The Vapor

by Nathan Parks

  “Nathan Parks is at it again with another intriguing tale from the world of the Nephelium. Parks takes you even further into the world of Angels and Demons in a light that you probably never thought to see them in before . . . a fantastic read to continue an amazing story.”

  — Joshua Dietrich

  The Eternals Book Two

  The Vapor

  by Nathan Parks

  © 2019. Nathan E. Parks. All Rights Reserved.

  Editing and Layout by Sheila R. Muñoz, EdD,

  sheila.r.munoz@gmail.com.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without written permission from the copyright owner.

  Dedicated to

  Stubby

  You showed strength until the end, fought your

  demons, forgave when forgiveness was needed,

  and remained loyal to family and your brotherhood.

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Correspondence of the Watcher Brotherhood

  Eve's Journal

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Prologue

  “Will you leave?”

  “You don’t deserve me! We are more than you can control.”

  “Then you control me--ALL of you--control me?”

  “You are weak! We are strong, and we don’t have time to waste on weak human flesh.”

  A figure scratched at the dirt that surrounded him and made up the walls of the small cave in which he found himself. He hissed and howled like an angry cat. His body was hunched in a “c” shape with his extremities gnarled and covered in open sores and gashes. What hair he did have covered his head in patches, and his eyes were clouded.

  “You don’t have time to waste! YOU!” He howled and hissed and bit at himself. “You made me this way!”

  “No,” a voice stated, oozing in sarcasm, “we did not. Your creator gave you a weak body; I just attempted to use it.”

  The man began to thrash wildly around, slamming his body against jagged stones that jutted out of the wall and, using human bone fragments on which he had gnawed before, stabbing at his legs and arms. “Get out!”

  Laughter! It drowned everything out.

  He ran himself hard into a rock formation. He was hoping to beat the voice out—rather, the voices out.

  “I was a well-respected citizen!”

  “I respect you! WE respect you.” More laughter!

  “LEAVE ME!”

  He ran from the entrance of the tomb, scattering bones and holding his arms up in front of him to block the sun from burning his eyes. Its heat upon his naked skin was almost too much to bear.

  “Kill yourself; then you won’t have to deal with me. Go to the tomb of the warrior and impale your ragged, wretched body upon the spears there. We will help you.”

  “LEAVE ME!”

  His mouth opened, and bile and saliva spewed out, leaving a trail in the dirt and grime upon his face and down his chest.

  “I am the Destroyer, and you are my pet. Nomen mihi Legioest, quia multi sumus! (Translation; My name is Legion, for we are many!)”

  The voices taunted him from all directions. He swung wildly, his wrist shattering against a rock as there was nothing else to hit. Pain cleared his mind for a moment; he fell to his knees, grasping at his broken and limp appendage. He lay down in the dirt and cried like an infant.

  At one time the creature was headed up the ladder of power and strength within his city; but now . . . now, no one even knew his name. His family had been stoned due to beliefs and rumors that they all had dealt in the worship of the Darkness. His little daughter, Jarasha, had knelt with tears streaming down her face as they prepared to kill her. She never hated him. She looked at him and whispered, “Daddy, I love you.”

  She had said something else; but the voices in his head began to torment him at that moment, and the supernatural strength had sent his body into convulsions. Breaking free that day, he had run down into the “Valley of the Dead,” the tombs outside the city. He had run, leaving her there. He heard a scream that had stopped him in his tracks . . . and that was it.

  Why? For what? A soothsayer had promised him a seat of power if only he would give his body over to a god, a being that needed a haven in which to hide. It would cost him nothing; that was what he had been told.

  He cried. These moments of sanity now were brief. He didn’t know if they were worth the pain of the memories that came with them, but at least he knew they were real. It was hard to distinguish reality from madness.

  His tormentor was back. His body flung madly into convulsions, but this time there was something different: was that fear he heard?

  “Get back! Now! I demand you to get back!”

  “Get back where?” he screamed. “Back to the tomb?”

  “Not you, Idiot!” There were thousands of screams blasting the walls of his brain and wrapping around the fibers of his thoughts. “Get back! We have nothing against you! Leave us! How did you find me?”

  The man was confused. “You have been here! You found me. I don’t want you any . . .”

  He watched his limp and shattered wrist be pulled back and then twisted in an inhuman position. His sentence was cut short with his screaming from the pain.

  “You will be quiet, Fool.”

  He didn’t understand it at first. What was this creature inside of him talking about? Had the madness within the madman gone insane? That would be irony. Would that equal it all out?

  All stood still. It was a voice—a voice that brought everything to a quiet standstill. It was a voice that made every sinew in this man’s body tighten in strength—tighten such as when a worn warrior hears the confidence of his commander saying that everything will be alright.

  The sun continued to beat down hot upon his naked form. The pain from his shattered body was almost more than he could bear, but that voice created an atmosphere that made it seem that none of that mattered.

  “Who are you?” the voice stated.

  The heap of a man pulled his head up from the dirt as he looked up. There was a man—or more like a soldier without armor—standing near him. He had a small entourage of more men standing at different intervals around him. He had thick, black, wavy hair that provided a great accent to his strong facial structure. His eyes seemed to be emblazoned with the strength of a seasoned veteran, yet still had a shine to them as if to say, “I have seen death, but does anyone know a great joke?” Even though he seemed to have the strong build of a warrior, he was dressed as a wanderer, his muscular f
rame draped in light and loose-fitting cloth.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is . . .”

  The man on the ground could not speak, the control of his muscles stripped from him. As his consciousness was being driven inward, the ripping of leathery membranes rushed forward, and the creature was manifested.

  “You know who I am, Grigori. Leave me! Our Clan owns this man.”

  The wanderer allowed a smile to break across his well-defined face. “By what rights? I don’t see Adramelech’s insignia upon him or your mother’s insignia.”

  “What do you want from me?” Legion spat. “I am not doing any harm to you or any of your puppets,” he continued, motioning to the other men. “This man is mine. He chose to accept me.”

  One of the other men, a shorter individual, pulled a dagger from his side. “Let me have him. I’ll show him who the puppet is.”

  The wanderer crossed his arms and just shook his head. They all had seen Possessors take over the body of a mortal before, and seeing the manifestation distorting this man’s body was nothing new.

  “No, Simon, I think this ‘Mighty Warrior’ knows that this isn’t really going in his favor right now,” the wanderer stated sarcastically. “Am I right, Legion?”

  Legion was in full reaction mode. He wasn’t just any Clan’s member! He was the Hero of the House of Adramelech, the son of Hecate, the one personally being mentored to inherit the throne of the Morning Star, the ultimate seat of power within the Families!

  He also knew that he was in one of his most weakened states. He had been sent here to hide until called up again by the Leaders of the Clans. He had grown somewhat lazy. There was not enough strength.

  “Let me be, and you will have my promise, Eternal One, to not interfere within this province.”

  This drew not just a grin but a laugh. “A promise? A promise from the very protégé of the Liar of all Liars? Your master has taught you well, Legion.”

  The body of the man he inhabited began to tremble as Legion prepared for a battle that he knew he would not win, but at least it would not be said that the Hero of the Fallen just surrendered.

  With as much strength as he could muster, Legion shredded the insides of the mortal. He pulled in anything that he could use as energy and drained the soul—or what was left of one—from him. He broke into the light with inch-long fangs bared and two curved swords wielding back and forth. The mortal’s body lay trashed and lifeless, and standing beside it stood a man or a creature or even an evil metamorphosis of the two.

  The group of men all stepped back, except for the wanderer. He stood unfazed by the antics of this being. He felt a surge of strength and power begin deep within His core as his arms went down to his side, and his hands began to curl as if holding invisible objects. The wanderer’s head was slightly bowed yet tilted enough to detect any movement from his “would be” assailant.

  The rush of energy and power began to travel up the paths of his body, and his muscles pumped with adrenaline. He looked up with not just a grin but also with flashes of what looked like fire in his eyes.

  “You dare stand against me, Legion? The Grigori and Watchers are strong, and yet you will stand against me?”

  Legion began to shudder as the inner workings of the creature which he really was fought to stay together. He was Legion; they were Legion, the only Fallen that was able to divide himself into multitudes of entities but all doing the will of the collective.

  “You are the one who will not let me go. So, you are the one defying the prophecies that are yet to be written in mortal tongue, Grigori!”

  Silver balls of energy crackled within the hands of the wanderer, energy unseen by the group of mortals that stood behind the wanderer. He was the last of the Grigori and the founder of the new Brotherhood, the Brotherhood of Watchers.

  “Then be gone. You are to leave this province and territory.”

  Legion kept lunging forward, keeping his eyes upon the wanderer’s hands, trying to get him to attack first. His mouth was watering for a fight; his fangs were longing to drink the blood that would truly give him power beyond anything within the realms.

  “Where do you suppose me to go?”

  “To Malebolge I bind you now!”

  Legion swore. He knew he had no choice right now but to stand down. His time would come—prophecy stated it would. At least he was going home to Malebolge, the inner circle of the Abyss.

  “I will go now, but our time will come, Eternal, and do not think that battle will be won with mere parlor tricks of water into spirits, food multiplying, or energy from the hands . . . many will suffer greatly! The blood of mortals will be mine, and I will be stronger than any who have come before either of us!”

  The group of men gritted their teeth in pain as a thousand screams blew through them. If one could imagine the sorrow and pain of the dying on a battlefield all wrapped together in one soul: that did not come close. They collapsed! Legion shattered himself into a dark mist and swept over the men.

  Not too far away, a young boy sat with his herd of pigs, unaware. The pigs screamed as if at the slaughterhouse and ran madly into a nearby pond. Legion would return.

  “They had human faces; their hair was long . . . and teeth were like lion teeth . . . then there was war. A shadow will be released . . . some will call him Apollyon, or Legion.”

  -From the Revelations of a Watcher

  Correspondence of the Watcher Brotherhood

  A letter from Josephus, a Watcher, to John during John’s exile on the island of Patmos. This letter was a response to John’s earlier letter and was discovered in a broken jar in unearthed catacombs in the ruins of ancient Rome. It is not certain if there were any more letters after this one, but this letter clearly revealed that the Watchers were still in possession of the vial of blood.

  Greetings in the Faith, Brotherhood,

  I believe that I have discovered something that time has thought lost! I believe that humanity's arrogance of devising what they thought to be a “true collection” of writings and expelling that which they did not understand or feared has left us vulnerable to the coming darkness.

  I fear that my research is revealing that we have had only part of the picture; and because of that, we have chosen a path that has led us only closer to our own prideful destruction.

  The rise of the Dracon has been our focus, and yet when combined with historical documents that once may have been considered authoritative, the picture changes. I believe that the time of darkness is here. The gods of the shadows are at odds, but they will be united by the one. Do not be so naive to believe that we will be able to hold this back. I fear there is no overcoming our fatal mistakes and arrogance.

  My notes are not fully compiled yet. I will notify you upon their completion or if I discover a way that we may be able to reconcile this before all is lost.

  There is one key that seems to come through all of this: the vial . . . but I do not understand its meaning in this . . .

  Only a fragment of the letter was found. It was removed from the site and stored with artifacts from the archeology site by the Watcher and Gatekeeper of the church in Heiligenblut.

  Eve’s Journal

  I hate the saying that time heals all wounds. Those who say that have no idea what real wounds are. They are the papercuts within the gore of a Viking mauling; you may not feel them all the time; nonetheless, they are still with you.

  I have no idea what heals wounds, but I know that I wrap mine in the dressings of revenge. Yes, it may not heal, but it sure brings on a nice, thick scab.

  Why not time? Well, it has been five years since I discovered who I am—what I am—and watched as my mentor was brutally killed. Do you think that time has healed any of that? How about the vile abuse I endured at the hands of moral degenerates at a young age? Nope . . . it is all still there.

  I am not sure where the last five years have gone. I have not had much contact with Leah or the Alliance. I have had some run-in
s with them here and there; but for the most part, we stay out of each other's way. I am aware that much has taken place in the realm of the Alliance and the Fallen.

  From what I understand the Arch Council did not appreciate it or take lightly that Leah did not do what they had hoped for her to do; and that was to ensure that I, the last of the Jerusalem Breed, stayed true to their militant spiritual rhetoric.

  To be fair, it wasn't her fault. I mean who are they? They preach about free choice; but then when I fade away into the shadows and choose my own path, they crucify their own?

  I am the least of Leah's fans, but truly it was not her fault or choice that I have taken this path on which I travel. If a choice is truly based upon free will, as the Arch Council likes to insinuate, then let it all be! Go seek after your next spiritual lackey and warrior.

  Well, anyway, from what I gather, the Arch Council has chosen to place Leah's team on a probationary period; but according to some sources, this has turned into a permanent "back shelf" position. Her team has been unable to accomplish anything. For me, I don't much care, because it has left me with more scum to deal with; and for me, it is the nectar of the gods.