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Authors: Robert Browne

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy
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“The what?”
“There are seven pages missing from the Gigas. Nobody knows how or when they disappeared, but there’s been all kinds of speculation about what’s on them, from a message from Satan to the secrets of God and the universe. And that’s probably what Ozan was after.” He tapped the iPad screen. “But it’s the
response
that has me puzzled.”
“Why?”
“Because it mentions the poet. ‘Don’t make the same mistake the poet made. You may lose more than your eyes.’ I think we both know who he’s talking about.”
“John Milton.”
“Exactly. He went blind nearly a decade before he wrote
Paradise Lost
. But this reply is couched as a
warning
to Ozan—don’t make the same mistake—as if Milton did something to
cause
his blindness.”
“So let me get this straight,” Callahan said. “On one hand we have these seven missing pages, on the other hand we have two guardians searching for secret messages, and smack in the middle of it all we’ve got a blind fucking poet.”
“There’s obviously a connection there. We just need to figure out what it is.”
Callahan got to her feet, stretched. “Well, maybe we’ll get lucky when we talk to the monk.”
Batty looked at her. “Monk?”
“I cross-referenced those e-mails with Ozan’s client database,” she said. “I got about a hundred different hits for D.C. and London, but only one for Chiang Mai. Three months ago he sent a package to a Christian monastery there. To a monk called Brother Philip. I’ve already chartered a flight.”
“Then maybe he
will
have the answer. I guess it makes sense when you think about it.”
“Why?” Callahan asked.
“The Devil’s Bible was written by a Benedictine monk.”
BOOK VII
 
The Fourth Moon of the Lunar Tetrad
 
Then in the East her turn she shines,
Revolvd on Heav’ns great Axle
—
Paradise Lost
, 1667 ed., VII:380–81
 
 
31
 
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
 
F
inding a new skin was always a problem for him.
Had he been like his sister, Belial, he’d simply tempt, seduce and lie his way into getting what he wanted. But over the years he had formed a personal code. One he did his best to follow.
No subterfuge, no games.
He would get what he needed simply by asking.
So his choices were limited. There weren’t too many humans out there who would willingly give up their bodies without the promise of some kind of reward. Which was why he found himself in Central City East, a section of downtown Los Angeles known as “the Nickel” or skid row, just blocks from the Angels Flight—a hillside rail tram that had only recently reopened for business.
The body he occupied—the body he was now forced to replace—had been found right here, a young man in his mid-twenties who had been a heroin addict since he was seventeen years old and had no qualms about leaving this world behind.
The young man’s speech had been slurred by drink and drugs, but he was cognizant enough to know what was being asked of him. Rewards no longer mattered. He had simply wanted a change, and was more than willing to take his chances in the afterlife.
“What’s it like out there?” he had asked.
“Like nothing you’ve ever known.”
“Will I see God?”
“I can’t give you any promises, but I
can
tell you that what you’ll see is a world
created
by God. What you make of it will be up to you—and it won’t be without its dangers.”
“I’m willing to take my chances.”
“Are you? I don’t want to do this unless you’re absolutely sure.”
“I’m sure,” the young man had said. “There’s just one thing I want to know before we start.”
“Ask.”
“Your name. I need to know your name.”
He remembered resting his palm on top of the young man’s head and thinking that, despite appearances, this was a good soul who would do well in the otherworld. Telling him his name was the least he could do.
“Michael,” he’d said softly. “They call me Michael.”
 
 
B
ut that was then and this was now.
After the fight in the alley and the severe loss of blood, the young man’s body was no longer useful to him. So Michael had patched up his wounds, gotten some much-needed rest, then used what little strength he had left to make his way back to skid row.
He hadn’t felt good about leaving Jenna behind. His instinct was to stay with her, keep watching her—especially with Zack still on the loose. He hadn’t intended to lose an entire day and much of the night, but what choice did he have? She seemed to be in good hands at the shelter, and with any luck he’d be back listening to her song before morning.
He began roaming the streets, feeling the life draining out of him with every step he took. He could, of course, abandon this body where it stood, but traveling through this world without a host was difficult and would only complicate his task. And he found it much easier to communicate with these beings when he looked and sounded like them.
As always, skid row was crawling with the wasted and the disenfranchised. Old and young, male and female, each one of them victim to human prejudices and often to their own mental or emotional weaknesses. They carried a sense of hopelessness so deeply rooted in their psyches that they saw no other remedy than to give up and give in. They drank and drugged themselves into oblivion, waiting and hoping for that final release.
Was he wrong to exploit that wish?
Maybe.
Maybe it made him no better than his brethren.
But his intent was pure. That much he knew for certain. He was here to
help
humankind, not hurt them. A cause he had dedicated himself to long ago.
He was a good hour into his search when he found a candidate. Older than he would have liked—late fifties or possibly early sixties—but there was a natural muscularity to his frame that couldn’t be disguised by the oversize shirt and the ill-fitting jeans.
The man lay sleeping under the marquee of an abandoned movie theater, huddled close to the boarded-up ticket booth, his hair long and gray, the equally gray stubble on his chin making the transition to full-grown beard.
He looked physically healthy and didn’t seem to be suffering the ravages of booze or drugs, so Michael had to assume he was mentally ill.
Which was both a blessing and a curse.
A blessing because his body wouldn’t give out so quickly, yet a curse because it was difficult to explain to someone suffering from mental illness why you want him to make the ultimate sacrifice.
A dilemma that Michael would just as soon avoid.
So he continued on, moving past the old man and dismissing him from his mind.
Half a block up, however, he felt a stab of pain in his side and realized that his stitches had torn loose and he was bleeding again.
He didn’t have much time.
Staggering to a bus stop, he sank onto the bench and checked the wound, doing what he could to stop the flow of blood. The moon hung low in the night sky, nearly close enough to touch, and as he sat there, holding his side, he thought about what was coming in just a few short days:
The last phase of the lunar tetrad.
The fourth in a quartet of full eclipses, unbroken in sequence, over the span of a single year. The last of four moons sliding through the umbra, turning a deep shade of copper.
A blood moon.
There were those who believed that consecutive eclipses were a signal from God. A sign that his son would soon return to the earth, that the dead would be resurrected and final judgment passed.
But there were others who knew better. Those—like Michael—who had been here from the beginning and had witnessed the creation of man and the world he inhabited.
Those who wanted possession of that world.
The dark rebels who had once been Michael’s friends.
 
 
T
he rebels had always thought of themselves as the heroes of the story. The bringers of light, the purveyors of truth, the bold few who had dared rise up against a tyrant to make their world a better place.
But history is written by the victors, and when the War in Caeli came to an end, those who had dared defy their father were beaten down and broken, labeled traitors, exiled to the belly of Abyssus.
To the world at large, they were seen as infernal spirits. Dark angels.
Daemones.
To their minds, however, the only thing that separated them from the so-called angels of God was their allegiance to individual freedom. They did not believe that their father, the creator of all things living, was infallible. Nor did they believe that he was fair or just or kind. And when he took it upon himself to create a colony of slaves, giving the poor hapless creatures the
illusion
of freedom, the rebels felt it only proper that they show him just how fallible he was.
These mindless beasts—these homo sapiens, as they would later come to be known—were weak willed and violent, superstitious and easily corrupted, susceptible to the ever-changing and often conflicting mythologies their creator had conjured up in order to mollify and manipulate them.
The rebels decided to exploit these weaknesses. What better way to expose their father’s arrogance than to lure his precious slaves into the endless fire? To tempt them into joining the New Rebellion?
Perhaps if he had treated these creatures with more dignity, this would not have been possible. But he had made a mistake in telling them that they were free to choose, only to punish them if they defied his will.
The contradiction did not go unnoticed.
While history would continue to be written by his followers, painting the rebels as evil and self-serving—using fear as a common motivator—the rebels worked quietly and with purpose, forging their own kingdom amidst the fires of Abyssus and doing all they could to undermine his authority.
Lucifer, a formidable warrior who was once God’s most perfect angel, had demonstrated a capacity for ruthlessness beyond all others. He rose among the ranks to become the leader of the rebels, urging them to return to Caeli to fight again. To conquer their father’s kingdom and take back the dignity he had stripped from them.
But on the night of the fourth moon, at the end of the first lunar tetrad, news of this rebellion reached their father’s ears and he lashed out preemptively, showing the rebel king no mercy.
Too cruel to simply kill Lucifer, he instead banished him to the City of the Seventh Gate, locking him in a cell of fire to forever contemplate the consequences of his deeds.
And this was where Lucifer resided to this day. Forever in agony.
Although they considered their cause a noble one, the remaining rebels disbanded, fearing their father’s retribution. They began fighting among themselves, dividing into clans, each clan led by the strongest of them.
Belial. Moloch. Mammon. Beelzebub.
Michael.
And as time wore on, as century after century flew past—their spirits dampened and their memories blotted by war and greed and heartbreak—they forgot why they had come together in the first place. They themselves became tainted by their ever-growing thirst for power and the desire to control the playground their father had created.
But these earth creatures, these humans, turned out to be more resilient than they had expected, and that playground could not so easily be dominated.
Beelzebub, first brother to Lucifer, called for a meeting of the clans in Pandemonium, the one city in all of Abyssus that had not been marked by partisan politics—a neutral ground, built by the great Mulciber, where the leaders had no fear of a surprise attack.

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