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  Reckoning

  ( Fallen - 4 )

  Thomas E. Sniegoski

  The time has come for Aaron Corbet, the eighteen-year-old son of an angel and a mortal, to face his worst enemy. Verchiel, the fallen leader of the Powers, is determined to defeat the prophecy that foretold Aaron's power over all the Fallen. And to do this, he intends to kill Aaron, hoping that the removal of such a «blight» will restore Verchiel in the eyes of the Creator.

  Aaron has been training for this showdown, working to understand and control the awesome force that resides deep within himself. He knows he will win. After all, Verchiel has taken away everything and everyone who ever meant anything to Aaron. He has nothing to lose…until Verchiel introduces Aaron to his long-lost father.

  Reckoning

  The Fallen series, book 4

  Thomas E. Sniegoski

  PROLOGUE

  Maybe it’s time to move on, the Malakim Peliel considered as he perched atop Mount Kilimanjaro, nineteen thousand feet above the arid African plains of Tanzania.

  The angelic being could count on one hand the number of times he’d had this thought in his two-millennia stay upon the dormant volcanic mountain. But always something distracted him from these musings. The coming of so-called civilization as villages turned to cities, seeming to grow up from the earth to replace the primordial jungles. The vast springtime migrations of wildebeests, zebras, antelopes, gazelles, and lions as they made their way across the Serengeti’s southern plains to greener pastures in nearby Kenya. There is so much to see here, he reminded himself. So much to feel, to hear, to smell. And wasn’t that his purpose—the purpose of being Malakim? He and his brethren around the globe acted as God’s senses, enabling the Supreme Being to experience the wonders of the world He created.

  However, today was different. Something in the thin, frigid air of Kilimanjaro was telling him—warning him—that perhaps it would be wise to seek another roost.

  Slowly, Peliel flexed millennial stiffness from his wings. The collected layers of dirt and ice that had clung to his stationary form over the thousands of years fell away to reveal a creature of Heaven in what had appeared to be just another natural formation dappling the frozen landscape.

  “There you are,” said a voice even colder than the winds blowing across the mountaintop.

  The Malakim gracefully turned, finding himself in the presence of another of God’s heavenly children. This one was dressed in human garb, accompanied by twenty of his ilk, and seemed to be the source of Peliel’s unease. “What host are you?” Peliel asked, casually brushing dirt from his intricate armor.

  “I am Verchiel,” the intruder answered, bowing slightly, “of the heavenly host Powers.”

  Peliel studied the beings before him, taking note of the multitude of angry scars that adorned the exposed flesh of their bodies. This angelic army had been in battle against a foe that also wielded the power of the divine; there was no other way to explain the marks of conflict they carried. What has transpired while my attentions were elsewhere? the Malakim wondered.

  “Ah yes, the hunters of the fallen,” Peliel commented aloud, the wind howling about him as if in warning. “You have been searching for me, Verchiel of the Powers?” To his own ears, his voice was gruff from millennia of non-use, like the grinding of tectonic plates within the earth’s crust. “And why would that be?”

  It pleased him to speak again, and his mind wandered back to the last time he had used his voice to communicate. Many centuries past, a jungle cat, a leopard, had inexplicably climbed close to the western summit of the great mountain. Curious of the creature’s intent, Peliel had appeared before the animal. It was dying, the frigid climate of Kilimanjaro’s winter season sapping the warmth from its lithe, spotted body, and in the language of its species, the Malakim had asked it why it had come to such an inhospitable place. As it lay down in the snow to die, the leopard had responded that it had been drawn up the mountain, tempted by the desire to bear witness to something greater than itself—lured by the powerful emanations of the Malakim. Peliel smiled, wondering if this was the reason these Powers had come, drawn by a sense of his omnipotence.

  “I am in need of something you have in your possession,” Verchiel interrupted the Malakim’s musings.

  Peliel chuckled, amused by this angel’s arrogance. “And what could I have that would possibly interest you, little messenger?”

  “You and the others of your kind are direct conduits to God,” Verchiel explained. “Extensions of His holy power—receptacles for His wisdom and knowledge.”

  Peliel crossed his arms across his broad chest, silently urging the angel to continue with a nod of his head.

  “I require information concerning the deconstruction of God’s Word … and I shall have it no matter the cost,” Verchiel proclaimed.

  Peliel’s ire was rankled by the presumption. How dare this angel think himself worthy to make demands of a Malakim? “Tread carefully, Verchiel,” the Malakim growled, “for it is within my might to see you punished for your conceit.” He unfurled his great wings of gunmetal gray, the very air around him crackling with restrained supernatural energies.

  “I’m sorry to say there is little you can subject me to, holy Malakim, that is any worse than what I have already endured,” Verchiel replied, a vicious sneer appearing upon his pale, burn-mottled features. “Give me what I ask for and I shall leave you to your observation of this … fascinating continent.” Malice dripped from his disrespectful words as he chanced a casual glance over the African horizon.

  There is a dangerous hate in this one, the Malakim observed, and again wondered what could have transpired while his attentions were focused elsewhere. He had no choice but to put this imperious angel, and those who followed him, in their respective places. This reckless arrogance could not be allowed to continue unchecked.

  “Insolent pup!” Peliel bellowed, his voice rumbling across the mountain like the roar of an avalanche. He reached up into the icy blue sky to draw from the heavens a weapon of crackling energy, a sword of divine might. And he slammed his weapon down upon the mountain-top. The ground heaved and split where it was struck, a fissure in Kilimanjaro’s rocky flesh zigzagging haphazardly toward the Powers angels as the ground beneath their feet shook.

  “Rail all you like, keeper of His Word,” Verchiel said, taking flight, his powerful wings lifting him from the tremulous earth. “It will change nothing.” And then he raised his hand and brought it down in a silent command to those who served him.

  The angels of the Powers host surged toward the Malakim, screams of violence pouring from their open maws, weapons of flame materializing in their grasps.

  Peliel responded in kind, his own weapon forged from the might of the storm, incinerating the first of the attacking heavenly warriors. They were no match for him, but still they came, one after another, unto their deaths. As the last of them cried out in failure and the ashes of their bodies drifted across the frozen mountaintop, Peliel turned to face their master.

  Verchiel stood unmoving, his hands clasped behind his back. There was not the slightest hint of remorse for the fate of those who obeyed his command.

  “You knew that they hadn’t a chance against me,” the Malakim seethed, the lightning sword humming and flashing in his grip, eager to strike again.

  The leader of the army so callously sent to their fates nodded in agreement.

  “But still you ordered them to attack. Why? Is it your wish to die, Verchiel of the Powers host? Do you attempt to save face by being vanquished by one greater than you?”

  The angel smiled, and in that instant Peliel of the Malakim was certain that the disease of madness had indeed infected this creature of Heaven. It was a smile that told him the angel
was beyond caring, beyond fear of reprisal. And for the briefest of instants, the emissary of God feared the lowly messenger.

  “What has happened to make you this way?” Peliel asked.

  Verchiel’s body grew straight and rigid. “I am what He has made me,” the Powers leader growled. “The deaths of those in my charge have served a purpose.” His eyes of solid black twinkled with the taint of insanity and he opened his wings as if to punctuate his mad statement. “A distraction was required.”

  Peliel sensed the presence of the Archons before their attack upon him, attuned as he was to the delicate thrum of angelic magicks—magicks that were taught by the Malakim. He turned to face the threat as a doorway into a place that reeked of death and decay closed behind them. There were only five Archons when there should have been seven, another sign that things were amiss. The Malakim began to ask his students what had befallen the world of God’s man while he was preoccupied, but the words did not have a chance to leave his mouth.

  Peliel knew the spells that flowed from their mouths, powerful magicks meant to immobilize prey of great strength, and he was preparing to counter their attack when he was viciously struck from behind. The ferocious heat of Verchiel’s sword had melted through the metal of his armor and punctured the angelic flesh beneath. The Malakim whirled to confront the source of this latest affront as the last words of the Powers commander became frighteningly obvious.

  “A distraction was required.”

  Verchiel had already leaped away and Peliel felt the spells of the Archons take hold. It was too late. He had missed his opportunity to fight back. The magick entered his body, worming its way beneath his flesh, into his muscles and bones, freezing him solid like the cold, rugged terrain on which he had dwelled these last two thousand years. His students had learned well the might of angel sorcery, and they encircled his immobilized form, gently lowering him to the icy ground as the winds swirled feverishly around them.

  Peliel could feel nothing but was fully aware of all that transpired about him. Four of the Archons loomed above, muttering the incantations that kept him incapacitated. From inside his robes, the fifth of the magick users—whose eyes, Peliel noticed, had been removed from his skull—produced a tool, a knife that shimmered and glowed seductively. Its blade was curved and serrated, and the Malakim was certain that its bite would be fierce indeed.

  The blind Archon plunged the blade down into Peliel’s forehead with such force that his skull split wide. The world began to grow dim, and as the veil of unconsciousness drifted across his eyes, Peliel saw that Verchiel had taken his place beside his purveyors of angel magick.

  “Do you see it?” he was asking over the droning repetition of the Archons’ spell, a breathless impatience in his voice.

  “It is there,” said the magick user with a tilt of his hooded head, the vacant caverns of his eye sockets filled with swirling pools of bottomless darkness.

  “Then get it for me,” Verchiel demanded with a fervent hiss.

  And with trembling fingers, the blind Archon reached inside the Malakim’s skull to take the prize his master so desperately sought.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Vilma Santiago pressed the phone to her ear, listening to the sounds of sadness and disappointment. She hated lying to her aunt and uncle—hated how it made her feel like a silly little girl—but the alternative was something that she herself had barely begun to comprehend, never mind her guardians.

  No, I didn’t really run away from home to hook up with a boy I barely knew, but was convinced that I’d fallen in love with, she wanted to tell them. Nope, not at all. In fact I was kidnapped by real live angels as bait to lure Aaron—you know, that boy that I’m in love with—into a trap. The bad angels wanted to kill Aaron before some kind of ancient prophecy that he was supposed to represent came true. You see, Aaron is a Nephilim, the child of a human mother and an angel—and guess what, so am I. Isn’t that awesome?

  She heard her aunt’s voice suddenly asking if she was still there, and Vilma promptly pushed aside the truth in favor of the lies. At the moment, lies were far less trouble.

  “I’m here,” she said, trying to keep the tone in her voice cheerful and upbeat. “Sorry about that, I think we might have a bad connection.”

  The woman’s questions droned on and on, the same questions that she had asked during Vilma’s first call a week ago. Was she in trouble? Did she have a place to stay? When was she coming home? Vilma gazed through the glass partition in the back of the phone booth at the traffic whizzing past her on the highway across from the roadside stop. She wanted nothing more than to be in one of those cars, speeding away from her life—running from what she had learned about herself. But she knew that was impossible, because no matter how far she drove or how fast she ran, she could never escape what she truly was.

  Nephilim. The word continued to haunt her. She had read about these offspring of angels and humans in the numerous books about heavenly beings she had enjoyed reading over the years, but she had never imagined that the knowledge she had gleaned would in any way, shape, or form pertain to her. It was just all so crazy.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” her aunt asked yet again, and Vilma paused before allowing the lie to flow from her mouth.

  The thing that made her a Nephilim—what Aaron described as an angelic essence—had awakened at the strike of midnight on her eighteenth birthday. With each passing day she could feel it growing stronger. And it scared her.

  “I’m fine,” she said into the phone. “I told you, I just need a little more time to figure out what I want to do with my life. As soon as I do, I’ll come home. I promise.”

  Is that really a lie? she wondered, barely hearing her uncle’s hundredth offer to come and get her wherever she was, any time of the day or night. All she had to do was call, let him know where to find her, and he would be there for her. Will I ever be able to return to Lynn, Massachusetts—especially being the way I am now?

  Vilma felt the power stir inside her and offhandedly wondered if it was similar to the feelings women experienced when pregnant. She seriously doubted that having a baby growing inside her could ever scare her as much this. Besides, if she were having a child it would be because it was wanted. Vilma didn’t want this angelic power, and sometimes she suspected that the thing inside her knew it. It was unpredictable, and she never knew when the essence would awaken and cause a fuss. She tried with all her might to keep it under control, but it was like trying to hold back a sneeze—except a sneeze didn’t have the power of Heaven behind it. Every day it seemed just a little bit stronger than the day before, and Vilma worried that there would come a time when the force would be stronger than her.

  Suddenly she didn’t want to be on the phone anymore, just in case the power of the Nephilim decided to assert itself. Most of the time it was downright painful, and she didn’t want to give her aunt and uncle any reason to be more concerned for her than they already were.

  Vilma told them that she had to go and that she would call them again in a couple of days. She told them that she loved them and her niece and nephew very much, reminded them not to worry, and assured them that she would be back home soon.

  And then, as the connection was broken, the power of angels thrummed through her body like the bass from a car stereo cranked to maximum, and Vilma wondered if this would be the time.

  The time that she could not hold it back.

  Aaron Corbet couldn’t pull his eyes from the entrance to the diner across the parking lot. The elderly, families, and truck drivers—people of all shapes and sizes, heading in for breakfast and coming out satisfied. It was all so boring—so mundane.

  What he wouldn’t give for boring and mundane in his own life.

  “What do you think that big fat guy with the bald head ate?” his Labrador retriever and best friend, Gabriel, asked from his side. “I think he just burped; I can smell sausage. I love sausage, don’t you, Aaron?”

  The young man didn’t answ
er, still caught up in the flow of normal. For just a brief moment he wanted to remember what it was like to be them—the people coming and going from the diner, oblivious to the beings from Heaven, angels, who walked among them.

  “Are you thinking about sausage, Aaron?” Gabriel suddenly asked him, chasing away his brief fantasy. “Or maybe pancakes. What I wouldn’t give for some of those. Are you sure we can’t go in and have something to eat? I’m very hungry.”

  “No, we can’t,” Aaron responded, feeling again the weight of the new responsibilities he had to bear. He had come to accept them, but that did not make them any easier to carry.

  The fallen angels that had fled to Earth after the war in Heaven believed in an ancient prophecy, a revelation that an offspring of a mortal woman and angel would be born into the world of man. This amalgam of God’s greatest creations, this Nephilim, would be special—different from others of its ilk—and would bring with it a way in which those who had fallen from grace could be forgiven their sins and reunited with their Holy Father in Heaven. Aaron Corbet was this Nephilim—the savior—whether he liked it or not.

  A family exited the restaurant—mother, father, and little boy probably about seven years old. The boy held tightly to the string of a Sponge Bob balloon, and at that moment looked to be the happiest kid in the world. Aaron watched them cross the parking lot to their car and couldn’t help but think of the family that had been lost to him, violently torn away as a result of his angelic destiny.

  After spending the first years of his life shuffled from one foster family to another, he was finally placed with the Stanleys, a truly loving couple, and their young, autistic son. They had accepted him as one of their own, and became the only family Aaron ever really knew. But they were all gone now, murdered by a host of angels—the Powers—hellbent on making sure that the prophecy of forgiveness would never come to pass. Their leader, a nasty piece of work called Verchiel, wanted him dead in the worst of ways, but Aaron just couldn’t find it in his heart to oblige.