Babylon Is Falling

By Celia McKinley

BABYLON IS FALLING: DREADFUL DESIRES #15

A five-part Dreadful Desires erotic fantasy series revolving around a post-apocalyptic war between humans and angels as royal Nephilim twins Zoe and Mahla contend with the vengeful Seraphim and seductive Watchers.

Almaladh is burning. The gates of Paradise have been smashed open. The last remnants of humanity face extinction at the hands of the heavenly host, led by the mad Nephilim that used to be Greta. And, somewhere on the far side of the world, a ravenous primordial darkness begins to stir... The battle to save an unraveling universe begins in the thrilling grand finale to the Fallen Sky pentalogy.

Includes a sneak preview of "Heavenly Days" and "Babylon is Falling."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Celia McKinley
• Release date: Feb 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215216576

Celia McKinley

Celia McKinley is an evocative writer of erotica and romantic fiction centered around themes of forceful seductions, sexual awakenings, and dark supernatural desire. Explicit but never crude, taboo but never degrading, her stories of sensual abandon and surrender strive to celebrate the irresistible allure of the forbidden and the beauty of sexual fantasy.

Book preview

Babylon Is Falling

Dreadful Desires #15

Copyright 2023 Celia McKinley

Published by Celia McKinley at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All depicted characters are 18 years or older. This book contains explicit, taboo sex scenes that some readers may find offensive.

"God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!

"How shall we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe the blood from us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games must we invent? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us?

"Must we not become gods ourselves simply to appear worthy of it?"

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Parable of the Madman

Table of Contents

Part I: Heaven and Earth

Chapter 1: A Perfect World

Chapter 2: Castles in the Sky

Chapter 3: The Mother of Harlots

Chapter 4: Waste and Havoc

Chapter 5: The Heavens Opened

Part II: The End of All Things

Chapter 1: Another Abomination

Chapter 2: Dark Side of the Earth

Chapter 3: Alone Together

Chapter 4: This Mortal Coil

Part III: In the Garden

Chapter 1: Out of this World

Chapter 2: Lux in Tenebris

Chapter 3: Tuesday’s Child

Chapter 4: Everything That Rises

Part IV: Human Universalis

Chapter 1: Pennoned in Flame

Chapter 2: Outside the Wall

Chapter 3: Every Leaf’s a Flower

Chapter 4: The Uncrowned Queen

Chapter 5: Fall Together

Teaser Chapter

About Celia McKinley

Other Books by Celia McKinley

Connect with Celia McKinley

Part I: Heaven and Earth

Chapter 1: A Perfect World

The night hadn’t ended: it’d burned away like tissue paper to leave behind crimson light and gray ashes dancing in the wind like snowflakes. Sunrise wouldn’t arrive for another four hours, and no one could’ve mistaken the flickering glow that suffused the crumbling alleys for daylight, much less the ruddy boils of light that spilled and pulsed through the smoke-filled sky.

Gehenna. Naraka. Hell. Words that’d fallen out of use for generations found new life as anguished metaphors among the survivors. As for the search parties sent to secure each burning sector of the district, they avoided speaking at all, for fear of losing their nerve if they tried to talk about the fresh atrocities that greeted them around every corner. The half-dozen figures that surrounded a slight young woman in the shattered remains of a courtyard hadn’t exchanged a word in almost an hour: the voice that spoke to her came out hoarse and strained.

We're here to help, the soldier said. Can you tell us which block you came from?

The woman didn’t answer him. Her blue eyes remained fixed on the rubble at her feet, and a gust of acrid wind streaked ashes through her short blonde hair. The survivor wrapped her arms around her waist and giggled to herself beneath the tears that still streaked her face. Her khaki pants seemed a size too large, clinging to her waist with the aid of a belt that she’d twisted into a knot rather than looped and buckled; she’d missed several buttons of her blouse and fastened most of the others with the wrong buttonholes, leaving the fabric tangled across her slight breasts rather than covering them. She looked as though she’d forgotten how to dress herself.

To Carthage then I came, she murmured beneath the wind, and the man leaned forward to catch each syllable, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears…

I didn’t catch that? he answered with a blink and a helpless glance back at his squad.

And when he had opened the fourth seal, she continued, her voice small, and her gaze lifted to meet his dark eyes. I heard the voice of the fourth beast say ‘come and see…’

She’s in shock, came the muffled voice of another soldier, a woman who’d wrapped a silk headscarf across her face against the searing fumes. She unraveled the white shawl and knelt to look the girl in the eye. You don’t have to speak. Just nod if you can understand us.

To Carthage then I came, the stranger replied. Burning burning burning burning…

I know her, a young soldier standing behind the pair volunteered. They turned away from the dazed woman to look back at him. At least, I recognize her. Greta, daughter of Lena, daughter of Jana. She's one of the higher-ups with the technologist division.

Greta, the first soldier said. Listen to me. It's going to be okay, just come with us.

That’s what he said too, Greta muttered. It used to be such a perfect world. Almaladh, she giggled through her silent tears, is falling down, falling down, falling down...

She's out of it, another man announced, his voice low and gruff with weary resignation. His tunic and loose pants alone, as drab and tan as the rest of the group’s fatigues, marked him as their commanding officer. Jena, you escort her to the field hospital. The rest of us...

The headset he’d left draped around his neck dinged once, twice, then quickened into a chorus of toneless beeps. He lifted it around his head and fumbled with the microphone.

This is Faris, he said. Go ahead.

It’s Mattias, a gruff male voice piped through the whistling static that’d forced him to remove the headset in the first place, technologist division. The signal we’ve been tracking through Januub’s stopped moving. I’m showing it’s holding steady on your position.

What?

Sergeant, if there’s anyone who just arrived, that means you’re looking at it.

Oh shit, he whispered, and he aimed his gun at Greta. Hands above your head, now!

Sir? the woman who’d uncovered her face asked, even as she stepped back and lifted her own rifle toward the stranger, as half a dozen barrels took quick aim at the silent figure.

It’s her, Faris barked. It’s inside her! She’s the one who did all this!

Greta looked up at him for the first time, her eyes meeting his and a slow smile spreading across her face. Oh, she said with a tilt of her head, an enemy. We like enemies.

Her pale skin and azure eyes began to shine with a cold white light. The wind quickened and whipped burning streamers of ash through the crackling air, and she flung her arms wide until it grew into a howling vortex pierced again and again by violet flashes of lightning. A staccato burst of gunfire pierced the shrieking wind; the muzzle flashes offered subliminal glimpses of shell cases clattering across the broken concrete, of thread-thin bullet trajectories twisting into spiraling orbits that vanished into the luminous eye of the storm. Greta stood in the heart of it all, arms outstretched, her face impassive as she glanced from one man to the next. Her glowing eyes settled on the woman who’d first stepped forward to reassure her, who stood frozen before her now with a black automatic rifle still raised between them, the barrel still smoking.

They make things simple, Greta growled.

The dust and lightning swept out in a shockwave, a ring of destruction smashing everything in its path and enveloping the plaza in a choking cloud of black soot. The ashes gradually fell to the pavement, as soft and delicate as a snow flurry, to leave her standing alone.

Angels bled virtual photons and dissolved into expanding wave functions when they died: one last burst of Cherenkov radiation and then they might as well have never existed at all. Humans weren’t nearly so tidy. Greta stood in the center of a splattered ring of crimson ichor and twitching remains, and a trembling whimper rose through her clenched throat as she stared about. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around herself; her breath came in ragged sobs.

Sergeant, a familiar voice crackled through a gore-soaked speaker lying on the ground a few feet away, can you hear me? Sergeant Faris? This is Mattias, please respond!

Mattias? Greta whispered to herself, her eyes