by Nathan Parks
“Yes?”
“Eve isn’t Joan, either. Troy is right: she is Nephelium, but just like all the Jerusalem Breed, she has to make the choice on her own.”
“I know, Evan. I am not trying to recreate her. I wish people would just shut up about Joan and let me do my job. I just can’t sit back and watch another one be ruined by the Fallen. She has been used all her life and been trashed by anyone and everyone. She has a rough exterior, but down deep, she just wants to know she belongs.”
“Don’t we all.” It was a statement rather than a question.
“Yes, but she is half mortal, Evan.”
“Yes, and that means she has to make the choice.”
“What if she chooses to go with them?” Leah asked quietly.
“Then she chooses. It lies in her hands.”
“I know.”
*****
Eve repeated the words out loud to herself. “Do you ever question God?”
She looked at the figure in the shadows. “How did you get in here? What are you doing here, Preach?” She remembered asking him that same question on top of the room at the Sanctum.
Isaiah didn’t really know what to say; but he had been close by when she had experienced her break down, and he knew what was going on. He also was aware he had to get her away from Kadar to allow her turning to happen in a neutral area so that she could make a choice without any outside force tainting it.
During the time a Nephelium had their turning, what truly was inside of them usually set them on the course toward which side they would choose. Most of the time a Nephelium was influenced greatly by the clan, so the trend fell in line with their surroundings. That is why Isaiah knew Kadar was trying to keep close tabs on Eve.
“Eve, there is a lot that is taking place, but we have got to get out of here. There isn’t much time, and we also have a very close friend whom we need to rescue.”
“Alfonso?”
“Yes. I am sure I know what is going on. I will tell you how I know on the way; but right now I do know that if I am right, he doesn’t have much longer. We have got to get him out of Arioch’s control,” urged Isaiah.
“Kadar told me that Arioch had Alfonso and was trying to get him to give up some information,” Eve responded.
“That is what I was afraid of. Then we really have got to go. I am telling you that Kadar does not have your best interest at heart.”
“Preach, am I one of them?”
“Yes and no.”
“Then why should I leave if they are who I am?”
“Because you may be like them, but you aren’t one of them--at least not yet.”
“How do you know?”
He drew in a breath, held it, and then let it out. “Eve, I know that I am also Nephelium,” Isaiah answered, “and I chose not to be like them. We do have the free will of mortal man.”
Her eyebrows rose and she sat back, but never took her eyes off him. “You are what?”
He couldn’t avoid it. He had to tell her, but he had to make it short. He didn’t know how long it would be before Kadar came to check on his prized possession.
“Eve, I am Nephelium. I am related to you.”
“But I thought they said that I was the last of the Jerusalem Breed?”
“You are. My heritage traces back to Rephaim’s sister, Avim.”
“But I thought you said that the Jerusalem Breed were the ones who followed Jah.”
“Usually they do, but each of the Nephelium has the chance to make a choice. I chose differently. Actually, I chose not only to follow Jah, but to live my life as a mortal. I did not want to embrace my supernatural side. I have avoided it as much as I could while trying my best to live my life doing Jah’s will . . . but right now we have got to get going or neither of us will have much of a life to live.”
At this point she didn’t care. Her mind was toast, and her body was letting her know that it wasn’t going to take much more.
“There isn’t a chance that you have a cigarette on you, is there?” asked Eve.
Isaiah looked at her with a grin. “You don’t smoke.”
“No, but right now I might as well start. I am thinking it might be the safest thing for me at this point.”
She laughed at herself for that one, and for a moment she felt good again. However, he was right: they needed to go! The most important thing right now was to find Alfonso and Megan. She was sure Kadar could find her with ease, so let him.
Isaiah led the way as they walked past several Nephelium here and there. The good thing about all of this was that pretty much everyone was a “new face” to the other, so as long as they didn’t run into any of the elders of the clan, they were good.
“Preach,” Eve whispered as they walked side by side, avoiding a direct line to an exit. “Why didn’t Leah and the others tell me about you?”
“They didn’t know, either.”
“Oh.”
That was all she could say. She had to think on that one for a few minutes.
“Do they know now?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And?” Eve prompted.
Isaiah didn’t respond, but sped up his walking as they headed toward a fire exit. They made it out without any provocation, and now they just needed to get on Isaiah’s bike and be gone. Isaiah didn’t know how they would get to Alfonso, or, as a matter of fact, where he even was; but he figured that he had a small drive ahead of him to put together a plan. He felt Eve’s arms wrap around him to hold herself onto the bike. It had been a long time since he felt the arms of a woman around him, and it brought a smile to his face.
*****
“So there isn’t a single person who has any idea of where she could have gone or who may have helped her out?” Arioch raged. “Is that what you are telling me?”
Drake had his teeth clenched, knowing that he didn’t need to respond with, “Well, you know it wasn’t our job to watch your whore.” He knew that would be a mistake.
Only a few minutes before, Arioch had taken some time out from the “meet-and-greet” while members were still showing up and decided to check on his precious mortal incubator. He had to start formulating a plan for what he would allow the Family to know he had up his sleeve and what he needed to keep hidden from them for now. To his angry surprise, he discovered he didn’t have as much as he thought he did.
When he arrived at the room, Arioch discovered the door open, the guards immobilized, and Megan gone. The bed showed evidence that someone had lain in it, but there was nothing else to show whether she had gotten up and walked out herself. The guards’ lifeless bodies told him she most likely didn’t.
“Where is Denora?”
Drake shrugged. He had become bolder since his possession, taking on the characteristics of the Possessor that had melded with him; but he wasn’t so stupid as to take it too far.
“I believe she is still with the old man.”
“She can kill him as far as I am concerned,” Arioch spat. “He isn’t any good to us if I can’t get what I need from him; and if he won’t give it to me, then I can make sure that he doesn’t tell anyone else, either.”
He paced back and forth with his chin in his hand, thinking ahead. He had to be several steps ahead of all of this in order to stay in this game, and he had to see if he could come up with a contingency plan for anything that could happen. He knew that the Alliance had to be involved in this; but there was no way they could have known about Megan, unless he had a snitch, or . . . it was possible they just got lucky.
“I’ll bet half The Vortex that the idiot Alliance just got lucky and they have no idea what they just stumbled across,” Arioch said, still thinking.
Drake was standing in the doorway of the room with his arms crossed as he heard footsteps coming up behind him. He turned and looked down the hallway in time to see Denora.
“Speaking of . . .”
“Don’t say it, Halfling,” she seethed. “What do you need?”
“I
don’t need you, but he does,” Drake said while motioning toward Arioch.
She stepped into the room and surveyed the situation. “Wow, so where’s the tramp?” she asked, not hiding her disgust for anything mortal.
In a flash Arioch was in front of her, and she reeled back by his hand hitting hard across her face, her skin burning from the impact. She rose up, and bore her fangs at him with fury and anger.
“Go ahead, you stupid idiot! Try it again, and I will gut you where you stand, Arioch! You aren’t a true Overlord, yet! You forget that you need me in order to pull this scheme off. I am not one of your bar dancers or bed whores. You do anything like that again, and so help me, you will wish that Adremalech had kept you as a bodyguard--not for his protection, but for yours.”
“Listen, Denora, I may not be an Overlord yet, but I will be--with you or without you. If you think that I can’t make your life just as miserable, you try me. I am still the authority around here. You will do what I say, when I say it, how I say it, and you will not forget your position in this clan.”
“Hmm . . . look who’s talking,” she muttered, refusing to nurse her face in order to not give him the satisfaction. “So answer my question, ‘why did you want me?’”
“Has the Watcher said anything or showed any sign of providing what we need?”
She shook her head. “No, and honestly, as much as I would love to continue with what I do best, I don’t think his mortal body is going to take much more. I don’t want to move forward unless you say I can. You know there isn’t anything more I would love to do but bleed him out.”
“No, not yet. I may need him for the Gathering. What I need you and Drake to do right now is see if you can find out where this girl is,” he said, motioning toward the bed, indicating Megan. “I need all the cards I can get, and I am not going to let that one slip through my fingers. She is too important. I think the Alliance was looking for the old man and stumbled upon a helpless young lady, not knowing why she was here. We can’t afford for them to discover that she is pregnant.”
“Let me take some of my team,” Denora requested. “We can move faster than if I have him,” nodding her head toward Drake. “He will slow us down.”
“No, you both better start learning to work together, because I am going to be using you a lot once we break free from Adremalech. You can do it my way and do it well, or do it my way and deal with my wrath.”
“Fine, but I won’t wait for him,” she sneered. “If the Alliance did take her, they most likely took her to the Sanctum.”
“Then I suggest you find your way there and get her back before the Gathering.”
“Done,” Denora stated, but to Drake she spat, “Let’s go, Halfling.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Sanctum looked like a beehive abuzz with action. There would be no one leaving unless they were headed out to their assignment. This was full activation. The armory was packed with members signing out equipment and ensuring that it all worked properly. The conference rooms had all been turned into team gathering areas, active with last minute preps. The motor pool was full of bikes and fast cars and even one humvee.
Ki had stopped in the Ops Center to make sure that all the computer networks were up and the satellite links online. He had turned everything over to one of his team members and then joined Troy and Leah in her living area.
“So honestly, before you all go get things done you need to get done before tonight, I need to know where we stand with our team,” Leah stated.
“This is it for now, Leah,” Troy said with coolness in his voice. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others, but I spoke with Isaiah.”
“You did?” she said with some excitement and anticipation in her voice. “When?”
“When I was waiting for Ki to get back from The Vortex, he walked in and said something about all of us needing to work together.”
“What did you say to him, Troy?” Leah asked. “Do we know where he is right now?”
“No, I couldn’t talk to him, Leah. How do we know we can trust him? All of this time he has lived a lie right beneath our noses.”
“Troy, what did you say to him?” Leah repeated with more urgency.
“I just told him I couldn’t work with him and that there wasn’t any place for him on our team.”
“AHH!” Leah exclaimed loudly, her fist hitting empty air as her anger bubbled to the surface. “Come on, Troy! We need everyone we have, and he has never steered us wrong!”
“Wrong? How about truthfully? Leah, he wasn’t just my friend, but a pastor! How could he stand in the pulpit week after week and yet not be living the truth that he was preaching about? How could he stand there and look at his people in the face, and yet the whole time they didn’t even know what they had behind their pulpit?”
She looked at him, her anger rising further. She couldn’t stand near him because she was scared she would hit him.
“So you’re telling me that we can trust everything you do or say? Are you telling me you have always been true to those around you? Is that it, Troy?”
“No, but I am not a preacher, either.”
“Oh! I get it! So a preacher is someone who has special ‘non-sinning’ abilities or a ‘do-nothing-wrong’ clause? Come on, Troy! He is human, just like you!”
Troy was getting angry now. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He wasn’t the one who had lied for so many years and betrayed the trust of the very people he supposedly cared about the most.
“No! That’s the issue, Leah. He isn’t human like me! He isn’t anything like me!”
“So what if he’s not? Did he actually lie to you about who he really is? Is it because your trust was betrayed, or is it because he isn’t exactly the way you thought him to be that bothers you the most, Troy?”
Ki just backed up and let the two go at it.
“Why are you getting angry at me, Leah? I didn’t do anything wrong here! I am not the one who has betrayed everyone!”
“Has Isaiah betrayed, though? Do we know for a fact that he has betrayed everyone, or is there something that has come to light that he never shared with us? Who made you judge and jury all of a sudden, Troy? You were given another chance out there on the battlefield in Iraq, and now you think you have the ‘all powerful gavel of justice’?”
Troy was infuriated. He threw his gear down and walked out. He wasn’t going to put up with this. Here he was the one getting rebuked and he had done nothing wrong, all the while the very one that should be getting blasted, a friend of so many years, wasn’t even here to be a part of this.
Leah stopped, raised her hands to her head, interlaced her fingers in her hair, and just stood there.
“What do we do now? Here we are on the verge of something that could be the biggest event since the start of mortal man, and we have a team that is splintered. What do you think, Ki?”
He stood there for a second not saying anything. He wasn’t really sure what to say. He could see Leah’s point. However, at the same time, he had felt a lot of the same feelings Troy had felt; and Troy had been closer to Isaiah. He stood up and started working his gear before he spoke.
“I don’t know what to think, Leah. I honestly don’t. I mean I never would have imagined standing on the brink of a clan war and watching an Alliance team break apart like this, but maybe this is just a test. We keep ‘talking’ about the choices that Eve has to make, but you know, I believe we are all right there with her. I can understand what Troy is feeling, but at the same time I can understand what you are saying. I think we just need to take some time before we kick this thing off to just get our minds focused.”
“Do you think we can count on Isaiah?”
“I don’t know. I would like to think so, but I don’t know honestly, Leah. What I do know is this: no matter what, we have a job to do; and the very reason we are here and exist is to keep this trash from pouring out into the mortals’ world. That still stands.”
Leah nodded.
“You’re right. Go get the things done you need to get done, and then I want to see you and Troy back here about seven tonight. The Gathering most likely will kick off at The Vortex late tonight at the height of the evening’s party life.”
He didn’t say anything more, but just took his gear and left quietly. She watched him go and then plopped down into one of her chairs. Her fingers went to the chain around her neck. She began to play with it as she began to really try to bring all of this into where it needed to be: focused.
*****
Isaiah cut the engine off and allowed Eve to get off the bike first before he dismounted as he looked around. He didn’t see any sign of activity around them; but, then again, if Kadar had already noticed Eve was gone and had sent someone out to find her, then they probably wouldn’t be right out in the open.
“So where are we?” he asked Eve.
She had told him she knew of a place where they could go, so he had let her guide him. They were standing outside a high rise building, a place with which he really wasn’t familiar.
“A friend’s place,” she stated. “They won’t look for us here, because my friend has no idea about any of what has been taking place. As far as I know, they don’t really know anything about her, either.”
“You say a friend?”
“Yeah, she works for me at The Broken Tear. I know she won’t mind if we stay here until we can figure out what we need to do. Kadar knows where I work, and I know he knows where Megan’s apartment is. We need some place where we can just think and talk. I have some questions for you.”
Isaiah and Eve went through the lobby and didn’t have to wait too long for the elevator. In the elevator they each stood on opposite sides and enjoyed the few moments to just “be.” Isaiah looked at the small billboard in the elevator which held flyers announcing different community events that were taking place within the high rise, and then his eyes rested on his partner. She was beautiful--rough and disheveled--but beautiful. She was strong, but he knew from their time on top of the Sanctum that she needed the chance to be weak. She had been the warrior for way too long, and she just needed rest. He knew that rest probably wouldn’t come any time soon for her, though.
