through his chest and pinned him to the floor right where Grace had been kneeling seconds before.

  Grace huddled into the corner and buried her face against the wood of the desk so hard she thought her nose might break.

  The waves of the ground moved as though alive beneath Grace, hitting her in the shins and knees again and again as she knelt and causing her stomach to lurch as though seasick. Beside her, she heard Dahlia begin to recite the rosary in Spanish in a low, breathless voice. As a backdrop, the glass on the floor clacked and pinged as the entire building shimmied with the rage of the earth.

  And in the next heartbeat, everything stopped.

  Grace’s frantic breaths in the sudden absence of sound were excruciatingly loud, but the silence didn’t last for long. Moans from the wounded began to fill the air.

  She heard her boss, Eli Johnson, bellowing his past-due pregnant wife’s name as he barreled through the dome from his office and toward the medical wing.

  “Jericho,” Dahlia breathed next to her. Then she scrambled from her hiding spot, sliding in the blood that slicked across the floor from the impaled man before gaining purchase and sprinting in Eli’s wake.

  Grace stared dumbfounded at the glassy eyes of the dead man in front of her before forcing herself to emerge from the desk.

  Utter destruction waited for her. Her eyes skimmed over the demolished main room of the facility. Everything was … gone. Desks were smashed. Books were flung to every wall of the room. The glass on the floor glittered like diamonds among the pools of blood. It looked like after-pictures of a tornado.

  But the trees stood resolute in the center of the room. Not one fruit had fallen from their branches. And on the desk beneath them, where Grace did her work, the sword glowed. The sword, usually covered with flickering green and gold flames, was now … angry. It was the only word she could use to describe what she was seeing. The green and gold flames had morphed into red and black. The metal, engraved with the words she had translated to say what the tree gives, the sword takes; what the sword takes, the tree gives was now pulsing with emotion. And coming off of the sword in waves was an otherworldly heat. The sword had always emitted a cool indifference. Now it was raging.

  “Oh, God,” Grace gasped. Her breathing sped up even more, and black began to edge in on her vision.

  Something had angered this inanimate object. Fear, so familiar and yet, in this case, so different, choked Grace’s throat. She had a gut feeling that in completing her job she betrayed a secret. The sword’s secret.

  Someone was coming. Coming for them. Coming for her.

  She had one thought before losing consciousness: What have I done?

  Chapter Two

  Such rage.

  It was one of the few emotions Jayden had felt in his entire existence, and it was burning him up from the inside out.

  Scenery flashed by. Trees that were miles apart zoomed along in seconds. He had to get there. It was his own foolish fear — another unwelcome emotion — that allowed this to happen in the first place.

  Between the two — rage and fear — he much preferred the rage. He had been around since the beginning of time, and never once abandoned his post. He had carried out his mission each time a human had dared defile the Trees, his sword making swift justice. And then, five humans had encroached on holy land. Jayden had sensed their looming connection to her and … run like a weak little human, the fear of encountering her much worse than anything Jayden could have imagined.

  His failure filled his mouth like bitterest poison. Pure weakness. It was bad enough that his post was the laughing stock of heaven; Jayden was a warrior who never fought — it had been centuries since a human had stumbled upon the Garden. But, when given the chance to engage in battle, he actually fled? He would never forgive himself, but he would make it right. He would never hesitate to carry out his orders again.

  When he had felt the immortal dying, Jayden bordered on hope. The thought that maybe he would not have to hunt them down — maybe they would kill themselves off as humans had been doing for millennia — had been drug-like in its euphoria. He could avoid her. Never even have to see her. It could be his salvation.

  And then he had sensed the moment when the immortal healed. Because they used the fruit — again — to save him.

  Jayden’s roar of vengeance crashed out of his chest, startling wildlife and echoing off of mountains.
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  They had used the Trees again. Unforgivable. And he would make sure they knew it, just as soon as he could get his hands on his sword once more. The sword he had abandoned with his post to avoid his Temptation.

  He reached the edge of land in Europe, and his wings automatically flared from his back, allowing him to take to the air as he hit what the humans had named the Atlantic Ocean.

  They should already be dead. It was his job. They defiled the most holy gift to humanity, and they had to perish as recompense. The rightness of his mission bolstered his wings, and Jayden put on a new burst of speed, covering the expanse of the ocean in mere minutes.

  By the time he reached the east coast of the United States, night had long ago fallen, and the sun was beginning to rise.

  Good, he would be able to catch them when they were asleep. Vulnerable. His mission would be completed within minutes, and then he could reclaim the Trees they had uprooted from their rightful spot, return them to the Garden, and go about his sentry duty as God intended.

  And if he came across his Temptation — Jayden nearly stumbled as his feet reclaimed the earth, his wings returning to their hidden spot in his back. No, he would not even allow himself to think of her. She was nothing. Nothing to him; nothing to the world. Nothing. He would carry out his mission and leave, whether he saw her or not.

  He was getting closer. He could feel the sword speaking to him. That he actually left it behind in his haste to flee — Lord of the Most High. A soldier abandoning his weapon? Unheard of. At least amongst the good soldiers anyway. He crossed over the city of Washington, D.C., barely paying heed to the damage his burst of rage had laid out. He followed the sword’s beckoning to an abandoned field and a conspicuous building that proclaimed loudly that it was a product of human government. This was the epicenter of his wrath, and it showed. The building was falling apart in the wake of what the humans would attribute to an earthquake. What had been a glass dome had exploded, allowing Jayden easy access. He quickly unfurled his wings and floated up and into the building.

  He landed in a deathly quiet, wide-open room that held the Trees at its center. They grew from the dirt ground to fill the entire space. Their branches brushed against the outer walls; they sagged heavily with fruit.

  They were beautiful.

  Jayden realized with a start that, if he could miss anything, he would have missed these trees. They were the Most High’s first gift to man; and the first gift that man had misused — just as they did with all of the Most High’s gifts.

  His eyes took in the damage to the room, and he barely stifled a wince as he saw fatalities on the floor. Fatalities that his anger caused. Reminders that he should be above emotion. He pushed the thought aside before it could manifest itself in more of the emotion that had visited Jayden twice already this day.

  A wave of energy pulled his eyes from the trees. His sword was here. He could feel the sword responding to his arrival, waves of recognition rolling over him. He turned to his left, knowing that was where he would find it, and was pulled up short.

  The sword was lying on a table, its red and black flames reflecting Jayden’s wrath, but that was not what captured his attention.

  Slumped on the ground below the table amid the sparkle of shattered glass was her. His Temptation.

  Jayden hissed in a breath and took a stumbling step back, his eyes never straying from her form. She had a mass of curly red hair that was haphazardly piled on her head, writing utensils protruding here and there. She wore a pair of glasses with thick, black frames that hid most of her face, but Jayden could still see her lush eyelashes and pert, upturned nose. Her face was gently rounded. Feminine. His eyes zeroed in on her full, parted lips before sweeping the rest of her form. She was a curvy, soft woman. Her clothes, completely lacking a shape, did nothing to hide her sweet body from his observation. The humans today would immediately dismiss her as overweight or even plain, but to Jayden she was … perfection.

  His Temptation.

  Jayden groaned and took a stumbling step forward. She would be what he couldn’t resist. That was the point. Since the Fall of Lucifer, every son of God knew that they would encounter a Temptation at some point in their immortal lives. Other than succumbing to Temptations, the only other way a son of God could Fall was partaking of the Tree of Eternal Life. And no angel would ever do that. Temptations were the heavenly realm’s greatest threat. They could take several forms — Lucifer’s had been power — but most often, a son of God faced his Temptation in a daughter of man. And she inevitably brought about his downfall. The daughters of man were forbidden. Every angel knew that. And yet —

  Here was Jayden, standing over his lovely Temptation, aching with each breath to reach down and touch her.

  He had severely underestimated the pull she would have on him. He had been right to flee when he felt her impending connection with the men who stumbled upon the Garden. He should have never come. Eventually, the Most High would have sent someone in his place to carry out his orders, but Jayden’s pride — another emotion he should have denied himself — had driven him here.

  She moaned and then turned over, her eyelashes fluttering.

  Jayden watched in rapt horror as her eyes opened and gazed at him in unfocused confusion. They were gray. Stormy. Breathtaking. “No,” he whispered fiercely as he felt something inside of him shift. He was doomed. He would never be able to leave her. He needed her so badly. Ached for her.

  His arm stretched out from his side and toward her. He watched in disbelief as his fingers spread, yearning for the feel of her skin. Jayden never touched a human for any purpose other than death. What would it feel like to skim the pads of his fingertips down her cheek? He was suddenly breathless to know, an odd ache settling in the pit of his stomach. He bent toward her —

  Those wide, unfocused gray eyes grew sharp in an instant. Confusion disappeared from their depths to be replaced with the terror Jayden had first been expecting. Seeing the terror in her eyes, however, devastated him on a scale he could not comprehend.

  She gasped and lurched to a seated position, immediately scrambling back, not heeding the damage she was doing to her palms as they pounded through broken glass. Her back hit the desk, and she had nowhere else to go. She was taking her air in big, echoing gulps, and Jayden worried that she would lose consciousness again or harm herself further in her attempts to escape him.

  “Calm, human,” he commanded in a low voice made harsher than he intended by the thought of her leaving him.

  “Go away,” she ordered softly, yet fiercely.

  Jayden frowned.

  “Go away now!” Her voice was rising in panic. He could sense her heart rate speeding with fear. Her beautiful eyes were rolling around without finding purchase. Her shoulders slackened, her eyes grew dazed once more, and Jayden knew she was seconds from fainting.

  He crouched down in front of her, reaching for her again to do — he knew not what. He only knew he felt this uncontrollable urge to calm her. To help her.

  But at the sight of his hand reaching toward her, she whimpered and cowered even more. “No,” she moaned. “Please … not … again.” A small sob escaped her lips, and she clamped them shut, all color draining from her face.

  Again? His Temptation made no sense.

  “Grace?”

  Jayden’s hand had been stretching toward her, but at the sound of a man’s voice behind him, his hand immediately reached over his Temptation’s head and wrapped around the hilt of his sword. In less than a second, he whirled around, his back to his Temptation, sword at the ready, his body in a battle stance, coiled to attack. He would kill any threat to her.

  Standing at the entrance to the room were two humans, a man and a woman. The man was very tall for a human. He had blond hair and light blue eyes that were focused on them with concern. At his side was a petite, dark-skinned woman with long black hair.

  “Oh, thank God,” he heard his Temptation whisper at the very moment he realized he was lookin
g at two immortals, two defilers of the Trees. And then the fact that his Temptation’s voice dripped with relief washed over him. She was relieved that these two abominations had come. Had stopped him from touching her.

  A growl erupted from his chest, and he launched to a full upright position. He had orders to carry out. No humans were to touch the Tree of Eternal Life. These two had. It was his job to kill them and restore balance. He would finally fulfill his purpose. Finally fight.

  He began to walk toward them slowly, sending out mental sensors toward the two defilers. He probed their minds easily. In an instant, he knew that the man had not partaken of the fruit willingly. Images of human testing and gut-wrenching sorrow flitted through Jayden’s mind as his target’s past became known to him. But the woman — Jayden’s eyes landed on her, and he tilted his head to the side as he approached. She had willingly eaten the fruit. Had taken it with selfish motives — as part of a scheme of hers. Of the two of them, she was the more abhorrent.

  She would die first.

  The man must have seen some change in Jayden’s eyes because he pushed the woman to her knees and stepped in front of her. Jayden didn’t slow his approach. He reached them and with a swift palm to the chest, sent the man flying across the room. Jayden heard him hit the wall with a crack of bone and paid no further attention to him. It would take a few minutes for him to heal, giving Jayden more than enough time to dispatch the woman and make his way over to where the other defiler was.

  The small, dark-skinned woman looked up at him, her eyes narrowing with a rage that matched Jayden’s own. He was momentarily surprised — he expected fear — but lifted his sword all the same.

  He heard a rush of fabric off to his left, but his sword was already moving.

  “No!” his Temptation shouted as she stepped between his sword and the kneeling woman. “She’s preg — ”

  It happened too quickly for Jayden to stop. He had been aiming low and for the crouched defiler’s neck — a quick death, far more merciful than she deserved — but where her neck had been, his Temptation now was.