Eden p-3

by Jamie McGuire

  I looked up. In a scene in which God had cast out the rebellious angels, the artist had drawn them in such a way that the angels seemed to be falling out of the painting — out of the ceiling. I looked at another mural at the back of the church, featuring Navy sailors drifting helplessly in a stormy sea, reaching out to St. Mary. In a moment of what had to be confusion, I could hear their panicked cries. I could hear them all, shrieking and wailing at the sight of the book that brought their home down around them.

  I squeezed my eyes tight, and gripped my ears. Their cries became so loud I couldn’t hear individual voices, only their frenzied, collective panic.

  Jared’s fingers touched my arm. “Nina?”

  At once, it all stopped. I opened my eyes and looked around. Insanity was the first thing that popped into my mind.

  Father Francis nodded in understanding, however. “It gets too loud for me sometimes, too.”

  I peered around to the different faces in the paintings, unsettled.

  The priest looked to the book, and then to Jared. “You can’t have that, here.”

  “I still need your help, Father.”

  “I’ve given all I can give.”

  Jared shook his head. “I can’t accept that, I’m sorry.”

  Father Francis left for the back of the church. Jared pulled me to follow. We kept a quick pace all the way to his quarters, where he immediately made himself a drink. He threw it back, and then made himself another. His hands were shaking, causing the mouth of the decanter to clink against the rim of his glass.

  The priest closed his eyes and lifted his chin, taking in another gulp of the amber liquid with one movement. The glass dropped from his hands, crashing into the floor. Some of the bigger shards made their way to my feet, and I stared at them for a moment.

  “Father,” I said, looking up at him. “It’s almost over. I know you’re scared, but we’re taking the book back soon.”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “To the Sepulchre?”

  “Yes,” I said, reaching out to him. I touched his arm, and he placed a hand on mine.

  “You won’t make it,” he said sadly.

  Jared shifted in frustration. “Let’s deal with the issue at hand, shall we? I just ask that you sit down with me one last time to try to find another way. Surely our only option isn’t to just wait until the baby is born and hope Heaven steps in.”

  The priest shook his head dismissively. “We’ve searched every line. There’s nothing.”

  “Just one more time. Please,” Jared said. “Before I take my wife and unborn child to Jerusalem, I have to know I had no other choice.”

  Father Francis glanced at the leather-bound pages and sighed. “Very well.” He adjusted his round spectacles, and glanced above him. “Then you must leave, and never bring that thing to the house of the Lord again.”

  Jared nodded. “You have my word.”

  The priest brought in an extra chair, and he and Jared opened the book. Immediately the room turned cold, and I wrapped my arms around my middle. The others knew we were here, and that we had the book. The element of surprise long gone, Jared didn’t hesitate discussing different passages. When Father Francis would get an idea, the pages would be flipped to one prophecy, prompting Jared to think about something else. The pages would flip the other way. They argued and agreed; each idea led them only to more frustration.

  Minutes turned to hours; still they went over each point of the prophecy until it sounded more like chanting than discussion. A strange glow lit up the edges of the windows, and I realized it was the morning sun. We’d spent all night in Woonsocket, and my eyes didn’t even feel heavy.

  For the first time, Jared looked up from the book to see me fidgeting in my chair. “Hungry?” He said it as if he’d just remembered I was there.

  “Getting there,” I said, resting my chin on my fist.

  He threw the book across the room. It hit the wall with great force and hit the ground with a thud. Despite its age, not a page loosened.

  I stood and walked to the small kitchen, found a glass and turned on the tap. My body was just starting to feel the beginnings of fatigue, and the tension in the room made me emotionally tired as well. A copy of the King James Bible sat on the counter. The spine was worn to nearly nothing, and the pages hung at an angle; the book so spent it could no longer hold itself square. I flipped open the cover, and then pushed several pages with my fingertips.

  “We should get you something to eat,” Jared said.

  I turned to the priest. “What does your Bible say about this?”

  Father Francis thought for a moment. “Well, it does have its own version of the end days. It talks about the woman with child.”

  “I’ve mentioned to Jared that we’re looking in the wrong place. If you can’t find the answers in the Bible of Hell, shouldn’t you look in Heaven’s?”

  The priest shrugged. “I suppose so.” He walked over to the counter and picked up the book. “It’s worth a try. A third of the Bible is prophecy.”

  I offered Jared my glass, and he took a sip. When he handed it back to me, he kissed my cheek. The two men returned to their chairs, this time opening Heaven’s Bible.

  Father Francis flipped the pages. “Let’s start with anything that discusses women with child in the end days.”

  Jared nodded, and waited for the priest to find the first passage. They discussed trumpets, and something about seals — I imagined angels opening wax-sealed envelopes the way celebrities do at award shows — and a dragon and a woman with child. I tried to tune that part out, because the sound of it terrified me. But I didn’t have the luxury of putting frightening prophecy to the back of my mind. Because of what I had seen the last two years, I knew prophecies were very real possibilities. My only defense against the instinct to run screaming was simply not to hear. The priest discussed literal and symbolic interpretations, among other things that made my head spin. I wasn’t sure if it was exhaustion, the fact that I was purposely trying not to pay attention, or that their discussion really was simply over my head. At any rate, I was pregnant, tired, and irritable.

  “It would be nice if you two wouldn’t talk about me like I’m not here,” I grumbled.

  Jared’s eyes turned soft, and he reached for me. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. We’re trying to hurry, but we need to be thorough. This is our last chance.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Kim needs to return the book to Jerusalem. I’ve made her wait long enough.”

  I nodded. Traveling to Jerusalem had crossed my mind many times. Shax and the rest of his minions would not make it easy for us to return his book to the one place he can’t go. The Sepulchre was above the tomb of Jesus; the creatures of Hell were forbidden. Even infinite, divine patience refused to tolerate desecration of the Sepulchre. The war could start the moment the plane lands, or they could try to keep us from even getting on the plane. We had no idea what would happen. That was the worst part.

  Father Francis looked up from the pages. His eyes were unfocused as he slipped deeper into thought. “There is an ancient Jewish apocryphal text called the Fourth Esdras. The archangel Uriel describes many things about the end of days.”

  Jared frowned. “I know what you’re about to say, and I know Uriel. Gabriel is the loudest adversary of Hybrids. Uriel is the second.”

  “Nevertheless, his prophecy has some merit. He says—”

  Jared cut him off. “Father….”

  My curiosity and sense of self-preservation outweighed everything else. “Tell me, Father. I want to know.”

  Jared sighed, and the priest continued, “He specifically mentions pregnant women in the Fourth Esdras. He says ‘Pregnant women will give birth to monsters.’”

  Jared rolled his eyes. “Uriel thinks I’m a monster.”

  I hesitated. “What…what kind of monsters?”

  The priest glanced at Jared, and then back at me. “He makes many prophecies similar to Revelations. He refers to this as ‘Th
e Beginning of Sorrows’. Jesus also states, ‘Woe to those who are pregnant or nursing babies in those days.’”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Jared said.

  “You need to listen,” I said. “Maybe you’re unable to figure this out because you refuse to hear the truth. Maybe this is out of our hands.”

  Jared’s brows pulled in. “Those prophecies state an abundance of Hybrid births. If something like that were happening, we would hear about it. Besides, Bean isn’t a Hybrid.”

  Father Francis pushed up his glasses, clearly intrigued. “You know this for a fact?”

  “Yes. The only child capable of this kind of reaction from Hell, a child capable of disturbing the Balance, will be more than a Hybrid.”

  “Your child isn’t human?”

  I wrapped my arms around my stomach, cradling Bean protectively. “You make the baby sound like an abomination.”

  “Isn’t it?” Father Francis said.

  Jared stood. “No. It’s a child. Our child.” He took my hand and I stood with him.

  “Forgive me,” Father Francis said. He stood before us. “I didn’t mean to offend you. We are in strange times — frightening times. I let panic get in the way of my thoughts. I just don’t see how it’s possible.”

  “Nina is a descendant of the Nephilim,” Jared said, matter-of-factly.

  The priest was confused. “But, this is what you are. Nephilim are children of angels, born of human women.”

  Jared shook his head. “I am the son of an Arch. The Nephilim bred the likes of Goliath. Giants not meant to blend in. These angels roamed the earth. They had…rebelled.”

  The priest’s eyes grew wide, and I felt mine mirror his. I gripped Jared’s shirt. “What are you saying? That I’m a descendant of demons?”

  “That’s not what I said. We’re talking thousands of years ago, Nina. Many things were different back then.”

  “Rebellious angels were cast out, Jared.”

  Jared cupped my arms. “My mother is a descendant of Celts. They were savages, Nina. They drank the blood of their dead. I don’t personalize it. That’s not what I am.”

  “Then why did you leave that part out?” I covered my face with my hands, ashamed to even look at Jared. He was half angel, and I was carrying around the genes of Hell. No wonder our child was so rare. “Did you know that before?” I asked, my eyes filling with tears.

  “No.”

  My cheeks felt as if they had caught fire. I was hesitant to ask the question that had come to my mind, but I would anyway. I always did, no matter how horrible I thought the answer would be. “Does it change the way you feel about me?”

  Jared took my jaws gently into his hands, and he looked straight into my eyes. “Nina, of course not. How could you even think that?”

  “Because I don’t know how I feel about me, now.”

  Jared put his lips on mine, and then he pulled me to him. It was my father’s last secret, the last thing Jared had tried to keep from hurting me. But, now that it was in the open, everything made perfect sense. I could never quite fit the pieces together until now.

  Still, I felt…the only way to describe it was that I felt dirty. After all of that, we were no closer to an answer than when we’d arrived. “Is that what Uriel meant when he said ‘monsters’? What will the baby be?”

  “Our baby. Bean will be our baby, nothing more. You know what you need?” he said with a small smile.

  “What’s that?” I said, wiping the delicate skin under my eyes.

  “The comfort of experience.” Jared tugged on my hand. “Let’s invite Lillian to dinner.”

  Father Francis held out his hand. “We’re not finished, are we?”

  Jared frowned. “The answers aren’t in those books. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “The answer is always in this book,” Father Francis said, holding his Bible in his hands. He held it to his chest. “We’ve just missed something.”

  “We haven’t missed anything. I had hoped He would lead you to the answer, Father, but He hasn’t so much as whispered in your ear.”

  Jared’s words sent my mind spinning. Had we missed something? Had the answer been in front of us all along? I clicked through each idea and passage of scripture I’d heard them discuss like channels in my mind. I kept coming back to Shax’s book, and returning it to Jerusalem.

  “Maybe it’s not in my ear he’s whispering?” The priest said.

  Jared waved him away. “Nina’s exhausted and hungry. It’s clouding my thoughts. All I can think about is that damn book and returning it so Shax can’t get to it and we can concentrate on keeping Nina safe.”

  “Wait, what?” I said, stunned.

  “I have the Jerusalem trip on my mind. I can’t focus on anything else. It’s maddening.”

  “He’s whispering,” I said.

  Jared raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  Father Francis nodded, and hobbled to where we stood. “She’s right.”

  I gripped Jared’s shirt. “The Sepulchre. The only place they aren’t allowed to desecrate. The one place the book is safe from Hell’s hands.”

  Jared’s eyes lit up like twin fires. “We can keep you safe there.”

  Chapter Nine

  Due

  Bex finished the last place setting, and then returned to the kitchen. Lillian sat happily at one end of my mother’s long, imported table, Cynthia not so happily at the other. I waited anxiously with them, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. Almost to a beat, Cynthia would shoot me glances of disapproval. She hated it when I fidgeted, but now that I was married, she felt it impolite to mother me. Bex and Jared worked furiously in the kitchen, their laughter and conversation filtering to the formal dining room along with the delicious smells of savory herbs.

  Bex appeared again with a basket of hot dinner rolls and a butter dish. His eyes darted to the empty doorway, and then back to the table. “It’s about time.”

  The front door opened, and then I heard Claire grumbling under her breath. She and Ryan made their way to the table like summer and winter — Ryan was all smiles, and Claire sported her usual scowl.

  Bex brought in a pot of steamed vegetables in one hand, and a bowl of rice in the other. Ryan pulled out Claire’s chair and then clapped his hands, rubbing them together.

  “I can help,” he said.

  Bex nodded once toward the kitchen. “Just pick something and bring it out to the table.” He pulled off his apron and took a seat next to his mother.

  “I think you should leave it on,” Claire said. “Pink pinstripes look good on you.”

  Bex stuck his tongue out at his sister and then placed his napkin in his lap. Lillian shot a look at Claire and then smiled at Bex. “It looks wonderful, as always, son.”

  Ryan returned with a casserole dish of scalloped potatoes, and Jared brought in a huge ham. They were laughing about something, and I couldn’t help but attempt to sneak a peek at Claire’s reaction. She allowed a half smile, but it quickly vanished when Ryan took a seat next to her.

  Jared sat next to me, and we began passing around the different dishes, filling our plates. As stressful and dark as the situation seemed, the banter was jovial, and Jared’s mood was nearly cheerful. The weight of an answer had finally been lifted, and he felt hopeful again.

  Cynthia barely finished her meal when she looked at her watch. “Jared. Bex. Thank you so much for dinner. I do apologize. I have an engagement.”

  Jared nodded. “Of course, Cynthia. Thank you for joining us.”

  She paused behind my chair and cupped my shoulders, kissing my cheek. “It was good to see you, Nina dear.”

  I nodded, and her heels clicked to the front door.

  Ryan’s brows jumped. “She’s not one for family functions, huh?”

  “Not really, no,” I said.

  “Cynthia shows her humanity by way of charities. She’s very busy, but she’s helped so many people.” Lillian said.

  “That she has,” I said. “I
s there pie?”

  Jared laughed, and Bex popped up. “No, but there is cake.”

  “Angel food?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said, leaving for the kitchen.

  Ryan pulled his fork from his mouth, clearly ready for dessert. “So what’s the real occasion?”

  Bex returned with the cake, setting it right in front of me. “Trying to keep the pregnant woman fed. It takes a village, ya know.”

  “Very funny,” I said, but I couldn’t help from cutting a huge piece. Pregnancy was the perfect excuse for gluttony.

  “Ryan has a good point,” Lillian smiled. “You’re in a very good mood for a change.”

  Jared smiled. “I took the book to Father Francis.”

  “Again?” Claire said, surprised.

  I swallowed the delicious, spongy bite in my mouth. “We were there all night.”

  Ryan cut his own piece of cake, but handed it to Claire. “So you found something?”

  “Not a damn thing,” Jared said, smiling.

  Ryan cut another piece for himself, causing a wider smile from Lillian. Claire just rolled her eyes.

  “I don’t get it,” Claire said.

  Jared used his fork to attempt to cut a piece of cake from my slice, but I stuck out my elbow to defend my plate. Everyone laughed, including Jared.

  Jared finally gave in and cut his own slice. “Nina and I were distracted. All we could think about was getting Shax’s book back to Jerusalem for Kim.”

  Ryan pointed at me with his fork. “She called me today. She’s past impatient. She was yelling. I’ve never heard her yell.”

  “It’s her lucky day, then,” I said.

  “Oh yeah, why’s that?” Ryan said, chewing.

  Jared put his elbows on the table and folded his arms. “Because we’re leaving for Jerusalem next week.”

  Claire shrugged. “Well, that’s smart. Ryan and I are both starting Brown in the fall, and it’s Nina’s senior year. It’s good to get it out of the way.”

  Lillian paused. “You’re going to Brown?”

  Claire shrugged. “Ryan wants to start back…I just thought….”

  “No, I’m thrilled!” Lillian said, beaming.