The War in Heaven (Eternal Warriors Book 1) Read online

  The imp cringed before the burning flames and gibbered with fear. Clearly, it had not expected so drastic a reaction, but Mariel was feeling jumpy tonight.

  “Begone, ill spirit,” she commanded, pointing the fiery blade at its throat.

  But even as she spoke, she realized she had made a careless mistake. She was too close! The imp’s arms lengthened as it reached out for her, and before she could react, her sword arm was seized in an iron grip. She tried to pull away, but the Shadowrat was strong, impossibly strong, and she could not break free. She kicked at it, but it twisted away from her, turning her arm painfully sideways and forcing her to relinquish her grasp on the sword.

  “Let me go!” she shouted, but the demon held her fast.

  The flames surrounding the blade hissed as they were quenched in the snow, and Mariel fell backwards as the Shadowrat threw her violently to the ground. Now it was her turn to cringe as the small, contorted form of the imp stretched and grew, until before her stood a mighty lord of angels, with cruel yellow eyes set on either side of a thin, hawk-like nose. She knew him and was afraid, not for herself, but for Christopher and his sisters.

  “Bloodwinter,” she gasped.

  “Prince Bloodwinter,” he corrected her in a haughty voice. The Prince was of the regal order of Principalities, and he ruled the whole of the two cities that made up the greater metropolis. Millions of souls lived under his authority, and he was not a merciful ruler.

  “Would you command me then, little angel?”

  “I am here by right!” Mariel defied him. “My charge is here and you may not take me from this place. Satan himself would not dare, lest he violate his accursed charter!”

  To her surprise, the prideful Prince was not angered by her words, but appeared to be amused instead. A hint of a smile flickered on his arrogant face, and then he gestured towards the woods.

  “Lord Satan would dare far more than you think, pretty one. Come, my children.”

  Out of the evergreens came a myriad of spirits, of many shapes and sizes, but all of them evil. There were Tempters and Fears, Imps and Incubi. There were Dream Riders and Nightmares, Spectres and Never-oughts. Scattered amidst the giant armored forms of Viles were the slender shapes of Succubi, who jealously eyed the pristine loveliness of the angel despite their own illicit allure. Fat little Greeds chattered excitedly among themselves as a loathsome triad of Lusts leered hungrily at Mariel, clearly hoping their demonic prince would make a gift of her to them.

  “I should have known. The woods were silent, and the animals were afraid. I sensed a presence, but I did not understand.”

  Prince Bloodwinter was magnanimous in victory.

  “It was not your fault. You could not have known. And your perception does you credit, for there are forces here tonight that are far beyond your ken, my dear Guardian.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll understand soon.” He snapped his fingers and issued a command to the teeming spirits. “Meergrae, Dholha, bind her now.”

  Mariel opened her mouth to cry for help, hoping to at least alert Paulus and Aliel, but a gesture by Prince Bloodwinter bound her voice and no sound came forth, though her throat was seared by the violence of her scream.

  Two Succubi knelt obediently on either side of her, and forced her roughly to her knees, turning her around so she found herself facing the Lewis house. One demoness unwound a pair of thick silver chains that were wrapped around her hips and passed one to her companion, then slipped a pair of iron bracelets off her slender wrists. Two stakes were driven into the ground and Mariel found herself bound, her wrists encircled by iron and attached to the stakes by the silver chains.

  “Do you think these will hold me?” she challenged Prince Bloodwinter as he walked around her.

  “Oh, I think they will,” he said, then he spoke three words in a language that was old long before Adam walked the Earth.

  Demonic fire erupted from within the metal, revealing its hidden nature. Mariel threw all her strength against the chains that bound her, but she could not snap them nor could she tear the stakes from the ground. The magical fire burned, but far worse than the flames was the agony she felt at being helpless to protect Christopher from this deadly horde. She did not understand how the fallen Prince of the Cities had come to take a personal interest in her charge, but she knew nothing good could come of it.

  “I hope you will note that I have not violated your sacred right,” Prince Bloodwinter said mockingly as he made her a sarcastic, but elegant bow. “Here you are, and here you shall remain.”

  “Why?”

  A look of anger flashed momentarily across the Principality’s haughty face, but he quickly mastered himself before he spoke.

  “It is not for me to say.”

  Mariel was surprised by his words, and was shocked into speechlessness when the powerful prince of demons abruptly turned around, sank to his knees beside her, and humbly bowed his head. His minions made haste to follow suit, though Mariel could not see why.

  Then an icy wind began to blow, a harsh wind from the east, ruffling the white feathers in her wings and swirling her golden hair before her eyes. It was a bad wind, full of pride and power. Despite the moonless, starless sky, it seemed as if the evil she’d sensed earlier was crashing down upon her, and with a horrified start she realized that inside the wind was her dark watcher, who was watching no longer.

  She threw her face back, looking skyward, and saw a sight beyond even her deepest fears. Her heart sank into despair as a glorious shadow soared over her on wings of dark perfection. She did not recognize it, but its regal aura of awesome power was unmistakable, and tears coursed down her face as she understood where it was headed.

  “No!” she cried. “No, no, no!”

  Behind her, the assembled demons began to laugh, hooting and howling and cackling with glee, jeering at the angelic tears now falling freely to the snow. Only Prince Bloodwinter was silent, still on his knees, glaring furiously at the Lewis house and at the window where the shadow had disappeared.

  Chapter 2

  Losing Paradise

  Star light, star bright,

  First star that I see tonight.

  I wish I may, I wish I might,

  Have the wish I wish tonight.

  I want that star and I want it now.

  I want it all and I don’t care how.

  Be careful what you wish…

  —Metallica, (“King Nothing”)

  “Christopher! Turn it down!”

  His concentration broken by Jami’s shrill interruption, Christopher looked up from his keyboard and rolled his eyes. Did she always have to yell at him? Couldn’t she just walk upstairs and talk to him like a normal person for once in her life? Holli never shouted about things, and he didn’t understand why Jami always felt the need to yell.

  “What?”

  “Turn it down! We’re trying to watch a movie.”

  Irritated, he didn’t deign to answer her, but he still reached out and lowered the volume on the stereo. The crunching grind of the metal guitars still reverberated throughout the study where he worked, but with the door closed, no longer penetrated downstairs into the family room.

  “Thanks!”

  Well, maybe Holli did shout sometimes, he amended his earlier thought, but she was a whole lot nicer about it. He liked his youngest sister, of course, everybody did. It was hard not to. She was so nice that she almost made up for Jami. Almost, but not quite. He twiddled his thumbs and wondered if, on the balance, he might have been better off without the twins altogether. It was a difficult question, but then, it was a little late to do anything about it now.

  Sighing deeply, he returned his attention to his paper on the computer screen and wished for inspiration. “Why, oh why, did I ever decide on Paradise Lost?” he berated himself. “That’s the last time I try to show up Sonja.” Sonja was the little blonde with granny glasses who sat in the front of the classroom. She was the pet of the English clas
s, and moments after she’d grandiosely announced her intent to write her term paper on Hamlet to coos of admiration, Christopher one-upped her with Milton. It was a satisfying moment, but he was paying for it now.

  The teachers at Mounds Park, the school attended by all three Lewis children, were neither cruel nor overambitious on their students’ behalf. But neither were they saints, and if a student was foolish enough to insist on tackling Milton’s epic for his sophomore thesis, they were not inclined towards wasting their breath talking sense into him either.

  From the family room below, he could hear the sounds of the twins watching Jerry Maguire, and the thought of joining them was surprisingly tempting. Christopher was no fan of Tom Cruise, but even Tom’s stupid smirk was better than a third straight night of Milton and his impossible old poem.

  When his wished-for inspiration still failed to appear, Christopher gave up for the moment and stared out the frosty window into the darkness of the winter night. There was a lot of snow out there, and he hoped it wouldn’t turn to ice before next weekend and ruin the ski slopes. The window pane rattled suddenly as a gust of wind struck it, and Christopher reached out to turn the CD player off. He closed his eyes and listened with pleasure as the cruel north wind howled its impotent rage against the secure warmth of his suburban home. What was that old saying? He searched his memory. Something about bad winds blowing somebody good? Well, it was something like that, anyhow. The thought reminded him of yesterday’s Warhammer game, and he smiled.

  The Winds of Magic had been kind to him, which was good because Don had caught him off guard by fielding an Empire army instead of his usual Orky mob. The Imperials presented a problem because Don was particularly adept at estimating distances, which let him use the Empire’s artillery to devastating effect. But in the second turn, the treacherous Winds dealt Christopher the Total Power card, and his Assault of Stone spell destroyed Don’s cannons, eliminating the threat to Christopher’s all-important light cavalry.

  Although his White Lions fell to a heavy unit of mounted Reiksguard Knights, they stuck around long enough to let his fast-moving Reavers sweep through the Imperial flank, cutting down two units of archers and a Battle Mage unlucky enough to get caught in the open. It wasn’t long before Christopher’s Seaguard beat back a desperate charge by the Reiskguard cavalry, then the battle was over and victory belonged to the High Elves.

  Christopher had been pleased, but as he admitted while Don sorted out their miniatures scattered about the felt-covered table, he’d been lucky too. He considered himself the better general, for the most part, but Don was the master of deception and made a habit of pulling a trick out of his sleeve at just the right time to turn the tide of battle and win the game.

  “Life,” Don told him, “is just like Warhammer. It’s all about the points. That’s your problem. You get too focused on what you’re trying to do, and you forget what the score is. You forget what you have to do to win the game. That’s why you usually lose.”

  “Are you talking about Warhammer or are you talking about life?” Christopher asked, idly fingering one of Don’s painted metal Orcs. Its beady red eyes seemed to glare at him, alive with bestial fury.

  “Both.”

  “Oh.” Christopher frowned back at the little miniature. “So how do you keep score in life?”

  “Ask your sisters,” came Don’s reply. “They know what it’s all about.”

  Although it was nice to think about his Elves and their victory, they weren’t helping him get the stupid paper written, so he wearily picked up the green-and-black paperback again and began thumbing through it. The print was small and it held a lot more pages than he’d realized at first, so he was glad he’d thought to look on the Internet for an online version. Who would write a poem this long anyhow? Now the Japanese, they were a lot smarter about the whole thing. Too bad this Milton guy wasn’t into the Haiku thing.

  Satan lost the war

  God kicked him out of Heaven

  Satan got even

  There it was. Paradise Lost in thirteen syllables or less. Fortunately, the older version he’d found online was shorter than the textbook version, but even at ten books, it was still nine books too long for his liking. Returning the book to the desk, he rubbed his eyes and considered the formatting of his paper. If he shrank the document’s margins to a full inch and increased the font from ten points to twelve, he’d only have a page to go. But Mrs. DeVries wasn’t an idiot, and he knew she’d knock him down at least a half-grade just for trying to pull one over on her. So he still had two full pages left to fill.

  What he needed, he realized, was a good quote. Preferably a nice, long one that would take up space, connect with the section he’d just written, and lead smoothly into his conclusion. He did a search for the word “obey”, and was pleased when the fourth example found by the program turned out to be sitting right in the middle of a big, fat, useable quote. He happily typed it in, word for word. The quote inspired him with a new train of thought, and his typing picked up speed. By some strange coincidence, the winds gusting through the darkness outside began to increase as well.

  …but the arguments presented by Satan are much more modern and compelling than those presented by Michael, Raphael, and the other obedient angels that refuse to join him and disobey God. They are more relevant to us, because they are more consistent with the way we now know the world really works.

  “Which is what?” he asked himself aloud. Doesn’t matter, he thought. It sounds good and the W’s make a nice rhythm at the end. Ba-da-ba-ba-da-da-da-ba-da-ba. He experimented with removing the word “really” and tapped out the beat with his fingers on the desk, but the sentence didn’t flow any better, so he put it back in again. For a moment, the lights flickered and he held his breath, fearing the computer would shut down, but it was just a momentary power surge. Breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief, he saved what he’d written thus far and continued.

  Good and evil are opposites, but only in the abstract. In the real world, they are more like the colors black and white. In the same way that colors can be mixed into an infinite number of shades of grey, good and evil are combined into an ineluctably inextricable admixture that can only be judged by each individual conscience.

  “Now that is righteous!” He grinned to himself, knowing his teacher would delight in the intricate alliteration of the repetitive I’s. In her class, a good grade depended less on what you said than on how you said it, and the more big words, the better. Thank God for the Microsoft Thesaurus!

  …Although the poet attempts to make Satan appear to be the villain, he is actually the hero. He is willing to stand up and fight for his beliefs, and for the freedom of both himself and others, even those who fight against him. He cannot hope to win against the totalitarian might of God, but he is still willing to make the ultimate sacrifice solely for the sake of his conscience. Since we admire this spirit in great heroes like Nathan Hale, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, it seems both unfair and wrong to deny the same regard to their true intellectual and philosophical antecedent, Satan.

  The window pane rattled again, as the wind outside grew in force, with loud moans and shrieks that sounded quasi-human. For a moment, Christopher had the uncomfortable feeling that someone was reading over his shoulder. He peered out the window, but all he could see was a gnarled oak tree, its bare, twisted branches blanketed with snow. He shrugged and returned to the keyboard.

  God, on the other hand, is an unfair dictator. He is uncaring, because he arbitrarily puts his Son in authority over all the other angels without regard for their feelings. He is undemocratic, because even though most of the angels agree with Satan’s position, he is unwilling to compromise. He is repressive and uncivilized, because he is willing to chain Satan to the Lake of Fire just because Satan disagrees with him. Unfair, uncaring, undemocratic, and uncivilized—it is impossible to reach any other conclusion than the correct one: that the God of Milton’s Paradise Lost is totally contrary to the spirit of th
e modern age.

  The wind continued to howl, and now Christopher was sure that someone was standing behind him, looking at the computer screen. He turned his head slowly, looking out the corner of his eye, but no one was there. He turned back to the keyboard for a second, then whirled around suddenly, hoping to catch the presence off guard. But still, there was nothing there. He laughed aloud, amused at himself, and made a face at his reflection in the computer screen. “We’re sorry to inform you, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, that your son is exhibiting all the signs of being a paranoid pyschotic.” He gave all ten of his fingers a preparatory waggle, and began typing his concluding paragraph.

  Gods are supposed to represent the perfection of a society’s values. A god should strive to reflect the ideals of the people worshipping it, just as the people must strive to live up to those ideals. But the world of the seventeenth century is not the world of today. Although it is still a great epic poem, the twin lessons of Paradise Lost for the modern world are as follows: One, that only uncaring, undemocratic and intolerant people can worship the biblical god of the Old and New Testaments. And two, that anyone who values fairness, tolerance, democracy, and freedom, when presented with the choice between God and the Devil, would logically prefer to worship Satan.

  “I quite agree,” said a deep voice behind him.

  Christopher turned around slowly, very slowly, hoping that the voice was just his imagination, and the unexpected presence would be gone before he finished swiveling in his chair. But he wasn’t imagining the handsome, black-haired man that stood smiling before him, wearing black Raybans and an airbrushed leather motorcycle jacket.

  The man was tall, and his skin was a ghostly white, in stark contrast with his black clothes. The top of his hands were both marked with the head of a dragon that appeared to continue up past where the leather covered his arms. The sleeves of his jacket were also covered with dragons, intricately ornate dragons painted in the oriental style. He didn’t look very threatening, more like a Calvin Klein model pretending to be a biker than the real deal from Sturgis. But what disturbed Christopher more than his unannounced appearance was the fact that his reflection did not appear in the mirror hanging on the wall behind him.