Year Two: Rebels - Cara Wylde Page 0,38
whispered.
“Yes. The heavenly beings saw the daughters of man and were fascinated. They descended from Heaven, married them, and soon realized they couldn’t offer them what they desired. The women craved to have children as much as they craved the pleasures of the flesh. The angels went before God and asked Him to… well… fix them. Everyone on Earth and below it had a different anatomy, an anatomy that allowed them to live normal lives. They couldn’t understand how their Creator had gotten such an important detail wrong, but no matter… They thought now it would all be solved. God refused. Of course.”
“And that was the first time the angels cursed.”
Lucien chuckled. “They’d learned some good ones from their mortal wives.”
“They went to the mages. They didn’t need God at all when there were powerful mages on Earth who could give them what they wanted.”
“Yes. And that’s where it all went downhill. Five mages gathered under the stars and performed a ritual like the world had never seen before. The Earth shook, the pocket universes trembled, God’s perfect, innocent servants lost their immortality, and the fabric of the universe itself was damaged beyond repair. Portals opened all over, and cosmic creatures cruised through, swallowing entire villages in their path. When they had enough, they hid under the ground to better digest their food. To close the portals, God, Satan, mages, and false gods had to work together. But even though the portals were closed, the cosmic spawns that had found their way into our world remained. It is said that as long as the portals stay closed, they will sleep. But that’s only an assumption, isn’t it? How could we know for sure?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone all along! We can’t know. What if they wake up? We don’t know anything about the Great Old Ones. Even as they sleep and dream, they are powerful. They can manipulate those who encounter them, not to mention they can create revenants.”
“I think your cast has set. Come here.”
I stood up and almost expected to fall back in the armchair. I didn’t. I actually felt better, and the pill he’d given me proved to be the most effective painkiller I’d ever taken. I walked to where he was standing, in front of a huge map of the sky.
“You’ve got wires inside, by the way,” he said casually as he helped me into a makeshift sling. “They will get absorbed as the bone heals.”
“Oh. That’s a relief.”
“They’re made of a special material that adapts to your body and your DNA, and then becomes part of you.”
“Why don’t we have these things on Earth, again?”
He laughed. “Some supernatural hospitals work with our tools and materials.”
“Good to know.”
“My great-grandfather was there when it happened,” he said.
My eyes grew as wide as saucers. “He was?”
“He wasn’t one of the Watchers – the angels who moved to Earth and married human women. But when the five mages performed their ritual, it affected all the creatures of Heaven. Some say it affected God as well.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but it was too much. I let him continue. He pointed at the map, and I squinted my eyes trying to see in the strong sunlight that poured through the wide-open windows.
“This is how the sky looked when the ritual was performed. This is the exact alignment of the stars. If you want to banish the Great Old Ones, you have to do it when the sky looks the same as it looked then.”
“Oh.”
He stuck his index out to get my attention. “That is the first condition.”
“There are others?”
“The second one is that only the descendants of the mages who performed the ritual can undo the work of their ancestors.”
I blinked. “And the third?”
He smiled. “No, that’s all. The stars must be aligned right, and the mages must be direct descendants of the original ones.”
I sighed with all my might. “Impossible, then.”
“Not at all.” He shook his head. “Humans get discouraged so easily.”
“Ha! So you know I’m human!”
“I’ve known all along.”
“You keep calling me an angel.”
“I keep calling you ‘angel’, not ‘an angel’. There’s a difference.”
In a corner, there was an earth globe – the kind one could find in a pseudointellectual human’s office, open it and discover a miniature bar inside, – underneath it was a red and black sphere, and on top of it was a white and blue one. Hell below, Heaven above. He opened the sphere that represented Heaven and pulled