Reckoning

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In his mind Aaron saw his destination, a barely legible, weather-beaten sign that read

SAINT ATHANASIUS CHURCH AND ORPHANAGE:

established 1899.

This was where the final battle would occur. There were multiple buildings, including a church, but he knew he needed to be inside the school. That was where his father was being held. That was the image Lucifer had placed within the Nephilim’s mind.

The picture of the gymnasium inside his head made him think briefly of his own school, Kenneth Curtis High, and all he had given up—graduation, college, a human life. He had been so angry in the beginning, that his once normal life had been turned on its head by angelic prophecies and blood-thirsty angels, circumstances beyond his control, a destiny he had known nothing about. And even though time had allowed him a begrudging acceptance of his fate, it hadn’t made his sacrifices any less difficult.

He parted his wings like the curtains on a stage pulled back to present the last act of some great production. This is it, he thought in nervous anticipation, the final chapter of a story that began on the morning of his eighteenth birthday, the day his life changed forever.

He furled his great black wings beneath the flesh of his back, their movement stirring a strange, reddish fog that drifted above the floor of the gymnasium. An atmosphere of danger permeated the room, and the hair at the back of his neck prickled, a sword of fire springing to life in his hand. He was ready for this to end.

His eyes scanned his surroundings. The mist was thick, but he was able to make out the features of the old gymnasium, the hard parquet floor covered with years of dust beneath his feet, a skylight in the ceiling above, spattered with bird droppings. He moved his hand through the dense vapor, wondering what it was, knowing it couldn’t be good. It made the bare flesh of his arms tingle, his chest ache as he reluctantly took it into his lungs.

Then it hit him with the force of a storm driven wave. His weapon of fire fell from his grasp as his body was wracked with violent spasms. What’s happening? Aaron wondered on the brink of panic as the synapses in his brain exploded like fireworks on the Fourth of July. It was as if every emotion—rage, despair, love, joy—had come alive at once, more incapacitating than any physical attack. He was numb, stumbling through the billowing red fog, trying to regain control of his runaway passions. He had no doubt now as to what this was. He was too late. His father’s curse had been unleashed.

The punishment of God was free.

Try as he might, Aaron could not wrest control of his emotions. The mist cajoled them, inflamed them, drawing them out like infection from a wound. Raw, unhindered feelings that ran the gamut from sadness to rage to joy were released within him. Again and again he lived the moments that had created them, the mundane and the profound, the joyous and the miserable.

Fear flashed through him as he saw the first foster home he could truly remember, horrible people who had taken him in only for the meager allowance the state paid for his upkeep. He felt the loneliness and anger, relived the abuse and neglect. Then that experience was viciously torn away to be replaced with another, and then another still. It was as if all the defining emotional moments of his life were happening simultaneously: the early endless stream of foster homes, the fights at school, his discovery of Gabriel—a filthy puppy tied to a tree in a gang member’s backyard—the first time he saw Vilma Santiago, and the deaths of the Stanleys, the only true parents he ever knew.

Aaron tried to block them out, to hold them at bay, but the experiences were relentless, an assault upon his every sense. His confusion turned to rage, and then to panic. He lashed out with a newly summoned blade of fire, futilely cutting through the swirling crimson vapor, doing anything to fight back, but to no avail.

The fog grew thicker, hungrily closing in around him. And suddenly, as if his own emotional turmoil hadn’t been enough, every aspect of the war in Heaven bombarded his already torn and frayed senses. He saw the crystal spires of Heaven stained crimson with the blood of discord, smelled the sickly sweet aroma of burning angel flesh, and listened to the cries of brothers, once comrades in the glory that was Heaven, locked in furious combat. How easily it all fell apart, he sadly observed as he experienced the woe of God, a despair the likes of which he could not even begin to describe. It was all encompassing, a sucking void that pulled him in and devoured all hope.

At that devastating moment Aaron fully understood the magnitude of his father’s crimes and the fallout that followed. To go against the Creator, to strike at God—it was the pinnacle of sin, the saddest of all things. He could think of no way to escape the anguish of it. The malaise was like an enormous hand pushing him down to the ground, crushing him, and he came to the sickening realization that nothing mattered, that the struggle of the fallen angels for forgiveness was to no avail.

It was hopeless.

All his sacrifice and struggle had been for naught.

With a trembling hand Aaron brought his weapon of fire to his throat and prepared to end it—to make the misery stop. He felt the searing bite of the blade’s flaming edge upon the flesh of his neck, but did not pull away. It was a blessed relief to feel something other than the sorrow of the Lord God.

“Stop,” begged a voice riding upon the churning mist of crimson.

And strangely it stayed his hand, the fiery blade faltering. Aaron stumbled through the unnatural fog, stepping over the bodies of others who had released themselves from the pain of Heaven’s fall, drawn toward the voice, an island of hope in a sea of desperation.

The image of a man hanging from the ceiling in chains appeared in the roiling vapor. Aaron moved closer and could see the glowing, archaic symbols etched upon the dark metal restraints, symbols infused with the ability to sap away the strength of the angelic.

He reached up to help the man down as further waves of drowning emotion washed over him, and he again found himself contemplating his sword. It’ll be quick and relatively painless, he thought, raising the blade of fire to his throat. Anything to take away the hurt…

“That’s not the way,” the hanging man croaked, and raised his head of curly black hair to look upon Aaron with eyes deep and dark, old eyes filled with centuries of pain.

Aaron knew this man, so long associated with all that was evil and wrong with the world. He was pulled into Lucifer’s gaze, unexpectedly feeling as though he had been tossed a life preserver, adrift in a furious sea of rabid sensation. “It … it hurts so much,” he said, clutching a prized moment of solace, fearing he would not have the strength to endure the next pummeling wave.

“But think about how good it will feel when it stops,” Lucifer whispered, his head slowly falling forward again.

The red cloud churned around the fallen angel, emanating from a gaping, vertical wound that began in the center of his chest, the horrible gash splayed open with metal clamps. Aaron was reminded of the cat he’d had to dissect in his junior year biology class, only this subject was somehow still alive.

“You’ve got to use it,” Lucifer murmured. “The pain. Use it as fuel to move past the torment, to the light at the end of the tunnel—punishment to absolution. It’s what’s kept me relatively sane since the Fall.” He strained to smile. “It’s good to see you in person, son. Only wish the circumstances were a bit less hairy.”

Aaron moved closer to the prisoner, fighting to keep his feelings in check. “Let me help you,” he said, preparing to use his heavenly blade to sever the debilitating chains and release the fallen angel that was his father.

Lucifer’s head rose. “Watch your back,” he croaked in warning, and Aaron spun around, his sword instinctively raised, blocking another weapon of fire as it descended out of the mist to end his life.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Verchiel screamed, emerging from the deadly fog.

Aaron was momentarily shocked by the angel’s decaying appearance. The heavenly armor that once gleamed like the sun was now dirty gray. The usually firm and modeled flesh of his arms and legs was wrapped haphazardly in blood-stained bandages. His face was like a single, open wound.

Their weapons hissed as they bit into one another, shrapnel of heavenly fire cutting through the air. Aaron cried out in sudden pain, his cheek glanced by the sword’s fiery embers.

“The end is upon us,” the leader of the Powers rumbled as he bore down upon his weapon, attempting to drive Aaron to his knees.

“That’s probably the first and last time I’ll ever agree with you, you son of a bitch,” Aaron snarled, calling forth his wings, pushing forward, driving his attacker back, using the rabid emotions as his father ordered.

The two angelic entities glided across the gym, locked in a furious struggle, the Creator’s punishment flowing around them, becoming darker, thicker, as if egging them on. It was taking all that Aaron had to ignore the multitude of emotions that made him want to drop his sword, to give in to the sadness and despair all around them. He raged against the disparaging feelings, reminding himself of all those who were depending on him.

Verchiel pressed his attack, his sword coming dangerously close to severing Aaron’s head from his shoulders. The Nephilim flapped his powerful wings, sending himself up toward the muted light from the skylight, Verchiel in heated pursuit. Then he suddenly spun around, arcing downward, plowing into the angel and sending them both plummeting to the gymnasium floor.

They hit the hard wood with incredible force, boards splintering and popping from the impact. Verchiel shrieked, thrashing beneath him. He reached up and dragged a clawed hand across Aaron’s face, barely missing his eyes. The Nephilim leaped away and noticed that he was covered in blood. It took him but a heartbeat to realize that it was not his own, but Verchiel’s. The injuries beneath the angel’s bandages were bleeding profusely and he stank of rot.

Verchiel climbed to his feet, his great wings flexed, feathers shedding like falling leaves. He glanced down upon himself, the blood from his injuries running down his body in rivulets to pool at his feet. “This is what it’s come to,” the Powers leader said, a despair in his voice that only added to the anguish roiling about them. “It’s all been taken away from me.” He glared at Aaron with black, hate-filled eyes. “You’ve taken it away from me—you and the monster that spawned you.”

“Do you honestly believe that we’re entirely to blame?” Aaron stared hard at the angel, his gaze unwavering. “That we’ve somehow pulled one over on God, and you’re the only one who knows about it?” He shook his head in disgust. “What a load of crap.”

Verchiel seethed, fists clenched before him, black blood oozing between his fingers to patter like gentle rain upon the floor.

“Sins were committed,” Aaron continued. “Crimes so unimaginable that they could never be forgiven. Or can they?”

The fog swirled about Verchiel, as if somehow attempting to comfort him. “You know nothing of what we experienced,” he growled.

Aaron extended his bloodstained arms, showing the Powers leader the black sigils that adorned his flesh. “But that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I wear their names, those who died fighting for Lucifer’s cause. And inside of me lives a piece of each and every one of them.”

The angel’s horrible face twisted in revulsion. “You’re more of a monstrosity than I thought,” he snarled with disgust.

“A monstrosity who knows their jealousy,” Aaron countered. “That feels what it was like when God seemed to turn away from them to embrace another creation on a new world. I know how desperate they were to regain his favor. Desperate enough to do something foolish.”

Verchiel glanced down at the blood pooling at his feet. “They broke His holy trust and for that they deserved a punishment most severe.” He looked back to Aaron. “I was doing what I was told to do. It was my holy mission to bring them down.”

“The fallen eventually realized that they were wrong, but have you?” Aaron asked. “If God told you, right now, that they were to be given a chance to do penance—to prove they were truly sorry—would you even be able to hear Him?”

“I followed my commands.”

“Exactly,” Aaron agreed with a slight nod. “You followed your commands.”

Verchiel turned suddenly, stalking away from him. “I’m tired of all this … living,” he said.

Aaron noticed that one of the angel’s blood-covered hands had begun to glow, and he readied himself for the next round of conflict. “Then let’s see what I can do about putting you out of your misery,” he replied, sword of heavenly fire burning righteously in his grasp.

The leader of the Powers turned, his right hand glowing with incredible heat, the blood running down from the wounds upon his arms, hissing snakelike, evaporating to smoke before it could drip upon the white-hot hand. He laughed, a sound void of any humor. “I wonder if He’s listening now?” He turned his eyes toward the heavens and raised his burning hand. A tendril of living flame erupted to explode through the skylight and illuminate the night beyond it with the glow of Heaven’s fire.

“What is that disparaging statement humans often make to each other?” the angel asked, as jagged pieces of the broken glass rained down upon him. “Go to Hell?”

And Aaron realized what was happening. He watched in stunned horror as the crimson mist coalesced, snaking across the floor like some prehistoric serpent, over the bodies of those felled by its malignant touch, eager to invade the world beyond these walls.

“Yes, that’s right,” Verchiel said with an obvious glee. “You can all go to Hell.”

Kraus tried to squeeze himself deeper into the darkened corner of an abandoned classroom, a cacophony of emotions bringing him to the brink of insanity. All the anguish, anger, and loneliness that had been part of his early life was with him again, the intensified feelings bombarding him threefold.

With his new eyes he had watched the angelic ritual performed upon the fallen angel Lucifer. Even before the last of the rite was completed, the healer knew that nothing good would come from it, and he attempted to hide himself away.

For decades he had served the angelic host Powers, developing a certain preternatural sense for things beyond the norm. As most humans were oblivious to the paranormal, Kraus found that he had become keenly sensitive. Those senses were screaming now, and he attempted to fold himself tighter into a ball, to protect himself from the forces that had been turned loose this day.

How could I have been so blind?

Though a force from Heaven, Verchiel had become twisted, obsessed with the completion of his holy charge no matter how high the cost. And Kraus had helped him. How strange it was that it took the leader of the Powers host rewarding him with the gift of sight for him to truly see how things actually were.

I was blind, but now I can see.

Kraus heard the cries of his classmates at the Perry School as they were consumed by fire, and he shuddered in the darkness. There had been no act of mercy that fateful night, only murder.

He was suddenly reminded of something Lucifer had said to him only days ago, and fought an unrelenting wave of fear to remember exactly what had been said. The healer had found himself drawn to the prisoner’s cage, although he had been instructed never to enter the room in which the Powers’ captive had been imprisoned. Somehow he sensed that he was needed, that his skills as a healer were being called for. Still condemned to darkness, he had gathered his instruments and healing potions, feeling his way to the schoolroom where the personification of all that was evil was imprisoned.

Evil personified. Kraus would have laughed if he weren’t so afraid.

The Devil had welcomed him into the room, and Kraus stood strong against him. He knew he had to be on guard, for the prisoner’s manipulative ways were legendary. He had bravely informed the prisoner that he was a healer and had come only to administer to the fallen angel’s wounds. Lucifer had said he understood, and although most of his burns had healed, he wished for Kraus to treat a few stubborn patches.

The healer had stoically obliged. It was his duty, after all, to care for the angelic creatures around him, whether they were soldier or prisoner. But he found himself in awe of this prisoner’s demeanor. Here was the Prince of Darkness, the Lord of Lies, imprisoned by the forces of Good, and all he could talk about was how much he enjoyed the springtime, and could he please have some bread for his friend, a mouse.

Was it then that the first seeds of doubt were planted? Kraus wondered. Or had it been with those final words, as he completed the application of healing salve upon Lucifer’s burns?

“It’s going to get worse around here before it can get better,” Lucifer had warned. “That’s the way it has to be, but I thought you might want to know.”

He had wanted to ask the prisoner to explain, for he had already begun to suspect, to feel, that the near future was ripe with the potential for danger. The words were at the tip of his tongue, ready to fall from his mouth, when Verchiel returned from his latest defeat at the hands of the Nephilim. He had been lucky that the Powers commander hadn’t slain him then and there, but the angel had been preoccupied with his plans for the future and Kraus had quickly fled.

The future.

Lucifer’s words again echoed through his mind. “It’s going to get worse around here before it can get better.”

Kraus uncurled himself and leaned back against the cold plaster wall. He remembered the last time he had seen the prisoner, hanging from the ceiling in chains, his torso cut open and something unspeakable leaking out into the world.

“Very bad indeed,” he muttered, afraid to move, afraid to incite another pummeling wave of the supernatural force that seemed to have subsided for the moment, allowing him to gather his wits about him.

“Why would he have told me that?” Kraus asked the oppressive gloom.

In his mind he saw the mist leaking from Lucifer’s wound—saw how he fought to keep it inside—and Kraus knew he had to do something.

The thought of leaving his hiding place filled him with mortal terror. What was happening beyond the walls of this classroom was not meant to be seen by mere man. And besides, what could he possibly do to prevent it?

“That’s the way it has to be.”

Kraus finally found the strength within himself to stand, and before he could question the sanity of his actions, went to the door.

“But I thought you might want to know.”

He moved through the darkened school, the eerie vapor that had once been contained within the first of the fallen becoming thicker as he neared the gymnasium. Kraus tried with all his might not to let it affect him, not to be reduced to quivering human wreckage by its touch. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, plunging headlong into that debilitating mist. He waited for it to overcome him, to crush him beneath the overpowering weight of its despair, but it did not happen. Perhaps more than the ability to see was bestowed upon me by Verchiel’s restorative touch, Kraus considered.

It was like being blind again as he felt his way through the swirling mist, stumbling over the bodies of those who had already fallen victim to the full extent of the vapor’s malignancy. He could not bring himself to look at them, for they had been his charges for decades, their well-being his responsibility, and it hurt him deeply to know that there was nothing he could have done to ease their pain.

A limp human shape, hanging from the ceiling’s metal girders by thick links of metal chain, loomed out of the drifting mist before him. But now that he had reached his goal, Kraus was unsure of why exactly he had come. He could hear sounds within the fog, voices raised in rage, and he suspected that the Nephilim had come to challenge Verchiel’s insanity.

“It’s bad,” Kraus muttered to the unconscious figure, clutching his satchel of healing tools to his chest as if they could somehow protect him. The deafening sound of an explosion and the shattering of glass made the healer wince, and he shielded his head from possible hurt. “Very bad,” he whispered, and he felt the cool touch of the fresh night air invade the stagnant atmosphere of the gym.

He noticed that the mist was being drawn toward an opening in the ceiling where a skylight had been, and the nightmarish images of the vapor expanding across the globe filled his head. “I can’t imagine it any worse,” Kraus muttered.

And Lucifer slowly raised his head.

“Help me down,” he said. “I think that’s my cue.”

Aaron watched in terror as Verchiel rose up alongside the integrated fog, wings beating the air as he followed the seething mass on its undulating course toward the open skylight, toward its freedom.

Then instinct took over and Aaron spread his wings and leaped into the air. The manifestation of Heaven’s grief had become something akin to a single great tentacle, slithering through the air pointed at the gaping hole in the ceiling.

“You have to stop this!” he screamed at Verchiel, his blade of fire passing uselessly through the gaseous mass. At one time the Powers leader must have been a rational thinking being, and he hoped to somehow appeal to what remained of that creature, if anything remained at all. “You claim to be a loyal servant of God, and yet you’re going to allow this to happen? Think about what you’re doing!”

Verchiel hovered just below the shattered framework of the skylight, his tattered wings flapping furiously to keep his form aloft. His dark, horrible eyes were riveted to the snake of fog. Night had fallen outside, and despite the horror of what was happening below, the stars in the sky twinkled beautifully. If the mist were allowed to escape, Aaron wondered if the night sky would ever look this beautiful again.

“He has to be shown,” Verchiel said dreamily, beckoning for the deadly vapor to flow all the faster. “If I’d only been allowed to complete my mission, this never would have happened.” He shook his head sadly as if there was nothing more that he could do. “It is too late—too late for us all.”

Aaron flew at the Powers commander, thoughts racing. There had to something he could do to stop it. Anything. “It’ll be the death of us all!” he shouted at the angel, desperately trying to reach any hint of the divine still lurking within Verchiel. He had turned this monstrous haze on; he had to know how to shut it off.

The leader of the Powers brought forth his own sword of fire, swiping at Aaron, driving him back. “Yes, it will be our death!” he cried out, his face a blood-covered mask of open sores, “and He will be forced to bear that guilt.”

Aaron narrowly avoided the bite of Verchiel’s burning blade, riding dangerously close to the hellish mass. The angel came at him again, his bandaged hand closing about the Nephilim’s throat, forcing him back into the punishment of God.

Aaron struggled violently to be free, but Verchiel’s grip was like steel. He felt as though he were drowning, every fiber of his being invaded by the experience that was the War in Heaven. Finally he managed to break away, falling toward the ground, unable to function—barely able to cope with what his body was experiencing. He landed with a sickening thud and painfully rolled over on his back, looking up at the ceiling. He thought of the world beyond the gym. He had seen what Lucifer’s hell had done to the angelic, heavenly beings of amazing power and strength, and shuddered to think of the horrors that would soon befall the people of the world.

Struggling to collect himself, Aaron yelled at the angel hovering near the ceiling above him. “You have to stop it!”

Verchiel simply smiled, the marble pale skin of his face hidden in blood. “I can’t,” he said with a shake of his head. And his smile grew all the larger and twice as terrible.

Verchiel recognized some of the misery emanating from the body of the condensed vapor as his own. Anger turning to rage, sadness to overwhelming despair; all of them he had experienced during the Morningstar’s war in Heaven and during his own recent abandonment. He had contributed mightily to this swirling miasma of experience, and now it was to be released upon the world.

The angel’s black eyes gazed up through the open ceiling from which Hell would escape, through the cold light of stars above, and attempted to see Paradise. He had always imagined that his mission, his private war, would eventually end and that he would return to Heaven a hero of the cause. Things would be as they had been: chaos squelched, order restored, and the memory of Lucifer Morningstar and his atrocities purged from the memories of all divine beings. Verchiel saw himself basking in the celestial light of his Lord and Heavenly Father, the favored child of God, and all was right in Heaven and the universe.

But it’s not meant to be, the angel forlornly reminded himself, averting his gaze from the wide sky above to the snakelike monstrosity writhing in the air below him. Here was the personification of his own rage, his way of punishing all those who had hurt him. A horrible but necessary way to make things right again.

The Morningstar had not been forgotten. His presence had continued to infect the heavenly domain like some malignant growth, blossoming into the cancerous prophecy of forgiveness, and eventually the state in which Verchiel currently found the world. He could take it no more; the denigration had to be stopped.

“Are you watching, my Lord?” he called to the open space above him. The stars winked as if in response. “You may have been able to forgive them their trespasses, but I cannot.”

He soared up and out through the damaged skylight into the night, gazing down as the probing tip of the gaseous appendage cautiously reached beyond the skylight into the cool night air.

“That’s it,” the angel encouraged, a perverse satisfaction the likes of which he had never known empowering his decaying form. “This world of sin belongs to you now. Let them feel what we felt—how horribly we suffered for His love.”

Verchiel looked out over central Massachusetts, his gaze traversing beyond New England to look upon the whole planet of man. “Will You forgive me, Heavenly Father?” he whispered. “When my sin is committed and my penance is done, will You take me back into Your embrace?”

He again looked upon the monstrous thing that had been the bane of Lucifer as it prepared to make its way into the world.

But something was wrong.

It hesitated.

Verchiel flew closer and watched in surprise as the hellish mass began to recede into the building. “Come back!” he roared pitifully, his cries of disappointment echoing through the still of the night.

He descended, following the serpentine form back into the building, Bringer of Sorrow ignited in his grasp.

There was Lucifer Morningstar kneeling upon the floor of the gymnasium, his own fingers now holding open the gaping wound in his chest, an expression of unadulterated suffering etched upon his features, as he gradually drew the thick crimson vapor back within himself. Standing beside him, a supportive hand upon the first of the fallen’s bare shoulder, stood Verchiel’s own healer, the monkey Kraus.

“What is this?” the angel growled aghast, not so much that the Morningstar was free, but that one who had served him so faithfully, on whom he bestowed such a great gift, could be party to Verchiel’s own betrayal.

“I’m taking it back,” Lucifer said, struggling to his feet with the help of the human animal. “It is not the world’s burden.” The enormous volume of swirling mist slowly burrowed back inside his body. “It is my punishment. I am its master, and it is mine alone to bear.”

“You always were a selfish one, Lucifer Morningstar,” Verchiel ranted as he dropped from the ceiling, placing all his might behind what would be a killing blow.