All that knowledge, the elder thought, eyes turned to the soil around the base of the Tree. The ground bubbled as the Shaitan stirred.
And he began to wonder if perhaps he’d made a mistake.
He looked up as the fearsome form of Taranushi approached. Malachi recalled the ferocity of this first Shaitan, the violent acts he had mercilessly performed throughout the ages in Malachi’s name.
The knowledge of God contained within such a vessel . . . perhaps it wasn’t the best of his ideas.
He revisited his vision of a future plagued by a war that would bring about the end of all things. He saw the Shaitan in this vision, believing at one time that they were fighting under his command, but now . . .
“What is wrong?” Taransuhi asked again.
“Nothing,” Malachi lied. He looked to the writhing ground again and felt nothing but disgust.
“They’re not ready,” he stated flatly, turning his gaze back to his servant. “It is not yet time for them.”
Taranushi’s expression was one of confusion. “I do not understand. I can feel my brothers and sisters . . . desperate . . . wanting . . . ready to be born . . . unleashed into the world.”
Eden trembled angrily beneath them, and Malachi lost his footing, stumbling to one side. Taranushi caught his arm and their eyes locked.
“Finish what you have started with me,” the Shaitan pleaded. “I no longer wish to be alone.”
Malachi could hear the desperation in his creation’s voice, and considered what it would be like to be the only one of your kind. God had created him first, mere seconds before Lucifer, and he remembered that feeling.
The intimacy between creator and creation. It was something that could never be forgotten. Fleeting, but so powerful.
If only the Lord had stopped there, what a reality they could have shaped.
“Sometimes alone is best,” Malachi said, pulling his arm away, already considering alternatives to his future. A future that did not include the Shaitan. “There’s a cave nearby that I used for my work,” he began. “We’ll go there before we leave Eden and—”
“No,” Taranushi roared.
The symbols on his pale skin began to flow, like the warning of a snake’s hiss just before the strike.
Malachi reared back, startled—but not surprised by the creature’s insolence.
“You will do as I say,” he ordered, exerting his will over his creation.
The markings upon the Shaitan’s skin slowed, and the creature backed down beneath his gaze.
“Remember that there are even worse fates than being alone,” Malachi warned, a sudden niggling thought entering his mind as he looked upon the powerful beast. Am I strong enough to defeat the Shaitan?
And as if the beast could sense his sudden inkling of weakness, Taranushi’s body became like smoke as he emitted the most bloodcurdling scream.
“I have waited long enough!” the Shaitan proclaimed, swirling around the Tree of Knowledge, flowing past to reconstitute before the two humans.
“You will do as I command,” Malachi ordered.
But it was too late; the Shaitan was beyond all that.
“I hear them,” the creature said, breathing rapidly. “They are calling out to me . . . questioning why they are still beneath the cool, damp earth of this place, while there are kingdoms and worlds to conquer.
“Gods to usurp.”
Malachi knew he had to do something. Things were spinning rapidly out of control. Carefully, he approached his creation.
“Taranushi, please,” he pleaded in his calmest tone. “Trust me. Your species will be born; they are just not yet ready.”
“You lie!” the monster bellowed. “I can feel that they are ready.”
“A tragic miscalculation on my part,” Malachi said, closer now. He palmed his dagger from within the folds of his robes. “They need more time.”
He was closer now, and Taranushi seemed to be listening.
“If we were to complete the process now, they would be deficient. Imperfect.”
Malachi was close enough to strike. At least he’d been smart enough to build in a weakness for the Shaitan. He would strike at the monster’s heart; even though it wasn’t often in the same place as the beast shifted its shape, the elder could sense—could hear—where it was at that moment.
“And we wouldn’t want that.”
Malachi lunged, his burning blade plunging into the solid flesh of his creation’s chest, and into where its monstrous heart beat.
The elder’s eyes met Taranushi’s, and he expected to see the light of life failing, but the Shaitan only snarled.
“What you seek is no longer there,” Taranushi growled.
Malachi attempted to pull back, but it was too late. The Shaitan’s flesh bulged outward to engulf his hand, trapping him.
“Perhaps it is a cycle,” Taranushi said, his form shifting to resemble Malachi.
“You betray your Creator, and I betray mine,” the monster spoke with Malachi’s voice, a sinister smile appearing on his bearded face.
The Shaitan struck, dark energies flowing through his form and into the elder. Malachi screamed out in pain as the force of the energies ripped him from Taranushi’s clutches and sent him flying to land at the base of the Tree of Knowledge.
He lay for a moment, stunned, feeling the Shaitan in the ground below him moving toward the surface.
“You dare,” Malachi said with great indignation, as he slowly climbed to his feet. He summoned the remnants of his divinity, and even though he had been stripped of most of his angelic power when sentenced to Tartarus, he was an elder, and the power that still remained was awesome.
Heavenly energies flowed from his body; Malachi was ready.
Taranushi crouched at the edge of the jungle, the black markings upon his pale form flowing again, forming larger and bolder shapes, in his attempt to distract his opponent.
The Shaitan moved, but not in the way the elder expected.
Malachi had counted on a full-on attack, the servant versus the master, but the monster moved quickly to the left, toward the humans cowering on the ground.
“If you will not bring them forth, I will,” the Shaitan proclaimed, snatching up the cadaverous form of Adam and heading for the Tree. The old woman screamed, leaping to her feet, trying to drag the man from Taranushi’s muscular tentacle, but the monster was too fast.
Malachi tried to block his way to the Tree, but Taranushi was fury incarnate, moving with incredible speed, dodging the elder’s pathetic attempts to strike him down. Multiple limbs, flowing with their own arcane energies, lashed out, and the elder was tossed aside, tumbling from the base of the Tree to lie upon the trembling ground.
Taranushi stood beneath the Tree, Adam’s limp and naked form before him.
“A sacrifice,” the Shaitan cried to the Garden. “Let the blood of the first feed the hunger of a new beginning.”
And as Eliza Swan screamed, Malachi watched, helpless, as Taranushi brought Adam toward his mouth of razor-sharp teeth, biting into the old soul’s withered throat and letting his ancient blood ooze from the gaping wound onto the soil.
What have I done? The question reverberated through Malachi’s mind as he watched the horror unfold.
Adam’s blood rained down upon Eden’s flesh, the disease beneath her surface becoming more active as it fed upon the ancient life stuff. The ground began to tumble and roll as if in the grip of convulsions. And from the cold, dark womb of dirt, a new life started to emerge.
Taranushi let the limp and bleeding body of Adam fall to the ground, as pale, childlike hands shot up from the soil, like some perverse fungus. They attached themselves to the ancient one’s body, sinking tiny claws into the withered flesh and tearing pieces away.
The old woman wailed for the first of men, her sad tears running down her face to water the soil of Eden.
And from her tears the most beautiful of flowers began to grow.