“Am I under arrest?” Achaia asked confused. “You said that like a police officer.” She turned to face him as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Unfortunately, not far from it.” Noland said frowning. “I mean, you’re not under arrest. But the Nephilim will of course be investigating what has happened with your father. As a witness, they need to know what you know.” He walked toward one of the small rooms that composed the lobby aread.
“So you take me into the precinct, and I tell my story to a couple of guys with note pads?” Achaia shrugged, following him. “Sure, if they will help me find my dad. I’ll do anything.”
“More like a couple hundred guys…” Noland looked sideways at her.
Achaia stopped walking, she felt every nerve in her being, halt. “Like on trial? In front of a bunch of people?” Achaia lost her appetite and felt like she was about to vomit.
“Before the entire Nephilim council.” Noland said. Achaia was surprised by the nervousness in his voice. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you before the others woke up. Achaia, I need to warn you.”
An elderly couple walked past, and Noland pulled her over to the side against the wall. She was shaking. “I don’t understand.”
“Achaia, I need to explain something to you.” Noland looked worried.
Achaia’s breathing was heavy, she felt like she was on the verge of a panic attack.
“Follow me.” Noland led her through the lobbies, pausing to grab a couple of croissants and a bottle of some orange drink. He led her to a courtyard out the back door and sat her down on a stone wall that ran around the perimeter. “First, I need you to breathe, okay? This is important.”
Achaia nodded. Frustrated with herself. “Drink this.” He said opening the bottle and handing it to her.
She took a sip and was surprised that it was carbonated. She had thought it was regular orange juice. She felt the bubbles loosen up her tense chest. She looked up at him again, ready to listen.
“You’re not a suspect or anything, okay. They just need to know what you know, so they can try to find your dad. But I don’t want you to be caught off guard in there. Because of,” Noland seemed to be looking for the right words, “a lot of things that happened… a lot of Nephilim don’t like your dad.” Noland paused. “Actually, they kind of hate him. They really don’t trust him.” He seemed to have given up on his search for tact.
“Thanks.” Achaia said sharply.
“Hey, I didn’t say me.” Noland said defensively. “It’s just a truth. But because of that, a lot of them aren’t going to trust you.”
Achaia nodded. That made sense. They didn’t know her.
“And Achaia, you’re the only half-blooded Nephilim with human parentage. We don’t know what this means—” Noland handed her one of the croissants. “Nephilim abide by a code, not entirely by choice. We don’t have free will like humans, we have more like—room to fudge.” He explained. “But you’re half human,” He cocked an eyebrow. “We’re not sure where that leaves you. Chances are, you have more freedom than we do, and to the Nephilim, that might make you seem—”
“Untrustworthy?” Achaia guessed.
“Dangerous.” Noland said looking down at her. “Don’t be surprised if they verbally attack your father. But I want you to brace yourself for what they might try to say about you.”
“Why would they…?”
“They really hate your father.” Noland looked sad. “Some people are all too quick to forget greatness in the midst of mistake.” His sadness deepened. Achaia got the feeling he wasn’t just referring to her father anymore.
“What do I do?” Achaia asked. “I don’t think I can—”
“Just try to keep calm. You haven’t done anything wrong. You barely know anything. Best case scenario they will write you off as inconsequential. You’ll be free to go.”
“Inconsequential?” Achaia’s eyebrows furrowed. “That’s the best case scenario?”
Noland frowned. “Not that you are—” He fidgeted with the knee of his jeans.
Achaia was starting to get cold. “What’s the worst case scenario?”
Noland looked at her, noticing her shaking. “Don’t worry about that, now.” He said standing. “Come on, you’re cold. They have hot chocolate inside.” He reached down a hand to help her to her feet. She noticed that though he only wore a light jacket, he wasn’t shaking. When she took his hand, it was warm.
As soon as she stood, she dropped his hand and followed him inside. “When do we leave?”
“As soon as you can be ready.” Noland frowned. “I’ll go wake the others.”
“Just do it nicely.” Achaia looked up at him over where she prepared her hot chocolate.
“I’ll do my best.” Noland smirked.
The cab ride to the Vatican wasn’t long enough. All too soon, Emile was helping Achaia out of the cab. She stood on the curb and looked up at the great stone wall that surrounded the ancient sacred place. A queue of tourists lined the pavement, waiting for entry.
Noland led her to a hallway beyond a door at which she wouldn’t have looked twice. He explained that this was where Nephilim gathered, their headquarters. She looked around. It was average looking, nothing supernatural or exciting, no portals to the beyond—though she hadn’t really known what she had expected.
After the others were led by some sort of official down a short hallway to the main entrance to the meeting room, Noland stood behind a closed door with Achaia. “You’re going to be okay.”
Achaia nodded, and tried to swallow the frog in her throat.
The door before them opened. A dark skinned man with broad shoulders and a surly disposition stood in the doorway. Achaia had to lean her head back to look at the man’s face. She had never met anyone so tall. “Bring her.” He said in a low voice that rumbled through her chest, nodding to Noland.
The room was long and cold, cave-like. It reminded her of an indoor coliseum. There was a chair set in the middle of the room, the only place that seemed intentionally lit. In front of the chair was a sort of podium with a panel of people sitting on it. The rest of the room was stadium seating, with stone bannisters separating her from the people who sat in them. The seats went farther into the dark than her eyes could see.
Achaia stopped and stared at the massive crowd around her. Noland reached forward from behind her and grabbed hold of her hand, giving it a tight squeeze.
The massive man then led Noland to his seat in the front row next to the door they had entered through. The man, then, stood in front of the door as if to keep her from running away through it. He crossed his arms and shooed her forward with one hand.
Noland had said she wasn’t in trouble, but Achaia couldn’t help feeling like she was a criminal on trial, and that the tall man was the world’s largest bailiff. She walked forward leaving him, and everything she thought she had known and understood, behind her.
Whatever she had thought or expected, this wasn’t it. The room was bigger, and there were more Nephilim than she had ever imagined. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach was threatening to consume her. She remembered that the people filling the seats before her had once been an army that had fought together. When she looked into the faces of those on the podium in front of her, she could see it. The faces of warriors. She wasn’t sure if it was just her paranoia, but there was a blood thirstiness to the look in their eyes. Especially the man in the front.
Achaia sat down and glanced back behind her at Noland. He gave her an encouraging nod. She noticed that Olivier and the others were seated a few rows behind him. When she looked up at the panel before her, the front man spoke.
“Achaia Connolly Cohen, here known as Achaia bat Shael,” he said in a low voice that carried. For some reason she thought of how dogs often reacted to low voices, and when you punished a dog you used your lowest possible voice to make it pay attention, to make sure it knew it had done something wrong. The man’s voice shook her, though it was ca
lm, like he was using his voice to make her feel like she had done something unspeakable. “I am Joash ben Yahweh.”
Achaia cringed and waited for him to proceed.
“You are the daughter of Shael Cohen formerly Shael ben Yahweh?” he asked.
“Yes,” Achaia said in almost a whisper, her voice failing. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said more strongly. She found herself wishing she had someone, anyone, next to her. She had never felt so alone or exposed. She felt the weight of every eye in the room laying on her.
“And your mother?”
“Anna-Maria Connolly.” Achaia said loudly, so as to be heard. She sounded small in her own ears.
“The human.” The man added with disgust.
Achaia wanted to roll her eyes, but thought it unwise, instead she nodded.
“Do you have any knowledge as to the whereabouts of your father?” The man asked leaning forward to get a better look at her.
“No.” The man cocked an eyebrow in suspicion. “Sir,” she added, not knowing what else he could have been waiting for. She was getting the feeling this man was not easy to appease.
“Recount your experience of the days leading up to the disappearance.”
Achaia wrung her hands, telling a room full of strangers about the arguments she’d had with her father, about how he had looked as if he hadn’t slept or eaten in days. She felt violated being forced to share such personal information about the only family she had left. As she finished, the man before her just nodded.
“And he never mentioned where he was going?” The man said.
“He never mentioned that he was going. He didn’t leave me,” Achaia said angrily. “He was taken.” She fixed her stare on the man as though she could force him to believe her with the sheer force of her will.
“So you think,” The man said.
Achaia swallowed hard. She could feel her cheeks burning.
“Shael Cohen,” He said their last name with a curl of disgust on his lips, “was the Lord’s bounty hunter. Who do you suggest could have overpowered him, to take him?” The man sounded as if he were laughing at the idea. “Your father annihilated armies completely alone. Yet, you propose he was kidnaped.” The man shook his head.
“But he wasn’t—”
“Strong? Smart? Trained?” The man looked outraged. “There is not a man alive that could apprehend Shael Cohen if he didn’t wish to be. Or he would have been imprisoned centuries ago for his treachery.”
“Treachery? My father didn’t betray you, he defended you! He pulled you out of Hell—”
“That was the mercy of God, not your father.”
“Because he sought penance for you!”
“Penance? You call this penance? This is torture!” The man shouted before he was able to catch himself.
The crowd around them looked stunned.
“Forever cursed to protect the ones we stooped to envy—” The sadness in his voice would have earned Achaia’s sympathy, had he not earned her hatred first.
“But Shael’s history of abandonment tendencies speaks against him in this instance.”
“Tendencies?” Achaia asked, outraged. “My father has never, nor would he ever, abandon me!”
“Shows how little you know him.” The man stood and leaned over the stone bolster separating them and glared down at her. “He made his deal to leave you when you were an infant.” The man said harshly.
“Deal?” Achaia asked.
“I see your father has been just as forthcoming with you as he once was with us.” The man smirked maliciously. “Your father sold his soul to Lucifer when your mortal mother died.”
Achaia felt as if she had been smacked in the face.
“For all I know, he is plotting something. He has allied himself with Lucifer once again, and they are planning something.”
“My father is not working with Satan!” Achaia yelled. She felt ridiculous voicing the sentence. It was not one she had ever thought she’d need to make. It felt unnatural, as did the entire situation around her.
“What do you think it means for him to sell him his soul? Why else would he do that?” The man stood rigid.
“How should I know? I didn’t even know Lucifer existed until yesterday! That any of this,” Achaia stretched out her arms gesturing frantically around her, “existed, until yes-ter-day!”
“So you say,” he said coldly. “And how are we to trust that you have not been left in our care to feed him information?”
“This is what you call care?” Achaia asked sharply.
“Check yourself girl.”
“Check yourself!” Achaia shouted, standing. “You drag me in here, presuming to know me. You know nothing about me!” She found herself pointing at the man, as if she could bruise him from fifteen feet below where he stood. “You may have history with my father, and granted I don’t know much about that– I have faith in the man I know. He’s everything I have.” Tears were welling up in her eyes, and her throat hurt from holding back tears as she collapsed back into her seat. She could not allow herself to cry in front of these people.
“Yes,” The man’s voice was low and rough. “Pity it isn’t much.”
“That is ENOUGH.” Noland yelled from behind her.
The entire room seemed to gasp. Achaia turned to look at him, and saw that he was not only on his feet, he was rounding the bannister, and pushing the world’s tallest man aside to approach the podium.
“This is not your affair Noland Amsel. You have no right to speak. Take your seat.”
“She is in my Charge.” He said gesturing at himself angrily. “I am the only one who has a right.” Noland had reached her. He clutched the back of her chair to the point of his knuckles turning white. Noland shot a glare around the room as if daring someone, anyone to argue against him.
“You don’t want to do this, son,” the man said sternly.
Achaia’s eyes were on the man, but she felt the heat radiating from Noland, her chair becoming uncomfortably warm. “I am Noland ben Nathaniel. The tongues of men could never accurately express the gratitude I feel, that I am not your ‘son’. As a sign of respect, you will refer to me by my name.” Noland’s voice was hoarse with rage. Whispers spread through the crowd. “I am a Nephilim leader and your equal. This interrogation is over.” Noland lifted Achaia to her feet and led her over to where he had been sitting.
The room broke out into murmurs. “Amsel,” the man started in rebuke.
Noland sat her in what had been his seat.
“The Lord himself has charged me with the protection of Achaia bat Shael. Do you thus accuse God of harboring fugitives?” Noland glared at Joash, who was finally stunned into silence. “I ask the other leaders of the Nephilim; with the present information, how are we to proceed?” Noland spoke over the man and looked to the people sitting in the rows behind him.
They leaned in, and conversed with each other. A long moment passed. Achaia realized that she had forgotten to breathe.
A man stood, who looked surprisingly like Emile. “The girl is to be taken to the safe house in Russia until we can obtain any more information about Shael ben Yahweh’s whereabouts.”
“Amen,” the crowd chanted in unison.
Noland nodded curtly and spread out a hand gesturing for Achaia to exit ahead of him. She watched him shoot one last angry glare at Joash as the door closed.
Noland stormed across to the windows on the other side of the hall and looked out over the city. “That was wildly insensitive and inappropriate.” Noland said in way of an apology. “I had hoped they would have shown more decorum.”
“Decorum?” Achaia asked. “You think I expected decorum?” Her voice cracked.
Noland turned to look at her.
“Humans may not be supernatural, or divinely ordained, but when a father goes missing, they generally show compassion. Here I’m met with contempt. Is this what your God looks like?” The tears were flowing from Achaia’s eyes now. She hated crying in front o
f Noland, but she couldn’t hold them back any longer.
“No,” Noland said sadly, shaking his head. He took a step toward her. “That behavior was not an accurate depiction at all, of our God.” Noland closed the space between them. He raised a hand as if to touch her face, but lowered it again. “Achaia, the way he has just treated you is unacceptable. I knew there were still residual feelings about your father, but for him to…” His hands were balled into fists.
“Thank you,” Achaia paused, at a loss for words, “for stopping him…”
“Achaia!” Yellaina called out behind her. A crowd of people was now working its way into the hall. As she reached her, Yellaina wrapped her arms around her protectively in a hug. She was a few inches taller than Achaia. Achaia wondered if this is what it would have felt like to have an older sister.
“We need to get her out of here, now.” Emile said urgently. He wasn’t looking too good himself, Achaia noticed. His eyes were wide and wild.
Noland nodded, and took her by the arm, nearly dragging her down the hallways. Achaia could hear the shouts growing louder behind them.
“Noland!” Achaia said. “My legs aren’t as long as yours.” She had been nearly running to keep up with him, and her arm was sore. He released her arm, but kept walking briskly toward the exit. He practically shoved her into the cab when they reached the street.
Achaia looked back up and saw the crowd following them out. Noland pushed Yellaina in after her and slapped the roof of the car for the driver to take off as he slammed the door shut. Out of the back window she watched as Noland and Emile turned to face the crowd, then the cab rounded a corner.
“I don’t understand what just happened.” Achaia said wiping the wet from her face.
Yellaina frowned. “They had no right to attack you like that. I’ve never seen Noland so mad. And he has never claimed equality with the elders.” Yellaina looked down.
“What does that mean?” Achaia asked.
“He basically just announced, very angrily, that he is ready to step up and lead.” Yellaina sighed. “But how are you feeling? I can’t believe brother Joash attacked you like that!”
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