The Fallen 4 (35 page)

But it was Gabriel. He held Dusty’s bloody hand gently in his mouth, so that they could travel together.

Vilma gasped at Dusty’s condition. Everything that they’d worked so tirelessly to achieve was all falling apart.

“Did you find Lorelei?” Vilma asked, forcing aside her escalating panic.

Gabriel did not respond, his dark eyes fixed upon the body of his master.

“Gabriel, listen to me!” Vilma cried.

The dog’s eyes shifted to hers.

“No, just Dusty,”
the Labrador said, his canine voice trembling. His eyes shifted back to Aaron.

Vilma had no idea what had happened to Lorelei, but seeing Dusty, she doubted that it was anything good.

“We have to get out of here,” Vilma said, again looking toward the fire. It was only a matter of time before the monsters reassembled.

“Where?” Cameron asked.

“We need to split up,” Vilma said. “Make it difficult for them to follow us.”

“But where should we go?” Melissa asked, nearly in a panic.

“Someplace safe,” Vilma said. “Dig deep into your memories. There has to be a place from sometime in your life, before
all of this, where you felt absolutely safe, where nobody could touch you.”

She looked at them all, making sure that they truly heard her.

“That’s where you need to go.”

“What about you? What about Aaron?”
Gabriel asked.

“Don’t worry about us,” she said, scanning the fire. The armored figure who had wounded Aaron had manage to douse most of the flames on his armored body, and was rising to come at them.

“You need to go,” she said.

Cameron started to protest.

“Now!” she screamed.

From the look on Cameron’s face, he didn’t like it. None of them did, but they didn’t argue. Cameron wrapped his wings about himself and disappeared.

Melissa prepared to do the same. It looked as though she wanted to say something, but words seemed too hard at that moment, and instead she blinked out of sight after Cameron.

“I’ll see you again,”
Gabriel growled, leaning his mouth down toward Dusty’s hand.
“Promise me you’ll do everything you can to keep Aaron alive.”

“I promise,” Vilma said.

With that the Labrador took Dusty’s hand in his mouth. His body at once began to glow, sparks of fire flying from his yellow fur, and then they too were gone.

Vilma watched the armored figure clomp across the scorched earth, beckoning to her with an outstretched hand. Lucifer’s face had been severely burned, but she could see that it was already healing.

“This is done, Nephilim,” the imposter said in a wheezing voice, vocal cords raw from the heat of dragon’s fire. “Surrender your life to me and know peace.”

Peace,
Vilma thought, taking Aaron’s body in her arms. She needed to go someplace where she had known peace. Someplace where she had been loved. Somewhere she’d felt safe, before the darkness had fallen and nightmares had become reality.

Vilma flexed her wings, bringing them around to take her and her love into their embrace. Vilma wondered if that place could still exist.

She hoped with all her heart that it did.

*   *   *

Lucifer was falling.

Deep within his psyche the Son of the Morning felt all the misery that the Darkstar had inflicted.

Lucifer had managed to hold on until now. Bombarded with memories of his past, the enormity of his failures, he’d been buoyed by the belief that there was the slight chance at redemption.

He needed to find a way to survive and reclaim his body.

But Satan had other plans. The Darkstar wanted Lucifer gone, wanted to leave behind only the memories of Lucifer’s terrible acts.

Satan wanted to leave behind what Lucifer had been, not what he had been in the process of becoming.

Satan had made Lucifer watch what he was doing. The Morningstar had felt the murder of Lorelei—
poor, sweet Lorelei
. Lucifer had tried to fight Satan, but it had all been for naught.

It had almost been cause for him to let go, to drift down into the darkness of his psyche until he ceased to be.

But the Morningstar had been determined to remain strong and avenge Lorelei against the dark creature that had taken up residence in his body.

The Morningstar had had hope.

And that’s exactly what Satan fed upon.

When Aaron had arrived, Lucifer had thought that was the tipping point he’d been waiting for. His son, their savior and Redeemer, would triumph.

Darkness now closed in tightly around Lucifer, and he fell deeper into its cold embrace. He did not want to remember what Satan had done to his son.

Aaron had been going to save them all. He and his Nephilim had been set to rid the world of darkness.

But the Darkstar had had other plans.

Lucifer pulled the black of oblivion about him like a shroud, not wanting to see—not wanting to remember.

Shuddering in the grip of shadow, he recalled what had been shown to him. What he had been forced to experience.

Lucifer had felt every blow, every searing blast of divine fire, and wished that it had ended the threat of Satan—that it had ended him.

But the creature had lured the boy in close, using the face of the boy’s father.

My face.

Lucifer had experienced the horrific sensation of his blade being plunged deeply into the stomach of his son, murdering Aaron Corbet—as if by his hands.

My hands.

It was more than Lucifer could stand, and he retreated deeper into the darkness of his being.

So deep that all would be lost.

As if he’d never existed at all.

*   *   *

The Darkstar closed his eyes and sighed with pleasure as the being once called the Son of the Morning surrendered.
What a glorious sensation it is,
he thought, that much closer to totally possessing the body he had grown so fond of.

It wouldn’t be long now.

He felt their eyes upon him, and turned to see the gathering of monsters that had answered his summons and were eager to expunge the last threat to their supremacy.

They had come and born witness to his capability.

Satan felt their beady eyes upon his personage. A part of him still didn’t trust these creatures and was waiting for another attack, but there was something in the air of this place, something that told him that things had changed.

The armor of darkness had reformed upon his body, and before his audience’s watchful gaze Satan placed the helmet upon his venom-scarred head and gazed at the nefarious multitude. Then he forged a sword as black as pitch and raised it high above his head.

“Hail Satan!” The chant spread through the gathering of beasts.

“Hail Satan!”

At last they recognized their savior.

“Hail Satan!”

He who would give them the world that had once belonged to God’s chosen.

“Hail Satan!”

The Darkstar walked amongst them, still holding his blade of night high above his head. As he passed them—the trolls, goblins, wraiths, and demons—they lowered their heads in reverence, dropping to their knees as they were touched by his passing shadow.

He soaked in his conquest. The property that had once belonged to their divine nemeses had been reduced to nothing more than rubble and ash.

This was what he would do to all who opposed him, to all who would try to keep him from making this world his own, from making this world
his
Heaven.

His attention was caught by something near the skeletal remains of a greenhouse. He could not say if it was a scent or something more, but he was drawn to the broad patch of open ground. He knelt. The glove of shadow receded from his hands so that he might touch the dirt with bare fingertips.

He sank his fingers into the cool earth, and was filled with joy that everything was progressing as it was supposed to. There, buried beneath the ground, was a new treasure for his kingdom.

Satan turned to address his minions.

“There are bodies buried here,” he announced. “The bodies of our enemies who fell in battle against our forces of darkness.”

He turned his gaze back to the flat piece of land. Someone had left mementos to remember those who had been slain.

How touching.

“I want these bodies exhumed,” the Darkstar told his followers.

The monsters immediately went to work, the trolls digging with their shovel-like hands, while the others used any makeshift tool that they could find to move the dirt away from the prizes their leader sought.

If this was to be his kingdom, then the Darkstar would need special beings to serve him. Messengers for his most holy word.

Satan watched as the shroud-covered bodies were unearthed from their final resting places.

The Darkstar needed angels of his own.

And now he would have them.

EPILOGUE

V
erchiel had no idea where he was.

He’d heard the psychic cry of the Nephilim magick user, and had started back to the school.

But he had ended up here… wherever that was.

He was in a place of total darkness, and his divine fire did little to illuminate the thick shadow of his foreign surroundings.

The angel’s mind raced.
Can this be some sort of trap generated by the Fear Engine?

He began to make his way through the stygian gloom, in search of answers.

Or at least something that he could fight.

There wasn’t a noise to be heard or a scent to be smelled in this place.

A shudder—
could it be fear?
—raced down his spine as he
recalled the nothingness after his defeat at the hands of the Nephilim Redeemer.

Was he somehow back in that oblivion?

Verchiel continued to move forward, his every sense on full alert.

The sudden sound of voices in the oppressive silence was deafening.

“What if he does not find us?” one of them questioned.

“Then it was not meant to be,” answered another.

“The darkness is long and deep,” said a third. “Give him time, and he will find us.”

Verchiel moved eagerly in the direction of the conversation.

“This one, he knows the darkness?”

“Yes, he knows it.”

“And the darkness knows him.”

The voices cackled with laughter.

Verchiel had had enough. He willed his body to glow with the power of his inner fire. “Show yourselves!” he commanded.

And the shadows parted, like curtains on a stage, to reveal three hunched and hooded figures.

“You have found us,” croaked one.

“As I knew he would,” declared another.

“What a beautiful sight to behold,” exclaimed the third, extending a clawed hand, but stopping short of the circle of
light. “The masters have chosen wisely with this one.”

Verchiel bore down upon them, his body still throwing off its awesome radiance.

The three retreated into the shadows.

“Who are you? Who are these masters of which you speak?” Verchiel demanded.

“We? We are nobody,” said one.

“Humble servants of a greater power,” said another.

“A power that wishes to change the world,” said the third as the others nodded their hooded visages in agreement.

Verchiel stepped closer to the odd women. “This power—” he began.

“Your light,” interrupted one of them. “Dim your glow, for it blinds those who spend most of their days in shadow.”

“Light so bright is not known by eyes such as these.”

“It is no wonder that our masters have sought you out.”

Verchiel pulled back upon his glow, and watched as the three old crones ambled closer.

“Much better,” said one as they all wrung their clawed hands in anticipation.

“You speak of your masters,” Verchiel repeated. “Who are they, and why have they brought me here?”

“They designed this world,” said one.

“They manipulate the events that will shape the future,” said another.

“They are the Architects,” revealed the third. “And they wish for you to serve their cause.”

*   *   *

Vilma stood in the tiny side yard of her aunt and uncle’s home on Belvidere Place in Lynn, Massachusetts, watching the sun disappear from the sky, and the night emerge. She had been here with Aaron for a few days.

There was barely any daylight now.

She thought of all that the Nephilim had been through, and wondered if they’d had any real effect at all. The night was still on the march. She guessed that it wouldn’t be long before it was dark all the time.

Her angelic nature stirred, and she realized that she was no longer alone in the yard. Standing on the step leading into the house, her seven-year-old cousin Nicole was watching her.

“Hey, you,” Vilma said. “Watcha doin’?”

“Better come inside,” the child said, eyes wide and serious. “Before the monsters come and take you.”

This was the kind of world that her aunt and uncle and cousins were forced to inhabit. A world that she, and others like her, had tried to make better.

They had failed.

“No monsters will take me,” Vilma said, shaking her head. “Or you, if they know what’s good for them.”

She wanted Nicole to believe that she was safe, but Vilma had seen some of the other houses on the dead-end court, and
they were boarded up, some nothing more than burned-out shells. Her aunt had said that things had come when it was fully dark, things that had taken away some of the neighbors, and set fire to their homes.

“You’ll punch them?” Nicole asked.

“I’ll do worse than that,” Vilma said, feeling a sudden overwhelming urge to hug Nicole tightly and never let her go.

The child smiled, and Vilma hoped that the little girl felt safe in her presence.

“Why don’t you go inside,” Vilma suggested. “I’ll be just a minute. I want to check on something.”

Vilma turned to the back of the tiny yard as the screen door slammed behind Nicole. Vilma wanted to see how her scarecrows were holding up. Two armored bodies hung from fence posts, flies buzzing around their horrible faces. When she’d first arrived with Aaron, Vilma had found these things very much alive and sniffing around the house, looking for a way to get in. She hadn’t been in any mood to deal with their filthy likes, so she’d killed them.