The Armageddon Conspiracy (69 page)

She thought of her father.
Sinclair
said he’d committed the greatest of crimes – being in love.
Not
with the True God, but with the things of this earth.
It proved his
soul was still seduced by the world’s beauty.
He wasn’t ready for
heaven, his name wasn’t written in the Lucifer Stone.
She’d seen
her own name there, but did she want it to be?
Wasn’t she the same
as her father?
Life had sickened her often enough, but it could
still offer breathtaking moments.
Now and again, something
transcended the misery, like that lone red rose in the graveyard in
the ruined abbey.
Its smell, its texture.
So infinitely
beautiful.

Was that rose really one of the Devil’s
snares, one of his tricks for keeping souls imprisoned in this
world?
James, as he died, spoke of beauty.
He would have given
anything for just one more second to appreciate beauty, wouldn’t
he?
Can one instant of ecstasy redeem a life of despair?
Maybe only
an artist could live that kind of life.
Can beauty exist in heaven
where nothing ever changes, where nothing dies or grows old, where
there’s no cycle of death and rebirth, no seasons of growth and
decay?
How can there be beauty when everything is beautiful?
Maybe
beauty, true beauty, exists only when it’s perishable, already
containing the seeds of ugliness.

‘
I’ve changed my mind,’
she mumbled.
‘I can’t do it, I can’t.’

‘
You can’t stop now,’
Sinclair screamed at her.

‘
I
won’t
kill the human race,’ she
blurted.
‘No one could take that responsibility.’

‘
Have you understood
nothing?
You’ll be saving us, liberating billions of imprisoned
souls.
If you don’t do this, you’ll be the worst traitor of all.
Do
you want to be the person who damned humanity to hell for
eternity?’

The Temple started to shake.
The huge
gold cherubim swayed, long cracks appearing on their legs and
wings.
Lucy glanced up.
She couldn’t get any power into her legs to
stand up and get out of the way.
The vibrations increased, the
cherubim shaking more violently.

‘
Get out of here,
Lucy,’ Gresnick croaked.
‘The whole place is coming
down.’

Lucy remained motionless on her knees,
her energy gone.
She stared numbly at the Ark, vibrating on its
altar.
Fragments of the wings of the cherubim were falling around
her.

At last she managed to haul herself to
her feet.
Gresnick was somehow getting to his feet too, despite the
blood streaming from his leg wounds.
Screaming, he took one step
and pushed her out of the way.
Both cherubim toppled over.
The head
of one sheared off and struck Gresnick, its body falling exactly
where Lucy had just been.

Lucy crouched down over Gresnick.
He
didn’t seem to be breathing.
Her body felt as if every cell were on
fire.
The pain was intolerable.
Leaning over, she kissed him on the
forehead, just as she once kissed her father in his coffin.
‘Thank
you,’ she whispered.

Sinclair and the others surrounded
her.

‘
The pain will never
end, Lucy,’ Sinclair said.
‘Can’t you see that?
Everyone you loved
and who loved you is dead.
This is a vale of tears.
You can end
this horror.
You can end it now.
You have the power.
I beg you,
release us from this jail, this eternal penal colony.
With one
blow, you can make hell vanish.
You can stop the suffering for all
time.
No more tragedy, no more pain.’
He took her hand and lifted
her to her feet.
‘End it,’ he urged.
‘End hell.’

Lucy gazed at the Ark, feeling
sick.

‘
You know what’s in
there, Lucy,’ Sinclair said.
‘Jehovah is reaching out, manipulating
your mind.
You must resist.’

Lucy nodded slowly.
It always had to
end this way, didn’t it?
Sinclair was right.
There was just too
much pain.
It wasn’t one moment of beauty that redeemed life, it
was one moment of suffering that condemned it.
For anyone anywhere
to be in torment meant the world wasn’t worth it.

She returned to the pentagram, crouched
down again and completed Solomon’s magic word, the word to summon
Jehovah.

The whole Temple was trembling now: the
floor, the ceiling, the walls.
The structure could collapse at any
time.

‘
Look!’
Sinclair
shouted.
‘It’s happening.’

Lucy stared at the space directly above
the miniature winged golden cherubim on the lid of the Ark – the
so-called Mercy Seat where the Shekinah was said to appear.
A
strange orange glow had appeared, just an intense spot of light
initially but rapidly expanding to the size of a tennis ball, then
a football, getting bigger all the time, starting to elongate, with
new shades of orange swirling into the original colour.

Sinclair’s eyes were fixed on the
glowing light, his face an odd mixture of hatred and curiosity.
Lucy felt as though she should say something, but words seemed
futile now.
She stood there, rooted, with the Spear of Destiny in
her right hand, its blue glow becoming ever more intense.
The
Lucifer Stone was equally bright, shining like an emerald sun.
Was
it really happening?
Had she truly summoned God?

The gold-leaf curtain behind the Ark
rustled and something staggered out from behind it.
As the glow
over the Mercy Seat became more intense, Lucy gazed at the thing
that had emerged – a huge, misshapen figure, infinitely black, with
twelve wings, twice the number of an ordinary seraph.
Darkness
seemed to be issuing from it.
It was a grotesque parody of an
angel, literally decomposing as it moved, its flesh bubbling and
dripping onto the golden floor, feathers of its many wings
fluttering around it.

Lucy had never seen anything so
repulsive, and its ugliness grew in proportion to the intensity of
the orange light above the Ark.

Sinclair grabbed Lucy.
‘Don’t be
fooled.
In the kingdom of the True God, he’s the most beautiful
angel of all.’

She shrugged him off and held the spear
above her head, pointing it at the heart of the orange glow.
The
spear itself now radiated with the same luminous light as the
figure taking shape above the Ark.
The Lucifer Stone had changed
its colour to orange too.
Everything in the room was bathed in the
same glow.
It was as though the ethereal light above the Mercy Seat
was absorbing everything, transforming the whole world around
it.

‘
Wait until the
Shekinah has fully materialised.’
Sinclair’s voice was calm and
cold now.
‘Strike when it’s starting to be replaced by the
abomination that lurks behind it.
You mustn’t let the monster
materialise fully or he’ll destroy you.
He’s only vulnerable at the
point of transition, as he first shimmers into his earthly body.
You’ll get only one chance.
Go straight for the heart.
That’s what
Lucifer instructed.’

Lucy gazed at the wondrous figure
flickering into existence in front of her eyes.
They had said that
the Shekinah was the beautiful earthly presence of the Creator, but
that didn’t do it justice.
It was majestic beyond words.
An
impossible dream, a glimmering, shining beacon of infinite hope,
beauty in every form.

And suddenly there it was, fully in
this world.
The Shekinah was not so much female as androgynous, but
spectacularly, unfeasibly beautiful.
The orange light had become a
brilliant, dazzling white.
The shining figure opened its eyes and
they were blue like a sky in a perfect world.
If ever God existed,
this was God.

Then two extraordinary things happened
at once.
The Shekinah started to dissolve, replaced by a new,
indescribable light beyond anything Lucy had seen in her life.
And
a Robin Redbreast bird fluttered into the Holy of Holies, landing
on the lid of the Ark, just under the Mercy Seat.
It began
twittering, oblivious to everything around it.

‘
Do it now,’ Sinclair
bellowed.
‘Strike.
Straight at the heart.’

Lucy raised the spear, but now it felt
heavy, unbelievably heavy, so heavy she thought she must surely
drop it.
Everything seemed to be pressing down on her, like the sky
on the shoulders of Atlas.
She glanced down at her father’s locket
round her neck, at his glinting ring she’d put on her finger.

The birdsong reached
into her mind.
Let the birds
sing
.
She could hear James’ dying
voice.
Let them sing of how much I loved
you
.
The Robin Redbreast took off again and
flew in a circle around her head.

‘
Now!’
Sinclair
shrieked.
‘There’s no time left.’

Lucy knew exactly what
her father would do, what James would do, what love,
life
demanded.
Suddenly
the spear felt weightless.
It knew exactly what was in her mind,
where she wanted to throw the spear.

Hurling it with all her might, it flew
forward at fantastic speed and instantly struck its target straight
in the heart.

‘
No!’
Sinclair
screamed.
He staggered forward, staring in disbelief at the spear
embedded in the chest of the towering black figure behind the Ark.
Lucifer reeled backwards, his huge wings coming apart.
He tore down
the gold curtain as he collapsed to the ground, letting out a
hideous gasp.

Lucy went behind the Ark and watched
Lucifer crawling forward, making a pitiful wheezing sound.
He
managed to get as far as the altar bearing the Ark, and reach out
towards the Lucifer Stone sitting on top of the Stone of Destiny.
He rolled onto his back and looked up, clutching the Lucifer Stone
to his chest.
For a second, his body shimmered.
The blackness was
replaced by a light so bright it was as though the whole world, the
whole universe, had lit up.

The dying figure was transformed into a
supernaturally radiant angel with brilliant golden eyes, so
handsome it made Lucy feel winded, dizzy, sick.
He was made of an
ethereal, shimmering substance, with twelve perfect wings
glistening with living gold.
Then he was gone, taking the Lucifer
Stone with him, leaving nothing but a pile of ash and a cloud of
black dust behind the Ark.
A gust of cold wind dispersed the
ashes.

‘
What have you done?’
Sinclair screeched.
‘Lucifer, Son of the Morning, the Shining One,
the Brilliant One, Helel Bel Shaar, Angel of the Morning, Son of
the Dawn.
You’ve destroyed
him
.’

Crazed with fury, he took his sword and
ran towards the Ark.
He swiped at the new figure taking shape above
the Ark, but the sword went right through it.

The figure, rapidly becoming less hazy,
its features growing more defined with each passing second, sent
out filaments of multicoloured light that grasped the Spear of
Destiny where it lay on the floor and raised it up.
Clutching the
spear in its left hand, it pointed towards Sinclair with its right,
then, palm-upwards, slowly raised its translucent hand.
Screaming,
Sinclair was lifted off the ground by an invisible force.
He hung
suspended in mid-air, cursing madly.
The figure clenched its fist
then released.
Sinclair was hurled backwards through the air and
slammed against the far wall.
The impact was so violent, his head
shattered.
Blood, brains and fragments of skull slid down the
wall.