The constable strode forward, puffing out his chest. “Go ahead, boy,” he said, holding his arms out. “I’m ready. Send me home to God.”

“It … it doesn’t work that way,” Aaron stammered. “I just can’t do it—something inside tells me when it’s time.”

Lehash laughed again, as if he’d never heard anything as funny, and Camael seethed.

“Silence, Lehash,” Belphegor ordered again, scrutinizing Aaron. “Is that true, boy?” he asked. “Have you sent fallen angels back to Heaven?”

Gabriel, who had been unusually quiet, suddenly padded toward Belphegor. “I saw him do it,” the dog said in all earnest.“And he made me better after I was hurt. Do you have anything to eat? I’m very hungry.”

Belphegor studied the animal, whose tail wagged eagerly. “This animal has been altered,” he said, looking first to Camael, and then to Aaron. “Who would do such a thing?”

“He was hurt very badly,” Aaron explained. “I … I didn’t even know what I was doing. I talked to the thing living inside me…I begged it to save Gabriel and—”

Belphegor raised a hand to silence Aaron. “I’ve heard enough,” he said. “The idea of such power in the hands of someone like you chills me to the bone.”

“What should we do with them?” Lehash asked. There was a cruel look in his eyes, and Camael was convinced that he would do whatever Belphegor told him, no matter how dire.

“Take them back to the house,” the old angel said, turning toward the fenced yard he had come from. “I need time to think.”

“Listen to me, Belphegor,” Camael again tried to explain. “No matter how wrong it may seem to you, Aaron is the one you’ve been waiting for. Even the Archangel Gabriel believed it to be so. You have to trust me on this.”

The fallen angel returned his attention to Camael. “God’s most holy messenger is not here to vouch for him, and I’m afraid trust is in very short supply here these days,” Belphegor said sadly. “There’s far too much at stake. I’m sorry.” He looked to his people. “Take them back to the house, and be sure to keep the restraints on them.”

Lehash grabbed hold of Aaron, but the boy fought against him.

“Listen,” he cried out, and Belphegor stopped to stare at the Nephilim. “I’m trying to find my little brother—he’s the only real family I have left.”

Belphegor looked away, seemingly uninterested in the boy’s plight.

“Please!” he yelled. “Verchiel has him and I have to get him back. Let us go, and we’ll leave you alone, we promise.”

The old fallen angel ignored the boy, continuing on his way. Lehash again gripped him by the arm and pulled. “C’mon, boy. He don’t want to hear any more of your nonsense.”

“Goddam it!” Aaron shouted. “If you’re not going to listen, I’ll make you listen!”

And then he did something he should not have been able to do with the magickal restraints in place.

Aaron Corbet began to change.

CHAPTER FIVE

Aaron knew that time was of the essence and felt his patience stretched to its limits. The fallen angels, these citizens of Aerie, weren’t listening to him. He didn’t have time to be locked away in the playroom of some abandoned house. The Powers had Stevie, and the thought of his little brother still in the clutches of the murderous Verchiel acted like a key to unleash the power within him. Before he realized what he was doing, anger and guilt had unlocked the cage door, inviting the wild thing out to play. Aaron felt his transformation begin, and this time it hurt more than anything he could remember.

He turned to glare at Lehash, who still held his arm. “Let go of me,” he snarled, and felt a certain amount of satisfaction when the fallen angel did as he was told.

The pain was incredible, and Aaron could only guess it was because of the magickal restraints he still wore on his wrists and around his neck. He could feel the sigils burning upward from beneath his skin to decorate his flesh. They felt like small rodents with sharp, nasty claws, frantically digging to the surface. He screamed as sparks jumped from the golden manacles. The power within him wasn’t about to back down, even if it killed him.

He found Belphegor’s wide-eyed stare and held it with eyes as black as night. “Look at me!” Aaron cried. “Can’t you see that we’re telling the truth?”

He lurched toward the ancient fallen angel, crackling arcs of supernatural energy streaming from the enchanted restraints. From behind him he heard Camael and Gabriel call out for him to stop—but he couldn’t. He had to make Belphegor realize that they meant the people of Aerie no harm.

The constables were beside him. Lehash was aiming his guns, pulling back the golden hammers, while Lorelei had raised her hands and was mumbling something that sounded incredibly old. The one called Scholar stood at Belphegor’s side, ready to defend the wizened fallen angel if necessary.

“Give me the word, boss,” Lehash sneered, “and I’ll drop him where he stands.”

“No!” Belphegor ordered, raising his hand.

The sigils had finally burned their way to the surface of Aaron’s flesh, but there was no relief from the pain. His wings of ebony black had begun to expand on his back, but were hindered by the magick within the sparking bonds. The pain was just too much, and he fell to his knees upon the desiccated lawn in front of the abandoned home. “You’ve got to listen,” he moaned.

“Could just any Nephilim override the magicks of the manacles, Belphegor?” he heard Camael ask above the roar of anguish deafening his ears.

“He is powerful, I’ll grant him that,” Belphegor replied. “But I’ve met powerful halflings in my time, and that doesn’t make them prophets. Matter of fact, most are dead now, driven insane by power they couldn’t begin to understand, never mind tame.”

“And the markings?” Camael asked. “What do you make of them?”

Aaron opened his eyes to see the leader of Aerie kneeling beside him with Scholar. “I want to know what they mean,” Belphegor said, gesturing to the archaic symbols decorating the Nephilim’s face and arms. Scholar removed a pad of paper and pen from his back pocket and began to copy them.

“Do you believe me now?” Aaron asked weakly, exhausted from the battle between the angelic force and the magick within the golden restraints.

Belphegor stared at him with eyes ancient and inhuman, and he felt like some kind of new germ beneath a scientist’s microscope. “The question is, boy, do you believe that you are the Chosen?” Belphegor asked.

Aaron wanted to tell him what he wanted to hear, what would allow them their freedom, but he couldn’t. Although Camael and even the Archangel Gabriel believed he was the savior, the truth was, Aaron still saw himself as just a kid from Lynn, Massachusetts. Certainly he couldn’t deny his power, but did that make him the Chosen One?

I just don’t know.

“I … I’m not sure,” he told Belphegor, and felt the power begin to recede.

The old angel smiled and rose to his feet.

“Should we take them back to the house?” Lorelei asked. She had moved up behind the older angel, and Aaron noticed that her fingertips still crackled with the residual of her unused spell.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Belphegor replied. “Let them have the run of the place, but the manacles stay on until I’m sure they can be trusted.”

“Are you out of your mind, old man?” Lehash asked. The others looked uncomfortable with his outburst. “With so much going on out there, you’re gonna give them free reign? They’ll be murderin’ us in our sleep before—”

“You heard me, Lehash,” Belphegor said as he turned his back and strode through the yard. “Welcome to Aerie, folks,” he said, and disappeared around the corner of the abandoned house.

The prisoner’s eyes opened with a sound very much like late fall leaves crackling underfoot, head bent and gazing down upon hands charred and blackened. He was sitting up against the bars of his cage, his entire body enveloped in a cocoon of sheer agony. His fingers slowly straightened, and through scorched and bleary eyes, he watched as flakes of burnt flesh rained on his lap.