“Enough!” Aaron’s voice boomed in the chamber. He flew beside the youth and grabbed his arm, holding him tightly so the ax could not fall again.
“Enough,” he repeated, his voice softer.
Jeremy’s eyes were wild with rage, but he obeyed, relaxing the tension in his arm and looking to the opening in the wall. “Well, what are we waiting for?” he asked, ducking through the hole.
There was an immediate commotion from the other side.
Aaron readied his sword and followed Jeremy’s path through the hole and into a much larger chamber beyond. Jeremy was near the entrance, standing over the dead bodies of three trolls lying on the rocky floor.
“Everything all right?” Aaron asked him.
“Right as rain,” Jeremy replied, an unnerving grin momentarily gracing his pale face as he turned away from them and headed toward a circular corridor of rock.
Aaron was about to tell the young man to wait for them, but Vilma appeared beside him.
“I’ll keep him out of trouble,” she said, using her wings to fly after Jeremy, gracefully flitting across the rocky surface of the chamber and into the shadowy corridor beyond.
Aaron turned toward the entrance to the cavern just as the last of the remaining Nephilim entered. “Let’s go,” he said, motioning to the others to follow Vilma.
Kirk was the last to stumble by, and Aaron reached out for the young man.
“Maybe you should stay here,” Aaron suggested, eyeing the scarlet stain on the side of the boy’s T-shirt.
“I’m all right,” Kirk said, even though his face was pale and dappled with sweat. “I can do this.”
“Are you sure?” Aaron stressed.
Kirk took a deep breath, nodded, and turned to follow the others.
They walked into the stone passage. At first it appeared that there had been no resistance, but then the troll bodies started to pile up as they continued farther in.
“Hmmm,” William said so that everyone could hear. “Wonder if Fox happened to pass this way?”
There was some nervous laughter from the group.
“Stay focused,” Aaron warned, wanting them to remain on guard. They had no idea what they were walking into, but there was no choice. They were Nephilim, and this was their job—their purpose.
They needed to be ready for anything.
And, as if on cue, the wall beside them seemed to melt away. A shaggy beast in all its twisted glory sprang at Aaron.
It let out a horrible, bloodthirsty cry, lunging at Aaron’s chest with its filthy spear tip. There wasn’t much maneuverability in the passage, and Aaron threw himself back against the opposing wall, raising his sword of fire to block the attack and willing the blade to blaze all the brighter.
The troll screamed, dropping its weapon to cover its injured eyes. Aaron didn’t hesitate a moment. He slashed his blade down upon the monster and ended its life before it could recover.
“Watch the walls,” he warned the others, in awe of the beasts’ abilities to pass through stone and rock as if it were little more substantial than smoke.
A troll screamed from somewhere behind their group, and Aaron saw the blaze of a heavenly weapon followed by another unearthly cry.
“You guys good back there?” he called.
“We’re okay,” Cameron reported. “One just tried to come up from the floor. I took care of it.”
They had to get out of the confined space of the passage, to find Vilma and Jeremy.
The tunnel before them suddenly dipped down, winding farther into the bowels of the earth, and from somewhere below there came a series of screams.
Something told Aaron that they’d found what they were looking for.
* * *
This is what it’s all about, Jeremy reveled as he surged into the large subterranean chambers that housed what looked to be a troll village.
This was what he’d been waiting for, to let loose, to let the power flow through him and into the ax he carried. There was nothing the filthy beasts could do to stop him; he was a force to be reckoned with, the ultimate power of God made physical.
He was like a storm upon them; no matter how many they sent to fight him, they were struck down in death by his unrelenting fury. He could see the fear in their beady eyes as he came farther into their territory. How do you ugly buggers like it? he thought, enjoying the monsters’ distress.
Deeper into the village he went; huts made of rock and dirt exploded into black clouds under the power of his ax.
From somewhere in the distance he heard his name.
“Jeremy.”
But it didn’t stop him. Nothing could stop him. He was a destroyer … a berserker … and there was nothing that would make him cease, until all their enemies were …
“Jeremy!” a voice cried all the closer.
He spun toward the sound, ready to destroy that, too, and came face-to-face with the girl—with Vilma Santiago. He had to pull back upon the fury that roared within him. He wouldn’t want to hurt something as fine as that.
“Watch out,” she cried out to him as she did battle with a group of trolls that sprang at her from the rubble of their dwellings.
He had no idea what she was talking about, for there was nothing that could stop him. It was she who needed to watch out … she, and their so-called leader, whom she called “boyfriend.”
The blow came to the back of his head. Jeremy fell to his knees in an explosion of color and sound. Dazed, he glanced up, and through bleary eyes saw what Santiago had tried to warn him about: a troll wielding a hammer that would have made the God of Thunder himself weak with envy.
The beast raised its hammer once more, and Jeremy struggled to raise his weapon to block the hammer’s descent. But his concentration was gone, and the blade of the divine ax exploded into sparks as it was decimated by the fall of the troll’s war hammer.
Jeremy managed to roll out of the way just as the hammer struck the stone floor in an explosion of shattered rock. The chamber was spinning, and he was finding it hard to put together a coherent thought, never mind re-create his ax of fire.
The large troll saw that it had not yet claimed the life of its victim and, with a snort, again brought the hammer up, charging forward to finish the job.
Jeremy desperately needed a weapon, but try as he might, he could not create one; his brain was still too scrambled from the force of the initial hammer blow.
He wondered if Nephilim were allowed nine lives, like cats, as he prepared to have his brains bashed in.
But the blow didn’t fall. He looked up at the troll, which still stood above him but no longer held its weapon. In fact, it no longer had hands.
There was a flurry of movement near the beast, followed by the sound of something soaring through the air as the troll’s shaggy head tumbled to the ground and rolled toward him. Jeremy could see the monster’s beady eyes, wide with shock, peering out from beneath locks of black, greasy hair.
“I told you to watch out,” Vilma said.
He looked up from the troll’s dead eyes to see the striking young woman standing there, burning sword crackling in her hand.
She was a sight to behold. Even though her clothes were torn, and covered with dirt and blood, Jeremy wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen another girl like her.
“That’ll teach me to listen,” Jeremy said as he raised a hand for her to help him up.
“Could anything possibly teach you to listen, Jeremy?” Vilma asked as she pulled him from the ground.
“Maybe I could surprise you,” he said, looking into the dark spots of her eyes, far closer to her than he had ever been before. The angelic nature stirred within, but this time it did not hunger for violence but for something else entirely.
Vilma released her grip on his wrist, stepping back to look toward the cavern entrance.
Aaron stood in the opening to the chamber, and a perverse part of Jeremy hoped their fearless leader had seen them.
And the thought of this b
rought a sly smile to Jeremy’s lips.
Aaron wasn’t sure exactly what he was seeing as he entered the chamber, but he knew he didn’t care for it.
The way Fox and Vilma had been standing there, so close together …
Stop, he told himself. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted from the job at hand. He was about to call down to them, to ask if they were clear, when he felt it.
Aaron’s senses came immediately alert, his skin starting to burn and itch as the sigils of the angelic fallen began to appear there. It must have been something extremely dangerous to arouse their appearance. A quick glance around showed him that the others felt it too.
“What is it, Aaron?” Russell asked, his wide blue eyes darting around the stone cavern.
More attuned to his angelic abilities than the others, Aaron moved toward the source of the disturbance. He stepped over the bodies of the fallen troll soldiers, the sensation intensifying as he approached an area that looked as though it had been designated for the preparation of food.
He heard the others behind him gasp.
Two human bodies hung by their ankles from a rack, their throats cut and their blood drained into large stone bowls. There were gore-covered knives, and a primitive meat cleaver, lying beside smaller bowls that looked to be filled with dried spices.
It was a horrible sight, but not what had drawn him to this place.
Aaron sensed Vilma by his side and turned to look at her.
“Do you feel that?” Aaron asked her.
She nodded, stepping closer to him and gently touching his hand. The black sigils upon his flesh tingled with her touch.
Jeremy stormed past them, his fiery ax taking form in his grasp. “Looks like we interrupted their tea.”
Aaron still couldn’t put his finger on it, moving farther into the area, a sense of danger still present in the air. He noticed the stone handle protruding from the ground at his feet. At closer examination he saw that it was a handle to a circular stone cover in the ground.
As he bent to grab hold of it, he knew what had drawn them to this section of the troll habitat.
“Be ready,” he ordered as he pulled the heavy lid from the ground, revealing a circular manhole-like opening in the floor.
Aaron dropped the heavy cover with a thud, and brought his sword to life to illuminate what was within the hole.
He gasped at what he saw below.
Vilma and Jeremy came to his side and peered down into the opening.
“Oh my God,” Vilma said, bringing a hand to her mouth in shock at the sight.
“Bloody hell,” Jeremy whispered.
Down in the hole were bodies—dried yellow bones, some still covered with leathery flecks of meat—but wedged into the corner, now looking up at them with hateful eyes, was a sight Aaron had never expected to see again.
He had thought them all destroyed, and if not destroyed, sent back to Heaven by his own hand to face the judgment of the Lord, but there was no mistaking the smell of its hate for him … for his kind.
An angel of the heavenly host Powers.
“Abomination,” he hissed, a mere shell of its former divinity.
And seeing what had been done to the angel that had hunted the Nephilim nearly to extinction … Aaron actually felt a tinge of pity.
“That’s one of the bastards that was hunting us, isn’t it?” Jeremy asked, glaring down into the pit.
Aaron didn’t answer, still stunned by the horrific sight.
“I say we leave ’im down there to rot.” Jeremy leaned forward to spit into the hole.
Aaron’s hand shot out, catching the fluid before it could fall upon the imprisoned angel.
“No” was all he said, the young man’s spit sizzling in his hand as it heated, turning to steam. “We’re not like them.”
Jeremy glared and walked away in a huff.
Aaron then turned to William. “Help me get him out of there.”
It wasn’t easy, but they managed to haul the injured angel from the death pit. Lying on the ground before them, he was a disturbing sight. It appeared that the trolls had been gradually feeding upon the Powers angel, and the thought nearly made Aaron sick to his stomach.
The angel drifted in and out of consciousness, rambling when awake, cursing the Nephilim’s very existence. He called them a blight in the eyes of God.
At least that was what this particular host of angels had believed.
Aaron thought of their leader and felt a chill of fear pass through him. Verchiel had been a formidable foe, and had almost succeeded in unleashing Hell on earth. He had planned to wipe out all life, and allow God the opportunity to start all over. Whether God wanted it or not.
But with the fate of the world hanging by a thread, Aaron had stopped Verchiel, forgiving him his sins and allowing him to return to Heaven to face the judgment of the Creator.
Aaron doubted that the Powers’ leader had gotten off easy for what he had intended for the world, and for the many Nephilim that had been murdered over the centuries.
“What are we going to do with him?” Vilma asked, interrupting Aaron’s thoughts. Even after what he had said to Jeremy, there was a part of him that wanted to leave the angel to rot in the cavern for all the evil it had done, but Aaron knew that wasn’t the answer.
One of the angel’s wings had been severed at the shoulder, while the other, which was missing most of its feathers, beat fitfully upon the ground, stirring up clouds of dust.
“He’s dying,” Aaron said as he knelt beside the trembling creature.
“Looks like he’s been doing that for a very long time,” Jeremy added from where the others stood. “Maybe we should help him along.”
Jeremy’s ax sparked and hissed as if eager for the taste of more violence.
Aaron could see the way the Nephilim looked at the Powers angel. Many of them had endured horrors that the hands of these angels had delivered to them, while others had certainly heard the stories. This was a creature whose sole purpose had been to exterminate them. How were they supposed to feel toward it?
“Maybe you’re right,” Aaron said, staring at the mangled angel on the ground before him.
“You’re not going to hurt him … are you?” Vilma asked.
It hurt him to have her ask such a thing of him, to think that he might be capable of such an act, but the times they lived in had changed him—it had changed all of them—and he was sure she had seen him do things in battle that had given her pause.
“No,” Aaron said with a slight shake of his head. “The exact opposite, really.” He held up his hand and felt the power surge to life there. The power to forgive.
The power of redemption that was his gift as the Chosen One.
If the angel before him was filled with repentance, Aaron had the ability to send him back to Heaven.
The Powers angel continued to writhe upon the ground as Aaron placed a softly glowing hand upon his sunken chest. The angel was wearing little more than filthy rags, and Aaron felt the cool touch of his skin through his palm.
The angel stopped his thrashing and looked up into Aaron’s face. One of his eyes was missing, but the other fixed upon Aaron intensely.
“What are you?”
“I can send you home,” Aaron told him. “Back to—”
“Heaven,” the angel finished.
“Yes.”
“And what must I do to receive such mercy from the likes of you?” the Powers angel asked.
Aaron sighed, sensing the resentment, the disgust that the angel still held for his kind.
“You have to be sorry,” Aaron said.
“Sorry?” the angel asked.
“Sorry for the sins you’ve committed … sorry for all the pain you have caused.”
The Powers angel started to laugh, and it was an awful sound. Blood, like black tar, spurted from the sides of his grinning mouth, running down his face. Aaron recoiled.
“When I was taken by these … things,” the dying angel
croaked, blood still filling his throat, “I was searching for the means to see you … to see all of you dead.”
An icy chill ran down Aaron’s spine as he felt the hate that emanated from the angel in waves.
“We lost the battle,” the angel said, nodding his head. “But we have not … have not lost the war.”
Aaron had heard enough. “Verchiel was defeated, sent back to Heaven to face the wrath of the Almighty. The Powers were wrong, and the sooner you accept—”
“Accept?” the angel barked, blood-flecked spittle spraying from his mouth. “There will be no acceptance. As I lay there in the pit, as those beasts feasted upon my flesh, I waited … not for my brothers to come, but for the eventual end.”
The angel’s ignorance was maddening, and it took everything that Aaron had to hold it together. And he needed to hold it together. The others were watching.
“I can’t help you. I can’t send you home, unless—”
“I have done no wrong,” the angel declared, straining with each word. “It was our mission to see the monsters that inhabited His world destroyed.”
“And yet, here we are,” Aaron said as he stood. He gestured to the other Nephilim. “No matter how misguided you were, your mission has failed.”
The angel’s one eye darted around as if searching for something.
“They’re still out there,” the angel whispered to the stone ceiling.
“Who?” Aaron asked. “The Powers? They’re gone,” Aaron told him again. “The Powers have all been sent back to Heaven to face judgment for their sins.” His palm began to radiate a warm glow again, and he held his hand out toward the angel.
“I sent them there.”
“Not all,” the angel said, violently shaking his head. “Others … others still search for the solution … the solution to the problem at hand.”
Aaron felt his insides twist into a knot. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“You will,” the angel replied, his single eye twinkling maliciously. “But by then it will be too late.”
Aaron knelt again beside the angel.
“What are you trying to tell me?” he asked, sensing that the angel was hinting at something very important.
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