Page 299 of Caelum

Her nostrils flared. “Have you looked outside your ivory tower recently? The world’s in chaos and what are people doing? Looting shops, holding people at gunpoint to steal from them?—”

Ah.

The news.

Shit. Frazer had said we should switch it off, but keeping her in the dark wasn’t something any of us had wanted to do.

Before the call with Samuel, she’d grabbed some toast from the breakfast tray and had taken a seat in front of the screen. Flickering through channels had shown us the state of chaos in this mad world, and I could empathize with why she was questioning things.

We were saving people who didn’t particularly merit saving.

“Humans were never supposed to be inherently good or bad. They just are. They live their lives with free will to do as they want. Their punishment is not ours to mete out,” Avalina advised her soothingly, her eyes softening as she saw Eve’s distress.

I snuggled closer to her on the sofa and hooked an arm over her shoulder, so she was under my protection. Even if it was only a hug, I hoped it made her feel better.

Eve tipped her chin up and challenged, “When all the Ghouls are gone, what happens next?”

“There’s no way of knowing.”

“No, and what if it’s worse than it was before?”

“That’s in God’s hands.”

“And what if God’s wrong?” Eve snarled, shoving my arm away and surging to her feet. “It might have been inadvertent, but he made four creatures. The Ghoul, a destroyer. Themajnun, a soldier. And theJannah, a protector. All of us seem to have a purpose, but the humans? What’s their purpose?”

“Why does it matter?” Frazer asked softly. “We have a role to play in this, love. We have no choice.”

Her jaw clenched. “We’re saving people who don’t deserve it.”

“No, we’re destroying people who need to kill to survive. Saving the humans is a byproduct of that one action,” Reed explained, and I wasn’t surprised to see her take to that idea.

“I’ve watched enough documentaries to know that when you take away an apex predator from an ecosystem, it never bodes well. Maybe we shouldn’t take Erlik out of the equation. Maybe that would be too dangerous,” she reasoned.

But Avalina shook her head. “I might agree with you, Eve, if it weren’t for one thing. This mention of Tamag.”

“Explain, please,” Dre said gruffly, and I watched him grab her and haul her onto his lap. Before she could argue, his hand tightened around Eve’s thigh, his fingers flashing white with tension for a second as he squeezed.

“Tamag is a Turkish term,” Eren interjected before Avalina said a word. He drummed his fingers on the table. “It’s our ancient mythology. Greece had Hades, Rome had Pluto, our ancient God of Death was Erlik, and he ruled over Tamag.”

“I’m surprised a boy of your age would know that,” Bartlett commented with a frown.

Eren’s smirk was dark. “I have a lot of time on my hands. Plus, my father was fascinated by the mythos.”

“So, Erlik is the name of the Original, but along the way he’s gotten mingled in with ancient mythology,” Frazer reasoned.

“Yes,” Avalina replied simply. “The trouble is, these references to Tamag, with Erlik as the gatekeeper, then Erlik’s leader? It sounds remarkablylike a reference to Satan himself.” She whispered the devil’s name, and it was hard for menotto shake my head.

After a lifetime of atheism, it was difficult, even in the resounding proof shoved straight in my face, not to react to such fear. I’d never believed in Heaven and Hell because, at far too many points in my life, I’d lived in hell, except mine had been very earthly in origin. Heaven? That was for rich boys with food in their bellies and parents who gave a damn about them.

Simplistic, perhaps, but the memories were as real as ever and made a mockery of Avalina’s fear.

After all, she was the one here who’d dealt with Satan in the flesh.

Bartlett squeezed his wife’s shoulder. “Ghouls were likened to demons in human legend because theywereSatan’s workers on this realm. With his taint in their bones from our sins, he used them for his gain. I can’t say what happens in his lair, but I know that having decimated two-thirds of his legions on this realm, he won’t be happy.”

My mouth gaped. “You can’t seriously tell me that you think the devil is about to rise?”

“Kill Erlik before his leader surfaces? That pretty much sounds like it to me,” Samuel stated grimly, and his face looked pretty ashen now. Shit, we all lookedashen.

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