The War in Heaven Read Online Free PDF

the now vacant altar, he immediately noticed the state of the manacles and chains. They had been sheered off in a haphazard way. What sort of tool cut metal in this fashion? There were tiny shards of metal scattered around the altar and even on other altars, a dozen feet away. And this wasn’t just any metal; no, it was of a sort forged only by the angels and those who had fallen. It possessed an almost supernatural strength, many times more resilient than natural steel. Yet here it was, sliced to ribbons like common scrap. Cordon picked up a wrist shackle nearly half an inch thick that had been roughly sliced in two.
    Incredible
, thought Cordon. Even an angelic sword would have had a hard task cutting this metal.
    He sat down upon the altar to ponder what he had seen here. He looked around, and a particular human, a female, apparently Hispanic by birth, caught his attention. For a human, she was rather attractive, even here in this place. She was in a perfect position to have witnessed what happened as her head was drawn back by the chain around her neck to the optimum angle. But had her mind been clear enough to have grasped what she saw? Would her testimony of the things that had transpired be reliable, or more akin to fantasy? Like many of the humans here, she was not being ravaged by the birds. Her dark eyes followed Cordon as he approached. They held such a glassy look about them. This was not a good sign.
    “Please, can you take me away too? I want to go home,” she said in a quiet dry voice.
    Cordon knelt down before her altar. His deep blue eyes met her dark, seemingly unfocused gaze. The poor woman’s neck chain forced her headback to such a degree that she gazed perpetually at an upside-down landscape, and the altar of the missing human. Tom Carson occupied the very center of her world.
    “Why do you think that I can help you?” asked Cordon, his voice soft and melodic.
    The woman gazed into Cordon’s face. It was the face of an angel, smooth and without blemish, framed in flowing golden hair. He was not like so many of the demons of this place, not a hideous being with a gaunt wrinkled countenance.
    “Aren’t you one of them? I mean … a deliverer? Yes, you must be. I knew you would come. I knew you wouldn’t abandon me. I’ve repented, really I have. Please, give me another chance, I beg you.”
    The woman was rambling and confused—a product of who knew how many years of abuse on the grandest scale. Her mind might well be as chaotic and disoriented as her speech.
    “What is your name, child?” asked Cordon.
    “My name? I used to know my name. But I haven’t needed to know it in so long. All we have to know is how to feel pain. I can do that.”
    Cordon waited patiently, he had time. Still, he questioned whether interrogating this wench was worth its investment.
    Then her eyes seemed to come to focus upon Cordon. “My name is Julie.” A single tear welled up in her left eye. “You’re not going to help me, are you? You’re not one of them. Your face is kind of like theirs, but your wings are not like theirs at all. You’re not going to help me.”
    “Who is it you speak of?” asked Cordon, caressing her cheek gently with his hand. His voice was soft and gentle, the voice of an angel. “After all, I can’t tell you if I am or am not one of them if I do not know who they are. Tell me about them, Julie. Tell me all that you have seen. I may yet be able to help you.”
    “I don’t know where to begin, how to describe what I saw,” said Julie, in a trembling voice. “There weren’t any birds feeding on me right then. I was healing, the way we do, after they’ve finished with us.”
    “Yes, go on,” urged Cordon. “Tell me all that you saw, and I will tell you if your words might hold within them your own deliverance.”
    “Deliverance?” asked Julie.
    “Deliverance,” confirmed Cordon. “No, Julie, I’m not one of them, but maybe I can help you nonetheless. I can take you from