Drawn upward to the monster’s mouth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Leviathan’s muscular tendrils hauled him closer. Aaron tried to squirm from their strangling grasp, but the monster’s hold upon him was too strong. The sea beast attacked his mind as well, weakening his resolve, taking away his desire to fight back. The spider-things living beneath the behemoth’s armored scales chittered and hissed as Aaron’s body was drawn steadily upward.
He was almost to Leviathan’s mouth, a yawning chasm of razor-sharp teeth, when he heard another voice in his head. It was soft at first, a soothing whisper, like the sound of the wind moving through the trees on a cool fall night. He focused on this new, not unpleasant, tickle and struggled to stay conscious.
He opened his eyes and found himself gazing into one of the many opaque sacks hanging from the gigantic beast—the one that held God’s messenger. The Archangel Gabriel’s eyes opened, and Aaron knew it was his presence within his mind.
“I have long awaited your arrival,” whispered a voice that sounded like the most beautiful of stringed instruments.
The voice of the monster was suddenly silenced, drowned out by the enlivening sounds of a cosmic symphony—and despite his dire predicament, Aaron reached out to communicate with this latest entity in his teeming mind.
“How is that possible?” Aaron asked “How could you know that I would be here—that I would come?”
Aaron could sense Leviathan’s growing annoyance. Something was blocking its access into his mind, and the monster did not care for that in the least.
“I knew that my torment would not last an eternity,” said the angel Gabriel, the celestial music inside his head building to a near deafening crescendo. “That my successor would eventually come and complete the task assigned to me,” the angel’s voice crooned.
Aaron didn’t completely grasp the meaning of the Archangel’s words. “Successor?” he questioned. “I don’t understand.”
The angel’s eyes again began to close. “There is no time for misunderstanding,” the angelic being whispered, the sound of his voice growing steadily weaker. “You are as I was,” he said. “A messenger of God.”
“Wait!” Aaron screamed aloud as he was dragged away from the digestive sacks and up toward the monster’s face. He squirmed in the tentacles’ clutches, the broken bones in his wrist grinding together painfully as he tried again to establish contact with the Archangel. “What do you mean?” he shouted. “I still don’t understand!”
A tentacle, its thickness that of a tree trunk, reached down from above the struggling youth and snatched him away from the lesser appendages, drawing him upward.
Aaron found himself hanging upside down by the leg in front of Leviathan’s monstrous countenance. The bulging eyes on either side of its head studied him with great interest; its enormous circular mouth puckered and spat as it spoke. “What is there to understand?” asked the horrific sea deity, its voice like the last gasp of a drowning man echoing inside his head. “Your struggles are futile. Surrender to my supremacy and know that it was your life essence, and those of your companions, that finally enabled me to procure my freedom.”
Somehow, Leviathan had not heard the angel Gabriel’s words. The monster did not hear the angelic warrior proclaim him as a messenger of God, and Aaron began to wonder if it all wasn’t some kind of perverse trick on the part of the sea beast—to give him the slightest glimmer of hope and rip it savagely away.
He was brought closer to the gaping hole of a mouth, and Aaron saw himself pathetically reflected in the glassy surface of its bulbous, fish like eyes, dangling upside down, waiting to be dropped into the cavernous mouth of the ancient, undersea behemoth. Messenger of God my ass, I don’t have a chance in hell, Aaron thought as he prepared to be consumed.
“That is what it wants you to believe,” said the barely audible voice of the Archangel Gabriel. “That is how it has defeated us all, by making us believe that which is not true.”
Aaron squirmed, the angel’s words chasing away the monster’s infusion of self-doubt.
“When will you realize the futility of your actions?” Leviathan asked, giving him a violent shake. “Why do you fight when you cannot win, little Nephilim? The time for struggle is past. Now it is time to surrender.”
Aaron found the words streaming from his mouth before even realizing what he was going to say.
“I will not surrender to you,” Aaron said, a powerful anger building up inside him. He began to thrash, attempting to free himself from the ancient beast.
Leviathan laughed, tightening its grip upon his leg and lowering him toward its yawning mouth. “Courage even in the face of the inevitable,” it gurgled. “Perhaps it shall make your life stuff all the more sweet.”
The stink that wafted up from the monster’s gullet was enough to render a body unconscious, and Aaron tried desperately to hold his breath. The flesh of the sea monster’s tentacle was slimy beneath his clawing fingers, and he could not get a good enough grip upon the skin to render any damage. He felt the appendage’s hold upon him loosen, and prepared for the fall into oblivion—when the angel Gabriel spoke again.
“I give again to you, my weapon of choice. Take it now as you took it the first time you struggled within the grasp of nightmare. I give to you Bringer of Light—use it well, messenger of God.”
Aaron felt the blade of the messenger, Bringer of Light, appear in his hand, and the sharp, grinding pain from his broken wrist immediately eased as the bones miraculously knitted themselves back together.
“What is this?” Leviathan growled, its enormous eyes attempting to focus on him and the weapon that sprang to brilliant life in his grasp.
Aaron felt invigorated. The shroud of despair that had held him in its grasp dissipated like the morning fog in the presence of the rising sun. He swung his body out and swiped his blade across one of the fishlike eyes that ogled him. Bringer of Light cut across the wet surface of the bulging orb, slicing open the gelatinous organ. Leviathan screamed in a mixture of agony and rage—and Aaron was released from its hold.
The monster continued to shriek in pain, its gigantic mass thrashing in the close quarters of the undersea cave. Aaron landed precariously atop the cluster of sacks hanging from the front of the raging Leviathan. He tried to grab hold, to keep from being thrown from the swaying stomachs. His body slid across the rubbery surface of the digestive organs, sounding much like it did when rubbing a hand upon an inflated balloon. Aaron sunk his fingernails into the fleshy surface and held on.
The sea monster was bucking, bellowing its rage throughout its cave domain, its injured eye swollen closed, weeping streams of thick yellow fluid that resembled egg yoke.
“You shall suffer for that, Nephilim!” it screamed as it bent its body in an attempt to locate him with its remaining sensory organ. “I shall make your internment within my hungry stomach last an eternity. You shall be my favorite meal, and I will savor the taste of you for a very long time!”
Aaron began to slip, his purchase upon the tumorous sacks insecure. His face pressed against the surface of one of the opaque membranes, and he again found himself peering into the wane face of the Archangel Gabriel, floating within the digestive fluids of the behemoth.
“Messenger,” a voice probed weakly within his brain, “free me.” And the angel opened his eyes, their intensity inspiring him to act.
Aaron pulled back his arm with a yell and brought it forward, hacking at where the digestive sacks connected to Leviathan’s chest. The heavenly blade passed through the connective tissue with ease, and the dangling organs fell from the monster’s body like ripened fruit from the tree.