Rise of the Nephilim

by Adam Rushing

  “He’s definitely Nephilim,” Jude said, feeling the bile rising to his throat.

  “What do we do now?” Eva asked in a frightened squeak.

  “We prepare,” he answered her and reached up and grabbed two pistols off the wall, keeping one for himself and giving one to her.

  The monster outside continued to ram the door, as they armed themselves for the inevitable confrontation. The steel slab was beginning to warp inwards from the inhuman force being applied to it with each blow. Eric was already crouched in front of the wall opposite the door, machine gun at the ready.

  The besieged entryway finally fell from its hinges and their ruthless antagonizer burst forth into the room, with his arms crossed in front of him. Eric opened fire and the entire scene devolved into a slow motion drama. The man was bulletproof, withstanding the hail of bullets like some invincible Titan. Jude noticed the sparks of the projectiles striking the walls around him. The Nephilim was using the same repulsion technique that Emily had used back at the conference.

  Eric’s magazine ran out of bullets, and he scrambled to load another one before the Nephilim could react. He had just raised his gun back to a firing position, when his body was thrown against the wall. He let out a groan and held his right shoulder where he had taken the brunt of the impact.

  Jude tried to pull off a quick shot at the man’s head, but missed by an inch. The bullet embedded itself in the concrete next to his head. The man looked over at Jude, rage in his eyes. “How dare you, stupid human!”

  He took a few large strides, pushing Eva to the ground as he passed her, and caught Jude by the throat. He lifted Jude off the ground and pinned him against the wall like a ragdoll. Jude dropped his gun and grabbed the man’s arm, trying to relieve the pressure and keep himself from choking. Mercenary sneered nastily at him. “If Azazel didn’t want you alive, I would snap your little neck right now. We are your masters, and you will do as you’re told. Do you understand me?”

  Jude tried to spit in his face, but his lower jaw didn’t have enough room to move in the man’s firm grip. “Do you understand me?” The man repeated his question and shook Jude like a ragdoll.

  “I understand,” Eva said quietly from behind him, a split second before the attacker’s face deformed from the force of the hollow point exiting through his forehead. A black smoky substance escaped, screaming through the hole, and the body fell.

  Jude hit the ground and fell to his knees in a coughing fit. He looked up gratefully at Eva. She was beginning to shake, as her adrenaline rush subsided. “Thanks Eva,” he wheezed softly, “that was amazing. Eric, are you okay?”

  Eric moaned from the floor, “I’ll live. I think he dislocated my shoulder, though.”

  The sounds of the conflict outside had quieted down.

  “I’ll go get help,” Jude offered, as he found his footing. “Eva, will you look after Eric for a bit?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Be careful out there, ok?”

  “I will,” he assured her. “It sounds like things are dying down out there.”

  Eva asked, “You don’t think he was telling the truth about the others, do you?”

  Jude shook his head and tried to maintain an air of confidence. He grabbed his discarded pistol off the floor and ventured forth to discover the outcome of the conflict. He slowly navigated a few turns of the corridor, until he spied the central meeting area. There, he saw Artemis sitting on top of the meeting table stitching up a gash on her thigh and talking to what looked like a homeless woman.

  He gripped his weapon cautiously, unsure of the situation, and slowly came forward. The lady noticed him and motioned to Artemis. Artemis gave him a grim smile and motioned him over with a flick of her head. She continued sewing herself up, while he made his way to her.

  “It’s good to see you safe, Mister Sullivan,” she said with her usual professionalism. “How are the others?”

  “One of those guys got in, but we managed to take care of him,” he reported, as he continued eying the stranger. “Eric hurt his shoulder, but with some medical attention, he’ll be okay. How is everyone else?”

  Artemis winced, as she pulled the last stitch and tied off the wound. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know. If it hadn’t been for her, I may not have made it at all.”

  The vagrant woman held out her dirty hand to Jude, “Greetings, Mister Sullivan. It’s a pleasure to meet you in physical form.”

  “You are Grigori, then?” Jude guessed.

  “Indeed,” the woman said. “We came as quickly as we could. Unfortunately, haste limited our choice of nearby hosts. This poor soul is not healthy enough to endure much strain.”

  “She worked well enough for a surprise counterattack,” Artemis offered warmly. “Thank you again for your help, sister. It has been too long since we conversed.”

  Iris squeezed her shoulder, “Let’s hope this is the beginning of a reconciliation between the Aspides and the Council. Many of us sympathized with your ideals, but were too afraid of exile to take a stand. Please, forgive my cowardice.”

  Jude shifted nervously, as he began wondering about the rest of the team. “Please, excuse me ladies, I’ll let you catch up. I really need to find Eric some treatment.”

  Artemis nodded, “Check the labs. Hephaestus should be back there. He will get you what you need.”

  “Thanks, Artemis,” Jude said. “I’m glad to see you’re okay.” He hurried off down the corridor leading back to the labs. The entire place was in shambles. Books were tossed everywhere from fallen shelves, shards of glass littered the floor, and priceless artifacts were in pieces. Among the wreckage, bodies clothed in familiar gray uniforms lay bloodied and contorted. He was glad now, that he had not been in the thick of the battle.

  He emerged from the maze of chaos into the relative cleanliness of the laboratory section. It seemed as if the conflict didn’t make it back this far. He spied Hephaestus working over a table in the first medical room and knocked on the glass to get his attention.

  The Irishman looked up and walked over to open the door for him. “Jude, it’s good to see you in one piece. I was just finishing up with Prometheus, if you would like to come in. Be careful, though, his body is in bad shape.”

  “Will do,” Jude agreed. “By the way, could you go check on Eric, when you get a chance? He was injured during the fight and needs some attention.”

  “I’ll head there right now,” Hephaestus answered somberly and wandered off in the direction of the armory. Jude walked over to the table and surveyed the damage. Prometheus’s right arm had been crushed at the shoulder. It was a nasty bit of savagery that made Jude happy it had been dressed and bandaged before he arrived. Hephaestus had done his best to dress the wound and stop any bleeding, but the man’s face was already turning a sickly pale color. Death was coming soon.

  “Hello, Jude,” the Aspides elder greeted him, a faint wheeze coming from a punctured lung. “We did it. The Grigori finally came.”

  “They did,” he agreed. “What about you? You’re still able to transfer out of this body, right?”

  “I am,” Prometheus responded weakly. “I don’t want to leave him alone like this, though. I’m going to stay until the end. I owe him that much.”

  Jude nodded, “That’s very respectable. Please, come back to us, when you are able. I’ll leave you in peace until then. I’m going to go find Leo.” He turned and left Prometheus to comfort his host’s last minutes.

  “Jude... wait…” the Aspides leader called out behind him weakly. “Leo….”

  Jude stopped. He felt a dread sense of foreboding in the way Prometheus had called him back. “Where is he, Prometheus?”

  “He’s next door, to the right,” the old man finally whispered. “He wasn’t as strong as he thought, the old fool… Not against so many... Please, find a way to break it to Eva gently. We all care for her.”

  Jude backed out of the room silently and hurried to the neighboring medical bay. On the table was a great whit
e sheet conforming loosely to the shape of a human body. Loosely, Jude realized, because some of the parts were angled in a fashion that were quite inhuman. He held his breath in sheer dread, as he pulled the sheet away from the body. There lay Leo, his face broken and bruised from what looked to have been a tremendous beating. Jude shuddered to think what the rest of his body was like underneath the fabric.

  “Sleep well, Apollo,” he said quietly, as he replaced the sheet and stood there shaking, trying to maintain his composure. First, Emily and now Leo… All of these remarkable people he’d met were dying before he’d even gotten the chance to know them. He was tired of running. From now on, he would face these Nephilim head to head.

  He stumbled out of the room and fell to his knees, as he lost control of his emotions. He heard people running toward him, as he sobbed.

  “Jude, did you find Leo?” Eva questioned with a wild undertone in her voice.

  He didn’t answer… couldn’t answer. He simply shook his head and continued crying.

  “Tell me where Leo is, Jude!” She grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him upright, so he was forced to look her in the face. He couldn’t look her in the eye, but this was all the confirmation she needed. Tears also began forming in her eyes, as all of her fears were realized.

  “No… No, no, no…” She said, as she backed away in disbelief. Jude finally found control of his body again and pointed behind him to the room he had just left. She ran past him as fast as she could.

  “Hephaestus told us,” Eric said softly. His arm had been set in a sling, but he held out his good hand to help Jude stand to his feet. A wail arose from the room behind them.

  Jude turned to go to her, but Eric held his arm firmly. Jude began to protest, but Eric shook his head. “Don’t go. There’s nothing we can do for her. Just let her mourn. Come on, I need to go back and talk to Artemis.”

  The two men left Eva behind to return to the central area. They were halfway there, when they heard a gunshot ring out. Jude cringed and listened carefully, prepared for another fight. He breathed a sigh of relief, when all he heard was silence. It was only then he realized that Eva’s crying had stopped.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Eric left Jude sleeping soundly on the dental chair, where he had been hooked up to a tangle of wires and equipment not more than forty minutes before. The man had flown into a rage over his failure to prevent Eva from harming herself, even going so far as to try to blame Eric for her loss. He attempted to throw a few punches at his face, but Eric managed to fend him off with his one good hand. It took Hephaestus to sedate him, before he caused too much damage to himself, and the two had stowed him away in the lab. They needed peace to plan their next move, while they waited on their new found comrades to find more suitable bodies.

  Eric knew he should be upset over Eva and Leo’s deaths, but he had gone numb somewhere between Geneva and New York. War had crept upon him and covered him once again with its tattered, bloody cowl. His training was kicking in, and he was more or less running on autopilot at this point.

  “Where do we go now?” he asked, as he and Artemis pow-wowed amid the shambles of the underground reliquary. “We can’t stay here for much longer. There’s no telling when Azazel’s guys will come back.”

  She sat on the ground, cleaning her pistol. “We have an emergency shelter in the mountains upstate, but we can’t leave until Prometheus’s new host is ready. Hephaestus found him a viable body at one of the local hospitals, even if it’s somewhat young. It should be ready to inhabit any time now.”

  “How did you manage to sneak a coma patient out of the hospital?” Eric mused. “Nope, never mind. I don’t want to know. Why won’t the Nephilim do that? Wouldn’t that solve the possession problem?”

  “It won’t,” Artemis promised grimly. “They only know how to consume and dominate. Why take a host with nothing, when you can control someone already wealthy or in power? Why take a nobody, when you can insert yourself directly into the good life? The same goes for all of the technology Hephaestus has developed here. If anything, all they would use it for is for their own gain. No, all of our records and machinery will be destroyed when we abandon this place. We can rebuild again later.”

  “That really is a shame,” Eric observed, as he looked around at the antiques in his field of view.

  “These pieces will be just a few of countless lost pages in the annals of history, Eric,” Artemis said in a blasé manner. “I’ve seen more of it disappear, than you could ever imagine.”

  “What’s most important is that we see this through to the end”, a new voice interjected, “especially now that we have some support.” They both looked over to see a Japanese man in his late twenties leaning against a display case. He was wearing a simple ensemble of blue jeans and a green striped button-down shirt. He walked over to the two carefully, still unsure of his new body.

  “Good to see you back, Prometheus,” Artemis saluted the man in military fashion.

  “It’s good to be back,” her superior added, as he opened and closed his hands to get comfortable with his new muscles. “It’s odd, though, to not have a human mind to share it with. This one was quite brain dead, poor kid.”

  Artemis shot him a grin, as she pushed herself off the ground to inspect his new physique, “You’re such a traditionalist. You know you can last much longer in an empty body without getting anchored. Won’t it also be nice to fight without risking another life?”

  “As always, you make a good point,” Prometheus admitted, as he continued to flex his new muscles. “We need to gather our things and prepare to leave as soon as our new allies return.

  “That’s another thing that worries me,” Eric confessed. “Why did only seven Grigori come to help us? Where are the rest?”

  “More will come in due time,” Prometheus assured him. “It’s hard to overcome dogma so quickly. I’m sure many of them are afraid they will fall to temptation, just like the Nephilim. We must be patient.”

  “And hope we aren’t all dead before that happens,” Eric muttered under his breath.

  Prometheus continued on, ignoring Eric’s comment. “At any rate, will you help Hephaestus rouse Jude? Hopefully, he’ll be a little more tractable after being sedated for a while.”

  Eric nodded and left the two behind to discuss their plans. He threaded his way back to the labs to meet Hephaestus and figure out how to deal with his belligerent companion. As he arrived, he saw that the engineer had already begun applying straps to the chair as a precaution before waking him.

  “Good, you’re here,” Hephaestus greeted him absently, when he entered the room. The man’s shock of red hair shook continuously back and forth, as he monitored Jude’s vitals and measured out a dose from a medicine bottle marked Narcan. The drug was designed to wake patients up quickly from sedation. “Stand over here and get ready to hold him. He may come out of this trying to fight.”

  Eric stood on his directed mark and braced himself, as Hephaestus inoculated Jude in the thigh. Almost a minute passed, before Jude began to stir. He shot up in the chair with a wild look in his eyes, as they slowly began to focus again. He shook his head to fight off the effects of the drug and gazed at the two.

  “You…” He sputtered. “Why did you…?”

  “You lost control of your emotions, Mister Sullivan,” Hephaestus explained. “You were a danger to yourself and others, so you needed to rest for a little while.”

  Eric gripped Jude’s shoulder with his good hand and tried to give him his best sympathetic look. “I’m sorry we weren’t there for Eva, man. I’m so not sure she wouldn’t have tried to hurt herself later, though. At least she and Leo are together now.”

  Jude flashed him an angry look, before the fire in his eyes died away. He hunched his shoulders and slurred, “You’re right. I know you are. I’m not a soldier like you, though. I’ve seen more death than I ever cared to see in my lifetime.”

  “It never gets better. You just learn to live with it
. Let’s get out of here, huh?” Eric said, as Jude slid onto the floor and caught himself as his knees gave out. Eric offered him his uninjured side to lean on, and they slowly left the room.

  * * *

  Jude groggily fought to overcome the mix of sedative and stimulant battling for supremacy in his brain. The effort to maintain his equilibrium left the next few hours a series of abbreviated memories. In one of the instances, he remembered seeing the seven Grigori return from finding new hosts for the journey to the other safehouse. In another instance, he recalled a memorial ceremony for Leo and Eva. They lay side-by-side on separate gurneys, their hands clasped together to bridge the gap between them in eternity. Eric stood at attention, while the Grigori and Aspides sang a lilting, unmetered eulogy in their native tongue. He faintly remembered his own tears, as the haunting unintelligible lyrics drew them from his eyes.

  The staccato of recollections ended, as he stared at the entrance to the underground shelter from the rear window of Leo’s SUV. The last rays of daylight were dancing off of the windows of the neighboring buildings, making it difficult to see inside the small roofed parking pavilion. He was sad to leave behind so many priceless artifacts. Suddenly, he felt the rumble of a large underground explosion shake the vehicle and saw pillars of smoke billow forth from the door, desperate to escape the inferno within. The world went dark again.

  * * *

  One of the alerts on Mike’s computer’s electronic dashboard furiously blinked bright red and yellow. He leaned in to study which parameters had been met to trigger this particular message. It was a report of some type of explosion and subsequent fire in the basement levels of a building in upper Manhattan. Intriguingly, the basement level did not exist in the building plans, which had stumped the first responders on the scene. Even more interesting was the fact that local news agencies were reporting the event to be a localized earthquake, nothing more.