A Hundred Words for Hate

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Garden was arriving.

Through space and time she surged, sensing a world thriving with life just beyond the veil, and pulling herself toward it.

Eden had been lost for so very long, moving from place to place—world to world—searching for what would make her complete again.

It had been so long since she was last whole.

Since she had last held her children.

This place—this world—sang as it approached; kindred sprits, they were, for both had been shaped by the Almighty.

But the closer she came, the more pain the Garden experienced. The illness at her core was growing, becoming more dangerous as the world of God’s man drew near.

She did not wish to endanger the world, but Eden had grown weak as she traversed a multitude of realities, and she did not know if she had the strength to move on.

The Garden reached out to the world, searching for a place where she could be, where none who lived upon her would be harmed. The planet Earth welcomed Eden, and guided her to an inhospitable place—an area mostly devoid of life.

A place where she had a chance to be saved.

For the Garden could sense beings of great strength walking upon the Earth, beings of unimaginable power.

Beings that could save . . .

Or destroy her.

The North Pole

Gregson Paul pulled himself tighter into a ball inside his sleeping bag and listened to the freezing winds howl hungrily outside his tent.

As he had done since joining this expedition, he shivered to the point that his bones nearly broke, and wondered about when he had turned into the world’s biggest fucking idiot.

He guessed, as he had guessed before, that it was when he first saw Marjorie Halt in her cutoff jeans shorts.

The tent undulated, battered by the relentless current of air. It wanted him to come out; it wanted to show him how fucking idiots were treated when they volunteered for a scientific expedition to the North Pole to provide the most accurate survey of the thickness of the Arctic ice.

There were three others in the expedition, lying alongside him, wrapped in their sleeping bags as well. There was Terrance Long, the expedition’s environmental scientist; and project leader Daniel Hiratsu, engineer in charge of the various pieces of high-tech equipment that they were using to survey the polar ice’s thickness; and then there was Marjorie, grad student and ecological savior. She wanted to be the one who told the world about how the Arctic ice caps were melting due to global warming, and he had hung upon every word that left her beautiful mouth on that hot—very hot—summer’s day at the University of Michigan, as they lounged in the grass out in front of the student center.

By the time she had finished talking he wanted to tell the world about the melting ice caps too, and anything else she might suggest . . . and possibly to see what lay beneath those ridiculously short but awesome cutoffs.

There were no cutoff shorts now—maybe beneath the layers of special thermal clothing that they were wearing, but he wouldn’t know. Marjorie had very little interest in him in that way.

She was as cold as the ice they were measuring.

When it was time to rise, they would be on day one hundred and twelve in their mission to reach the Pole. According to Professor Long, they and the ground radar unit that they were using to penetrate and take readings of the ice depth every eight inches would likely reach their destination today, and their mission would pretty much be complete.

Curled up and shivering inside their tent as the below-zero windchill mercilessly assaulted their shelter from outside, Gregson began to dream of another place, a warm place with thick, tropical growth.

A primitive jungle older than recorded history.

Gregson awakened with a yelp, the heady, humid stink of the jungle lingering in his nostrils. He could see that the others still slept, huddled against one another within their cramped confines. Listening to the relentless winds outside, he was about to lie back down, to perhaps escape again to the dream of that wonderful and warm tropical place, when he smelled it.

He sat up in his sleeping bag, a mummy rising from his tomb, and sniffed the frigid air.

Was he going crazy, or did he actually smell that thick, wet jungle? He’d vacationed with his parents in Costa Rica a number of times while growing up, and he remembered the aroma fondly, often thinking of the South American jungles to help him drift off to sleep at night after a long and grueling day of taking readings in below-zero temperatures.

But there was no mistaking it: Gregson could smell the jungle.

He considered waking the others, but, still doubting his sanity, decided against it. Squirming from his sleeping bag, he put on the protective clothing he had shed before going to bed, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to awaken the other members of the team. And even if they did wake up, they’d probably just think he was going outside to perform the uncomfortable task of relieving oneself in a subzero-degree environment.

As strange as it seemed, the jungle smell was stronger—thicker—the closer he got to the tent’s exit. He quickly unzipped the opening, temporarily allowing the howling, razor-sharp winds entrance as he crawled outside into the snow, turning around to seal up the opening behind him.

Standing, Gregson slipped on his protective goggles, looking through the tinted lenses in the eerie twilight of the Pole, searching for the source of the unusual smell.

He didn’t have to look for long.

Gregson thought that he had to be dreaming. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Exhausted from pulling sledges loaded with equipment across the ice, he often had bizarre and incredibly vivid dreams of being home in Michigan, or even back on campus.

But this was unlike anything he’d experienced before.

The wind had piled a few feet of snow just in front of the tent, and he pushed through the powdery drifts in order to get closer.

He half expected it to vanish: a mirage on the bleak, frozen landscape.

But it didn’t; it remained, its details becoming more precise the closer he got.

There was a jungle at the North Pole—not a chance they could have missed it, not even in a blizzard. Gregson was about to turn back and rouse his fellow explorers, but the jungle called to him, the warmth of the place radiating outward and enticing him forward.

The Garden drew him closer.

He pinched his leg through his thermal pants, wanting to be sure this wasn’t just the product of a dreaming mind.

Thick, billowing steam rose up from the mass of trees that spanned for miles in either direction. It became warmer the closer he got, and he swore that he heard the sounds of squawking birds.

How was this even possible? His mind wanted to know. It didn’t make the least bit of sense, but here it was, right before his eyes.

One second Gregson Paul was walking across ice, and the next his heavy rubber boots were falling on grass. The temperature becoming increasingly hot, he could feel the sweat pouring from his body beneath the layers of his clothes. Before he could even question the act, he found himself stripping away the layers, basking in the heat of this magickal place.

And that was exactly what it had to be, he thought, as he dropped his heavy jacket onto the ground . . . onto the thick green grass.

Magick.

He found himself drawn to the place, compelled to enter the jungle, but the man could see no discernible entrance, his passage blocked by thick, thorny vines, massive trees, and tangled underbrush.

Gregson looked for a way in, moving along the jungle’s edge until he found it.

It loomed above him, between two enormous stone pillars, intricately forged from what appeared to be iron: two ornate gates.

But the gates were closed.

Barring him entrance to the Garden beyond.