Excerpt from THE LAST TEMPTATION

Book VI of The Windfallow Chronicles

Just beyond Angari’s comprehension there lurked in the Barrier Wood

(The Barrier wood encircles Windfallow at its equator and is the only place a demon can live.) a being more dangerous to the Alari than anything he had met in the millennia he had been alive.  Word had finally come to Lucifer, the great deceiver, the great dragon of Revelation, that an innocent world still existed.  A shining light in the galaxy.  A world not his.  And protecting that world, an angel, an Alari he was called.  Angari was his name.  And Lucifer had it.

Now, he prowled the Barrier Wood.   Abiding furiously until the day he brought the Alari under his control.   Words would be his weapon.  Words more subtle than those he used to drive those two from Eden.  Always in the Alari’s thoughts as he rested in the shade of the Barrier Wood.  As though they were his own; as though he alone had thought of them; the questions, the resentment for being made eternal.   Subtle.  “Your Maker has given you free will, Angari!  Just as he gave it to Eve and Adam!  Your downfall, Alari!”  Had Angari been watching the Wood he would have seen it tremble as though a mighty wind sent ripples over its surface.

Angari stood before the completed tower.  Rising a thousand feet into the blue/green sky of Windfallow, it dazzled even the eternal eyes of the Alari.  Gemstone left undressed, used just as it came from the quarries, rivaled Windfallow’s sun.  Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald and Diamond reflected and refracted the light until a million rainbows fused into one and created a new horizon.

Angari stood before the tower.  The marvelous tower.  The tower he had designed and built with his own skill and craftsmanship.  His tower.  The Tower of the Angels.  No Great Bell hung here – “Though it should” he thought.  No, rather a huge wind chime, suspended from the topmost spire, caught the breeze and the light together and sent echoes of music across the valley.

Suddenly he was not alone.  Standing beside him, bathed in unapproachable light, was Michael.  “What have you done, Angari?”  The words came to the Alari like icy flames in his heart.  “What have you done?”

The Alari fell to his knees, head bowed, hands turned palms up in reverence.

“RISE! DO NOT COMPOUND YOUR FOLLY BY WORSHIPPING ME!”

Books available from Amazon Kindle