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"It's beautiful here, isn't it, Aaron?" asked a young voice.

Aaron looked down to see Stevie sitting in the sand beside him. The boy had a plastic pail and shoveland was busily digging a hole in the wet ground.

Aaron glanced into the hole and saw that it was far deeper and larger than he had first imagined.
I'll betthere are tunnels under here,
 
he thought for some reason.
Miles and miles of tunnels.

"Did you hear me, Aaron?" Stevie asked, drawing his attention away from the hole.

Aaron looked into the boy's expectant face. "I'm sorry, Stevie," he said. "I guess I zoned out for aminute there."

The little boy was only wearing a pair of bright red swim trunks, and Aaron could see that he was gettingsunburned.
If we aren't care
ful, he thought, the kid'll get sunstroke—
just like thattime when ...

"Ijust said how beautiful it is here, that's all," Stevie interrupted his train of thought. The child continued to

work at his hole. "I don't ever want to leave."

Aaron laughed as he knelt down beside the boy. The surf flowed over his bare feet, so warm. "We haveto go home sometime," he said as he ruffled the boy's blond hair. "Don't you want to see Mom and Dadagain?"

Stevie turned and pointed up the beach. "They're over there," he said. "I can see them anytime I want."

Aaron looked up and saw Lori and Tom Stanley sitting in beach chairs beneath a large, yellow umbrella,a red and white cooler between them.

They'd bought Dr Pepper, he unexpectedly recalled, the first and last time they had ever used the redand white cooler. Something had been left inside it after the beach trip, and it had spoiled, leaving behinda nasty odor. They were never able to get the smell out of it, so they'dthrown the cooler away. Aarontried to remember how long ago that had been. It was the same trip that Stevie got sunstroke.

Lori and Tom waved happily from their beach chairs, and Aaron tentatively waved back, suddenlyovercome with a sadness he couldn't comprehend.

"Don't feel sad," his foster brother said, filling his pail with sand. "There's nothing to be sad about here."

"How did you know I was feeling sad?" Aaron asked.

Stevie did not answer, and continued to dig in his hole—making it larger, deeper.

Aaron stood and gazed out over the ocean. Dark clouds were forming off in the distance— perhaps a

storm coming in. "This all seems so familiar," he said, more to himself than to Stevie, as the wind ruffled

his dark hair.

"And is that so bad?" the boy asked.

Aaron glanced at his little brother and saw that Gabriel now sat beside the child, tail wagging as Steviepatted his head. "Hello, Gabriel," Aaron said to the dog.

The dog wagged his tail in response, panting happily. He had been running in the water and was soakingwet, sand sticking to the fur on his legs.

"What's the matter with you, Aaron?" the child asked. "Everything here is so perfect—so peaceful. Just

let yourself accept it."

The sky was darkening as the clouds drifted closer to the shore.

"I want to," Aaron replied, a feeling of pure joy beginning to bubble up within him, but he forced it back.

"I really, really do—but this feels wrong. Like I lived it before."

"But you were happy then, right? And you can be that way again. It's a gift for all you've had to endure." Stevie was suddenly standing in the middle of the hole he had been digging. "Let me take your pain away." He stretched his sunburned arms toward his older brother, a smile on his face.

It seems simple enough,Aaron thought as he watched the gray clouds billow offshore. They seemed tobe changing direction, leaving the sky over his head perfect, unblemished by the storm. All he need do isaccept this time, this place, as his reality, and everything would be fine.

But it wouldn't.

"This is all wrong," he said aloud with a furious shake of his head. He gestured to the ocean and the

world beyond it. "This isn't right, this moment has passed. It's a memory from three years ago."

"Stop it, Aaron," Stevie demanded. "Don't spoil what I've made for you."

Aaron stared at the angry child as the clouds again tumbled in from the sea, low and dark, pregnant withstorm. A distant, threatening rumble of thunder shook the air. "This is all a dream—a nightmare, really."

"Aaron!" the boy screamed, stomping his foot.

"What are you?" Aaron asked, a powerful wind suddenly whipping at his clothes. "Stevie never talked like this—he barely talked at all." Aaron looked at the dog, who continued to wag his tail happily even though the wind was blowing sand into his lolling mouth. "And this isn't Gabriel. It just looks like him." Aaron stepped closer to the child. "I'll ask you again," he said grimly. "What are you?"

It was suddenly black as night on the beach, and arcs of lightning coursed across the sky as thunderclapsboomed. The ocean had been whipped into a frenzy by the tempest, with waves crashing violently on theshore.

"You can be happy again!" the child shrieked over the storm. "All you need do is—"

"What. Are. You?" Aaron spat. From the corner of his eye he could see the ocean waters, in the

distance, begin to froth and boil.

"I have existed since the fifth day of creation," Stevie said in a chilling voice not his own.

Something moved beneath the roiling waters. Something large.

"I was that spark of uncertainty in the Creator's thoughts as He forged the world—that brief moment of

chaos—before Genesis."

A monster emerged from the depths of the sea, skin blacker than the darkness that now surroundedthem. It seemed to be at least a hundred feet tall, its wormlike body swaying above the storm-ravagedsea. Hundreds of tentacles ofvarying degrees of thickness and length grew from its body, writhing in theair as if desperate to entwine something in their embrace. Aaron could not pull his eyes away from thenightmarish visage as it undulated across the thrashing sea toward the beach.

"The darkness of the ocean became my dwelling," said the thing that resembled his brother. "And there I thrived, hidden beneath the waves—until the Lord God sensed my greatness and sent His angelic messengers to snuff out my glorious light."

The monster was closer now. Large, opaque sacks dangled hideously from its glistening body, swayinglike pendulums as it lurched closer to land.

Aaron was unable to take his eyes from the horribly awesome sight, surprised that he could even think,let alone speak. "You're so wonderful that God decided to take you out?"

The Stevie-thing ignored his question. "The ocean was my domain, and any who dared transverse themwere subject to my wrath—and I soon developed a taste for the lives of those the Creator sent todestroy me."

The enormous sea beast loomed above Aaron. Even from this distance, he could see that its mass wascovered in rows of fine scales that glistened with the colors of the rainbow. If it weren't so outrighthideous, he might have found it beautiful. There was a blinding flash oflightning, followed by an explosionof thunder— and the pregnant clouds opened up in a deluge of thick, driving rain.

"That's what has kept me alive over the millennia, and what will eventually free me from my prison

beneath the sea."

The viscous torrents coated Aaron's body, forcing him down upon the sand. The ground could notabsorb the thick, milky fluids, and they pooled around him, ever rising.

The beast reached the shore, hundreds of tiny muscular appendages propelling the nightmare up onto thebeach. "I sense in you a power that both frightens—and excites," the monster said, its voice now comingfrom two places—his little brother and the thing upon the shore, a perverse stereo effect echoing throughthe air. "Never have I encountered one such as you."

Aaron fought to stand, but he felt the ground beneath him shift, rising up to hold him fast. The foul raincontinued to fall, coating his body in a layer of slime. "What is this place?" he frantically asked thedoppelganger of his brother.

"It could have been your individual paradise," the entity explained, its voice a disgusted rumble. "Like a

bee to the flower, I used the promise of personal heaven to lure you to me. A place where you would

have been content until your final days." Stevie shook its head in disappointment. "But you have rejected

it."

"It's not real," Aaron spat, attempting tokeep the fluid that rained from the sky and flowed down his face

from entering his mouth. "It's a lie."

The thing that had taken on the guise of Stevie scrambled from its hole and walked casually toward thegigantic behemoth that had emerged from the sea. "Be it lie—or truth," it said, approaching the front ofthe beast. The creature responded to the strange child's approach by opening its cavernous maw.

The rain of slime was falling all the harder now, and Aaron felt himself violently sucked beneath thesurface. His arms became trapped in the rising mire that accumulated upon the ground, and he thrashed ina futile attempt to free himself from the hungry earth, but to little avail.

Stevie had entered the mouth of the sea monster; the circular opening was ringed with razor-sharp teeth. It reminded Aaron of the mouth of a piranha fish. The boy stood there, peering out as it slowly began toclose. "It all ends the same," he said from within the monster's maw. "You within the belly of the beast—food for Leviathan."

The final words ringing in his ears, over the storm's rage, the great beast snapped closed its mouth,reared backward—and threw its mass back into the roiling sea.

Aaron struggled; it seemed as though the harder he fought, the faster he was pulled deeper.
It all endsthe same,
 
he heard the inhumanvoice reverberate in his mind, his head beginning to sink below thesurface. He tried to scream, to bellow his belief that this was all some twisted mind manipulation, but itwas cut short—abruptly silenced as a mixture of the sand, and the slime that fell in torrents from the blacksky, flowed into his mouth and down his throat.
You within the belly of the beast,
 
the monster hadgurgled.
Food for Leviathan.

The beast that was Leviathan reclined its massive shape against the cramped confines of the cave wall,where it had been trapped for countless millennia. The monster was content for now, for many of thedigestive sacks that dangled from its body were filled with angelic life— brimming with power that wouldbring the dark deity to eventual release.

Its latest feed—the half-breed—the Nephilim, fought mightily to be free of Leviathan's hungry embrace,his mind filled with panic.

"Your struggles are futile." The monster wormed its way into Aaron's frenzied thoughts. "Take comfort in knowing that the power that resides within you—now flowing into me will be used to reshape the world. Through the eyes of my minions I have seen what the Creator's world has become: a place teetering daily on the brink of chaos."

Leviathan showed the young man within itsbelly disturbing images of the world at large. Scenes of war,wanton violence, and death flashed before the Nephilim's mind's eye, a world seemingly touched bymadness.

"This is what
God
 
has done," the beast growled.
 
"I
 
can do better. When I am finally free from my prison beneath the earth and sea, I will use your power, your marvelous strength, to push this place toward pandemonium. And then I shall mold it in my glorious image."

Thousands of Leviathan's black-shelled spawn writhed eagerly beneath the protective cover of its scales.

It would be they that would carry out the will of the beast, changing and twisting the existing fauna—fromthe inside out. The idea of being unleashed upon the planet made them chitter in happy anticipation.

The Nephilim continued to fight, refusing to allow the digestive nutrients to begin the process of hisabsorption. This annoyed the great beast, and again, it delved into the captive's mind. Indelicately it toreinto his memories, and found the recollection of a life most mundane— or it was, until the power of Heaven inside his frail human shell awakened to pursue some long-forgotten, ancient prophecy ofredemption.

Leviathan had no time for prophecy; it had a world to conquer.

The one called Aaron thrashed and bucked as Leviathan picked unmercifully through his memories. Thebeast saw the awakening of theangelic nature, the resurrection of his pet— imbibing the lowly animal witha life-force that it was currently finding most delicious—the death of his parental guardians, and thefurious battle with the leader of the Powers' host, Verchiel.

The monster writhed within its prison of rock. Long had it anticipated Verchiel, and those who followedhim, to seek out and attempt to eradicate the glory that was Leviathan in the name of God—but it nevercame to be. For some reason, it had been spared this attack. Leviathan continued to exist, feeding onprey that would allow it to survive, drawing those of an angelic nature to it. Like the cunning anglerfish,the sea beast psychically dangled the tantalizing promise of bliss before the pathetic creatures of Heaven,and it was only a matter of time before they were ensnared, resting inside its ravenous digestive sacks.