cordelia malthere

Finding It-666: the Beast

Theresa Da Priera, aka Nun Tess

Nun Tess was the tough catholic sister who abducted the Beast at her birth on the 6th of June 1996 with Father Williamson. She is the one that took charge of her care up until It-666 was five years old. On the fifth birthday of the Beast, she was killed ruthlessly before her by men paid to abduct the child.

We do not know much about Nun Tess apart that the Portuguese was some sort of surrogate mum to It-666, one that would exorcise ‘the child’ every night. Tess was almost the first contact of the Beast with a human if we remove the hands of father Arthur Williamson who assisted at her birth and put her in the Nun’s arms, still with an umbilical cord attached to her demonic goddess of a mother to be cut.

Tess is a nun on a mission to save humanity like Father Williamson whom she takes orders from. Like him she is a fervent Christian. Like him and other catholics, she participated in cursing the Beast whilst still in the belly of Lilith. They cursed the Beast to have a heart, not in the physical organ aspect but in the moral sentiments one. They succeeded as It-666, ‘The child’ as Tess calls her, shows signs of having a good sensitive heart.

The nun educate It-666, teaching her how to read and write. The Beast’s school books have the delicious irony of being the bible and the lives of Saints. Bright, she learns abnormally fast. The Child also possess a characteristic which unsettles the nun slightly, she has the capacity to express herself in any language. She seems to know all of them without having to study them.

Tess is a strong character who did influence It-666 from an early age. Despite the demonic capacities of the child, she impressed on her enough to be good and to fight her demons.

The Tutor, when he first learnt of the existence of the Beast, and where It was hidden, went with the firm intention of killing Eremiel’s child. However as he observed Tess and her interactions with the Beast, he realised the good work the humans had done in cursing her and raising her up. It was not necessary to erase the Beast from the surface of the Earth. His intentions then changed to strengthen the work of the nun and secure the Being of It-666 on her path of remaining good.

Tess had achieved something important by her looking after of the Beast. She helped determine her sweetly strong character that aimed to stay good. If the curse sowed the seeds by giving a heart to the child of evil. The nun cultivated that heart to make it go in the right direction. All the Tutor had to do, was adding his support to the young tender Being.

The name of the character was created in reference to my own ancestors and family. However it is a blend of a few individuals within it. Therese is the first name of one of my aunts, widow with five children, she had an endless energy to bring up her children. She was a tower of strength for them, like Theresa is taking on the responsibility of raising up the little Beast. For Da Priera, my grandfather was Portuguese, and I used part of the surname of his mother which was Jesus Da Priera. The fact that Tess is from Portugal is not a mystery. It is a wink to some of my roots. As for the fact that she is regarded as a Saint by the Angels, that she has that strong religiously soldiering persona about her, was inspired by Ste Marie Madeleine Postel who is one of my ancestors. I would say that Nun Tess character has been composed to show a strong woman, with deeply rooted religious beliefs. Nothing scares her, she will attempt to thwart the evil plan of Eremiel with his conception of the Beast, by insuring with others that she is born with a heart. Then she will cultivate that heart, by raising ‘It’. The simple human answer to ‘It’ is just ‘Love’. With love, you resolve everything, with hate you destroy all that lives. The entire saga contains that message and statement.

Now what happens in the early years of the Beast, from her conception to when we meet her in book one of our Saga, ‘Finding It-666’, age sweet sixteen, in her cage under a pentagram, will be released in a prequel trilogy. So Nun Tess will be seen again big time, as one of the main characters of the prequel.


Until we meet her again, let’s travel back in time and get a good glimpse of her,

Death followed the gliding Tutor across the clearing where he pointed to him the path of the great deer. An untouched snow was glistening under the last rays of the cold afternoon sun for him to acknowledge. Walking behind the fast moving Being Azryel was eager to discover more. Soon they reached a little log cabin in the midst of the wood, the Being pointed to a nun and a priest carrying an infant in his arms, walking silently in the snow towards the cabin. The Tutor announced to It and Azryel,
-This is the arrival of It-666. She is just six month old. The priest holding her tight is Father Arthur Williamson, and the nun is Sister Theresa Da Priera. Both were there at the birth of the child. Take a closer look at It. Remember, none can see you.
Death approached to be at arm distance only from the priest and watched in wonder. The baby was extremely beautiful with a head covered by lovely blond curls, like a cherub, yet as she opened her eyes staring right at him the picture perfect was immediately destroyed. She had deeply black and braising demonic eyes. She blinked a few times, smiled at him then waved, blabbering,
-Az, Azry, Az.
The priest thrust her back more closely into his chest, telling to the Sister,
-She is seeing things again. Let me warn you Tess that you will never be completely alone with her. Spirits, demons and ghosts will be surrounding you at all times.
To which the nun replied shrugging her shoulders,
-Well any entities better be warned I will not suffer their presences around the little one. I will exorcise them all.
The Tutor put his hand upon Death’s arm recalling him,
-Lets move on to another chapter of It’s childhood. The child saw you somehow. You don’t want to be exorcised, do you bad spirit?
Azryel smiled sarcastically, as he answered,
-How would you know if I was a bad spirit? Anyhow I can not be erased for I do the erasing in every World.
(verse 31: The Tutor)
They witnessed the special toddler as she found a lark lying lifeless on a layer of leaves. Carefully picking the little song bird up within her baby hands, she considered it attentively. A few pokes from the child had no effects. She kissed tenderly the feathers and ran back towards the cabin with her new found feathery treasure. She showed her find to the Sister who was cutting wood into logs with a large axe. The nun Theresa rose her eyebrows and scolded her, -No, child, you can not bring every dead thing in the house. We have a garden now filled of those dead animals. If you ever bring me a live creature I may let you keep it as a pet, but that would imply you looking after it and caring for all its lifetime and at three, I doubt you are up to it right now. Did you kill that one or found it like that?
The toddler blabbered away,
-Like that. I heard it sing. In the morning. Every morning singing song. Nice. I want the little bird back.
Theresa dropped her axe by her side and held the child’s hands together, enclosing the lark within. She stated,
-The little bird flew away into the spirit world. Maybe it was its time, maybe it had an accident. The wind was powerful last night. Who knows. Feel its cold breast, its little heart has stopped. It means is life is totally over and will not sing anymore, despite us wanting it to do so. It passed away to our great sadness but maybe it made babies this year, who will sing next year.
The little It-666 started crying gently her baby blood tears, and mumbled,
-I wanna hear his babies but I wanna hear him too. I wanna hear his little heart again. I wanna have him all back and alive.
The Sister took back her axe, lifted it and told,
-Cry all you want, child. It is life. With life comes an inevitable death. And all your wants and 'wanna' can do nothing about it.
The young curly blond girl pouted. She shook her head, spoke in tongues for a minute then reverted back to the human language for the benefit of the nun, in her strangely odd voice,
-I can do something. For all I want I can. Heart means life you kinda said. Watch.
Theresa dropped her axe at once and her hands went to join the ones of the toddler upon the bird, giving her most disapproving look. She scolded,
-Think before you do anything, child. A heart can beat with its spirit gone. Without its spirit the lark will be a living shadow. Its songs will ring into our ears every morning soulless.
It-666 smiled brightly at the nun. She stroked the lark upon her own heart and whispered,
-I can feel what you mean. It is not far away. I can catch it back too. I got it. I got it right there with the heartbeats.
She opened her hands to release a living lark. The bird flew to a tree nearby, sang beautifully before flying back to the child landing on her shoulder. The Sister muttered to herself,
-I will be damned, the child Antichrist can make miracles, age three.
Death looked at the Tutor for answer yet he was enjoined to keep his whole attention upon the scene,
-It is far from over.
Azryel saw the toddler running to the garden plot by the cabin. There she dug and unearthed dead animals. One by one she raised them all from their dying state back to the living. When all were running happily around her, she laughed out loud and tried to reassure the deeply worried and baffled Sister,
-They are all good. They are all okay, they all got their souls back too.
(verse 32: Soulful Singing Lark.)
Azryel focused back upon the scene as he saw Sister Theresa opening one window of the cabin happily, humming a joyous air. Death recognised the ‘Do-Re-Mi’ tune of the ‘The Sound of Music’ film and sadly shook his head when he saw the doomed human putting a strawberry cake to cool upon the window sill. He whispered to the Tutor,
-The strict nun loved the child. She was celebrating her fifth birthday. I understand they hardly had any food yet she managed to get enough to bake a cake and finishing it off by using strawberries from their small garden.
The Beaming Being replied,
-They looked after each other. The ‘child’ remained the child for the nun. Sister Theresa did not enforce upon It-666 a monstrous identity. She treated her as a child first and foremost, a special one that needed to be told upon not to make zombies in the garden patch. Yet she tried to educate her too, like any child to write and read. She realised soon enough the ‘child’ already knew that, and more frighteningly so she knew it in all languages, alive or dead. Tess exorcised the child every evening since she was one. It worked like a favourite bedtime story to the young impressionable Beast. It made her fight her own evil every night before she could rest peacefully exhausted. Fight against Evil was impressed upon the child first and foremost by Tess. In the young It-666’s heart, Sister Theresa is her mother, adoptive and all encompassing of her all specialness. Yet Theresa failed to name the child as she dreaded the day, she would be snatched from her. She expected it to happen. She always thought she would never survive the grief of it. She did not. Watch.

Four men ran within the woods towards the small cabin, fast and fully armed.
The young Beast in her river lifted her head up, shivered all over, the fish within her palms was charred to death. She ran as fast as she could towards the cabin.
When she arrived upon the scene, Sister Theresa had a colt pointed to her head, with four men harassing her. She could not stand the rib cage battering inflicted upon her guardian and shouted to the aggressors,
-I am here. Come and get me.
One staid by the nun as three went to grab the child. Although It-666 went straight to the man holding the colt and no one could stop her.
Theresa pleaded,
-Run away, child. Do not fight. Run away from it all.
The man shouted to the nun,
-Shut up, Bitch! No running away on my watch.
He pulled the trigger of his colt.
Tess closed her eyes, blood pouring from her forehead covering them and whispered her last words, before falling lifeless in front of her,
-Run, far and you will see One’s way. Run far away.
It was not to be so, as when the child reached her she enclosed the Sister within her small arms and cried out,
-No……………
The man holding the gun met her braising black demonic eyes just once before bursting into a living human flame. As she turned around to ran away, It met the three others, and her straight look within their eyes sent them bursting into flames likewise. She ran past them further and further away from the fire she was leaving behind her. Her eyes were covered by blood tears, she could barely see her way forward. She started shivering all over as she jumped streams and bushes, as an understanding reached her that she had burned those murderous men alive just by looking at them. The more she trembled, the more she felt the ground below her tremor. It was getting worse the further she went. The sky was dark at three. An electrical storm flashed lightnings by her path, splitting trees until she reached a clearing where the sun seemed to be there despite it all. Breathless she ran to a Being sitting peacefully upon a dead log. He opened his arms wide opened and received her. Patting her back, he started singing to her something she had heard before. It soothed her slowly but surely. The quake by her feet ceased altogether as she fell upon her knees by the Being. She asked him breathless,
-Are you the One? I need to run a bit more if not.
The Being stroked her cheek gently, answering,
-You will always be a runaway, child. Tess called me to look after you, to keep an eye on you for a while longer and forever.
She smiled to him and just collapsed at his feet.
(verse 33: Tess’s Death)



The Compendium of Characters

      • Book Dedication
      • This comprehensive nomenclature will be ordered by the chronology of the published books and within it by the alphabetical order of the characters. Following the ‘Who’s Who’ of characters, you will find a ‘What’s what’ section, a list of created or combined words with their meanings. There are a fair few occasions where I applied this poetic license to fit closely to the heartbeat of the story or a particular individual within it. The last sections are the peep-holes to the future publications relating to those stories, spin-offs, prequels or next instalments to look forward to. It will offer the tangible glimpse of what is coming next or what happened before.
      • Published the 21st of October 2014, this short story was born like many of my stories within the midst of a nightmare. I remember still vividly hearing some chilling noises, some eerie music, sad laughter, stuck in the darkness of a long box. I pushed the door open to realise that I was in my coffin. A cowardly glance outside revealed a hilly cemetery, a moonlight night and other corpses rising from their graves, some dragging others to do so. I was freaked enough at the sight to lay back in the safe darkness, thinking that it must be a bad dream and that it will all pass. But someone saw me, someone recognised me, called my name out loud and opened my coffin lid wide open. In front of that half decomposed cadaver, my heart seemed to fail to beat any longer. I closed my eyes of fright and I woke up in my bed safe and well. I was not exposed in a coffin, exhibited to other dead people, I was in my bedroom with for only witness, my black cat Mystic blinking her yellow eyes at me peacefully from the other pillow.
      • It-666’s story can not be told in one sentence not even in one book. It has a fateful spin to it which will last for as long as it is meant to last. It is determined.
Finding It-666: the Beast
  • The ex-wife of Walter Workmaster is the human and younger sister of the incarnated Gabriel Purallee and the mother of the incarnated Michael. In Angelic terms, she is a very special person chosen to carry one or more Angels back to their incarnated form. Did she knew about it? She had no clue at all. She had no conception that her son, brother and uncle are Archangels until she stumbles upon an Angelic meeting led by Raphael at his AA club in the middle of the night.
  • We meet ‘It’ at the start of the saga, aged 16, in an appalling state. Kept in a cage, starved, tortured, left in her own mess, the teenager has only one wish, the one of dying. Representing all we fear, the incarnated Beast, is a young distressed Being. She had far from the most enjoyable start in life.
  • Gabriel plays a very important character in the saga. We meet him in the first book as incarnated Doctor Gabriel Purallee. Strangely enough that ambivalent Angel is the one that all turns to for some sort of stability. His clinic and his house serve as a refuge, the safe haven where one can hide to stay alive.
  • We meet Michael, age eight, called Micky by all. This important Archangel has only recently incarnated once more and his human childhood makes him be temporally at a vulnerable stage. However he was given parents of choice in Walter and Caroline. Both are nurturing and loving him to bits. Like the Beast, this character is at an early stage at the start of the saga. Unlike her, he was provided with a loving childhood, which makes him a very happy, bouncy kid Being. He has bags of tenderness for everyone which he wears on his sleeve. From his currant human parents, he gathers that loving understanding and open minded acceptance. Faced with a brand new member of the family, called the Beast, and not being an only child anymore, he just takes her hand and shows her what it is to enjoy a bit of childhood. His heart adopts It-666 almost like his father, without question.
  • Wrath is a character which tells you how it is in his standards and will force you to them by any mean, without almost any regards for who you are. Raphael has a physical presence that can make you quiver and he knows it. He plays with it shamelessly like a cat on a mouse chase. He can make it as sweet or cruel for you depending on his plans, schemes and temper. Wrath is renown to have a very short temper, trying him is definitely a bad idea. He comes with strings attached. He is full of them. Worse, he is the leader of them: anyone he pulls can spell your doom or your blessing momentarily. Raphael as a puppet master could be all good if his mind would not switch in a nanosecond to an entire other direction. Raphael is frighteningly so impulsive yet it is also his main skill, quick thinking, acting fast, he kills anything in the bud before it can fester away.
  • If Wrath was daunting enough, his henchman is even more unsettling. What can I say to bring justice to Azryel’s character? I absolutely adore writing him. Azryel Mortimer is a character which grew a life from my pages and into my own heart. If there was a fan T shirt, black with a big red heart in the middle saying: ‘I love Az’, I would wear it proudly with no shame at all. It is odd for an author to say that they are the first ‘groupie’ of their created characters but I can only admit that I am for this one.
  • From all of Raphael’s Angels, Asha is one with a very kind heart and the patience of a true Angel. He will take the time to explain things to the lay human without being ordered to do so. He will offer his shoulders without being asked. Known as the ‘Philosopher’, he has a calm, poised and understanding attitude about him.
  • We meet the character of Liz Arczy briefly in the first book. She then develops slowly but surely throughout the saga to a certain potency and consequence. Receptionist at the clinic of Gabriel, the red head human picked the interest by her quirky personality.
  • What can I say about that character? That you will never be able to quite grasp The Tutor even with your best intentions and most clever brain cells fully switched on. Elusive yet fully on, it is a whimsical idea of God, a pure allegory.
  • Nun Tess was the tough catholic sister who abducted the Beast at her birth on the 6th of June 1996 with Father Williamson. She is the one that took charge of her care up until It-666 was five years old. On the fifth birthday of the Beast, she was killed ruthlessly before her by men paid to abduct the child.
  • Father Williamson is one instrumental character which changed fate by a simple trick up his sleeve: a curse. To be honest I do not let any readers know much about him at any stage in the saga. Although if we meet him again in book 3, he is still a short encounter, yet a vital one. However he is one of the main hero of the prequel trilogy to the Saga of the Beast.
  • What can I say about that character? That you will never be able to quite grasp The Tutor even with your best intentions and most clever brain cells fully switched on. Elusive yet fully on, it is a whimsical idea of God, a pure allegory. I must confess that it is one of my hardest characters to write about. He is the Sum of all Souls. You may find him beguiling. You may find him intimidating for he is. However whenever he steps in, he brings immediate relief with his presence. However he is the one the Angels will seek out to resolve their issues and dilemmas. Daunting, mysterious, knowing more than he will reveal at any one time, talking almost with riddles and puzzles to work out, he is the hard core of entities.
  • Wendy Workmaster is a character which is only mentioned here and there. Wendy is past, gone and dead yet remembered by many with a sore heart, especially her twin brother Walter and her fiancé Gabriel. How to describe Wendy? She was another little Walter, a pure Workmaster through and through. She could finish the sentence of her brother and he could finish hers. They would laugh and cry at the same time, at the very same things. Physically, she is a tomboy blond, the exact copy cat of her brother. Very pretty in understated ways, she grabbed the overwhelming attention of Archangel Gabriel.
  • Cecile is the Au-pair girl of the Workmasters. We only encounter her briefly in the first book of the Saga. The French girl had been living with Caroline Workmaster and her son Michael to help out. The single Caroline is a busy doctor with irregular shifts which rendered an Au-pair girl invaluable. Cecile is reliable and her nice character is well liked by the entire family. She gets on well with everyone. Her responsibilities range from babysitting to picking up Micky from school, passing by helping him with his homework.
  • Tango Charlie is a human character which only appear in the first book. CIA/security agent, code name Tango Charlie is one of the Service secret connections of Big Gab and his Uncle Raphael. However if Wrath uses the services of human secret agents with scarcity and sagacity, his nephew prefers using their services to soliciting the ones of the Angels of Raphael. On the part of Gabriel, you may call this pride, or an ongoing feud with Wrath which makes him reluctant to ever have to ask the elder Archangel for help.
  • Mister ‘3’, ‘Santa Morte’, The Aryan, henchman Colt and Big Brother 4 are all humans at the service of Paul Peterson. They are all killers apart for Big Brother 4 who is the security watcher at ‘P’s’. They are all fearing the demonic politician. They will follow his orders to the letter to save literally their own skins and they will be ruthless about it.
  • Well, here we arrive at a character which I kept in reserve for the last to be mentioned: Eremiel, the father of the Beast, aka, Evil. Fallen Archangel, the extremely handsome Eremiel is bad to an unsettling purity. He is the nasty piece of cake that the Angels have constantly faced for almost an eternity as their Arch-enemy. He ruled Hell for a long while, after being ‘fired’ by the Tutor and sent there, and after depositing Hades from his Hell throne, shortly afterwards. Eremiel is the evil character in It-666 Saga: we meet him in all the books written in one form or another. He is that undermining constant Being which wants none to have an ‘happy ever after’ apart from himself.
  • You have just met the characters of the first book. You will meet more as the other books get published one after the other. I can tell you already that there is a crowd of characters in the universe of It-666. However you have just been introduced to the principal ones: It-666, Walter Workmaster, Azryel Mortimer, Raphael Wrath and Gabriel Purallee.