"Look at the blue-white heat waves radiating from the mother-seer who was on the ground already . . . watch them wash over the female Neteru." Using his long index finger, he craned it toward the dark, vaporous mist. "Look at the charge that explodes from the male Neteru to wash over her and to keep all falling debris from her. Then look at the murderous response in his eyes that gave even Vlad a second of pause."
Lilith leaned in and studied the slow-motion, frame-by-frame image of Vlad's expression."Absolutely amazing."
"Does Carlos Rivera seem the least bit afraid of his fate at that moment?" Sebastian paced as he spoke, counting off evidence on his fingers. "Also look at the male Guardians. There's no human sense of self-preservation within them. They are functioning from the purely reptilian segment of their brains, down to the R-complex . . . which is a very dangerous thing, but also a very advantageous thing to exploit."
Lilith nodded."Dangerous indeed." She stroked the tension away from her temples. "This means angels will be involved." Her gaze shot toward the table. "But if this is true, then why haven't the ancestral Neterus come to her aid or the angels simply shown up to protect her?"
"Could it be they're deployed in a search-and-destroy mission seeking your heir?"
"Or," Lilith murmured, lost in thought as she stroked her chin, "they must know that a premature, heavy-handed show of force by their side would tip us off. It is still human, this prophecy child, and as such must navigate the vagaries of fate on the earth plane in order to be born. It doesn't get a free ride.Interesting."
"While Elizabeth is fighting the Neterus with Vlad . . . and Lucrezia and Nuit are raising the Antichrist's war chest, replacing the recent incalculable losses that their territories just sustained, we could raise the pale horse of the Apocalypse. We could do this while no one, not even the Neterus, would be aware."
For a moment, Lilith simply stared at Sebastian.
"At the end of the battle in the Greek isles to protect the heir," Sebastian said coolly, "their side raised the black stallion that shall harm not the oil or the wine . . . but that is the last one that they can alone raise-the next one is our pawn . . . remember that for balance, in a sense of Divine equity and just after the Dark Lord's fall during the Big Bargain we were given access to two horses at the end of days to use to tip the scales, true?"
"Yes . . . it is true," Lilith said in a faraway voice.
"Ah, but you have rightly been focused on the healing and development of the heir in his hidden North American caverns beneath Washington, D.C. However, I beg you not to overlook this opportunity, Lilith. We get to raise the pale horse, then their side can break the fifth biblical seal . . . which will give them access to bring back the souls of all those slain and martyred-even those stolen from Dante's infernal Book of the Damned."
"Hence the reason the release of the pale horse is not to be taken lightly by our side. That would give the Light the edge to possibly annihilate us with all those-"
"Think of it though, Lilith," Sebastian said quickly, cutting her off in his excitement. "We have a chance that allows our Dark Lord to raise the pale horse of human plagues. It is what we've been waiting for. And if there is a plague upon the land, after Lucrezia's and Nuit's shadows poisoning through the airwaves, the babies will die. Even the Neteru Guardian team, and even the Neterus, had been weakened by sustaining the poison for a time . . . their females, if carrying, will not be able to fight off the pandemic outbreak wielded by the pale horse."
"We must be careful with that one, though," Lilith warned. "The heir is still healing and has human code in his DNA . . . it came through the pollution of Cain's seed merged with my husband's . . . and while I'm sure my ova and the Dark Lord's seed cast a dominant darkness around his immune system, we must still take care."
"Understood," Sebastian offered, but undaunted, pressed on. "Do remember, however, what it says in the texts;the rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him ." Sebastian spun and clasped his hands together. "Weare Death. That isour rider.Our province. Hadesis Hell . . . our armies. The pale horse, as it states even in their tomes, was given power over one-fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, plague, and by wild beasts of the earth. No child will escape the plagues, death, Hell, and destruction that our fallen angels of the Apocalypse release. Our heir will be a fully matured male when he finally awakens from his chrysalis state. That compared to a human Neteru baby that will take twenty-one years to come into its own. If our plagues don't get it, how long can they run? How long can they hide? Even if we kill the Guardians' progeny, missing the Neteru child, it would decimate their team's morale, make them sloppy . . . and from there it is only a matter of time."
Sebastian opened his arms in an impassioned plea. "Lilith, even after the Light breaks that next seal to release their saints in a retaliatory strike, the chess move comes back to us again to break the sixth seal. We still retain the upper hand. The great earthquake-"
"Where the sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned bloodred, and the stars in the sky fell to earth," Lilith murmured, warming to the idea and finishing Sebastian's scriptural quote.
"A fitting coronation for your heir."
The two demons stared at each other once more.
Lilith inclined her head ever so slightly, her eyes glowing black. "Your proposal has significant merit. Let me think about it."
Hand-to-hand combat met black magic steel against Neteru blade. An elbow to Carlos's jaw opened him up to swing range as he stumbled back for a second, but then he severed Vlad's pike in half with a double-handed blow from his sword. Pikes coming at his back from Vlad's demon forces made Carlos duck and pivot to avoid being fatally impaled. Vlad had to quickly throw up a black-box to avoid fire from his own troops.
"Siege the citadel!" Vlad ordered, pointing to the cathedral. "Leave him to me!"
"We can't, milord! It is impossible to get near the gas and power lines under it," one of his demon captains shouted back. "Everything below the fortress is white-hot."
Clearly fearing retaliation for being unable to fulfill the command, the demon pointed a human-draped pike toward the large copper statue of the archangel that guarded the bell tower. "This is Uriel's-"
A lightning bolt cut through the sky before the archangel's name had left the demon's lips, simultaneously smiting the demon to ash as it lit the huge copper statue. The statue's eyes glowed with white fury, and from that unflinching glare, a crackling white envelope of protection sealed the cathedral.
"Seize the infidel to our dark empire!"
In the three seconds it took for Vlad to bark out his command, Carlos had fallen back to his vehicle and begun sending white-light pulses from the tip of his blade to the holdout position Vlad's army had taken on top of neighboring buildings, exploding demons everywhere he could see. Vlad called his injured stallion to him, pulled three innocents through the glass of an office building, and flung them to his nightmare creature.
"Feed!" Vlad ordered, watching Carlos grapple with trying to keep his demon army away from the perimeter of office buildings, while also trying to fight against his black shield to get to the screaming humans being cannibalized by his stallion. Vlad threw his head back and laughed as the horse disemboweled a man that was still alive, and then snapped off the head of a terror-stricken, shrieking woman. "That is what my army will do to your Guardians the moment we find a weakness in that fortress-and know that all human domains, even those perched upon hallowed ground, have a weakness in the end of days!"
Choices contracted within Carlos's mind. Something very fragile within him snapped as he looked at the three dead bodies on the ground being consumed. Demons had begun sacking the buildings around them to feed and replenish their fallen warriors. The images of human carnage haunted him in the tense few seconds as windows exploded out to the street, the sounds of screams pierced the air, and bat-winged, skeletal creatures began to feast. It was the battle of Nod happening all over again, but this time on the earth plane.
Sickened by what he witnessed, a charge filled Carlos's hands, but when he released it, what came from his fingertips was a fury-filled black charge that sliced through Vlad's shields and knocked him off his mount.