Jeff swallowed, tears springing to his eyes. "No. You can't. It's not fair."
He took the autoinjector from Akash and held it in front of Jeff’s face. "You were going to bonk me on purpose, let me kill my wife, kill my neighbors, until you put me down like a rabid dog. If it's anything, it's fair." He smiled a smile he didn't feel. "But I'm not a rabid dog. I'm a man, and a better man than you. So tell us what you know, and this goes back in the case."
Jeff squeezed his eyes shut. "You're going to think I'm lying."
Matt ran his tongue over his teeth. "Try me."
"Gerstner isn't human."
Garrett interrupted him. "So she's an alien?"
Matt glared him into quiet. "Go on."
"We're not sure what she is, but she was an old woman when the bombs buried her under the rubble of Dresden. American operatives uncovered the bunker in the late fifties, and she was still there, the only thing still alive, buried under rock for almost fifteen years, with nothing to eat, nothing to drink. They found her half-loaded into the incinerator, laughing." Matt exchanged glances with Blossom. "She claims she's a Nephilim."
Blossom raised an eyebrow. "What is nay-flim?"
Jeff closed his eyes, then opened them. "A fallen angel."
Matt glared at Jeff. "That's ridiculous."
Jeff shrugged against his bonds. "I didn't say it was true. I said it's what she claims. What we know is that she's very old, that Hitler's Deutsche Physik program victimized her until a bomb sealed them all in to die, that everyone in that bunker killed each other or themselves, that she was rescued by the group that eventually became ICAP, and that Gerstner Augmentations stop working when you unplug her from the machine."
Akash let go of Jeff's arm and stepped around where they could see each other. "I don't get it. Why not just unplug her?"
Garrett frowned. "Better question: How do you know all this?"
Jeff looked at each of them in turn but answered Garrett first. "Because my grandfather told me."
Blossom frowned. "And your grandfather is who?"
"One of the historians who went with Brian Frahm into the bunker."
Matt grunted at the impossibility. "Excuse me?"
Jeff sighed. "I think you know Frahm’s family history. How he and I got involved with ICAP."
"Sure," Matt said.
"I don't," Blossom said.
He sighed again. "Our grandfathers served in the Special Activities Division of the CIA, just grunts. His group, under Lieutenant-Colonel Petrie, uncovered the bunker under Dresden. Before he passed, Gramps told me the truth of it." He looked past Matt, through him, quoting. "'The floors were slick with long-rotted bodies in SS uniforms. Until they breached the doors there wasn't enough oxygen for full decomposition, and almost all of them were suicides. The smell was unbelievable. They found her, this emaciated, skeletal body strapped to a gurney with spring steel, half-loaded into an incinerator, the walls everywhere stained with old blood. They helped carry her out, to winch her up the stairs to the dark sky waiting above, and the whole time she laughed a wheezing, inhuman laugh, too dry to come from living lungs.'"
His eyes focused on Matt. "Only that's not true. It was my grandfather, but wasn't Frahm’s. It was Frahm."
"Bullshit," Garrett said.
Jeff's eyes flickered to Blossom and then back to Matt. "I lied, but not about that. Brian's real name is Kurt. Kurt Frahm was born on August seventeenth, nineteen-hundred-and-fourteen in Omaha, Nebraska, and uses Gerstner's power, whatever it is, to keep himself young."
Matt pulled the picture from his wallet, smoothed it out, and passed it to Garrett. "Gottschalk sent this to me a few days ago."
Garrett snatched it out of his hand, looked at it, showed it to Akash, and passed it to Blossom without comment.
"What about your grandfather?" Akash asked.
Jeff shook his head. "He didn’t want in. Said it wasn’t natural, that it went against God's plan. He wasn’t happy when I took the job. He told me the truth to keep me away, only it didn't work. I want to be like Frahm, young forever." He raised his head in a defiant sneer. "And so does everyone else."
I don't care about this story, Blossom signed from behind him. How do we stop it?
Matt wanted to hear the rest, but saw her point. "Alright, say that's true. How do we stop it?"
Jeff shrugged. "Like I said, she's in the machine. Take her out and it all stops."
"And Frahm dies," Akash said. "Instantly?"
Jeff sighed. "I don’t know. But it’s not just Frahm. The rest of upper management, and some bankers, and CEOs, and politicians. A lot of people with a lot of money don't want to die." His eyes dropped to the floor and he muttered, "I don't want to die."
"Us," Garrett said. "What's going to happen to all of ICAP’s augs?"
Jeff looked up at him, then swallowed. "I have no—"
The world went white.
Monica screamed, a cry of mournful terror, and behind it, pain.
Her pregnant belly bulged, then writhed. Her legs jerked, and she clutched at bloody sheets with feeble hands. A shadow with eyes of jade enveloped the bed in wings of smoke, and whispers gibbered homicidal praise to its glory. Her head lolled back, and she murmured, "Please, don't. Not my baby."
She gritted her teeth, panting short, desperate breaths, then gasped as her stomach ruptured in a spray of blood and amniotic fluid. Black claws tore through her abdomen. The sleek, almost-human head that emerged behind them shrieked in release, and the shadow joined it.
Matt blinked and found himself on his knees, hands clutching his head. He tasted bile, and his throat burned.
Akash knelt in front of him, concern in his eyes. "You okay, man?"
"Something's wrong with Mon." He looked at Garrett, who frowned at him. "Get what else you can out of Jeff. I'll be back." Garrett grabbed his wrist and hoisted him to his feet.
"You need backup?" Blossom asked.
The memory of shadow loomed in his vision. "Um. Maybe."
Akash grabbed his kit and followed Matt out the door. Blossom met them at the car and took shotgun.
"How do you know?" she asked.
Matt fired up the engine and hit the gas. "I don't know how I know. A . . . a vision. Something like that."
Akash flopped back in his seat. "What kind of aug causes visions?"
Matt shook his head. "Not one I've had. Precog doesn't stretch out beyond a split second, but I've had that, too." He buried the speedometer needle; if he passed a cop, he’d deal with it one way or another. "What kind of aug causes immortality? There's too much here we don't understand."
Akash cleared his throat. "You ever going to tell Jeff that was saline?"
Matt shook his head without taking his eyes from the road. "No. Maybe. I guess it depends."
"On what?" Blossom asked.
"I don’t know. He’ll figure it out when his eyes don't change in the next couple of days. I figure he can use the worry."
"Yeah," Akash said.
Chapter 14
The SUV screamed into St. Martin’s parking lot, empty except for a lone Save-A-Lot shopping cart tipped over next to the curb. Matt popped the door before the car had come to a complete stop, jerked the parking brake, and stepped out into the morning drizzle. He caught the assault rifle as Akash tossed it to him and ran to the rectory, Akash and Blossom at his heels.
Jason opened the door on the third bang, and Matt froze, fist in the air. The priest’s eyes widened at the weapon in Matt’s left hand, barrel pointed at the floor. Matt cleared his throat. "Get out of the way, Jason."
"Holy shit, Matt." He put his hands on the doorframe, blocking the entrance.
Matt shouldered past him, sending him stumbling into the loveseat. "Where’s Monica?"
Rees’s eyes darted from Akash to Blossom back to Matt, then strayed again to their weapons as he picked himself up. "Back room. Down the hall on the left."
Matt smothered his impatience. "Show me."
Rees led hi
m past a modest kitchen adorned with a cross on the wall, down a small hallway, to a door. He licked his lips and touched on the stock of Matt’s REC7 with two fingers. "Is this necessary?" They locked eyes.
"I don’t know."
He put his hand on the doorknob, nodded to Akash and Blossom, and opened the door.
The Virgin Mary stared down at the twin-sized bed from a frame on the wall, next to an inverted crucifix. The comforter held the shape of a body curled in a fetal position. Ted sat at her feet, tail thumping as he looked up at Matt. There were no wings of smoke, no demon with eyes of jade. Matt kneeled next to the bed and put his hand on Monica’s shoulder. He shook her gently.
Ted hopped off the bed and wandered over to Matt, jamming his head into his thigh with a happy whine. She didn’t move as Akash reached past him, lifted the cross from the wall, and handed it to Father Rees.
Ignoring their quiet, confused chatter, Matt shook her again. "Mon?"
She shuddered but didn’t roll over, so he pulled back the comforter. As the fabric slithered over her body, the whispers chittered across his brain. He pushed them to the back of his mind, and caressed her bare shoulder with the back of his fingers. "Hey, baby. You okay?"
A sheen of sweat covered her skin and soaked her pink tank top. Her head shook, the barest shiver of blonde hair on the pillow. She rolled over, and Matt’s heart skipped a beat.
Her teeth gritted in pain, with eyes filled with tears, she clutched her pregnant belly and the bloodstained area below. "I’m losing him." Her pale face creased with pain. She wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Blossom disappeared in a breath of wind. Somewhere in the distance, Matt heard the rectory phone clear the cradle and then three button clicks.
The whispers tittered in glee. He shook them off, leaned in and kissed her forehead. "Ambulance is on the way, baby." Blossom’s voice confirmed the statement as she reported a pregnant Jane Doe bleeding on the side steps of St. Martin’s church.
The whispers changed, softened, oozed with dark promises. The fragile, fading life inside Monica pulsed in Matt's mind, cried out in desperate pain. A terrible certainty gripped him: his son’s heart couldn’t handle the strain. He wouldn’t survive.
The whispers told him he could and would, if Matt shared his blood with his son, breathed life through his wife into the tiny unborn form. If he didn’t, the boy would die. She would die. A cut, a suckle, and they’d both live, even thrive.
He froze in panic. These weren't incoherent whispers, these were something else. Intelligible, intelligent, seductive. Is this it? Am I crazy? And if not, are they telling the truth?
Matt shook off the thought, and the whispers shrieked their impotent rage. Would sharing his blood with Monica infect her, and their son, with the taint of Gerstner Augmentation, the promise of death in madness? Could it be worse than the madness and death he would bring if he stayed with them? He tumbled back from the bed and into a startled Father Rees’s arms, then accepted Akash’s hand up.
Blossom appeared in the doorway. "Ambulance is coming. Take her purse. She needs to be Jane Doe." She glared at Matt. "And we can’t be here."
Monica reached out and grabbed his hand, and he leaned close.
"Don’t leave me."
He kissed her. "I have to, babe. They can’t know who you are, and they’re looking for me. They'll take good care of you at the hospital, and Jason'll watch Ted." And if I stay, I might save our son and damn you both. Without turning he handed Rees a slip of paper. "That’s a new email account. Send word as soon as you know anything."
The priest took it and said nothing.
"Matt," Akash said, putting his hand on his shoulder. "We got to go."
Monica wrapped her arms around his neck. "No, baby. I need you."
The whispers told him to tear at her throat with his teeth, to squeeze her until she ruptured and bled out, to gouge out her eyes and turn on the priest. Something darker told him to cut his own wrist and pour the blood into her throat. He kissed her, stroked her hair, told her he loved her. And then he pulled away, until only their fingertips touched, and then not even that.
She sobbed, and he touched his heart. "I’ll be there, baby. Let Jason and the EMTs take care of you."
He snarled in tearful grief as he backed out of the room. He staggered and ran to the car. The ambulance screeched into the parking lot as Akash put it in gear. Matt watched in the rearview mirror as paramedics unfolded a gurney and wheeled it into the rectory. Akash took a right, and the church disappeared from view.
"There’s nothing you can do, boss."
From the back seat, Matt tried not to sneer. "I know." It wasn’t Akash’s fault he’d brought nothing but pain to his wife and unborn child.
Blossom turned around and poked him in the forehead with two fingers. "You know it here." She poked him in the chest. "But not here." She turned around without waiting for a reply.
The car bled through the miles.
* * *
Matt had underestimated how hard things became when you needed to remain anonymous. They had cash, but in the age of smart phones there weren't many places that had computers you could just walk in and use. Even the public library wanted to see your library card. They hit a Best Western, and Matt walked into the “Business Suite” as another guy walked out—no keycard needed.
He had one message, from JRees. Admitted. Still strong.
He typed, K, clicked send. He resisted the urge to throw the monitor across the room, to smash everything just because he could. In a hopeless rage, he opened Google and typed in "Nayflim." After a few tries, he gave up on the spelling and tried "fallen angel.”
Mentioned in the books of Enoch and Jubilees and a few other places, the Nephilim were the spawn of angels that had defied God to come to Earth and breed with human women. God cast these angels, called the egregoroi and led by Shemjaza or Chemyaza or various other names depending on where he looked, into the eternal darkness of Tartarus. The book of Jubilees said that the Great Flood wasn't about the sins of man, but God's way of ridding the world of the Nephilim. But in his unknowable wisdom, God let a few remain as bodiless demons, to tempt humans before Judgment Day. It didn't say anything about wings of smoke, or Hitler or Deutsche Physik or whacked-out vegan Manson cultists.
He started as the chair next to him scuffed against the floor. A woman in sweat pants and a halter top sat and logged in. She smiled and averted her eyes, glanced at him again, and blushed. Her slender, uncalloused fingers rested on the keys, and she eyed him askance before typing.
He closed the browser, logged out, walked outside, and got in the car.
Blossom's inscrutable look told him nothing.
"Drive," Matt said.
Akash drove.
* * *
"All I’m saying," Akash said as he pulled into the motel parking lot, "is that if any part of what Jeff said is true—"
"It’s true," Blossom interrupted.
Akash frowned, and Matt shared the irritation in his reply. "He believes it's true. That doesn't mean it's true."
Blossom rolled her eyes. "Yes, okay. He believes it's true."
"Anyway," Akash said, "if any part of it is true, then we don't have a choice, eh? Whether she's a Nephilim or a demon or some weird scientific anomaly or freaking Bob Hope, we have to go in and get Gerstner, get her off the machine."
"But we don't know what that will do," Blossom said. "It could bonk every aug on the planet. What then?"
Akash shrugged.
"Shrug isn't good enough, Akash," Blossom said. "The death toll—"
Matt interrupted them. "The door's open."
"What?" Blossom said. She looked up, then disappeared. The car door slammed in her wake, and she appeared next to the motel-room door, pistol raised. She glared at them as they got out and rushed to the door. "No sound."
Matt led the way inside, and swore.
The room stank of sulfur and gunpowder. Garrett lay face up on the carpet, eyes wide, odd puncture
wounds all over his skin, and a single bullet hole in his temple. Bits of blood and brains scattered over the cheap carpet. The through-and-through had exited behind his ear, and powder burns indicated a point-blank shot. Jeff's chair sat empty, the bailing wire around the legs slick with blood. Both Garrett's REC7 and his pistol were missing.
Whispers chattered, and Matt body-checked Akash out of the doorway. He grunted at the sudden pain in his shoulder, a bee sting on steroids accompanied by a weapon report. They hit the floor as another spray of bullets peppered through the walls.
Matt scrambled across the floor as bullets punched through the room, shredding the mattress, shattering the lamp.
"Ow!" Akash screamed. "Goddamn it!"
"You alright?" Matt asked as the gunfire died.
"Through and through. I'll be fine. Fuck!"
Tires shrieked. Blossom vanished out the door as he helped Akash up.
"Thanks—" Akash started, blood gushing from his thigh.
Matt bolted for the car, sparing a glance at the red Mustang fishtailing out of the parking lot. Blossom got in as he turned the key and gunned it over the curb, across the lawn, and into the path of a black van. The van skidded sideways and tilted up on two wheels, passing through the space they’d occupied a moment before. He jerked the steering wheel left, gritting his teeth against the grinding itch in his shoulder.
"What about Akash?" Blossom asked.
Matt swerved past an oncoming sedan and into the correct lane, pedal to the floor. "We'll go back for him."
The Mustang disappeared behind the trees, still hanging on to the last of their leaves. Matt rounded the corner at full throttle and eased through the drift on the oil-and-stone road. He gunned the gas across the left lane and shot back into the right just as a yellow, early-model VW Beetle rounded the next curve.
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