Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

Dare she say it?

Her feelings .

Just as she had no control over the sadness that overcame her whenever she lost a soul, she couldn’t help how she felt about this man. A frame of mind that was both troubling and dangerous. She knew she should have turned him immediately, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to even try. Couldn’t bear the thought of losing the qualities that made him who he was.

And after their glorious night together-a moment she had delayed for two long years-she had worked very hard to forget about him. Had distracted herself with the flesh of others in hopes that her thoughts of that night would soon fade away.

She had not returned to his home. Had not returned to his bed. And had almost convinced herself that he was no longer important to her.

Yet here he was now, pulling at her. Floating before her in the ether. Summoning up the lingering remains of that night in the tea shop with Ajda.

And this part puzzled her.

Was he there right now? In the tea shop?

Had he gone to Esau?

Before she could weigh the gravity of this turn of events, she saw him crouched near the floor, his face coming into sharp focus, and she could see that he wasn’t happy. Far from it.

There was hate in those eyes. Fury.

And she knew with sudden certainty that-true to his intellect-he was now fully aware of who she really was and what she had done to that useless bag of bones, that supercilious whore he had called a wife.

And for the first time in as long as she could remember-

– Belial was heartbroken.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY

After the fifth shot of whiskey, Batty still wasn’t properly anesthetized, but he was getting there. He’d brought the bottle to their hotel room and planned to finish it off before the night was over.

He was slumped on a couch near a window that overlooked the city, his forearm bandaged, the Milton manuscript lying on the cushion next to him. But he hadn’t cracked it open yet. His excitement over it had waned. Died, actually. He was too busy getting drunk.

And thinking about the redhead.

He cursed himself for not recognizing what she was the moment he’d taken her into his bed. But then the smell of the swamp had been high that night, hadn’t it? And the temptation strong.

But that was no excuse. No matter what desperate rationalization he might come up with, the end result was always the same.

He had slept with the creature who had killed his wife.

He’d had intimate relations with the dark angel-the fucking demon , all right?-who came into his home, burrowed her way into Rebecca’s mind and drove the woman he loved to destruction-all the while using his voice to spew her venom.

His voice.

Yet despite knowing this, and despite his utter contempt for the creature, Batty’s yearning for her-that animal instinct-had not gone away. Seeing her on that floor with Ajda had stirred a desire in him he could barely suppress.

And that made him sick to his stomach.

Hence, the bottle of whiskey.

“You ready to talk about it yet?”

Callahan sat in her armchair, Ozan’s iPad in her lap, the copy of Steganographia and Ozan’s notes on the table next to her. With Batty about as useful as a flashlight without batteries, she’d taken possession of it all and had spent the last couple hours working away, scribbling notes, checking references, consulting the Internet, texting messages . . . He had no idea what she was up to, but she was certainly keeping busy.

He, on the other hand, was merely passing time between shots.

He remembered that Ajda had targeted him specifically in that tunnel. Was it possible she had smelled the redhead on him? Was that why he was a threat? Had she attacked out of jealousy, of all things?

“Earth to LaLaurie.”

He blinked. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Just answer one question. All this stuff you’ve been spouting about angels and drudges and sycophants-it didn’t come from just books, did it?”

He looked at her. Realized he had involuntarily started rubbing the scar on his left wrist, as if he’d known what she was about to ask.

“No,” he said.

She set her phone and the iPad aside, giving him her full attention now. “Look. You don’t have to tell me about this if you don’t want to. I haven’t exactly been the most receptive human being on the planet.” She gestured to the bottle. “But it looks to me like you’re on the train to oblivion, and by all rights, I should be in the seat right next to you. Call me selfish, but I’d rather that didn’t happen.”

“Does it really matter?”

“It does to me,” she said. “I watched my father nearly drink himself to death right before he put a bullet in his head. And I’d just as soon not see that happen again.”

Batty didn’t often do this without permission, but she’d opened a small window and he took a moment to peek inside her mind. There was a lot of childhood anguish in there, and he knew she usually kept that window sealed tight.

“I’m not going to burden you with any details,” he told her. “We’ll save that for another day. Let’s just say that most of what I know about this subject came my way because of two things: my curse and my stupidity.”

“I’m gonna need a little more than that.”

“The curse I was born with,” he said. “This thing my mother called The Vision . . .” He raised his hands now, showing her his wrists. “And my stupidity.”

“I assume you did that after your wife was killed?”

“After what I’d seen in our bedroom I thought I knew exactly where she was headed, and I was foolish enough to think I could go after her. And when I cut my wrists, I was swept away to a place I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

Truth be told, his memory of that journey had faded over the last two years, becoming little more than a vague horror in a corner of his mind, like the murky remnants of a nightmare. But he’d come away from the place with its culture and its history imprinted on his brain, like data etched onto a microchip.

And knowledge like that wasn’t easy to forget.

“I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this,” Callahan said, “but are you saying hell actually exists?”

“Hell, Lazaa, Tartarus, Kalichi-every religion has a name for it, and believe me, you don’t want to go there if you can help it. I only had a small taste of it, and that was more than enough. And I’m pretty sure I brought a little piece of it back with me.”

He could see that despite all she’d seen tonight, she was having trouble accepting this idea. But he had to give her credit for not dismissing it out of hand.

She was making progress.

“What do you mean ‘a piece of it’?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he told her, “but I don’t always have the sunniest of dispositions.”

Callahan said nothing.

“I think part of the reason for that is what I’ve seen, but it’s also something inside me, as if a living piece of the place attached itself to my soul before I was revived. Like a parasite. For all I know, I’m only one kiss away from being a drudge myself.”

Which was why, he supposed, he still felt that attraction to the redhead.

“That’s ridiculous,” Callahan said.

“We went way past ridiculous a long time ago. And you can throw in absurd, ludicrous and laughable as well. Unfortunately, none of this is very funny.”

“So what’s your solution? Sit here and wallow in your misery? Or do you want to do something productive?”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive, are they?”

“Come on, Professor, I need you to sober up. You’re not any good to me like this. What do you say we call down to room service and order a pot of that really disgusting coffee these Turks love so much?”