by D B Nielsen
Grabbing a clean set of underwear, a pair of jeans, loose white t-shirt and a button-up chambray over-shirt, I was about to make my way to the bathroom when I was stopped mid-step by my sister’s patronising voice.
Leaning back upon the fluffy pillows, Fi said, ‘You’re not going to wear that are you?’
‘Why? Is it a problem? What’s wrong with it?’ I asked perplexed, looking from my typical outfit to my sister, whose metallic silver skinny pants, boho blouse and bright turquoise moto jacket made her look like a Victoria Secret’s model where she lay upon the king size bed.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ She sounded like I had just announced I’d taken up binge drinking or something equally horrific. ‘Epic fail, Sage. We’re in Rome. Rome. Do you have any idea what that means?’
I had a rough idea from her tone what it meant – at least, to her.
‘But it’s only breakfast with the guys,’ I protested in a whiny voice.
‘I don’t care if it’s only breakfast on a private terrace and no one is going to see you! It’s a travesty to wear what you’re thinking of wearing in Rome!’ Discarding her coffee on the bedside table, she leapt off the bed and pulled out a few items from her Samsonite suitcase. Holding them out to me, she ordered, ‘Here. Wear these.’
‘Oh hell no.’ I looked at the black mini and cream lacy top and set my jaw rebelliously. ‘Are you trying to colour coordinate me with the room? No way!’
‘We’ll see about that.’ Her smile was as over-bright as her metallic pants as I backed away. She tossed a short-waisted plaid jacket at me to complete the ensemble. ‘Now go put it on.’
Hastily, I retreated to the ensuite to take a shower and change, cursing my luck at having a glam sibling. But my stomach was taking on a life of its own, growling in desperation to be fed, and I gave up arguing with her – besides, I doubted that anyone other than the Anakim and Elijah were going to see me dressed in this getup anyway.
The bathroom was equally well-appointed as the bedroom in cool Carrera marble and silver tapware, with fresh white rose buds in a crystal vase on the shelf and designer toiletries in a pretty basket. And, in spite of my desire to hurry to breakfast, I climbed into a steaming bath and indulged in a moment of absolute pleasure. Sinking back and enjoying the luxury of the hot water lapping at my tired muscles and washing away the dried sweat on my skin, I began to hum softly to myself. In time, I lathered my hair with a gentle shampoo and rinsed it by floating on my back, the long chestnut skeins spreading around me in the water as if I were a mermaid.
But, even though I tried to hold onto my serenity, it couldn’t last. The bathroom was now suffused in the fragrance of damask rose, myrrh and vanilla, recalling me to my purpose. And I was desperately afraid that, sooner or later, I was going to have to take up the burden of the seraph blade once more and try to unlock St. John from the poison that held him captive. Fearful, I wondered if I would have to make the ultimate sacrifice and destroy his mind to break him free. And, even if he should retain his wits, I wondered if he would lose all memory of me and what we meant to each other.
By the time I climbed out of the bathtub, the water had turned tepid.
I quickly towel-dried and combed out my long hair, leaving it down to dry naturally – an absolute blasphemy in my sister’s book – applied moisturiser and a dab of cherry lip gloss, and dressed in the clothes she’d provided. Admittedly, they looked good on me and I felt my spirits rise – but there was no way I was going to open up a can of worms by telling her that, as I knew from the past it would mean her repeated attempts to make me into a mannequin.
Returning to the bedroom, I noted Fi’s absence and, in her place, a pair of black tights and knee-high boots were awaiting me. Thankfully, they were low-heeled. My bruises had already mended and my aches and pains felt better after the bath. I checked the clock beside the bed; it was going on ten – I’d slept for more than twenty-four hours and instead of eating breakfast, it would be more like brunch. But I didn’t bother lamenting another day wasted – I just chalked it up on the board and tried to move on.
I could hear my sister’s laughter and several melodious manly voices carrying through the open window, but what had me hurrying was the smell of freshly baked bread and pastries and other delicacies. I took a deep breath and stepped out onto the terrace.
Crossing the ochre coloured paving tiles, I was halfway to the table when I saw him sitting with his back towards me. I watched – paralysed, frozen – as he shook his head; the sunlight turning his slightly curly locks, the colour of polished bronze, into a bright halo. It contrasted against his signature black clothing as he then gestured in the most familiar manner, making me catch my breath in shocked anticipation.
‘Sage.’ I heard Gabriel call out my name – no doubt concerned at how long I had been standing immobilised – but all my concentration was on the man seated before me, seemingly unaware of my presence.
And then he turned around and faced me.
And I could have wept, cried out, hit out at something – anything – swallowing down the bitterness eating me up inside. It kept catching me raw and unaware.
His eyes were bottomless pits of darkness, a soul-destroying abyss. Yet, in every other respect, even to the minutest mannerism, in human form Elijah was the doppelganger of his son – even more so than the identical nature of my twin sister and me. Except that he wasn’t his son.
Stupid, Sage. Stupid.
Giving up on the need to observe the protocols provided by St. John and not use any names, I asked as I approached the table, ‘Gabriel, is there any news? Have you heard anything from St. John? Or about him? And Belladonna?’
The pleasant mood and camaraderie between the others was broken with my terse questioning. Immediately sober, Gabriel shot a liquid lightning glance at his men as if bidding them to hold their tongues in my presence. Perhaps he did not expect me to note it, but I felt they were keeping something from me and it filled me with dread.
‘Sage, ma petit puce, come and sit down,’ he said, patting the empty chair beside him.
They were keeping something from me. I knew it. But most of all, I feared it. I thought about St. John. And Belladonna. I couldn’t get her poison out of my mind. And I hated her a little more with each passing moment. My hatred for her seethed inside of me and all the tortures of Tartaros would never be enough to sate my abhorrence.
‘Have something to eat, child. You must be famished.’ This from Zeke whose baby-faced looks made me feel like he was mocking me, even though it was probably the furthest thing from his mind.
A pain stabbed at my left temple and I pressed my hand against it. I felt the edge of the seraph blade against my mind.
Think, Sage. Think.
I was being selfish again. Thinking only of my worry for St. John and forgetting the Anakim, my family, my friends, my workmates at the museum, the millions who would suffer because of Semyaza. The butterflies returned causing a hurricane in the pit of my stomach and my skin prickled into goose bumps. I was ashamed of myself.
The pressure eased.
‘Sage, come and sit down.’ Fi was by my side, urging me to accompany her to the nearest empty seat. Unfortunately, it was across from Elijah – and it took all of my willpower to look at him and ruthlessly try to suppress all thoughts of his son. But I managed it.
The pain disappeared completely.
Yet it was to be replaced with a chill that cut to the marrow with his next words, as if he knew exactly what I had been thinking.
‘There are a few – hand-picked, appointed – those singled out by fate. They are Chosen – elected to perform an extraordinary role as fate dictates. These few are permitted certain privileges. Gifted and rewarded. And tormented and tested.’ Elijah steepled his fingers to rest his chin upon; as if, meditatively, contemplating the brilliance of the universe. His dark eyes stared me down; unblinking eyes that had stared into the golden molten heart of the sun. ‘For mere mortals, the hours creep gradually
by until the end of time. Each hour draws them inexorably closer to a receding future and death. Each hour is a yearning for an illusory past. The horizons loom large in their immensity because these others are but lesser beings. But if this were not the case, there would be no purpose in living. For it has been written. And the Author of all our fates has ordained it. These Chosen few must be. And pain and suffering and death too. So that these little people, the multitude upon the earth, may value truth and beauty and life more.’
The Anakim warriors seated around the table had fallen silent. And all of my many accumulating, seething, brewing questions shrivelled and died. Elijah reached out across the table, across the half-eaten plates of food, across the bucket of complimentary chilled Krug champagne, across the sweet-smelling floral table centre, to me.
‘Wise One.’ There were aeons of empathy in the Watcher’s unexpectedly warm touch as he laid his hand upon mine. ‘I had forgotten the old quests for truth and enlightenment that I was sent here for. Other needs and cares held me. Other urgencies. Love consumes. I have known love, and it was a casualty. Such extraordinary love requires extraordinary sacrifice. Be cautious when walking in darkness alone. Be certain that this is what you wish for.’ His eyes seemed to encompass both me and my sister. And, in it, he spoke of the fall of this one tragic figure, once Grigori, beloved of God – the fall from grace, from beauty, from perfection, such as we had never known – for love. He ended with gentle counsel, ‘Heed me, Wise One, such extraordinary love and sacrifice can destroy as easily as it can create. There will be a price to pay.’
A cloud passed over the sun and immediately we were plunged into a stuttering light that struggled against the darkness. I shivered, experiencing a bone-deep fear and yearning. But I had made a promise long ago – before I knew what it meant that I was promising – and even now, in the face of untold and endless suffering, I would keep that promise. Because it was made with my whole heart and soul when St. John had asked it of me in the Jardin des Tuileries. And if I was St. John’s destiny, so was he mine.
‘May I serve you tea?’ Kal offered, breaking the silence that reigned after the Watcher’s words, and I thanked him, gratefully accepting a cup.
I noticed that he did not drink tea himself – and was to later learn that he didn’t actually like drinking tea, finding it too weak compared to his preferred morning beverage; strong black coffee. But Kal was ancient and, in his preference to maintain social conventions, found it comforting that not everything of the past had been lost to time, such as the ancient ritual of serving tea the world over, which he did with great finesse.
Taking a fortifying sip, I wrapped my hands around the teacup, feeling the need to dispel the momentary chill.
At some point, Gabriel had moved away from the table and now stood overlooking Rome’s cityscape whilst my sister’s face looked stricken, staring down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. I doubted if either of them knew what it was they were staring at – blinded by the flickering light, by Elijah’s words, staring unseeingly – perhaps for the same, perhaps for different reasons. I knew not. And I didn’t wish to intrude on their privacy of thought.
The fitful sunlight wavered and flickered again, bleak with a deepening shadow.
‘The sons of the Grigori come,’ Elijah observed unconcernedly.
As he pronounced this, I suddenly beheld a flock of birds, at some distance, advancing towards us with supernatural speed. This was what I’d believed to be the cloud formation that had caused the light to waver fitfully.
‘The Fravashi,’ Fi breathed out the word as her head jerked up; her voice trembling with rage and horror.
Abhorrent yet magnificent, these foul creatures drew nearer. Their winged, shadowy forms were outlined against the sun. And, as I perceived their leader, Sariel, at the forefront of the pack, a red mist came over my eyes.
I had thought he had died. I had hoped he had died.
‘Mizrael!’ I hissed from between clenched teeth. And, jumping to my feet agitatedly, uncaring that the wrought iron chair I had been sitting on clattered loudly upon the paved tiles, I sought to collect the Archangel’s blade and wield it against them. Yet already the Anakim prepared to fight; their blood boiling, surging in their veins as they soared at the single cry from Gabriel.
‘STOP!’ I yelled out to the Anakim, fearing for my friends, even as I saw that wrath and hatred and the furious desire to protect my sister and me deprived them of clarity of reason.
Their fury was without bounds; they hurled themselves forth with ferocity and went wheeling into the air to spring upon their foe – these forsaken, these Fravashi fiends – impelled by all the vehement passions that can arm one being against the existence of another.
‘Be calm. They have anticipated this reception. They are no threat to the Wise One.’
In all the chaos and anarchy, the Watcher remained unmoved. His voice rang with authority above the din. And then I felt a sudden tingling in my hand where I had been marked by the Seed, and it seemed somehow that a window had opened within my mind, permitting me the luxury of foresight, even as there was a sense of an eternity stretching both into the remembered past and the imagined future – of immeasurable decades and centuries and millennia – driving through the hollow and coil of seamless ocean, roiling like water-logged clouds in a vast, ponderous sky, revealing a ceaselessly recurring, unbearably moving, loss and bitter anguish and malignity that was the Fravashi.
‘Do something!’ urged my sister, turning anxious eyes on the Watcher.
‘What would you have me do?’ Elijah asked evenly as the sound of the deepening sky crackled with impending thunder and lightning.
‘Stop them!’ I screamed in a panic.
For the briefest of moments, the Watcher looked at me intently – observing me with an almost clinical interest until his natural affinity to show compassion asserted itself.
‘Very well. You may wish to cover your ears.’
He stood then and spoke a single, archaic word – a word I innately knew but did not understand – and, at that word, the roaring in my mind was overwhelming.
Suddenly, the fallen angel rose up, growing like a living tree, towering above me, increasing in immensity, foot by foot. Twelve feet tall – equally as tall as the Archangel Michael and, in his own way, a resplendent and terrifying figure – in all his full majesty and glory. The force of his angelic origins dazzled my eyes and I shrank before him, stunned and scared.
‘Bloody hell.’ Fi’s expression as she gazed up at the Watcher was rapt.
Gradually, beneath the palest skin of naked shoulders and muscular arms, extraordinary tattoos and symbols began to appear. Faint at first, a mere marbling of silver-violet and gold-tinted light that pulsated and danced in a strange manner, it gathered visibly in detail then faded, appearing and disappearing as it snaked its way around his body. As the veins flowing under his bare white skin pulsed with iridescent, preternatural light, the flowering symbols were a mirror of many of the markings on the Seed, yet somehow different, confounding the eye.
With the slightest movement, the merest pressure of sinew and muscle, the Watcher’s onyx-black wings unfurled to their fullest expanse.
Then, facing the Nephilim, he spoke.
Immediately, both Fi and I threw up our hands in unison to cover our ears and block out the intensity of the sound. But it made little difference. It vibrated through my body to my very soul. The Watcher’s voiceless words were like the purest notes of music that issued forth and were painful yet beautiful to listen to; cascading, harmonious, symphonic.
Perhaps like no other call, the forceful beauty of the Watcher’s inhuman cry had the Nephilim veering in great broken rings, like birds whose biological compass was disrupted by alterations in the earth’s magnetic field, as they were coerced to withdraw from engaging in battle. With a clamour, they returned to the terrace. But their seething anger and lust for blood did not abate. Nothing but the spilling of the enemy’s lifeblood w
ould quench the fire that blistered them.
‘Why did you call us back?’ Zeke demanded, slamming his hand forcefully on the table in an angry gesture so that I feared it might crack. ‘Do you not realise the danger we are in?’
‘You are in no danger,’ responded the Watcher, staring the smaller man down.
But the strident war cry of the Fravashi sounded high in the distance above us as if to counter his certainty. Like carrion birds, they were screeching their looming conquest in the skies above. Slowly now, their forms distorted by the roiling cloud cover, the formation of Fravashi began to take the shape of a spearhead of warriors.
‘How large is their force?’ shouted Gabriel, ignoring the Watcher.
‘Seven.’ Pen leant in closer to his leader and lowered his voice, so that I had to strain to hear him. ‘Their might and resolve are great. But if you cut off the head of the beast, the body will fall. Without their leader they are doomed.’
‘There will be no victory on either side,’ Elijah stated, folding his arms across his expansive chest.
But already the distant pinpoints, like floating dust motes, had turned into a blackened tide, cloaking the sun as they prepared for their descent.
‘Gabriel,’ Pen said hoarsely. ‘Your orders?’
Refusing to countenance the inevitable carnage and devastation, I shouted, ‘You will stand down! I forbid you to fight!’
Even as I cried out my order – the first order that I had ever given in direct contradiction to the Anakim, our protectors and our closest, most trusted companions – the roiling in the skies became the thunder of God. As one, holding their perfect formation, the Fravashi swooped.
Their actions kindled anew the rage in the Anakim and, if it were not for the Watcher, a bloodbath would have ensued.
Once again, I felt a strange surge of energy, a tingling and sparking from the mark on my palm, and an echoing roar filled my mind. Adrenaline pumped through my blood like a hit of heroine, though I’d never taken drugs, and never felt so focused yet equally perplexed in my life. Fi, whose expression of bewilderment mirrored my own, reached up to grip tightly the amulet hanging from her neck and, for an instant, her figure seemed surrounded by a silvery-violet light. Then her hand fell to her side indifferently and the halo disappeared.
