A Hundred Words for Hate (33 page)

There had been something horribly liberating about the experience, and yet terrifying. To think of the Seraphim—to think of this being of divine power filled with rage—unleashed upon this holy place . . . it scared his human side.

But their options were few, for he knew that he didn’t have the power to face the Shaitan without the unbridled fury of the Seraphim.

He could feel the scions of Adam and Eve staring at him. They were looking to him for guidance, unaware of the struggle going on inside him. It was taking everything he could muster to hold on to the leash. . . .

“What now?” Jon wanted to know, nervously looking about him. The jungle was moving, writhing as if in pain.

“We find the nest of the Shaitan, and kill them before they can be born,” Remy answered as the Seraphim howled for blood, testing his resolve at every turn.

“Then we’d better find them fast,” Izzy said. She was leaning against a nearby tree, her complexion wan—sickly. “I’m not feeling so good since hooking up to the Garden,” she explained. “Think I might be sharing how Eden is feeling . . . and it isn’t good. I don’t know how much time we have left.”

The flaming sword began to vibrate in Remy’s hand, and as if the blade had a life of its own, its tip suddenly pointed toward the earth.

Jon jumped back as Remy struggled with the unwieldy weapon.

“What’s happening?” he asked, afraid.

“I don’t know,” Remy answered, fighting the blade. The pull was incredible, his muscles straining to keep the sword from stabbing the ground.

“Let it do what it wants,” Izzy hollered. “It has a connection to this place. . . . I think it might be trying to help.”

Remy did, allowing the burning blade to drop, stabbing into the soil of Eden with a sibilant hiss. Images from the Garden began traveling through the sword and into his mind.

And what he saw filled him with horror.

The Tree of Knowledge, withered and dying, the ground beneath it churning with unholy life—as Malachi and the Shaitan looked on.

It was more than he could stand, and the Seraphim raged, charging forward to wrest away control.

Let me out
, the divine power demanded.

And Remy knew he had no choice.

He let the Seraphim come.

The angel Remiel considered the humans before him.

And, finding them of no importance to the coming conflict, he stretched his golden wings and leapt into the sky.

There was evil to be vanquished.

Blood to be spilled.

Battles to be won.

All in the name of Heaven, and the Lord God.

The Tree was nearly dead.

“Master, what is wrong?” Taranushi asked with concern.

It’s been drained
, Malachi thought, as he placed a hand against the dark, dry bark.
The fetal Shaitan have feasted upon the knowledge of the Almighty.

They should never have been capable of such a task. They were never supposed to do something such as this.

They were not designed to do something like this.

All that knowledge
, the elder thought, eyes turned to the soil around the base of the Tree. The ground bubbled as the Shaitan stirred.

And he began to wonder if perhaps he’d made a mistake.

He looked up as the fearsome form of Taranushi approached. Malachi recalled the ferocity of this first Shaitan, the violent acts he had mercilessly performed throughout the ages in Malachi’s name.

The knowledge of God contained within such a vessel . . . perhaps it wasn’t the best of his ideas.

He revisited his vision of a future plagued by a war that would bring about the end of all things. He saw the Shaitan in this vision, believing at one time that they were fighting under
his
command, but now . . .

“What is wrong?” Taransuhi asked again.

“Nothing,” Malachi lied. He looked to the writhing ground again and felt nothing but disgust.

“They’re not ready,” he stated flatly, turning his gaze back to his servant. “It is not yet time for them.”

Taranushi’s expression was one of confusion. “I do not understand. I can feel my brothers and sisters . . . desperate . . . wanting . . . ready to be born . . . unleashed into the world.”

Eden trembled angrily beneath them, and Malachi lost his footing, stumbling to one side. Taranushi caught his arm and their eyes locked.

“Finish what you have started with me,” the Shaitan pleaded. “I no longer wish to be alone.”

Malachi could hear the desperation in his creation’s voice, and considered what it would be like to be the only one of your kind. God had created him first, mere seconds before Lucifer, and he remembered that feeling.

The intimacy between creator and creation. It was something that could never be forgotten. Fleeting, but so powerful.

If only the Lord had stopped there, what a reality they could have shaped.

“Sometimes alone is best,” Malachi said, pulling his arm away, already considering alternatives to his future. A future that did not include the Shaitan. “There’s a cave nearby that I used for my work,” he began. “We’ll go there before we leave Eden and—”

“No,” Taranushi roared.

The symbols on his pale skin began to flow, like the warning of a snake’s hiss just before the strike.

Malachi reared back, startled—but not surprised by the creature’s insolence.

“You will do as I say,” he ordered, exerting his will over his creation.

The markings upon the Shaitan’s skin slowed, and the creature backed down beneath his gaze.

“Remember that there are even worse fates than being alone,” Malachi warned, a sudden niggling thought entering his mind as he looked upon the powerful beast.
Am I strong enough to defeat the Shaitan?

And as if the beast could sense his sudden inkling of weakness, Taranushi’s body became like smoke as he emitted the most bloodcurdling scream.

“I have waited long enough!” the Shaitan proclaimed, swirling around the Tree of Knowledge, flowing past to reconstitute before the two humans.

“You will do as I command,” Malachi ordered.

But it was too late; the Shaitan was beyond all that.

“I hear them,” the creature said, breathing rapidly. “They are calling out to me . . . questioning why they are still beneath the cool, damp earth of this place, while there are kingdoms and worlds to conquer.

“Gods to usurp.”

Malachi knew he had to do something. Things were spinning rapidly out of control. Carefully, he approached his creation.

“Taranushi, please,” he pleaded in his calmest tone. “Trust me. Your species
will
be born; they are just not yet ready.”

“You lie!” the monster bellowed. “I can feel that they are ready.”

“A tragic miscalculation on my part,” Malachi said, closer now. He palmed his dagger from within the folds of his robes. “They need more time.”

He was closer now, and Taranushi seemed to be listening.

“If we were to complete the process now, they would be deficient. Imperfect.”

Malachi was close enough to strike. At least he’d been smart enough to build in a weakness for the Shaitan. He would strike at the monster’s heart; even though it wasn’t often in the same place as the beast shifted its shape, the elder could sense—could hear—where it was at that moment.

“And we wouldn’t want that.”

Malachi lunged, his burning blade plunging into the solid flesh of his creation’s chest, and into where its monstrous heart beat.

The elder’s eyes met Taranushi’s, and he expected to see the light of life failing, but the Shaitan only snarled.

“What you seek is no longer there,” Taranushi growled.

Malachi attempted to pull back, but it was too late. The Shaitan’s flesh bulged outward to engulf his hand, trapping him.

“Perhaps it is a cycle,” Taranushi said, his form shifting to resemble Malachi.

“You betray your Creator, and I betray mine,” the monster spoke with Malachi’s voice, a sinister smile appearing on his bearded face.

The Shaitan struck, dark energies flowing through his form and into the elder. Malachi screamed out in pain as the force of the energies ripped him from Taranushi’s clutches and sent him flying to land at the base of the Tree of Knowledge.

He lay for a moment, stunned, feeling the Shaitan in the ground below him moving toward the surface.

“You dare,” Malachi said with great indignation, as he slowly climbed to his feet. He summoned the remnants of his divinity, and even though he had been stripped of most of his angelic power when sentenced to Tartarus, he was an elder, and the power that still remained was awesome.

Heavenly energies flowed from his body; Malachi was ready.

Taranushi crouched at the edge of the jungle, the black markings upon his pale form flowing again, forming larger and bolder shapes, in his attempt to distract his opponent.

The Shaitan moved, but not in the way the elder expected.

Malachi had counted on a full-on attack, the servant versus the master, but the monster moved quickly to the left, toward the humans cowering on the ground.

“If you will not bring them forth, I will,” the Shaitan proclaimed, snatching up the cadaverous form of Adam and heading for the Tree. The old woman screamed, leaping to her feet, trying to drag the man from Taranushi’s muscular tentacle, but the monster was too fast.

Malachi tried to block his way to the Tree, but Taranushi was fury incarnate, moving with incredible speed, dodging the elder’s pathetic attempts to strike him down. Multiple limbs, flowing with their own arcane energies, lashed out, and the elder was tossed aside, tumbling from the base of the Tree to lie upon the trembling ground.

Taranushi stood beneath the Tree, Adam’s limp and naked form before him.

“A sacrifice,” the Shaitan cried to the Garden. “Let the blood of the first feed the hunger of a new beginning.”

And as Eliza Swan screamed, Malachi watched, helpless, as Taranushi brought Adam toward his mouth of razor-sharp teeth, biting into the old soul’s withered throat and letting his ancient blood ooze from the gaping wound onto the soil.

What have I done?
The question reverberated through Malachi’s mind as he watched the horror unfold.

Adam’s blood rained down upon Eden’s flesh, the disease beneath her surface becoming more active as it fed upon the ancient life stuff. The ground began to tumble and roll as if in the grip of convulsions. And from the cold, dark womb of dirt, a new life started to emerge.

Taranushi let the limp and bleeding body of Adam fall to the ground, as pale, childlike hands shot up from the soil, like some perverse fungus. They attached themselves to the ancient one’s body, sinking tiny claws into the withered flesh and tearing pieces away.

The old woman wailed for the first of men, her sad tears running down her face to water the soil of Eden.

And from her tears the most beautiful of flowers began to grow.

Malachi was paralyzed by the sight, one part fascinated, the other filled with terror over what was to come.
It’s too late
, he realized, knowing that he did not have the strength to face off against Taranushi and the emerging brood. Slowly he rose to his feet, careful not to arouse the Shaitan’s attentions, and started for the cover of the thick jungle foliage. He would find his cave, and there he would begin to compose his escape.

Images of the Shaitan forces invading the Kingdom of Heaven oozed into his mind, followed by the presentation of total darkness, and he had to consider the fact that perhaps there would be no tomorrow.

The thought came upon him like a shroud draped over the face of the dead.

He was just about to turn away from the horrors unfolding at the base of the Tree, when a sound from above made him stop.

He had heard this sound before when last he’d stood in the Garden.

It was the sound of God’s terrible fury taken shape.

The war cry of the Seraphim.

Remiel dropped from the sky, burning blade in hand, a scream of furious indignation on his lips.

How dare this thing taint the Lord’s Garden with its presence
, the Seraphim thought as it swooped down upon the Shaitan.

The blade arced as he dropped, seeking out the muscular flesh between the beast’s head and shoulders. Remiel watched the fiery sword, anticipating the sensation of its razor edge biting into thick muscle.

But it was as if the blade passed through water.

The Shaitan’s body shifted, flowing away from the descending soldier of Heaven, to reconstitute directly across from him.

The monster smiled, attacking with the speed of thought.

Multiple sets of limbs rose, fingers like worms writhing in the air as bolts of snapping blue energy leapt from their tips. Remiel spread his wings, lifting off from the ground and blocking most of the supernatural energies with his sword, but one of them got through. The dark magick pierced his shoulder, an electrical fire igniting in his veins, causing his wings to grow numb.

He fell through the withered limbs of the Tree of Knowledge, landing on the body of Adam, the stink of the first human’s blood flowing up into his flared nostrils. He could feel the sickness of the Garden, feel the evil bubbling up just below its surface, and was almost taken to the brink because of it.

The Seraphim began to rise as tiny, white hands with claws like hooks reached up from the ground, grabbing at his armored form. Remiel watched in horror as the claws pierced the Heaven-forged armor with little effort, holding him in place as more and more of the birthing Shaitan attempted to feed upon him. He furiously beat his wings, pulling away from some of their clutches, and was able to kneel upon the churning soil, raising the flaming sword that once belonged to the sentry of Eden, and stabbing it down into the ground.

There came a muffled explosion, followed by unnatural, high-pitched screams from beneath the dirt. Remiel could feel their pain, hear the psychic screams of the injured and the dying, as the hold they had upon him loosened, and he was able to free himself.