Rise of the Beast (36 page)

Satan’s old audience hall was strangely quiet. There had been a time when the atmosphere of this place was a continual circus. In those days, one human after another was brought through that shimmering metal ring that formed an ethereal corridor from the holding cells to the place of their sentencing in this very hall. From here, they would be taken to the place where their sentence would be carried out. The ring was positioned about 50 feet in front of the place where Satan’s magnificent throne once stood. It deposited the shackled and often beaten victim virtually at Satan’s feet.

The lurid atmosphere of this place set the stage for their eternity. Upon the walls of this grand cavern room were great murals depicting the terrible nature and torments of the realm of the damned. Within this hall, the humans would experience their last relatively pain-free moments before their eternity of agony. Satan had been determined to make it a memorable experience.

At any given time, there might be a hundred or more demons in this place to witness the festivities. They would assume a multitude of grotesque shapes so as to terrify their rag-clad prey. But now, those days were passed. In the two years since the war in Heaven, no new souls had come to this realm of the damned. Now, the grave would retain its dead until the final judgment. This chamber no longer served a purpose.

Yet, this place was not empty. Two bat-winged beings knelt before the great ring. In very fact, they had partially disassembled it and were now peering into its interior, which was filled with a multitude of different-shaped crystals linked by fine fibers of what appeared to be glass. One held in his hand a sort of tool that caused the crystals to glow when brought near it.

Unlike most demons, these did not have the countenance of pale old men. They had the appearance of men in their mid-thirties. They were handsome men at that.

“I never tire of the beauty, the intricacy of this thing,” noted the demon who watched the other skillfully move the tool. “It is a pity that Satan forbid you to build any more of these. You created a thing of true wonder here.”

“Thank you, Rolf,” said the other, moving the tool still deeper into the maze of crystalline wiring. “It has been a very long time, over 6,000 years, since I last gazed upon it. I had nearly forgotten the principles involved. It is all coming back to me, however. Yes, I do believe that we will be able to build more of these all over this world. They will give our people greater mobility, the ability to reach a trouble spot more swiftly.”

Rolf once more scanned the crystalline wiring. “Then you envision trouble in our future, Lord Cordon?”

Cordon withdrew the tool from the other-worldly circuitry. “My dear friend, Rolf, how many times do I need to tell you that I am not a lord or a duke or a master. I am simply Cordon. I am no different than I ever was. I have no ego to feed.”

“Maybe not, my friend,” said Rolf. “But you need to exhibit a more commanding presence before the others. If you do not, you simply enforce the opinion that you are a weak leader. They are used to being dictated to, accustomed to following commands. You tend to make suggestions, not commands. You are far too soft spoken.”

“So am I to become a tyrant?” asked Cordon, a slight smile coming to his face.

“I don’t know,” replied Rolf. “It couldn’t hurt.” Rolf hesitated. “There is something else—the matter of the two women you allowed the humans to rescue. If the others discovered that you did this thing, they would be enraged.”

“In that case, I did the right thing,” insisted Cordon. “I need to throw these
people a bone once in a while. At least they came to me and asked. They did not attempt to take the women from behind my back. I respected that. That very fact leads me to believe that I can trust them. They have a certain nobility, a nobility that many of our people have lost over the eons that we have been here. We need to give in to the requests of these humans from time to time. What they have asked of us is certainly not unreasonable. We need to be good neighbors. Perhaps it will not always be so, but it serves us well for the moment.”

The huge, orange sun stood low in the sky as 19-year-old Tim Monroe knelt behind a large boulder, gazing through his crystal-viewing orb at the dismal procession of shackled, rag-clad humans making their way single file up the rugged, rocky canyon floor. From there they proceeded barefoot along a steep switchback trail up the 45-degree slope to the west that led out of the canyon and unto the long sloping ridge above. Inevitably, their route ended at the top of a towering cliff.

The Plunge of Desolation—yes, that was what they called it. It was a place where, one by one, the people in the procession threw themselves from the precipice to the valley floor hundreds of feet below. From there, the poor souls were compelled to drag their broken and mangled bodies from the base of the cliff, out of the way of those who would follow. There was no time of rest, no time to allow their shattered bones and ripped muscles to mend. They were expected to begin the long journey back up the canyon by any means possible, under the whips of their demon taskmasters, to repeat the cycle of regeneration and destruction again and again. It was barbaric—the fate of those who had chosen a homosexual lifestyle on Earth.

Tim knew their pain only too well. He was once counted among their number. How long ago had that been? Right now, he wasn’t sure. It had been easy to lose track of time in the depths of that cave. It had been a place of healing, both physical and spiritual. That cool subterranean realm had become his new world, and he liked it. Indeed, he felt very uncomfortable out here in the open, in the sunlight. He longed to return to that twilight realm, but there was work to be done first.

Again he focused on the procession. He had endured the suffering for nearly a year before the invasion of the Marines and dark angels. Imagine that—U.S.
Marines in Hell. At least, that was what they looked like. They had swept into the valley through some sort of otherworldly portal, mowing down the demons like so much chaff with beam weapons and blazing swords. It had looked like something straight out of a science fiction movie. They had brought with them thousands of small flying creatures who did their bidding. Those creatures had descended on the demons, biting and stinging, giving them but a taste of the suffering that they had dispensed to others for so long. They had literally chewed away the ankle shackles of some, freeing them, while leaving others to their fate. Those released had been escorted through the otherworldly portal to a place they called Refuge.

He should have gone with them. The creatures had sliced away his shackles, too. He had struggled to get to the place from which the others were being spirited away, but it was so far, and the crowd of still-shackled people made the going slow. He had almost reached the head of the line, but he had been too late. The demons had returned, and his fleeting opportunity for freedom vanished as the last of the liberators fled into the mystical portal.

Yet in the pandemonium that followed, he managed to flee up the canyon in which he now stood. Those around him were still shackled, slowed down, unable to escape the wrath of the demons that were already in the process of rounding them up, but he was more fortunate. It was better than a mile up that canyon, in a place that he had never been before, that he found one of the small flying creatures, seriously wounded from the battle, laying amidst the rocks. It was there, too, that he found a cave, a cave large enough for him to slip into, but too small for a demon’s massive wings. He had taken the small creature into the cave with him, nursed him back to health. He had become his friend. He had named him Goliath.

He glanced over at Goliath, who sat on his left shoulder, as he often did. He had helped Tim through the good times and the bad. He wasn’t a pet; he was far too sophisticated a being for that. He was his best friend, and during the months that followed, an even more special bond had grown between them. Tim didn’t have a word for it beyond telepathy. He could literally sense his tiny friend’s thoughts, his feelings, and he, in turn, sensed Tim’s. Over time, the link between them had grown stronger.

And as Tim had saved Goliath’s life, Goliath had become Tim’s provider. Tim still remembered the first time that Goliath had left the safety of the cave. He had returned with a strange artifact, a ring with the power to give forth
light. It made it possible for Tim and Goliath to explore the cave, which was actually the entrance of a grand cavern system that extended for miles.

Yet Goliath had been but the first. In the months that followed, others of his kind had discovered the cave. They had been fruitful and multiplied. Now, their numbers were in the tens of thousands. They had become his companions, his friends. They made living in the caverns more of an adventure. Amazingly, Goliath seemed to have the ability to command the others, and they obeyed him.

Then again, Goliath was special. He wasn’t just the first of these creatures that had entered Tim’s life; he was one of the first 24 of these creatures to exist at all. And he had plenty of stories to tell, incredible stories. He related tales of the dark angel Abaddon, his creator, of his relationship with a human woman who had escaped from the Great Sea of Fire, and of their flight from Satan’s wrath. There were so many adventures, and through them, Tim came to better understand the nature of Hell, better understand the grim world beyond the Plunge of Desolation. He came to understand what purpose these creatures, Abaddon’s children, served. Perhaps, one day, they would help change the face of Hell. Perhaps, he could play a part in that change.

The creatures ventured forth from the cave to prey on the demons and on those humans whose hearts were still full of darkness. They traveled far and wide in their search for food. Often, they returned with things that he could use. They brought him literally thousands of brightly glowing crystals that allowed him to bring illumination to his subterranean world. They brought him the dark cloak and robe that he wore now, clothing to replace the gray loincloth that he had worn for so long. They had even brought him a demon’s sword and scabbard. It had taken at least a dozen of the creatures, working together, to bring him such a heavy object. He had spent literally thousands of hours practicing with it, and he had become quite good.

Tim had even mastered some of the sword’s hidden powers, such as the ability to project a sort of ball of fire. He had seen the demons do that trick many times, mostly to evoke fear among the humans under their command, to keep them in line. It was Goliath who had coached him in this art. It was a mental discipline, not unlike the telepathy they shared. The energy to project the strange fiery manifestation was found not in the sword itself, but within him who wielded it. Its wellspring was within his very soul. The trick was bringing forth that energy and infilling the sword with it. It had taken months for Tim to achieve some measure of competence in the art, though true mastery
still eluded him. Nonetheless, firing it at the cavern wall 60 feet away had driven the rocks to a dull red heat. Not bad for a human. At least, that was Goliath’s observation. To his knowledge it was a feat previously achieved only by the demons.

Yet these creatures had become more than his personal thieves and companions. They had chiseled out a great chair, a table, even a bed, from the rock around him, using their powerful teeth. They had turned this cavern into a home, even a fortress. They had become his loving subjects, his warriors. No longer was he just another helpless human at the mercy of the demons. Now, he had power in his corner, and today, for the first time, he would use it.

Again Tim peered through the fist-sized crystal that acted like a spyglass toward the shuffling multitude about 200 yards away. Where was she?

He had met Megan just a few weeks after his arrival here. She wasn’t much older than him. She had ended up in the eternal line just ahead of him. The demons forbid it, yet the two of them had managed to strike up a conversation here and there, when no demons were in sight, when their pain had receded enough to allow it. It had helped them to maintain their sanity. They’d been lashed over it a few times, but it hadn’t stopped them. He’d desperately needed someone to talk to; so had she. Most of those around him didn’t even speak English, but she did. She was from Australia, of all places. He’d come to love her, and she him. It was a strange situation for a pair such as they, sentenced there for their unnatural affections, but there it was. They’d made a pact between them; they’d stay together, no matter what. They’d take the plunge together, wait at the bottom of the cliff until the other was able to travel, whatever it took. Occasionally they’d gotten separated, but not for long. One of those times was on the day of the attack. Megan had already gone over the cliff, he was left on top. That was the last time he’d seen her for a long time.