The Paradise Prophecy

53

As Belial’s headless corpse flopped to the ground behind her, the girl staggered forward and burst into tears.

Batty dropped the sword and grabbed for her, pulling her into his arms. And as she sobbed against his chest, he felt Rebecca smiling inside him.

But it wasn’t over yet.

All around them, the battle still raged, Callahan fighting off the last of the drudges as Michael and Beelzebub continued trading blows. Then the moon began to darken, turning a deeper shade of red, as the ground beneath them trembled and rolled.

Batty wondered if this was it.

Had he made a mistake in keeping her alive?

Were the gates of the Abaddon about to open, once and for all?

But then the girl began to tremble violently in his arms and to Batty’s surprise, she pushed away from him. Stepping several feet back, she looked up at him without even a hint of fear or confusion in her eyes.

Something had changed about her.

There was a maturity in her gaze. An awareness. She was no longer the young girl he’d seen trapped in Belial’s grip.

Then her body began to shimmy and shake, her naked flesh falling away, as if she were shedding a cocoon, and a bigger, bolder, more radiant being rose from within, her wings unfurling, opening, spanning fifty feet or more.

She was, quite possibly, the most beautiful creature Sebastian LaLaurie had ever seen. And as she levitated several feet above the ground, she smiled at him.

“You made the right decision, Sebastian. God sent me to watch over you. Over all of you. I am your second chance.”

“But I don’t understand,” Batty croaked. “I was supposed to kill you.”

The angel shook her head. “No, Sebastian. It was the third choice that mattered. The hidden choice. The one not shown in the prophecy that demonstrated your humanity to God and told him there was still hope for humankind. The one that came from reason and emotion, with no promises attached to it. It was the right choice, Sebastian. The only choice.”

Free will, Batty thought. That’s what it ultimately came down to. And what so many people thought of as weakness-the ability to empathize, to care, the thing that seemed so absent in the world of late-was really man’s strength. His lifeblood.

The angel flicked a wrist and the sword at Batty’s feet suddenly leapt through the air and landed in her hand.

Then she was moving, gliding, sweeping the blade in wide arc, a wave of energy rolling out across the rooftop, drudges disintegrating in its wake, dark angels dropping their skins where they stood, their vaporous life-forms fleeing in terror.

With a roar of rage, Beelzebub broke from Michael’s grasp and flung an arm out, firing his own ball of energy straight toward the warrior angel’s chest. But she deflected it with the blade, hurling it right back at him, the impact slamming him to the ground.

He landed in a heap at the edge of the rooftop, his body twisted, broken beyond repair. Looking up at her in stunned disbelief, his eyes went blank-

– and he was gone.

And as the last of the demons abandoned their skins and fled into the darkness, the angel waved her sword once more. Thunder rumbled, and all throughout the city, the fiery crevices of hell sputtered and died, sealing up before Batty’s eyes.

Then the angel looked at him and touched her heart.

“Go with God, Sebastian . . .”

And before Batty could say a word, she let her wings carry her into the sky, taking her upward toward the heavens. As she disappeared from view, a ray of golden light broke through the darkness above and swept across the landscape, restoring everything in its path.

It looked to Batty as if someone were running the film in reverse, buildings rising from the rubble to their former glory as the city was restored.

And all around him, the favela began to shift and change-battered aluminum shacks turning into houses; trees and grass sprouting and growing, flowers blooming, as the moon faded away and the sky turned a brilliant, cloudless blue.

Batty looked at Callahan and Michael, all of them standing there, frozen in place, covered in fine black dust, their weapons limp in their hands, their mouths agape-

– as they stared in awe at the world around them.