It was a photograph of a face that Cassie knew only too well. “It’s him!” she cried. “The cowboy. You found him!”
Erik remained unmoved by her enthusiasm. “Are you sure that’s the guy you saw?”
“I could never forget that face. It’s him, absolutely. Who is he?”
“His name is Leroy Hunt. He got a dishonorable military discharge after the Gulf War. Too bad nobody checked his psychiatric profile before giving him weapons training. He parlayed that into a career as a pricey hired gun. Somehow he’s managed to stay out of prison because anybody who could place him at a crime scene conveniently disappeared.”
Cassie became lost in the photo. She still couldn’t believe her nightmare had been that accurate. The man she saw in her dream was staring right back at her, and he had a name. She looked up to find Erik studying her intently. “What is it?” she asked.
The young man kept silent for several seconds before asking, “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”
The girl was taken aback. “I… uh… of course. That is… what do you mean?”
“This guy is bad news. He isn’t somebody you should be messing with.”
Cassie decided it was time to return his stare. His eyes were an odd shade of green. There was a hint of gold mixed in, like new spring grass. Brushing that thought aside, she shot back, “My sister is dead! You forget I caught the whole show in 3-D. Do you think I need a lecture from you about risk?”
His face was an unreadable mask. “I think maybe you do because so far nobody has pointed out how dangerous working for the Arkana can be.”
“I made my choice,” she said with more bravado than she felt. She was still deeply ambivalent about her involvement in the organization, but she wasn’t going to let him see that.
“You only think you made a choice,” he contradicted her. “A choice is only a choice if you can actually understand your options.”
“And you’re convinced I didn’t do enough soul searching before I agreed? Gee, it must be nice to be a mind reader.”
He refused to rise to the bait. His voice was dead calm. “I think you acted on impulse. You figured this might be fun because you’re just drifting, and you didn’t have anything better to do.”
Cassie could feel her face flushing to the roots of her hair. He had hit a nerve. “That’s it.” She stood up. “This conversation is over!”
He sprang out of his chair and reached the door before she did. He wedged himself in front of her, blocking the exit. “Wait a minute. You can’t just wander around the vault.”
“What are you going to do? Handcuff me? Shoot me?” She glared at him. Her eyes challenged him to lay a hand on her. “I want to talk to your boss. No, on second thought, I want to talk to your boss’s boss!”
Erik considered the demand. “That would be Maddie.” He stepped away from the door to let her pass. “Maybe she can talk some sense into you.”
“Maybe she can talk some sense into you instead,” she muttered over her shoulder as he escorted her from the Security Division.
***
About ten minutes later, Cassie was seated in the operations director’s office venting to Maddie about Erik’s rude behavior. “He was impossible! I mean, what did I ever do to him?”
Maddie offered no comment during Cassie’s tirade. Her voice was uncharacteristically soft when she finally spoke. “You need to cut him some slack, kiddo. He was closer to Sybil than any of us. It’s his job to coordinate security for the pythia when she’s in the field. He went with your sister on half a dozen recovery missions.”
“That’s just great. Did you ask him why he wasn’t there when she actually needed security? The night she died.”
He was there the night she died,” Maddie corrected mildly. “He just got there five minutes too late. I think he’s been beating himself up for that mistake ever since.” She sighed. “There isn’t anything that you could say that would make him feel any worse.”
“But why attack me?” Cassie protested. “I’m her sister, for crying out loud.”
Maddie paused to consider. “Maybe that’s the reason. It’s because you’re her sister and our new pythia. He’s afraid the same thing might happen to you, and he couldn’t stand to have that on his conscience.”
Cassie relented slightly. She wasn’t any more well-disposed to like Erik, but at least she was ready to move on to a new topic. In a less angry tone, she asked, “Do you know what was I supposed to learn from him?”
“Did he show you the photo of Leroy Hunt?”
Cassie nodded. “Yeah, he said the guy had a reputation for eliminating anybody who could identify him.”
Maddie gave a half-smile. “Then I guess you’re safe until dreams are admissible in court.”
Cassie grew thoughtful. “If this guy has a track record as a gun for hire, then that means he didn’t want the key for himself. Do you have any idea who paid him to find it?”
“It was the Nephilim,” the operations director said matter-of-factly, “though I never would have figured them to tag somebody like that to do their dirty work.”
“The Nephilim? It sounds like a disease.”
Maddie barked out a laugh. “Between you and me, kiddo, that’s how I think of them. As a disease. The name ‘Nephilim’ is Hebrew and, depending on who you listen to, it either means ‘fallen’ as in cursed or ‘wondrous’ as in superhero. The cult plays it both ways. Since I’ve only got a nodding acquaintance with the Bible, my facts may be a little bit sketchy but here goes.
“Way back when in Genesis, the Hebrew god appointed some angels to watch over humankind. After a while, these particular angels got tired of watching and took a fancy to the local tootsies. They started to date them if you know what I mean. The result was a hybrid race of giants known as the Nephilim. The Hebrew god was so mad at this abomination that he started Noah’s flood just to wipe them out. Well, a few of them survived, and their god allowed them to live as demons to tempt humanity. That’s the last time they’re mentioned in the Big Book of Begats.
“Now this is where it gets interesting. Around 1800, a New Englander named Jedediah Proctor had a vision. Jesus came to tell him that, because of his death on the cross, he had redeemed not only the souls of all mankind but the souls of the Nephilim, too. The reason Jesus was giving this intel to Proctor was because Proctor, himself, was a descendant of the Nephilim. Although the Christian god decided to give the half-breeds a second chance, he attached a few caveats.
“Proctor was to go around and gather together the descendants of the Nephilim who by this time were scattered all over the world. They were to band together in communities and behave themselves until the Second Coming. If they were all good boys when the big day came the Christian god would restore them to the rank of angel first class in heaven. If they weren’t so good, not only would they go to hell, but they would be transformed into demons and join the ranks of Lucifer’s satanic minions for all eternity. So, no pressure there.”
“You said boys,” Cassie noted. “What about the girl angels?”
“No such animal,” Maddie stated flatly. “The Nephilim is strictly a boys’ club. They believe only males carry the angelic bloodline. The girls are descendants of their human mothers—breeding stock and nothing more. This creates a little bit of a problem for the cult. Hard to get a date when the girls don’t get any special perks come Judgment Day. It’s an even bigger problem because the Blessed Nephilim are expected to breed in a big way. Jedediah Proctor was told that the Christian god was so disappointed in humans that he wanted the Nephilim to multiply and build up an angelic kingdom on earth. That’s one of the reasons they’re polygamous. They have huge families. The women, aka brood mares, are called consecrated brides to distinguish them from you and me, aka Fallen women. They get a pat on the head for being the wives and mothers of angels, and that’s how they get a guaranteed ticket to heaven. By building up the angelic kingdom. The more k
ids they crank out, especially males, the higher their status upstairs.”
The girl raised dubious eyebrows. “And this Jedediah actually got people to believe him? To follow him?”
“In droves. For the past two hundred years, their numbers have been growing. They keep to themselves mostly and try to avoid contamination from the outside world while they wait for the Second Coming. When Jedediah Proctor died, he passed on his prophetic powers to his successor who is known as the ‘Diviner.’ The diviner claims to get direct revelation from their god about what they’re supposed to do. He’s like the pope and what he says goes. Weird, huh?”
Cassie nodded. “Weird doesn’t begin to cover it.”
Maddie continued. “I wouldn’t care how weird their cult is if they minded their own business, but now they’re messing with us. When Erik followed Leroy Hunt from Sybil’s apartment on the night he broke in, he ended up at the Blessed Nephilim headquarters out in the sticks.”
Cassie was mystified. “I don’t understand. If the Arkana collects artifacts that are pre-biblical, what would this Nephilim cult want with the stone key?”
“Aha!” Maddie jabbed the air for emphasis with a sharp fingernail. “That’s the $64,000- dollar question, and we still don’t know the answer.”
“Maybe it’s what Griffin said. There are lots of overlord sects that would try to destroy the Arkana if they could.”
“You mean one artifact at a time?” the older woman asked jokingly. “That’s got to make for some pretty slow going. Besides, the Nephilim don’t know we exist.”
“They don’t?” The girl was flabbergasted. “Then how did they track down Sybil? They had to know she was the pythia.”
“I don’t think they did. I’m guessing they just blundered across an artifact that they wanted at the same time Sybil was going after it. She was an antique dealer, so they wouldn’t question why she might want it. Something like this has happened a few times before.”
“With the Nephilim?”
Maddie leaned forward across her desk to retrieve her lighter and a pack of cigarettes. “I haven’t had a cigarette all morning, and I’m dying for a smoke. Let’s continue this discussion topside.”
The pair walked to the elevator where Maddie swiped her keycard. Once they started their ascent, she picked up the thread of the conversation. “Now where did I leave off?”
“You said that the Nephilim had taken some Arkana artifacts before this,” Cassie prompted.
“Right. These other episodes happened before I joined the Arkana, so I’m vague on the details. The first time was about twenty-five years ago in the Balkans. Somebody from the recovery team was murdered, and an artifact was intercepted. Then about ten years ago, something similar happened in the Middle East. A team of ours was after an Asherah artifact. She was the main goddess of the Canaanites before the Hebrews invaded the area. By the time we figured out what had happened, two of our operatives were missing, and the artifact was gone. We eventually traced that theft to the Nephilim too.”
Cassie felt a vague sense of uneasiness at Maddie’s words—a memory being jogged loose somewhere at the back of her consciousness. She dismissed it, for the time being, more intent on understanding the strange behavior of the Nephilim. The elevator doors opened on the second floor. They strolled down the long hallway with its vacant offices and meeting rooms.
When they reached the bell tower staircase and began to climb Cassie said, “It just doesn’t make any sense. If the whole point of their existence is to sit around waiting for Judgment Day, then there’s no reason why they should care about some goddess artifact much less kill to get it.”
Maddie paused to catch her breath before saying, “I’m beginning to think it has something to do with their current diviner. His name is Abraham Metcalf. The Nephilim have been around for two hundred years and the Arkana a lot longer than that without our paths ever crossing until right around the time this Metcalf took charge of the organization. It might be he’s got an agenda that we don’t know about.”
The second they cleared the top of the spiral staircase into the tower, the operations director walked directly to the couch, sat down, and lit up a cigarette. “You know I promised Griffin that if the stairs ever got to be too much for me, I would quit cold turkey. I might be a little winded, but I guess my habit is safe for today.”
Cassie sat on the sofa slightly downwind of her companion. “So, the Nephilim are living here in the Midwest?” she asked.
Maddie laughed ruefully. “I wish they could be corralled that easily, but they’ve gone global. They have satellite communities everywhere, and their so-called apostles are out beating the bushes for missing Nephilim as far east as China.”
The girl felt puzzled. “How do they know when they find one? Is there a DNA test? A secret handshake?”
“In the screwiest bit of circular logic ever, they believe that if a guy joins their cult, then that proves he has angel blood. He’s doing what he was meant to.”
“Unbelievable.” Cassie shook her head. “But I still don’t get why anybody would want to join up with them. I mean if their diviner expects them to act like a bunch of lemmings, what’s the appeal?”
Maddie blew out a long puff of smoke, cocked her head to the side, and considered the question. “Try to imagine you’re some poor schmuck with a boring life and low self-esteem. Somebody comes along and tells you you’re descended from a line of angels. You’re better than human. Who wouldn’t like to believe that?
“Besides, I think some people get turned on by the idea of Armageddon. Things go wrong in their own lives, and they automatically believe the whole world needs an overhaul. And who better to make that happen than some overlord god hurling thunderbolts. They can fantasize about a big sky daddy who’s going to kick the asses of everybody who’s ever been mean to them. Then they figure their lives will get better. Of course, that assumes they think they’re on his good side.”
“Still, why would anybody blindly play follow-the-leader like that?”
Maddie waved her hand in the air to waft her growing smoke cloud away from Cassie. “Faith is a tricky thing. A real slippery slope. It has to be balanced with some kind of reality check which people who join these organizations tend to avoid. Hundreds drank the Kool-Aid at Jonestown. A dozen people from Heaven’s Gate committed suicide to board a spaceship. Eighty more loonies let David Koresh blow them up at Waco. Cults are made up of people who let somebody else make their decisions because they don’t trust themselves to know what to do.”
Cassie grew somber as her mind drifted off to another topic. She thought about a man with wavy hair. “Now that you know about this Leroy Hunt character, what are you going to do to him?”
“For the time being, nothing. He’s part of a bigger puzzle. We need to find out why the Nephilim wanted him to steal the key in the first place. Singling him out for retribution at this stage isn’t going to help us get the answers we need.”
The girl felt crestfallen. “In other words, you’re telling me that this guy is never going to have to pay for what he did to Sybil.”
“All in good time.” Maddie gave a knowing smile. “I have a feeling we’re going to cross paths with him again very soon.”
“At the Nephilim headquarters?” Cassie asked hopefully.
“Nope. Somewhere in the vicinity of the lock that fits that stone key. Griffin tells me he should know where to find it any day now.”
Chapter 23 – The Object of My Rejection
Five minutes after the operations director escorted Cassie from the building, she called Erik into her office. The young man wore a sullen expression. He appeared ready for battle.
“Have a seat,” Maddie said tersely.
Erik slouched into a chair and folded his arms across his chest, defiantly propping his feet on the edge of Maddie’s desk.
She looked at the worn heels of his loafers. “You need new shoes,” she commented.
&nbs
p; He gave a wry smile in spite of himself. “Am I busted, chief?”
Maddie shrugged. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me your side?”
“My side of what?” Erik asked defensively.
The operations director shot him a reproachful look. “I think this would go faster if you stopped tap dancing.”
The young man let out an exasperated sigh. “What did she tell you?”
“She said you were rude to her.”
“So Little Miss Tiny got her feelings hurt? Maybe I should send her flowers or something.”
His comment was met by dead silence.
He apparently reconsidered his approach. “You know this whole situation is nuts!”
“You don’t like her? She seems OK to me.”
Erik rubbed the back of his neck. “She isn’t one of us.”
The operations director was taken aback. She remained silent for several seconds before countering, “Her family has been part of the organization for generations.”
“Maybe her family has been, but she was raised as an outsider without a flipping clue what the rest of her relatives were doing.”
Maddie sighed. “So, she came from the outside. Way back when the Arkana first got started, everybody came from the outside.”
Erik laughed humorlessly. “You know this is different. All of us, everybody who’s in the organization now was raised in it or married into it or recruited into it after being screened. From the time I was sixteen, I knew about the family business. I also knew I wanted to be part of it someday. I had years to get used to the idea. And there’s a good reason why it should take years.”
Maddie was about to offer an objection when Erik added softly, “Or do you need to be reminded about your ex?”
“Don’t go there,” the operations director’s voice dropped to a low growl. She didn’t want to have that fiasco thrown in her face. She had thought about bringing her then-husband into the Arkana, but she waited seven years before opening the discussion. Just about the time she was ready to bring him in, he decided to clean out her bank account and head south of the border with a newer model.
The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set Page 12
