by Jerel Law
“I . . . I didn’t . . . ,” the one who had tried to expel him a few seconds ago trembled.
A hand landed on his shoulder. “Get up,” the janitor said. “All of you, get up.”
The janitor plopped down in a tall leather chair at the end of the table and threw his feet up on the dark wood. He smoothed out his coveralls, which had a name tag that said “Dante.” He folded his hands behind his short-cropped, wiry hair and then motioned to the empty chairs without a word. The rest quickly found a place to sit.
He ran his hands over his head again, and his hair suddenly became stringy and long, covering half of his face. His eyes turned slowly from dark brown to the color of blood.
“You all look so beautiful today,” he said, his eyes falling slowly on each of them. They had to do everything in their power not to shield themselves from his awful gaze. “But I’d rather see you as you really are.”
He waved his arm across the room. Instantly they each began to transform. Crusty, gnarled faces emerged, replacing their chiseled features. Crumpled wings sprouted out of their backs.
“There. That’s more like it,” Abaddon said with a smile. “Your true, ugly, hopeless selves.”
He leveled his gaze at them again, turning slowly to look at each one, each of the Fallen who had failed him.
In a strangely calm voice, he spoke. “I gave you a simple task to complete. All I asked was that you destroy the nephilim and their families. How hard could it be?” He chuckled again, allowing the tension to hang in the air. “And you are supposed to be my leaders . . .”
They were wilting under his terrible stare. His quiet fury was worse than any tongue-lashing he could have given them. He wasn’t simply angry—he was anger. And it was invisibly pouring out from him, now in its full measure.
Suddenly, as he looked at the fallen angel closest to him, she screamed out in agony and disintegrated into a pile of dust. Slowly, methodically, he turned toward each of them, and each felt the invisible blade slice through them. Soon, they were only piles of black dust on the plush leather chairs.
He rose and watched the tall buildings from the window for a while, his hands behind his back. His eyes veered upward toward the clouds. He glared at something unseen, but said nothing, turning his attention back to the question at hand.
“How will I get rid of the nephilim and their children?”
Yesterday it had been a question of strategy. Of their potential importance to the other side, of how they could be used to stand against Abaddon and his forces. And he had decided he couldn’t allow them to live any longer.
Today, though, there was more. Abaddon had been thwarted. Again. His rage did not dissipate in his punishment of the Fallen. It only grew.
“I know a way, Master . . .”
He didn’t turn toward the voice, already knowing who was there.
A young man had entered the room. He wore a black jacket, silk shirt, and jeans with a few holes carefully placed by a pricey designer. His silver-tipped black boots echoed throughout the room as he walked across the wooden floor.
“You know that I should destroy you right now for daring to come into this room, Dagon,” Abaddon said. “You’re a weasel.”
He turned toward the young man and morphed entirely. He was no longer the janitor. His hands and face grew bony and pale. A hood now covered most of his head.
The man lowered his eyes, not daring to look into the Evil One’s face. But he had his master’s attention, what he had been wanting for some time . . . it was his now, for better or for worse.
Abaddon looked at him with the same glare, but hadn’t cast him into oblivion yet with the others. A good sign.
“I can find one of them,” Dagon said, eager for his Master to see his ingenuity. “I know how to locate a nephilim for us. I can find out where those . . . angels . . . have put one.”
He spat the word angel with hatred on his tongue.
“And if we find one, I can find out what we need to know,” he continued. A personal audience with Abaddon . . . Dagon could barely contain himself.
“The location of the quarterlings,” Abaddon said. He paced around again, thinking. “Who will lead us to these children?”
Dagon was ready for this question, and he uttered the name with a proud smirk.
“Clamwater.”
Abaddon stared out at the buildings again. Slowly, a smile began to crease his lips. Roger Clamwater. He remembered the man’s fear and how easily he had collapsed under the power of Marduk last year. He was the first to fall and turn toward the darkness of Abaddon’s power. Yes, he was as good a candidate as any. And if they could gain information from him . . .
“He will lead us to the children,” said Dagon, his ambition pushing him forward with new energy. “And then they will all come—all of those pathetic creatures will come to the aid of their poor children!”
Abaddon’s fist tightened. “Then we will destroy them all.”
Dagon nodded. “There is another thing,” he said. “But it is small, barely needing my Master’s attention. It’s just that . . .”
“Get to it, Dagon!” Abaddon snapped.
“Of course, Master. I witnessed a prophet on the streets of New York not long ago.”
“So?” the Evil One snarled. “They are of no consequence to us. No one even listens to them these days. Most people think that they’re just crazy.”
Dagon nodded. “Yes, you are right. It was just that, I happened to see two quarterlings there, listening to her. Jonah and Eliza Stone.”
Abaddon spun away from the window and faced him fully now, which caused Dagon to take a couple of steps back. He hadn’t expected such a forceful reaction to that family’s name.
“There was something between this prophet and the boy,” Dagon continued. “In the hidden realm, I could tell there was a . . . connection, between the two.”
Abaddon stood in silence for a while, pondering this bit of news, chewing on its significance. “How can you be sure?” he barked.
“I watched them,” said Dagon, trying to stand straighter. “I know what I saw, what I heard. There was something there. I could sense it. And I know certain prophets have caused us . . . problems in the past. At any rate, you should know that we don’t have to worry about it going forward.”
Abaddon raised his eyebrow. “You killed her?”
“No! Of course not! I wouldn’t do that to a prophet without your permission. But I’ve had her contained,” said Dagon, relishing his moment. “She won’t in any way be able to interfere with our plans. I am simply trying to cover all the bases.”
“And you are telling me this to improve your standing,” Abaddon said, bitterness on his tongue as his glare burned into Dagon.
“We will hold her until you are ready to do with her what you wish, my lord.”
Dagon bowed his head, knowing better than to say anything else now.
“Yes,” Abaddon said, turning his gaze back to the city. He would relish extracting whatever he could from a prophet of Elohim. They were often entrusted with even more useful information than the angels about the movements of His forces. But his thoughts moved back to the boy. If he had a connection with this prophet . . . “This plan to find and rid ourselves of the nephilim,” he whispered. “Do it. I’ll deal with this prophet later.”
Dagon couldn’t hide his smile this time as he changed from the young man with the jacket and fancy boots into the demon he truly was. He bowed his head, then snapped his wings once, silently gliding out of the open window of the boardroom.
FOURTEEN
A LONDON FLAT
Roger Clamwater walked the fourteen blocks from his office as a stockbroker to his London flat every day, rain or shine. He routinely counted the steps—usually about three hundred every block, totaling somewhere near forty-two hundred—it was something to do on the way home. It helped him ignore the more annoying things—like happy schoolchildren, fresh air, and brightly colored ice-cream parlors.
/> His mind wandered back to the day before, to the attack, and he shuddered. The spray of bullets from the car driving by had shattered every window of the café where he had been sitting— outside, of course, as was his daily routine in the mornings. He’d been lounging in a chair, reading the Guardian and sipping a cup of tea—two lemon slices, no sugar, please—when out of nowhere, shots were fired. Actually, he had heard a scream first. Then glass shattering. A woman behind him dove to the ground, hiding behind a table.
He didn’t even have time to react, though. His eyes were drawn toward the gray compact car driving by. The barrel of a machine gun was sitting on the edge of the passenger door.
Firing.
He forgot to duck. But he remembered certain things in detail. He had dropped his teacup, the porcelain shattering into a million pieces at his feet. There were two hooded figures in the car, one driving and one firing the gun. He felt a breeze blowing through his hair by his ear, just past his side. He would realize later this was from the bullets whizzing by.
The police were there in less than a minute and found Roger still sitting in his chair, staring at the street. The officer shook him to his senses, and he blinked several times, finally seeing the face of the man in front of him.
And then everything began to move at regular speed again, the whole scene before him swirling into focus. He whipped his head around to see people sprawled out around him. There was glass everywhere, tables overturned, a woman with her hand plastered over her mouth, and a bald man sitting in the corner, weeping.
The police had whisked him inside and asked him and a handful of others a thousand questions. What exactly did they see? What kind of car was it? Could they make out a face? What did the gun look like? The truth is, none of them were much help. The whole incident had taken less than ten seconds.
One question topped all of the others, though. It was one they could find no helpful answer for at the moment: why hadn’t anyone died?
A few of the officers stood and chuckled to themselves, not wanting to make light of the situation in front of the victims. They made quiet jokes about how bad the aim of the gunman must have been to miss so many people at such short range. Soon some of the others were laughing along with them, marveling at their incredible luck.
Roger had a suspicion that the last thing involved had been luck. He used to believe in luck, but not anymore.
He forced himself to stop counting steps and run his mind back over the incident as slowly as possible. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that he might have caught a glimmer of something in the corner of his vision. The gun had been flashing, so he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he glimpsed a different kind of flash.
Angel wings?
Of course, once he had been visited later that day by the angels themselves, he knew he must have been right. They had been the ones to shield him and the others from the bullets. They’d been the ones to stop the attack.
They had come to move him, warning him of danger. They told him that not only he but also his son were targets of the Fallen.
It had brought back all the memories from the previous year that he had so carefully locked away: the horrifying places he’d been taken against his will, the creatures he had only had nightmares about before, but now had seen face-to-face. The details of those faces were etched inside of him, somewhere deep. He even remembered their smell, and had found that he couldn’t tolerate even a whiff of a scent of garbage now. Taking out the rubbish had become a daily chore.
But there was more. These angels seemed so good. But he didn’t trust them. How could he? The only person in his life who had never let him down was his son, Rupert. Everyone else had abandoned him at some point—his mother had died, he’d never met his father, his peers had always made fun of him, and his wife had left after Rupert was born.
Yes, he would send Rupert away, since the angels seemed to have their wings all twisted out of shape about it. He did believe that the threat was real—he had to, since he’d seen it with his own eyes. He would do anything to keep Rupert safe.
But he wouldn’t accept their protection for himself. He was determined to continue on as though nothing had happened. His routine, his job, his regular stops at the café—even though they were mundane, they were his. He had only agreed to the angels’ protection for his son when it was clear he would get to speak to Rupert, though he had to endure that awful angelic tornado to do it.
There was something else, though. Something he wouldn’t tell anyone else.
He remembered what it felt like.
Last year, he had discovered what it felt like to give in to him. The awful, evil, intoxicating feeling of power. He had seen it in Marduk’s eyes. He had felt it course through his soul, even for that brief moment.
He hadn’t been able to forget the whispers inside his head. Whispers reminding him that Abaddon, the Evil One, could give him all the power he could ever need to protect himself and Rupert forever. With that kind of power, he would never need anyone else again.
Roger continued counting steps, all the way to forty-two hundred. He turned to walk up the steps and into his flat.
It felt smaller with Rupert gone. He sensed the emptiness around him and sighed, dropping his old leather satchel on the dining room table. The place was spotless, just as he liked it. The thought zipped through his mind that he would now be able to keep it much neater without Rupert around. As soon as he thought it, though, he felt a tinge of regret. The loneliness was a fog hanging over every room in the house.
He threw a frozen dinner into the microwave and hit Play on his answering machine. Thirteen messages. He listened to them patiently as he waited for his food. One was from the London Fire Brigade for fund-raising. Delete. The other twelve were from various news agencies looking for interviews about “the alleged terrorist attack” on the café.
He deleted them all and leaned against the kitchen counter. Covering his eyes with his hand, he felt tears begin to flow as he pressed against them. His chest heaved for a few seconds, but he flung the tears away from his face angrily, forcing himself to stop. He never cried, and he wasn’t about to start now.
Even by himself.
Roger didn’t bother to turn on the light in the den. He plopped down on the creaky sofa and ate his meal in the dark.
The chill that entered the room was barely noticeable at first. And with the steaming plastic tray of meat and noodles on his lap, it took him a little while to figure out what the other smell in his house was.
Maybe he had forgotten to empty the rubbish bin last night. In all of the commotion, he was sure this easily could have happened.
He made a move to get up and check on both the temperature and the trash, but he sat back down again. It was as if a weight were across his chest. He just couldn’t bring himself to get off the sofa. He felt so tired. Maybe he just needed to get some extra rest.
He placed the half-empty tray on the floor and lay down flat on the sofa. He felt so tired that he couldn’t even reach down to untie his shoes. He was barely able to loosen his tie and undo the top button on his shirt. Folding his arms across his chest, he closed his eyes.
It was easy for Dagon to slip past the six angels keeping watch over the London flat. Easier than he had imagined it would be. He simply had a couple of his associates create a stir in the alleyway across the street—basic diversion tactics.
Elohim’s angels really are getting sloppy, he thought. Of course, maybe I’m just that good.
He silently watched Roger prepare his food, listen to his messages, and break down crying. Pathetic, he thought. What a weak-willed lowlife. He saw the dimly lit glow coming from the center of his chest. If he only knew. He couldn’t help but grin. He has no idea . . .
Roger sat down on the sofa. Dagon was beside him as soon as he sank into the cushions. Time to get to work. He dug into his shoulders, finding just the right spot. This was the part of his job he relished the most. The other fallen angels could make war with arr
ows and swords and intimidation. But Dagon knew where the real war was fought—and right now, he was on the front lines.
It took only a few minutes for Roger to fall into a deep sleep. The fallen angel continued his work, whispering into his ear. Roger moved restlessly on the sofa, sweat breaking out on his forehead.
In the nightmare Dagon painted, Roger found himself in a black pit. Dark sludge covered the sides, which made it impossible to climb out on his own. He tried, but he couldn’t scale the walls—each time he just slid back down into the dirt. A light appeared above, and he somehow knew instantly what it was, or rather, Who. That’s Elohim, he thought in his dream. When the hand extended down from the light and into the pit, Roger wavered for a minute.
But slowly, he found himself shoving his hands into his pockets. He couldn’t bring himself to take it. He wasn’t sure he could trust that hand, or where it would lead him.
The light faded, and for just a moment, a feeling of crashing loss overtook him. Then he saw another hand. It was dark and scaly, but it looked strong. Above it, two eyes pierced through the darkness. He looked into them and found he couldn’t look away. There was something in them that was familiar. He’d peered into eyes like this before. Where was it? He struggled to remember.
They drew him in. No words were said, but with every second that passed, Roger heard the promises the eyes spoke. They promised enough power to protect Rupert from anything. They promised to give his son everything he deserved in life. Maybe even enough power to wash all his fears away.
In a moment that caused him to tremble with both ecstasy and horror, he grabbed the hand. Whether it pulled him up and out of the pit, or simply joined him down in it, he was unable to tell.
FIFTEEN
A NEW GIFT
Where am I? What am I doing here?
Those first few seconds of waking up made him feel disoriented. Was what happened last night just a dream?
His answer came as he turned his head and saw his tall African roommate sitting cross-legged across the room on his bed, his dusty old Bible on his lap. David’s eyes were focused on the page in front of him, so much that he didn’t even look up as Jonah moved.
