Читаем The Night Eternal полностью

Irrigated by a complex canal system, it had grown randomly through the centuries, radiating outward from the waterways and ending up in a shape that vaguely resembled a dove in flight. Its ten-acre contours crystallized in that form when the surrounding walls were erected around 2024 BC. The walls were over forty feet tall and six feet thick, constructed of baked mud brick and plastered in gypsum to make them shine brightly in the sun. Within them, mud-brick buildings were built so close together as to be almost on top of one another, the tallest of which was a temple erected to honor the Canaanite god Moloch. The population of Sodom fluctuated around two thousand. Fruits, spices, and grains were abundant, driving the city’s prosperity. The glass and gilded bronze tiles of a dozen palaces were visible at once, glinting in the dying sunlight.

Such wealth was guarded by the enormous gates that gave entrance into the city. Six irregular stones of enormous size and heft created a monumental archway with gates fashioned from iron and hardwoods impervious to fire or battering rams.

It was at these gates that Lot, son of Haran, nephew of Abram, was when the three creatures of light arrived.

Pale they were, and radiant and remote. Part of the essence of God and, as such, void of any blemish. From each of their backs, four long appendages emerged, suffused with feathery light, easily confused with luminous wings. The four jutting limbs fused in the back of the creatures and flapped softly with their every step, as naturally as one would compensate for forward movement by swaying one’s arms. With each step they acquired form and mass, until they stood there, naked and somewhat lost. Their skin was radiant like the purest alabaster and their beauty was a painful reminder of Lot’s mortal imperfection.

They were sent there to punish the pride, decadence, and brutality that had bred within the prosperous walls of the city. Gabriel, Michael, and Ozryel were God’s emissaries—His most trusted, most cherished creations and His most ruthless soldiers.

And among them it was Ozryel who held His greatest favor. He was intent upon visiting the town square that night, where they had been instructed to go—but Lot beseeched them to stay with him at his residence instead. Gabriel and Michael agreed, and so Ozryel, the third, who was most interested in the wicked ways of these cities, was made to acquiesce to his brothers’ wishes. Of the three, it was Ozryel who held the voice of God within himself, the power of destruction that would erase the two sinful cities from the earth. He was, as it is told in every tale, God’s favorite: His most protected, His most beautiful creation.

Lot had been blessed aplenty, with land and cattle and a pious wife. So the feast at his home was abundant and varied. And the three archangels feasted as men, and Lot’s two virginal daughters washed their feet. These physical sensations were new to all three of the angels, but for Ozryel the sensations were overwhelming, achieving a profundity that escaped the other two. This represented Ozryel’s first experience of individuality, of apartness from the energy of the deity. God is an energy, rather than an anthropomorphic being, and God’s language is biology. Red blood cells, the principle of magnetic attraction, neurological synapse: each is a miracle, and in each is the presence and flow of God. When Lot’s wife cut herself while preparing the herbs and oil for the bath, Ozryel beheld her blood with great curiosity; the smell of it excited him. Tempted him. And its color was precious, lush… like liquid rubies glinting in the candlelight. The woman—who had protested the men’s presence from the start—recoiled when she discovered the archangel staring at her wound, enraptured.

Ozryel had come to earth many times. He had been there when Adam died at the age of nine hundred thirty and he had been there when the men who laughed at Noah drowned in the raging dark waters of the Flood. But he had always traversed this plane in spirit form, his essence still connected to the Lord, never having been made flesh.

So Ozryel had never before experienced hunger. Never before experienced pain. And now a flood of sensations besieged him. Having now felt the crust of the earth beneath his feet… felt the cold night air caress his arms… tasted food grown of the land and carved from its lower mammals, what he thought he would be able to appreciate at a remove, with the detachment of a tourist, he instead found drawing him closer to humankind, closer to the land itself. Closer to this breed of animal. Cool water cascading over his feet. Digested food breaking down inside his mouth, his throat. The physical experiences became addictive, and Ozryel’s curiosity got the best of him.