A Hundred Words for Hate (24 page)

“You have met your better, sentry,” the shape-changer said. “Accept your fate now, for your kind, and all the hosts of Heaven, will soon bow before my brothers and sisters. The Almighty will be made to see the error of His ways, and a great change will be brought upon the Shining Kingdom and all the worlds that bask in the light of its glory.”

Mulvehill started to back away as muscular tentacles shot out from the tatooed beast’s body toward the angel, whose form still glowed like white-hot metal.

“What now?” he said, running in the direction he’d last seen Fernita go, a battle of monsters still raging behind him.

Dreading what new insanity would be waiting ahead.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
he dead man moved.

Fernita had been making her way through the woods, trying not to slip and fall, when she came across the body.

It was wrapped in an old red blanket, propped up against the base of a birch tree. She wanted to run past it, knowing she had to get as far away as she could from the monsters behind her, but she could not.

It was as if it were calling out, beckoning for her to come closer.

For a moment, Fernita hesitated, trying to force herself to go on, but her mind was filled with the images of a wondrous place of green, a jungle unlike anything she had ever seen.

The old woman stepped closer to the body.

And suddenly the memories came flooding back.

She remembered the place she saw when she opened her mouth and bared her soul in song. She remembered who she really was.

Pearly had tried to hide that too, but now Fernita Green was just another fading memory. She was Eliza Swan, and always had been.

Eliza could feel a song bubbling in her heart as she climbed over the mounds of frozen leaves and broken branches toward the body, a song starting to move from her heart—her soul—up through her chest and into her throat.

How long had it been since she had sung?

It started as a hum as the words came to her.

A song of Paradise, a song of the place she saw so vividly inside her head.

She stumbled then, her slippered foot catching on half-buried roots, and sprawled on all fours in front of the corpse. She reached out to steady herself, brushing against the dried, almost mummified flesh of the body’s foot.

And the images that filled Eliza’s head were explosive.

They came at her all at once, a sensory rush of pictures and emotions, and in the course of a moment she lived a lifetime, born into the Garden from the rib of a man. . . .

This man before her.

She saw and felt it all: the temptation, the sin, the loss of innocence.

She could taste it in her mouth . . . the taste of the fruit.

The taste of their fall from grace.

The sin had become part of them, following them from the Garden, growing in the hearts and souls of their bloodline. Never to be forgotten.

Never to be forgiven.

Until . . . now.

Eliza recoiled, pulling her numbed hand away from the body. She had no idea what had just happened, but she understood what was on the horizon.

Eden was returning for him . . . this corpse. . . .

This man.

Eliza understood whose body it was that lay before her.

“Adam,” she said, staring at the withered remains wrapped in the red blanket.

The corpse tilted its head ever so slightly toward the sound of her voice; its eyes slowly opened to look upon her.

And she began to scream.

He had worn the guise of his master for so long that Taranushi had actually started to believe that he was the elder angel Malachi.

But as he took his true form, he was reminded of the truth, and his purpose.

Taranushi was the first of the Shaitan: the beings of darkness and fire that would soon replace the angels of Heaven.

He looked down upon his foe, tightening his grip upon him. The Cherubim was tired, the fight nearly drained from him.

The Shaitan momentarily took his dark eyes from the angel, and gazed off in the direction of the scream he had heard moments before. It was the one out there whom he wanted: she was the reason he was upon this Earth . . . waiting.

Waiting for the Garden to arrive.

Taranushi turned his black-orb eyes back to the Cherubim. Still the angel pathetically struggled.

“Why can’t you just die?” the Shaitan asked, aggravated now.

Heavenly fire leapt weakly from Zophiel’s hands but it had no effect on the shape-shifter.

Again Taranushi looked off into the woods. If he did not act, she might elude him again. He knew that he should go.

In a display of savagery, Taranushi shaped his malleable form into something distinctly terrible, with claws and teeth so fierce that not even God’s armor would protect. The Shaitan ravaged his foe, biting and clawing, ripping and tearing away pieces of the Cherubim’s armor and the divine flesh beneath.

The blood of the angel was like the strongest of acids, but Taranushi used the pain as his fuel, maiming the heavenly sentry to the point where it struggled no more.

The Shaitan looked down into the faces of its foe, seeing in the many eyes expressions of failure. The Cherubim knew that his end was here, that he had been brought to the edge of death by his better.

His eyes begged for release, but the Shaitan did not know the meaning of mercy. Instead. he left the angel to die slowly as his life force poured from his torn flesh.

Once again the Shaitan assumed the dignified form of Malachi.

An appearance far less frightening to the human whom he sought.

The human who would grant him access to the Garden and bring about the birth of his people.

And the fall of Heaven.

Zophiel knew that he was dying, but it did not stop him from attempting to rise. The pain was great, but it did not compare to the agony he felt at the core of his being at the failure that had come to define him.

As he struggled to stand, his mind wandered back to the time when he’d discovered the threat to them all.

The threat to Heaven and to his Lord God.

If there was but one thing for which he could thank the monster that had mauled him, it was this moment . . . this clarity of thought. Impending death had cleared the fog from his damaged mind, and he saw what had brought him to the brink of madness.

He had been in the Garden of Eden after the fall of the humans, guarding the sacred place as the war with the Morningstar raged in Heaven. There had been rumors that Lucifer would try to take the Garden as his own, and Zophiel remembered his bravado. As long as he was sentry, nothing would dare threaten that holy place.

He had sensed a disturbance not far from the Tree of Knowledge, and upon investigating, had discovered several strange, fetal creatures writhing in the dirt at the base of the Tree. Zophiel was familiar with all the beasts in the Garden, but he had never seen the likes of these. They were pale, hairless, their bodies adorned with black sigils of power . . . sigils that caused the fire of his sword blade to ignite ominously as his six eyes passed over their odd shapes.

What are these . . . things?
the Cherubim wondered, instincts attuned to danger already beginning to thrum.

And then an angel stepped into the clearing from the dense forest, holding one of the mewling life-forms lovingly in his arms. He was the elder Malachi, the one to whom God had given the gift of creation.

“What is this?” Zophiel remembered asking.

And the elder angel had explained that they were his attempts to create a better servant for the Almighty—a better angel—that he had been secretly working on his Shaitan, as he called them, for quite some time.

Zophiel recalled his own reaction to the word
secretly
, and when prodded, Malachi explained that the Lord knew nothing of his experiment . . . that it would not be wise for Him to know about the creatures that would one day replace His Heavenly hosts.

The Cherubim was about to demand that Malachi explain himself, or be brought before the Thrones, when the elder did the unthinkable.

Malachi suddenly dropped the infant life-form to the ground and lunged at the sentry, dagger of light in hand.

Zophiel had no chance to react.

He remembered the pain as the blade slid through the middle of his faces, and how everything, in a matter of seconds, had turned to madness. The thoughts would not come; there were only pain and confusion. The need to retaliate, to strike back at the one who harmed him, who had threatened the Creator and all that He had built, was all a-jumble.

The dagger had brought about the insanity, and Zophiel was nothing more than a wild beast trying to remember the purpose of its rage.

But now he remembered.

Now, in time to die, he remembered.

Zophiel painfully spread his wings, blood leaking from his ravaged body to pool upon the frozen ground. He had to get away; he had to do something to stop Malachi.

The Cherubim leapt skyward, flying above the clouds.

Not sure how much longer he, or the Kingdom of Heaven, had left.

The screams had drifted off, but Mulvehill still surged ahead.

He listened as he wove between the trees, listening for the sound of pursuit, but so far there was nothing.

Maybe they killed each other
, he thought, just as he found the old woman, kneeling in front of a birch tree.
Wouldn’t that be something
.

“Fernita,” he called, then caught sight of something wrapped in a red blanket leaning against the tree.

A body.

She turned at the sound of his voice, and he could see that her face was damp with tears, but there was something in her expression.

Something in her eyes.

Clarity. That was the only way to explain it.

“This is Adam,” she said. “And he needs our help.”

Mulvehill stepped forward and knelt beside Fernita. He was shocked by the condition of the body leaning against the tree. It reminded him of a mummy that he’d seen at the Museum of Science a few years back, only this mummy was somehow alive.

“I don’t know how much time we have,” he said, his eyes drawn to the dark, sunken orbs in the body’s—in Adam’s—skull. Mulvehill felt as though he were falling into them, suddenly feeling a sense of calm despite the current situation.

“You help him,” Fernita said, holding on to Mulvehill’s arm as she awkwardly climbed to her feet. “I’ll be fine.”

Mulvehill gently placed one arm behind Adam’s back and the other under his knees, and carefully lifted him from the ground. His injured hand throbbed painfully with each rapid-fire beat of his heart, but he didn’t have a choice. They had to move, and move now.

It was a little disconcerting, the corpselike figure in his arms seeming to weigh close to nothing. Skin and bones, that was all he was.

“If we head this way, I think we’ll be close to the highway,” Fernita said, leading them away.

There was that look again, Mulvehill observed as he followed with Adam. There was that clarity.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a voice boomed from somewhere behind them.

Mulvehill spun around to see the white-haired, older gentleman, but he knew better. He was about to tell Fernita to run faster, when the bearded man was suddenly right in front of him, his movement a blur.

“I believe you have something that belongs to me, monkey,” the thing wearing the mask of humanity said with a knowing smile. It knew that Mulvehill was aware of its deception. “Give him to me,” he demanded, holding out his arms.

“Why don’t you go fuck yourself,” Mulvehill said, knowing that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to say.

The figure before him stared blankly before seeming to explode. First there was a bearded guy in a suit, and then there wasn’t—the man’s shape flowing up and out, expanding and contracting as it became something else.

A thick tentacle of pale, tattoo-adorned flesh lashed out, slapping Mulvehill with such speed and ferocity that he found himself airborne before striking a nearby tree and dropping to the frozen earth in a heap of agony.

The taste of blood filled his mouth. And through bleary eyes he saw that the creature was holding the blanket-wrapped Adam in an arm that coiled about the ancient figure like the body of a large snake.

“Respect,” the creature said, fixing Mulvehill with its inhuman gaze. “Humanity will know its betters soon enough.”

“Steven,” a frightened voice called out.

Mulvehill turned his head slightly and saw Fernita moving toward him through the trees. His heart sank.

“There she is,” the creature said happily, a grin, absent of any real joy, spreading across its gaunt, skull-like features.

Fernita knelt before Mulvehill, placing a cold hand against his cheek.

“I told you that you should’ve left me,” she scolded.

“I could be saying the same thing to you,” Mulvehill replied, trying to shake off his pain but only making everything hurt all the more.

Fernita turned to face the strange beast that held the body of Adam in one tentacled arm.