protective domain-‘Dominique!’
The whisper of her name reverberates in her mind like a tuning fork.
Jacob rasps, choking on his own blood, ‘Free him.’
She lays her son’s head down gently and stands. Grips his sword in both hands. Staggers to the calabash tree, its glow fading fast – and thrusts the blade into the trunk with all her might.
The Siren’s scream echoes in Mick’s mind, and suddenly the haze lifts.
The Succubus is clutching her side where a stream of black ooze sprays outward like oil. She wheels around, her demonic vermilion eyes spewing hatred at Mick.
No! Impossible!
Michael Gabriel smiles triumphantly. Never underestimate the power of love.
Another wound bursts open, this one in her throat. She flops on her back, gagging on her own excrement – as an eternity of shackles are stripped from Mick’s being.
*
The heavenly glow of the calabash tree increases its brilliance as white bark melts into gobs of mucuslike goo.
Thrashing about within this rapidly liquefying mound are two figures. One is Lilith, her pale flesh gushing an oily excrement; the second is Michael Gabriel, his torso held from behind, the Succubus’s fingernails digging into his back.
‘Get off my man, bitch!’ Dominique lashes downward with the sword, severing Lilith’s arms at the elbows.
Devlin circles overhead, but refuses to get nearer to the painfully brightening light.
Dominique drags Mick’s lifeless form from the tarry ooze. ‘Jake, he’s not breathing!’ She removes her mouthpiece and forces it past her soul mate’s blue lips and into his mouth.
‘Come on, Mick-breathe!’ She shakes him, then starts mouth to mouth, but is unable to resuscitate him.
‘Oh God, no… not after all this.’ Removing a pony bottle of air from her exoskeleton, she straps it over Mick’s face, then begins CPR – as a second white light appears at her back, its unearthly glow warming her skin.
Dominique turns. Her jaw drops open, releasing the regulator. ‘Jacob?’
The brilliant light-force that is Jacob Gabriel rises from his deceased physical form, casting a heavenly glow throughout the spiritual dimension.
En masse, the Nephilim gravitate toward the source.
‘Like moths to a flame…’ Dominique whispers.
The energy from Jacob’s soul bathes their skin, miraculously washing away the gray soot, revitalizing their flesh. Limbs are restored, the torturous orbs dropping from their rejuvenated bodies.
Dominique’s mind is in a daze. And then Evelyn Strongin’s words, spoken so long ago, are whispered into her consciousness.
There is a Hell, Dominique, but it is not a real place. Those who enter the afterlife possessing negative energy reside in their own self-imposed Hell. Judgment, blame, and guilt can distort or destroy one’s own sense of self. Unless we allow love to purify the darkness of our souls, Hell can be a very forbidding place.
‘Love…’
Tears of joy pour from Dominique’s eyes as, one by one, the lost souls of New Eden’s colonists, held so long within their self-imposed purgatory of guilt and shame-smile… then disappear in a blink of heavenly white light.
Devlin hovers above the melee, flapping his wings, screeching at the top of his lungs. ‘No! Get away from him! Leave him be!’
The remaining Nephilim push in tighter, desperate to embrace their newfound savior.
And then they are gone, all but Jacob, who moves toward her, bathing her in his loving light.
The alabaster ooze from the calabash tree melts like snow as it is kissed by Jacob’s angelic glow, restoring Lilith’s earthly beauty, healing her wounds.
Jacob kneels by Lilith. Touches her face.
Lilith opens her eyes, now filled with a childlike innocence. She looks up at Jacob and smiles.
Jacob takes Lilith’s hand, then turns to his mother. He points to Mick, who is now breathing on his own. ‘Be happy.’
Dominique chokes on the lump in her throat. ‘I love you.’
Jacob smiles. And then he and Lilith are gone.
Mick groans.
Dominique rushes to his side. She strokes his thick mane of silver-gray hair and stares into his brilliant, azure-blue eyes, recognizing the look of schizophrenia. ‘My poor baby, what did they do to you?’
The Underworld rumbles like thunder. Crimson flames shoot out from the serpent’s open mouth, an emerald eruption of energy still pouring from the fifth-dimensional conduit. The subterranean ceiling is fragmenting, exposing curtains of brilliant white light.
Devlin snarls at her from the edge of the pit. Spreading his wings, he dives into the maelstrom.
And then everything is gone.
Dominique finds herself kneeling by the edge of the artificial lake, back on the planet’s surface. Hurricane- force winds howl in her ears, threatening to swoop her up into its vortex. She looks around, blinded by volcanic dust.
Mick is lying by her side, the Guardian’s transport pod rocking twenty feet behind them.
Stooping painfully, she positions Mick’s arm across her shoulder and half carries, half drags him to the spacecraft. She pulls him inside. Seals the hatch.
‘Computer, get us on board the Guardian’s transport as fast as you can!’
The pod struggles to lift against the monstrous currents of air and debris.
Dominique holds on, unable to think through the insanity of the moment as they are inhaled within the hurricane’s vortex. She squeezes her eyes shut, memories flashing in her mind as the space vehicle whips around the eye wall of the storm as if caught in a washing machine.
Flash: She is back in the Miami mental asylum, sitting before her new director, Antonio Foletta, discussing her new patient.
‘Why was Mr. Gabriel incarcerated?’
‘Mick lost it during his father’s lecture. The court diagnosed him paranoid schizophrenic and sentenced him to the Massachusetts State Mental Facility, where I served as his clinical psychiatrist.’
‘Same kind of delusions as his father?’
‘And the mother. Archaeologists Julius and Maria Gabriel were convinced that some terrible calamity is going to wipe mankind off the face of the planet. Mick also suffers from the usual paranoid delusions of persecution, most of it brought about by his father’s death and his own incarceration. Claims that a government conspiracy has kept him locked up all these years. In Mick Gabriel’s mind, he’s the ultimate victim, an innocent man attempting to save the world…’
Flash: Her first visit with Mick. The handsome paranoid schizophrenic with the ebony eyes moves closer, inhaling her scent. ‘I swear on my mother’s soul that I won’t harm you.’
Flash: She is in the Gulf of Mexico, on a boat with Mick, after helping him escape. ‘Mick… back in the asylum when you asked me if I believed in evil. What did you mean by that?’
‘I also asked you if you believe in God… if you believed in a higher power.’
‘I believe someone watches over us, touching our souls on some higher plain of existence. I’m sure part of me believes that because I need to believe it, because it’s comforting. What do you think?’
‘I believe we possess a spiritual energy, which exists on a different dimension. I believe a higher power exists on that level, one we can only access when we die.’
‘I don’t think I ever heard heaven described quite like that. What about evil?’
‘Every Ying has its Yang.’
‘Are you saying you believe in the devil?’
‘The devil, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, what’s in a name?’
Flash: Back in Chichen Itza, on the winter solstice of 2012, the prophesied day of doom. Ennis Chaney grips
