Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) - By Aaron Patterson Page 0,123

one suffered an injury, the other one did as well.

But the demon mind was a powerful thing; sometimes in the individual it could produce unforeseen anomalies. Some of the Brothers were strong enough to will their way out of mortal danger. Those were a rare breed, and what few were able to flee to more hospitable parts of the world did so—to the west.

In reality though, that was a mere deferment, a trifle. There was nowhere for the Nri Brothers to hide, no matter what temporary allegiances they might make. The full force of that which worked its way through the tower was striking the Nri with duplicative effect all over the city. Not since the early days had such a thing been seen under the sun. It was reverberating through the atmosphere in tremors, signifying the beginning of the end; that terrible reality that all fallen angels had denied for millennia.

The angel Kreios was ushering it in. And El was beginning to assert Himself.

Nwaba could feel it now, it was unmistakable. For the first time in thousands of years his fear became genuine again. It was a flash in the pan, fleeting, but still: deny it as much as he might, he could not tell lies to himself. Such a thing made fools of the sane; he would not cross over.

If this is indeed true, he thought, if El is beginning the final judgment…? He stalked the floor of the penthouse living room, his resplendent shimmering white form, both hideous and beautiful, covered in scales as well as skin, a lizard with human face, a fully intentional contradiction in terms, designed to be an affront to truth and beauty. To El Himself.

What shall I then do…? He mulled the possibilities over.

If the list of possibilities was narrowing, he would eventually be left with two choices. These two choices every fallen angel had known from the time the manifestation of El had fulfilled all prophecy. Before that they could only guess, but now they knew: they could either fight or die.

For thousands of years they had chosen to fight. Still in rebellion, a third of the host, the full number of them that had chosen to rebel and cast their lot with Lucifer, had for thousands of years been fighting a war of mitigation. Though they had failed to defeat El at every point along the way, still they fought, they resisted. They knew they were doomed to lose. That was why they fought. That was what made their cause ultimately moral, ultimately just.

They fought against the great heavenly tyranny, and at heavy cost. So many of their number had been snatched off to eternal punishment over the centuries, and so few were now left.

Nwaba’s anger kindled afresh as he thought of the Sons of God. They too were fallen. Yet El favored them. They claimed to leave Him for love, for women. But the Nri at least had just cause, rights, they worshipped their own morality. They occupied the high ground, and for this reason the Brotherhood would never stop hunting down and killing the Sons of El. Not until they were all dead.

CHAPTER VI

“COMFORTABLE, JOHN?” MR. EMMANUEL asked the girl’s father. It was one of those things people said. He actually wasn’t the slightest bit interested in John’s comfort level.

John made no response; he lay on his back under the restraints.

Mr. Emmanuel had known all along, of course. He had many levers to pull, and he had pulled enough of them in America to get Harry—his agent and a member of the Nri—inserted, with another, a helo pilot, into the FBI investigation on the girl Airel. It gained him the inside track, got him closer to the daughter of El through her desperate and unsuspecting parents.

It was a thing of beauty, really.

There had been considerable collateral damage, about which Mr. Emmanuel was completely indifferent. And of course Harry had always been expendable, which Harry didn’t need to know. He had served his purpose; he had lured the bait man John all the way to Cape Town. Soon, the girl would come and the Sword could be…appropriated from her.

For Mr. Emmanuel the ends justified the means if they were pragmatic to him. There were those born to serve, others born to lead. And then quite apart from all that, there were those who crushed both the servers and the leaders and enslaved them to a whim.

History was replete with examples of the stupidity of sheep. Ignorance is its own