Armageddon (27 page)

Not only out there . . .
Aaron heard Lucifer’s voice say.

He looked down to his bare chest, at the circular black mark, and found that it had grown smaller.

But in here.

In his thoughts Aaron saw Lucifer touch the center of his chest, showing him where the most corrosive darkness existed.

And with that Aaron understood exactly what needed to be done.

Through the wafting dust and smoke, he heard the sound of a child in distress. Instinctively Aaron advanced to help, but
stopped when he saw his foster brother sitting in the center of the street, crying pitifully.

“You killed us, Aaron,” Stevie cried, tears streaming down his face. “You did nothing to protect us, and so we died.”

Aaron felt a tightening in his chest as his black mark grew a little larger.

The faceless unsaved appeared again behind the crying child, and they, too, began to wail.

“God put you here for a purpose,” Stevie said. “But you failed him, Aaron.” Stevie’s eyes fixed him with a glacial stare. “You failed us all.”

The darkness inside Aaron started to churn. But he would have none of it.

The sigils burning on his skin, he reached for his chest, sinking his fingers into the skin around the dark mark, taking hold of the darkness and ripping the cancerous mass from his body.

“What have you done?” Stevie screamed. “What have you done?”

Aaron willed the divine fires into his hand and watched the darkness be consumed by the fires of light. Stevie ran at him, the seven-year-old transforming into an armored engine of hate.

Aaron understood now that victory was not to be judged by the tiny failures, but how the final battle was fought.

A battle that could only be fought without self-doubt.

Malak bellowed, his voice echoing from within the scarlet helmet he wore. His hands had become like knives, long and razor sharp, ready to cut flesh from bone.

Aaron fashioned a sword unlike any other he’d made, as if it had been forged in the fiery passions of God’s heart.

He’d carried the guilt of what he had done to Stevie for so long, allowing it to fester deep inside him.

Allowing it to grow.

He’d given that guilt a certain strength, a power over him, and now he knew that it was time to let it go. To accept what he had done. It was a necessary loss. If he had to do it again, there would be no choice.

“What. Have. You. Done?” Malak’s claws were ready to rip Aaron’s still-beating heart from his chest.

But it wasn’t to be.

Aaron pivoted at the waist, God’s blade of heavenly fire held tightly in his grasp, cutting through his foe’s armored neck, severing the helmeted head from its body. He watched the head spin in the air, as Malak’s armored form crumpled like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

The head continued to spin in space. All around them grew dark and cold. The head burst into flame, and in that flame, Aaron saw a face.

A beautiful face that called his name.

“Aaron.”

He grinned, for not only had he been delivered from
darkness—

But he had been delivered into the arms of the one whom he loved with all his heart and soul.

“Vilma,” he whispered.

*   *   *

Enoch ran across the mall’s parking lot and into the woods as fast as his legs would carry him.

He was bigger now, stronger, and it was all because of the memories that had been restored to him.

Enoch knew exactly why he had been sent back to earth—and what God had told him to do. But in order to fulfill God’s commandment, he needed to get away. No matter how much it pained him to leave Jeremy behind, he had to escape. Without him alive, the world, and all of God’s creatures, would meet a terrible fate.

Enoch was amazed at how sure he was of his body. No longer being a toddler made it that much easier for him to run. He had outgrown his shoes and was running barefoot, cautious not to step on anything sharp and injure himself.

The black-suited assassin appeared out of nowhere.

Enoch screamed, struggling with his foe, but even though he had grown, he was no match for his preternatural opponent.

The attacker moved to pin him, but Enoch flailed his arms, grabbing at the figure’s black mask and twisting it violently, before it came away in his hands. He was stunned by his attacker’s apelike visage. Its yellow eyes glinted as it snarled,
showing off a pronounced set of canine teeth.

Enoch had readied himself for a terrible fate, when his attacker bent down and sniffed at the child’s face and body. Still pinning Enoch to the ground with its superior strength, the apelike creature reared back, eyes twinkling—as if it had learned something from Enoch’s scent.

The creature emitted a terrible howling sound and hauled him up from the ground. Enoch struggled as he was dragged back toward the mall parking lot, but his efforts were fruitless. The creature simply picked him up and placed him under its arm as it barreled through the woods.

He was in a panic, thrashing his arms and legs wildly, when suddenly Enoch found himself falling. His attacker dropped beside him, lifeless, a knife—no, it was a metal feather—sticking out from its apelike face. The child scrambled away from the body, only to be stopped by a figure in a long coat, with huge wings.

Huge metal wings.

“Who?” the child asked, as the angelic figure loomed above him.

“Child of God,” the man said, “I know of you and have sworn to help restore the Metatron.”

Enoch could not believe his ears. “You know me?” he asked excitedly.

The strange angel stiffened, his head flying back in a silent scream. All Enoch could do was watch in terror as he collapsed,
dead.

Three more of the masked assassins walked toward him, knives in hand, and Enoch spun around to escape.

Only to run directly into the arms of another killer, who had come up on him from behind.

*   *   *

Satan Darkstar had returned to space.

The Lord of Shadows floated above the earth’s atmosphere, studying his prize.

He should have been happy—satisfied—taking it all away from God and from humanity itself.

But this was just one small victory. The battle that he foresaw gnawed at him like a wolf chewing on a bone.

It seems so small now,
Satan thought of his prize.

The Sisters’ memories were fresh in his mind. The ancient power that had been in their possession for so very, very long provided him with tantalizing glimpses of how to make his desires a reality.

A being of tremendous power, the Metatron, had been sent from Heaven to the world of man. The Metatron had been given a special path to come and go as he pleased, but this thoroughfare had been closed off when the being met with a horrible fate.

But though it was closed, the door remained.

All he needed was the key to open it.

Satan felt his ire rise. He had lost God’s power in the
Himalayas, but surely there were other keys. Keys that if used correctly could perform the function that he required.

What did the humans call them? These special keys? Skeleton keys.

He would use a skeleton key. He would replace the power of God that had been given to the Metatron with another power of similar strength.

Now where could something of equal divine power be found? Satan Darkstar thought as he floated in the vacuum of space. A cruel smile teased the corners of his angelic visage, for he already knew the answer.

This body he had stolen. There was power unlike any other deep inside it. A power that had been created by an act of supreme defiance—

When this creation challenged its Creator.

As a punishment for this act of insolence, the Creator took all the pain and misery that had been created from Lucifer’s defiant act and placed it inside His rebellious creation.

Lucifer would endure the hell of what he had done to remind him of his sins against his Creator, his Holy Father.

Satan Darkstar felt the energy churn inside him, a reminder of what existed at this body’s core.

Hell was inside him: a power to rival that of God and Heaven.

This would be his skeleton key.

Satan opened his wings of black and dropped back down
into the atmosphere, through the thick shroud of clouds, to the world—

His world.

Waiting below.

There was much to do before the conquest of Heaven. He needed to call upon his troops.

He needed to gather his armies, for there was a war soon to be fought.

V
ilma wasn’t sure how much more her body could take.

The room had become like the surface of the sun, or at least what she imagined the surface of the sun to feel like.

Aaron’s body was white hot, his skin covered with the glowing angelic sigils that were his birthright.

“I love you so much,” she whispered in his ear, as she held him tightly. Her own skin tingled painfully, on the verge of blistering. “Please, come back to me.”

Aaron’s body grew hotter still.

“Can you hear me? I need you. The world needs you.”

Vilma could no longer bear the searing heat. She released her hold on him—the hardest thing she had ever done.

He burned so brightly now that she could barely look at
him, and had to raise a hand to shield her eyes. “Aaron!” she cried desperately.

She knew that the Unforgiven were waiting right outside the chamber door, ready to release her as soon as she was ready. But not yet; she wanted to be with him for as long as she could, in case it was the last time she would ever be by his side.

The concrete walls began to crack and disintegrate, falling away in huge, dry chunks.

The heat finally became more than she could stand. It was time. Her heart breaking, she turned away from the man she loved and gestured for the Unforgiven to open the door. It would do no one any good if she were dead. There was still a battle to fight, an enemy to be defeated.

And if Aaron could not be there to lead them, she would act in his place.

Vilma heard a noise behind her, and suddenly, the blinding radiance was gone. She spun around to see a naked Aaron kneeling on the broken floor, his majestic ebony wings spread wide. The sigils that had blazed red on his pale skin were once again black. He was conscious and looking at her, his mouth struggling to move.

“I . . . I hear you,” he said through trembling lips. “And I need you, too.”

Aaron pitched forward, and she darted across the chamber
to catch him as he fell. He grunted in her arms as she lowered him to the floor. His wings furled, disappearing beneath the flesh of his back, and the sigils began to fade.

“Hello!” Vilma cried toward the door. “Help us, please!”

Aaron tried to raise his hand, to touch her face. “I missed you so much,” he whispered.

She couldn’t contain herself. She leaned down and kissed him passionately on the lips. His soft flesh was still hot, but she didn’t mind.

She heard the clanking of the door mechanism and the creak of the hinges as two of the Unforgiven technicians entered the room, clad in their heavy, heat-resistant outfits.

“He seems to be awake now,” she told them. “We need to get him back to the infirmary as quickly as—”

“No,” Aaron said, trying to push away from her.

“Aaron,” Vilma said, trying to be stern. “You’ve been in a coma for the last three weeks. You can’t—”

“Have to,” he interrupted. He stumbled slightly but managed to stand. “I think I’m good,” Aaron said, gently poking the puckered scar in the center of his chest. “The darkness inside . . . it’s gone.”

Taylor abruptly pushed past the two technicians. She stopped cold as her eyes fell on her naked son. “Oh God,” she whispered, her body beginning to tremble.

Aaron’s gaze quickly went to Vilma, and then back to the dark-haired woman who headed toward him.

But Vilma said nothing, watching as Taylor threw her arms around the young man.

“I’ve waited so very long for this day,” Taylor cried, her voice muffled as she spoke into his neck. “The day I would finally get to hold you.”

Aaron’s face wore a look of shock, then slowly relaxed into one of understanding. Vilma had no doubt in her mind that he instinctively knew who this woman was, as he threw his arms around her.

Taylor was the first to pull away. She reached up and took his face in her hands, staring at him in wide-eyed wonder.

“You’re my mother,” Aaron said, his voice as soft as a feather.

Vilma felt her eyes begin to tear at their raw emotion.

“I am,” Taylor said. “And you’re my son.”

An Unforgiven angel came into the chamber with blankets, handing one to Vilma, and then to Aaron.

Vilma nearly laughed out loud when she saw Aaron’s realization that he was naked in front of her and his mother.

He quickly pulled the blanket around himself.

“I always believed I would have so much to say to you, but now . . . ,” Aaron trailed off.

“We’ll have plenty of time to catch up.” Taylor reached out to stroke his arm lovingly.

But will they?
Vilma suddenly wondered as a grim-faced Levi entered the silo.

Taylor turned her adoring gaze away from her son. “Levi,” she acknowledged, the joy on her face draining as she saw his expression.

“We lost him,” the Unforgiven leader said woefully. “We lost the child.”

*   *   *

The ancient angel appeared distracted.

“That will never do, never do at all,” he muttered to himself, seeming to forget that Melissa and Cameron were even there. He turned abruptly then, heading deeper into the darkened chamber.

Melissa looked to Cameron. He appeared just as confused as she was. He shrugged, and they began to follow the angel as he continued to mumble to himself.

The chamber grew larger the deeper they went; the inside of the mountain had been hollowed out to create this vast space.

Melissa stopped, taking it all in as the lighting grew brighter, and she attempted to understand.

“What is this place?” she wondered aloud.

The walls on either side of the room were honeycombed with what looked to be frosted, podlike chambers. There had to be at least a hundred of them, probably more.