Afterlife: A Fall of Angels Novelette

Copyright © 2011
Keary
Taylor

All rights reserved.  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

First Digital Edition: November 2011

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious.  Any similarity to real persons, living or
dead,
is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Taylor,
Keary
, 1987-

Afterlife (Fall of Angels
) :
a novel / by
Keary
Taylor. – 1
^st
ed
.

Summary: Cole Emerson never was and never will be a good man.  He will stop at nothing to protect Jessica from one of his brothers hell-bent on exposing what has happened to her.  Even if it means ending a few lives.

“...new torments and new tormented souls

I see around me wherever I move,

and
howsoever I turn, and wherever I gaze.”

- Canto IV, Inferno, Dante

They always screamed.

There was something satisfying about the intake of breath every single one of them would take, just before the scream came bellowing out.  The way their eyes would widen. 
The way their chests would rise and fall rapidly, despite their need to breathe anymore.
 

There was just something satisfying about seeing another person writhe in misery.

“Down,” Cole condemned the man before him.  His followers around him heckled and cheered from the spiral staircase, sinfully delighted to be having another soul join them in their eternal wretchedness.

For that was what Cole was. 
Miserable.
 
Damned.
 
Forsaken.

He pressed the red-hot rod to the back of the man’s neck, watching as his flesh gave way to the imprinted X.  Moments later the man’s own set of glorious wings burst from his back and Cole simply watched as the newly branded angel was dragged down into the fiery depths by his brothers.

Like it had been after almost every trial since he had been sucked back into the afterlife, shouts and brawls broke out around the cylinder.  Some of the council left, mostly the do-gooders.  They weren’t ones to fight.  Everything was peace and butterflies with them.

But those who served with him were built from contention and upheaval. 

That was all the world of the dead felt like lately. 
Chaos.

Cole rubbed his chest absent mindedly as he zoned out the noise around him.  He remembered the chaos that once filled him.  He remembered the feeling of his entire being collapsing in on him.  It had been a long time since he had felt pain.  He barely even remembered what it felt like until he felt the pull from within.  But even while he hid, licking his wounds in his crumbling family estate, he wouldn’t return to his world.  The pain made him feel… alive. 
Almost human again.

But a dead man can’t fight the call of the dead any more than the tides could fight the pull of the moon.

Cole closed his eyes, drawing for a moment on his last few minutes in the human world.  The feeling of Jessica’s lips against his would be something he clung to for the rest of his never ending existence. 

The shout and sound of flesh connecting with flesh brought Cole unwillingly back to the present.  His black eyes flashed to the two brawling angels who occupied the catwalk with him.  They threw fists, shouting words that were too horrendous to even have meaning in the world of the living.

“That’s enough!” Cole bellowed as his hands curled into fists.  The two men froze where they were, their own cold black eyes meeting Cole’s.

“I expect more out of you, Duncan,” Cole said quietly, his voice resonating who he was and just how much power he possessed.  “You’re a leader and you’re acting like a freshly made angel.  Whatever your quarrel with this man is, surely this is not the way a council member handles it.”

Duncan’s eyes grew hard as he looked back at Cole, the same way they probably had before he shot his mother and father-in-law at Christmas over one hundred and fifty years ago.  Giving one last shove to the other lowly angel, enough to knock him into the abyss below, he turned to walk back to the staircase.

Cole tried to ignore his mutterings of “not under his leadership for much longer” as he watched Duncan retreat.

Letting his eyes search the stone walls, Cole looked for the cause of all this trouble. 

As soon as Cole returned from the world of the living and reclaimed his position, Jeremiah had started the upheaval, hungry for the position of leader of the condemned back.  He had so graciously pointed out Cole’s grave betrayal in returning to the world of the living and abandoning his duties.

And now Cole might lose everything.

Unless Jeremiah was down below, spending time among their fellow men and women, Cole realized he wasn’t in the cylinder.  There was stone in the bottom of his stomach, giving him the sinking feeling that he knew where Jeremiah was.

Cole wouldn’t pretend that he didn’t hear the whispers.  He sensed the doubt that others had in his ability to lead the condemned.  Echoes about Cole losing it brushed the stone walls, each wondering how a woman could drive him to such madness as to return to the world of the living.

He had lost leagues of credibility.

Walking to the stairway, Cole stood in the shadows.  He crossed his arms over his chest, his wings folding behind him.

He would wait for Jeremiah.

As much as he didn’t like it, his follower’s words affected him.  They were right.  He had lost it, in a way.  Cole’s love for Jane had tortured him for centuries but he’d dealt with it. 
But as soon as Jessica came along…
  She’d pulled out a whole new creature in him.

Time meant nothing in the afterlife, but
being
dragged on and on as he waited for Jeremiah to return. 

And as simple as he might have felt a single drop of rain land on the back of his hand, he felt Jeremiah’s presence again.  Stepping out from the shadows, he watched as Jeremiah descended the stairs toward the heat of the below.

As soon as Jeremiah met Cole’s eyes, a sly smile grew in the corners of his lips.  The familiar beast of anger flared inside of Cole.

“Going missing in the afterlife is a dangerous thing,” Cole said, managing to keep his voice even.

“As you would know best,” Jeremiah tested.  He stopped two stairs above Cole, meeting his eye, measure for measure.  Jeremiah may have been young, but he didn’t lack confidence because of it.

“Where have you been?” Cole asked.

The smile broadened on Jeremiah’s face.  He stepped down and passed Cole on the stairway.  Stopping below Cole, Jeremiah half turned back.  “She’s a stunning creature.  I see why you couldn’t get her out of your head.”

The beast inside of Cole snarled.  “I don’t know what you’re referring to,” he lied easy as he blinked.

“I wonder what her skin feels like, what those perfect lips taste like,” Jeremiah said thoughtfully.

The crack of Jeremiah’s head against the stone wall behind him echoed for all to hear as Cole’s hand wrapped around his throat, pinning Jeremiah against the stones.

“You will stay away from her,” Cole hissed.

Unharmed, and without the need to breathe, Jeremiah simply chuckled, his black eyes darkening in glee.  “There’s something peculiar about her.  I can smell it.  She’s not fully one of them anymore, but not really one of us.  Is she?”

“She’s where she belongs,” Cole growled.  The knife that had been lodged in his chest for months now gave a little twist.

“I’m curious to see what she’s capable of,” Jeremiah said easily, despite Cole’s tightening hand around his throat.  “I think the others on the council might be curious as well.”

Cole met Jeremiah’s eyes, feeling the beast grow and shutter within him.  But what could he say without giving
himself,
and Jessica away?

“Leave her alone,” Cole said, releasing Jeremiah.  Without waiting for a reply, Cole descended down the stairway.

“
Thy soul is hurt by cowardice,

which
oftentimes
encumbereth
a man

so
that it turns him back from honorable enterprise.”

- Canto II, Inferno, Dante

His eyes kept drifting to her serene looking face.  The trials of the exalted were so
boring,
he couldn’t seem to pay attention.  So instead he watched her.  Jane.

Cole recalled how infatuated he had been with her the first time he laid eyes on her.  She was feisty, had a lust for life he had never seen in a woman in his era before.  Their eyes had locked on each other, a terribly hot wave of connection fizzling between the two of them.  Cole wanted her like he had wanted nothing else in his life.

Cole got what he wanted in life.

But to find that she had been promised to another man was a crushing blow to Cole’s ego that he could not handle.  He was Cole
Emerson,
women did not turn him down.  Father’s came to him, trying to strike bargains for him to take their daughters into marriage and into bed.