Authors: Robert Browne

The Paradise Prophecy (48 page)

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy

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And many things could go wrong here.

The otherworld was a vast and frightening place, and no one who had visited could claim to know it all. Even the angel himself—who had a home here—had only seen a part of it.

They traveled in silence, each harboring their own thoughts, their own fears. The forest around them was quiet. Too quiet. And the angel knew that its inhabitants were well aware that their home had been invaded by strangers. They would wait and watch, and evaluate ... and should they feel threatened, they would not hesitate to defend.

The trail seemed to wind on endlessly, and had the scholar not been lost in thought, weighing the decision that lay before him, he might not have been able to continue. Though his memories of the place were vague, the forest stirred up intense feelings of dread and heartbreak, blunted only by his determination to see this thing through and make the right choice.

As they moved through the trees, a mist began to descend, and the spy thought that it might be a living entity, with thoughts and feelings of its own. It clung to them as they walked, seeping into their skin and clothes, seeming to speak to them in low, ominous whispers, and the spy remembered what the scholar had told her about bringing a piece of this world back with him.

It was a thought that did not comfort her.

After traveling through the mist for several hours, they found themselves at the edge of the forest overlooking a yawning canyon, its jagged hills blackened by fire. They stood in a row, looking down at the deep crevices in the canyon floor, waiting for the angel to speak.

After a moment, he pointed toward the largest and deepest crevice of them all.

“There,” he said. “The path to Pandemonium.”

The spy looked doubtful. “All I see is a giant hole.”

“It’s the only way in.”

“How do we get down there?” the scholar asked.

The angel turned. “What I’m about to ask you to do will go against your better nature. You’ll have to shed your earthly prejudices and follow my lead.”

“I think I shed my earthly prejudices when the mist started talking to me back there,” the spy said, “so what do you have in mind?”

The angel tucked his weapons in his waistband, then moved to the very edge of the cliff and turned his back to the canyon.

“You must let yourself go,” he said. Then he did, allowing his weight to carry him backwards over the edge of the mountain, his jacket billowing as he fell. The other two watched in disbelief as he plummeted toward the canyon floor—

—then the mist billowed out from his clothes and his skin, slowing his descent until he was merely floating.

A moment later he touched the ground unharmed.

He signaled for the others to follow, but they both hesitated, unable to grasp what they had just seen.

Then the spy shook her head, said, “Ahh, hell ...” and moved quickly to the edge before she could change her mind, clutching the shotgun to her chest as she spun around and let herself go.

The scholar watched for a moment, then moved to the edge and followed her down.

They landed without incident, the last of the mist rising from their skin, whispering softly as it evaporated. They were surrounded now by jagged mountains and razor-sharp rocks. A misstep, a fall, and a piece of the earth here would slice through your flesh and bone as if it were nothing more than soft butter.

The large chasm was still a mile away, and they traveled a well-worn path toward it, stepping carefully around the rocks, ever mindful of the unseen creatures who watched them from the shadows.

The spy heard a low growl and turned her attention to her right, where a pair of green luminescent eyes carefully followed her.

“Keep facing front,” the angel said. “Make no move to provoke it.”

The spy snapped her head back around, trying very hard to keep her legs from trembling.

This was, the two humans thought, the longest mile they had ever traveled. As they finally neared the edge of the chasm, however, they felt no relief. They saw a long dark pathway leading toward the glowing light, a pathway that held no promise. No hope.

Several black scorpions skittered up the path toward them, and the angel held up a hand and said, “They will only sting you if you show them fear. But if one becomes aggressive, merely rub a finger along its back and it’ll immediately calm down.”

“You have
got
to be kidding me,” the spy said, her voice laced with disgust.

“All creatures, dark and light, want to be loved.”

A moment later, the angel again took the lead and they made their way down the path. The scorpions skittered up close, but did not attack, instead turning and following like excited children, as the three continued forward.

They soon passed through the mouth of the chasm, entering a narrow cave with a low ceiling. They all ducked to keep from bumping their heads, and saw roaches and spiders clinging to the rocks, the roaches rubbing their wings together as if ready for flight, their feathery whispers faintly reverberating against the walls.

The spy and the scholar exchanged brief, uneasy glances as they followed the angel into a shadowy tunnel. The angel withdrew his knife, spoke a brief incantation, and the knife began to glow, illuminating their path. Several multi-legged insects that the humans didn’t recognize scattered away in fright, disappearing down a dark hole in the tunnel floor.

The three stepped around the hole and continued on, moving along a curve until the tunnel opened out onto another cave. The angel came to a stop and pointed his glowing knife toward a stone archway on the opposite side.

“The entrance to Pandemonium.”

“At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot,” the spy said, “what exactly
is
Pandemonium?”

“A city built by the great Mulciber in honor of Satan. We call it the City of Lost Souls.”

They heard a sound and something moved in the shadows of the archway. Then a thing that looked like it should be a wolf or a dog stepped forward and began growling at them.

All three heads.

“A trinine,” the angel said. “It won’t harm you unless you upset its master.”

“Its master?”

As if in answer, a figure slithered out from the shadows behind the three-headed dog. It had the body of a serpent below, and that of an old woman above, her breasts sagging, her hair stringy and gray, her face etched with lines, her teeth crooked and yellow.

“Well?” she said. “Are you going stand there staring, or come inside?”

The two humans exchanged glances again, then followed the angel as he crossed to the old woman.

“What’s the fee today?”

“Same as always,” she said. “Nothing more than a kiss.”

The thought of this turned the humans’ stomachs, but they were soon distracted by movement in the shadows on the opposite side of the archway. The shadows shifted and something dark and menacing moved forward, a shape with no real definition.

Whatever it was, it was watching them carefully.

“Go back to sleep, boy,” the old woman said. “They’ll pay their fee.” Then she looked at the three visitors. “Won’t you?”

“With pleasure,” the angel told her, then stepped close to her and leaned down, kissing her on the lips. The woman snaked her arms around him and held him there for a moment, then finally released him.

“Be on with you, then. Next.”

The two humans once again exchanged glances, neither of them anxious to move forward.

“Come on, come on,” the old woman said, “or I’ll sic my son on you.”

The trinine growled and the shadows on the far side of the archway shifted again. Not one to waste time, the scholar leaned down, giving the old woman a kiss. Again she snaked her arms around him, holding him there, and when she released him, he stumbled back, his eyes wide and slightly embarrassed, as if he’d enjoyed the moment but didn’t want to admit it.

Then it was the spy’s turn, and she clearly did not want to do this. Steeling herself, she tucked the shotgun under her arm, then sidled up to the old woman, crouched down and hesitated, not sure she could go through with it.

“Oh, for Lucifer’s sake,” the old woman said, then grabbed the spy and yanked her close, planting her lips on her. A slick tongue slithered down the spy’s throat and a burst of pleasure flowed through her. Then she, too, stumbled back in a daze and struggled to stay on her feet.

“All right, boy,” the old woman said. “Open the gate.”

A moment later they heard a faint creak as the gate was opened, and the humans took the path toward the City of Lost Souls.

Pandemonium.

T
he place was at once familiar, yet like nothing Callahan had ever seen before. They seemed to be in a canyon of some kind, with dark, cavernous walls, but with no sky to speak of.

No moon. No stars.

Yet something was stirring up there. Something oppressive. Hostile. A malevolent turbulence—as if some dark spectre was watching over them.

A long row of burning torches lined the narrow road, and the walls on either side looked like huge, blackened beehives fashioned out of dark stone.

Homes, Callahan thought, but left it at that.

She didn’t want to consider what might be living inside. And she hoped she’d never have to find out.

Up ahead was what looked to be the center of the “city”—if you could really call it that—a cluster of ancient stone structures with pillars and archways surrounding an open square.

But a normal city would be bustling with activity, and this one wasn’t. In fact, it was deserted. A ghost town. No one milling about. No lights in the windows. No sounds. No nothing.

And Callahan wondered why.

“Where is everyone?”

“Asleep,” Michael said quietly. “And be thankful for it. In a few hours this place will be crawling with creatures you’d best not see. Otherwise you might not get back to the overworld with your sanity intact.”

Too late, Callahan wanted to say, but she remained silent.

She’d been to cities all over the world, traveled to some of the most dangerous places imaginable, but as they moved toward the empty square, she’d never been so unnerved before. Never felt a
weight
like this. An uneasiness so deep that it seemed to drag her down.

The threat here was not so much
ex
ternal as it was
in
ternal
.
And she suddenly realized that what she felt was despair. The despair of a thousand lost souls all gathered in a single place, buzzing inside her like bees in a hive.

If her father had felt only a fraction of this before putting that gun to his head, then she understood why he’d done it.

No one could live with this feeling for long.

She glanced at LaLaurie and knew he felt the same. He’d already had his taste of hell, and she was pretty sure it had been more than enough.

They came to a stop, then Michael ushered them under the shadows of an archway.

“Wait here,” he whispered. “And keep your voices low. You really don’t want to wake anyone up.”

Callahan frowned. “I thought you said this was neutral ground?”

“For angels,” he told her. “Everyone else is fair game. That’s why they call it Pandemonium.”

H
e was gone for an eternity.

After leaving them behind, Michael had crossed to another archway and disappeared beneath it, swallowed up by a curtain of darkness. When several minutes had passed and he hadn’t returned, Callahan started feeling restless.

“What the hell is taking him so long?”

“Give him time,” LaLaurie told her. “He obviously knows what he’s doing.”

Until now, LaLaurie had been uncharacteristically quiet. Callahan wasn’t sure what was bugging him—other than the obvious—but he hadn’t been the same since they’d escaped Belial’s most recent assault.

She knew he had seen something on those pages that she wasn’t privy to, but she figured it couldn’t be any more horrific than what they’d experienced so far.

Deciding to risk getting her head bit off, she said, “What’s going on, Professor? You’ve barely uttered a sound since we left the church.”

LaLaurie looked at her with pain in his eyes. Then he said, “They want me to kill her.”

Callahan wasn’t sure what he meant by this. “Kill who?”

“Who do you think?” he asked. “The sacred traveler.”

“What are you talking about? Who put that crazy idea in your head?”

“The pages.”

Callahan frowned, knowing by his look that what he’d seen must have been extremely disturbing. “So are you ready to tell me about them now?”

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy

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