Fall of Lucifer (23 page)

Michael lifted his visor. ‘We must arrest all two hundred of his generals,’ he said. ‘I will take Zadkiel myself. May Yehovah guard our souls.’ He saluted, shut his visor, and galloped ahead, his stallion’s hooves thundering towards the tower keep.

They thundered over the moat’s bridge and straight through the thousands of arrows fired by the human crossbowmen through the loopholes of the castle. Michael’s legions smashed the portcullis and rode into the forecourt as the petrified guards threw their crossbows down in terror and ran for their lives.

Michael and his generals burst through the heavy wooden doors of the castle and surged into the huge banqueting room.

Seated at the head of the banqueting table, devouring a cow’s leg, sat Gadreel, surrounded by his demonic underlings. He leered malevolently. ‘If it isn’t His Highness, pretty Prince Michael. Come to settle a score, have you?’

Michael’s face was grim. He nodded to Raphael. ‘You know what to do. I search for Zadkiel, supreme commander of His Excellency Lucifer’s armies.’

Gadreel took another huge, slobbering bite of the cow’s leg and wiped his mouth on his chain-mailed arm. ‘My master, Abaddon, is occupied,’ he growled. He looked towards the stairs. ‘He copulates . . . ’ Gadreel leered at Michael. ‘As for me . . . I am not so taken with the daughters of men. But
you
, my pretty . . . ’

Michael raised his sword. His face was impassive.

Gadreel nodded to his angelic rabble and licked his lips suggestively at Michael. A dark, demonic fire filled their eyes as they stared at him. ‘We have unfinished business, my prince . . . ’ Gadreel’s face contorted into a vicious mask. He drew his metre-long broadsword, as did his hundred fallen angelic followers. Michael’s warriors squared off against them.

With one deft move, Michael knocked Gadreel’s sword from his hand and edged him against the stone wall, the Sword of Justice at his heart, emitting ruby lightning.

A raging fury filled Gadreel’s face. ‘Michael and his white sorceries!’ he roared.

Michael turned to his generals. ‘Shackle him,’ he commanded.

Mayhem ensued as Gadreel’s warriors threw tapered axes and swung their morning stars, clashing savagely with Michael’s warriors. Broadswords and quarterstaffs clashed violently; axes and maces flew into shoulders, heads, and thighs. Eight of Michael’s angelic warriors shackled the rabidly fighting Gadreel with heavy iron chains all across his body and shackled his feet together in heavy irons. They rolled him into the centre of the room, face down.

‘We seek only the generals,’ Michael said.

‘You seek for me, then.’

Michael looked up the ornate staircase to see Zadkiel, dressed only in his shift, staring down at him. Michael inhaled sharply. His eyes were pained from many memories – as were Zadkiel’s.

Zadkiel bowed. His princely tones were gentle. ‘His Excellency, the esteemed Prince Michael.’

Michael bowed. ‘Zadkiel, supreme commander of Lucifer’s armies.’ He paused. ‘I come only for the perpetrators.’

Zadkiel backed up the stairway, strangely perplexed. A beautiful fair-skinned woman – a daughter of man – walked towards Zadkiel swathed only in a cloth. Her body was covered with jewelled bangles and pierced with silver ornaments, her dazzling face adorned with cosmetics. Braided golden tresses hung to her thighs.

‘Zadkiel . . . ’ She held out her delicate ringed hand to him.

Zadkiel stared back at her, as one entranced. ‘Laleesha . . . ’ He smiled tenderly at her, gesturing to her to retire. She bowed her head and retraced her graceful steps.

Zadkiel stared back at Michael, his eyes assessing the situation. He stared down at the chained Gadreel, the dreadful comprehension dawning. He looked at Michael, horrified. ‘I am not an animal like some of these.’ He gestured to Gadreel. ‘You of
all
know this, Michael . . . ’

Michael looked down at the floor, refusing to meet Zadkiel’s gaze. ‘The punishment for transgressing the eternal law is clear and irrevocable. For cohabiting with forbidden flesh, you and your generals are to be to be cast in eternal chains into hell – the pit of gloom – until the Day of Judgment.’

Zadkiel blanched. ‘Michael!’ he pleaded. ‘I beg you, no!’

Michael’s chin set in a firm line. ‘Zadkiel, mighty leader of Yehovah’s Holy Watchers, partaker of the fellowship of Christ . . . Lucifer has used you. You did his bidding, and your reward was the delectable pleasures of the flesh.’ For a fleeting moment Michael lost his iron discipline, raw with the emotion and vulnerabilities of their age-old friendship. ‘You violated the sacred mysteries of Yehovah – the
forbidden
knowledge . . . ’ His voice broke, raw with anger and grief. ‘At what price such treachery, Zadkiel?’ His mouth trembled. ‘Your eternal
soul
?’

Zadkiel’s countenance filled with a deep bitterness. ‘Then cast
him
in the pit. Your blood
brother
is the supreme master of treachery – he surely is the diabolical master of this scheme.’

Michael shook his head. ‘In this matter Lucifer is untouchable. We can take only the ones who did his bidding. This he well knows.’

Zadkiel dropped to his knees, the full web of Lucifer’s treachery suddenly apparent. ‘He betrays his own generals?’ he murmured, his voice unsteady.

Michael slung off his helmet and walked up the steps, for a fleeting moment no longer the warrior but the friend, his face a hand’s-breadth away from Zadkiel’s. ‘Why did you not return with us when you had the opportunity?’ He grasped Zadkiel’s shoulders with his fierce strength. ‘The Christ called for you by name.’ His voice shook with passion. The darkness lifted momentarily from Zadkiel’s eyes, and Michael caught a fleeting glimpse of the Zadkiel of old.

‘Lucifer forced me to swear allegiance, Michael,’ Zadkiel whispered. ‘For eternity of eternities. My vow has taken hold of my very soul. My word of honour has become my curse.’

‘Then break your vow!’ Michael cried.

Zadkiel’s eyes deadened. ‘You of all should know the web of sorceries the black widow weaves.’

Michael’s hands fell to his sides in despair.

Zadkiel turned to look at Laleesha, standing outside a doorway up the stairs. A terrible agony crossed his face. ‘I am lost for all eternity,’ he murmured. Gently he laid his broadsword down on the stairs and walked slowly, stair by stair, downward past Michael, to where Gadreel was shackled.

Michael turned. Hot tears pricked his eyes. ‘He is full of grace – filled with compassion . . . ’ he pleaded.

Zadkiel stood at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Redemption for all mankind . . . but not for me.’ He lifted his arms in surrender. ‘Do your godly duty, Michael.’

Michael looked one last time at Zadkiel, then nodded to his generals. They chained Zadkiel and pushed him through the door as Laleesha sobbed.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Tartarus

Two hundred of Lucifer’s generals stood chained and shackled on the unending plateau of smoking black onyx. The black stone was riddled with orange cracks from the blazing furnace that raged a thousand leagues below them.

Michael handed to Uriel the huge iron key to the abyss. Uriel walked over to a huge circular lock that had been carved out of the granite. Reaching down, he placed the enormous key into the lock. Ever so slowly, it started to turn. A hundred angelic warriors grabbed the iron rivets of the door to the shaft of the abyss, pitting their great strength against the cavernous door.

Billowing black smoke erupted from the shaft entrance of the blazing furnace, darkening the galaxies. The warriors were momentarily knocked off their feet by the blast of heat.

Gadreel stared, petrified, his entire body shaking uncontrollably, while Azazeal let out an ear-splitting scream of terror. Zadkiel stood, eyes lowered, and swallowed hard – courageous to the end.

Michael lifted the Sword of Justice high above his head. ‘Thou art reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Thou, Zadkiel, who art Abaddon, shalt be king over them. Enter into your abode – Tartarus, the molten core.’

The angelic guard pushed the shackled angels inside the shaft of the abyss. Michael turned his face away.

Gradually, the smoke in the shaft of the abyss thinned out. One by one, the hunched and shackled generals groped their way down the twisting shaft of Hades, with Zadkiel leading the way, terrified but contained. Downward, downward, and still downward, stumbling, burning in the pitch-blackness. The walls of the caverns glowed red-hot with deadly coals that hissed whispering, vile obscenities.

Zadkiel came to a halt in front of a flowing river of molten fire and lava.

Sariel retched, stumbling to his knees. ‘I
curse
Yehovah – I curse Him!’ His scream mingled as one with the hissing walls.

Gadreel fell prostrate, his eyes burning in their sockets. ‘I curse the Christ – I curse His holy presence. I curse the one who brought us here.’

Zadkiel turned, his tongue blistering from the intense heat, his expression like stone. ‘Then curse yourself, Gadreel. Curse yourself for rejecting the King of glory, and curse yourself for embracing Satan – the king of lies and the damned. Curse Satan the treacherous, and you curse the true perpetrator of our doom.’ He turned, his still noble features set. ‘But do not curse the Christ.’

Gadreel raised his huge torso from the dirt and smashed Zadkiel’s head from behind. Zadkiel fell to the ground. Gadreel kicked him viciously to one side of the smoking tunnel.

‘Who placed
you
king over us? I curse the Chrisssssst . . . ’ he snarled as a huge blast from the furnace blew Gadreel, screaming, into the living, molten stream.

Azazeal and Sariel stood shaking uncontrollably, weeping . . . terrorized. The semiconscious Zadkiel clutched the hot black earth in his fist. ‘Michael . . . ’

* * *

Michael knelt. He was a lone, crumpled figure on the plains of black onyx, his head resting against his broadsword. The echoes of the fallen angelic generals’ curses and screams filtered upward through the ground as they fell burning beyond Hades, beyond the menacing abyss, to their final destination: the cavernous subterranean pits of gloom carved within the very lowest regions of Hades – the molten core of Tartarus.

Michael’s lips moved incoherently as he prayed, for he well knew that they fell.

* * *

Lucifer studied the missive with the emblem of the Royal House of Yehovah.

‘So,’ he said, raising his gaze to Charsoc triumphantly, ‘eternal law prevailed. They left their first estate, cohabited with the race of men, and He has banished them to Tartarus, the molten core.’

He stared for a long while at Michael’s golden seal in the lower right-hand corner of the missive. Then, with a half smile glimmering on his mouth, he leisurely lit a black taper and held it to the linen paper. He watched the flames as they flickered across the seal, turning it into smouldering ashes.

‘It is precisely as you foretold, Your Excellency.’

Lucifer plucked a sweetmeat from an ornate platinum bowl at his side. He caressed it between his fingertips. ‘Zadkiel . . . Sariel . . . Azazeal . . . ’ he reflected. ‘They were wavering in their allegiance. They and their regiments regretted their defection from the First Heaven. Their pangs of conscience had to be purged from our midst.’ He popped the delicacy in his mouth and swallowed.

‘They were traitors of the soul, Your Majesty,’ Charsoc said.

‘Insurgents, apostates,’ Lucifer muttered. ‘As for Gadreel,’ he mused, ‘he was fervent in his devotion to me. But he and his legions were unrestrained, unpredictable.’ He picked up a second delicacy. ‘They were expendable.’

He held out the sweetmeat to one of the six sleek hellhounds that lay coiled before his throne. ‘Cerberus, my sweet.’ Cerberus opened his mouth, revealing huge fangs. He devoured it in one swift bite, his eyes evil yellow slits.

‘And you, Charsoc?’ Lucifer stared at the thin bony face before him as he stroked Cerberus’ glossy black head. ‘Do you too miss the First Heaven? Do you not
yearn
as they did for Yehovah?’

Charsoc was quiet for a long moment. ‘You can rest assured, Your Excellency,’ he said quietly, ‘that my soul’s condition is unerringly as yours when it comes to all matters of Yehovah.’

Lucifer stared with hard eyes beyond Charsoc upward out of the black crystal dome. ‘Then you
too
are conflicted in your soul, Charsoc!’ Lucifer swept the bowl of sweetmeats on the floor with his sceptre. ‘His hold on us, it seems, is
indissoluble!
’

Lucifer rose, a wild fire in his eyes. ‘Even in the midst of hell.’

Chapter Twenty-nine

Two by Two

Are-created mammoth towered over Xacheriel. Next to it, Lamech was tottering up a ladder, studying the dimensions of the newly erected dinosaur. The portal of the natural sciences was jammed with thousands of Earth’s prototypes. Along the walls were never-ending intricate diagrams of every species in a million galaxies.