Abraham Allegiant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 4) (33 page)

Lot’s wife Ado made a meal for the angels and the entire family sat with them as they ate.

She watched them with a wary eye and said to Lot. “You know we are breaking several laws by housing these men here for the night.”

His eldest daughter, Ishtar said, “Father, we are duty bound to report this to the Ministry of Hospitality.”

“I know, I know,” said Lot. He was scrambling, trying to figure out how he could possibly get out of this mess he had gotten himself into.

Mikael watched the nervous Lot with sadness. “You have done what the Creator requires. Be strong and courageous, man of faith. El Shaddai is your strength.”

Now Gaia, the youngest daughter piped up, “Blasphemy! You two are going to be in real trouble now.”

Mikael kept his eyes on Lot. “You need to take back authority over your family, Lot.”

“How dare you!” yelped Ishtar. “Ba’al Youth are the future of this world! We are the sons and daughters of Ashtart.”

Gaia added, “King Bera loves us, and you are the son of a mongrel!”

Suddenly, Lot banged his fist on the table and yelled like he had never yelled before at his family. “
Ishtar and Gaia, shut your mouths or I will shut them for you
!”

Ishtar and Gaia looked with fear at their father. But they shut their mouths.

The silence was broken by a loud crash outside and a pounding on the door. Ado jumped; the girls shrieked.

Lot sighed with resignation. “They followed us.”

He looked over at Mikael and said, “This is not good, my friend. You may be angels. But these miscreants have savaged worse.”

Mikael looked at the Destroyer, who only gave a slight smirk.

Lot said, “Let me see what I can do.”

He got out of his chair and went to the door. He lifted the bar across the heavy oak door, turned and said, “Lock the door behind me.”

Ado obeyed.

Lot stepped out into the night.

All around his house were a thousand shadows of the night. Riff raff, gangs, and the darkest elements of Sodom, both young and old. They had come for flesh, angel flesh — male angel flesh.

The leader, Belus, a giant of a man, with large muscles from mining, stepped out and said, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out, Lot. It is our right by law to penetrate them!”

The crowd around the house cheered. It was true. City legislation protected the citizens to engage in sexual rapine with strangers and merchants who visited the city.

Lot yelled back, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly!”

The crowd jeered him.

Belus was offended. “I am outraged! How dare you spew your hatred and intolerance calling
us
‘wicked!’ You should be hanged for such criminal hatred!”

The criminal element cheered again.

Lot was undeterred. He knew that Mikael and the big one were angels, and he still maintained his shred of faith in El Shaddai, though he was sweating now, imagining his own torture and abuse along with the angels.

He approached Belus with a conciliatory tone, “Belus, listen to me. I have two virgin daughters who have not known a man. They are of age for their sexual freedom. Please, let me bring them to you to do as you please. But do nothing to these men, for they are under my care.”

Belus was burning with anger now. He turned to the others with a prophet’s oratory. “This man, Lot, came to sojourn in our good City of Love! Now, he sits in judgment over us?”

The shadows of Sodomites came out into the firelight of the torches carried by the bolder ones. There were at least a thousand in the open square alone, and God only knew how many more still hiding in the shadows.

Lot backed up to his door.

Belus pronounced like a judge, “I say we will deal worse with you than with those angels!”

The crowd yelled again, but now, they were becoming more agitated and less in unison. Belus was igniting them, but there would come a moment where he had no more control over them, and they would simply sweep over Lot and take what they wanted.

Suddenly, a large pair of hands reached from behind the door and pulled Lot into the house.

It was the Destroyer.

Mikael stepped out front, just as some of the men had decided to move and break down the door.

A group of ten of them jogged toward Mikael and riled the crowd forward.

Mikael then held his hand out and a bright ball of light seemed to appear from his hand and burst outward like an arc of lightning that blinded everyone in the open square.

The ten running men tripped over each other and fell to the ground. Others rubbed their eyes trying to get their vision back. But it was not going to come back. All thousand pairs of eyes had had their retinas permanently burned out. They were groping for the doorway, but were falling all over each other trying to find their way. Fights broke out over their stumbling and they started raping and brutalizing each other.

Inside, Mikael told Lot, “Have you any other family here?”

Lot said, “Just my sons-in-law betrothed to my daughters.”

“Go out the back and get them now. We are leaving.”

Lot obeyed and left out the back door.

Ado said, “What do you mean we are leaving?”

Mikael said, “The outcry against the pentapolis and its people has become so great before El Shaddai that he has sent us to destroy it.”

Ishtar blurted out, “I am going to tell Ashtart about this! You have no right!”

Gaia shook her little fists and ranted in a tantrum. “I am not going! I am not going!”

The noise of the commotion outside became riotous. The blindness had infuriated the men, but they were taking it out on each other in a riot of rage.

Lot came back in the back door. No one was with him.

He saw his two girls in a mutual tantrum, holding their eyes shut and crying, “I am not leaving! I am not leaving!”

He walked up and slapped both of them until they stopped in fear at the gall of their father.

But he was taking charge.

Mikael asked Lot, “Where are your sons-in-law?”

Lot shrugged. “They did not believe me. They thought I was joking.”

Which was a good thing, because Lot did not care for the two juvenile delinquents. They were sycophantic Ba’al Youth who had no shred of moral integrity.

Mikael said, “Leave now, lest you be swept away with the damned in punishment.”

Lot hesitated, “Is there not any other way of doing this? Can you not find the leaders and punish them? Do you have to kill the innocent with the guilty?”

“We are not killing the innocent,” said Mikael.

It struck Lot that Mikael just implied that there was not a single other righteous person in the city but him and his family. And he was not even sure of his family.

“You have wasted too much time,” said Mikael. “Destroyer, grab them.”

The Destroyer picked up Lot and Ado; Mikael picked up Ishtar and Gaia, and went for the door.

The girls started kicking and screaming until Mikael squeezed them so tight, they passed out.

Lot saw it and could not help but give a smile of approval.

Mikael backed up, and the Destroyer gave a swift kick that exploded the door outward with a blast that slew the twenty closest blind criminals and laid a hundred others out flat on their backs.

The angels led the family through the confused blind crowd and out of the city.

The morning was dawning over the mountains now.

Someone had informed the gods about the commotion at Lot’s home, and that there were angels in the city.

Ba’al and Ashtart were raving mad that angels had sought such subterfuge, and they were on their way to capture the offenders when they saw the angels carrying Lot’s family toward the gates.

Ba’al stopped in his tracks and held back Ashtart.

“What are you doing?” complained Ashtart. “They are getting away.”

Ba’al’s skin went pale as the blood left his scales. He knew who that huge angelic hulk creature was.

“The Destroyer,” said Ba’al.

Ashtart was startled. She knew who the Destroyer was, but had never seen him. She knew they would not stand a chance against the Destroyer. No one stood a chance against that Angel of mass destruction.

“We need to leave now,” said Ba’al.

They turned tails and ran back to their temple. But Ashtart had one last punch she wanted to throw.

Outside the gates of the city, Mikael told Lot, “Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.”

But Lot stopped him, “My lords, you have shown me great kindness in saving my life, but I cannot make it to the hills in time. I will be overtaken. May I flee to Zoar? Would that be far enough?”

Mikael looked at the Destroyer, who nodded. Mikael turned back to him, “Okay, I will grant you this favor. Go to Zoar but do not stop until you get there. I will hold off until you arrive.”

Lot and his wife and two daughters then set off on their horses toward Zoar a few miles away.

Mikael and the Destroyer reentered the city. But as they stepped through the gates, they heard a heinous screeching bellow come from the main street leading to the temple. It was not human; it was more like the sound of many humans full of furious rage.

Then the ground trembled beneath their feet and they saw the thing come at them from the street.

It was the Meat Puppet, the creature from the Pit of Ashtart’s experimentation. It was about twenty feet tall, a mass of muscle and flesh and bone coming at them. It had appendages that worked as two arms and two legs, but they were not very human looking. It was made of humans that had become melded together in a singular consolidated creature of fury. Ashtart’s spell had worked; it had united the minds of the individuals who made it up into one hive mind in service to Ashtart. That mind was inhabited by Nephilim demons, and Ashtart had commanded it to kill.

It ran full speed at the angels. It had no eyes, for it had two hundred eyes all over its body, the eyes of its composite human bodies merged into one.

It was grotesque. It was hideous.

It swiped one of its mutant hands and hit the angels, launching them a hundred feet and slamming them into the wall of the city. They hit and dissolved the rock into a pile of rubble. Mikael had the wind knocked out of him, but the Destroyer was only angry.

He stood up and brushed himself off.

The Meat Puppet reached them and tried to crush Mikael with a pummeling fist of flesh and bone. Mikael rolled out of the way.

The Destroyer grabbed one of the legs and ripped it off. The Blob shrieked in pain and it fell to the ground in a bloody mess.

But then it reshaped itself with a new leg, like a mutating organism.

“This is not going to be easy,” said Mikael.

The Meat Puppet swung and hit Mikael again. He slammed into another wall and this time was knocked unconscious.

The Destroyer would not go down so easily though. He drew a sword from his sheath. It was a hefty sword to match the angel’s powerful arms and large size. He wielded it with a mighty arc, and cut off the Meat Puppet’s left hand.

The titan screamed again, all ninety of its voices in painful unison, as it reshaped its hand, which the Destroyer promptly cut off again, bringing the thing down in size with each chop.

The Meat Puppet backed off. It did not see that Mikael had feigned unconsciousness so he could sneak up behind it and jump its back, plunging his own sword deep and ripping out a dozen of the human bodies.

The Blob fell to the ground and Mikael rolled off.

Mikael and the Destroyer then ran into the midst of the city to lose the thing in the labyrinth of streets. The Meat Puppet followed them limping with its bloody mass of seventy bodies still held together by magic and villainy.

• • • • •

By the time, Lot and his family made it to Zoar, they were exhausted. He found a place to stay and he dropped off to sleep.

But Ado could not sleep. She had been upset by the way things had gone. Her soul was in Sodom. She had never left the city her entire life and now she was forced to leave by a mean pair of judging angels who had no compassion for the people of her city who had become her family. She thought of being alone with Lot and her girls and how they would have to start a new life together in a new world of frightening uncertainty.

She could not stand it. She could not stand to follow this cruel, vindictive and capricious god El Shaddai who put them through so much pain and misery. At least Ba’al had cared for them. He provided them with everything they needed to live and thrive in the city. He brought rain for the crops, and bitumen from the fields, and copper from the mines. The city was her heart.

So after Lot and their daughters were fast asleep, Ado got on one of the horses and made her way back to Sodom. She was not going anywhere. She would stay with her city, come hell or high water.