The Fallen 4 (17 page)

Mount Vesuvius had erupted for two days. The air over where the great Roman city of Pompeii had stood was now filled with choking clouds of poisonous gas and ash.

Mallus found himself drawn to the scene of this great disaster.

To the site of more than two thousand human deaths.

He had flown through the shroud of ash spewed out by the volcano, listening to the sounds as the inhabitants had cried out to their gods for salvation. But there had been no one to help them as the air had become superheated and their bodies had been buried under ash and pumice.

The ash clung to him too, so he soared above the disaster and simply shook off the white-hot volcanic spew like a dog shaking off a summer’s rain.

He liked to think of these kinds of disasters as being God’s way of expressing His displeasure with humanity. But deep down Mallus knew that it wasn’t true. This was just a natural disaster.

And he should learn to enjoy it for what it was, and the damage that it caused.

As Mallus walked atop the cooling layers of lava, he tried to visualize the city as it once had been, where the bathhouses had once stood, where the markets had teemed. Now there was nothing. Everything had been buried beneath a blizzard of black snow, twenty feet deep.

Through the thick haze Mallus caught sight of movement. He knew that nothing human could have survived the still blazing temperatures and air inhospitable to fragile lungs. He summoned a sword of fire.

Using his wings to fan away the gas and smoke, Mallus charged at his unseen foe, eager to be the first to strike. He swung out with his sword of fire, aiming for where he imagined his enemy might be, and found his blade of divine flame captured in a powerful grip.

Mallus attempted to pull back his weapon, but it was held fast. His wings continued to beat the air, and finally the thick, poisonous clouds parted to reveal the strangest of sights.

It was human in shape, but it appeared to be made entirely of ash—the same ash that now hid Pompeii. Thinking quickly, Mallus brought forth another weapon, a battle mace, and smashed his opponent’s featureless face with all of his heavenly might.

The ash broke away, to reveal a blazing red eye peering out from the blackened eye socket of a human skull.

What madness is this?
the fallen angel thought, just as the
ashen figure latched on to his throat with its other hand and drew him close.

“Will you serve the makers of the future?” rattled a voice from somewhere deep within the attacker’s charred throat.

Mallus spread his wings, struggling to free himself from the painful grip upon his neck, but the figure held fast and slammed him against the still cooling ground.

“Will you serve the makers of the future?” it asked again.

“You speak in riddles, monster,” Mallus rasped, still fighting to be free. “I serve only my own interests now that I have been abandoned by God.”

The single eye burned brightly. “Will you serve the makers of the future?”

Understanding that this thing that held him wielded enough power to end his existence, Mallus had no choice but to answer, giving his enigmatic attacker what it sought, in hopes of gaining an opportunity to escape.

“Yes,” Mallus hissed. “I will serve the makers… the makers of the future.”

In an instant his attacker was gone, and the still seething layers of ash beneath his back began to crumble, giving way to his weight. Mallus fell.

He tried to slow his descent, but his wings were useless as he continued to plummet. It felt as though he were falling for days; the passage of time suddenly had no meaning.

Then as quickly as his descent had begun, it stopped.
Mallus found himself standing in a world of total darkness. Even the divine fire that coursed through his veins could shed no light upon his surroundings. The flames that he summoned were quickly suffocated by an all-encompassing dark.

After a time the infinity of blackness was all that he knew, all that he could remember. He felt himself being taken apart, atom by atom.

And just as he felt his life about to cease, a voice called out.

“Will you serve the makers of the future?”

“Yes,” he answered, his voice strained and dry after days… months… years… of disuse. He thought he had answered the question immediately, although time had become meaningless in the black of nothing, and he realized that it might have taken a century or more for him to respond.

A golden light then shone upon him, bathing him in a warmth akin to the praise of the Lord God Almighty, and Mallus felt the atoms of his form taken from the shadows and reassembled, not as he had been before…

But better.

An envoy of a new beginning… an agent of the future.

From the darkness they emerged, like multiple suns rising to chase away the eternal dark. These globes of golden fire were covered in multiple sets of staring all-seeing eyes, and these eyes were all turned to Mallus.

“We are the Architects, and the future is ours to build.” The spheres spoke in unison. Their voices sounded like the
most beautiful of heavenly choirs raised in exaltation.

Mallus could not take his eyes from the magnificent beings. He had heard of the Architects but had always questioned their existence, as did all the angels of Heaven.

The Architects were supposedly the very first of God’s creations, produced to aid Him in the task of plotting out the universe. Once they had served their purpose, the Almighty had reabsorbed the Architects into His being. Then He was said to have used them in the creation of the angels themselves.

But somehow the Architects had emerged again, and Mallus reveled in the presence of their power.

“The Architects have watched you, angel, and have seen the depths to which you have fallen.” Their voices rose in a cacophony of sound. “But we have also seen your potential.”

Mallus was speechless, and all he could do was stare.

“We see in you an ability to serve us.”

“Yes,” Mallus said, his voice barely a whisper.

“The ability to perform as one of our Agents out in the world… to serve a greater goal…”

“Yes,” Mallus said again.

The orbs of fire continued to spin in place, but the thousands of eyes were still fixed upon him.

“But first you must prove yourself worthy to serve our lofty goals.”

“Anything!” Mallus screamed, for whatever they asked of
him would be better than the eternal blackness in which he’d been lost for so long.

“Your task is of the utmost importance to our cause,” the Architects said.

“Tell me,” Mallus begged.

“There is an angel second only to the Lord God,” they said. “He is the Metatron, and he is God’s voice, God’s will in the world.”

Mallus waited to hear what they required of him.

“You must kill him for us.”

*   *   *

Closing his eyes, Satan reached out to the shadows around the temple and beyond, entwining himself in their fabric, making himself a part of the darkness.

He knelt within the place of worship. The Sisters stood in a circle around him, their hands clasped together, lending him their unnatural strength.

The Darkstar allowed his essence to permeate the ancient rock and soil deep beneath the churning sea that had held the church in its grasp. Then he spread his arms and wings and tossed back his head as he forced his will upon the ocean landscape.

He was the rock and mud of the seemingly bottomless trench, and the rock, mud, and trench was he. With a grunt of exertion Satan flexed his muscles, feeling the underwater landscape respond in kind. Careful to not damage his place of
worship, he used his connection to the ocean floor and raised the temple on a volcanic plume of molten rock.

Though the crushing waters sought to enter the long-buried place of worship, he kept himself and the Sisters dry by weaving a barrier of darkness around the structure as it slowly pushed through the murky depths on a growing platform of cooling igneous rock.

The ocean around the rising church did not care for Satan’s dark influence and attempted to show its displeasure, unleashing angry seismic activity to thwart his actions. It was as if the ocean floor had gone to war. Mountains of rock jutted up through the strata as the sea grew black with swirling sediments.

The rushing waters around the church were like the chaos Satan imagined for the world when its occupants truly learned of his existence. Life upon the planet would either accept his omnipotence or pay a horrible price.

An island of smoldering black rock emerged from the roiling waters to present itself to an unsuspecting world. The bubble of darkness that had covered the expansive church disintegrated in the fading sunlight as the temple was again exposed to the air.

“It is risen,” Satan said within the halls of his church.

The Sisters of Umbra laughed with joy, raising their hands and bowing their hooded heads in praise.

“Praise be, it is risen,” they said as one.

Satan was weary from his exertion, but euphoric. Now everyone would know of him. He no longer had to hide in the shadows of the frozen earth.

The new lord and master had arrived.

And long would he reign.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

S
o these Architects,” Aaron asked into the silence of the room, after Mallus had paused in his tale. “Are they angels, or something else?”

Mallus opened his mouth to answer, but Verchiel interrupted him. “They’re neither,” the former Powers leader said. “They don’t exist. They’re fairy tales fabricated by overly creative minds to explain things that are unexplainable.”

Mallus turned his gaze to the angel. “And yet I served them for centuries.”

Aaron could feel the tension between the two and attempted to defuse it.

“Then why wouldn’t Verchiel know about them?” he asked. “He’s been on the earth a good many years. Why wouldn’t he have encountered the Architects?”

Mallus smiled briefly. “Probably because they didn’t want him. To allow him to be aware of them would have interfered with their grand schemes.”

“Which are?” Lorelei asked, leaning heavily upon her cane.

Mallus looked down at the floor, shaking his head ever so slightly. “They didn’t share that with me. They simply expected me to carry out my assigned tasks.

“At first they seemed to be random acts, but when I began to figure into other Agents’ assignments, patterns began to emerge.” Mallus paused, making certain that they all were listening. “The Architects have led the world to this,” he said, gesturing toward the world beyond the infirmary windows. “This is all part of their plan.”

Verchiel scoffed. “Madness,” he said, folding his arms defiantly. “Why would any being of a divine nature plan for a fate such as this?”

“Perhaps a greater plan is in motion here,” Mallus answered. “I had yet to figure it out before I left their service.”

“And why the change of heart?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah, for somebody who liked to see towns covered by volcanic ash, why would you care about destruction now?” Cameron followed through.

“Perhaps I saw something of this world and its inhabitants that made me realize I had made a mistake,” Mallus said, focusing his gaze on Aaron.

Aaron was suddenly uncomfortable. It felt as though the fallen angel were looking right into him. It was weird, and it was the second time Mallus had done it.

“How do we know that this isn’t all some sort of clever deception?” Verchiel asked, distracting Aaron. “How do we know that Mallus doesn’t still serve these mysterious Architects and isn’t just using us to further their agenda?” He smiled slyly, and Aaron was reminded again why the angel was such an asshat.

“I don’t think being seriously injured in a subway station was part of a master plan,” Cameron responded.

Mallus stood up from his chair, and faced Verchiel.

Aaron and Gabriel were already on the move, positioning themselves between the two.

“All right, guys. Why don’t we—” Aaron began.

“If I were still in service to them,” Mallus said, ignoring them, “would I have done this?” He turned his bare back to them, revealing the angry scars upon his shoulder blades.

Where his wings had once been.

“You cut off your own wings,” Melissa gasped in a horrified whisper.

“If I were to leave the Architects, I had no choice,” Mallus said, the pain of his loss obvious in the timbre of his voice and the sorrow in his eyes.

“Every angel’s wings are distinct, like a person’s fingerprints,” Lorelei explained to the group. “Each gives off its own unique magick.”

“Aye,” Mallus agreed. “They would have been able to find my trail whenever I used them. I had to be sure that I would not be followed.” He then looked down at the elaborate tattoos on his chest. “The loss of my wings and these sigils have rendered me nearly invisible to my former masters.”

“Until you were injured,” Aaron added.

Mallus nodded. “Until I was injured. One of the sigils was interrupted, sending out an invisible alarm to those whose only purpose was to watch for me.”

He gestured toward the corpse on the floor.

“His sole task was to find and eliminate me. And now that he is gone, I’m sure another has been given the same task. But we are in luck.”

Mallus produced the Agent’s knife. “We have its Gleaning Blade.”

Lorelei hobbled forward for a closer look. “May I?” she asked.

“Careful of its point,” Mallus said. “Just a prick is enough to devour everything stored in your brain.”

She admired the weapon, turning it in her hands. Dusty came to stand beside her.

“The Agent was going to use it on me,” Mallus said. “To find out everything I’ve learned, seen, and heard since leaving the service of the Architects. But the Agent never got the chance, ending up a victim of its own weapon.”

“You killed him with this?” Dusty asked the angel.

“I did.”

“Then everything he knew… ,” Dusty began, staring at the dead Agent.

“Is now stored within this blade,” Lorelei finished.

“It is,” Mallus agreed. “And that is a very good thing for us.”

Verchiel stalked toward Mallus and then stopped, his face inches from the fallen angel’s.