At The Gates

Chapter Two

“Sillylittlewingedcousinsaywhat?” I really needed to stop watching Hannah Montana.

She glowered at me. “We must save Heaven.” She had apparently forgotten whose nephew I was, because she went on as though I was expected to care. “Michael freed Gabriel from his imprisonment and they have laid siege to the Garden of Eden.”

That couldn’t be good. After Asmoday’s attempt at bringing about Armageddon fell apart, my old mentor and demon lieutenant, Duke Forcalor, had dragged Gabriel back to Heaven to face judgment. Though I hadn’t heard what they’d done to the archangel, he hadn’t been seen since. The fact he was now free to seek revenge meant things were gonna get real bad in record time.

“Why Eden?”

Scarlett growled as though I’d missed something. “Eden is all that’s left of the Heaven I knew.” Apparently I had. “Gabriel and Michael rallied a secret army from amongst the Angelic Choir, those angered that Forcalor was allowed back in. Gabriel’s forces ready to strike, they shut down the portals to Heaven so no one could escape.

“As dawn broke, they set upon those who had not spoken out against the duke’s return to the Kingdom.” Tears ran silver down her cheeks. “Too many of my brothers and sisters died before we even knew we’d been betrayed. The rest of us made for the protection of Eden, the only piece of Heaven Gabriel didn’t yet control. Uriel barred the gates. He and Forcalor held off the advance until we could regroup. There was no mercy on that field.”

Tremors rattled her body as she continued. “Uriel feared Gabriel might use the Earth-side gate to assault us from the rear, so he ordered it sealed. He sent me out to seek help just before Eden was locked down.”

“That’s where your groupies come in?” I gestured to the street.

She nodded. “A number of the Nephilim were camped out on the Earth-side of Eden. They attacked me as I came through. Wounded as I was by Gabriel’s onslaught, I barely made it past them.” Her voice cracked on the last, as if unable to believe she’d nearly been killed.

I shuddered, thinking about all the possible reasons for them being there. The Nephilim were the bastard sons and daughters of angels and humans; the mutts of the supernatural world. Kind of like me, only a little further down in the pecking order, if you can believe that.

Barred entrance to Heaven due to their impure bloodlines and dubious conceptions, they were often spiteful. They sided with demons to cause trouble for the Angelic Choir whenever they had the chance. If you saw one, you could be assured havoc would follow.

They trended toward the lower ranges of power, inheriting only a miniscule portion of their angelic parents’ magical abilities. They were far tougher than humans, though much less so than most angels and demons. What they lacked in brute power, they made up for in numbers. There had to be tens of thousands of them roaming the planet, perhaps even more now that God wasn’t around to curb their reproduction.

“How many were there?”

“I didn’t have time to count, but I’d guess a hundred or so, maybe more.”

A chill ran down my spine. We’d gotten lucky only the three had followed her.

Right then, I heard a noise in the rear of my house. Cursing, my gun somewhere in my bedroom, I readied my magic as Scarlett drew her sword. Before we had a chance to do anything else, the door to the spare room burst open.

Katon, DRAC’s resident enforcer and all around badass, leapt into the hall, his sword shimmering in the lead. On his heels rushed Michael Li, the organization’s mentalist and psychic PR guy with a 9mm in his hand. My heart rate thudded back to normal at seeing them, and I let my energy dissipate.

Behind them, I saw the glimmer of fading lights from the spare room and realized they’d come through the dimensional gate my uncle and I’d built. Though I vaguely remember giving them access to it, they’d never used it before. It gave a whole new meaning to the term home invasion. Ice-T could only wish he’d had it so easy.

“Good thing you’re not the pizza guy or we’d be getting it for free.”

Katon grinned, the sharpened points of his eyeteeth visible. “I see you’re still alive, Frank. Scarlett must have arrived just in time to save your ass.” He sheathed his replacement sword with a clack, his dark face creased with relieved amusement.

While he looked like a backup singer for the legendary heavy metal band Judas Priest, dressed from head to toe in black leather adorned with silver spikes, Katon was Hell on wheels. We’d gotten closer over the course of our mutual death-defying adventures in DRAC, but he wasn’t a guy you pushed too far, no matter how good of friends you were.

Though he’d lost his prized sword in our most recent adventure, made from the Spear of Longinus, he’d acquired another magical blade imbued with a powerful, fast-acting paralytic. It wasn’t quite in the same league, but it didn’t make him any less dangerous. His being a vampire only emphasized his threat.

“For once,” Scarlett said, striding to embrace Katon, a sad smile on her full lips, “it was the other way around.”

He returned the hug, and then pulled away to look her over before his gaze drifted up to her eyes. At last he sighed, his down-to-business face firmly in place. “What happened?”

We went over what they’d missed. Once we were done, Michael headed out to speak to the neighbors.

His mental powers an impressive mix of mind reading, telepathy, and thought control, Michael was the head of DRAC’s cleanup crew. He went behind us and made sure every trace of our presence was wiped from the minds of those unfortunate enough to witness us in action. It was his job to keep humanity ignorant of the growing unrest in the supernatural world brought on by God’s disappearance. Like tonight, a little psychic reorientation would help keep our little scuffle out of the legitimate news.

Once Michael was gone, Katon turned to Scarlett. “So, Uriel needs help to defend Eden?”

If I’d had an extra cape, I’d have given it to him; Captain Obvious in the house. “Given what DRAC has been through recently, I don’t think we’re in any shape to help,” I said.

Katon sighed, nodding in solemn agreement. “We’ll do everything we can, Scarlett, but Frank is right. Asmoday’s dread fiends decimated our ranks and we’ve yet to replenish them. Worse still, Rahim is but a shadow of his former self. Though he insists on working, Abraham has restricted him to light duty to ensure he recuperates fully.” Sadness washed over his face for an instant as he spoke of his friend, before his stoic mask reasserted itself. “We’ll be hard pressed to raise an army, let alone one that stands any hope of going to war with angels.”

Scarlett’s shoulders drooped, her tears returning. “Though I knew that in my heart, I prayed a miracle might avail itself.” She let out a quiet laugh, the sound harsh and bitter. “It seems fortune has abandoned us, as well as God.”

Caught off guard by the rancor in her voice, I just stared. God’s reconciliation with Lucifer and his departure from existence had hit the angels hard, Scarlett more so than many. Despite that, she stayed dedicated to His path, defending the vision of Heaven she had always known. Lately, that vision had let her down, and let her down hard.

Captured by Gabriel, and handed over to the demon lieutenant Asmoday, had been a betrayal that nearly broke her spirit, its wound piled atop that of God’s abandonment. Heaven was no longer the sanctuary she believed it to be; the one she needed. To see the archangels slaughtering her people, the family she loved, had apparently been the final straw. Her faith was failing.

“We will fight, Scarlett,” Katon assured her, his dark hand squeezing hers. “I’m just not sure it will be anything more than a glorious attempt at failure.”

She tightened her grip on his hand, defeat etched across her expression. “Thank you. I can ask for nothing more.”

“We need to speak with Abraham and see what he says.” My expectations of success weren’t any higher than Katon’s, though I’d learned not to discount Abraham’s ability to triumph in the face of adversity. He was a wily old coot.

The founder of DRAC, and a king among psychics, Abraham foresaw the disappearance of God and the troubles to follow. His keen wit, sharpened by the adversity of having to outwit immortal beings, and tempered by the fires of experience, he had an understanding of the world unlike anyone else. If he didn’t know what we needed to do, he’d figure it out.

With a loud crash, the front door flew open. “You guys need to get out here,” Michael shouted from the porch. His voice was raw, his tone piercing.

His panic was contagious. We flew outside, filing down the sidewalk to the street behind the mentalist. He pointed and we looked.

Off in the distance, not more than a couple of blocks away, the sky was awash in brilliant light. Strange, localized white clouds stood out against the night’s darkness. They roiled with purplish lightning that crackled through their interior in sudden bursts. The clouds sat low in the sky, unnaturally so, not more than a hundred yards above the trees.

The whistling howl of wind drifted to my ears, a stiff breeze buffeting us in waves, the gusts coming off the clouds. Then suddenly the wind stopped cold. The cloying scent of ash and decay settled in the air, its taste sour. Muffled thunder rumbled in time with the colorful lightning, and a fine mist of ashen snow began to fall from the clouds. It floated lazily, settling over everything underneath it.

Scarlett let loose a whimper and stumbled. Katon caught hold of her to keep her steady. I didn’t even have time to ask what was wrong before Michael cried out and fell to his knees, his hands clutching to his head. His teeth were clenched, agony scarring his features.

“It’s death,” Michael groaned as a streamer of blood ran from his nose and down his chin.

Heedless of the obvious warning, I raced down the street to get a closer look. Though it covered a good three to four block radius, the storm was static. The clouds hovered in place with no forward motion, which made it easy to reach.

That weirdness alone should have been enough of a hint to stay away.

The rancid smell grew thicker as I approached, the scent of an old tomb unearthed. My ribs tightened, the air thick in my lungs, biting as though a mound of fire ants had taken up residence in my chest. As I reached the edge of the fall, my senses kicked in and warned me off, a banshee’s scream inside my head. I could only imagine what Scarlett and Michael felt. Eyes watering, coughing up cinders, I looked to the drift and froze.

Wisps of gray smoke rose from everywhere the ashen snow touched. The ground beneath was charred black. Grass and trees died in its wake and withered before my eyes. Nothing seemed immune. The asphalt of the road bubbled and melted, turning to gravel, then dust. The metal fences and rock walls sagged and crumbled. Even the vehicles were being eaten away, obsidian circles of rot appearing on their surfaces, the blackness spreading as destruction took hold.

In a nearby yard, a dog lay twitching on the ground. Any whimpers it might have made had been cut short by the merciless fall, its snout devoured whole. What was left of its tongue was little more than dripping red strands, which lolled from under its panicked eyes. It stared at me, black dots screaming in silence for pity. Its hindquarters were gone, intestines splayed out behind it only to meet the same grisly fate beneath the ashen snow.

My stomach clenched. Churning sickness begged for release as it scaled the back of my throat. I summoned my energy to end the creature’s suffering, but the storm finished it first. The dog twitched one last spasm, and then its head collapsed. Its fight was over.

A sudden thought hit me, my eyes jerking to the houses. The nearest one, a nice two-story similar to my own, was missing most of its roof. The virulent snow ate away at its remains, billows of smoke whooshing up from inside. There were no sounds from within, no panicked screams or cries for help. It was likely no one was home.

The sick in my stomach hardened, knowing full well that one instance of mercy was all I could hope for. As I surveyed the neighborhood, it was awash in deadly white. Faster than I could have imagined, homes had been undone, as had anyone inside them: children, wives, mothers and fathers, grandparents, all consumed, leaving naught but ash. Nothing could survive the storm. In just minutes, that’s all there would be: nothing.

I reached out, extending my hand into the fall. Flakes struck my arm in several places, their touch a fiery brand at every impact. Clenching my teeth to restrain my scream, I yanked my arm back, staring at the blackened dots that ate at my flesh like ravenous piranha. They warred with my immune system, the devil in me slowly gaining the upper hand, but they fought hard. Searing agony accompanied the entirety of the battle as I realized the storm was somehow natural in origin, not magical.

Katon, at my side in huff, pulled me further from the fall, a sharpened snarl on his lips. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. I knew what he was thinking, but there weren’t any suicidal tendencies in me, nor was I going crazier than normal.

There was just a part of me, a piece of my mother buried deep inside-her compassion, her selfless dedication to life-that felt the need to suffer with those I couldn’t save. It wanted to feel what they felt, to understand the horror that befell them. It needed me to know what they went through, so I would never forget. I needed to hurt to find the strength to prevent it from happening again.

Either that or I’m just a masochist hiding behind the memories of my murdered mother. Either is possible.

Scarlett and Michael came up behind, their breath rasping in rhythm as they viewed the atrocity splayed out before us. They’d both felt it far stronger than I had, their senses far more refined. They, too, were suffering, but I couldn’t bring myself to face them. That would be too much.

Once more I looked up at the clouds, only to see them shudder as though having a seizure. Their motion slowed and collapsed inward, the slow whirl of a cosmic drain. The dancing lightning inside their depths flashed a few more times, streaks of purple staining the all-encompassing white, and then ceased. The thunderous rumble ended with it. Then, as though it had never been, the storm darkened and faded away into the blackness of night, its cancerous snow disappearing with it.

What it left behind was a ruin far worse than any war could have ever aspired to. Though the damage was confined to an area less than four city blocks, it had been absolute. Save for a few scattered walls, their angle such as to avoid direct contact with the fall, there was nothing left. A blackened crater, more than a foot deep, marked the boundaries of the storm.

No blood or gore, no hair or bone, was left to mar the perfect abyss of emptiness. Even the smell disappeared. There was simply nothing left but the hard black earth, cleansed of all life. Everything that once towered above existed now only in memory, or perhaps a photograph or two. The space had become a void.

My chest ached and I, at last, turned around. Scarlett’s normally green eyes were assailed by red, her nose and cheeks flushed. Michael didn’t look much better. The pair hung onto each other in mutual discomfort. At a loss for words, I tried to say something to ease the moment, but a movement in the shadows just beyond the dead zone caught my eye, stilling any trite commiseration I might have come up with. Someone was watching us.

As though the figure realized I’d seen it, it slipped into the deeper shadows of the distant houses. Like a bat out of Hell, I ran after it. My heart pounded in my chest, a galloping blast beat that drove me forward with frantic insistence.

The horrific images of what I’d witnessed forever seared upon my memory, there was only room for one more thought inside my head. Murder.