Armageddon (4 page)

“He was helpful,” Mallus replied.

The Malakim pulled a bottle from the back of a shelf and removed the cork with a loud pop. He sniffed the contents and made a face.

“He was?” he asked.

Mallus nodded grimly. “I think I know where he meant.”

From the puzzled look on Tarshish’s face, Mallus could tell that he did not understand at first, but then realization blossomed in the powerful being’s ancient eyes.

“Right,” Tarshish then answered him. “I should have known we would end up there.”

“The scene of the crime.”

T
he six demons crept past Mrs. Carmichael’s sixth-grade classroom, hunting for prey in Brideview Elementary School. Seeing them in the building where she’d spent some of the happiest moments of her life filled Melissa with an anger that took nearly all her power to control.

But she waited, crouching behind the partially open door of the boys’ bathroom, studying their movements. The filthy creatures carried an assortment of swords, knives, and spears, nothing that would stand up to the divine fire at her disposal. They wore armor, but what skin was exposed glistened wetly in the dusky light coming in from the corridor’s large windows. She listened carefully as the demons spoke to one another, understanding their guttural language as she was able to understand all languages.

What Melissa heard did little to cool the anger that simmered in her breast. In fact, it burned all the hotter, desperate to be unleashed upon her enemies, as they talked about humans’ delicious meat. One of the demons even pointed out that children were sweetest.

Melissa’s angelic nature squirmed at the loathsomeness of it all, and sparks of holy fire began to leap from the tips of her fingers.

Bright enough to capture the demons’ attention.

“Shit!” Melissa swore, bursting through the bathroom door, a massive sword made of the fires of Heaven appearing in her hands.

Her first swing cut through the leg of one demon, sending him to the floor with a shriek. She buried the crackling blade into his bald skull, and he burst into flames, casting an eerie glow in the corridor for her to see by.

Melissa was surprised that the others hadn’t run. Instead, they simply stood, glaring at her with red, beady eyes.

She popped her wings, and the looks upon their monster faces were priceless. She could see that they were afraid of what she was. Even in the short time that her Nephilim band had existed, they had done a lot of damage to the Community of horrors, earning quite the reputation for their ferociousness.

“Boom,” she said, and lunged at them.

Swinging her flaming sword into the neck of another demon, Melissa separated its head from its body and sent
it tumbling down the hall. She could not help but wonder if the Nephilim had become the monsters’ boogeymen: the punishment that monster mothers and fathers threatened their monster kids with if they didn’t eat all their intestines for supper, or crawl into their coffins at bedtime.

The thought made her smile, but not for long.

There were four demons left. She methodically took two of them down, one after the other. She was much too fast for them, jumping up to fly over their heads, then dropping down to skewer them before they could figure out where she’d land.

The floor became sticky with their blood, which suddenly made Melissa think of the kindly Mr. Scartino, who was in charge of janitorial services at Brideview Elementary.

He wouldn’t be happy with the mess she’d made.

A spear point narrowly missed her face. She had to pay attention. Aaron had always tried to instill the importance of keeping one’s mind in the game.

Aaron.

She remembered how he’d looked after the injuries he had sustained, as they had all been forced to flee the school where they’d lived. He hadn’t looked good, not at all.

She wondered if he was even still alive.

Melissa forced her thoughts back to the problem at hand, bringing her burning blade down upon a demon’s spear, cutting it in two. As he tried to stab at her with the broken ends, she
pushed off from the ground, her wings carrying her above the demon. Using both hands and all her might, she plunged the blade through his head, splitting the nightmarish beast in half.

She glared at the last remaining demonic soldier. The stink of death and evil hung heavy in the air, and Melissa was again reminded of how much she hated what the world had become.

It made her cranky, and when she was cranky, she could be so very cruel.

“I’ll let you kill yourself,” she told the last of the demons, in its nasty language. Surprise flashed upon its leathery face. “I’ll stand right here and let you do it.”

The demon held a knife that looked as though it had been carved from bone. He waved it around, attempting to intimidate her, but having very little success.

“That’s about all the mercy I can muster for your kind,” Melissa finished.

They faced off for a moment, neither of them moving.

“So what’s it gonna be?” she finally asked the monster. “Are you gonna do it, or am I?”

The demon did pretty much what she expected. It threw its blade with deadly accuracy. Melissa caught the knife with ease, watching as the demon turned tail and fled. She willed flame into the demon blade, making it crackle and spark with the fires of Heaven.

“This would have been so much easier if you’d killed yourself,” she muttered as she took aim, and threw the burning
blade with all her might.

The knife punched through the demon’s skull, and it exploded in a flash of light and fire. The headless body slumped to the floor.

“She shoots, she scores,” Melissa cried, pumping her fist in the air as she imitated a cheering crowd.

Then she turned to the corpses littering the floor and began to drag them into a pile in the center of the corridor. Taking the burning blade of her sword, she shoved it into the middle of the demon pile.

Demons were extremely flammable. They went up like oily rags.

Melissa watched, making sure that none of the holy fire jumped from the pyre to the walls of the school corridor. She didn’t want to burn the building down. As soon as the bodies were nothing more than ash, she stuck her blade back into the smoldering pile, reclaiming the divine fire.

The school was silent. Melissa closed her eyes and extended her wings to be sure that no other beasts lurked nearby. The tips of her feathers were sensitive to the unnatural, but she could feel no vibrations alerting her to trouble. The school was now safe.

She took a final glance at the ashes, allowing one of her wings to sweep the pile across the corridor to mingle with the dust and dirt that had collected there since the world had fallen to pieces several weeks ago. Then she turned and headed for
the concrete staircase that would take her into the basement, passing tattered posters on the walls promoting good hand hygiene during cold and flu season.

Colds and flu are the least of humanity’s problems now,
she thought as she pulled open the basement door and jogged down the steps. A second set of stairs took her farther underground to the bomb shelter.

From what she understood, these bomb shelters had been built in most public buildings during the 1950s, when the threat of nuclear attack was on everybody’s mind. When Vilma ordered the Nephilim to flee to somewhere safe, it was the first place Melissa thought of. She had to wonder if the yellow-and-black poster depicting the symbol for radiation shouldn’t be altered to show that the shelter could be used for monster attacks, too.

She rapped on the heavy metal door with her knuckle.

“It’s me.”

She heard the sharp click of a metal bolt being slid back, and the door opened just enough for a set of old eyes to peer out from behind horn-rimmed glasses.

“You alone?” the old man, whose name was Charlie, asked cautiously.

“I certainly am,” she answered. It was the same answer she gave him every time she returned to the shelter.

“Can’t be too careful,” he replied as he always did, stepping back and allowing her to enter.

Melissa entered the room, closing the door firmly behind her. The others watched with fearful eyes. There were six of them in all—Charlie, who had opened the door, and his wife, Loretta; a young mom, Doris, and her five-year-old daughter, Maggie; Tyrone, who was no older than her; and the school’s middle-aged nighttime security guard, Scott.

They had all found their way here to the shelter, after the darkness fell permanently and the streets had become unsafe.

“So?” Scott asked, his hand creeping up to caress the can of Mace that he wore on his belt. “Did some of those things get in?”

“Yeah, they did,” Melissa said, moving toward the elderly woman who was lying on a cot in the corner. “But I took care of it.”

“Did you find anything to help Loretta?” the old man asked, following her to his wife.

Melissa dug in her pocket for the bottle of Advil she’d found in the teachers’ lounge, before encountering the demons. “This might help,” she said, opening the bottle and shaking out three of the pills.

Loretta looked sweaty, and Melissa was sure that she had a fever.

Her eyes went to the dirty bandage on the old woman’s arm, and she reached out to take a peek at the wound beneath. It appeared to be getting worse. Something totally unnatural had bitten Loretta before she and Charlie had abandoned their
home and come to the school looking for shelter.

“Hey, Loretta,” Melissa said, as she took the woman’s hand and gently squeezed. “Why don’t you sit up for a minute and take these? They’ll help with the pain.”

Loretta’s eyes opened to mere slits, and Melissa put her arm around the woman’s shoulders, pulling her up.

Charlie stepped forward with a half-empty bottle of water. “I’ve been trying to get her to drink, but she won’t.”

“Thanks, Charlie.” Melissa took the bottle, then put the pills on the old woman’s tongue. “Here, swallow these,” Melissa told her, carefully tilting the water to the woman’s lips.

Loretta looked as though she was still asleep, but she managed to get the pills down. Melissa helped her to lie down again.

“Do you think those will help?” Charlie asked, fiddling with his glasses. He took them off, wiping the lenses on the front of his shirt.

“They won’t hurt,” Melissa replied. She turned away from the old woman to find the young man watching her. “Got something to add, Tyrone?”

The dark-skinned youth had given her nothing but attitude since they met. They all knew what she was. When she’d first arrived, the building had been overrun with giant, ratlike creatures. She’d quickly dispatched them, and everyone had appreciated it.

But Tyrone had continued to look at her like she was
as bad as the rat things. “You know we can’t stay here much longer,” he said.

The group had been there for close to a week before she had arrived. They were now wrapping up their second week there.

“I don’t know that,” she replied, walking past him to get her own bottle of water. There were five cases of bottled water stacked against the far wall. They had to be careful. It wouldn’t last forever.

“We’re gonna run out of water . . . out of food.”

Several cases of ready-to-eat meals—MREs—were piled by the water. It was probably enough to last them a month, if they skipped some meals here and there.

“That’s not a problem today,” Melissa said, cracking the top on her first bottle of water for the day and taking a long swig.

“Yeah, so what are we gonna do when it is?” Tyrone asked.

Melissa knew he was right. They would have to do something before the food and water ran out, but she wasn’t sure what yet.

“I’ll know when the time comes,” she replied. They were all watching her now.

They must have thought they were saved when they first saw her.

Sword of fire in hand, wings flapping powerfully upon her back.

Their prayers had been answered.

As she drank her water and glanced back at each of them, she had to wonder if they were still feeling that way.

Or if they were thinking that not even Heaven could save them now.

*   *   *

Verchiel haunted the remains of the Saint Athanasius School and Orphanage, wandering the grounds in search of answers to what had happened, and where the Nephilim had gone.

It was obvious that they had been driven from this place, although they had not gone quietly.

The bodies of trolls, goblins, and other nightmarish beasts still littered the grounds—there was even a dragon corpse.

No, the Nephilim had not left their home without a fight.

But the question still remained—where had they gone?

Something wriggled at the former Powers’ leader’s core, a feeling entirely unfamiliar to him. He paused where the science building and secret library had once stood, and where now not a trace of either remained, considering the odd sensation. He decided that it must be guilt. Guilt that he had not been here to help those who had once been his mortal enemies, but were now unlikely comrades. Guilt that he had been approached by servants of the Architects and had been invited to swear his allegiance to their cause.

His eyes ticked down to the pale skin of his forearm and the strange, snakelike mark that had appeared there. The three
hooded sisters who spoke for their masters, the Architects, had given him the mark. They’d told him that once he had made his decision, they would know, and would call for him.

But Verchiel also had another choice to make. A choice that an ancient prophet had foretold in a painting. A decision would have repercussions on his future, the future of the world . . .

And the future of Heaven.

Verchiel seethed, his anger leaking from his divine form and setting the very ground around him afire. He had never seen the world in shades of gray before. As leader of the heavenly host Powers, he’d had no doubts about who his enemies were and what had to be done to purge their blight from the world.

But the Lord God Almighty had seen things differently, and Verchiel had been struck down by one of the very creatures the Powers’ leader had sought to render extinct.