A Hundred Words for Hate (19 page)

Francis scanned the room. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, doubting he’d see the flaming, eye-covered orbs of the Thrones floating around the Pelican, but then again, he hadn’t followed through on his orders, and the Thrones were impatient sons of bitches.

But it wasn’t the Thrones. It was an angel, tall and dressed to the nines in a dark suit and tie. The angel’s human guise was a striking one, with hair and beard of glacial white. He looked like some sort of aristocrat who had decided to see how the simple folk lived.

He was headed directly for Francis, other patrons instinctively moving aside, allowing him to pass.

Francis casually set his jar of moonshine down, letting his arm brush against his coat pocket. The Enochian dagger was still there, resting . . . waiting . . . eager for another taste of angel blood.

But he would wait, see what the creature of the divine wanted first. Who knew, maybe he just stopped by for a drink, saw Francis, and was coming over to say hi.

And maybe pigs had suddenly learned to fly.

Eliza was wailing beautifully upon the stage, this time accompanied only by the fat man—Big James—on his guitar.

Francis watched her, but was totally aware of the angel now standing before him. “Can I help you with something?” he asked, his eyes never leaving the woman onstage.

“No, I don’t think that will be necessary,” the angel said, his voice oozing authority.

Francis glanced quickly at the angel and was surprised to see that he too was staring at Eliza.

“I believe we’ve both found what we’re looking for,” the angel said.

“Maybe you should start by telling me who you are and what you want,” Francis said, feeling what could only have been sharp pangs of jealousy.

The angel slowly turned his gaze to meet Francis’s.

“I am Malachi,” he said in a way that made Francis think it should have meant something to him.

“Am I supposed to know you?” he asked, retrieving his whiskey from where he’d placed it on the floor beside his stool. “Because I’m sorry to say I have no idea who you are . . . other than you’re obviously from that grand ballroom upstairs.”

“Grand ballroom?” Malachi questioned, before it eventually dawned on him. “I see, you make light of the Kingdom.” He nodded ever so slowly to show he understood, but Francis doubted that he really did. “You’re trying to be like them—the humans. I could never understand the need for this sense of humor. It was a trait I would have deemed worthless in the initial design, but the Allfather saw things differently.”

Malachi’s words were like a jab with a sharp stick. This talk of design and the Allfather piqued the former Guardian angel’s curiosity to the extreme.

“Now do you know who I am?” Malachi asked.

Francis knew of a powerful angel, one of the first to be created. It was he and the Morningstar who had stood by the Lord God’s side as He created the Heavens and the Earth below.

And yes, he had been called Malachi, but why would an angel of such power be here?

“You’re
that
Malachi?” Francis asked, hoping that he was mistaken.

“I am,” the angel said.

“But why are you
here
?”

“I am here for the same reason you are,” Malachi said, staring at the stage where Eliza and her band were deciding what song they would do next.

Francis’s hand drifted down toward his pocket. “You’re here to kill her.”

“No.” Malachi looked at him. “To save her.”

Francis’s head was spinning, and he was about to ask the angel to step outside so they could talk freely when there came a horrible commotion—the sound of smashing glass and splintering wood, followed by the screams of the Pelican Club patrons.

Francis jumped from his stool, removing the deadly blade from his pocket. The screams intensified as the air became rank with the smell of burning flesh and something else.

Something divine.

The smell of angel.

The cries of the fearful and the dying replaced Eliza’s songs. Francis watched in growing horror as the club’s patrons, engulfed in fire, ran to escape, too terrified to realize that they were already dead as the hungry flames burned them to nothing.

A Cherubim emerged from the smoke with a discordant roar. It had been a very long time since Francis had last seen one of the more beastly of the Heavenly hosts. The Cherubim were the Lord’s guard dogs, and he briefly considered the fate of Leo and Cleo on the front porch of the establishment.

What is something like that doing here?
Francis wanted to know.

He watched as Melvin stood bravely before the forbidding angel, grabbing hold of a chair and swinging it wildly at its multiple faces in an attempt to drive it back.

It was the face of the lion that decided the club owner’s fate, its ravenous jaws opening to ridiculous proportions, snatching the man up, and biting him in half.

Francis had seen enough.

He was moving toward the Cherubim, knife poised and ready. But something grabbed hold of his arm with a steely grip.

Francis spun around and looked into the face of the angel Malachi.

“You won’t do much damage with the likes of that,” the elder angel said, making reference to Francis’s Enochian blade.

The Cherubim lifted its trifaced head, and its multiple eyes locked upon the angels. He spread his wings, fanning the smokefilled air eagerly before he started to charge.

“He’s looking for her,” Malachi said, taking his eyes briefly from the monstrosity coming at them to look at Eliza frozen upon the stage.

“Eliza!” Francis cried out, noticing for the first time that she was still inside.

But the Cherubim had noticed her too, changing his course and barreling across the club floor, tossing tables and chairs aside as if they were nothing.

“Get her to safety,” Malachi ordered. “You have to protect her for me.”

Then Francis saw that the angel held his own weapon in hand, a blade, long and narrow, that seemed to have appeared from nowhere, and looked as though it might have been made from a piece of the sun.

And for a brief moment, Francis actually believed that the two of them had a chance against the rampaging Cherubim.

Right before Malachi plunged the burning dagger into Francis’s eye.

Hell

Francis screamed at the top of his lungs, struggling against the restraints that held him upon the stone table.

Malachi withdrew his blade, the smell of burning angel flesh trailing behind it like a tail.

“There,” the angel lord said, placing a cold, dirty hand against Francis’s hot, sweating brow.

“What did you do to me?” Francis asked, his voice nothing more than a strained whisper.

“I made you forget,” Malachi replied with a knowing smile. Hell rumbled outside the caves, sending shock waves through the mountains. Dust and dirt rained down from the ceiling upon them. “But I left you with enough to do what needed to be done.”

Malachi turned and picked up a bucket nearby.

“She had to be protected,” he said, pulling a ladle of water from the bucket and bringing it to Francis’s lips. “And I could think of no one better to do that than a member of the Guardian host.”

Francis did not want the water; he wanted answers, but as the ladle touched his lips he slurped greedily until Malachi took it away.

“I don’t fucking understand,” Francis said as the angel tossed the ladle back into the bucket.

“And you shouldn’t,” Malachi said. “But it will all become clear as we progress.”

The scalpel was in his hand again, and Francis began to thrash in anticipation of what he knew was to follow.

“Let us continue,” Malachi said with cold efficiency.

And Francis steeled himself against the incredible agony, eager to know what this was all about.

Desperate to remember.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
he swamp is trying to kill us
, Remy thought as he was dragged deeper and deeper beneath the thick, muddy water.

But Remy was having none of that, thank you.

He called upon the Seraphim, but the essence of Heaven that resided inside him did not respond.

Swamp grass reached up from the silt-covered floor, wrapping around his ankles and drawing him down to the bottom of the swamp. Remy struggled in its grip as supernaturally invigorated currents swirled about his face, trying to force him to breathe.

Just take a deep breath
, he imagined the swamp water saying in a thick Louisiana accent.
Suck it in deep, boy, and all your troubles will be over.

He commanded the Seraphim to manifest, but somehow it denied him. He could feel it deep in the darkest part of his being, watching as his human nature struggled with its newest plight.

So weak and fragile
, he heard it growl.
But still you cling to it.

This is not the time
, Remy said, oxygen deprivation starting to take its toll.

I have nothing but time
, the Seraphim replied.
Time to lie here buried deep within the darkness of your being, waiting to be called upon when needed . . . imprisoned and hated when not.

The grass was drawing him down, catfish and snapping turtles stirred by his presence, hearing the siren call of the swamp to attack.

Perhaps it would be better to die
, the Seraphim continued.
To allow the fragile guise of humanity that you wear to choke upon the black water, to suffer no more.

His lungs were about to burst, explosions of color blossoming in the darkness. There was nothing Remy could do other than call the Seraphim’s bluff.

He opened his mouth, foul water pouring in to fill the cavity, and for a moment, he knew what it might be like to drown.

For a moment.

The Seraphim flew up from the darkness, filling his every fiber with the power of its being, chasing away the opportunity for death. Remy’s body burned with the fires of Heaven, the heat from his armored flesh causing the water that surrounded him to boil with such intensity that nothing could live near him.

So glad you decided not to die
, Remy chided, wrestling with his angelic nature so that it could not assume total control. Beneath the churning waters, he spread his powerful wings and sprang from the bottom of the swamp in a roiling cloud of silt, dead fish, and turtles.

The world had turned to muffled chaos.

Jon thrashed, trying desperately to keep his head above water as the swamp tried to pull him under. He could feel things around him, beneath the stinking water, things that bit at his clothes, trying to get to the flesh beneath, things that wrapped about his ankles, trying to yank him below.

“Please!” he screamed, moving his head away as a wave rushed at him, trying to enter his mouth to silence his voice and steal his life. “We don’t mean you any harm.”

He could see Izzy still standing on the platform in front of her house, hands glowing with supernatural power that flowed from her fingertips down into the water.

“My daddy said you’d be coming someday,” she cried over the groans of the swamp bending to her will. “You’d be coming here to try to find out about my mama, and nothing good would come of it.”

Something in the water tugged hard upon his ankle, and Jon screamed once before being pulled beneath the surface. His hearing aid buzzed and whined as it was submerged. Frantically Jon reached for his foot, feeling the slimy blades of grass wrapped around his shoe. Before his lungs could explode, he tore the shoe from his foot and struggled back to the surface.

Jon broke the surface, gasping for air, and found himself gazing up into the face of the woman using the swamp as her weapon.

“Just . . . just let me talk to you.” He gasped, struggling to keep his head above the thrashing water.

“You’re not dead yet?” Izzy asked, her voice filled with annoyance. Then she raised her hand, sending a writhing blast of magickal power out into a wooded section of the animated swamp. “I can fix that.”

The waves grew, breaking over Jon’s head, their weight trying to push him down again. He fought the watery onslaught, arms flailing, desperate to grab onto something, anything that could keep him afloat.

Through stinging, bleary eyes he saw something floating in the water not too far from his reach, but as he reached out to take hold of what he thought was a thick branch, he caught sight of two yellow eyes.

Alligators
, his brain screeched in full panic.
I’m about to be eaten by alligators.

Jon spun in the water, and began to swim as hard as he could away from the approaching predators, but Izzy wasn’t going for it.

“Where are you going?” she called out from the deck. “Don’t you want to meet some of my babies?” She started to laugh, directing even more of her magick into the water surrounding her stilt house.

Jon imagined he could hear the sound of the gator swimming closer, its hissing breath as it anticipated its next meal, its jaws creaking like an old hinge as it opened its mouth wide for the first bite.

A wave of black water dappled with dead fish and God knew what else rushed at him, throwing him backward into the path of the advancing alligator.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Jon heard Izzy say over the whine of his water-damaged hearing piece.

At least I’ll be with Nathan soon
, he thought as he slowly turned, looking into the cold stare of reptilian death.

But then the alligator came to an abrupt stop as the water around them became suddenly hot.

It began to froth, and glow an eerie yellow as something rapidly rose to the surface.

The angel erupted from the swamp in an explosion of blazing light and clouds of steam, his mighty wings flapping powerfully, holding his majestic form above the frothing waters.

Remy scanned his surroundings with the eyes of a warrior, searching out the nearest threat.

He saw Jon bobbing in the water below, an alligator too close. Remy angled his body down toward the water, and reached down to snatch Jon from the water.