Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
A sickening image to look at.
“Fuck,” Abaddon muttered, rubbing his arms as cold shivers trailed up and down his limbs.
“Maybe it all really happened here. Many years have passed after all, and I was a kid,” Gabriel said, but the tremble in his voice told Abaddon that the state of the boy’s mind was fragile.
The four sides of the pyramid leaned toward a point above, and Abaddon lit the ceiling to find an eye of Horus painted in bright azure on a square block making up the middle of the vault.
Nausea squeezed his throat as the blurry image of the same view passed through his mind. But the eye growing in his imagination wasn’t immobile. It blinked, revealing a bright pupil before casting its gaze on the statue to point out the hidden lever.
A lever.
Abaddon’s heart jumped, and as he once again took in the idol, heat poured into his face like a swarm of hornets about to sting him to death.
Just like that, he knew that there was more to this folly than what their eyes could see. But as he glanced at the lost expression on Gabriel’s face, he wasn’t sure whether keeping this knowledge to himself wouldn’t have been the better choice. Then again how could he lie to his lovely lamb for whom he cared so deeply?
Gabriel scooted at the base of the statue where the throne became a six-sided block of stone. He ran his fingers over a small black tile engraved with the simplified depiction of a flame.
Driven by pure instinct, Abaddon pulled his hand back as if the fire was real and could burn Gabriel like the torch held by Watson had.
Symbols floated through Abaddon’s head, each glinting as if it had been bathed in crystal dust. Arranged on the sides of a hexagon, they spun around him like an unholy halo while six shadows emerged from the dark corners of the pyramid. Their hypnotic chanting made all the colors glow more intensely as Abaddon, or rather a version of him, drank sweet liquid from a silver cup.
The hooded figures stepped closer to the statue and fell to their knees, each pressing on a relief carved in the six-sided pedestal in a sequence known only to them. And now Abaddon.
“Fire doesn’t go first,” he whispered.
“Huh?” Gabriel stroked Abaddon’s shoulder, but blood was already boiling in his veins as he moved.
“Earth, water, fire, air, life, death,” Abaddon said as if he’d been the one chanting those very words in Latin, not the ghostly shadows in his vision.
“H-how do you know this?”
Abaddon’s throat ached with the weight of a jagged rock that would cut his artery open if he dared to speak, so instead he followed the course he knew to be correct. The order of elements not only opened the passage to the beyond but also guided ritual torture.
When the stylized skull sank deeper into stone as the last of the symbols marking the sides of the pedestal, a dull thud sent an imagined drop of icy water down Abaddon’s back.
Metal clanged beneath their feet, and one of the painted slabs of stone that made up the floor sank right in front of them.
Gabriel’s sweaty fingers entwined with his. “This has to be what Martinez wanted to show us.”
Abaddon still couldn’t speak, overwhelmed by the scent of rot coming from the dark hole in the ground. His shirt was now wet and clinging to his overheated body, but when Gabriel took a step forward, he didn’t resist and shone the flashlight down a flight of stairs that led straight to Hell.
His whole being screamed for him not to go, but Gabriel took the first step, and Abaddon followed. He’d do anything to protect this boy. Even without his sword or wings, without his angelic might, he’d fight off whatever demons hid in the basement of this unholy building.
Each step felt like having a strip of skin removed, but Abaddon bit his tongue and trudged on, passing between walls painted with images of his likeness coming into the world. Sulfur bit his nose as he breathed in, but his mind knew it was being toyed with, and that all he could really smell were mold and damp.
A light switch was sunken into the wall at the end of the staircase, and he pressed it with eyes pinned to the tips of his shoes. The light here should have been bright and unpleasant, but instead it glowed like natural fire and was just as artificial as this whole temple.
Everything about it was sickening.
A frown never left Gabriel’s face as they stepped out of the corridor and into a domed room with three groups of small dark niches spread out at its sides. And on an elevated stone platform stood a throne.
“It’s here. This is where they maim and murder,” Gabriel whispered, pointing a shivering finger at the pedestal. “It’s empty.”