The Fallen 3 (10 page)

But he also remembered her before the angelic nature within her had matured.

Watching as she unmercifully moved through their enemies, striking them down in a flash of her fiery blade, Aaron could not help but miss the innocent girl that used to be, and feel great sadness for what had been lost.

“She’s a sight, isn’t she?” commented someone close by.

Aaron spun around, still in the midst of his berserker fury, to see Jeremy Fox standing there, his clothing and exposed skin flecked with black blood. At his feet was a dead troll, a burning ax blade still stuck in its back.

“Excuse me?” Aaron asked, not sure if he understood.

“Your woman, there,” the British boy said with a lascivious grin. “She’s certainly a beautiful sight.”

It took nearly everything Aaron had not to forcibly wipe that grin from the boy’s face. Instead he threw himself into combat against a dwindling enemy.

Though at first their number had seemed endless, many of the trolls were now retreating back from whence they came, leaving behind their dead and wounded as they passed through the now permeable rock.

Aaron found himself winding down, the throbbing of boiling hot blood through his veins slowing. He looked around. Some of their number had been injured, while others …

Vilma knelt before Janice’s body, using a knife of fire to cut away the heavy netting that covered her.

Aaron approached them.

“Is she …,” Aaron began, knowing the answer but still wanting to ask the question, just in case there was a chance.

“Yeah, she’s dead.” There was a cold indifference in Vilma’s tone.

He could feel the others’ eyes upon him. They all were very aware that this could happen to any of them; it was stressed day in and day out. They were at war with the forces of darkness, and the forces of darkness could very easily take each of them down.

“What now, Aaron?” William asked, and Aaron turned to see him standing at the rock wall. “Are we going after them?”

There was a part of him that wanted to leave, to get away
from this cold, dark place. Since becoming Nephilim, he’d had his fill of death, enough to last him for years, but Aaron knew that wasn’t what they were going to do. He was about to tell them his plans when another spoke up.

“Of course we’re going after them,” Jeremy Fox said, pulling his burning ax blade from the skull of one of his troll victims.

He advanced toward them, spinning his ax in hand, the blade spitting sparks that sizzled and hissed as they struck the puddles of blood that had formed on the ground.

Jeremy’s eyes glistened in the twilight of the chamber as he stood before him, waiting for what Aaron had to say. Seeing a use for all that pent-up fury that the British boy still carried, Aaron stepped aside, gesturing to the wall.

“Yeah, we’re going,” he said. “Just as soon as we deal with this obstruction.”

Jeremy glared at the wall of rock, a cruel snarl of a smile forming upon his face as he came to realize what Aaron wanted him to do.

“If you would be so kind,” Aaron encouraged.

And Jeremy charged at the wall with a snarl, ax blade of divine power coming down upon the rock obstruction with a sound ringing like the end of the world.

He went wild, fueled by his anger, hacking unmercifully at the wall. Slivers of rock exploded outward with every hit of Jeremy’s fiery battle-ax.

Aaron’s wings unfurled reflexively, as did the other Nephilim’s, as they shielded themselves from the flying debris.

Then, cautiously, Aaron lowered a wing and saw that Jeremy had made an adequate opening. “That should be good enough,” he said.

But Jeremy continued to pound the pieces of rock into powder.

“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 brought 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.