End of Days Read online

  Also by Wendy Alec

  THE CHRONICLES OF BROTHERS, TIME BEFORE TIME SERIES

  The Fall of Lucifer

  The First Judgement

  THE CHRONICLES OF BROTHERS SERIES

  Son of Perdition

  A Pale Horse

  For a complete character list, please refer to the back of the book.

  HarperInspire, an imprint of

  HarperCollins Christian Publishing

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

  1

  Copyright © Wendy Alec 2018

  The author asserts her moral rights, including the right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Epub Edition August 2018 9780310096238

  ISBN: 9780310091011 (TPB)

  ISBN: 9780310096238 (ebook)

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Set in Sabon Lt Std by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is produced from independently certified FSC™ paper to ensure responsible forest management.

  For more information visit: www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

  Contents

  Also by Wendy Alec

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  The Characters

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Large Hadron Collider

  574 Feet below Earth’s Surface

  CERN

  North-West Suburbs of Geneva

  Franco-Swiss Border

  2026

  Professor Alessio Bernoulli, Chief Physicist of CERN, removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes for the fifth time in ten minutes.

  They were still there. The apparitions.

  Except that they were no longer apparitions.

  The forms directly in front of him were rapidly materializing from a fine ethereal substance into something resembling what, up until a minute ago, he would have characterized as flesh and blood.

  Bernoulli took two steps backward.

  With trembling fingers, he pushed his hands through his long dark hair and placed his glasses back on the end of his nose.

  He couldn’t accurately count the creatures.

  More of them were materializing with every passing second.

  They were at least eighteen feet in height, some far taller, their heads gigantic in circumference. Each figure was at least three times the size of a human.

  He stumbled back towards the hidden alarm system as his decades of scientific training imprinted every grotesque detail of the monsters in his mind.

  Yellow hair, matted and coarse. On each hand and foot, an extra digit. On each wrist and ankle, a broad copper manacle.

  Monstrous grey wings springing from massive shoulders.

  Eyes glimmering with the lilac pallor characteristic of all Nephilim.

  ‘You have summoned us, the Fallen, from our sleep beneath the Earth in the lowest levels of hell, the bottomless pits of darkness until the time of the Great Judgement.’ The monster was now speaking – in perfect Italian. ‘Why do you summon us? Is it time?’

  ‘Wh-who . . . what . . . are you?’ Bernoulli managed to stammer, still edging his way toward the alarm.

  His eyes locked on to the underside of the far-left console.

  Perspiration broke out over his brow.

  ‘Is it time?’ the monster rasped. ‘We left our First Estate and lay with the daughters of Earth. We are the Fallen, the Nephilim, who sodomized the race of men. We are the Fallen, who conducted genetic experiments and created hybrids and chimeras – beasts and monsters. Is it time? Is it time?’

  Perspiration drenched Bernoulli’s crisp white shirt.

  He was not a religious man, far from it, but the whispered myth of Genesis 6 was manifesting right in front of his eyes. The monstrous hybrid fallen giants, spawned from the cohabitation of fallen angels and human women.

  His eyes fixed on the enormous copper shackles around the monsters’ ankles. With each step, the creatures’ chains ripped up the smooth marble tiling of the laboratory floor.

  Bernoulli was now only a foot and a half from salvation.

  Suddenly, the hideous monsters all parted as one. Bernoulli stared, rooted to the ground in terror, at the grotesque apparition lumbering slowly towards him out of the collider.

  A creature thirty feet in height materialized in the tunnel. It had the body of a colossus, a huge lashing tail of seven poisonous serpents, six muscular arms growing from the sides of its ribcage, and three enormous heads. One head was of a lion with six eyes. Another was of a monstrous leviathan with black, rubbery skin and fire billowing from its nostrils. A goat’s head rose from the creature’s back.

  The last living vision that Alessio Bernoulli saw was six rows of grotesque yellowed teeth, the instant before they ripped into his neck.

  ‘We have opened the gates of hell,’ he gurgled, suffocating, as the blood from his carotid artery drained from his neck.

  His lifeless, glassy eyes stared up at the Large Hadron Collider, where he lay drowned in his own blood.

  No one noticed the slight, petrified girl, with long dark hair and big glasses, peering through the glass doors . . . then running for her life.

  Castel Gandolfo, Italy

  Seven Days Earlier

  Raffaelle Ricci, 19-year-old assistant to Father d’Angelis, walked swiftly through the cloisters’ ancient winding corridors, his long dark hair falling across his beatific features.

  He whistled softly as he did a cartwheel through the vast observatory library housing the priceless antique works of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Kepler – euphoric in the fact that he was finally alone . . . king of the castle.

  Apart from his adored mentor.

  And the stranger.

  The Italian carabinieri who on a normal day would be on alert, their sub-machine-guns at the ready, were glaringly absent from their posts. Raffaele grinned, making a beeline for the chestnut doors towering eighteen foot high at the east side of the castello.

  Pushing them open, he entered the Palace wing that now housed the headquarters of the Vatican Observatory. Raffaele paced through the newly renovated corridors and stopped at a se
t of doors exquisitely carved with interlacing leaves. Here lived Father d’Angelis, who was not only the Chief Astronomer but also a personal confidant and mentor to the Pope himself.

  He stared down at the two trays of food that lay untouched on the antique Aubusson rug. He shook his head in disapproval.

  Four days previously, Father d’Angelis had dismissed all the ecclesiastical staff, apart from Raffaelle.

  And the stranger.

  The stranger who had arrived at Castel Gandolfo on a bicycle, precisely seventy-two hours and twenty-two minutes earlier, dressed in the humble garb of an Italian farmer, his features almost completely hidden beneath a straw hat.

  Father D’Angelis himself had welcomed him. Minutes later, they had disappeared into the father’s private cloister.

  For three days, Raffalle’s meticulously laid silver trays – laden with the finest preserves, freshly baked wholegrain bread, lean and tender bresaola flown in on a private jet from Valtellina, festooned with pressed white linen napkins, silver cutlery, and the Limoges Chine Petit Panier Chinois china that the Chief Astronomer currently favoured – had been left outside the huge mahogany doors. Untouched.

  This was the fourth day that the men had been locked within the confines of the ancient chamber. Raffaelle knelt down and gathered the trays, sighing, resigned to the fact that his meticulously crafted handiwork had once again gone unappreciated.

  Only he and one other in the entire Vatican even knew that the two men were meeting. And only the two men themselves would ever know the unspeakable horror of the things discussed within the ancient stone walls.

  The Third Secret of Fatima.

  The sophisticated, maleficent magic of fallen angelic entities.

  Interdimensional portals.

  CERN.

  The young intern was about to retreat to the palace kitchens, having been given strict instructions that he was not to disturb the father and his guest under any circumstance.

  But Father d’Angelis refusing his favourite food? The aged salted beef that was his favourite delicacy?

  He frowned deeply, then taking his life in his hands, moved toward the door, took a deep breath, and knocked.

  There came the faintest tread of slippered feet, then the key turned in the lock. The door edged open a few inches.

  The stranger lifted his head. His eyes met Raffaele’s.

  It was the head of the Roman Catholic Church, the ruler of the Vatican, his Holy Eminence, Pope Boniface XI.

  The Pope looked up from the towers of papers, his normally tranquil countenance clouded in righteous anger.

  ‘Iniquitous!’ He slammed the papers down onto the table. ‘It is consummate evil. Even in all my days as a humble priest in Malta – in all my days as an exorcist – never ever . . .’

  His right hand trembled.

  Father d’Angelis laid a gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Nikola,’ he pleaded, his pale blue eyes shining with affection. ‘Beloved Nikola,’ he said, almost in an undertone. ‘We exist in the time of the very end. The Great Tribulation. We stand at the very edge of all things.’

  ‘But this . . .’ Pope Boniface, once known as Nikola Cassar-Desain, removed his spectacles with trembling fingers. ‘Francois, old friend, this is consummate evil. Their doomsday machine. It is an attempt to open the interdimensional gateways; the wormholes that will allow evil beings, dark spiritual forces, fallen angels, demons, freely into our dimension.’ He paced the room. ‘It is Nimrod reborn; a twenty-first-century Tower of Babel!’

  ‘Ah, Nikola,’ Francois d’Angelis gazed as if into remote distances. ‘It has been the quest of corrupt men for centuries: to open up a portal to the other side.’

  ‘Their attempt . . .’

  ‘This is no mere attempt.’ Francois d’Angelis’s voice was very soft. ‘That CERN will open up the hyperdimensional stargates is beyond question.’

  The Chief Astronomer stood and stared out over the lake glimmering in the sunset. His voice quavered. ‘Over four hundred years ago, John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, attempted to open a stargate – a literal stairway to the heavens.’ He turned to the Pope. ‘It was one of the first recorded attempts at opening a portal to another dimension. The spiritual entities he summoned called themselves the Enochian Angels; evil angelic forces that communicated their dark magic to Dee. He discovered through his interactions with the Enochians that there were watchtowers where stargates exist on the Earth. Stargates or wormholes that could be accessed by performing dark apocalyptic spells. According to his writings, the Enochian entities, however, refused to allow Dee to initiate the apocalypse. They told him that a specific time had been set.’

  The Pope stood perfectly still. ‘And you believe that time is now?’

  ‘I believe it is so. Yes.’

  ‘The apocalypse working,’ the Pope murmured. ‘I remember this from my early years as an exorcist. In the twentieth century, Aleister Crowley tried to complete it.’

  Father d’Angelis removed his pince-nez and placed them carefully on his antique writing desk.

  ‘Crowley.’ The Pope’s voice took on a tone that Father d’Angelis had never before heard from the Holy Father. ‘Aleister Crowley, British occultist, known by some as the wickedest man in the world. Years ago, my old mentor, Brother Amartini met him one stormy night in St Ives, Cornwall. Crowley was much older by then but Brother Amartini was a very young and inexperienced exorcist and thought Crowley was without doubt the most evil man that ever existed.’ The Pope’s voice was barely audible. ‘It was his eyes apparently.’

  He raised his face to Father d’Angelis.

  ‘He never forgot his eyes. It was as though he was looking directly into the eyes of the diabolus. It was the day that Brother Amartini discovered that consummate evil truly existed amongst us.’

  He hesitated. ‘Even Crowley failed to open the portal.’

  ‘Yes. He failed. For the past 4,500 years,’ Father d’Angelis continued, still sotto voce, ‘Lucifer and his cohorts have been waiting for an opportunity to open the gate. Finally, man’s science has caught up with the knowledge of the Fallen Watchers. This time using sophisticated scientific methods, they have found a high-powered dimensional device that can bend space-time, open dimensional portals – stargates. That device is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.’

  ‘Open the portals to where?’ the Pope breathed. ‘Or to what?’

  Father d’Angelis gazed in silence at the full moon, suspended above the lapping waters of Lake Albano.

  ‘That, old friend, is what we are here to uncover.’

  Large Hadron Collider

  CERN

  The slender dark-haired girl locked herself in a small glass anteroom, hyperventilating. She scrabbled on the floor for her heavy black-rimmed glasses, grasped them in her left hand and held her eye to the scanner. The metal door in front of her swung open.

  Putting on her glasses, she studied the meticulously numbered files of the secret archive. The sinister apocalyptic files, hidden far away from public scrutiny, stretched forty feet high, from floor to ceiling – some twelve miles of shelving.

  She rushed inside, willing herself to concentrate. She had done this every day for the past two weeks, delivering the strange black files with the crest of golden vipers into the professor’s hands each night at 2 a.m., returning them before dawn.

  Professor Bernoulli had sworn her to secrecy.

  She walked swiftly to archive number 1006666 and sifted through the catalogued files until she found the slim gold box with the ornate embossed crest.

  She brought her gaze to the strange carving of an eye on the box. It clicked open. Removing the ten black files, each marked ‘BABEL’, she tucked them into her rucksack, then quickly entered a ten-digit code. The pulsating red light in the box turned green and a hidden compartment clicked open.

  Inside was a box the size of a matchbox, carved from crystal. Lifting off the lid, she took out a computer chip no bigger than a pinhead. Popping
open the back of her digital watch, she dropped the chip into a tiny cubical space in the watch and replaced the cover.

  She had one more mission.

  Hidden in Alessio Bernoulli’s private archives were her secret papers.

  She ran down the aisle, turned right, then a sharp left down three flights of wooden stairs until she reached the small musty private archive and stopped.

  She and Alessio Bernoulli had the only access to Archive 33. She reached for an unmarked black box on the fifth shelf and entered a digital code.

  The box snapped open.

  There was the plain beige file belonging to her great-uncle Professor Hamish Mackenzie: Number 112, marked ‘AVELINE. 1981. Restricted access for 50 years’.

  She removed the file from the box and placed it in her rucksack.

  Then raced at breakneck speed out of the room, through the deserted corridors.

  Hurtling down the modern steel emergency staircase, until she reached a rusted metal stairway in the tunnel.

  Running for her life.

  Down . . .

  Down . . .

  Down . . .

  Seventy-two Hours Later

  ‘We are sure, then?’

  Francois d’Angelis nodded. ‘It is everything we feared and worse. They will bend the timeline and open the wormhole that has been closed for all eternity in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. They have discovered what holds back the veil between two spiritual realms. Antimatter.’

  The Pope rubbed his forehead, scowling. ‘Antimatter?’

  Father d’Angelis nodded. ‘Antimatter is always connected to its source: chaos, from which all antimatter emanates.’

  They exchanged foreboding glances.

  ‘Lucifer’s realm,’ Father d’Angelis said. ‘Call it a different frequency or a different realm. Antimatter is so powerful that when released, it cannot be contained.’

  ‘So CERN is trying to manipulate the darkness for their own ends,’ the Pope replied.

  Father d’Angelis sighed deeply. ‘Yes. Manipulating frequencies and polarities. The orchestrators, the Black Jesuits . . . The Brotherhood.’

  ‘They answer to no one,’ the Pope said, swinging around, pale. ‘They have only one master.’

  Father d’Angelis, looking grimly at his old friend, said, ‘Lorcan De Molay himself.’