Hope's Prelude: The Angelorum Twelve Chronicles #2.5

by L. G. O'Connor

  “Disappointed that you remained stationed in France because of me. Many of the Guardians were eager to head to far-off lands in those days, where the Angelorum was needed most.”

  Relieved, he rested his cheek on the top of her head. “Hopefully, you will not think me unambitious, but my greatest desire has always been to live by your side.”

  She pressed a kiss onto his smooth chest. “Then I’m truly blessed,” she said, and rested her cheek over his beating heart. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything . . .” he whispered and meant it.

  * * *

  SANDRA

  NOW THAT SHE recognized Sara Solomon, she had one more person to protect—and it wouldn’t be done through added security.

  Reaching up, she touched the amulet Isa wore on a silver chain around his neck; the amulet that hid his energy and concealed his true nature from the Dark Ones. The request traveled over a hard lump rising in her throat. “I need you to give this to someone. Not yet, but soon.”

  His arms tensed around her. “Who, my love?”

  “Someone who needs it more,” she said softly, running her fingers over the smooth stone edges. Only twelve existed, one for each High Council member. Though the amulet Isa wore was originally meant for Hope, Constantina ended up giving it to Isa to keep him safe when Hope insisted that he accompany her. Isa didn’t know that Hope had sacrificed her wings to save his—and he never would. Leading him to believe her transformation was a mission requirement, she had gone ahead before he could stop her. In truth, she feared if he knew the amulet had been meant for her, he would’ve traded his wings for hers. At the very least, the Council would’ve demanded it.

  “Then it will be done,” he whispered and stroked her hair. Isa’s warmth couldn’t chase away the hard knot of dread that had settled in the pit of her stomach.

  Now they’d both be targets.

  Chapter 16

  SANDRA

  Palo Alto, California.

  “OH MY GOD, I don’t believe it!” Tom said, his voice echoing in the oversized warehouse space of their secret laboratory. His mouth hung open as he sat at the work table in the open conference area near the equipment, staring at the printed results. “Am I reading this right? The replication process gave us a one hundred percent match?”

  Sandra gave him a weak smile and stayed silent. By her estimation they were only seventy-five percent of the way there. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Nephilim and humans carried so much of the same DNA, and that they had Angelorum-invented genetic replicator equipment, they’d be nowhere. So they’d managed to successfully splice the necessary Nephilim genes into a human genome and transform it into a genetically created Nephilim genome.

  Now what? She wondered. Once they figured that out, all they’d have to do is bind it all up with a trigger protein that would accelerate cell replication. Then prepare a saline intramuscular delivery, and voilà. They’d have a vaccine.

  Tom put down the report and reached for his unopened can of soda, eyeing her warily. “What’s wrong? You should be thrilled.” He popped the top on his diet cola, took a deep swallow, and then set it down on the lab table with a thunk. “You’re really raining on my parade. Will you tell me what’s going on? You’ve been wearing the face of doom for a week now.”

  Sandra smoothed the deep furrow in her brow with her fist. “Sorry, just thinking.”

  He grimaced. “About what, exactly?”

  Holding a hand over her mouth, she tried to harness all the problems her mind was busy trying to solve. Not least of which was their contingency plan in case of discovery.

  Tom had come a long way since the night Isa revealed his true nature almost five weeks ago, diving into his new world with an open mind. So far, he’d made a formidable partner, exceeding her expectations.

  “We’re missing something,” she mumbled, more to herself than to Tom.

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re missing the ‘why,’” she said.

  “I thought it was to save a life.”

  She shook her head and paced. “That’s our reason. What’s theirs? It’s not as obvious as creating a Nephilim army. The key to understanding anything that happens between the Angelorum and the Dark Ones is to look at the duality. It’s a yin-yang relationship, a two-sided coin. Keeping Cara alive also serves Luc’s purposes, and you can bet he has a damn good reason.”

  “Luc?” he asked, puzzled.

  She flicked her hand impatiently. “Luc Morningstar is Lucifer’s moniker when he’s earth-walking in human form, or what the Dark Ones call ‘living topside.’ He spends the rest of his time where you’d expect.”

  “Of course he does.” He snorted. “So what are we missing?”

  She ignored his sarcasm. If he knew anything about Luc, he wouldn’t be so flip. Rather, he’d have bone-chilling fear invoked at the mere mention of his name.

  “Before we continue careening down the path we’re on, I have to make sure we don’t play right into Luc’s hands. It would be just like him to manipulate us into doing his dirty work.” She scratched her head and stopped pacing. “I need to spend some time digging into the Angelorum archives to study the prophecy more closely. The answer’s in there somewhere.”

  She rose to go to the library they’d carved out of the warehouse space they were using to house their lab. Tom grasped her forearm with a look of earnestness. “Let me help.”

  She rubbed her lips and sighed. Two heads would be better than one at this late hour. “All right. Let’s whiteboard what we know.”

  She rolled over the large whiteboard and erased the contents. Dividing the board in half, she labeled each side: Angelorum on the left, Dark Ones on the right.

  “Let’s start with the obvious. Cara needs the vaccine to transform into a Nephil to live, and the Dark Ones need it to create a Nephilim army,” Sandra said, placing her notes on each side preceded by a plus sign.

  “Seems pretty straightforward,” Tom said.

  Sandra shook her head. “The symmetry is there but it’s too easy. We need to dig a layer deeper.” She placed a negative sign on the Angelorum side, and jotted down the next point. “We’re breaking Angelorum Law by engineering a vaccine to create more Nephilim.”

  Tom’s eyes widened, and he sat up straighter. “We are? I didn’t know that. Why?”

  She blew out a breath. “The reason Nephilim can’t procreate goes back to the covenant the first Watchers broke with God during the time of Enoch. Noah, the Flood,” she said, pacing in front of the board, “that all had to do with God’s wrath brought down not only upon mankind, but the scourge of Nephilim abominations created by unsanctioned breeding between the angel Watchers and human women. Some modifications and new covenants were made after that. The Angelorum has God’s blessing to be here under the protection of the new Nephilim Guardianship because of how we are created and how the Angelorum controls our numbers. This vaccine blows that all to Hell. Hopefully, not literally.”

  “Am I supposed to know what all that means?” he asked with a blank stare.

  “For the sake of this discussion, a law has been broken. Another downside? It’s a law unique to our side that doesn’t create an equal liability for the Dark Ones. We can keep it at that. My only point is: why is it necessary to make Cara a Nephil to save her life?” She stopped and jotted the question underneath her negative point about breaking the law. If she had to guess, it was another by-product of the ripple she was placed here to correct. God help me.

  Tom slouched in his chair and shrugged. “I agree. Why not just harness the healing properties of the Nephilim immune system.” He scratched his chin. “Maybe we should examine possible death scenarios. How do you think she could die?”

  Sandra nodded. “Good idea.” She squeezed in a third column to the left of the Angelorum column and started jotting a list: stabbed, shot, poisoned, burned, choked . . .

  Tom blurted, “Car accident, explosion, head cut off—
”

  Sandra stopped writing and scowled at him.

  “What? It could happen,” he said, widening his eyes in mock innocence.

  “Let’s stick to possibilities that won’t take a miracle to fix, shall we? Even Nephilim can’t grow new heads,” she muttered.

  He chuckled behind her.

  Her head snapped around.

  “Sorry. It’s late,” he said, trying to wipe the grin off his face. “Admit it. This is kind of surreal. Isn’t it?”

  “Only for you,” she said, and then added illness to the list.

  “Dropped from a building,” Tom said. “Kidding.”

  She wrote it down anyway, and recapped the pen. “The sad part is any one of these things could happen, it’s just that some are less likely than others.”

  He straightened up in his chair and took another swig of soda. “But like you said, Nephilim DNA can’t help them all. Let’s get rid of the least likely candidates.”

  She uncapped the pen, and drew a line through: head cut off, dropped from a building, and explosion. “That leaves the first five, plus illness and car accident. I think we can eliminate the last two.”

  Standing back, she chewed the end of the marker and stared at the list.

  “Can Nephilim survive the rest of those things?” Tom asked.

  “Depends,” she replied, squinting at the words. “I’d lean toward yes, but so could a genetically enhanced human.” She added a plus sign to the Angelorum side, followed by accelerated healing powers.

  “This will be the first modification we need to make. Nephil heal fast, but I think we need to allow for even faster healing if any of these other five are possibilities.”

  Tom humphed. “So, then . . . what can a Nephilim survive that an enhanced human being could not?” Tom asked.

  Sandra stared at the whiteboard and drew a blank.

  “Okay, asked another way, what can a human not survive that a Nephilim could?”

  “An attack by a demonic weapon,” Isa said as he emerged from the hallway into the lab.

  Tom thumped the heel of his hand on the side of his head. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Because you’re only human,” Isa said, fighting back a smile. Sandra was pleased that Isa and Tom’s relationship had returned to normal since the reveal in the cafeteria at the Longevity Lab.

  Sandra smiled, welcoming the interruption. “I guess three heads are better than two.”

  Isa leaned in for a quick kiss. “Possibly.” He looked at the whiteboard and lifted an eyebrow. “Interesting list.”

  “We’re trying to figure out potential death scenarios for Cara,” she said. “Join us?”

  Isa glanced at his watch and shook his head. “Can’t. Just stopped to do a quick perimeter tour and to see if you want coffee when I come by later.” He had stepped up the number of nightly patrols he did on the lab since last week.

  Her mood brightened at the promise of hot caffeine. “That would be great.”

  “Affirmative,” Tom said. “You’re my hero, man.”

  Eyeing the board, Isa pointed. “Good luck with . . . that.” Then he turned and disappeared down the darkened hallway.

  She picked up the pen and drew lines through all of the remaining options except stabbed. “Isa’s right. An attack by a demonic weapon would have a different outcome for a Nephil. Swords and knives are the weapons of choice for both sides. Your suggestion about getting one’s head cut off is not that off base. But it would kill both a Nephil and a human, so I’d have to rule it out. But if stabbed with a demonic weapon, a human would likely not recover where a Nephil would.”

  She shot him a look. “I need to take another look at the prophecy.”

  “But we just figured it out, didn’t we?” he asked, crushing the aluminum can in his palm and tossing it into the waste bin marked RECYCLE.

  “Almost. Now I have to find a way to tip the scale in our favor.” Turning on her heel, she headed over to the library.

  “Hey? What do you want me to do?” Tom yelled after her.

  “Evaluate our options to accelerate healing, I’ll be back . . .” she paused, having no idea how long this would take, and added absently, “ . . . eventually.”

  AN HOUR LATER, Tom stuck his head into the room. “Sandra?”

  She looked up from her screen, bleary-eyed.

  “Any progress?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “The words are just melting together.”

  “How about a break? Isa just delivered the coffee run,” he said, wearing an expectant smile and holding up two to-go cups.

  Her eyes glued to the promise of caffeine in his hands, and she beckoned him inside. “Just what I needed,” she said, covering an escaping yawn with the back of her hand.

  He handed her one of the Styrofoam cups and then settled into a chair next to her at the library table. She took a long sip and let the warm liquid kick-start her brain.

  “How’d your idea pan out?” he asked.

  She swept a hand over her face and glanced at her electronic tablet. “Haven’t gotten there yet. Something struck me on the way back here.” She rested her stylus on the table. “The Foundation is piecing out the work to multiple labs, which both makes sense . . . and doesn’t. It helps to hide their true objective, but on the other hand, knitting together a vaccine successfully with multiple teams working in silos seems a little . . . risky. It also expands the timeline to finishing the end product. Even with the unknown collection site . . . unless . . .” Squinting, she picked up the stylus and bit down gently on the end.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless . . .” she straightened in her chair and whispered. “Unless they already have a copy of the Nephilim Genomic Map.” A shiver coursed down her spine as the pieces slowly fell into place. There was only one way the Dark Ones could have a copy of that map . . . a traitor at the highest ranks within the Angelorum. The one her mother had mentioned.

  A knot formed in the pit of Sandra’s stomach. Her lips parted as she followed her mind’s eye back inside the beach bag to the shells, and the threads of destiny that sat sparkling in the palm of her hand.

  Cara wasn’t the only one they needed to keep alive.

  “What do you know about Dr. Kai Solomon?” she asked.

  His eyebrows flew up. “Kai? You know Kai?”

  With a tight smile she said, “I know of him. What can you tell me about him?”

  He shrugged. “We started Forrester at the same time, and worked for a year under Dr. Lawrence Noble until he died. Kai’s a brilliant scientist. Accomplished for his age.”

  “Anything else?”

  Tom sniffed and crossed his arms. “Yeah, he’s got a near photographic memory. It’s uncanny. He could glance at something and spout it back to you verbatim without ever looking at it again.” He chuckled. “Ironic, the guy’s never on time. Was always late for meetings.”

  She smiled. “Different part of the brain.”

  “Why? What’s Kai got to do with any of this?” Tom asked.

  “He’s connected to the woman we’re trying to save,” she said. “They were lovers in college . . . if I had to guess, they’re still close.” She also believed, now more than ever, that Kai would play a critical role in Cara’s future. There was no such thing as a coincidence in her world, only destinies to be fulfilled.

  In a moment of clarity, she realized two things.

  “I know how we can win this,” she said. A surge of excitement lifted her heart rate. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner?

  Tom’s eyes lit up. “How?”

  “Wings. We remove the ability to develop wings. Cara still becomes a Nephil and is saved, but the Dark Ones don’t get their army.”

  “But I thought you said longevity . . .” he said, wrinkling his brow in befuddlement.

  “Only in fully developed adults. We can separate wing and glandular development through gene modification.”

  She slapped the table in satisfaction, hi
s expression turning from baffled to impressed.

  Pasting on a smile, she hoped her enthusiasm would hide her second revelation . . . that neither of them would be around to see Cara live.

  Chapter 17

  EMANELECH

  Northern California.

  “WE HAVE A . . . complication,” Emanelech said, clutching her cell phone tightly in her palm as she strolled back into the bedroom she shared with Achanelech in their mansion.

  Achanelech glared at her and pulled up his trousers. “What kind of complication?”

  She gave him a tight smile. “According to our source, the unexpected kind.”

  He growled. “If you’re going to ruin my day, could you at least wait until after I have a cup of coffee?”

  “Fine, fine, fine,” she said in a singsong voice, releasing the sash on her silk robe and pulling open her drawer of unmentionables. “Maybe I’ll give Luc a call. I’m sure he’d be interested to know that the Angelorum have infiltrated our project.”

  “Damn it, Em!” he snapped. The bed springs creaked under his weight.

  Plucking a red thong and matching lacy bra from the drawer, she slammed it shut and faced him. He sat half-dressed in a suit, wearing an accompanying scowl.

  “The early morning news delivery is what it is, Acchie. Need I remind you that it’s midafternoon for our source? It could’ve been worse. The call could’ve come at three in the morning,” she said. Given how they’d spent their time at three a.m., this was a far preferable option.

  “What did the source say?” he grumbled, dragging a hand through his hair.

  She slipped on her underwear and then pulled a suitable outfit for work from their walk-in closet.

  “Well?” he snapped, tapping his clawed toes noiselessly on the Persian carpet.

  “It appears my lead scientist at Forrester may be running a little side project.” She shimmied into her skirt and zipped it. “His work had started to hit unexplainable dead ends at Forrester, so I had him followed.”

  “And?” he asked with a look of impatience.