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most confusion. It was about these four riders that he had
mentioned. He called them that, four riders.
    “ I said to him,
'Father, where do such things come from? How could they come to be?
Surely they are not from God, are they?' And he looked at me and
said, 'Mario, my child, these riders are from the Devil. They were
made from pieces of his flesh, carved out with his own hands and
molded into four sons.' He shook his finger at me and said, 'Remember
that, child. The Devil has four sons. And one day they will come into
this world to tear it apart and give it as a gift to their father.'
    “ 'But who are they
really, padre?' I asked. And he replied, 'They all have secret names,
but we call them War, Greed, Pestilence...and Death.'”
    Chef cleared his throat
and swallowed nervously. “Well, that's what the old padre said,
anyway. Perhaps he was simply old. Or mad. Who can say? But that is
what he told me.”
    “ Is that possible,
judge?” Natalie asked in a hushed tone. “Is it possible
that the Devil created offspring from his flesh the way that God
created him and Sariel and Michael?”
    “ I don't know. But
it's a horrible thought, isn't it? Horrible in that it makes an awful
kind of sense.”
    Chris shook his head in
denial. “No, it can't be.” He looked plaintively at Judge
Hawkes. “Sariel said that Luci...that his brother couldn't
create new life, he could only corrupt. That's why the Fallen have to
inhabit the bodies of the dead. They can't be born into human form
like me and Natalie and the others with angelic souls have been.”
    The judge peered
sightlessly out of the front window at the approaching clouds.
    “ But that's just
it,” he said as he stared blankly. “If the story is true,
or based on the truth, Satan didn't create new life. He took pieces
of his own essence and imbued them with intelligence and purpose.
Gave them the power to destroy. Oh, I have a horrible feeling that
Mario's priest was closer to the truth than we might want to
believe.”
    “ It doesn't matter
now, Ethan,” Chef said. He nodded at a thick formation of
clouds on the horizon. Clouds that they were flying straight into.
“What matters is that we are about to hit a thick bank of storm
clouds and that every time I've tried to adjust my course to avoid
them, they've moved back to block me.”
    They all stared at the
uninterrupted blackness ahead.
    “ That's impossible,
Chef,” Chris muttered.
    “ I know it is,
Chris. As impossible as angels born into human bodies, or demons
walking the Earth wearing dead men as their skin. But there you go.”
    Chris looked at the
clouds. They were billowing and black and it suddenly felt as if the
plane was actually a submarine, churning its way into a mass of ink
spewed by a gigantic octopus. As he watched, flashes of lightning
dazzled the eyes as they lit the clouds from deep inside.
    “ Is there no way
around them?” Judge Hawkes asked Chef. The man just shook his
head, his lips closed tightly in a thin line of concentration.
    The judge looked at Chris
and Natalie and they returned his gaze nervously.
    “ You'd better go
back and strap yourselves in. I'll make the announcement to the rest
of the staff.” He picked up the copilot's headset and put it
on.
    “ Let's go, Chris,”
Natalie said and hurried out of the room, Chris closely on her heels.
    They found seats and sat
down side by side, just as the judge's voice came over the speakers.
    “ We're about to
enter a bank of violent thunderclouds. This may be the threat that
Natalie told us about. We don't know what to expect, so be ready for
anything. Now please, strap yourselves in and stay calm. This could
get rough.”
    The staff scrambled to get
seated and put on their belts. Even through her gag, Chris could here
Margaret hooting with laughter and he felt a mixture of anger and
fear. She really is nuts, he thought and tried to ignore her.
    He looked out of the
window and watched the light fade from the sky.
    What could be