The Sunset Prophecy (Love & Armageddon #1) (37 page)

“
We can’t do that,” Mirabel said angrily.

“
What did Logan tell you?” Cindy asked Keelen. “There has to be something to all of this. He took the bullet, Keelen. He stood there...pushed you out of the way and took the fuckin’ bullet.”

“
We need a car,” Keelen said. She then turned around, glowered at Paolo, and angrily pointed her finger. “Don’t you ever suggest we leave him behind.”

The earth shook as if an enormous satanic beast which lay dormant beneath the city
was exhuming itself from a mantled sarcophagus. The sensation wasn’t like the light, rolling tremors from the previous swarm of mini-quakes. This one was what many Angelinos referred to as “the big one.” The shaking began how most quakes did. The first three seconds felt as if the ground was sitting on top of a gentle wave. Everyone stood still. A paralysis meant to gauge the seriousness of the event. But this one was different as the trembling didn’t stop, and then the realization of seeking a doorframe or ducking underneath a table became a reality. The longer it shook, the stronger the wave got, and the wave transformed into jolts. First they were compact and brief, and then they began to feel as if they were being thrown around by their ankles.

Logan, Keelen, Paolo and Mirabel were slammed to the ground. It was impossible to walk or even wobble as they helplessly witnessed windows shatter
and the ground in front of them rupture, like the tearing of freshly baked bread. It didn’t matter if it was the hardened concrete from the sidewalk or street, or the grassy turf from the park; it all split open, revealing chasms that appeared bottomless to the naked eye. The older buildings surrounding the park crumbled to the ground, creating a cloud of dust, asbestos and concrete.

After much violent chaos, t
he shaking ended. Sirens were the first sounds to break through the initial seconds of post-destruction deafness. Then came the haunting wails of people trapped underneath the rubble. Car alarms, birds lathered into an alarmed chatter. The city was officially under the thumb of a new reality; one overwhelmed with death, destruction, and the specter of the Rapture.

Parts of the ground jutted
upward like flatiron peaks. Keelen continued to weep over Logan’s corpse, everyone else stood up with no clue as to how to traverse the suddenly created, interconnected valleys that had spread out before them.

“
Should we climb down into the spaces between the cracked ground?” asked Cindy.

“
I don’t know,” Paolo said, examining the fissure right in front of him. “This one doesn’t seem to have a bottom.”

The earth shook again. Paolo, Cindy and Keelen huddled over the fallen demigod and goddess. Mirabel fell on her knees. The quake wasn
’t as big as the previous one, but the aftershock was still a formidable one. As the shaking ceased, Mirabel, who was on an island of sidewalk and grass, immediately stood up and began yelling and flailing her arms wildly, trying to get Paolo and Cindy’s attention. “Mira!” she said, pointing toward a large hole that had been created by the earthquake in the middle of the lake. A bubbling bristle of red-hot, glowing magma pooled in its center. Then like a submerged, broken fountainhead in the middle of some golf course pond, the endless slag spilled into the surrounding area speedily and heavily.

“
Are you kidding me?” yelled Paolo. “Mirabel, hang tight. I’m coming to get you.”

Fisker observed the group below. He stretched his wings and tested the wind. Feathers fluttered with a unified rhythm, the skin between the
plumage cooled against the breeze. He stared at Logan’s lifeless body sprawled on the grass and the volcanic activity that had encircled the survivors. Fisker couldn’t leave Logan’s body behind. He had to take his body. The thoughts of martyrdom crossed his mind. Theolodus was much too popular now, much too loved.

With his plumed ailerons positioned for a headlong dive, Fisker took a step off the ledge. Instead of feeling the first few seconds of weightlessness whenever he
’d commit to descent, something tugged at his wing—an annoying tug that quickly gave way to crippling pain. Wincing, Fisker turned around and saw a large, bloated man, whose face was covered with loose and dangling skin, holding on to his wing. “Lelantos?” Fisker howled in agony.

Adam tightened his grip on the arching bone of Fisker
’s wing, breaking it, as if it were a diseased clavicle with tremendous amounts of applied pressure. Uriel fell to his knees. Adam remained silent as it appeared that his mouth had been burnt shut. Fisker glanced at Adam’s arm and noticed pieces of fabric had merged into his skin. In desperation, Fisker flashed his radiant gold sword and swiped at Adam’s torso, slicing his bulbous midsection, disemboweling him in the process. Adam remained unflinching and conjured the same flamed leash he used against the Seraph at the arena. He wrapped it around Fisker’s neck and tightened the noose with all the strength left in his smoldered hand.

Fisker grasped the fiery leash, hoping to loosen its rein, but instead, burned both his hands to a crisp. His face flushed red with blood. Spittle flew from his mouth. Remnants of a sentence escaped his lips, filtered with obvious pain and torment.
“Y...Declare...war...”

Adam tightened the noose around Fisker
’s neck in response further. He had waited for this moment much too long. The smarmy, condescending, winged fucker who flaunted his superiority as if it were a shield against criticism, against compromise, struggled, and for the first time in his multi-millennial life, experienced true submission. Adam grunted and yanked. The snapping sounds of vertebrae cracking like twigs filled his ears. Fisker dangled lifelessly from the leash, his ascendancy extinguished. Eyes white like spider eggs.

The glowing cord recoiled into the void of Adam
’s wrists and Fisker’s broken body collapsed onto the rough, crushed-granite roofing felt. His shoes slipped off, revealing a set of hooves at the end of his pants cuffs and horns burst through the skin of his forehead. They were alabaster in color and as solid as ivory tusks. Adam stumbled backward, surprised at Uriel’s sudden transformation in death. He exhaled and a glimmer caught the corner of his eye.

Adam turned his head toward the western sky and saw Jrue
’s wall of flame grow taller than everything that peaked on the horizon, consuming all that stood in its wake. Urgently, he used his arm to cover his gash and used his hands to cup the innards that had slipped out from his wound. He then picked up the Remington .700 with his other hand and boarded the police chopper. He sat in the pilot’s seat and stared at the console. In-flight controls were as alien to Adam as menopause was to a nomadic Bronze Age shepherd. He flipped every switch that looked switchable, pulled every lever that looked pullable, and stared at the barometers with confusion and growing disdain. Adam closed his eyes and willed the chopper off the platform, while the blades and rotors remained still.

Paolo, Mirabel, Cindy and Keelen saw the chopper drop like a
three-ton stone off the roof of the bank building. “Everyone down,” Paolo yelled, anticipating the chopper splashing molten lava once it connected with the fiery floor.

The police chopper stopped abruptly in midair and floated toward them. Adam maneuvered the aircraft with the mysterious forces granted to him by Pit. The heat from the magma began to melt the leather seats inside the cockpit. With brute strength from his mandibles, he was able to stretch his jaw, tearing away the skin that had melted and coagulated and healed over his mouth. With a disabled tongue, he yelled awkwardly,
“Fire...my father approaches...get in.”

Paolo picked up Keelen by her hips and put her in the chopper. Once inside the cabin, Keelen reached down and helped Cindy on
board. Paolo loaded Logan’s body, then Thalia’s. Due to the loss of his lower eyelids that had been burned clean off, a heavy gush of tears cascaded down Adam’s malformed face when his eyes fixated on his mother and Logan’s lifeless bodies being lifted onto the helicopter. Adam willed the chopper toward Mirabel, who kicked her knees up into the air like an Olympic-class hurdler. “Hurry,” she cried. “The bottoms of my feet are burning.”

Paolo leaned out of the cabin, as Cindy and Keelen held onto his legs.
“Mirabel, grab both my arms. Not my hands, okay?”

Mirabel nodded and gripped Paolo
’s bare forearms as he gripped her corpulent arms by her elbows. “Pull me in,” Paolo yelled at the girls. Mirabel lunged onto the floor of the chopper and began kicking her legs into the air, wildly and in pain. The blistered and reddened bottoms of her feet were visible through the burnt soles of her sneakers. Mirabel wailed on Paolo’s shoulders as Adam ascended the chopper into the rage-filled sky, sparking with endless and fearsome webs of lightning.

Paolo and Cindy stared through the chopper
’s side opening, seeing all of West L.A. being consumed by Jrue’s relentless fury. Keelen rushed toward Adam, who sat snug in the pilot’s seat and gave him the coordinates from Logan. “Your brother gave me these numbers. This is where he instructed me to go.”

Adam glanced at the chopper
’s instruments and then at the coordinates on the piece of paper. “Put the...num...numbers...in the...’puter,” he said; his burnt tongue made him hard to understand.

“
I’m sorry, what? Can you say it slower?” Keelen pleaded.

“
Input...input...input,” Adam said, with an annoyed mumble, maniacally pointing at the console with his burnt and chubby finger.

Luckily, the onboard navigation wasn
’t that drastically different than the one in a late model vehicle. Once Keelen plugged in the numbers, a red arrow appeared on the chopper’s center console. She then exhaled a sigh of relief, sat back and crossed her legs. As she kicked up her leg, she accidentally kicked a switch with her toe, which promptly activated the chopper’s blades.

Adam flashed
Keelen a crooked smile and reclined in his seat while holding onto the helicopter’s joystick. “Thank you,” he said.

Keelen closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against the seat and began to cry.
It was a rare opportunity for release while the city below was in the process of consumption by every type of conceivable disaster. Loneliness set in. Despair. The realization hit her that nothing was ever going to be the same.

40

San Gabriel

C
indy sat next to Adam in the cockpit. Sadness and confusion delineated the emerging wrinkles on her smooth face. “I can’t believe all of this is happening,” she said, her eyes focused on the cordillera ahead. “How did I not see all of this coming?”

Keelen sat in the farthest seat in the back, caressing Logan
’s pale skin, as she tried to keep her whimpering subdued. Although solemn, there was plenty of determination wrinkling her forehead. She leaned in on Logan’s expressionless face and whispered, “You’re with me right now. If you can hear me, we’re almost there.”

Back in the cockpit, Cindy couldn
’t keep her eyes off the badly burnt God. She glared with morbid curiosity. “You’re Lelantos, aren’t you?” she asked. His grotesque visage and the few innards that had splashed onto his lip made her pity him. “What happened to you?”

“
My father,” he said, with a stone-cold demeanor. “I’ve betrayed him.”

“
Is he the one who started the fire?”

“
He is the
fire
,” Adam said.

While Adam carried Jrue
’s flame into the elevator of his apartment, before coming to the rescue in the police chopper, he suffered a change of heart. Adam was a stubborn and proud god. He knew he was stronger and more powerful than the beings chosen by Adonai to do his bidding on Earth. He felt when push came to shove, and if war were declared once again, he’d challenge those who ruled Caeli until the bitter end. It’s not that he believed victory would be guaranteed, but he felt it wouldn’t be guaranteed for them, either.

As he descended from the floor of his penthouse, Adam seared open a hole at the bottom of the elevator and released the vessel containing his father, thinking the steel that lined the shaft
’s walls would neutralize Jrue’s flame. Unfortunately for him and the city of Los Angeles, Adam’s apartment building sat on top of unexplored oil reserves. The vessel carrying Jrue’s flame melted through the concrete foundation and connected with the tar sands below. This was fuel for an already enraged Alpha deity.

An explosion followed. Jrue
’s fiery tentacles climbed up through the elevator shaft and consumed everything it touched, including Adam, who lumbered in the lobby at the time. “You’re dead to me,” the fire whispered, as Adam felt the fat underneath his skin bubble to a boil. Charred and roasted, Adam managed to crawl out of the lobby and into the street, fleeing from Jrue as the inflamed God reveled in absorbing the vast reserves of petrol underneath the building.

Cindy continued analyzing him, d
issecting his features and injuries with her keen observational skills
. How does a god acquire flesh?

Adam
’s lidless eyes bulged outward, focused on the terrain ahead.

“
My father wanted me to plant him in the forest. He wanted to use timber for fuel,” he said. “His goal was to gain enough power so he could go down to the city and raze it to the ground, knowing you and my brother were down there. He wants to burn it all down until he feels that spark or rush. See, when you kill a god, euphoria sets in. Jrue doesn’t know my brother is dead. He’s going to scorch everything to ash. There will be no end to his rage.”

“
The city...is the entire city on fire? Is there a way we can stop it?” Cindy asked, crying.

Adam shook his head.
“He wants the forest, too...he’ll be here soon,” he said. “I’m helping you. I don’t know what my brother has planned or had planned, but I’ll help him and you, all right?”

The omnipresent mountaintop ahead quivered. Large rings of dust rose into the air, like enlarged smoke signals. It was both beautiful and eerie.

“I never thought the city was next to a volcano,” Cindy said.

Adam shook his head.
“It isn’t a volcano,” he said. “But there is something dormant inside that mountain waiting to come out.”

Behind the mount, there was a small basin surrounded by a pine forest.

Paolo, who sat next to the window alongside Mirabel in the cabin, yelled as he spotted something in the dried vegetation below. There was a smattering of creatures perched on some of the larger branches and the granite peaks that stuck out of the ground like spires. Keelen and Cindy joined him. “Why are they up here?” Keelen asked.

“
The Seraphs are up here as a last line of defense. You need to get to the center of that basin,” Adam said, his voice stern with focus. “I will handle the Seraphs.”

Adam flew the helicopter toward a narrow ridge. There was a naturally-made, geological platform on the side of the ridge that seemed like a perfect spot to land. Adam lo
wered the chopper and hovered a few feet off the rocky ground. He didn’t know how to land with the traditional instruments, but he committed to it anyway. The helicopter abruptly touched ground, bouncing everyone around as if they were inside a pinball machine. Paolo bumped his head on the metal ceiling. Keelen pinned her shoulder in between the seat’s metal armrests as she held onto Logan’s body, instead of using her hands to balance herself.

The engine ceased, the blade and rotor whirled slowly to a stop and something wet and white hit the windshield. Adam looked up and snow began to fall.

Everyone streamed out in orderly fashion. Adam was the last out of the chopper. He stepped out with his mother on his shoulder and proceeded to gently place her on the white-powdered ground. With a snap of his finger, threads of golden silk began to circle Thalia’s body as if some invisible and enchanted arachnid was wrapping her up. Adam got on one knee, placed his hand over Thalia’s chest and bowed his head. His pulled his lips back and he began to weep. “I’m so sorry,” he said through his sobs. “I should have stopped them.”

Cindy walked up to Adam from behind and placed her hand on his burnt back.

“Don’t touch me,” he said gruffly. Pain had manipulated his mood. “I could have defended her, but I didn’t.”

“
Well, from what I gathered, from the Apocryphon, you had no choice in the matter,” she said.

Adam turned around as the snow began to fall heavily, covering Cindy
’s straight and silky hair. He felt the snowflakes cool the fresh, opened wounds that littered his entire body. He then placed his blackened hands on Cindy’s shoulders and asked, “Where’s the Apocryphon?”

“
It’s in my bag, inside the helicopter.”

“
Can you get it?”

Cindy snatched the backpack out of the helicopter and handed it to Adam. He pulled out the large red book and began thumbing through it. Although Adam knew of the prophetic outcome, he didn
’t know of its machinations. His brows scrunched with agitation. Something he’d found inside the book bothered him. “This is incredible, all is documented, but...but where are the last pages?” he asked.

“
What do you mean?” Cindy asked, grabbing the book from Adam’s hands and inspecting it herself.

“
Someone tore out the pages.”

“
This isn’t right,” Cindy said, as she massaged the torn edges. “Yeah, you’re right...what the hell?”

The wind howled and the snowfall increased. The temperature suddenly dropped. Frost blanketed the top of the mountain.
The ground turned white and snowfall rose, reaching the tops of everyone’s ankles.

Cindy turned around and faced the group.
“Did any of you tear the pages from this book?”

Everyone
’s lips remained flat. Eyes neutral. No one emitted suspicion.

She looked toward Adam and pleaded,
“I’m sorry...I read through two-thirds of this book. I don’t know what the rest meant. I don’t understand why anyone would do this...I didn’t notice any torn pages before. Dammit...”

Just beyond the snowfall at the edge of the mountain they could see the city engulfed in flames.
Countless plumes of black smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air. The glow from the pockets and pools of magma sparkled from a distance. Jrue’s fire looked slow-moving from 10,000 feet above sea level, but the reality was that it was approaching fast, like a swarm of incendiary locusts.

The darkened sky above their heads swirled. Purple and reddish hues emerged, dotting the dark clouds with long sherbet-colored stripes. The top of the mountain rumbled. Rocks tumbled down the granite slopes. Up above, at the center of the black brume churn, a dozen Seraphs appeared, flying in circles, shrieking.

With crazed eyes, Adam yelled at the group, “Go up that slope, now.”

“
Where are they?” Keelen asked. She scanned the surrounding brush with panic in her eyes.

Adam sensed danger and quickly picked up
Thalia’s bound body and tossed it into the helicopter. Adam turned around and out of nowhere, four Seraphs appeared and pounced on him like a pride of famished lions. Instinctively, Cindy rushed to Adam’s aid. She grabbed a long, pointy branch and flung it at one of the creatures that had clawed itself onto Adam’s back. Adam sparked himself on fire and tried to repel the Seraphs off his arms and shoulders, but they looked determined on ripping Adam apart piece by piece, and no amount of heat seemed to deter them. He fell to the ground as the creatures relentlessly mauled him.

“
Go!” Adam yelled, from beneath the winged pile of gray flesh. “Take Logan.”

“
Cindy, come on,” yelled Keelen, as she held onto Logan’s hand, his body lying lifelessly on the ground.

Cindy didn
’t listen. She ran up and kicked one of the creatures. Annoyed, the Seraph turned around and slammed Cindy to the ground by slapping her chest with its wing. The Seraph declawed itself off Adam and pounced on Cindy. Paolo, seeing that Cindy was in grave danger, rushed the Seraph as it was about to strike her with its claw and tackled the beast against the nose of the helicopter. “Keelen...Mirabel...go!” Paolo yelled.

Keelen dragged the 175
-pound demigod a few meters toward the hill. Panting and sweating, she stopped to catch her breath.

“
Help me, goddammit,” Keelen yelled at Mirabel, who stood still with her hands on her face, paralyzed as she watched the group succumb to the winged beasts. Mirabel heard Keelen’s cries for help and ran toward her. As soon as she bent down to lift Logan’s feet, a Seraph swooped down and lifted her off the ground with its talons. Mirabel didn’t scream or yell as she was whisked away into the dark skies.

Terrified, Keelen didn
’t stop. She continued to drag Logan through the snow and up the hill. Her grip slipped occasionally and she’d fall on her behind, but with relentless determination, she immediately sprang back up on her feet and doubled her effort.

The hill was covered in trees and dried brush. The falling snow camouflaged and protected her from the spiraled-eye hunters that patrolled the foliage below like birds of prey. Embers floated past her line of sight, contrasting with the snowflakes as if they were red and white fairies jostling for sport. As she trudged
backward with her back facing the incline, she stared straight ahead and could see a red glow emanating from beyond the treeline. The solid snowfall that almost reached the middle of her shin slowly turned to slush. Her cold cheeks warmed. “Come on, Keelen,” she grunted at herself. “Get him up top. You can do it.”

Tears streamed down her face. The pain was excruciating. Her shoulder had been separated when Adam landed the helicopter, and the reality of the injury was beginning to settle in.
“I can’t do this,” she breathed to herself. She then shook her head and peered at the roiling clouds above. An ominous feeling overtook her. Surrender crossed her mind, but she knew she couldn’t give up. Logan gave her one mission and that was to take him to the top of the mountain. He had done much for her and it wouldn’t be right leaving his body half-buried in the muddy slush, undignified, after lifting the veil of corruption for all of mankind.

The mountaintop grumbled. The ground
vibrated as if she were standing on top of a warehouse filled with thousands of massage machines. Keelen reached deeply. The last fifty or so yards of angry slope wasn’t going to prevent her from keeping her promise to Logan and a potential promise to life itself. The air, flowers, insects, the ocean, green and lush hillsides that sprouted in the spring, the smiles from fellow humans, friends, family, the banal dangers that come with living, sharks, rabies, viruses, bacteria, and all the bullshit that came with human existence—even taxes, pollution and potholes—deserved a chance to keep going, a chance to keep evolving.

She dug her nails into Logan
’s wrist and hauled him up the embankment, and then with a few more pushes from her slender thighs and dainty but defined calves, she finally reached the crest. She threw herself down on her knees, tightly gripped Logan’s hands and wailed loudly, a release, as if she channeled every single last gasp and breath provided to her by all of mankind. A howl.

Down on Sunset Boulevard, in the smo
ke-filled crevice where Israfel resided, the trumpet stood, waiting for one final blow. He plodded along the floor, moisture oozing out of the soles of his elephantine feet like a gargantuan slug made of lips, wings, and doubt. He inhaled and then blew through the mouthpiece. A sound, like an infinite collection of foghorns streaming their tone through the rapid circulations of a particle accelerator in some Swiss Valley, reaped deafness across the land.