She chuckled and looked back down to the game she was paying on her tablet.
“What’s that?” she heard him ask.
“It’s a game that for some reason I can’t stop playing. I don’t know why either. It’s so frustrating.”
He leaned closer and she felt his breath against the back of her neck. “What do you have to do?” he asked softly.
Nicole shut her eyes and willed herself not to be affected by his nearness. When she opened them back up, she had regained her composure. “You have to slide these candies to make matches of three. Every level there’s a different challenge, and every level gets a little harder than the one before it. There are so many times that I’ll get so close, but won’t make it.”
“Hmm. Let me try,” was all she heard before the tablet was pulled from her hands. She tried to make a grab for it, but he held it out of her reach and nodded to her food. “Eat some first, and then I’ll give it back.”
Grudgingly, she picked up her burrito and looked down to watch the game. It didn’t take him long to lose a level and waste one of her lives. “That’s a crock,” he spit out.
She laughed and took the tablet from his hands and handed him her food. Surprisingly, he didn’t fight her, but leaned in to watch her play.
She groaned when once again she lost a round.
“You were ripped off,” Gemariah said with a mouthful.
Nicole looked up and saw a large bite taken out of her burrito. Slightly elbowing him in his side, she scolded, “Hey, stop eating my food.”
It was almost natural when they switch tablet and food again. A few minutes later, Gemariah let out a loud, “Hah!” “I won,” he said with a grin.
“No you didn’t.”
He quickly looked down at the screen where it said that he hadn’t completed the level. “What? I did what it said to do.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t get enough points to pass the level.”
“What the hell?” He handed the tablet back to her on a huff, and she couldn’t help but tease him.
“Sore loser much?”
When he only scowled and didn’t answer, she smiled and looked back down at the game. It wasn’t too long before she felt him lean in to watch. When she lost again, she lowered her shoulders on a sigh. “I’m out of lives. Now I wait… again.”
She turned it off and reached for more food.
“I think that game was created by demons with the sole purpose to torment people.”
His comment made her laugh and look over at him. “I couldn’t agree more.”
Together they sat there, talking and laughing until he had to go back to work. It had been a short time, but it was a time that would keep her smiling until he got home that evening. I had better be more careful, she thought, or I could start getting used to the arrangement. She couldn’t forget that she was still going home after everything was over with. If only his place would stop feeling like home to her.
******
It had been a little over five weeks, and she didn’t think she could take much more. She needed out! Every day she would walk around the room or to the bathroom, but she was never up too long.
There was one evening that she had talked Gemariah into letting her go downstairs. It was glorious! They sat outside on the patio and played cards.
He was in the middle of teaching her five card stud when she had a cramp. It wasn’t a large one, but it was enough to cause her to flinch. Without haste, he picked her up and carried her back to bed. He spent the rest of the night muttering how he should have never let her leave the bed, and how it would not be happening again. No matter how many times that she told him it could have been anything, gas even, he didn’t want to listen. After that, she knew her bedroom stint was lasting until she got the go ahead from the doctor, and her next appointment wasn’t for a couple days.
She flopped back on the bed and threw her hands out wide. It only took a minute until her breathing became difficult and she sat up to prop herself against the headboard.
“Why are you looking so glum?”
She heard the voice, but didn’t open her eyes. She wanted to wallow in self-pity a little while longer.
“What if I told you that I brought a surprise?”
This got her to crack open an eye, but she still didn’t speak.
She saw him smile before her gaze zeroed in on what he was holding in front of him. Her laptop! She squealed and stood up on her knees. When she reached for it, he held it back from her grasp.
“There are some stipulations.”
Groaning, she sat back down and looked up at him, waiting not so patiently.
“You are not to overwork yourself. You’re office has given you leeway to record information on an encrypted file that can’t be hacked. New software has been installed, and it’s safe to use.”
She knew that she was doing a horrible job of hiding her excitement. It was too good to be true. Something to do! An actual purpose while she was stuck in limbo.
“You are not to overwork yourself,” he warned again. “If I say it’s time to shut it down, it’s time to shut down. Do you understand?”
She held out her arms. “Yes, Father,” she mocked.
He held out the computer for her to take. “I’m only concerned. I’m not your father.”
“Thank God for that.” She wasn’t paying complete attention to their conversation, but instead powered up her computer. It took a minute to notice the silence, and she realized what she had said. It was something that needed clarification. He had contacted her job and set everything up for her. It was a gift that needed a reward. Therefore, she decided it was time to open a tiny window into her past.
She looked up at him and sighed in resignation. “My biological father was a very mean person. That’s actually putting it lightly. You’re nothing like him.”
In discomfort, she looked back down at her screen and clicked on the McGrath file. There were so many similarities between what happened with Shane and what happened to her. It made her nauseated just to think about it.
“My biological mother and he made my life hell. I did everything wrong and was a bane on their existence. They made it a point to show me, physically and mentally… every day.”
That was more than she had planned on revealing and once it was out there, she felt awkward. She clicked on the picture file and scrolled down to the photo of the white haired man.
“My dad was a dick too.”
His admission brought her gaze back up and to him once more. She waited silently so he could continue, just as he had done for her.
“He beat the crap out of me every day. He never liked me and wanted me gone, but I wouldn’t leave my mother.”
“Was she mean too… like mine?”
He looked to the far back corner and smiled. “Nah. She was a queen to me. Not saying that she didn’t wallop me whenever my head needed to be straightened, but she never raised a hand to anyone out of anger.”
His smile started to fade, but it was as if he was still lost in the past. “No matter how bad it was with my father, she always tried to protect me. When I got older, it was me that was protecting her. There was no way that I was going to leave her.”
“She sounds wonderful.”
He smiled again, and brought his focus back to her. “She was.”
“How old were you… when she died?” she asked but then realized how incredibly rude that was. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
“No. It’s okay.” He moved to the side of the bed and sat down. After some adjusting, he sat next to her and leaned against the headboard as well. “I was twelve.”
She put her hand on his leg. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Is your dad still around?”
“Oh no. He’s been gone for quite some time.” He picked up her hand that was on his leg and held it in his.
She wanted to say that she was sorry, but she didn’t know if she truly was. A person that was that terrible to their o
wn child… well, it was something she would never understand.
“Did you ever find out why he was the way he was, to you I mean?” she asked.
It was as if he was reluctant to speak, but eventually he answered. “I wasn’t his biological son.” When she didn’t say anything, but looked at him with a confused expression, he groaned and rubbed his hands down his face. “She was raped. She got pregnant.”
“Oh my.” She immediately regretted asking. “Did they ever catch him?”
“He came back years later, and it happened all over again. I was gone for the day, or I could have done something.” He was staring at the wall on the opposite side of the room, and she could tell by his tight fists that there was still a large amount of regret inside him. He shook his head as if to clear it, and continued. “That time she got pregnant with the twins. You know what happened from there. Years later, he was caught and brought to justice.”
Something wet dripped on her hand and she realized that she was crying. She was sad for the woman that she never met, and sad for the young boy that had to live through it all.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he said as he adjusted to lean closer to her. “What are you looking at?”
Nicole felt the hand that was still holding hers tighten marginally, but she chose to ignore it.
“It’s nothing. I was just looking at pictures from the house…” She paused. How should she say it, the house where she was attacked by a crazed maniac and almost lost their babies? In the end she just ended up repeating, “the house.”
She clicked out of the picture of the silver haired man and started at the beginning of the mural pictures. She wouldn’t show pictures from the house itself, but she thought that it was okay if she just showed him the painting.
The screen became a full view of the basement walls. “It was amazing,” she exclaimed. “This whole thing was painted by a ten year old boy. He said that it was pictures of things that he saw in his dreams. His imagination is astounding.”
“It depicts the story of the Great Flood.” Gemariah spoke as if he was in awe, and pointed to the screen at the far left. “You see… On this side, it shows the war in heaven. Supposedly, it was angel against angel. That was when Lucifer and the angels that fought with him against God, were banished from heaven.
That was the start. After that, two hundred more angels decided to come to Earth and spread the word of the Lord. It didn’t take long for the evils of the world to corrupt their souls.” He moved his finger to touch the second scene. “With their superior abilities granted from the divine, they became monstrous. Soon, their offspring came, grotesque beings that were large, unnatural, and just as mean. The world became a hellish place.”
He moved his hand over to the water. “You’ve heard the story of Noah’s Ark, right?” At her nod, he went on. “With humanity on the verge of becoming extinct, God decided to flood the earth to kill off all the offspring of the fallen angels and everyone that their corruptness had touched.”
Supposedly, it rained for forty days and forty nights, but there was something God didn’t know. The only way to kill a nephilim was—”
“Nephilim?”
“A descendant of an angel,” he clarified.
She chided herself for interrupting him. It was a completely different story; one that she had never heard before. She pressed her lips together to not speak again. She was afraid that if she did, the spell would be broken and he would stop talking.
“God didn’t know that the only way to kill a nephilim was to destroy its heart. We can drown over and over again, but it won’t kill us.” He quickly looked up and over at her before correcting himself, “I mean, them. It won’t kill them.”
He stopped his story, and looked more nervous than ever. She wanted to hear the rest, though. It was something that she felt she needed to hear. “What happened then?” she urged.
“The flood killed all of mankind, except for the people that were on the arc. The nephilim survived but were very weak. After the flood, the Lord sent his most dedicated and fierce angels to dispense of them, one by one. The angels he sent were only on Earth for short stints so their souls stayed pure.”
He stopped talking as if the story was finished, but there was something that was bothering her. “God sent angels down to kill them when they were most vulnerable? That doesn’t seem very Godlike. What if some were innocent?”
“Look at you.” He brought his hand up to touch the side of her face and ran it down its length. “Always the fierce protector.” He kissed her forehead as if she were a child and turned back to look at the screen.
“The original nephilim were horrid beings,” he explained. “Some were said to stand twenty feet tall with extra toes and fingers. Plus, there were the multiple rows of razor sharp teeth with a specific desire for the taste of human. It was as if it were only the evil inside the fallen angels that had been used to create the child. There were no good ones.”
She frowned, still not liking the idea of God ordering the slaughter of so many people.
He saw her discomfort and sighed in exasperation. “Okay. You’ll like this part,” he said.
She looked back at him to listen.
“What if I were to tell you that some were better at hiding than others? There were some that evaded execution by hiding deep inside the Earth where they couldn’t be found. Eventually, they came out and started to reproduce again, but it was at a much slower rate because of their limited numbers.
Lucky for them, and Earth, as generations came, their human side consumed more and more of them till they had just as much humanity in them as any normal person. They even looked the part to where they were able to walk amongst other people and not draw attention to themselves. The descendants of the ones that survived the flood are said to walk amongst us today. It is said that the ones with the souls that are mostly pure get to live while the others are dispensed of accordingly.”
When she didn’t say anything, he caressed her hand with his thumb and asked, “How does that make you feel that you could be near a nephilim and not even know it? You could have even talked to one before.”
She giggled and knocked him with her shoulder. “Very funny. Where did you learn that story anyway?”
He shrugged. “It was just something I picked up somewhere.”
She smiled and leaned over to lay her head on his shoulder. “You tell it very well. I didn’t want it to end.” She paused to think, and then giggled once more. “I think if I were to ever have met a nephilim, it would have been Malachi.”
She felt his body stiffen before he spoke, “Why Malachi?”
“Because he’s so big.”
“Hey,” he said, clearly offended. “I’m just as tall.”
“No you’re not. Almost… but not quite.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Okay, Babe.” She reached over and patted his chest. “Whatever you say.”
“You’re a little twerp, you know that?” He reached over as if to tickle her, and she giggled when she sat up straight to move away. Her attention was brought back to the computer and she clicked through more pictures. “I want to show you my favorite scene,” she said before stopping on the one with the angry, silver haired man.
He stiffened once more and looked at her sharply. “Why is that your favorite?”
She smiled wistfully and gestured to the screen. “When I look at this, I see a man standing up to the other man that’s harming the woman and child. “It’s as if he is pointing and yelling at the man to stop.”
“Do you want to know what those people represent?” His voice was hesitant, but there was a coldness that hadn’t been there before.
“You know?” she asked. “Of course I want to know.”
She saw the tick in his jaw, and wondered if it had been something she said that made him mad. “You don’t have t—”
He didn’t let her finish, but instead pointed to the silver haired man. “This man is supposed to repre
sent Ramiel, one of the two hundred angels that fell from heaven to spread the word of God. He was special though. He was a member of the Grigori, the Eight Choir, and volunteered to go to Earth.
At one time, he was the angel that greeted souls once their body’s had died. He was gifted with the ability of divine sight, and could show them anything they wanted to know about heaven. Supposedly, he was one of God’s most trusted angels.
The Grigori were said to be the only angels to truly understand humans and could spend large amounts of time with them and keep their divinity. Because of that, many of them volunteered to go to Earth and counsel about the Lord. Ramiel was one of them.
Their ability to avoid corruptness was greatly mistaken. Ramiel soon started to use his ability of divine sight to torture people. He showed people their worst nightmares or what he could, to gain what he wanted. Out of everything, there was one thing in particular that he became known for.”
He stopped talking. She could tell that he wasn’t comfortable, but she felt as if she needed to know the answer. Swallowing hard before speaking, she looked up at him and asked, “What was that?”
Decision made, he looked right into her eyes and stated, “He’s known for tempting mortals into moral guilt, specializing in domestic violence.” When he brought his attention back to the computer screen, so did she. “He’s not telling that man to stop, he’s encouraging him.”
“He looks so mad though.”
“I don’t know. All I do know, it that he’s not a good person. He’s among the worst of the fallen angels.”
“Why do you talk about him as if this wasn’t years ago?”
He frowned as if it were obvious. “Angels don’t die of old age. They can only be killed by the sword of arch angel or by God himself. It is said that God will banish them, but won’t have them killed for the misuse of free will he grants everyone on Earth.”
“But he had all those nephilim killed,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but he didn’t create them.”
They were both silent and lost in thought.
The Divine Whisper Page 24
