“Sparks!” I shouted. “Where we’re going there will be reapers that aren’t blazing across the sky at Mach One. They will have chosen to reveal their elemental nature. This is just like back at my safe house. You can’t look at them. You need to keep your eyes fixed on me at all times!”
She turned her head to face me. “You don’t think I’ve already thought of that? I’m probably going to be dead in a few minutes anyway. At least I know there’s something else out there if the worst actually happens.”
I forced a smile even though I could feel my heart sink. Sparks was right, the odds were against us but God love her, and she was going to be with me right up until the bitter end.
“Listen, Sparks … whatever happens- “
She reached across Ezekiel’s chest and drove her fist into my shoulder yet again. “Would you just shut up? My God you’re freaking hormonal for shit sake!”
I spotted the beach in the distance as Ezekiel broke into a sharp nose dive. The wind blew past us with a near deafening roar and the angel swooped over the thousands of reapers like a fighter plan strafing the enemy. He deposited us about a hundred yards away from Amy and then he hurtled across the beach, slamming into her like a battering ram.
And Amy didn’t even move.
The angel ricocheted back about fifty feet, his body tumbling across the sand in a cloud of dust and feathers. But he was down for less than five seconds because he quickly took to the sky, sweeping his wings out to their full span and then he dove straight down, swooping to earth at a blinding speed. Holy power flew from his lips as Ezekiel manifested a golden spear. He was just about to hurl it at Amy when she made a lifting motion and the sand beneath her feet shot up into a protective barrier. Ezekiel had to move fast to avoid it, banking hard to the right at the last moment and once again crashed into the beach.
The reapers shrieked and cried out in the ancient language of my kind. In front of them a colossal battle was being fought but they paid no attention because their collective rage was directed squarely at me. I cupped my hands over my ears to blot out the noise of their seething hatred just as Ezekiel dug his feet into the sand and lashed out with a pillar of fire from his hands so intense that it seemed to turn night into day. The sky above thundered and forks of white hot lightening crashed into the ocean spreading electricity across the waves in all directions. Amy crossed her arms in front of her face and the fire simply flowed around her battered body like water. It dripped onto the sand and seemed to bubble and froth like an unwatched pot on a stove. She raised her hand and made a snatching motion and the earth began to rumble as a bank of thick clouds rolled in, blotting out the clear night sky. She made another snatching motion and the temperature plummeted as hailstones as big as baseballs started crashing into the beach.
Sparks cried out just as I covered her with my trench coat and attempted to shield her with my body. Excruciating currents of pain radiated across my back with the strike of each hail stone and I looked out pleadingly to Ezekiel; my eyes begging him to do something because Sparks and I were being stoned to death. The angel nodded and then he raised both hands over his head, sending another pillar of fire straight up. It formed a dome of flame and the hail immediately transformed into harmless droplets of rain.
“This is insane, Reaper!” Sparks barked as she crawled out from underneath me. “Is there anything you can do to stop those two because if this is just a small display of their power, I’d freaking hate to see what they’ll do to this beach if they get really ticked off with each other.”
“If there was a way to end this, don’t you think I’d have done it by now?” I shouted through the pounding rain. “I can’t interfere and even if I wanted to, you can see what kinds of shit I’d be up against.”
“Then what can you do?”
I looked at Amy and searched for some sign that Jael wasn’t entirely in control. Her normally soft and tender eyes blazed furiously as she lashed out again at Ezekiel with a wave of crimson force that swept the angel up off the ground and high into the air. An enormous shadow flew straight up out of the earth beneath Amy’s feet forming a claw-like hand that wrapped itself around Ezekiel and driving the angel straight into the ground with enough force to leave an impact crater. It picked him up again and then pounded him three more times, the force shaking the earth and nearly knocking Sparks and me flat onto our asses.
“Ezekiel!” I shouted. “You two are going to destroy this beach!”
Amy spun around and fired a volley of energy that hit me square in the chest, sending me careening through the air. I crashed into a sand bar and shook my head as I gazed out at the long trench from where my body skidded across the sand.
“I’ll be destroying much more than this beach, death-dealer!” The Amy-Jael thing shouted in a gravelly voice that sounded more animal than angelic or human. “You were foolish to bring a mortal into this!”
I slowly got back to my feet and saw Amy cast a venomous look at Sparks. She raised her hands to deliver of blast of God-knows-what that would kill the detective where she stood, and just as she was about to attack, Ezekiel flew into her. His muscular frame carried Amy-Jael high into the air and then the sky lit up in an explosion of green and crimson light that illuminated the overcast skies with a haunting glow that could easily be seen for miles all around. The pair then plummeted to the earth like a meteor, hitting the ground with enough force that an explosion sounded, cracking the air with a deafening blast of noise.
I staggered forward and looked out across the windswept beach to see Amy staring at the angel with a crooked grin on her face. Her hair hung limply over her shoulders and her eyes burned with a look of pure madness. She lifted her eyes toward me and spoke the ancient language of my kind and that’s when the reapers decided to make their move.
They turned to face me, thousands of them, each one a death-dealer fueled by the power of life itself. They cried out their hatred of me, each word burning through my mind like thousands of flaming daggers. I dropped to my knees, covering my ears to blot out the sound, but it cut through as easily as a butcher’s knife hacking through flesh and bone. I could feel my essence become tainted, each voice slicing through my mind. I shut my eyes tight and ground my teeth as I tried to fight against their collective will. I had to strike out at them, somehow, but my essence was collapsing under the weight of their collective rage. The bile in my stomach surged up into my throat and I dropped onto my knees as I struggled to breathe.
My mind flashed to that dying child in 1919. The antiseptic smell of the hospital room filled my nostrils and I heard the death rattle as the boy struggled to breathe through his fluid-filled lungs. I gazed at the tear-streaked face of the child’s mother as she sobbed into the father’s shoulder. The boy turned and looked at me. His eyes bore straight through me and then he opened his mouth.
“You are never going to be like them,” he said curtly. Only it wasn’t a child’s voice, instead, it was Jael. You will never be one of them no matter how hard you try. I can release this girl you hold so dear to your heart if you take my blade and strike down Ezekiel. He is nearly finished death-dealer. I have prepared him for you to deliver a fatal blow. Do this thing for me and I will let you have your precious Amy.”
I tried to get up and immediately dropped down onto one knee in exhaustion. I’d been blasted by a power so great that it should have blown me to atoms, yet I was still alive, somehow. The reapers raged again, their voices hacked through my mind like a thousand machetes. I knew that I could blot them out if I would just take up Jael’s offer. I could be with Amy again. I could find the peace and contentment that can only come with knowing that the person you’re with has your back. That together, both of you can withstand a lifetime of trials and tribulation.
But I was lying to myself as I grasped at those thin fragments of hope like a drowning man. The end of everything would happen if Jael managed to win this battle and that meant her promise of releasing Amy was as worthless as I felt in my heart. I
realized at that very moment that my humanity was artificial and no matter how hard I might try; I would always be an outsider in the world of man.
I knew that I couldn’t save Amy.
I wanted the earth to swallow me whole. The raging shrieks of the reapers wore be down as I glanced a few feet away and spotted the Holy sword. It had fallen out of my hands when Jael hit me with her power. I crawled with every ounce of my energy and grasped the handle in my right hand. I tried to lift it, but The Holy sword in my hands felt like an anchor, and I very nearly released my grip.
“Amy,” I croaked, nearly ready to drop dead under the weight of the reaper’s oppressive mental assault. “I’m so sorry.”
“No you fucking don’t, Reaper!” Spark’s voice cut through the feral shrieks of the death dealers. I felt a strong pair of arms wrap around my shoulders. Two hands, stronger than steel, stronger than the howling wind in a hurricane gently pulled at me, and then Sparks whispered two simple words that silenced the deafening voices in my head. Two words that acted as an anti-virus to the infection that had threatened to snuff out my very existence.
“Fight back!” she said.
I nodded weakly as I gazed out at the thousands of reapers staring at me with a single unified look of murder on their collective faces.
My eyes panned over to see Amy standing over the broken body of Ezekiel and in her hand was gleaming ten-inch blade. It lit ablaze with Holy fire as Amy reached out and grabbed the dazed angel by his golden hair, snapping his neck back. She raised her arm high over her head as she prepared to stab Ezekiel in the back.
And God forgive me for what I did next because I will never forgive myself.
I turned my head toward Sparks and said, “Run. For God’s sake, run for your fucking life.”
She didn’t even blink as she spun around and sprinted with every ounce of energy in her body. I gathered the final reserves of my strength and stood up. I raised the Holy sword above my head and it instantly lit aflame. Unimaginable power coursed through me as I drove the sword into the sand between my feet. I lashed out with my essence. I drew on the creatures in the sand and I could feel the land in front of me withering as I drank the living energy not only from the ground, but also from the sea. I could hear the screaming voices of sea mammals as I bled them dry.
The death energy pushed across the beach as an unstoppable force. My brethren, those thousands of reapers who had this night forsaken their purpose, recoiled at the display of my power. But it wasn’t just my power they feared, it was the hand of The Almighty working through me. He lashed out with cold, unmitigated vengeance. My eyes blazed furiously as I watched the shadow of death rolling across that beach, killing everything it touched until it came to Amy.
She was just about to deliver the death blow when she felt His power tugging at her soul, an unyielding force. She doubled over, her hands clutching her stomach and she began to vomit. Her face contorted into hellish shapes as Jael fought against His will. She held onto Amy with an iron grip, twisting her body like a contortionist in a display of its unholy power. She screamed – a painful, deathly wail that I could feel in my bones as Jael struggled. Amy’s body lifted off the ground and hovered above the sand, but Jael refused to let her go.
And her eyes.
They gazed out at me, pleadingly. Begging to be released from whatever hellish torment that Jael had put her through. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she cried out once more, only this time it was Jael’s voice I heard.
“I will not yield!” Jael roared. “If you are to take me this night then she will die also!”
Once again, Amy’s body twisted and contorted into hideous shapes as Jael fought desperately to maintain possession of Amy’s soul. I could hear bones snapping as Amy screamed again, but she fought against her captor. She struggled furiously to regain some measure of control as invisible claws dug deeper into her flesh. Wounds appeared on her face and arms, her innocent blood dripping down onto the sand, and for a brief moment the real Amy surfaced.
“Reaper,” she whispered, her voice echoed through my mind and sent a searing dagger of pain that burned straight into the center of my chest. I gazed up at her once beautiful face only to see a sunken and hollow shell that barely resembled the girl I’d fallen in love with. “You are still a good man … I forgive you.”
Through me the power of the Almighty lashed out. Death energy formed a black, shadowy hand that seized Amy’s body, tearing the poison that was Jael from her soul. She cried out, a haunting, tortured cry that burned into my heart. And for a short moment, I could have sworn I heard the sound of that heart beginning to break.
My choice.
It had always been my choice.
I just never knew what it truly meant to be human until I watched Amy die.
26
My former brethren scattered to the four winds the very moment Amy’s body fell to the sand. It was as if they were fleeing the scene of a crime, only the criminal was me. The sand had given up its dead. For acres around me, the beach was littered with dead insects and worms. I looked out onto the shoreline and found thousands of dead fish strewn about in every direction.
I had killed everything the death energy touched, and worse, I had killed Amy.
Ezekiel tried to offer some measure of consolation. He reminded me that she was meant to die on that desolate beach. It was simply Amy’s time.
And that just pissed me off more.
Sparks returned from running for her life and leaned against me to catch her breath. Together we watched as Jael stood in judgement before the Angel of Death and Transformation, and it surprised the hell out of me to learn that cherubs weren’t cute little chubby child-angels with tiny wings. Instead, they looked just like any other angel save for the fact that this particular angel had a psychotic gleam in her eyes. Ezekiel once again wielded his holy sword that I’d taken from him on that hill overlooking the bottleneck in the road at the quarry.
Sparks held me close the way as big sister would as I stared at Amy’s wrecked body. She said nothing because there was nothing to be said. She knew well enough to leave it alone. For now.
Ezekiel held the tip of his sword against Jael’s neck. “Jael,” he said in a strong, clear voice. “You are judged a traitor against God. You have killed your own kind and schemed to make war against Heaven.”
She said nothing to defend herself, which kind of surprised me. I would have expected the angel to repent, hell, that’s what I would have done had I known what was going to happen next. And surely, Jael had to know her fate the moment she decided to act against her maker. It came in the form of four powerful words along with a holy sword pressed against her throat.
“I cast you out!” Ezekiel said. Not even a second later Jael was ablaze in heavenly fire. She roared as Sparks turned her back on the grisly scene. Some things are too horrific for human eyes to look upon.
Jael’s holy form burned away, her once perfect skin falling to the ground in glowing embers until a new being stood before us. Its long tongue flicked at the air like a serpent. Its now crimson colored eyes gazed down at its claw-like hands in what appeared to be disbelief. An enormous pair of leathery wings unfurled from behind her shoulders as her transformation finished. She was fallen angel.
She opened her mouth and roared with a guttural, almost beast-like voice, on her knees.
“Ezekiel, why do you protect these creatures?” she cried. “They break faith with every breath they draw into their filthy lungs, yet He loves them above all other things when he should smite them. Their existence should be erased from the Book of Life. And now you cast me out because I wanted to save Him the trouble of doing what he should have done eons ago. I did this for our brothers and sisters that we are parted from. As long as these disgusting humans exist, we can never reunite with those who are fallen.”
If Jael was hoping she’d gotten through to Ezekiel, she was dead fucking wrong. He spat on her and shouted back, “BE SILENT.”
A
nd at that very moment, a lone figure appeared on the shoreline, clad in a rumpled grey business suit. Abraxas.
“Well, look what we have here,” he said in a strangely cheery voice as he approached Jael. “You must be the one who was killing our kind. We’ve got an entire warehouse full of lovely little torments to share with you. Hello, death-dealer and … detective! I’m shocked … shocked to see that you’re actually still breathing. Pity that. You know, we could find a place for Ms. Sparks, as well. We can stop her imminent death in eight year’s time – what do you say, Detective? Does that sound like a bargain?”
Sparks didn’t need any prompting. She pulled her Glock out from its holster, spun around, and shot Abraxis in the head. Again.
She was good that way.
“You might want to get your new conscript the hell out of here, Abraxas,” I said. “The good detective has got like at least five more clips of ammo on her and it’s been a rough night, so, you know …”
The demon grinned as chunks of meat and tar-like blood ran down his face. “Of course. I forgot about her anger management issues. Jael, my master has decided to call you Naberius. Do follow me, won’t you?”
The now fallen angel looked at Ezekiel, pleading for a moment, but the angel turned his back on her. Defeated and shunned, Naberius hesitated but took Abraxas’ hand. Together they walked down the beach, disappearing into a black mist. After a minute or so of silence, Ezekiel turned to face me, his holy sword disappearing from his hands.
“I … ask your forgiveness, death-dealer,” he said, actually sounding apologetic. “I did not agree with His plan for you because I did not trust you. I knew you faced an impossible choice and knowing your great mistake that endangered the world of humans, I believed you would choose wrongly. Once again, He has woven together a lesson for me, indeed, for all of us.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said, gazing out at Amy’s broken body. “It’s about faith, isn’t it? What about Amy? Is she dead because she didn’t have any faith left after a shitty life? She’s down in hell, because nobody could save her soul. I couldn’t save her.”
Immortal Remains: A Tim Reaper Novel Page 22
