He looked up at us as we gathered around him, his eyes reflecting the pain I knew he’d never voice. At seeing him, Katon knelt down and buried his face into the old wizard’s chest. Weakly, Rahim draped his arm over Katon’s head and pulled him in tighter. He squeezed his eyes shut as a single tear slipped from the corner and ran down his cheek. A quiet sob slipped from Scarlett as she turned away from the pair, hiding her face. For all the rage and violence that festered inside her, she would forever be an agent of the Lord. Her heart would forever be vulnerable to tragedy.
Unable to help, I simply let them be. They stayed there for several minutes, neither speaking nor breaking the embrace. Unwilling to interrupt, I stood and started to back away when I noticed Rahim looking at me.
“How bad?” I asked, knowing full well I wasn’t going to like the answer. He, no doubt, hated to admit it even more.
“My spine is shattered,” he said as he took a deep, laborious breath. His face winced with the effort.
Katon pulled away to make it easier, settling in beside him. “I can’t feel anything below my chest. It’s all dead.”
My heart sank. In my mind, that was worse than death. “We need to get you back to DRAC.” I knew it was the right thing to do, but I wasn’t even sure that’d help.
While the members of DRAC had performed many miracles since their inception, healing on the scale Rahim required wasn’t one of them. Forget all the stories you’ve heard about preachers or wizards healing the crippled and bringing the dead back to life, same as they were before. They aren’t true. Outside of God and the Devil, no one has the level of power or control necessary to truly resurrect the dead or make a crippled man walk again. Magic doesn’t work that way. For all its vaunted reputation, it’s rarely useful for anything more than destruction. While somewhat flexible, conforming to the imagination of its specific wielder, its true nature is brute force. The hammer never cures the anvil.
The soul transfer, the closest thing to a miracle in today’s Godless world, would also be useless to him. As a human, Rahim had no ability to partake of a supernatural being’s soul. While his suffering could be eased by judicious magical rituals and modern medicine, Rahim’s future was in the hands of fate and the surgeons in the employ of DRAC.
He knew this better than any of us.
“There is still much to do, my friends, but I’m afraid I can do little to help.” Rahim patted Katon on the leg to motivate him, his moist eyes never leaving mine.
“Take me home.”
Page 247
History Lessons
Back at DRAC, Katon having escorted the doctors who wheeled Rahim into surgery, Scarlett and I were left alone in the small waiting room. Unable to remain still, she paced the room from one end to the other, her leather pants squeaking faintly with every step. So rattled by how fast we’d fallen apart, I sat with my head in my hands and stared at the carpet. I couldn’t even bring myself to think something sexual about the sound Scarlett was making. That alone was a sure sign of Armageddon coming to pass.
With Abraham held captive by Baalth and Rahim broken, perhaps never to walk again, all that was left of the Council was Rachelle. As powerful and as good a person as she was, she would be little help from this point on. Even if she did sense the next ritual, it would be too late to stop it.
Asmoday had done well for himself. In just a few short days, he’d decimated DRAC, clearing the way for the end of the world. Not bad for an underachiever who had been kicked out of Heaven for being the errand boy who delivered the apple to Eve.
Speaking of misguided angels, I glanced up at Scarlett. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
She stopped her pacing and looked at me with baleful eyes, nodding.
“How did Asmoday manage to kidnap you?”
Her face twisted weirdly, as if unsure of what expression to make. “He didn’t.” She took a deep breath, letting it out slow. “Gabriel did.”
I leaned back in the chair, whistling. Scarlett had been drug through the wringer ever since the war broke out and she was forced to take sides. It’d been hard on her having to turn her back on her friends, people she’d known since she came into existence, who had chosen to follow the path of Gabriel. Family one moment, enemies a heartbeat later, she never quite grasped the concept of angels not being the good guys. Her heart belonged to the Angelic Choir of old and she just couldn’t understand why it wasn’t that way with all of the angels.
Gabriel’s betrayal had to have been almost as painful to her as God’s disappearance had been. Everything she was, her whole world view, was tied up in the premise that God was on high and he would lead, she would follow. She’d only recently begun to accept the fact things were different these days and they probably would never go back to being the way she remembered. Now, with Gabriel kidnapping her, all that pain had to have come rushing back, the fresh scars torn open and left to bleed.
I felt for her deep down, though I had to admit I Page 249 was glad I was on the other side of all that. Demons and betrayal went hand in hand, it went without saying. It was never a matter of if. It was always a matter of when. It’s so much easier to deal with that kind of crap when you know to expect it. She hadn’t been raised in that environment like I had. This was all new to her. Though I knew it was eating her up inside, on the surface, she seemed to handle it well enough.
“He’s gone insane, you know?”
I’d kinda thought that already. I just nodded, letting her go on.
“Though he didn’t say it directly, I think he believes God will come back if he wipes out the world. He blames the humans for so exhausting God’s patience He was driven to abandon us.” A saw a shiver run through her. “He’s not going to stop until we’re all gone, Frank.”
Hours earlier I might have argued with her, enough of my confidence still alive to make a case for hope. I’d have told her we had a chance of stopping Gabriel and Asmoday and we could still win out. But now, I couldn’t even lie to her, let alone to myself. I sank down in my seat, worn out both mentally and physically. Scarlett saw my resignation and went back to pacing.
It seemed to me as though there was little else to do but sit back and wait for the big bang. It came two seconds later.
Katon burst into the waiting room, kicking the door off its hinges. It flew across the room and landed in a broken heap of splintered wood against the furthest wall. Furious, his fangs glistening under the fluorescent lighting, he screamed epithets that made even me blush. Had I been brave enough to take my eyes off him and spare Scarlett a glance, I’m sure the color of her face would have matched her name. Rather than do anything to draw his attention to me, I sat back and watched as he gave a row of metal chairs the worst beating of their inanimate lives, thrashing them into tiny pieces and stomping them into the carpeted floor. Even Scarlett took a few steps back, not wanting to get caught up in his tantrum. It was a sight to behold, let me tell you. Once the chairs succumbed to his rage, he whirled to face me. My heart stopped mid beat. I didn’t want to end up like them. I started to sweat.
“I’m going to rip Asmoday’s entrails out through his throat and feast on his treacherous heart.” He stepped in front of me and leaned in to be sure I heard him, his face a wrinkled mess of ferocity. I sat still, like a cornered rabbit, afraid to move for fear he’d take his anger out on me. “I’m going to tear his testicles off and use his seed to write his epitaph. I’ll use his dick as my pen.”
I sensed an opening to remind him I was on his side. “Uh…I’m with you, brother,” I muttered, nodding Page 251 like a bobblehead doll.
My heart started up again when he spun around and put his foot through the wall several feet away. I was more than glad it wasn’t my head. Not satisfied with that small destruction, he began tearing madly at the plasterboard. Clouds of white dust filled the room, settling thick around us. After a few minutes of frenzied tearing, his shoulders slumped and he leaned against what was left of the ravaged wall for support.
“That was our last chance and we blew it.” He turned around and dropped to a seat on the floor, his sad eyes looking up at me. Seems Scarlett and I weren’t the only ones feeling doubt. “Armageddon is coming and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
Though unable to cry, Katon’s eyes had no problem expressing his overwhelming sadness. It was heart- rending. Scarlett went to his side and knelt down to comfort him. She was braver than me. His head drooped as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close.
“We have failed,” he whispered, his voice breaking as he said it.
