The Hallowed Land Experience

No Matter what it Takes

 
"Harrrrrrgh!", grimaced the big Hawaiian as he put his back into lifting the fallen beam.

With inhuman strength Tyraeth lifted the heavy slab of concrete off of the fallen figure of Bob Jonas. Pat Roberson heaved and pulled the stony faced preacher out from under the archway. Bob gritted his teeth as his fractured legs were dragged along the floor.

"C'mon! Hurry!", Tyraeth hissed through clenched teeth.

One by one the highest ranking members of the Religious Reich squeezed through the small opening that Tyraeth had made. One of the cave-ins had trapped them on the wrong side of the exit. In the darkness they had prayed for deliverance. Now their prayers were being answered.

"Praise the Lord!", Jerry exclaimed as he squeezed through and saw the stairs on the other side.

"Yes, praise the Lord! Praise God Almighty!", Gary Blauer added, clasping his hands together in prayer as he emerged.

"Bless you, son. You're a true angel.", Bill McCarthy said warmly to the large Hawaiian after dusting himself off. He didn't know just how right he was. "You're like the Lord's pass blocker.", he added melodramatically.  "Saving us from getting sacked and delivering a touchdown."

"I never thought that I'd ever see a miracle.", Bob Barry gasped as he rose to his feet. "But you are like Samson. The Lord has given you the strength to save us."

Tyraeth closed his eyes and tried not to listen. Just thinking about saving the skins of men like them, men who didn't deserve it, made him wish that he could speed their descent into hell. But for the chance to see Kestrel once again he would do almost anything, even suffer the fools who made a mockery of what he had sworn to defend.

Tyraeth looked around and noticed that one of them was missing. "Where's Marvin?", he gasped.

"He's still in there somewhere. I saw him get hit by a chunk of rock.", Gary said, eager to leave as soon as he could. "I think he's dead."

"Get out of here.", Tyraeth barked at them. They did, carrying Bob Jonas with them carefully up the stairs. With one last grunt Tyraeth lifted the slab just enough to slide underneath. Then he let it crash to the ground behind him.

Tyraeth hastily made his way through the maze of fallen beams and stone. Every now and then another part of the ceiling would collapse, and Tyraeth knew that he didn't have much time before all was lost. His heart was pounding and his eyes searched crazily for any trace of his beloved. Down one passage he found Marvin lying on the floor, bleeding and unconscious but still alive. He carried him to safety inside one of the cells and then continued his frantic search.

In another cell Tyraeth found the defiled corpse of Bob Jonas' victim. Seeing her sickened him, but he was relieved to see that it wasn't Kestrel. That was something that Tyraeth and Kestrel shared. They could always could tell who each other was when they put on mortal forms. Their bond was that close.

Soon Tyraeth came to the central room of the dungeon. His eyes locked on the wreckage of a machine in the middle of the room. The two women were still strapped into it. One was dead, but the other was not. Tyraeth's heart missed a beat. It was Kestrel, and she was still alive.

Tyraeth rushed over to the unconscious woman. Her body was twisted, broken, and torn apart. He looked down at what had become of Kestrel, his long lost love. Tyraeth stood quivering before her, shaking like a young boy at his first dance.

"Oh, God.", the large man spoke hoarsely as his emotions overwhelmed him. He looked at her wounds and felt her suffering, suffering which he felt responsible for. He fell to his knees and began to weep out of control.

In the years since he'd lost her Tyraeth had sealed away all his memories and feelings for his beloved. One by one he had dealt with them, suppressing them and fighting with them when he had to, and carefully locking them up in a part of his mind that he intended to never visit again. Now Kendra had thrown the door wide open and he was drowning in the emotions of he past. All the love and the pain, all the joy and the despair, and all the anger and the shame that he thought were far behind him were now flooding back, leaving his soul gasping for air. Tyraeth fell to the floor and curled up in a ball, unable to do anything else but scream, cry, and pray for it all to stop.
 

Liander pulled up outside the mall. He checked the clock on the dashboard. It read nine fifty-five. He'd made it just in time. Grabbing the costume off of the passenger's seat he raced towards the mall entrance, leaving the technician and the driver alone with Kiri in the back of the ambulance. Liander didn't care about them. He had a job to do and he was determined to do it.

The night clerk had her key in the door as Liander ran up to her and waved the costume in front of the store window. She shrugged and opened the door for him.

"Thanks.", Liander said breathlessly. "I didn't think that I'd make it in time."

"Nice costume.", the clerk said unfeelingly as she walked back and unlocked the cash register.

Liander looked down at the bloody gauze wrapped around his limbs and chuckled. "Yeah. I made it myself."

Liander set the belly dancer outfit down on the counter and the clerk looked it over carefully. She held up the torn lower half and looked Liander straight in the eyes.

"It looks like someone was in a hurry.", she said sternly, clearing her throat.

"Sorry.", Liander said apologetically.

"I'm going to have to keep twenty dollars of your deposit.", the clerk said.

Liander nodded and the clerk rung up his total, handing him a receipt. Liander thanked her once more and put the receipt in his pocket. He checked off one more box on his mental list. There was only one more thing left that he had to do.
 

Tyraeth regained his feet. He didn't know how long he had lain there in middle of the torture room. It may have been hours. More of the roof had collapsed, and pieces of concrete and steel lay all about him, but ironically the machine that had brought Kestrel to the brink of death had protected her from the avalanche.

Tyraeth extended a shaking hand towards the body of his beloved. He could see that she was still breathing, but only just. Her mortal body was not long for the world of the living. Tyraeth held his hand back. Even though he desperately wanted to look into her eyes again and hear her voice once more, he also knew that it meant breaking an oath that he sworn to Gabriel himself. But as he stood there looking at her soft, gentle face, he knew that he would never forgive himself if he did nothing as he watched her die.

Tyraeth gently touched Kestrel's face. He let some of his essence flow into her body. Gradually she came to, lifting her head, and opening her eyes.

"Tyraeth.", she said gazing up into his eyes.

For a long moment neither of them could say anything. Tyraeth felt a lump in his throat that was too big to swallow. He wanted to say her name but it wouldn't come out.

"I always knew that you'd come for me.", Kestrel whispered.

The words sunk into Tyraeth and tore into his soul. There was something in the way she said them, the way she said them with an innocent faithfulness, a faithfulness that he had betrayed. He hadn't come for her. He had left her to suffer, helpless and alone. Now he felt unworthy to stand before her, unworthy of her faith, and unworthy of her love. Tears poured down his cheeks once more as he remembered how he pleaded with Gabriel to rescue her. He remembered how he'd swallowed his pride and obeyed the orders to let her go. He remembered telling himself that it was all for the greater good no matter how he felt about it. He remembered how every fiber of his being had screamed at him to charge into hell and do whatever it took to bring her back, but only his sense of duty held him back. And now, looking upon the face of his beloved he knew, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he had made the wrong choice.

"I'm sorry.", he finally choked out. "I wanted…"

"I know.", the fallen angel replied. "I know. I forgive you, Tyraeth. I forgive you."

But her words did nothing to make Tyraeth feel better. He knew that he did not deserve her forgiveness. He lowered his head and wrung his hands together. His mind went through the possibilities again, taking her back to heaven and demanding that she be reinstated, making a deal with a demon prince to be with her again, going rogue and taking her away with him, but he knew that nothing would make things right again. There was no way that he could go back to the way things were, and that was the only thing that could make him feel whole once more.

"I can't take you back to heaven.", Tyraeth began. "They would never…"

"Tyraeth. You don't have to.", Kestrel whispered. She pulled one of her hands out of the broken bonds and placed it on his. "But there is one thing that you can do for me. You can save me from the fires of hell."

"Oh, God, no.", Tyraeth thought to himself. Destroying her soul was something that he knew he could never do. As long as there was even the tiniest glimmer of hope that they could be together he knew that he could go on as if everything was normal, but with no hope at all he felt as if there would be nothing holding him back from the abyss.

When Tyraeth was young the war between heaven and hell filled him with a sense of purpose. He rejoiced after every victory and vowed revenge after every defeat. But now that he had loved and lost, the never-ending war wasn't the same anymore, and God's love no longer filled him like it used to. He never admitted to anyone, and only rarely to himself, that he felt like he was living a lie.

"I can't. Please. Don't ask me to do that.", Tyraeth begged.

"You must.", Kestrel pleaded. She sighed and looked softly into his eyes. "I wish that we could go back to the way it was. I want to be with you in heaven again."

Kestrel paused and managed to smile. "I want to call you honeywuggums and have you spin me around in your arms like we used to."

Tyraeth cracked a grim smile as another tear fell.

"But I'm no longer who I once was.", Kestrel said as the smile faded from her lips. "My soul. It's scarred forever."

Tyraeth could hardly bear the thought of her innocent soul at the hands of the demon princes. His despair began to turn into rage, and his rage he turned back upon himself. He felt that it was his fault.

"Don't let me go back there.", Kestrel pleaded. "Please, Tyraeth. Do it because you love me."

Tyraeth knew what he had to do but he found it hard to bring himself to do it.

"Don't think about it, just do it.", Tyraeth told himself over and over.

Tyraeth watched his hands rise up to his chest and begin to glow. He told himself over and over again that this was the right thing to do, that he had to show her that he loved her, and that he couldn't let her down again. His hands glowed brighter and brighter as he channeled the force necessary to destroy his beloved's soul.
 

Liander searched around the hospital for a computer connected to the internet. He found one in an out of the way part of the hospital. Making sure that no one saw him he locked the door and quickly hooked the camera up to the back of the machine. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he began uploading the pictures to a special site on the internet. He watched the progress bar intently, not wanting to relax until it reached one hundred percent. Like a snail the bar crawled slowly across the screen. Liander broke into a cold sweat. He felt that at any time Tyraeth or some other angel was going to burst in to the room and destroy the camera before he could finish sending the incriminating footage.

Minutes passed that seemed like hours. Liander couldn't take his eyes of the screen. Another thought occurred to him. One that disturbed him greatly. What if Tyraeth hadn't managed to rescue the leaders of the Religious Reich in time? If that was true then all that he had worked so hard for would have gone for naught.
 

Tyraeth's hands glowed with holy intensity as he looked at his fallen lover. He stood on the precipice between hope and despair, not wanting the jump over the edge, but feeling that he had no choice. He tried not to think about what he was doing and just do it, but a final thought entered his mind. He wasn't being true to himself.

"Doing what others thought was right is the reason that I was separated from my beloved in the first place. That is why she's here. That is why she has suffered so much.", Tyraeth thought to himself. "I cannot make that mistake again. Not even if it is God's will. And not even if it means doing what she believes is right."

Tyraeth exhaled slowly and made a fateful pledge. "I must do what I believe is right.", he thought, the words feeling both right and wrong at the same time. "And though I may suffer the consequences of my actions, I do so willingly, for this time it is my choice."

Tyraeth looked deeply into Kestrel's eyes and felt her love again for the first time. "Kestrel. I love you.", he said earnestly as a warm feeling filled his soul. "And we'll be together once more, no matter what it takes."

Tyraeth pulled one hand away. The glow around his hands faded, but on one hand it still shone brightly. He took one last look into Kestrel's eyes before mercifully ending her mortal suffering. She looked back at him helplessly, but with hope in her eyes, and an undying faith in her beloved angel. The light flashed and in an instant it was all over. Tyraeth lowered his hand and took a deep breath. Discord rang in his ears but he was still an angel. He had not fallen. But he was no longer pure. Once again he felt a sense of purpose, but it had cost him a part of his soul, and he wondered if it was worth the price.
 

Liander sat quietly in Kiri's hospital room watching CNM. Kiri lay sleeping beside him, blissfully sedated to prevent her from running amok among the doctors, nurses, and other patients. Liander was finally able to let himself relax as he saw the leading religious figures in the country being interviewed by Wolverine Blitzer. He even smiled a little as he saw a large Hawaiian man carrying the Hallowed Land Experience's president, Marvin J. Rosenthrall, out the front gate and into an ambulance. The heroic angel didn't talk to the reporters, but the look in the man's eyes spoke volumes. Liander could see that he wasn't the same angel that he used to know, and that he had suffered as much as anyone could. The smile fell from Liander's face as his guilt and regrets returned.

"Why didn't you listen to me Tyr.", Liander said to himself. "Why didn't you listen to me about Kendra?"

But Liander knew the answer. If you had a weakness, any weakness, Kendra would find it and use it against you to make you do her bidding. Liander knew that all too well. And the more he thought about the future, the less that he liked what it held. Kendra knew all of his weaknesses and she wouldn't hesitate to do to him what she had done to Tyraeth if she needed to. And now Liander knew that if he went rogue, or even if he was somehow accepted back into heaven, that he would never truly be free of that evil woman.