Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (23 page)

Methuselah, Lamech, and Betenos awakened to the smell of stew cooking on morning fires. The sun had not yet come up, but they could see by the sky that it was near. They were bound together hand and foot with vines used as rope. Cain and his pack of wolves had taken them hostage the previous night, and brought them to this camp on the far side of the valley, distant from the exit crevice.

They looked around for the wolves, but
the animals were gone. The Cainites were a clan of about a hundred, male and female, all wearing animal skins — but no children.

Where were the children?
thought Betenos.
What kind of tribe does not have children? How could it survive?

Cain approached them with a woman by his side
, tall, with raven black hair and chiseled facial features. She had the presence of a warrior, but dressed as a tribal queen. She carried a pot of stew for them.

“This is my favorite sister and wife, Awan,” said Cain. “Welcome to ‘the Hidden Valley’, my ‘Garden away from the Garden,’ I like to say.
I have always had a green thumb. So I put it to good use.”

Lamech
remembered from stories that Cain was a worker of the ground. This secret paradise was a breathtaking incarnation of God-given skill.

Awan
undid their bindings. She gave them utensils to eat some stew from the large pot. Lamech and Betenos attacked it hungrily.

Methuselah did not bother. He stared into oblivion. Why eat? It would only keep him alive.

Cain said, “The giant twins brought you to me.”

Methuselah showed no interest in this conversation.

It was Lamech who spoke. “You sent Ohyah and Hahyah?”

“I paid them
a bounty to find you,” said Cain. “I think you understand that concept well enough.”

Cain
lingered over regretful memories. “I have been wandering for too long in search of you, my vengeance.”

“Us?” asked Lamech.

Cain answered, “I was not even sure you were the ones I was looking for. But when Ohyah told me of his dreams and his meeting with Enoch, I knew. I knew that you were the lineage of the chosen seed of the Woman that would crush the seed of the Serpent.”

Lamech broke out in a cold sweat. He had an idea where this was going and did not want to
find out.

Awan watched the three of them like a wolf watching its prey.

Cain continued, “Elohim is a sadistic connoisseur of cruelty. He is an arbitrary dictator. He accepts one offering and rejects another. And why? I gave him the fruit of my gifts that
he
gave me. But it was not good enough for him. He wanted it his way or no way. He wanted a blood sacrifice.”

A bitter pause
hung in the air. Then Cain gave a savory grin. “So I gave him one: The blood of my brother. The vengeful petty deity cursed me and made me a creature of the night — with an eternal thirst for blood. I cursed him back and decided to create my own Eden with my own rules, and my own god: me.” A big proud smile cracked his visage.

Lamech and Betenos shivered. They felt as if they were staring in
to the face of sin itself, crouching at their feet, ready to pounce.

“At this very moment,
” Cain added, “a gargantuan horde of Nephilim warriors marches on Eden to take possession of the Tree of Life.” He paused. “Imagine a world of true equality, where all men are gods, all creatures divine, everyone lives forever.”

Where evil never dies,
Lamech thought to himself. He knew what such claims to “equality” without God led to: genocide by those who ruled in the name of equality. They never shared their power once they had it. The first to taste of the Tree of Life would turn and keep it from everyone else.

“Imagine the absolute freedom from all dependence on a cosmic child abuser who tells us what we can and cannot do.”

And I thought it did not get worse than Inanna,
mused Lamech.

Methuselah remained in his trance of self-pity. He
listened, but still did not care.

Cain concluded
his pontificating, “And in the meantime, I will have the ultimate revenge of absorbing the very life and lineage of Elohim’s Chosen Seed into my own body, when I drink your blood and devour your flesh.”

A shiver of terror went down the spines of Lamech and Betenos. Now they understood why Cain
looked more like one hundred years old, instead of his eight hundred and fifty years. He cannibalized the life source of his victims, their blood replenishing his youth, their flesh regenerating his body. Lamech glanced at his father, who now watched their captors. Those captors were not interested in Methuselah, they were interested in Lamech.

“The sun is rising,” said Cain. “I must retreat to my residence for rest. Awan will care for you until the evening, when I rise — for dinner.” He smiled and walked away, leaving Awan watching them with a smirk on her face.

She shoved the pot at Methuselah. “Eat up, old man, we need you plump.”

Methuselah did nothing. Awan dropped the pot at his feet. Some of it splashed on Methuselah, and still he did not react.

Awan left them alone with the last of the food to finish it up.

Lamech studied Methuselah. “Father, you are not the only one who lost mother.”

Methuselah remained unmoved. They had been sitting there for some time and Methuselah had offered no plan, no hint or desire to escape. He
waited to die. His meaning, his Edna was gone. And with her, the earth.

Lamech
spoke sharply with renewed conviction. “You may want to die. You may not care what happens to the rest of the world. But I do. This is bigger than my life, than all of our lives. If grandfather Enoch prophesied the truth and Betenos and I are the lineage of the Seed, then why would you give up? Would you dishonor the faith of the one you loved most on this earth?”

That got through Methuselah’s wall of silence.
Lamech was right. His son was absolutely right. Methuselah had placed his faith in this world and not in Elohim’s promised world to come. He had relied on his senses for so long that he had worn them out. He had lost his taste, his smell, his touch; he had become blind, deaf and dumb. He had neglected prayer because Elohim seemed so distant and his prayers almost futile. He had come to believe that things got done because he got up and did them, not because of Elohim’s solicited favor. Since Elohim was going to do what he was going to do anyway, then why bother wasting time talking to him about it? He had become a self-made man who lifted himself up by his own sandal straps. And it was all a self-deluded lie. He had missed the whole point that his wife had been trying to tell him: he distrusted Elohim because of the betrayal of the gods. He had lived a life of self-reliance rather than a life of faith. He had sought desperately for significance in this world. But he now understood his significance would be as the protector of Elohim’s Seed, not the fulfiller of his own.

Methuselah
lifted his face to Lamech. His eyes were red with tears, his face flush with revelation. Everything in Methuselah’s life came clear in that one instant.

Methuselah took the pot of stew and ate like a hungry dog. He would need his strength.

She had done it. Inanna had pushed her warrior horde at an unprecedented pace. In three days
, they had gone over one hundred and thirty leagues, an unrivaled achievement of Nephilim endurance. However, her glorious fortitude had taken its toll.

“We must slow down, Inanna,”
Enki complained in their command tent. “We have lost two thousand warriors to exhaustion and dehydration.”

“They were the weakest,” said Inanna. “More food for the strong.”

Utu jumped in. “The numbers of deaths will rise exponentially if we continue at this rate. Even Nephilim have their limits, and we are perilously close to it.”

They were within sixty-five leagues of Lake Urimiya, on the west perimeter of the Garden.

“We will be at our destination in one more day,” she said.

It
shocked Enki. “Are you out of your mind? You want to take the last sixty-five leagues in
one day
?!”

Inanna’s eyes narrowed like a dragon about to strike. “Are you challenging my authority, General Enki?”

Enki backed down. Insubordination was punished by binding in the earth, a fate worse than death for a Watcher.

He softened his argument.
“It will do us no good if we make it to Eden in record time, with a demoralized and exhausted army at a fraction of their fighting strength. It is suicide.”

“For Anu’s sake,” said Utu, “at least give the soldiers a half-day’s extra rest.” They were within minutes of trumpet’s call to march.

Inanna stared at them with incredulity.

Utu clapped his hands
. The eleven Rephaim generals entered the tent and stood to attention. Thamaq and the limping Yahipan were among them.

Utu
ordered them, “Report on the morale.”

Thamaq said, “My lord, there are whisperings of mutiny in some quarters.”

Inanna thought about it. She strode past the Rephaim. She spotted Yahipan with recognition. “Hobbler here is keeping up, why cannot everyone else?”

Yahipan gritted his teeth. On the one hand, his handicap was singled out again, but on the other hand,
he clearly impressed Inanna. Now, if he could only find another way to shine like a star.

“Give the horde an extra hour of sleep,” said Inanna.

She thought to herself,
Am I being too weak?

“We
need to be to Lake Urimiya by nightfall tomorrow. Then they can have a few day’s rest before battle.”

“Yes, Queen of
heaven,” said Utu. He raced outside to make sure the trumpet call would be delayed.

“And for my sake,” said Inanna, “track down these
mutinous whisperers and execute them.”

Yahipan saw his opportunity and stepped forward. “Yes, Supreme Commander. I will rout them out before sunrise.”

Inanna stopped her pacing and noticed Yahipan again. She turned to the other Rephaim. “You see this will? If the rest of you had half the will of this invalid, we would be unstoppable.”

Yahipan bowed and left the tent on his mission
. He wondered whether her comments would raise him up or keep him singled out as pitiful.

Inanna had no intention of giving the Nephilim a few days rest when they arrived. They would need a full day just to build their pontoons for crossing the lake. She
would throw numbers at the enemy to overwhelm them. Tens of thousands of weakened Nephilim were still too many for the Cherubim to withstand. Nephilim were expendable and Cherubim were not invulnerable.

She knew the Cherubim well, their strengths, their weaknesses, and their numbers.
Only several hundred of them were scattered around the perimeter. She would split her forces. The Western army would build pontoons as the Southern army travelled around the shore to mount a flank attack from the mountainous region in the south.

The Garden was walled by the Savalan mountain range in the north
, the Sahand in the south, and by the huge Lake Urimiya on the west. The only opening into the valley lay in the East, where the dominant Cherubim forces stood guard. When they discovered the Nephilim army arriving on the lake, they would split their forces between east and west. They would not be expecting a flanking attack from the mountainous southern region. The huge volcanic chain of the Sahand was precipitous to climb and therefore an unexpected entry point for a raid.

The Cherubim were not experienced in fighting angelic/human hybrids. Humans they could slaughter easily enough with their flaming whirling swords, but Nephilim were a crossbreed
. The forces needed to combat the angelic half of the Nephilim were the angels who were now busily held up in heavenly legal procedures.

The Nephilim would have to rise to the occasion. Inanna did not know how much longer the satan could keep the heavenly council embroiled in his lawsuit. It was a diversion made in heaven. God and all his heavenly host, because of their despicable dedication to righteousness would give their full attention and presence to due process of law.
In doing so, they would not be available to defend the Garden when it was attacked. She had split the enemy’s forces and cut them off from their Commander in Chief, that loathsome tyrant from above.

She thought of cutting in half the extra time she gave the Nephilim to sleep. Beneficence was one of the demands on deity she detested.

Lamech and Betenos had prayed for Elohim to deliver them. Awan and several villagers watched them like guard dogs the entire day. They fed them well. Methuselah considered that a mistake, because regardless of how “plumped up” Cain thought they were, they were also renewed in their strength and readied in their resolve to fight back if they had a chance.

Methuselah
watched the sun go down. He asked Awan, “Where is the wolf pack that accompanied Cain in our capture? I have not seen them in the camp.”

“They only come out at night,” said Awan, with a hint of dark delight.

Betenos wondered whether Cain planned on sharing his meal with those canine allies.

Awan
watched Betenos with a cocked head, trying to read her lips moving in prayer.

“Where is your god?” said Awan.

Betenos stared back without fear. “He is in the heavens and he does as he pleases.”

“Evidently, he does not appear pleased with you,” said Awan.

“Our God is able to deliver us,” said Betenos. “But even if he does not, we do not fear you who can destroy the body, but rather Him who can destroy both body and soul in Sheol.”

“My god will consume your body and soul,” said Awan. “So I doubt there will be anything left over for yours.”

They turned to see Cain walking toward them in the darkness, like a phantom.

Awan said, “Here comes my god, now.”
She and the other guards got up and left the captives alone with Cain.

“How goes the seed of the Woman?”
asked Cain with a lighthearted tone of irony. “I had a good day’s sleep, and I am famished.”

Methuselah glanced at Lamech and Betenos. There was no way he
would let anything happen to his son and daughter-in-law. But the only problem was that he was entirely at the mercy of this monster. He was in no position to save anyone.

T
he silhouette of an Anzu bird suddenly fell across the bright blood red moon. It came right toward them. It landed in the village which now looked strangely empty of people. It had become a ghost village.

Where had all the people gone?
wondered Methuselah.

Cain turned to see the thunderbird and whistled.

From out of the darkness came six very large wolves. The raven-black she-wolf came up to Cain. He gave it a look that Methuselah saw was more than master or owner. Then Cain went to meet the Anzu bird in the distance.

The wolves circled the captives and watched them with hungry attention.

Methuselah looked into the eyes of the black she-wolf. In that moment, he knew where all the people had gone. Those were the eyes of Awan, the black-haired wife of Cain.
These wolves must be the human villagers transformed into canine beasts of the night
. It started to make sense. Awan’s allusions, the disappearing wolves and now the disappearing villagers.

Methuselah
glanced at Lamech and Betenos. They appeared to have had the same revelation.

Lamech whispered, “What black art is this? Does Cain know the secrets of the Watchers as well?”

The She-wolf growled menacingly and stepped closer to Lamech. He promptly shut up.

Cain
came back to them. He spoke hastily, “I have some important business to attend to. I am afraid I will be gone for the evening.”

The wolves
looked up at him as if they understood his every word. He turned to Methuselah.

“
Do not worry, they will not be eating you after all. Not tonight.” Then Cain ran back to the Anzu bird. He climbed on it and it flew off like a bat out of Sheol.

The wolves turned their attention back to the hostages and stood watch as sentinels.

Lamech hoped Cain was not exaggerating with that last remark about not being eaten tonight.

Betenos was not
as certain that these voracious carnivores would be able to exercise such self-control until their master got back.

Methuselah
had seen real concern on Cain’s face after he had received the correspondence attached to the Anzu bird. Something was not going right with Cain’s plans, and that gave Methuselah just the edge he had been praying for.

He had begun praying again.