Aaron closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. “So are they real or are they made up?”
The gunslinger slurped the remainder of his coffee and brought the front legs of his chair down upon the floor with a thud. “There might be some truth in all the tall tales, but it’s been jumbled together over the years, and it’s hard to tell fact from fiction.”
Lorelei spoke up from a workstation tabletop where she sat cross-legged, reading through an ancient text where the Malakim were briefly mentioned. “It says here that they were the arch mages of angelic magick and keepers of forbidden knowledge.” She flipped her snow-white hair back over her shoulder and out of her face. “Knowledge known only to God.”
“What we do know for certain,” Scholar continued, “is that the Malakim were created to be extensions of God, the receptacles of all His wisdom and knowledge—forbidden or otherwise.”
“It’s that knowledge thing I’m interested in,” Aaron said. “Where can we find these Malakim?” he asked. “Do you know—”
“The Malakim supposedly came to Earth after the war in Heaven,” Scholar interrupted. “To study and record the changes caused by the fallen.”
“How can they be contacted?” Aaron asked, his patience clearly wearing thin.
Scholar set his mug down, immediately craving another cup. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Aaron. The Malakim have hidden themselves away. There hasn’t been any contact between our kind and them for thousands upon thousands of years.”
“I can’t believe this,” the Nephilim said, sitting down on the bare floor and running his fingers through his hair. His voice was heavy with disappointment. “Have you ever actually seen one?” he finally asked, looking up at Scholar.
“No, but—”
“Have any of you seen one?” Aaron prodded climbing to his feet.
“Well, it might have been a Malakim,” Lehash began, rubbing his stubble-covered chin. “But I can’t say for sure.”
Scholar quickly turned and walked to farthest end of the room. Aaron wanted proof of the existence of the Malakim, and proof he would have. It was kept in a glass case along with all the other treasures of Aerie. He carefully opened the lid and removed the ornate cylinder from its resting place upon a red velvet pillow.
They were all staring as he returned, still startled by his abrupt departure. He held the canister up for Aaron to see.
“You want to know how we are sure the Malakim exist?” he asked, heading for the workstation where Lorelei sat. She hopped down as he approached. “Belphegor gave this to me for safe-keeping,” Scholar said, slowly unscrewing the end piece from the tube.
“I can probably figure out where he got it,” Lehash said, watching with the others.
Scholar gingerly tipped the canister, allowing the rolled scroll to fall out into his waiting hand. “It was given to the Founder when he established the first safe haven for our kind.” Slowly he began to unroll the scroll, revealing the angelic script upon the golden parchment.
“It’s a spell,” Lorelei said, bending over to examine the writing.
“Yes, it is,” Scholar said. “The first spell of concealment ever to be placed upon our sanctuary. The Malakim who visited approved of what Belphegor was doing and gave us his blessing, which meant God’s blessing.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Lehash said, pushing closer for a look. “A real live Malakim gave that to Belphegor.” The gunslinger smirked. “Always wondered if we had God on our side; didn’t know we had the paperwork to prove it.”
Aaron came closer, moving past Lehash’s bulk to stand next to Scholar. He gazed down upon the scroll, a strange look in his eyes. “A Malakim wrote this?” he asked, his index finger tracing the shape of the heavenly alphabet in the air above the scroll.
“Yes,” Scholar answered.
“Then that means he touched it,” the boy said dreamily, his thoughts seemingly someplace else altogether.
“Of course he touched it,” Scholar responded testily. “How else could he have written it?” He lifted his hand, allowing the scroll to roll shut.
“I have an idea,” Aaron said, turning to leave. “It’s probably a long shot, but it can’t hurt to try.”
“Where you going, kid?” Lehash asked, following close behind.
“To see Gabriel.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Time is short,” Verchiel hissed, his voice echoing through the abandoned church. “Find the last of the Malakim.”
Katspiel convulsed violently upon the unconsecrated altar of Saint Athanasius Church. His eyeless gaze stared blindly at the fading image of Heaven painted on the high rounded ceiling, his face wan, twisted in a mask of agony. The magicks the Archon attempted to command were wild and unruly, leaching away his life force in exchange for the location of the last of Heaven’s magick users.
“So elusive,” he grunted, reaching up with clawed hands as if to rend the air. “Quicksilver—moving from here, to there, across the world of God’s man, then gone, like darkness chased away with the coming dawn.”
The angel curled into a tight ball. “I must rest,” he slurred.
But Verchiel would not hear of it. He flew from his perch on the back of a wooden pew and landed upon the altar beside the quivering Archon. “There will be no rest until the Malakim is found,” he screeched, grasping Katspiel by the scruff, yanking him, flailing, into the air.
“Mercy,” the angel mage begged, his voice trembling. “All I ask is for some time to—”
“Don’t you understand, worm?” Verchiel growled, pulling the Archon closer to his snarling face. “Surprise is lost to us. Our prey knows he is being hunted.”
“So tired…,” Katspiel groaned as he dangled limply in his master’s grip.
“There will be plenty of time to rest once the Malakim is found and the final piece of knowledge is extracted from his skull.” Verchiel dropped him to the dusty floor. “Continue,” he ordered.
Slowly Katspiel raised his arms, a spell of summoning upon his lips, the drone of his feeble voice drawing down magickal forces eager to partake of his already depleted life force.
Verchiel watched intently until the sound of someone entering the church distracted him. He turned and saw Kraus heading down the center aisle toward him. The human moved differently now, his newly regenerated sensory organs taking in everything, devouring the sights around him.
Kraus approached the altar, and Verchiel watched curiously as a look of horror slowly spread across his face. “What is it, healer?” And then he, too, realized what the healer saw.
Verchiel had started to bleed.
New wounds had appeared, and old wounds, long since healed, had reopened, dark blood raining down to spatter upon the altar and puddle at the angel’s feet.
“Time is short,” he had told the Archon.
Truer words were never spoken.
The air around the sleeping girl crackled with a subdued supernatural energy, and Aaron could feel the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. Vilma was lying on a bare mattress on the floor, placed in the basement of an abandoned house on the outskirts of Aerie, away from the citizens’ homes. She looked small upon the king-size mattress—fragile, as if the power inside her was consuming her mass, eating away at all that was human so only the angelic would remain.
A sheen of sweat was on her brow, and she grumbled in her sleep. But the language she spoke was neither English nor her native Portuguese. It was the language of angels, and Aaron knew that the essence inside her was growing stronger despite the supernatural restraints placed upon her.
Gabriel lay faithfully by Vilma’s side, his dark brown eyes never leaving her as she slept. His burns had already begun to heal, the scorched patches filling in with new golden yellow fur.
“How is she?” Aaron asked, reaching out to stroke the dog’s head.
“It’s hurting her,” he replied, his voice full of concern. “I’m trying with all my might, but I can’t seem to
calm it down. It wants to get out—it wants to run wild.” The dog looked away from his charge to hold Aaron in his soulful gaze. “But I’m not going to let that happen.”
“You’re a good dog, Gabriel,” Aaron said, and leaned down to kiss the top of his hard, bony head. “What would I do without you?”
The dog seemed to take the statement literally. “What a horrible thought.” He tilted his head to one side considering the alternate reality. “What would you do without me?”
Aaron smiled, amused by the animal’s strange perception of things. But the humor was fleeting as they again found themselves staring at the unconscious Vilma, locked within the grip of a power older than creation.
“What are they doing to help her?”
Aaron sighed. “That’s just it, Gabe,” he began. “They have no idea what to do. Normally, when something like this happens they…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“They what?” Gabriel asked. “They wouldn’t hurt Vilma, would they?” He climbed to his feet. “I won’t let them, Aaron.”
“They don’t want to, but it might come to that if something can’t be done,” Aaron explained. “She’s becoming dangerous, Gabe, and to keep her from hurting someone … there might be no choice.”
The Lab sniffed at the girl’s sleeping body, his tail beginning to wag. “She doesn’t want to hurt anybody, and neither does the thing inside her. It just needs to be trained.”
“I know that. Look, Gabe, there is a slim possibility that certain angels called the Malakim might be able to help Vilma, but the thing is, nobody knows where they are.”
Aaron could practically hear the gears clicking in Gabriel’s square head as he tried to process the information.
“We have to find them, then,” the dog said matter of factly.
“Exactly,” Aaron replied. “Since your accident,” he continued, “since I made you better, your senses have gotten more powerful, haven’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you could track an old scent from something?” Aaron asked.
The dog thought for a moment. “How old?”
Aaron shrugged. “I’m not sure. A few thousand years maybe.”
“Is that all?” the dog responded, a mischievous twinkle in his dark brown eyes. “And here I was thinking you were going to give me something tough.”
Something was drawing Lucifer out of his inner self, pulling him away from the retreat he had created deep within his subconscious. He didn’t want to leave, struggling against the current threatening to wrench him from his internal world and the woman he loved, but it was to no avail. So he left Taylor standing nervously before the locked vault door and promised to return as soon as he was able.
He allowed himself to be drawn upward, the powerful force dragging him through multiple layers of consciousness, and the closer he got to the surface, the worse the pain became. But he endured, embracing it, for it had been his constant companion since his fall. It was his penance, and he deserved no less.
Lucifer’s eyes opened, dried discharge crackling as his upper lid pulled away from the lower. He blinked away the blurriness, his burning gaze focusing upon the mystical circle that had been drawn on the parquet floor beneath him. An aching pain in his arms and legs diverted his attentions elsewhere, and he realized that he was suspended by chains, hanging over an arcane protective circle, the subject of some kind of ritual.
It was more than mere physical pain he felt; this unpleasant sensation went far deeper than that, and he came to the frightening realization that Verchiel was somehow succeeding with his mad plans—that the angel had found a way to undo God’s Word. The image of the large vault door within his mind—its locks falling away—filled his head, and he recoiled from it.
“You can’t do this,” he said aloud, struggling pathetically against his bonds, his body swaying with his useless efforts.
“Oh, but I can,” said a disturbing voice from close by, and Lucifer lifted his head to look upon Verchiel, or at least he believed it to be him.
Clad in armor that once shone like the sun, the figure that shambled toward him was a nightmare to behold. The exposed flesh of the angel’s face, arms, and legs was wrapped in bandages, bloodied by oozing wounds.
“Is that you, Verchiel?” Lucifer asked, struggling to keep his head up, the muscles in his neck beginning to cramp. “What happened? Cut yourself shaving?” Then he saw the eyes that raged from between the gore-stained bandages and knew exactly who it was before him.
“Insolent even in the face of your own demise,” Verchiel hissed.
In all his years of existence, Lucifer had never seen such hate as he now saw in the Powers leader. Here was a being birthed by God that had somehow lost touch with everything that made him a creature of the divine. Even Lucifer still remembered what it was like to serve God, after all that he had been through.
“Believe it or not, Morningstar, I asked the Archons to awaken you,” Verchiel said, his voice a rasping whisper through the bandages that partially obscured his mouth. “I want you to be fully aware of the next catastrophic act you will be party to.” The angel stepped closer, careful not to disturb the mystical circle, and grabbed Lucifer’s chin, lifting his face to gaze upon Verchiel’s disturbing visage. “I thought we might have a private discussion first, while the Archons rest. They have been working so very hard to complete their task.”
“What’s happened to you?” Lucifer asked. The sickening smell of decay wafted from Verchiel’s body, and he wanted to turn his head away, but the Powers commander still held his chin firmly in hand.
“This is yet another example of how the Lord rewards those who serve Him faithfully,” Verchiel growled bitterly. “All my wounds, received in service to His holy cause, open again and weeping.”
Lucifer directed his gaze to Verchiel’s cold eyes. “Do you think maybe He’s trying to tell you something?” he asked, hoping to reach even a sliver of sanity in the Powers commander.
“Yes,” Verchiel said with a slow nod of his bandaged head. “Yes, I do believe that He is attempting to commune with me. Through His actions, or lack there of, He is telling me that the sinful have won, that the wretched and the cursed, the criminals and the abominations whose taint has poisoned the heavens above and the earth below, hold indomitable sway over all.”
Verchiel leaned his face closer to Lucifer’s, the smell of rot nearly suffocating. “But I will not hear of it,” he said, squeezing his prisoner’s chin all the tighter, refusing to allow him to look away. “I will not surrender to those who should have died beneath my heel. I shall see it all turned to Hell before I give it away.”
And with the last pronouncement of his rage, Verchiel released his grip and backed from the circle. “And to think, the one that began it all—who brought war to Paradise, and still had the audacity to believe that his sins could be forgiven—shall be the instrument of my defiance.” Verchiel studied the first of the fallen, the hint of a grotesque smile beneath the soiled wrappings. “It brings me a certain satisfaction to know that the prophecy will never be brought to term, that the founder of our misery will never find forgiveness at the hands of his son.”
Lucifer couldn’t bear to hear any more of the angel’s rantings. He wanted to return to the darkness of oblivion, to the comfort of a precious memory in the shape of a love long lost. But there was something that Verchiel said that he did not quite comprehend. He strained to lift his head and look upon the Powers commander to ask the question.
“Forgiveness at the hands of his son?”
Verchiel chuckled, a wet rumbling sound. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t know, or at least suspect, Morningstar,” he teased.
“What are you saying?” Lucifer struggled to ask, the Archon spell used to return him to consciousness wearing thin.
“Why, the Nephilim of prophecy, the one called Aaron Corbet—he is your son.”
CHAPTER NINE
“ This place is much bigger on the inside
,” Gabriel observed as he strolled deeper into the seemingly endless room, his nails clicking on the bare, hardwood floors.
“At that first stack, take a…” Aaron started to tell him, but the dog was already on his way to finding the others.
“Don’t tell me, Aaron,” Gabriel said, his nose skimming the surface of the floor. It sounded like a Geiger counter searching for dangerous levels of radiation as he followed the scent. “Let me find them on my own.”
Gabriel hadn’t wanted to leave Vilma, fearing that his absence would cause the essence to awaken again. But he had finally agreed when Aaron explained that it was the only way left to help the girl. Besides, Scholar wouldn’t allow the scroll to leave his house.
Aaron followed the dog through the multiple winding corridors of bookshelves as the animal tracked his quarry. He was pleased with how well Gabriel was doing, but were the Lab’s olfactory senses really good enough to find an angelic being that had left his scent on a scroll thousands of years ago? That was the million-dollar question, and a chance they were going to have to take.
Scholar had scoffed at the idea, saying that he’d never heard of anything quite so ridiculous, and the others weren’t quite ready to go along for the ride either. Aaron defended his theory, giving examples of his dog’s ability to track. Being able to find a slice of cheese hidden somewhere in a house didn’t have quite the impact that he had imagined, but the example of Gabriel being able to track the scent of fallen angels was at least met with a begrudging curiosity. He explained that Gabriel’s senses had intensified since he had been healed and that he was no longer just a dog. Gabriel was special and was capable of amazing things.
The dog suddenly stopped short, sniffed the air, and reversed his direction. “Almost lost it,” he grumbled. “Lots of other smells around here, but I can smell that cigar stink above them all.”
And with that final statement, the dog quickened his pace, Aaron almost jogging to keep up. At a closed door he began to bark, his tail wagging furiously.
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