by D B Nielsen
I heard the rush of wings overhead, louder than anything produced by a bat or bird, an unnatural sound in the silence of the forest, and realised that this was the sound that I’d heard, what I had thought to be a heartbeat.
I felt myself gripped by an unreasoning, overwhelming flood of fear as I knew without doubt that what was hunting us down was a Rephaim.
My impressions were confirmed by the foul odour of rotting vegetation and dampness which grew stronger still, permeating the fresh scent of the forest, overpowering its clean earthiness, until I thought I might retch.
But amidst the frantic beating of wings, the pounding of my heart, the stench of putrefaction and Fi’s mutterings, I suddenly had an epiphany.
My right palm began to tingle then throb where it had been branded, feeling hot and cold simultaneously. The feeling was sharp, burning, and when I breathed in now my throat felt as if I was swallowing particles of ice. The cold heat seemed to spill through my veins, through my limbs to my nerve endings, numbing my fingers even further. I broke out in a sweat, perspiration clinging to my clothes and trickling down the valley between my breasts, but I was unaware of any further discomfort as I concentrated on the vision in front of me.
Streaks of golden radiance lit the path ahead of us, distinguished in every living thing – the trees, the ferns, the lichen, the snowflakes all glowed golden. I read the signs provided to me by a benevolent universe and I felt the sentience of the Seed. Felt the ripeness of life. So clear. So sharp. So defined.
Ancient symbols were revealed in the symmetry of the snowflakes as if frozen in time and space like golden ribbons unfurling between the trees, like banners of light billowing in the breeze even though there was no wind in this stillness. Like a filament glowing within a light bulb, the symbols were pointing me in which direction to take.
Like each individual snowflake, the symbols that named the world were unique, distinct; pulsating with luminescent, golden life. And the naming of each was important. Things truly named could never simply vanish from the earth. Names held power. The symbols spoke to me. Falling from the heavens and moving like atoms, performing a celestial dance. Their ghostly appearance floated in the air before me, leaving a plume of golden dust which pulsed with light as if it were a living thing, as if it were corporeal. I felt the symbols resonating, vibrating; felt my very being becoming one with nature. A perfect fusion. A synergy.
If I had the ability to step out of time, I would have done so to gaze about me in wonder and awe. But we were still being hunted. A cold, heavy presence passed overhead, slowing time till it too froze with the temperature dropping rapidly to arctic.
Looking up at the canopy above us, I thought I caught the glint of cold, palely glittering, inhuman eyes. Lifeless eyes. And I knew then that this was why they were called the Dead Ones.
Looking into its eyes, I felt that life was hopeless, fighting was useless; we didn’t stand a chance.
With what sounded like the flapping of its enormous black wings, the lone Rephaim loomed up overhead, preparing to dive down to strike us.
Light faded, as if night had descended to smother the land. Colour drained away completely, with the exception of the purity of the golden symbols.
The symbols gave me strength and I moved then. I wasn’t about to wait to become the Rephaim’s victim. Grasping Fi with all my might, I tried to outrun the Rephaim.
Following the symbols ahead of me, I moved forward; then right; skirted an ancient oak; again took several paces forward; left now – but I wasn’t moving fast enough, I couldn’t move fast enough, burdened with the deadweight of Fi and constantly tripping over bracken and feeling the suction of the snow at my feet as my boots sunk into it.
I might have gained some speed but Indy then stopped dead in the path, refusing to budge. I was sobbing with exhaustion and fear. I couldn’t pull him on the leash and hold up Fi at the same time, so I released him, hoping that he would be able to fend for himself or, at least, find his own way home.
But instead of leaving us, Indy did something that amazed me. He stood sentinel. Like the dogs at the kennel, like the winged bulls at the museum, Indy was my guardian.
And it was at that moment that Fi lost complete consciousness, folding onto the ground at my feet.
I sobbed then, knees buckling beneath me, collapsing onto the snowy ground, my emotions in a tangle of hope and despair as the urgency of our situation pressed down upon me. I did not know if I could scream, did not feel like I could utter a sound, my breath coming out in sobbing gasps, but my only thought was of St. John and his promise that if I needed him he would be there. And my lips moved without conscious thought forming his name.
But as the monstrous creature above spread its wings wide, darkening the area around us with shadow, I knew that it was too late. I held my twin sister in my arms as if mirroring Michelangelo’s famous sculpture, The Pieta. I was glad that she wasn’t conscious and would not know the horror of what we were about to experience. And I despaired of ever telling St. John that I was a fool to stop him from speaking and now I would never know whether he meant to make me his wife one day.
Obsidian wings rushed overhead. The Rephaim banked and dived in violent pursuit. As it tore overhead, it let out a cry like a warring demon, an earth-shattering bellow. Its massive shadow loomed over us, combing the air with a crackling wind, flying in and low. Then it sheared off, taunting us, looping in a widening gyre. Its aggressive manoeuvre flattened treetops, winnowing the flakes of snow in its turbulent wake.
I was too frightened to breathe, let alone cry out.
The Rephaim gathered itself for another onslaught.
And then a clear voice rang out across the forest like music, both haunting and lyrical, ‘STOP! DO NOT HARM HER!’
Fi jerked suddenly in my arms but her eyes were now wide open and she had ceased her weird babbling.
I looked overhead anxiously but saw nothing but canopied growth. No Rephaim poised to attack.
I looked around me for the source of the cry that had saved us, if only postponing the moment temporarily, and saw the young caretaker from Satis House standing in the distance beyond the silver birch trees, tall and proud, his beautiful face lifted to the sky, lifted against the Rephaim bearing down upon him.
Closing the distance now, its wings beating against the chill winter air sending flurries of snow spiralling around us, cracking the branches of the trees so that its needles fell down like poisonous darts, the Rephaim stripped the treetops bare.
I thought the boy would cower before the monstrosity of such a creature. But he neither cowered nor did he flee.
He simply waited.
Fi cried out in horror at the sight before our eyes and only then did the boy turn to face her; his expression one of sorrow and despair. I thought that he looked as if he expected that he would die and accepted it; even almost welcomed it. But he was eclipsed from our view by the blackness of feathered wings as dark as any raven’s, their span as wide as an albatross in flight. The Rephaim was a sight to behold, casting shadows across the land, smothering it in darkness.
And finally I saw the face of the Rephaim that meant to kill us. He had come with the express purpose to kill me. But I had always known that he would come to finish the job he started in Paris. And now others would suffer for my folly. Yet I no longer felt afraid.
‘Andromalius!’
I cried out the Rephaim’s true name and, just for a moment, it paused. Its cold, dead, inhuman eyes, the pupils mere pinpoints like the bottom of cataracts, drowned my reflection as it turned to face me.
By all rights, I should have quailed before it. Instead, I disentangled myself from Fi, standing up in its shadow, feeling a surge of power.
I rushed forward, leaping over a felled tree, darting between ferns and bracken, my clothing becoming wet and weighty as I crashed forward amongst the still falling snow. And Fi and Indy were in my wake, following up the rear, moving to stop the abomination from achieving its goa
l. But still we were not close enough to save the boy from harm.
I was panting with exertion, my lungs burning, feeling like they would burst, but still I ran on. I had to stop this thing from happening. The death of an innocent.
And then as the Rephaim reared back to attack, its wings spread wide in the air, I saw the boy hold up his hand, fingers extended, like Adam reaching out to touch the finger of God on the ceiling of The Sistine Chapel. I had no idea if he meant to ward off the touch of the evil in front of him or welcome it.
Without warning, from behind us, came an almighty roar as if the very heavens were splitting apart. The trees themselves seemed to quake at the sound and eddies of snow spun around us like little whirlwinds. And I saw the symbols grow brighter still, denser, more vivid – golden streams against the darkness. And a voice reached out to me in agony and despair.
‘SAGE!’
It was the most glorious thing I’d ever heard.
But even as I began to turn around, something – someone – shimmered past my field of vision, a blur of white and gold, overtaking me. And the scent of sandalwood filled the air dispelling the noxious fumes.
A blinding flash of light and dark intertwined, like a coil of rope reaching into the clouds connecting heaven and earth, shooting up into the sky and Fi and I fell to the ground, covering our heads with our hands. It was accompanied by a sound like a thunderclap, booming and cracking overhead, so loud that I thought my eardrums might burst.
The explosive eruption of raw elements that sizzled with sulphur and ozone surged forth, like a fast-moving electrical storm. Lightning flashed across the sky in slashes of bluish-white, turning the clouds from milky to black and back again where it crashed, rending the heavens apart. The sound of thunder roared, accompanied by bursts of actinic static, as I tried to recover my burning, short breath.
They battled for supremacy, Nephilim against Nephilim. Trees and rock whipped up in their wake like rebounding hail as, from above, a maelstrom of thrashing wings could be heard. Lightning ripped across the heavens like razor steel, threatening to break apart the earth. The barrier between this world and the invisible thinned, stretched, blurred.
Overhead, the storm was still massing. The cracking thunder continued. Flashes of lightning illuminated the darkness of the forest. Then, before my eyes, the woodland seemed to transform itself. A terrible burning smell permeated with the foulness of the Rephaim’s scent carried on the wind. Vapours rose from the earth, writhing like mustard coloured snakes, coils of sulphur and other poisonous gases from the earth’s core. From a distance, the woods directly ahead shrivelled in response, becoming barren and blackened. It crept forward from the spot where the Nephilim raged – an insidious ooze that transformed verdant copses into a deadened piece of earth.
Inching its way forward, it tainted all it touched. Snow melted. Roots shrivelled. Soil charred under its touch, leaving nothing behind but black ash. It was as if lightning had struck the earth, and all around the radius where it had struck was left as smouldering cinders.
The storm burst over us again with a fierce wind that buffeted my slim frame as I lay on the ground. The solid oak trees were bent double as if in pain, holding their middles, beneath this fresh onslaught.
There was something primitive and supernatural in the storm – something destructive, alive, its evil intent roiling beneath the sky as the gunmetal clouds rippled like tidal waves from its luminous epicentre.
And then all was silence and stillness.
Indy tore away from me then, dashing forward across the poisoned earth, and out of sight faster than I could open my mouth to call him back. I felt dazed and disoriented as I lay on the snow. By the time I had recovered my wits, Fi was already up and running, leaving me for dust.
As I raced after them, I heard Fi’s voice screaming incoherently.
Of the Rephaim, it was nowhere to be seen. It was as if it had vanished into thin air.
Catching up to Fi, I saw that she was clutching at St. John’s arms, wildly berating him. She looked like a madwoman – eyes wide and wild, damp hair dangling in stringy strands down around her face and back.
‘Don’t! Leave him alone!’ she sobbed.
At first I thought she meant the Rephaim, but then I saw that she was afraid that St. John meant to go after the young man who was already disappearing into the distance, shoulders hunched in rejection. I was uncertain of what was transpiring and again felt at a loss, tension rising inside me.
‘Leave him alone!’ Fi repeated, ‘He saved us!’
I had never seen her in such a state before and I reached out to touch her arm, to draw her away from St. John in order to calm her down. But she whirled away from me, chasing after the young man who had disappeared into the thicket of the trees, Indy following now at her heels.
‘FI! FI, WAIT!’ I cried out to her retreating back but she refused to heed me and soon she too was swallowed by the woods, vanishing from my view.
I turned back to St. John but before I could even form a coherent thought, I found myself struck by a solid object, my back pressed up against the trunk of an old oak tree. And then St. John’s hands were in my damp hair, forcing my head back, his lips moving over mine – softly at first and then with increasing urgency – and he was practically sobbing my name. And I realised then how close I had come to death. And how much this would have affected St. John.
I wanted to tell him that I was all right, that I was unharmed. But I was being assailed by him. My senses were swamped with him – his earthy scent, the sweetness of his lips, the silkiness of his hair – and I exulted in his touch and taste.
As his mouth moved to my throat and neck, giving me an opportunity to suck in a deep breath, I weakly pushed at his arms in an attempt to get him to stop.
‘St. John. Stop. Please.’ My voice sounded weak and slurred with passion, even to my own ears. Great, Sage, that’ll make him stop!
‘Please,’ I said again.
He stilled then, his lips against the hollow of my throat.
‘What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?’ he whispered.
And he was off me in an instant, searching my body for wounds or injuries.
‘No, no,’ I protested, gasping. ‘I’m fine.’
Satisfied, he moved into me again, his lips against mine. Heat coursed through my body and there was nothing more I wanted better than to yield to him. But instead I shoved against his chest, pushing him backwards.
‘I’m fine, St. John. I’m all right,’ I repeated, watching as fear and passion slowly abated and comprehension dawned.
He fell into me again then, but this time I could feel that there was no urgency, no sense of desperation. He merely placed his forehead against mine, looking into my eyes deeply, and stroking the rats’ tails that hung down from the top of my head.
‘I thought I’d lost you, that I wouldn’t get here quick enough,’ he whispered, his voice rough and low.
‘But you did.’
We both held our pose for a moment longer, relishing the closeness, trying to slow our breathing. Then St. John levered himself away from me and held out a hand, each motion completely graceful.
‘Is he dead?’ I asked as I took St. John’s outstretched hand; its warmth welcoming against my frozen skin.
I had no need to clarify whom I meant.
St. John brought me close to his side, sharing his body heat as we began walking back to the Manor House.
‘No, Louis is not dead. Defeated for now ... but not dead,’ he replied gravely, and must have felt my slight shiver as he continued to say, ‘I had no seraph blade to kill him with ... but, if I had, he’d be dead. What you saw was a version of hand-to-hand combat Nephilim-style.’
‘So, he’ll be back?’ I asked weakly, my voice little more than a whisper, my teeth beginning to chatter with cold and shock.
St. John drew away from me to remove his leather jacket and drape it round my shoulders. It still bore the warmth from his body. He insisted that I
put it on properly but, as I obeyed him, I found the sleeves hanging low, covering the tips of my fingers, and I felt a little like a child playing dress-up.
He smiled wistfully, kissing the tip of my nose before we returned to our former position. I snuggled deeper into him as he answered my question.
‘He’ll be back, but it won’t be any time soon, and next time we’ll be better prepared. I didn’t realise the extent of the power given to him by the Grigori but, now that I do know, it won’t be so easy for him to elude us again.’
I asked quietly, ‘What does that mean?’
St. John’s voice when he spoke was calm but I could hear the note of steel under it and how angry he must have been, feeling that Louis had gotten away.
‘Louis is a hunter, Sage. A predator,’ St. John said, ‘He lives for the thrill of the hunt. It’s his passion, his obsession. He cannot feel love and he cannot value life – he is Rephaim, a Dead One. And because he is dead inside, he feels nothing – he cannot feel empathy or compassion for others – and he desires only a nothingness, an oblivion. The only things that matter to the Rephaim are chaos and death.’
‘He sounds like a Vampire or a Dementor,’ I joked, half-heartedly.
‘In some ways, he is,’ St. John replied. ‘He preys on life, on hope, on love.’
At that, I almost tripped, not looking where I was going and not seeing the exposed root that was partially obscured by the snow in my path, but St. John’s lightning reflexes were there to save me from falling.
He explained, keeping firm hold of my waist, ‘He’s drawn to the vitality of living beings. He envies what they have and hates them for it.’
‘But how could the Rephaim have become so ... so twisted?’
The path ahead was becoming wider and filled with more light now and I realised that beyond the trees, the Manor House was coming into view.
‘Because of the Fall of the Grigori and their curse to wander the earth until Judgement Day,’ St. John replied, guiding me forward. ‘The Grigori are doomed, Sage. They have been cast out of Paradise and there is nothing for them on earth – they have near an eternity to contemplate all that they have lost because of the pact they made. Their hatred and anger and bitterness consume them and, in turn, it consumes their children who suffer at their hands and at the hands of their enemies.’
