Fall of Lucifer (16 page)

All across the chamber, spine-chilling screams resounded as the renegade angelic host were consumed by the blistering fireball.

‘I’ll take man with me! I won’t burn alone!’

His deranged screaming resounded through the darkness as the searing tongues of fire started to engulf Lucifer. He looked down incredulously at his hands. As he watched, they blistered. His broad, manicured nails twisted into talons and yellowed with age. The chiselled alabaster features became pockmarked. The jet-black eyebrows grew together. The beautiful aquiline nose became misshapen. The passionate crimson mouth grew thin and cruel.

Frantic, Lucifer put his hands to his cheeks, feeling his mangled, misshapen features. The magnificent thick ebony tresses fell from his scalp in smoldering clumps. His gold and ruby ring burned deep into his flesh.

‘Hear me, Christos!’ he screamed. ‘I, Lucifer, light-bearer, chief prince, holy angelic regent of the Royal House of Yehovah, do now become Your sworn enemy, and treachery and iniquity will I bear unto You throughout eternity of eternities!’

A gale-force wind blew through the chamber. The angels with Lucifer – themselves hideously transformed – clung desperately to balustrades, marble columns, and overturned marble tables as they were sucked away from the throne room. They screamed frenziedly as the lightning raged.

Then, propelled by some unseen gargantuan magnetic force, they and everything in their wake were sucked towards the swirling black vortex beyond the chamber entrance.

[[GABRIEL IMAGE]]

The shadows had fallen . . .

Chapter Seventeen

East of Eden

Lucifer stood on the new planet. Earth.

He was outside the eastern entrance to the Garden of Eden, watching the pale turquoise waves lap onto the pearlescent white sand.

He looked up into the azure heavens at Earth’s lone moon, then moved his palm across the sky. Thousands of light-years above the garden the enormous pearl gates of the First Heaven became visible. He could see the cherubim and seraphim guarding the vast open portal that stretched from the First Heaven down to the northern gates of the garden. Thousands of angels descended and ascended between Earth and the First Heaven.

He passed his hand over the sky once more and saw a solitary figure within the gate, standing at attention. ‘Michael,’ he hissed.

Lucifer raised his gnarled hand and brought ridged, yellowed nails to his blistered cheek. Though his mangled features had been hidden by a hooded grey robe, he disrobed swiftly and Sachiel took his outer garment.

‘Wait here, Sachiel.’

Lucifer moved towards the entrance of the eastern gate. Silently he watched the angelic sentinels, the keepers of the gate. They did not see him. The atoms in his angelic frame began to radiate at the speed of light, and his skin metamorphosed into scales. Within seconds, he passed through the undergrowth undetected by the guards – a serpent.

He slithered through the mangroves and rain forest towards the centre of the garden. There the two trees – the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – stood shrouded by the white fire in the corner of the garden. He lay hidden in the lush undergrowth, waiting.

The white fire arced towards him like a magnet, engulfing his scaled body with incandescent tongues of flame. Slowly he took on human form. His ravaged features shed like a second skin. His face morphed back into the beautiful chiselled features of old: the wide, marble-smooth forehead; the full, sensuous mouth; the bronzed, perfect skin; the blazing clear sapphire eyes. Gleaming raven hair fell over his shoulders onto the shining white robe. A golden girdle circled his waist, and his feet were clad in gold. His head was crowned with a crown of translucent light. His presence was kingly, majestic . . . noble.

Lucifer put his hand to his face, feeling his features. He moaned in ecstasy. He moved deeper into the garden, breathing deeply, drinking in the fragrance of myrtle. He stopped on a bank underneath a stand of cedars.

In the farthest part of the garden, bathing in the golden nectar of the warm pools, was the female prototype Lucifer had seen in his chambers being cloned from the prototype man. Except this was not a hologram. ‘Man!’ he whispered.

He stared, mesmerized, as the woman dived, clean-limbed and slender, down a waterfall into the hot springs and swam with the cavorting dolphins. He watched, enthralled, as the graceful figure walked out of the waves onto the white sand, her long golden hair falling to her knees.

He walked out from the undergrowth over the sand until he stood in front of her. His face shone like a burning flame.

She bowed low. ‘My lord.’ She raised her fair face to his and looked him in the eyes. Her body was covered in an infinitesimal layer of the incandescent white fire.

Lucifer reached out and caressed her face gently. ‘Matter,’ he murmured in wonder.

She smiled, radiant and guileless.

He stared at her, entranced. ‘You are very beautiful.’ His tones were silken.

‘Thank you, my lord.’ She spoke plainly. ‘But you yourself are indeed glorious. Why, Prince Michael I know, and Prince Gabriel I know – but you . . . ’ She gave a playful laugh.

Lucifer contemplated. She was pure, undefiled, completely without artifice. He gave her a dazzling smile. ‘I am a king.’ He gestured to the garden. ‘You enjoy Eden?’

Her eyes grew wide with wonder. ‘Your Majesty, it is truly a paradise. Why, you have provided us with everything we could desire.’

‘You are partial to the fountains?’ He leaned against the cedar tree.

She frowned. ‘Oh, yes! But I love to swim with the porpoises in the Pool of Serenity, my lord.’

Lucifer smiled. ‘And the scents of the forests?’

Her eyes sparkled. ‘The perfume of the frangipani at twilight is utterly delectable!’ She ran to a frangipani tree and plucked off a flower, which immediately grew back. She ran over to Lucifer and placed it near his nose. ‘Is it not, Your Majesty?’ Again she bowed low.

Lucifer shook his head. She was captivating.

The woman looked up at Lucifer disarmingly. ‘We are content to obey your every edict, my lord. Yehovah and yourself know what is best for us. We do not have the wisdom or discernment of our lords. This we understand. That is why we gladly would submit to yourselves, who are so much wiser and more discerning than ourselves. I am glad it is so.’

Lucifer beckoned her closer. ‘Surely it would be more expedient for you to discern accurately, without having at every turn to be guided by Yehovah. His time is surely far too valuable to be caught up in your minor quandaries.’

Eve frowned. ‘I had never considered that, my lord. He has always taken our concerns greatly to heart.’ She looked at Lucifer, perplexed. ‘I did not think that He considered us to be a burden.’

‘And a burden you surely are not. But the time to mature draws near, and with it accountability.’

Eve hesitated. ‘Well, of course we should be accountable. And we must mature. It is right. It is good.’ Her eyes clouded with concern. ‘But you say that we are selfish? I did not want to be a burden. Why, He delights in our walks together in the cool of each day.’

The blood drained from Lucifer’s imperial features. ‘He
walks
with you?’ He stared grimly beyond the mists and the hanging blossoms of the Gardens of Fragrance towards the simple wooden gate, the entrance to Christos’ grotto. A strange evil fire burned in his eyes.

Eve smiled. ‘We are His companions.’

‘If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall be as God, discerning right from wrong.’

‘We are created in the image of God,’ she said, confused.

He drew closer to her. ‘You are created in His image, but He has held this one thing back from you.’ He stopped, staring up at the First Heaven, then deliberately plucked the pale blue glistening fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ‘The knowledge of good and evil. There was one who misused it once, who committed treachery with violence against Him. A seducer . . . a renegade. He has warned you?’ Lucifer caressed the blue fruit.

Eve nodded, eyes wide. ‘He said there was one whom He greatly loved but who committed treason,’ she spoke softly. ‘He said we must be vigilant.’

Lucifer nodded. ‘That is so, sweet Eve. He would protect you. He would shelter you. He was so grieved at this betrayal that He, believing it to be in your best interests, took the choice away from you, lest you also commit treason.’

‘We would never do aught against Him! Why, we love Him so greatly!’

‘And this He knows full well, which is why He has sent me this day to declare to you that He has issued a new edict. You shall eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You shall make your own decisions, filled with wisdom and discernments, as does God.’

Eve blinked, her thoughts in disarray. ‘But Yehovah said that if we eat of its fruit, we shall surely die.’

‘You shall not surely die. Indeed, in the day that you eat of it your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be filled with wisdom and multiple discernments, just like a god.’

Eve stared at Lucifer, transfixed. ‘Why – I should like to be as a god . . . ’ she whispered, with an unfamiliar glint in her eyes.

He raised the fruit to his mouth. ‘You shall be even as I am.’ He took a large bite and swallowed. Then he smiled his old magnificent smile and passed the fruit to her.

She lifted it to her lips and caressed it avariciously. She bit deeply into it . . . greedily. The juice gushed down her chin.

Instantaneously the white fire disappeared from her body, leaving her naked. She was oblivious, both to her nakedness and to Lucifer retracing his steps through the undergrowth.

Lucifer watched from hiding as the man, Adam, approached her from across the white sand. She beckoned to him and held out the fruit. The man ate of the fruit. And the white fire disappeared from his body.

Immediately there was a thunder from above them. The portal closed, and the gateway to the First Heaven disappeared. A circle of flames appeared around the tree, surrounding it.

Lucifer, a serpent once more, slithered back through the undergrowth near the eastern gate. Once outside the scales became the blistered skin of Lucifer’s fallen angelic body.

Sachiel stared at Lucifer’s hands as the short, broad clear nails thickened and became ridged. Lucifer grabbed the hooded robe out of Sachiel’s grasp and flung it over his distorted features, watching as twenty mighty cherubim descended from the portal, their flaming war swords drawn.

‘May hell be my witness!’

Chapter Eighteen

Gabriel

Heaven was silent. In mourning.

Gabriel stood in grey robes, grief-stricken. He looked around him at Lucifer’s inner chamber: dark, desolate, abandoned.

He inhaled sharply. Everything was untouched, exactly as it had been the night before his brother was banished. The magnificent frescos, his collection of pipes and tabrets – his viol and bow still lay on his writing table. Lucifer’s Sword of State had been placed back in its magnificent jewelled sheath. Enormous cast-iron chains barred the splendid golden doors to the observatory, where they had spent so many moons in laughter and merriment.

Gabriel leaned over Lucifer’s writing desk and gently caressed the viol.

Michael stood in the doorway, silently observing. ‘Gabriel.’

Gabriel turned, tears on his cheeks. His eyes were dull. ‘You are returned from Eden?’ His voice was lifeless.

Michael moved towards him and reached for his arm.

Gabriel pulled away violently. He drew his robes tightly around him and strode over to the shackled balcony doors.

Michael looked after him in anguish. ‘Gabriel!’

Gabriel gazed out at the seven spires of the Holy Mountain, his back towards Michael. Many minutes elapsed between them before Michael spoke.

‘Why did you not go with Lucifer?’ Michael’s voice was hoarse with emotion.

Gabriel was silent. His back remained turned to Michael.

‘Many were deceived.’ Michael hesitated. ‘Even Zadkiel.’

Gabriel turned suddenly, his chin set, his expression hard. He picked up his sword and walked through the chamber. At the threshold he stopped, his back still towards Michael, the hot, stinging tears unseen by his elder brother. ‘I wanted to go, Michael.’

The huge golden doors slammed in Michael’s face.

Chapter Nineteen

The Title Deeds

The seven Ancient Ones of the High Council of Heaven sat on the jacinth thrones under the open heavens on the high place of the Tower of Winds. Only the eighth throne – Charsoc’s – stood empty, a chilling reminder of recent events.

The blue winds roared, blowing the mists of wisdom and revelation down onto the seven white heads of the ancient monarchs. They were seated around a pure golden circular table, their heads bowed, their lips moving silently in supplication to the Ancient of Days. A huge golden-bound codex sat on the table. Far above them, lightning bolts illuminated the firmament.