A Hundred Words for Hate (28 page)

He sat up in his sleeping bag, a mummy rising from his tomb, and sniffed the frigid air.

Was he going crazy, or did he actually smell that thick, wet jungle? He’d vacationed with his parents in Costa Rica a number of times while growing up, and he remembered the aroma fondly, often thinking of the South American jungles to help him drift off to sleep at night after a long and grueling day of taking readings in below-zero temperatures.

But there was no mistaking it: Gregson could smell the jungle.

He considered waking the others, but, still doubting his sanity, decided against it. Squirming from his sleeping bag, he put on the protective clothing he had shed before going to bed, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to awaken the other members of the team. And even if they did wake up, they’d probably just think he was going outside to perform the uncomfortable task of relieving oneself in a subzero-degree environment.

As strange as it seemed, the jungle smell was stronger—thicker—the closer he got to the tent’s exit. He quickly unzipped the opening, temporarily allowing the howling, razor-sharp winds entrance as he crawled outside into the snow, turning around to seal up the opening behind him.

Standing, Gregson slipped on his protective goggles, looking through the tinted lenses in the eerie twilight of the Pole, searching for the source of the unusual smell.

He didn’t have to look for long.

Gregson thought that he had to be dreaming. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Exhausted from pulling sledges loaded with equipment across the ice, he often had bizarre and incredibly vivid dreams of being home in Michigan, or even back on campus.

But this was unlike anything he’d experienced before.

The wind had piled a few feet of snow just in front of the tent, and he pushed through the powdery drifts in order to get closer.

He half expected it to vanish: a mirage on the bleak, frozen landscape.

But it didn’t; it remained, its details becoming more precise the closer he got.

There was a jungle at the North Pole—not a chance they could have missed it, not even in a blizzard. Gregson was about to turn back and rouse his fellow explorers, but the jungle called to him, the warmth of the place radiating outward and enticing him forward.

The Garden drew him closer.

He pinched his leg through his thermal pants, wanting to be sure this wasn’t just the product of a dreaming mind.

Thick, billowing steam rose up from the mass of trees that spanned for miles in either direction. It became warmer the closer he got, and he swore that he heard the sounds of squawking birds.

How was this even possible? His mind wanted to know. It didn’t make the least bit of sense, but here it was, right before his eyes.

One second Gregson Paul was walking across ice, and the next his heavy rubber boots were falling on grass. The temperature becoming increasingly hot, he could feel the sweat pouring from his body beneath the layers of his clothes. Before he could even question the act, he found himself stripping away the layers, basking in the heat of this magickal place.

And that was exactly what it had to be, he thought, as he dropped his heavy jacket onto the ground . . . onto the thick green grass.

Magick.

He found himself drawn to the place, compelled to enter the jungle, but the man could see no discernible entrance, his passage blocked by thick, thorny vines, massive trees, and tangled underbrush.

Gregson looked for a way in, moving along the jungle’s edge until he found it.

It loomed above him, between two enormous stone pillars, intricately forged from what appeared to be iron: two ornate gates.

But the gates were closed.

Barring him entrance to the Garden beyond.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

B
efore Taranushi knew himself to be Shaitan, he knew only that he had been shunned by God.

He dropped from the night sky down to the city rooftop in a swirling maelstrom of howling wind, dust, and dirt. In his multiple arms he still carried the nearly lifeless body of Adam, and the descendant of the first woman who, along with the ancient man, would complete the key, and allow him and his master access to the Garden.

And to his still-gestating kin.

The pale-skinned creature crouched upon the roof of the building, making sure that his charges were still intact; the use of magick often had diverse effects upon the frailer examples of humanity.

Adam was unconscious, but still among the living, and the woman was crying and trembling with fear.

How pathetic
, he thought, observing the life-forms that the Creator had deemed worthy, while discarding one such as he.

Taranushi remembered as if it had happened only moments before being presented in his infant state to the Lord God by he who had fashioned him from the stuff of darkness: his master, Malachi.

He could not recall the Lord’s face, but remembered the feel of His eyes. He was to be the first of the Creator’s servants: the soldiers of His glory as He created the universe and all that existed within it.

But the Holy Creator cared not for what Malachi presented, deeming it unfit to exist, and brushing it aside to move on to the next.

The Messengers
.

The angels.

But Malachi saw his potential, and refused to erase him from existence.

The Shaitan gazed up into the evening sky, sensing a presence in the pitch-black that surrounded the blazing stars in the sky. Sometime soon that darkness would be hungry enough to consume the stars.

And the Lord God would know the experience of being discarded.

Deemed unfit to exist.

The human woman looked at him with disbelief in her old eyes.

“If only your tiny mind could comprehend the mightiness of the gift that He has bestowed upon you,” Taranushi said with a snarl, resenting the woman for everything that she was.

He shrugged off the rage he felt welling in his being, and flowed across the rooftop to the door that would allow access to the building below. Another muscular limb erupted from his torso, grabbing hold of the doorknob and pulling it with all his might. The knob disintegrated in his grip, and he found himself creating other limbs to tear the barrier from its hinges.

Standing in the now open doorway, the Shaitan sniffed the air, seeking the scent of what had brought him here.

“There it is,” he growled, his bottom half having become like liquid as he flowed down the stairs, his captives under a powerful arm each, to the levels below.

The building was quiet except for the rustling of vermin and the rumble of the structure’s heat source. No one currently resided in the building, but the scent of previous tenants caused his nose to wrinkle in disgust.

Fallen angels—they were the worst-smelling of their kind.

The Shaitan reached the apartment building’s lobby, his muscular neck extending outward, nose twitching as he continued his search.

“It is below,” Taranushi said with a sly grin, moving toward another door. He reached out, sensing that there had been defenses placed there. His fingertips tingled the closer his hand got, powerful angelic magicks infused within the wood to prevent unauthorized entrance.

The creature sneered at the pathetic attempt, throwing himself full force against the barrier and reducing the door to splinters. Angel magick was nothing against the power that had created him.

The disgusting smell of a fallen wafted up from the room below, but there was also another scent beneath it, a smell that made the black sigils upon his pale flesh writhe like maggots.

Taranushi descended to the basement apartment, eyes scanning the darkness for what he had been sent to find.

Though it was weak, and beginning to fade, the stink was unmistakable.

He placed the frail form of Adam down upon a nearby piece of furniture, while uncoiling his tentacle-like limb from around the old woman’s waist.

“Stay where you’ve been put,” he warned her, snarling as he spoke to show off his pointed teeth. He realized that it had been quite some time since he’d fed at the biodome, and found the human before him quite tempting, but he wasn’t about to jeopardize his entire species to satisfy his hunger pangs.

The old woman’s gaze suddenly hardened, and he thought he might need to teach her through pain, but she instead moved herself across the floor to the prone form of Adam lying naked upon the furniture.

“If you’re not meaning to kill him you might want to be a little gentler,” she scolded. She reached into a pocket of the clothes she wore and produced a cloth. Licking the fabric, she proceeded to clean some small wounds upon the first man’s skeletal body.

“Everything is going to be all right,” she cooed to the cadaverous figure. “You just hold on and see.”

Adam remained silent, unmoving, as if dead.

Taranushi was tempted to tell them what their fate would be, but he had already wasted enough time, interacting for centuries with the fragile life-forms that had stolen God’s affections.

Turning toward the lingering aroma, he rushed toward it, eager for his mission to finally be over. After all this time, the pieces had at last fallen into place, and the beginning of the end was about to commence.

At the far end of the basement room the first of the Shaitan stopped before a closed door. He pulled it open to reveal what appeared to be a storage closet. Inside there was an old metal bucket and a mop, and some boxes stained and mildewed from water damage.

Gazing inside, Taranushi felt his smile grow wide with excitement, for he did not see an empty closet; he saw so much more.

He saw through the drifting malodor what had once been there not so very long ago.

Not a closet, but a passage to Hell.

A passage that would soon exist again.

Hell

The entire cave was shaking, the shrieks and moans of a Hell being gradually murdered echoing down the stone passage to where they were.

“It won’t be long now,” Malachi said wistfully, gazing off in that direction. “Changing . . .”

Francis dropped his bare feet down from the stone table to the floor, feeling the violent vibrations increasing in intensity. The entire place—the entire mountain—was just a few minutes away from being shaken to rubble.

The Hellion had risen from where it had patiently lain the entire time he was being tortured—the elder angel rummaging through his brain as if looking for a favorite winter hat. The foul beast paced nervously, glancing toward the sounds of its world being torn asunder.

Francis didn’t know what he was going to do. To say he was weak was an understatement. If asked, Francis would have had a difficult time admitting that he was even alive, but if he wasn’t going to attempt something, who was?

Malachi wasn’t right in the
cabeza
—a trait that he’d noticed seemed to be quite common in many of the Lord’s more powerful creations of late—and he certainly wasn’t up to anything good. Francis missed being able to pick up the Batphone to give Remy a call. Struggling to stand, he wondered whether Eliza had reached out to the angel, the memory that he had left her one of Remy’s cards, just in case, giving him a warm feeling in his tummy.

Or that just could have been his insides melting to slag.

Maybe Remy would be arriving any minute now, he thought, as the floor of the cave hummed beneath his feet. Flying down the cave corridor, guns blazing—no, Remy would most likely be carrying a sword—sword blazing, coming to save the day.

“You’re smiling,” Malachi said to him, raising his voice to be heard over the commotion outside.

Francis leaned back against the stone table, still too weak to stand on his own two feet.

“Was I?” he commented. “Must be a touch of gas.”

“I thought that perhaps you had resigned yourself to the approaching change . . . a moment of clarity before . . .”

Francis could sense it coming.

“Before what?” he asked, tensing to do something, but what, he did not know.

“Before your usefulness was brought to a close.”

Malachi struck with the speed of a cobra. That fucking scalpel was out again, and whenever that bad boy made an appearance, nothing good followed.

At first Francis thought that nothing had happened, that whatever Malachi was going to do was somehow avoided as the elder stepped back away from him.

But then he followed the elder’s eyes, and felt the growing tightness in the flesh of his stomach.

“You fucking didn’t,” Francis slurred, not wanting to look down at himself, but really having little choice. He leaned farther back against the table and slowly tilted his chin down to see the extent of the damage.

“You have always been a prominent fixture in the visions gifted to me by the fruit of the Tree,” Malachi said.

Francis looked down at his chest, seeing the fine line that started just below his sternum and went down to his groin. Blood had started to seep from the edges, making the line—the cut—that much more noticeable.

“And little by little I figured out why.”

His legs began to give out, and he caught himself on the stone table’s edge, the sudden movement causing the incision in his belly to tear apart, exposing his inner workings to the outside world.

“In using you as their agent, the Thrones provided me with the perfect all-purpose tool for my needs: strong, cunning, ruthless, penitent, and quite resourceful.”

Francis’s hands went to his belly, and he pressed them against the diagonal cut, desperate to keep his insides from sliding out onto the floor.

“And they gave you certain gifts . . . certain useful gifts to make you a better executor of God’s will.”

Malachi retrieved what looked to be a bowl from a collection of crap cluttering a formation of rock jutting from the cave wall used as a shelf.

“One of those gifts is in your blood.”

Someone had pulled the cave floor out from beneath him, and Francis found himself dropping down to his knees. The impact was jarring and he felt what was inside him—what he wanted to keep inside him—press against his hands. He was successful in preventing his inner workings from leaving his body.