Armageddon Rising (The Soul Collectors Book 1)

  Armageddon Rising

  A Soul Collectors Novel

  S.H. Roddey

  Phoenix & Fae Publications

  Chester, South Carolina

  Copyright 2013 Susan H. Roddey

  Originally Published July 2014 by Seventh Star Press

  Edited by Rodney Carlstrom

  Cover Art by Susan H. Roddey

  This is a word of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Any trademarks, service marks, prduct names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.

  Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or in part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  In loving memory of my father,

  O’Neal Hoff

  whose untimely passing has been my

  greatest and most painful inspiration

  Black wings.

  Wide, gleaming black wings sprawl out in a grotesque caricature of grace, raindrops kissing their surface and glimmering under the grimy streetlights with the opulence of a Hollywood starlet’s jewels. The wings, hard, spiny tendon and bone encased in tough skin resembling oily leather, quiver, buffeting the wind in all directions. Soggy leaves flutter on the sidewalk, their dead bodies weighed down with rainwater. Even the steady onslaught of the storm seems to recoil from the monstrous things.

  The rest of the world falls away as the man at the center of the impressive spread snarls. His face contorts into a grim and violent mask of hate.

  “Fuck the contract,” he says. Every muscle in his torso bunches at once and he hunkers down, preparing to attack. An inhuman sound ushers from his throat; a deep warbling rattle both breathy and vocal. Gooseflesh races up my spine and true terror lances through me, rooting my feet to the spot while demanding I run. My gaze flickers to the car several feet away then back to the beast.

  Time slows.

  The beast draws in a deep breath through his nose and lets loose another of those horrid, otherworldly noises. He lunges. His tattered, batlike wings curl forward, the spiny tips reaching for me as he springs. His jaw distends, the skin on his face rippling as it transforms into something beyond the realm of my understanding. Horrible. Cruel. Deathly.

  Evil.

  I can’t move. I am trapped, rooted to the spot by my own stupid, selfish fear. I try to run by my feet won’t move.

  The Nephilim’s hands, tipped now with sharp, black claws, reach out and touch me, closing around my throat and constricting my airway. I gasp, clutching at his wet, slimy skin, fighting to release the pressure on my windpipe, but for naught. My vision sparkles and fades, his hands ever tightening, his noxious, burning breath coming in wave after wave to ruin what few thin breaths I manage. My legs give way and I topple backwards, the back of my head exploding in pain as it connects with the sidewalk. The tips of the beast’s wings crash into the concrete as well, digging into the ground and entrapping me in a makeshift cage. My right ankle twists down at a sharp angle under his weight, the tendon up its back popping and shooting tendrils of agony up my leg.

  “You will not take her from me,” he says through gritted teeth, the voice echoing across two separate sets of vocal chords. The sound shakes me to my very core. Spittle dangles from his bared teeth, dripping down onto my face and into my eyes. His breath invades my mouth and I gag, the muscles in my throat working to clear the pressure of his hands and halt the offending odor in its quest toward my lungs.

  I try one last time to fight, but my life is extinguishing. It wanes with each softening heartbeat that taps against my skin beneath his hands. He squeezes hard, and pain flickers around the place where he holds me. I take one final breath, and the world goes black.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I sat up in bed, my mouth wrenched open in a hysterical scream. Sweat poured from my shaking body and for the briefest of flashes, the nightmare’s hold continued. I’d just been killed, my life extinguished in the briefest of flashes in a horrible twist on an old memory.

  Out of air, I gagged, coughed, and sucked in a ragged breath. The memory still too fresh, I almost lost the battle against the urge to scream again. Instead, I swallowed and took another breath, then a third. The harsh red light of my alarm clock glared up at me, blinking a manic series of 12:00, 12:00, 12:00 at me. The rhythm helped ground me. It was real, steady, and there. I realized the power had gone out at some point, because the numbers repeated in the darkness without changing. My hair, soaked through with sweat, clung to my skin where it wrapped around my throat, partially stifling my air passage. That explained the hands. The restraint on my foot turned out to be my tangled bed sheets, and the cold air only a product of my window unit air conditioner. And the stink of the beast’s breath? Not breath at all.

  It was brimstone.

  Disentangling myself from the soaked and constrictive bed linens, I levered myself to my feet and stumbled down the hallway toward the kitchen, turning on every light I passed. After the horrific display of my imagination’s true colors—if I could blame my imagination for what had just happened, these days I couldn’t be sure—darkness was not my friend. Balance either, I determined, as my ankle—the same one I’d snared in the dream—gave out and pitched me headlong into my bookcase. The flimsy shelves snapped, sending my entire collection of paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels tumbling to the floor. Damn it. I’d spent a lot of time cataloging those books.

  “What the hell?” I shouted to my empty home as I regained control of my still quivering extremities and stepped over the mess. I’d pick it up later. Right now, I couldn’t keep my mind on a pile of books in the floor which I would inevitably trip over when I went back to bed.

  Turning the corner into the kitchen, I discovered the source of the stench. A manila folder sat on my table, smoldering. The blackened corners curled; thin tendrils of smoke floated toward the ceiling. By the rate of incineration on this one, it looked urgent. The more it burned, the more it stank which, by design I suppose, was meant to get my attention. And it did. The smell of burning brimstone is a pretty stout one, even for someone with a stomach made of lead.

  “Yeah,” I’ll deal with you in a minute,” I said to the thing, bypassing it in favor of catching a glass of water from the sink. I drank it in four gulps and poured another. It slid down my throat, cold and sweet, and helped to steady my jangled nerves. My hands stopped shaking. My knees stopped knocking. But the image of those burning eyes and slavering jaws still lingered. The nauseating ripple of unseen eyes still crept over my skin, as if the monster were still lurking behind me, just out of my line of sight. I shuddered against it.

  It isn’t real, I demanded of myself. It’s just a dream. It didn’t happen like that.

  The stench of brimstone amplified. By the time I turned around, I had a small bonfire in the middle of my table. The envelope crackled and the top layer of my cheap plastic table began to melt and warp into an obscene, lopsided welt. Both my cable bill and the delicate, pink doily my mother crocheted were quickly reduced to a pile of ash. The whole thing smelled awful, a sickening blend of sulfur, rotten food, and sizzling flesh.

  I picked up the burning file with no small amount of wonder at how the flames ceased as soon as my fingers touched it. It always happened that way. These archaic pagers liked to make a big stink—literally, in this case—but they ne
ver hurt me. Inside I found a single sheet of folded parchment as charred and curled as the envelope from whence it came. Placing the envelope on the table, I picked up my glass and with one hand unfolded the slip of paper. It contained a single word in an ornate script.

  Armageddon.

  I raised the glass to my lips as I turned the paper over, pondering the implications of the clue. Lucifer never made his tasks easy for me, but this... this seemed melodramatic, even for him.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  The smooth voice came from behind me, over my left shoulder. With my nightmare still fresh on my mind, the sudden presence startled me and the glass slipped from my hand. It shattered, sending water and shards of glass tinkling across my clean floor.

  “Son of a bitch!” I yelled, wheeling around to face him. “I’m barefoot, you idiot!”

  Lucifer smiled, and flames flickered behind his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, his face a mask of bored unconcern.

  “No, you aren’t.” I sighed and twisted my top half around to survey the damage. Slivers of glass scattered from one end of the kitchen to the other, some swimming in tiny pools of cold water. “What do you want now?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I didn’t hear you. I was too busy trying not to pee myself.” I leaned over to pull a chair from beneath the table and crawled into it, careful to avoid the litter of glass at my feet. “You have my attention now. Ask me again.”

  He rolled his eyes. Asshole. “I asked you if you knew what the word meant.”

  “Armageddon?” I snorted. “The apocalypse. The End of Days. The last hurrah for humans.”

  “More or less,” he replied with a snort, but I couldn’t see any sort of amusement on his face or in his actions. My needless cruelty always amused him, but I didn’t even get a smirk today.

  Not. Good.

  “Whatever it is, my guess is it’s going to suck for a lot of people.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “So, what does it have to do with me? Isn’t Armageddon still eons away?”

  Lucifer didn’t answer. Instead, he began to pace, which made me even more nervous. He never moved. His white suit always remained flawless. Yet here he was, gliding back and forth in my kitchen, glass crunching under his shiny, wing-tip shoes. The crisp linen suit housed tiny wrinkles as if he had spent considerable time on the move. Another red flag, and again, not like him at all. Even his smooth, black hair showed signs of fraying at the edges.

  “One would think,” He replied. His voice shook with unspent nerves and his smooth façade began to crack around the edges. Tiny lines etched their way around the corners of his mouth. His blue eyes were clouded with worry, ringed by sickly, greenish-black circles, and radiated deep creases from their outer corners. The hollows beneath his high cheekbones were drawn and colorless. But the tiny tic at the corner of his right eye frightened me more than the pacing, the burning, and his presence in my house combined.

  “What are you not telling me?” I asked.

  “A lot,” Lucifer replied.

  “And how much of what you’re not telling me do I need to know?”

  “Best estimate?” He paused and glanced at me. I nodded. “All of it.”

  Jerk. “So why don’t you tell me, oh Majesty of Assholes?”

  I expected to have my head set on fire. Or at least a stern look and smart retort. I received no response. Nothing. Again, not a good sign.

  “What do you know of Armageddon as it’s written?”

  I blinked in surprise. Not at all what I expected. It had been awhile since I’d gone to church—about fifteen years, truth be told. But Armageddon… I remembered Armageddon. I always found the end of the world an interesting, however unlikely, concept.

  “The Chosen One is called, sets the whole thing in motion by reading from a scroll. Seven seals are broken and release the horsemen as well as various plagues. Then there’s the rapture and so many are saved. Sound about right to you?”

  “Romantic explication,” He replied without affect. “It’s a great horror story if you think about it.”

  “True. Is all of this getting ready to start?”

  He sighed and took a seat next to me. Every fiber of my being screamed in nervous anticipation. The Devil was scared, which meant I should be too.

  “It’s possible.” He reached up and rubbed his eyes, an oddly human movement for one so endless and obnoxious. “Truth be told, Lydia, we do not know what’s going to happen. By the time John had this ‘vision’, he’d gone half-mad. But it so happened that the right person had these frantic hallucinations at exactly the right moment to shape Christian dogma.”

  Do what?

  “Explain,” I ordered.” What does this even mean?”

  “Lydia, what’s the basis of the Christian religion?”

  I didn’t have a clue where he was going with this. I’d been raised in a Christian household, but until the ‘accident’ which put me in his service, I’d not put much stock in faith. At this moment, I wished I’d taken Sunday school a bit more seriously. “Don’t follow.”

  “Matthew 18:18 says ‘whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be what has been bound in heaven and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’“ Lucifer quoting the Bible…any other time, it would have been a total gas. I’d have rolled with laughter. But right now, no. Not a chance.

  “So whatever Christians say is what goes?”

  “Pretty much,” he said with no inflection whatsoever.

  “Well, that’s stupid.”

  Lucifer smiled in genuine amusement for the first time tonight, but it didn’t help settle my nerves. The expression came off more wicked than happy. “My sentiments exactly.”

  “Wait. You’re telling me that because John had a bad dream and wrote it down, it’s going to come true?”

  “In theory.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I shrieked. “Why can’t you stop being a complete bastard for two minutes and tell me what I need to know?”

  I climbed across the table to the side of my kitchen free of glass and stormed into the living room. He already sat in my chair by the time I reached it. So much for a dramatic exit.

  “Sit down, Lydia.”

  “Go to hell.”

  He raised one well-groomed eyebrow at me, and I realized how stupid I sounded. I shut my mouth and sat down.

  “If I had any inkling at all as to what would happen, I would not be here. The facts are this: Armageddon is on the way faster than anyone wants to admit, and none of us have a clue who’s behind it or how to stop it.”

  Talk about a pop fly into left field. “Do what? Us? Who are you talking about and what does any of this have to do with me?”

  In a fluid movement he rose and turned to stare down at me. The crawling feeling of being hunted, a shredded remnant of my dream, returned.

  “You’d best come with me,” He said. Something other than hellfire flickered behind those beastly eyes. Anxiety? Fear? Either way, I didn’t like what I saw there because I could see myself standing right in the center of it.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. It would to no good to tell him I’d rather go back to bed. He owned me, after all.

  “On a trip.” He looked me over and a smirk appeared on his lips. “But considering the company you might do well to put on pants first.”

  I looked down at myself and realized I’d been running around my house in the presence of Lucifer for the last half hour in nothing but a tank top and a pair of underwear.

  At least they were clean.

  I ran to the bedroom and threw on jeans and a t-shirt. As I sat down on the edge of the bed to put my shoes on, I happened to look up to find the old bastard standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, watching me with no small amount
of twisted amusement

  “What?” I asked. He smirked and my skin rippled.

  “Humans. You shouldn’t be so concerned with appearances.”

  “If I shouldn’t be concerned,” I asked as I stood and shook the legs of my pants into place, “why did I need to put clothes on in the first place?” I shouldered past him toward the kitchen, less concerned this time around about the glass all over the floor, to retrieve my belongings.

  “Respect for your intended audience,” came his reply as he followed me down the hall. I picked up the stinking bit of charred parchment, folded it up, and tucked it into my pocket with my phone, wallet, and keys. Lucifer raised his eyebrow at me again.

  “What?” I repeated. “Better to be prepared than stranded.”

  “Are you quite prepared enough? The end of the world is still on the table here.”

  “Keep it up and I’ll take two hours to powder my nose.”

  “You don’t wear makeup,” the flat, confused tone in his voice almost made me laugh.

  “Irrelevant.”

  “Smart ass.”

  “Thank you.” I grinned at him as I slipped an elastic from around my wrist and pulled my wayward hair into a ponytail on the back of my head. It hung half-way down my back now, which meant another haircut would be in order after this job. He rolled his eyes at me. “So where are you taking me?”

  “As I said, on a journey. Get your coat. It’s cold outside.”

  “Yes, mother,” I said, sticking out my tongue, but grabbed my jacket anyway. He held out a long, spindly hand. I didn’t enjoy touching him on a good day, yet it seemed I didn’t have much choice. I stepped up and laid my fingers in his upturned palm, consciously fighting the repulsion coursing through me.

  “Wherever this date takes us, I hope you plan to buy me dinner afterward,” I said. He chuckled as he closed his fingers around mine. Then he led me forward, out my front door. Beyond the threshold, the world canted to the left and I found myself forced to grasp his arm to keep from falling. When I looked around, it appeared that someone had drawn a translucent gray curtain over me.