Rapture Falls (36 page)

             
Baine sat in his pit as the animal ran riot on the surface, several bodies had fallen
in
around him, once he felt a little stronger
and his wounds had begun to heal,
he drag
ged
and stack
ed
two cooling corpses and a third body that was still moving against the side wall giving him a human ladder of sorts. Baine climbed out slow
ly and
cautiously searching for
Michael
as he knew that he was in no shape to fight one of the Archangels in his still healing state, as he reached the surface and hauled himself over the edge he realised that he needn’t have worried, the fallen one was lying in a large puddle of pooling blood around his prone position. As Baine moved closer he could hear the wet struggle for breath through the fatal throat wounds, he had to give
Michael
credit as despite his mortally wounded body he had gotten some good offence of his own in as the dog was lying a few feet away slowly limping its way back towards death for the second time.
Baine knelt beside the dying man,
Michael
seemed to be attempting to offer some perhaps prophetic words on his death bed, but the words were caught in his ruined throat spoiling his
last ditch
movie style death. Baine shrugged and moved away carefully avoiding the bodies lying in various states of health on the floor, at the far end of the room was an open door, he passed through and climbed the stairs out of this basement nightmare, he ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth deciding he
might need
something to take away the aftertaste of dead dog eyeball.
He began to ascend the dug clay stairs, his right hand steadying himself on the earthen walls leaving a slick red trail behind him. The daylight at the top of the stairs beckoned him toward a
welcome
reprieve;
he raised his face toward the warming sun and staggered forward eyes closed. A shadow suddenly filled the opening blocking the light,

             
“Bugger” Baine muttered to himself with a tired, slumped shouldered sigh, he knew what was coming but did not even have the energy to tense for the in
evitable
, the powerful blow propell
ing
him
airborne
,
cascading over the side of the manmade stairs and crashing back to the bottom of the pit.
Azazel
crash-
landed
next to his broken form, Baine rolled onto his back and stared up into the gloom at yet another angry angel, it was beginning to seem all too depressingly familiar. He was scooped up with ease and slammed into a clay
wall;
he heard a jangling noise heard through the foggy haze that seemed to be a permanent fixture these days. His arms were hoisted high and then clamped above his head, cold manacles snapped tightly
around his wrists rendering him helpless.
Azazel
took a step back and looked over at the ruined mess of
Michael;
he turned back to Baine blazing wrath with burning eyes,

             
“What are you waiting for” Baine managed before
the blood flowed and flesh was stripped by
angry
angelic talons
and teeth
.

             
Gabriel threw the small mobile phone against the hotel room wall shattering it instantly,
he carefully
swallowed the explosive rage that threatened to destroy his plans, the phone call had come from one of his agents secluded
close to Michael who it would appear
had broken ranks and taken Baine before the Cube had been discovered. It had taken every last ounce of self-restraint for Gabriel to actually take in the agents words as his head throbbed so terribly clouding his thoughts, the only silver lining was that the plan had actually failed in spectacularly fashion leaving
Michael
missing presumed perished.
The
hotel room was large and plush,
from here he
waited
for the human converts to arrive, the 11
^th
Order had followers across the world and protocol for any arrival in new territory dictated that Gabriel waited for a debrief, so he had to sit i
n a claustrophobic room choking on his own fury, perhaps he would call for room service for a little venting, at last he began to smile a terrible smile
.

CONTROLS ARE SPRIRALING

“
Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree:
And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place."
 

Deuteronomy 12:2-3

Lucifer
knelt low on the wet grass
,
she had forgone her usual expensively tailored wardrobe with some regret, but today’s endeavours required a more practical outfit of black combat trousers, a fitted lycra
long-sleeved
tee-shirt
topped with a tight fitting black sweatshirt. She surveyed the farmland with caution, she could sense the
presence
of her
brethren
, three archangels were secreted about the farm somewhere with a strange vacant scent of a fourth. The detective was lying face down beside her, oblivious to the
soggy
mud ruining his
clothes;
absentmindedly she reached over and gently rolled him over.

The farm house was around a quarter of a mile away but she needed no binoculars to view the occasional scurrying ants, the humans, around thirty in all, appeared to be from both orders. She recognised some from the Grigori’s ranks,
a curious mix of professionals and heavy-set labourers, she could not identify
any warriors from those in the open, but if at least three archangels were present then there would be
close
protection
, Reapers
.
Sudden movement from out of the ground caught her eye, an ingenious trap door swung open and two struggling figures emerged dragging a third, then another two heaving up a heavy dead weight, then another group, all in all she watched as eight bodies were pulled from their temporary graves. A crudely constructed pyre was arranged downwind of the farm and set ablaze, the corpses were hefted into the cleansing flames, their transporters stood in sombre reverence heads bowed in prayer.

McCullum stirred to her side, she looked down into his eyes, a temporary dull clarity returned, a slight parting of the mists, he looked up at her with confusion coloured with a tint of devotion. She reached down and began to stroke him through his suit
trousers’ relishing the reaction, until dark the afternoons light was
hers to waste.

             
Baine
drifted back and forth between the pain and the blackness, he felt himself being taken closer and closer to the edge of release before the pause that enabled his healing to bring him back. His throat was thick with clogging blood dragged from his lungs as
Azazel
ripped and tore through his chest and stomach, for a while he had been able to drift his mind away from the agony
whilst he cleared his mind and concentrated on forming a strategy,
but
in reality
it was a
fool’s
errand. His wrists were manacled securely above his head, the iron bars were driven deep into the walls and
securely
concreted, there was no James Bond style escape on the cards here
,
only more blood and more pain.