The Judas Line (24 page)

According to my watch I had been following those marks for forty minutes and it was only a handful more before I rounded a maple and saw my target, heavy white winter coat and leggings blending almost seamlessly with the pristine surroundings, the same kind of camouflaging winter gear I wore. The figure crept along, evergreen branches dragging behind.

I smiled, lifted my paintball gun and fired. Alcohol and blue dye spheres tore through the air to
splat
onto the figure’s back, knocking the person down.

“Kill to me,” I called softly.

Grunting, the person rose, sky blue blotches marring the formerly white coat. “Yeah, you got me,” came a voice I knew so well.

“Annabeth!”

She turned, arching her back in discomfort and raised an eyebrow. “That’s the problem with you, Olivier, you lack the killer instinct.”

“What?”

Her smile was mirthless. “You followed my tracks. I meant for you to find me.”

The smile that had so beguiled me was wrong. That situation was wrong. My danger sense kicked in too late to avoid three sharp impacts along my spine … the last thudding home with a hollow sound that tore my body away from conscious control.

Cold on my face, needles of frost that melted and reformed with every hitching breath. Coppery blood filled my mouth, my nostrils. A lung was punctured, quickly filling with blood, but I could not feel the wound. A numb feeling of horror gripped me as I realized that my spine had been severed near my neck and I was insensate to the cold stealing through my body.

I was dying.

No Words, no potions, no elementals. Cut off from all help, I could only lie there and feel my life slowly drip away.

Abruptly my perspective changed and the cold left my face as light flooded my eyes. Someone was kind enough to turn me over. That someone was Burke, also clothed in heavy white winter gear.

“Hello, Olivier,” he smiled nastily, holding up one of his prized repeating ballistic knives.

I grunted painfully in reply.

“You really are a simple creature,” he continued. “So easily duped.” Annabeth came within view to stand next to him. Her grin was anything but nice.

“Bitch,” I bubbled, spraying blood from my lips in a red mist.

“Opportunist,” she corrected haughtily. “I always go with a winner and we know who the real winner is, don’t we, Olivier?”

Burke’s teeth shone as white as the snow around him. With one gloved hand he casually reached through the opening of her white coat and cupped her left breast. Fury ripped through the blood in my throat as I vented a sharp whistle of a scream, soon followed by Burke’s laughter.

Annabeth’s sweet voice floated toward me. “So what do we do with him?”

“Nothing,” came the contemptuous reply. “Let the forest swallow him up.”

Gray skies and snow flurries. A cold wind brushed my face with icy fingers and blood steamed on my lips as I desperately struggled for air. I couldn’t feel it, but I knew my body was starting to get colder and colder as I slowly froze to death. That is, if I did not bleed out first.

Burke and Annabeth. Annabeth and Burke. I should have seen it, should have at least
felt
something, but I had been blinded by my lust, my passion. At least my wounds did not hurt, not compared to the pain of Annabeth’s betrayal. I had actually started to
trust
her and she used that to help Burke get the drop on me.

I wondered if she was Julian’s idea. It had been one of his cunning, sadistic plans and I had fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

Nose and cheeks started to go numb, and it would not be long before I gently slipped into my final slumber. Well, at least I would not be the Vessel for the Voice, the Family’s precious Redeemer. Death was far preferable to being someone’s puppet.

Oh, who was I kidding? Burke had pulled my strings, so had Annabeth and no doubt Julian. I had been a puppet all along … the best kind, one who did not know he was
a puppet.

The soft, golden glow slowly coloring the bones of the beech trees hovering over me matched my feeling of weary lassitude.

Golden glow? What?
A pique of interest pierced the veil of my drowsiness.

It stepped into view. No, not an
It
, but a
He
, a perfectly built, golden-hued man with lustrous, long black hair that flowed to his hips. Dressed in a white wrap of silky material that encircled his waist, he seemed impervious to the biting cold.

“Who?” I coughed, spraying more blood.

Then the wings unfurled, eagle-like pinions banded in white, bronze and silver. It came to me that I knew this being … one of the Liar’s messengers, a winged servant whose charter was to deceive the true believers into accepting the gospels of the Lying God. Fear like nothing I’d ever known clawed at my mind and I smelled the urine I couldn’t feel.

As if reading my mind, the messenger, the deceiving angel, smiled sadly and crouched, laying an aureate hand on my cheek. Even up close his perfection blinded me, rendering me unable to recall his simplest features.

“Know this, young Sicarius, and decide,” he said, voice like the music of the world.

And the heavens opened up to me.

I heard the first Word and saw the creation of everything.
Everything.
It all came together in a clash of sound so immense I couldn’t even really define it as sound—more a vast feeling too intense for mere mortals to conceptualize.

The world came into being, with Primals to maintain the delicate balance of nature. They fought, they struggled, but always with a harmony that made the struggle beautiful to watch, a ballet of violence and joy. With the creation of the Primals came the Angels, and none so powerful, so beautiful as Lucifer. He was the sun, the light that eclipsed all others. Then came plants and animals, growing, rising and falling quickly as time accelerated faster and faster.

It was almost too much for me to bear, this kaleidoscope of imagery that unfolded like an origami rose with millions of petals in my mind. Faster and faster the visions whirled and danced until the Word was spoken again—softer this time, a mere breath of celestial magic—and Man was born.

I felt the joy of the Creator as the divine spark flared inside Man, a spark that became the Soul … and I felt jealousy, the jealousy of an Angel. Lucifer. He saw in the Soul something that was lacking in him, a callous joke mocking his perfection. For the first time something new had been born in the universe that was not fashioned by God.

Hate.

Lucifer’s hatred for all men, their lack of perfection, their Souls, infected many Angels until they banded together in discord and tried to use their Words, the Words of their jealousy and hatred, against the Throne.

A struggle raged in Heaven as angel fought angel, the dead winking out of existence forever. Angelic blood ran in rivers along the splendid silver streets of the City of God and the Creator wept, unwilling to raise a hand to stop His children. It was a struggle that had to be decided by angels, a painful evolution of their moral hearts.

The angels of hate and jealousy were defeated, falling flaming from the heights, beautiful wings taken from them, bodies stripped of their perfection not because they defied the Creator, but because they wasted all that they were, all that they could have been, on Hate. They let it consume them and shape them into something horrific to behold.

Lucifer fell the farthest—far enough that God’s grace no longer touched his wounded, burned body. In that place, the Abyss, he began to craft Hell, a trap for the souls of Man whose evil denied them Heaven.

The Morning Star began to disguise himself with many Names, the foremost being Satan. In the world’s infancy, he walked its surface, often in disguise. Serpent, Dragon, Leviathan, all forms and names he used to bedevil man until Lucifer’s Hate gave him such power that the world could no longer contain his power, his form. He had grown swollen and pregnant with abhorrence. In his attempt to foster hate, he was denied the earth; he had no portal to give him access save in dreams.

But the damage was done. Man had defied the Creator, maturing too quickly, the divine plan thrown awry, and Man was cast out of Eden, which was removed from the boundaries of Earth. So they would not toil in loneliness, the Word was spoken again and more Men came into being, filling the earth with their industry. Satan’s stain still wreaked its havoc, though, as the first murder was committed, brother killing brother.

Satan laughed and he plotted.

“I am Harachiel,” said the being softly, his breath a faint tickle against my face. “Angel of Knowledge.”

Back. I was back and aware again of my surroundings. The vision that had held me faded like yesterday’s dream, but that vision left one certainty in its wake: the knowledge that it was the
truth
.

The Voice wasn’t the victim of an insane, lying God, wasn’t the poor oppressed savior of mankind, the one who would provide much needed order. All my life I’d been lied to. My life was a lie.

I began to cry at the injustice of it all, wiping my eyes.

Wiping my eyes?
My arms … they moved! I could feel. Sure, I felt so cold that I’d bleed ice cubes, but I
felt!
Shakily I stood, swaying for a moment with pins and needles pricking my feet. I looked up to thank the angel (an angel—one of the good guys!) and was stopped cold by the look of compassion in his eyes.

“You have the choice, Olivier Deschamps.” The angel smiled and it was the most glorious thing I had ever seen. “Thou
mayest
choose between good and evil.” That said, it vanished, as if it had never been, no sign, just a lingering tinkle, like fairy bells. Not even footprints in the snow.

For a long time I wondered at the archaic verbiage, but it was not until I met Mike that I realized those words were the equivalent of a smack to the back of the head.

Sighing, I headed deeper into the forest. I had some planning to do.

Thou mayest.



Wow. I could hardly believe what I had just read. Morgan/Jude met an angel! The concept stunned me, almost left me breathless. Silently I praised the Lord for showing Morgan the truth and letting him decide for himself.

Carefully I tucked the pages of the manuscript into the back pocket of my uniform and drank the cup of tepid tea that had been left for me. Once again I pondered the lonely roads we find ourselves on.

Back in the church, I had looked down a barrel of a gun and felt God’s power fill and sustain me. I knew that Morgan had to escape, that a sacrifice for his safety had to be made and that it would be me. No problem … trust in the Lord, right?

Not just a saying anymore, not for me.

Bullets missed, guns jammed and my friend made tracks. Once he left, the power slowly drained away, leaving me with a curious sense of calm and a cool detachment. Nothing could bother me.

Unfortunately, the lady (who turned out to be the infamous Annabeth) decked me a good one on the jaw and I dropped like a rock to the floor of the nave. Oddly enough, it didn’t hurt all. I smiled at her redly, blood dripping from a split lip.

“Take the Liar’s trash to the chopper,” she sneered. I had to hand it to Morgan; she definitely was a knockout.

Strong hands zip-tied my hands behind my back and hauled me to my feet. “So this is a priest?” said a deep voice from beneath a beige helmet. “Looks like a dumbass hick instead of one of the Liar’s butt-boys.”

A few choice words came to mind, but I made do with my serene smile and soon found myself airborne. After a few seconds a needle pinched into my flesh and the world went away for a while.

I came to in a little ten-by-ten room, empty save for a cot and a bedpan. My captors had done a poor job of searching me because the manila envelope was still tucked into my jacket pocket. A little light reading during my time in happyville.

No worries though; the Lord was on my side. But I sure could have used a gun right about then.

Chapter Twenty-One

Morgan

Rock flowed around me, pliable and thick as liquid cement. The bubble of air I rode in was only slightly bigger than my body, but the air remained sweet, pure. Light, dim and diffuse, lit the bubble as it floated through liquefied bedrock. Farther and farther I traveled until even the sight of rock stretching like taffy became … tiresome.

It wasn’t like flying, more like slowly body surfing on a wave of cool caramel, but without the sugary smell.

Bump
. My nose smacked against stone that didn’t flow resulting in a wash of pain that exploded behind my eyes. Before I could cry out, I oozed into the rock, birthing through to the other side.

Ow! Shards of something sliced into my hand right down to the bone and sharp points stabbed at me moments before they melted into a hard, smooth surface. Stale air clogged my nose, but I managed to whisper a quick Healing. Blood slicked my hands as the gashes covering my fingers and palms slowly closed, flesh knitting together until not a seam of damage remained. Only my chest still bled from a half dozen slices and punctures. Whatever had cut me sliced my shirt and jacket to ribbons. Another Healing and the fetid air was replaced by cinnamon, a vast improvement.