The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences (The Second Coming Chronicles Book 2)

by Terry James

  Mark launched from the board, the strength of his youth returning to his body. He raised his hands he clasped together in a tight, single fist, lifted his arms high above his head, and came down full force on the back of Robbins’ neck at the top of the spine.

  The body collapsed, the entity within screaming in fury while Mark lunged through the split in the wall that had developed during the quaking.

  The room had grown completely dark. Susie continued to pray, her grip on the gurneys to her right and left keeping her from falling in the violent shaking, the shaking that suddenly stopped.

  The room burst with light –so bright that she couldn’t see its source. Then it dimmed, becoming separate orbs of effulgence. Spheres of light hovered over the bodies of Lori and Morgan.

  Susie backed away from the gurneys, her gaze transfixed on the fantastic display of light.

  The orbs hovered and pulsed with life beyond the earthly. Thousands of lights of colors she had not seen in her lifetime streamed into the bodies of her friends. The spheres, when their work was done, merged to become a singularity, grew bright beyond comprehension, and dissipated to nothingness.

  Lori and Morgan sat on the edges of the gurneys, curiously examining their own bodies, looking at each other, then at the broadly smiling Susie Banyon.

  “The subject has escaped!” the beast within Blake Robbins’ body screamed into the intercom, causing the black ops chief to manipulate the controls on the board before him.

  “The BORGs! Intercept the subject!”

  Mark hurried through hallway after hallway, searching for openings in the walls. Any of the strange sliding-door breaches in the walls would do.

  “Please, dear Lord,” he prayed silently while hurrying through the corridors. “Let me find them…”

  Another earth shock jolted Mark, sending him careening off the wall to his left. When his shoulder contacted the barrier, the wall split.

  “Thanks, Lord,” he said, picking himself up from the new corridor’s floor after stumbling through the opening. “But, is there a subtler way to direct me to them?”

  The grin at his own little joke melted instantaneously when his eyes met with a nightmarish form that appeared as if out of the air. It was the thing that had haunted his dreams for as long as he could remember. But it wasn’t a monster of boiling cloud-like matter. It was a beast of immense size, covered in hair, and having fangs at least three inches long.

  The creature stood to the corridor ceiling, its reddish, glistening eyes seeming to project the flames of the lake of fire. Its mouth opened, the jagged teeth chomping with jowls that could detach a man’s arm with a single bite.

  Mark backed slowly from the thing, turning abruptly when he heard a noise behind him. Another creature blocked his path!

  Both beasts crouched for attack. They would tear him apart in seconds.

  Mark caught a glimpse of movement to his right –a movement he had no time to analyze. He leaped sideways toward the movement, and through the wall’s opening.

  Another door opened!

  He glanced back while he ran down the new corridor, seeing the giant’s massive forearm protruding through the split. Soon they would be through the breach. He had to find his wife and daughter and get them out of this maze of horrors.

  “Jeddy went this way,” Clark said, seeing the rottweiler’s hindquarters disappear through an opening. They followed, stopping to investigate the strange area into which the dog had passed.

  The area was labyrinthine, the darkened, cavernous chamber alive with constantly changing lights of many ominous hues.

  “Weird,” Kristi said, peering into the room that looked to be as large as a domed sports stadium.

  “Let’s go,” Nigel said. “We’ve got no choice.”

  Clark was already through the opening and moving behind Jeddy. He saw them, then. Hundreds of them! His nightmares come to life.

  The broiling, sparking creatures were everywhere in the chamber, moving in and out of the walls, the gleaming floor. They were the nightmare beasts of a thousand dreams he and his sister had endured…

  He stood among them, as did the others, who had caught up with him and the dog. The things didn’t notice the five people and the rottweiler…

  “What is it, Clark?” Kristi said, gripping his arm and holding him close.

  “Can’t you see them?” Clark said, his eyes wide while watching the creatures milling about the vast chamber.

  “There’s no one there, chap,” the Brit said.

  “Yes, there is,” David Prouse said, looking about the massive room, but seeing nothing. “They are here, all right. But, Clark is the only one who can see them.”

  “Let’s just find Morgie and her mom and dad, and get the heck out of here,” Cassie said, holding on to David.

  Jeddy started to move again, his nose sniffing the air. Clark followed him, warily eyeing the creatures that seemed oblivious to them. The others crowded close behind, letting the dog have his head in the matter of tracking the one he loved most.

  Susie examined Lori and Morgan for any injuries. Satisfied there were none, she asked, “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  “Where are we, Susie?” Lori asked, still woozy.

  “What’s going on, Mrs. Banyon?” Morgan echoed, her mind again fully conscious.

  Morgan clung to her mother, looking at her, and brushing her hair from her cheek.

  “Mom, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. I remember being injected with something –and waking up.”

  “It’s part of things we went through long ago, Lori, remember?” Susie said, seeing in Lori’s eyes the beginning of return to awareness.

  Morgan said, “I remember being on a sleigh ride with…with this guy. Then, I saw some weird lights, like disks that were full of light--like UFOs or something.”

  “Yes. We were coming to get you and your brother. Where’s Clark?”

  “My brother? What is he doing here?” Morgan said.

  “Long story, sweetheart,” Susie said. “You’ll get your explanations. Right now, we’ve got to get out of this place –as the song goes…”

  The five followed the dog to the center of the huge room, to a large, rounded walled area of polished metal. The massive cylindrical enclosure went almost to the domed ceiling.

  Jeddy stood in front of the wall, pawing violently at its base. He growled and whined between moments of putting his nose to the bottom of the wall, then scratching at the floor.

  Clark looked around them, seeing the beastly black, cloud-like creatures emerging and disappearing from and into the domed chamber. None of the entities indicated they noticed the five, all of whom, except for him, failed to see the creatures. Even the dog was oblivious to them.

  “Okay. It’s worked so far,” Nigel Saxton said, activating Zeke’s flashlight. The wall split upon the beam’s illumination.

  When inside, the air about their heads swam with strange vibrations that reached near painful levels. They pressed forward, to an inner-chamber whose wall looked to be constructed of the same type of metal.

  Jeddy now was in a full state of agitation, slamming his paws against the wall and biting at the floor at its base.

  Saxton directed the light at the barrier. The wall glided apart in a silent, sliding action. The rottweiler leaped through the opening.

  “Peanut!”

  Morgan’s greeting had scarcely left her mouth when her friend was upon her, knocking her backward with his paws upon her shoulders, his huge tongue lashing at her face in uncontrolled excitement.

  Kristi and Cassie’s greetings were only slightly less enthusiastic, followed by a long embrace by brother, sister, and mother.

  The room began to shake, nearly knocking them off their feet.

  “We must be on our way,” the Brit said, trying to nudge the group toward the opening by gently pushing them in that direction.

  “Where’s Mark?!” Lori’s shouted above the rumb
ling sounds of the quake.

  “This seems the center of their little universe,” Nigel said, letting his eyes peruse the area. “You and your husband are central to their purposes. He must be in this general vicinity.”

  “You ladies stay put, if you don’t mind,” the Brit said. “One of you gents want to come with me to look for him?”

  “I’m going,” Clark said. “David, take care of them.”

  “No! I’m going, too,” Kristi argued.

  “No, Kristi. Stay with us,” Morgan said, wrapping her arms around her friend. “Clark will be okay. He has to find Dad.”

  Jeddy looked to his mistress, uncertain of his priority.

  “Go with Clark, Peanut. Go. Find Dad,” she said.

  “Come, Jed,” Saxton said, his eyes meeting those of Morgan.

  “We’ll find your father,” the Brit said, turning then to hurry out of the chamber behind Clark and the rottweiler.

  The things called to him in the constantly changing in colors, multi-hued semi-darkness.

  George Jenkins jerked around to see the trio –the thin male forms with white hair and pasty skin who spoke as one through the center entity.

  “You are failing, George Jenkins. You were forewarned of consequences of failure.”

  The words issued in a cacophonous hiss from the slit that was the being’s mouth.

  “I--I am getting things under control…”

  “You are failing,” the figure said in echoing but calm resonance. “Only the physical can deal with the circumstance, Jenkins. We are helpless. The Elohim forces prevent our intervention. However, there is no such prohibition in our dealing with you.”

  “We have Lansing isolated in a peripheral corridor. It’s just a matter of time.”

  The room convulsed with an earth shock that caused both Jenkins and April Warmath to grab for the control board behind them.

  “As you see, Jenkins, time is fleeting. The earth-moment is now. Release the BORGs. The hybrids, although of interdimensional gentinasis, are permitted interaction within your world.”

  The black ops chief let the beings’ words sink in. He didn’t understand the terminology, but he agreed that the strategy was his only hope. It came down to a matter of brute physical force.

  The room shook again, causing the human occupants to jostle against each other and the control board. When the quaking stopped, the triumvirate of entities had vanished.

  Jenkins reached for the buttons on the board when he recovered. He shouted into the tube-like microphone suspended from high on the wall of monitors. “Release the BORGs! I want them in every corridor in Sector Charlie! They are to destroy Lansing and the others!”

  The earth convulsions grew more violent. David and the women clung to the gurneys, or to each other with each subsequent shock.

  “Do you think we should get out?” Kristi asked, looking to David Prouse.

  “No!” Morgan said, governing with a milder tone, then, her one-word answer that had burst with adamancy.

  “No, Kristi. Not until they find Dad. If we go from here, they wouldn’t know where to find us.”

  “What about those who know we’re here?” Cassie asked. “They will surely come to…deal with us.”

  “They didn’t know we were here while we walked through the middle of them,” David said. “We are under some sort of cloaking –just like I said…”

  “What about them, though?” Kristi said, gesturing toward the women. “They could see Mrs. Banyon, Mrs. Lansing, and Morgan.”

  “You’re right, Kristi,” he said.

  “Lori, Morgan, get on the gurneys,” Susie Banyon said. “They don’t know anything has changed–except that there’s been a whole lot of shaking going on…”

  “Yes. And, you can stand between the gurneys, like you said you were before the spheres, or whatever they were, brought them out of their sleep,” David said, moving to help Lori and her daughter climb upon the tables.

  Susie covered Lori with the covering as before, while Kristi and Cassie smoothed the cloth over Morgan so that it covered their friend from foot to neck.

  “All I have left in this,” David said, holding the .9 mm pistol toward the ceiling for them to see. “…is three shots. But, at least it’s something.”

  Saxton knew that they could move pretty much with impunity, so long as the rottweiler showed no signs that he sensed unwanted company within the hallways ahead. The Brit couldn’t figure how the dog seemed to know exactly where he was headed. Jeddy had not been given Mark Lansing’s scent--just one more strange instance in a series of inexplicable occurrences, he thought, walking several meters behind the dog, the pistol at the ready.

  The flashlight! He grasped for the flashlight. Yes, it was there, attached to his belt. He felt a rush of relief. Zeke’s strange gift--did it really have special…properties? The thought gnawed at him while he and Clark moved from one hall to another. So far, all was clear. Should he have left the instrument with David? To protect the women?

  “Jed smells something, Nigel!” Clark Lansing’s warning caused both men to stop, then move to near the corridor wall. They watched the dog stiffen, muscles swelling, fur bristling.

  Something lay ahead, and the rottweiler poised to attack. Then, just as Nigel and Clark expected confrontation with whatever monsters awaited, Jeddy relaxed and bounded ahead. He moved in a friendly body language, and his human companions looked at each other while the dog disappeared around the corner of an intersecting hallway.

  They proceeded cautiously, their backs to the wall. Seconds later, Jeddy jumped at a man in white attire while both the man and the dog rounded the corner.

  “Dad!” Mark’s shout of greeting brought him and his father together in an embrace that only a father and son, long separated, could manage. It was a moment of reunion each savored beyond which any words could express.

  Blake Robbins walked through the split in the wall, followed by April Warmath and three black-uniformed men. David, Cassie, and Kristi jerked to attention at the sudden appearance in the opening. Susie turned from her position between her friends lying on the gurneys.

  “You were wise not to run when the quake opened the door, Mrs. Banyon,” Robbins said from behind dark goggles with a satisfied smile. “We couldn’t have guaranteed your safety within the complex.”

  David and the girls stood away from the scene, astonished at the newest arrivals’ apparent inability to see them.

  “Why don’t you just release us? What threat are three women to you, and…” Susie gesticulated with a sweep of her hand. “…all of this?”

  “You will be…released,” Robbins said in a way that harbored sinister meaning. “But, we have things yet to accomplish with our friends, the Lansings.”

  “What things?” Susie asked, stalling –but for what purpose, she couldn’t figure. Just stall was her only thought in asking the questions.

  “We owe you no explanations, madam, but I’m feeling particularly generous. Miss Warmath, will you please open the Nephal IC?”

  “Nephal IC?” Susie said, watching Robbins’ companion pull from her jumpsuit pocket a small instrument, which she pointed toward one wall that began sliding slowly apart.

  “Incubation Chamber, Mrs. Banyon. The Nephals—well, let us introduce you.”

  The chamber’s interior was of a dark, sanguine hue. At its center sat a large container that appeared to be a perfect sphere of clear glass.

  Susie saw them, then, and they grew within the thick, clear fluid that surrounded them when they floated to the glass-like barrier. Two small children –perhaps two, maybe three years old. Their crystal blue eyes were wide, and they stared at her. The eyes telepathically called to her…to her maternity, to her humanity, to her spirit…

  “These Nephals are the focus of our mission. Our imperatives for this entire project.”

  The children were beautiful, transfixing. David, Cassie, and Kristi –like Susie-- watched the irresistible gaze of the little boys, while the ch
ildren stared back in wide-eyed innocence. Their perfect, round cheeks exuded life and health beneath stunningly white shocks of hair. Their chubby, naked bodies, perfection –as if a master had painted them as cherubs in some ancient portrait of heavenly portent.

  “These children…are Nephals. They are offspring of the combination of, shall we say, this human realm, and a realm of another sort,” Blake Robbins said. “Myth-makers would say they are the children of the gods. And, of course, they are partly human, as they spring from the biological contributions of human women. Actually, one of these Nephals is from a combination of the Lansing offspring –the male, Clark Lansing. The other is from the girl, Morgan Lansing. Their genetic materials, at least. Those of the other realm--how can I simplify?--merged, for lack of a more descriptive term, to create the right combination of god…and human.

  “Why?” Susie asked. “To produce a new kind of man? Like Hitler and the Aryan myth debacle?”

  Robbins hissed a disgruntled sigh of exasperation. “Of course, you cannot comprehend,” he said, becoming more pedantic in tone. “These are the first. They--one of them— is the prince that will rule the kingdom that has now come to this planet of human ineptitude and error. The other Nephal child will grow –exponentially—to point to the first, to convince the world of who he is. The others who will be Nephals –many others—will serve as armies that can move about by new technologies. Teletransportation, I think your entertainment geniuses call it. The Transporter of Star Trek fame?”

  Robbins became less effusive with his words, turning almost introspective while he spoke.

  “The creatures that are the product of those other realms combined with certain animal life forms –the Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch –whatever you have called them, can be moved about –appear and disappear through technologies. But human flesh had to be…adjusted. That is, the combination of those of the other realm and human genetics have produced –or will eventually produce—a hybrid that can be taken apart and reunified at the molecular–the atomic levels. Like Scotty did each time he beamed somebody up…”