The Paradise Prophecy

50

Batty turned to Michael. “Tell me you know where he’s taking her.”

“I have a guess. I only hope I’m right.”

“What’s your guess?”

“To Eden.”

“Eden? ” Callahan said as she came up the stairs behind them. “As in the Garden of?”

“Yes. Or at least what used to be Eden, before the corruption began. He’s taking her to the spot where the tree of knowledge once stood. It’s his way of thumbing his nose at the father. It doesn’t hurt that they’ll have a perfect view of the fourth blood moon.”

“Can you get us there?” Batty asked.

“Are you ready to do what needs to be done?”

Batty looked at the sword in his hand, then glanced at Callahan. She was covered with dust, looking as if she’d rolled around inside a vacuum cleaner bag.

Then he said to Michael, “Just get me there and you’ll find out.”

“I can’t get us to the exact spot, but I can get close. But be warned, a lot has changed since we left. The unrest will have escalated and the eclipse is about to begin. We need to work fast to make this happen.”

“Then maybe we should stop talking and get moving,” Batty said.

Michael nodded and sliced open a hole.

Michael wasn’t kidding when he said things had changed.

Callahan could barely believe her eyes. When they squeezed through the hole he’d made, what she saw was a city under siege, a battleground that lay beneath a turbulent night sky, the thunder of guns pounding her eardrums.

“Moloch and Mammon have done their work well,” Michael said. “It won’t take much to tip the scale.”

Callahan was stunned. “This isn’t tipped?”

The city was in chaos, a riot gone viral, men and women with weapons darting through burning rubble, pausing to fire on one another, some in police uniforms, others in street clothes. But Callahan got the feeling it was every man for himself-although she couldn’t be sure who was human here and who wasn’t.

What surprised her most of all, however, was that they stood in a city she knew. A city she had just visited.

They were in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

“What the hell are we doing here?” LaLaurie said to Michael. “I thought we were going to Eden.”

Machine-gun chatter forced them to duck. They all dropped down, taking cover behind a row of parked cars. This was insanity.

“We are,” Michael said. Then he jumped up and darted to an abandoned Chevy in the middle of the street, its engine still running. He climbed in, spun the wheel and hit the accelerator, backing toward them.

“Get in.”

Callahan glanced at LaLaurie and he looked just as confused as she was. Then she ran to the passenger side and jumped in, LaLaurie following close behind. When they were both inside, Michael punched the accelerator and they took off down the street.

Callahan checked the sky and saw a huge moon, a centimeter of shadow washing across it.

“It’s starting,” she said. “The eclipse is starting.”

They brought the girl up the stairs to the rooftop.

Belial couldn’t quite believe how beautiful she looked, all dressed up in that ceremonial robe. She had been drugged, but still she resisted, showing a lot of spirit.

Belial wished she’d could have taken some time alone with the girl. It would have been her last chance to understand what it meant to be a woman.

The two drudges had her by the arms. They stopped in the doorway, Jenna struggling between them, and waited for Belial to give her approval.

Moving in close, she smiled and ran a finger under Jenna’s chin.

“So beautiful,” she said.

The girl jerked her head away, tears filling her eyes, her speech slurred by the drugs. “Why are you doing this? What you want from me?”

“Michael didn’t tell you?”

“Leave me alone,” she cried. “I wanna go home. I want my mother.”

“Your mother?” Belial said. “Now why would you want to go home to that vile creature? Isn’t she the one who betrayed you, brought that man into your happy home? Or is that story all a lie?”

“Please… ,” she begged. “Please, let me go . . .”

“That’s exactly what we’re about to do, my darling. By freeing you, we free the world.”

Stepping back, she nodded to the two drudges and they carried Jenna past her toward the center of the rooftop, which was crowded with otherworld dignitaries.

Before they got her there, however, the earth rumbled, shaking the building, and everyone cheered as they looked up at the moon.

It hung low in the night sky like a giant blind eye, a shadow slowly creeping across it.

The new beginning was near.

Did you feel that?” Batty asked.

They were blasting down an eerily vacant highway, and this was the first time he’d ever felt an earthquake while riding in a car.

“It’s starting,” Michael said. “The opening of the Abaddon. And unless we get to that girl soon, all seven levels of hell will be released on earth and Lucifer will be free.”

They looked at one another, the thought of this a lingering foul odor.

Then Batty glanced at the shadow on the moon. “It seems to be moving faster than usual.”

“You can’t think of this as a natural event anymore. The speed of the eclipse will accelerate with each new soul corrupted.”

“How long before we’re in full eclipse?” Callahan asked.

“Minutes, rather than hours.”

The earth rumbled again and the rooftop swayed.

More cheers went up as lights blew out in the distance, then buildings started to topple, a spray of yellow-orange lava erupting into the air.

The two drudges pushed Jenna to the ground, and Beelzebub-who stood nearby, looking quite handsome in his own ceremonial robe-signaled to Belial that it was time to begin.

She nodded, then moved over and knelt before the girl, still smiling as she grabbed hold of the robe Jenna was wearing.

“I think we can dispense with this.”

She pulled the robe up over the girl’s head and Jenna, naked underneath, flung her arms around herself and started crying again.

Belial leaned forward and kissed her tears, murmuring against her cheek. “Don’t fret, my darling. This will soon be over.”

Then she looked directly into Jenna’s eyes.

Probing them.

Going in deep.

The orange light of the lava was reflected in her tears and after a moment Jenna started to relax, letting her arms drop to her sides, not so concerned anymore about modesty.

“That’s right, my darling. Let us see you, in all your glory. Present yourself to the Lord Satan and ask him to bring you home.”

Then, as if in answer, the earth rumbled again.

This one was a doozy. The earth shifted and everything around them started to sway. Suddenly the road cracked, a fissure opening up in front of them.

Michael slammed the brakes and spun the wheel, the Chevy’s tires burning up blacktop as they came to a screeching halt-

– just as a gusher of lava shot into the air.

They all jumped out and scrambled back, barely avoiding molten patches of the stuff that landed at their feet.

Heat radiated off it, and they fell back even farther as the earth rumbled again.

Batty looked up at the moon and saw that the eclipse had hit the halfway mark. They didn’t have a minute to spare.

“Enough of this bullshit,” he said to Michael. “Where are we going? Where is she? Where did they take her?”

Michael moved over to him, got very close, staring him directly in the eyes.

“Are you ready to do what has to be done?”

Batty couldn’t look away from him.

And he couldn’t lie, either.

“No,” he said. “I can’t do what you want. I can’t kill an innocent human being.”

“Then what do you plan to do? How do you plan to stop this?”

“They won’t succeed without her. I know they can’t. This can be fixed. We’ve done it before.”

“Look what’s happening around you, Sebastian. This is just the beginning of it. What you’re about to witness is hell come to earth. Is that what you want?”

Batty’s head was spinning. What he wanted was to scream.

The world was falling apart around them, but he had to believe. He had to have faith. And he couldn’t bring himself to say what the angel wanted to hear.

“Just tell me where they took her.”

Michael studied him, searching his eyes, then backed away and pointed. “There,” he said. “They took her in there.”

Batty looked across the street. Michael was pointing toward a cluster of ramshackle shacks. A shantytown made of plywood and aluminum siding.

One of the shacks had a word spray-painted across it in Day-Glo green:

Paraisopolis.

“Holy shit,” Callahan muttered. She was standing beside him now, gaping at the shantytown. “You’ve gotta be kidding me? The favela? This is Eden?”

“What does it say,” Batty asked.

She looked at him. “Paradise City.”