Jump: The Fallen: Testament 1 (30 page)

And Dal roared at Faith and cawed violently. And flames flew from his wings and rage filled his eyes. He could kill their Faith if he had to, but it would be better for his followers, and hers, to choose to follow. “It is
she
who shall be cast from the shadow of the great mountain, and I shall put claim on your soul for the next! None can save you, or her, from this fate, for such is the power of the Two Words.”

Faith looked up at the grandstands. The awesome sight of a million angels and what he was about to do made him smile. They were not the only ones who could bend and twist the Word to suit their own purposes. But all his life he had waited to feel the Word—see Heaven. Now that he had arrived, they had both lost their luster.

Faith spoke calmly, loudly, so all could hear. “My brothers and sisters of the Words of the two heavens, you have been deceived . . . but not by this dark angel alone. For I know your tribulation and your poverty . . . and the slander of those who say that they are gods and are not, but are truly deities of arrogance and jealousy.”

And Dal raised his wing, preparing to end Faith’s speech—splay out the guts of the father of the book, the new law. The law that was soon to be hers, as well.

Life would be his slave of the flesh and he would know her again and again. And he smiled and he swung at Faith—

— LIX —

RAIN COULD NOT remember her own judgment in the arena, but the judgment of the father seemed to last forever. The Dark Angel, Dal, tormented and tortured his soul, for hours it seemed, before giving him his wings. Then they took him from her and imprisoned him beneath the arena—put him in the Dungeon of the Damned, where the Chosen One and the Dark Angel kept the darkest
and
the brightest souls. Holding them until they forced them to fight for the sport of the crowd.

Rain knew that, she had been imprisoned there herself—caged behind iron bars covered with Rosary beads and crosses, unable to break free despite her newly bestowed power.

She could barely remember her own soul now—an archangel forced to fight others in the arena. But none had defeated her—none had come close. She cowered in her cage between matches, wondering and wishing that she could remember. But when she finally did, she was deep in the fall with her own father.

It was tougher for angels—they were not programmed like man—but she finally found her own free will and removed the yoke from her neck. Yet once she challenged authority, questioned Life, she was sent to the dungeons and chained for annihilation—the only way to destroy an angel.

Rain looked down at the Rosary beads and cross around her neck. It seemed like a privilege when they put them on her the first time—Life had told her it was a medal. That’s the last thing she remembered before the fall with her father. But when she brought the priest’s soul to get his wings in the arena, two golden angels had attacked her and put the Rosary yoke back on.

Yet after the church, Rain wasn’t the same innocent soul turned angel of bright. She would not be put under the spell again. She would not sleep through The End.

Rain waited in her sweltering dark cage as the golden guardian angel jailers stood watch just outside. She listened to the lust of the crowd in the arena, and then to the dark angel’s speech. Then she heard the father—Faith—give his own.
 

Rain’s light flickered despair in her cell, for she had failed the only thing that her father had entrusted to her—the safe return of Faith to the garden. It didn’t seem right—punishing the father like she had been punished with headaches in her life. After all, the dark angel himself had told the crowd—her brothers and sisters of light and darkness—that the priest was the author of the new Word. Would he kill the author? How could he?

She was afraid of Dal, but now she was afraid of Life more. When they dragged her from the arena, she could hear him, snarling and barking like a vicious dog at the father. The priest was laid low in the center of the field of diamonds and rubies. She knew now that they both intimidated all into following their rule. Dark angel or Life. . . They would kill Faith? Kill the father? She would not let them.

— LX —

I LOOK AT Salvation and Fury. I don’t think they understand, but I know what’s coming now. Hell, the father and I planned it. I couldn’t tell Salvation—she would have never let Rain go up there.

I didn’t tell either of them, but I knew neither the father nor Rain were coming back. Those two wouldn’t let them come back. Arrogant, oppressive and angry doesn’t mean stupid. Them or me, though, is a toss-up.

And by now, the father’s soul is an angel and the only thing that the dark bastard could do to him. . . I try not to think about it.

I hope this all works, because if it doesn’t. . . Let’s hope it does, because otherwise, ten billion souls. . . The father? What a waste.

And Salvation says to me, “She’s not coming back, is she.”

She’s not asking. It’s more like, “You better know what the fuck you are doing, because if my baby. . .” Or some scary shit like that.

“She’ll be okay,” I say. “She’s not our little girl anymore.” And I rub all of the healed holes that the bright angel of light—Rain—punched into me during the last few days. “Trust me, she can take care of herself.”

“For your sake,” Salvation says, “you better hope you’re right.”

— LXI —

WHEN LIFE LET her loose back in the Arena of Reckoning, Rain knew what her master wanted. It was hard for her to resist with the beads around her neck. She blasted Dal with her brightest light yet, before he had a chance to behead the father.

She watched him recoil from the truth of her light. Though he was fire itself—spat from the dark pit of the burning lake of oil—her light burned at his feathers and beat down their flames. And he took flight away to the shadows of the hall and landed on the other side of the arena.

The Chosen One watched, standing next to Rain, hands on her shoulders, grinning as her finest fighter yet sent Dal flying for cover. She smiled and then addressed the gallery, “Oh, how you are fallen from Heaven, my Day Star, my sweet son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground. . . . You who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to Heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the North; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are brought down to the far reaches of the pit by
my
light and
my
truth.”

Dal snarled at her. Life’s bright champion of light was becoming a nuisance. He had known the warmth of the Chosen One’s grace and favor before. It was fleeting and always ended the same way—cast from her side to rule in the bottomless pit of desperation and death. He knew Rain—her newest lapdog—would suffer the same fate. But for now, she needed to wait her turn.

Dal flew and the great flapping sound of his flaming wings burned through the air above the arena. He swooped at them both and spat a huge stream of fire. The two bright angels split and flew in different directions. Dal followed Rain, shooting fire and trailing black smoke.

With each blast, Rain flitted to avoid it, but Dal flapped his great wings to fan the orange flames and he shot another and another, chasing her around the arena, flying behind her bright shining light.

When she turned and slammed into him, Dal went crashing to the floor in a huge ball of orange fire and black smoke. When the black cloud of soot cleared, he sprang up and flew at her and shot fire from his wings and it engulfed her, and he fired all the feathers he could and Rain crashed to the floor of the arena, losing feathers and blood. And then she was back up and Dal flew at her again.

The Chosen One motioned toward the dungeons—she would not lose her champion this easily. Though she had never been bested since she arrived, Dal might be too much for Life’s unseasoned archangel. She would get more practice.

As quickly as Rain entered, two of the golden guardian angels from the dungeon snatched her from the floor of the arena and dragged her flickering body back through the tunnel, flying her to her cell below.

— LXII —

FATHER BENITO WATCHED helplessly as Rain was forced to fight with Dal. But weakened by a Rosary, she was unable to mount much of an attack. He knew now why Fury had hated them around her neck.

He had already surrendered hope when they took Rain during his judgment. Now Faith had to trust in his comrades. They were all he had left.
 

But if it was to be his last day in eternity, he would not go out like a lamb . . . or a lion. He spoke to the crowd as if they were his final words. Short and sweet—that was how he had always delivered bad news, “The dark angel has no claim on my soul.”

And Faith shook the talons of his two captors out of his side and off of his arms. And he spun and shot feathers at them both, piercing them and sending the two golden guardians, flailing and flapping toward the sides of the arena, squawking and screeching from the sting of his steel.

Then he stood and looked at the gallery. He could see Dal flying back—a huge ball of flame, preparing to silence him with fire. He flapped his newly minted wings and then hovered twenty feet above the center of the arena, so all could see and hear him. He said, “I will no longer talk much with you, for the new ruler of this world is coming.”

And then he recited the ageless prayer. The rest was up to them. And just like he told Jump, he altered it just enough to get his point across, “For light is his Mother, and darkness his Father, and he is their Son, and he is judgment, as my own judgment and yours was in the beginning, under my power for eternity, in this, our world without end. Amen.”

Neither of them could deny
that
word.
 

And then Dal’s flame melted Faith’s feathers and burned his flesh and boiled his blood. And Faith felt the agony and the darkness of wrath. But if his brothers and sisters could have seen his face through the flames, they would have noticed his smile—Jump was coming—right before he went to the black nothing before the next eternity.

And Dal’s flame fell down to a flicker. And he stood over Faith and growled to himself, “And now you are mine. You and your
book
.”

— LXIII —

IF YOU’VE EVER been deep in the forest at night, you would know the kind of darkness that descends over the three of us . . . and the planet. A thick blanket of black and the only light is the stars. A million. . . Billions of tiny points of bright pricking through the black of eternity, flickering like the truth in a dark sea of lies.

You can’t see the truth from the city. You have to go to the deepest, darkest woods of your soul. Because the city is full of its own light, an artificial brightness that masquerades as the truth of time. Lost in the forest, that’s where the light is the brightest. Because in the depths of your soul, shines the light.

“Are you fucking joking me?” That was what I said to the father when he told me that philosophical shit. But the guy was dead serious and now I know he was right. Because once we crumble the last lying, greedy, conniving flicker of the artificial light of humanity. . . Once Dubai falls, it’s a hell of a lot easier to see the truth in the darkness.

And there it is, shining like it was always there. A huge trail of bright stars in the sky—the pathway to Heaven.

I stare up at the twinkling trail of tiny lights. “You ready?” I ask Salvation and Fury.

They both know they are going.

“Like, where the fuck else can we go,” Fury says, “Vegas?”

Salvation laughs a little. “Not anymore.”

They both cluck and coo, obviously remembering what they did in Sin City. They told me about it, but maybe there’s something more.

When I quit chuckling with them, I say, “I still can’t believe you—”

“Whoa-whoa,” Salvation says.

“Oh my God,” Fury chimes in, “don’t you fucking know anything?”

Then Salvation clucks out a little giggle. Apparently the girls had more fun leveling that place than they told, because she looks at Fury and says, “What happens in Vegas. . .”

Fury smiles an evil little grin. Kinda gives me the shivers. “Dies in Vegas,” she says.

Then the two of them start flapping slowly toward the bright trail of stars in the dark night sky. And I can hear them above me, clucking and chirping at each other, lazily fluttering their words and their wings, pretending they aren’t shitting themselves at what’s ahead.

When I catch up to them, I say, “All right, ladies, foreplay’s over. Time to start fucking the faithful.”

I smile to myself and fly ahead. Then I listen behind me—I hate secrets.

“Fuck,” Fury says, “is he always like that?”

“Little girl,” says Salvation, “you have no idea.”

I smile in front of them and think,
We might just make it.

— LXIV —

THE TRAIL OF stars doesn’t work like the hole to bring souls does. It grabs the three of us like the jet stream currents, and Salvation, Fury and I rocket faster than any of us can fly on our own. Then the stars blur to streaks of bright light and then we are just . . . there.

When we appear at the entrance of an access tunnel on the edge of the arena, I can see that the dark bastard is deep into a rabble-rousing speech—he’s busy whipping the crowd of angels into a frenzy against Life. And something is lying at his feet.

Dal’s voice booms, “This two-thousand-year reign comes to an end, my brothers and sisters, and the light turns to darkness, and evil to righteousness.”

I can see a black angel coming down from the roof of the great hall. A huge iron key dangles from a great chain in his hand.

Dal points to Life. “And with this key,” he says, “I seize the dragon’s tail and bind her, and throw her into the pit, and shut it and seal it over her, so that she might not deceive you any longer, until this next two-thousand-year eternity ends.”

And it’s working pretty damn well, because the clanging of wings and the loud screeching of steel feathers fills the arena with the frenzy of the faithful and faithless, clamoring for blood, clucking and cawing for change. I don’t think they have long to wait.