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stuffed it in the woman's mouth.
    Margaret glared at her and
tried to speak, but only a muffled grunting made it past the fabric
in her mouth.
    “ Good,” the
judge said. “Christopher, Natalie, let's return to the cockpit.
Everyone else, stay alert. I will update you as soon as we know
anything further.”
    And with the two teens in
tow, the judge headed back toward the cockpit.

Chapter
4

    The three of them rejoined
Chef, who was still flying attentively and listening closely to his
headset.
    “ Any luck with that
madwoman?” he asked as the judge sat in the copilot's chair.
Natalie and Chris stood behind them.
    “ I'm afraid so,”
Judge Hawkes answered with a frown. “She mentioned the Four and
said that one of them was on our tail. This is bad, Mario. This is
very, very bad.”
    “ What is it, sir?”
Chris asked nervously. He'd never heard of the Four. Four what? Four
winds? Four leaf clover?
    “ I think I know,
Chris,” Natalie said. “Or, at least Gloriel thinks she
knows.”
    “ Well then, what is
it?” Chris was getting impatient. “Don't keep me in
suspense.”
    Natalie looked at the
judge. He sighed and turned to look back at Chris.
    “ I think she means
the Four Horsemen, Christopher.”
    It was a simple statement
that caught Chris completely off-guard.
    “ The Four Horsemen?
Wait, hang on a second. That's in the Bible, isn't it? I'm sure my
Dad mentioned it once or twice.”
    The judge's laugh was
brittle. “As a religious scholar, I'm sure that he did. The
Four Horsemen are the heralds of the Apocalypse. War, Pestilence,
Avarice and, the most powerful of all, Death. Four harbingers of the
end times. They serve Satan and are almost as powerful as he is
himself.”
    Chris swallowed heavily
and then thought of something.
    “ But, didn't
Margaret say that they weren't angels? If not angels, then what are
they?”
    Natalie and the judge
exchanged looks. Chris thought that both of them seemed unsure of the
answer. The judge confirmed it.
    “ We don't really
know. They aren't archangels, that much we can be sure of. As Sariel
told you himself, none of them followed his brother into damnation.
Luckily for us, I suppose.”
    “ There's a story
though, about their origins. Just a myth really, that I heard as a
boy.”
    Everyone looked at Chef in
surprise and he smiled at their expressions.
    “ What? Just because
I was raised in a small village doesn't mean I didn't get any sort of
religious education.”
    “ Well, what did you
hear, Mario?” Judge Hawkes asked. “And if you could,
please move it along. I think our visitor will be by in short order.”
    “ Yes, that's true.”
Chef cleared his throat and began to speak, watching the controls as
he did so.
    “ There was an old
priest who would visit our village several times a year. The nearest
church was a few hours travel, so people would wait for him to visit
and he would performs marriages, or say mass in memory of this person
or that. He liked to talk by the hour in between services. Most of
the children found his stories dull and paid him little attention.
Most of the adults did too, come to think of it. But not little
Mario. I loved the way he would tell stories from the Bible, but turn
them into adventures, not just dry readings from a book.”
    Chef hesitated, made a
course correction and continued.
    “ One day, he said
that he was going to tell me a story out of the book of Revelations.
However, it was a scary story, he said, and I might not like it. But
I, being a strong and fearless nine year old, told him that I would
not be scared and that I wanted to hear this story. And so he told me
the tale of the end of days. Of fire and brimstone. Of desolation and
damnation. And I was very scared indeed. Luckily it was a bright,
sunny summer day and there were no shadows to fear and so I listened
to the entire tale and didn't run away and hide my eyes. And when he
was done, I asked him one burning question; one thing that had caused
me the