Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 121324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Her nose wrinkled. “Looks like Godzilla.”
“Have you heard of Behemoth?”
“Yeah, it was supposedly one of God’s monsters. He later trapped it in purgatory. Or so the story goes.”
“It wasn’t a single being, it was a race created to defend the surface of Aeon. They lived up there. They were fine with it. Until they weren’t. They wanted the underground city, and they wanted it all to themselves. Having them as a common enemy united the guardians and the gatekeepers. We fought together against the behemoths in a short war that wiped them clean out.”
Her brows lifted as she studied the carvings depicting the battle. “Shall I assume God wasn’t too happy about the race being destroyed?”
“You should. In His mind, we’d played God. It was made clear that we’d be punished if another war ever broke out. For a long time, there was peace. But it didn’t last.” Cain paused as she once more studied the carvings. “When I was born, Adam was convinced that I wasn’t his son. He wasn’t wrong.”
Wynter’s gaze snapped back to him.
“I didn’t carry the birthmark of his family line, you see. So he proclaimed that I had to be another man’s child. Eve didn’t deny it.”
“So who is—or was—your father?”
“My mother had a friend she would often meet in the Garden of Eden, as it’s better known. They had a short affair. He was my father. And that was bad, because he wasn’t a guardian like her. He was a gatekeeper. It was forbidden for the two species to breed.”
“So you’re, like, half celestial?”
He felt his mouth tip up. “No, not even close. I have too much of my father in me. And then there is my creature. Guardians don’t have an inner entity.” He licked his front teeth. “Adam would have killed me when I was a baby if the lesser deities hadn’t forbidden it. It was decided by them that I was to be allowed to live, but that I was not to be given to my father to raise—that would be his punishment for breaking the rule. The deities trusted Adam to punish my mother.”
“That’s the main reason no one stood up for her.”
Cain dipped his chin.
“You once told me that Adam wasn’t able to punish you after you almost permanently killed Abel. Did the deities interfere again and disallow that, too?”
He shook his head. “By that point, they’d stopped paying attention. They were bored, I think. I escaped punishment because I quite simply put myself out of his reach.”
“Where did you go?”
“To see my father. To meet his kind. My kind, really.” He twisted his mouth. “Time went by, and Adam didn’t seek retribution. Eventually, we came to believe that he had decided against retaliating. So none of us expected the surprise attack that came years later. Well, it was more of a slaughter.”
Her shoulders tensed. “Slaughter?”
He pointed to a cluster of carvings depicting yet another battle. Only it hadn’t truly been a war, it had been an onslaught. “As I said, the lesser deities neglected their duties. The guardians took advantage of that and attacked the gatekeepers with the intention of wiping them out. Mostly, though, the guardians wanted rid of me, because I shouldn’t exist.”
Her brows snapped together. “And what right did they have to decide that?” she asked, anger dripping from every word.
“None. But guardians are all about power and perfection. In their opinion, the gatekeepers were the opposite of perfect and possessed too much power. The guardians felt that the world would be a better place without my kind in it; felt that there should only be light, not dark; only good, not bad. Stupid, really, because something cannot be good if it has no opposite—it would simply be.”
“It sounds more to me like they feared your kind and so wanted you all gone.”
“That was no doubt a driving factor behind it all. As for the attack . . . they were well prepared. The population of gatekeepers was only a quarter of what theirs was, so it wasn’t difficult for them to overwhelm us. Anyway, a small number of us were permitted to live after the battle and were subsequently dumped here, but it wasn’t out of mercy, as you already know.”
Her gaze cut to the carvings and then bounced back to him.
Seeing the question in her eyes, he said, “Ask me.” It came out sounding more like a dare than an invitation.
She swallowed. “What are you?”
“Hmm. You heard of behemoths. Or of a behemoth. There was another race of monsters—one much worse, much darker, much more deadly. You’ll know of it as a single creature.”
“Leviathan,” she said, her voice strained.
He slowly nodded. “Leviathan. Mythology has all sorts of theories about the legendary Leviathan, doesn’t it? Some think it to be a primal sea monster. Some believe it’s a Prince of Hell. Others think it is something much more malignant.” And he saw that knowledge right there in her gaze. “The truth is . . . there’s a very good reason why the guardians fear us. We are soul eaters. Gateways to hell, because anyone we kill—good, bad, holy, unholy, mortal, immortal—will be doomed to spend an eternity in hell itself. We do the same when we die.”