Part 1 (1/2)

A Hideous Beauty Kingdom Wars I.

Jack Cavanaugh.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Special thanks to Clinton E. Arnold and Greg Boyd for your excellent studies on princ.i.p.alities and powers and the nature of spiritual conflict as portrayed in the Bible. Your books have been a source of enlightenment and inspiration for this work.

Special thanks to Alton Gansky, a constant friend and sounding board for all things theological.

Thanks to Brett Burner for valuable suggestions that developed the story during rewrite.

Thanks to Steve Laube, agent, cheerleader, and friend.

Thanks to the people at Howard Books. This is our fifth book together. Your professionalism and encouragement are refres.h.i.+ng.

And thanks to my wife, Marni, and children, who bring such joy and laughter into my life.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood,

but against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

~HOLY BIBLE.

For how shall I relate To human sense th' invisible exploits Of warring Spirits?

~JOHN MILTON.

Let us suppose that this everyday world were, at some point, invaded by the marvelous.

Let us, in fact, suppose a violation of frontier . . .

~C. S. LEWIS.

Before the clock of cosmic time was wound,

In heaven, fresh made, there dwelt a holy race.

Conceived in light for wors.h.i.+p we were cast To walk in l.u.s.ter and eternal grace.

Until a fatal wickedness was found Hidden, a cancer deep within a soul.

Thus Lucifer turned thought to plan and deed, With dragon's breath set heaven's fields aflame With war. He scorched the Father's pristine realm, Laid waste unblemished joy.

Defeated, he and all the host who loved him, Cast down to worlds new born. Archenemy now, Confined in time, a cosmic spectacle.

The rage that ravished heaven's brotherhood, Now terrorizes earth with lies and strife.

Its borders breached, the warring h.o.a.rd descends, And what began in heaven now scourges man.

-ABDIEL, SERAPH OF HEAVEN.

CHAPTER 1.

Nifty little talk, Mr. Austin.”

The kid's eyes mocked me from the recesses of a hooded gray sweats.h.i.+rt.

”Speech. It was a speech,” I corrected him. He was playing to his buddies a few feet away.

The kid smirked. ”And that prize thing . . . like, wow!”

”It's the Pulitzer, son, not some whistle ring you pull out of a box of Cracker Jacks.”

”Yeah . . . whatever . . .”

I walked the open hallway. Ten years separated me from my graduation. This wasn't my high school anymore. The buildings were the same but the occupants had changed. Everywhere I looked there were hooded sweats.h.i.+rts. Since when had my alma mater become a school for Unabomber wannabes?

Swept along in a river of adolescent angst-an endless stream of tattoos, piercings, colorful swatches of hair, studded leather chokers, and black lipstick-I tracked the smart-mouthed kid as he pa.s.sed. He joined a pod of his friends, casting himself as the hero who'd gotten under the skin of some old geezer. They looked my way and laughed.

What is it about high school that brings out the worst in the human species? All my teenage insecurities, like faithful old dogs, were waiting for me when I stepped on campus, and had been nipping at my heels all morning.

I had an overwhelming urge to grab the kid by the scruff of his neck and take him on, to teach him a thing or two about respect.

Instead, I told myself I wasn't going to sink to his level. What difference did it make if some ident.i.ty-challenged adolescent didn't appreciate the magnitude of my literary achievement? I told myself to let it go. I was the mature one here.

Breaking eye contact with him, I turned forward and walked smack into a metal pole.

A pair of coeds, one plump and one rail thin, gasped. Their hands flew to their mouths, at first in shock, but then to hide their giggles.

A wiry-haired boy with serious acne problems laughed openly. ”Ouch! That's gotta hurt!”

He was just glad it wasn't him. This time.

”Are you all right, sir?” the plump coed asked.

”Do you want us to help you to the nurse's station?”

I cringed as the image flashed in my mind. Me, with a coed under each arm, being helped out of the fast lane.

I a.s.sured the girls I was fine. I struck a fine pose-more than fine, robust, virile-and hurried on my way, eager to put them, the pole, and the incident behind me.