Marlowe’s tail thumped on the cushion.
“It’ll be our little secret, okay?”
He barked softly as if to say, Your secret’s safe with me, and Linda laughed.
She loved it when Marlowe answered her.
It was almost as if he understood exactly what she was saying.
Steven Mulvehill was in a half-awake, half-asleep limbo in the emergency room of Brockton Hospital, waiting for the doctor to either discharge him or admit him.
Machines beeped and chimed on the outskirts of his consciousness, along with the chattering of voices and the tormented moans of the injured.
He was hurting, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the agony inside his head.
Mulvehill had gotten a glimpse behind the curtain—a peek inside Pandora’s box, so to speak—and knew that no matter how hard he tried, life would never be the same again.
Drifting down deeper into sleep, he saw his friend waiting for him, ready to tell him that everything would be just fine. And wanting to believe, Mulvehill let his guard drop.
Remy tore the flesh from his own face, revealing something pale and tattooed, with teeth like needles. Something horrible, and hungry to eat the world.
Mulvehill screamed, thrashing upon the hospital bed. The machines beeped loudly, and he guessed a nurse would soon be in to check on him.
Good, he thought as his heart raced painfully in his chest. And after she had checked him out and hooked him back up, he would ask her to turn on some more lights.
It was too damn dark in the room.
Marlowe waited outside the bathroom door as Linda showered.
He could have stayed on the sofa, but decided to accompany the female instead, preferring not to be alone.
He lay on his side on the rug in the hallway, closing his eyes, and in a matter of minutes he was dreaming.
He traveled to the place where his master was, a place of many trees and grass, surrounded by ice and snow.
A place filled with danger. Even in his dream, Marlowe could smell it, heavy in the air, drifting up from the ground, and from the leaves on the trees.
He began to bark, warning his master of the impending danger, but Remy did not hear, so Marlowe barked some more.
And would continue to bark until Remy heard him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
For Jon, it was like stepping into a fairy tale.
Like climbing the beanstalk and finding the old woman who lived in a shoe, and all her kids were being babysat by Cinderella.
It was that weird.
He’d been raised to believe in this place, that someday he and all his cousins would be allowed to return to Paradise.
To Eden.
Now, standing just beyond the gate, he tried to take it all in. It was an odd place, a foreign place. Jon had been to many a jungle in his lifetime as the Sons moved from place to place, but he’d never seen a jungle like this.
“Something’s wrong here,” Izzy said.
Jon noticed the trees, their branches twisted and malformed, the vegetation covered in dark, malignant spots. A smell hung heavy in the humid air; it was the smell of sickness, of rot.
Izzy bent down to the ground, and Jon watched as she extended her long fingers and stuck them into the moist earth.
The woman gasped.
“Oh . . .,” she said, eyes growing wide, her body rigid.
Thin, snaking vines began to emerge from the ground, entwining around her fingers and moving up her hands, wrapping around her wrists.
Her breath was coming in quick gasps, her eyes blinking rapidly as they glazed over.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my dear God . . .”
Jon reached for her, but Remy grabbed his wrist, stopping him.
“Wait,” he ordered.
“The Garden,” Izzy said between troubled breaths. “The Garden . . . the Garden is in my head. . . . Oh, God . . . she’s sick. . . . Something . . . something is growing inside of her. . . . Something is going to kill her if . . . if she can’t fight it.”
A strange moaning sound filled the air. Jon looked around for the source, but realized it was coming from all around them. The tree branches were moving, creaking in protest as they bent in their direction. Even the grass beneath their feet had begun to squirm.
“This isn’t good,” Izzy screamed, trying to pull her hands from the ground, but the vines held her fast. “She’s crazy from the pain . . . from the sickness.”
Tree limbs lashed out with whiplike speed.
Remy grabbed Jon, driving them both to the ground as a branch swiped at them, passing dangerously close to their heads.
“She . . . she’s trying to fight back,” Izzy said, now sitting upon the ground, still connected to the Garden. “She doesn’t know that we’re here to help.”
Thorny vines dropped from some of the higher trees, wrapping themselves around Remy like tentacles, and pulling him up into the air.
Jon watched in horror as the squirming tendrils yanked Remy higher into the thick foliage, the angel practically disappearing into the growth.
“She’s trying to save herself,” Izzy yelled.
Jon scrambled to his feet, standing beneath the struggling form of Remy Chandler, who was now completely enshrouded in sharp, spiny vines. He looked toward Izzy; she had the power to help but was held in the grip of the Garden. She had started to struggle, her body becoming covered in thin, slithering roots.
Jon moved to help her, but the ground beneath him turned to watery mud. He sank instantly to his waist, clawing at the ground for purchase, but wherever he touched, the ground turned to insubstantial muck.
Pulling him deeper, until he felt the cold touch of wet earth beneath his chin.
Ready to swallow him whole.
Taranushi dispatched the tigerlike beast with cold, deadly efficiency, wrapping his pliable body around the great cat and snapping its bones one at a time, slowly crippling it, before he began to consume its still-warm flesh.
The great cat had sprung at them from the thick underbrush as they fought their way through the living jungle, another example of how much the Garden had changed.
These changes disturbed Malachi, a seed of worry germinating in his mind. Something was amiss.
Thick, serpentine roots erupted around them, attempting to snatch Adam and Eliza from where they lay upon the ground. Malachi brandished his scalpel, lunging at the vegetation, cutting the tentacle-like growths in half before they could do any harm.
“It is obvious that the Garden does not want us here,” the angel said, brushing the signs of conflict from the fabric of his robes. “It too must sense the end of the old, and the inevitable approach of a new beginning.”
Malachi paused, waiting for Eden to respond, as Taranushi finished his snack and rejoined the group.
“Though a wonderful thing, birth can always be so . . . traumatic,” Malachi continued.
The jungle again began to tremble, shifting and moving as it readied to resume its attack on them.
“Tear it down,” Malachi said with a wave of his hand. “We do not have time for this.”
Taranushi did as he was ordered, his liquid form flowing toward the thickening wall of vegetation, bolts of magickal power erupting from his hands, reducing the jungle before them to drifting particles in the air, and cutting a swath of destruction into the very heart of Eden.
The old woman moaned, her face pale and flushed, damp with sweat and tears.
Malachi studied the humans; he hoped they would stay alive long enough to help him fulfill his plans.
“Bring them,” he commanded the Shaitan as he turned and strode down the blackened path.
The jungle surrounding him grew steadily darker, the growths more perverse and mutated. He was getting closer—closer to the seeds he’d planted so very long ago, the seeds that would now bear the fruit of his supremacy.