Rise of the Nephilim (16 page)

He woke from his stupor cold, wet, and, from the way the blood ran down into his eyes, certain he was suffering from a gash on his forehead. He managed to force a smile through his swollen face and coughed the same phrase he had been repeating for hours, “
Io ti perdono.
I forgive you.” His captors were growing impatient and agitated, as he managed to endure hours of mental and physical assaults.

“Come now, Vicar,” coaxed Azazel,” how long do you think you can keep this up? If I were in your situation, I would just divulge Jude’s location. Is it worth dying over? All this pain and suffering is so… barbaric.” He pointed up toward the ceiling of the catacombs where they were conducting their torture. “I’m sure you would rather be up there in your office going about your daily life. What do you say?”

He reached his right hand out as a peace offering toward the injured clergyman. Savelli looked him in the eye for a moment, as if contemplating his offer, then promptly spat in his open palm. Azazel cursed, as he shook the saliva off and gave the man a quick left hook to the jaw. “Fine!” he hissed and motioned to his guards. “I tried to be nice. Now, it’s time to show you just how
demonic
we can be.” He began to speak in a language not born of the Earth. Underneath the alien syllables undulated a pressure wave from infrasonic sound waves undetectable by the human ear.

It hurt Savelli’s already aching head, but he could not block his ears due to his bondage. Azazel stopped and affixed an evil smirk on his face. “I tired of playing with my food long ago, but some of my subordinates still revel in it.” An amorphous mass of shadow spilled down from the ceiling like fog and pooled around the Vicar’s feet. He felt a sharp chill, as the spirit swirled around him. It slowly began to make its way up his shaking legs.  The sensation of a thousand tiny needles pricked him, as the mass surrounded him and sucked away at his life force..

“What do you think you are doing?” Savelli asked, as panic rose in his voice. “I’ll never bend to you or your minions.”

“Oh,
Padre
,” Azazel said in mock sympathy. “I never truly expected you to. I’ll have to get my information some other way.” He addressed the darkness growing around Savelli’s feet. “Let his very existence become nothing but suffering, until he tells us what we need to know.”

The spirit shook and sighed in response to his commands, just as one of Azazel’s possessed contingent entered the room. “Sir, we have reports of an unauthorized take-off at an airfield north of here. We believe Sullivan may be on board.”

Azazel picked up on the muted gasp from Savelli. “Well, well… It seems you may be correct, Raxis. Find out who owns it and where they are going. Congratulations, Cardinal, it seems your god does answer prayer, just not yours. Kill him quickly.”

The swirling ebony miasma rose up to engulf Savelli and inject his mind with Lovecraftian horrors. The man’s scream rose to a high pitch, taking on an almost inhuman quality before choking and fading into nothing, as his heart gave out. The cloud lingered for a moment, as if savoring its deed, and roiled back toward Azazel. It caressed his outstretched hand and dissipated back into the spaces between the quantum foam.

The old man’s body stared blankly up at the ceiling, his mouth agape and lips already beginning to turn lose their pinkish tinge, as his body cooled in the chilly tunnels. Azazel ran a finger down his victim’s cheek, admiring the after-effects of his minion’s work. “Poor Savelli… were you so racked with guilt by your part in this that you committed suicide before the authorities could find you, or did you simply run away and disappear?” He spoke over his shoulder to his subordinate, “Do want you want with the body. If you want to leave him whole, make sure he turns up somewhere public.”

Jude held his head back as he lay on the couch of the Gulfstream and willed the cold compress to numb the welt on his forehead faster. He had been incoherent for an hour or so, but now he had full control of his faculties, and the dizziness from his concussion was slowly fading. He was grateful the jet was equipped with a closet containing some of Leo’s own wardrobe to replace his soiled ones. “Any word on what’s going on out there?” he asked Eva weakly, as he accepted the glass of water she gave him.

She sighed and sat down on the chair next to him and stared at the muted television. “It seems they got to our dear Lorenzo. The media is reporting that he ran from the madness at the Vatican and threw himself in front of a train to escape capture. Leo is certain Azazel played a role, though.”

“What does that mean for you two?” Jude asked with concern.

“I means we can’t go back to Italy any time soon. Our assets are sure to be frozen by now,” she answered. “Airports in Italy received orders last night to ground all flights until further notice, so our take off probably raised a few alarms. At least we were lucky and escaped into neutral airspace before the military could intercept us.”

“Won’t they be able to track us?”

“They can try, but it will be like searching for a needle in a haystack. We’re part-time traffickers, remember? This aircraft has a special coat of paint that not only absorbs radar signals, but the color makes us almost impossible to track overhead by satellite while we are over open water. No one should know where we are, until after we have landed.”

“Good,” Jude said and rolled on his side, so he could watch the news broadcast. The text crawl was in French, but he didn’t need to be able to read or understand the language to know what the story was about. Father Gallo’s slender frame stood behind a podium giving a speech.

“Turn up the volume!” He urged Eva.

“Hey Eric, come quick! Gallo is on TV!”

Gallo’s voice was being dubbed over by a French translator, but Eva offered to help decipher his address. “He’s discussing our escape and Lorenzo’s suicide.” She paused to listen more, then gasped. “He’s been given authority over the investigation for the entire European Union!”

“Damn,” cursed Eric. “There’s no way he could do that so quickly without help. He must have allies within the European Council.”

Jude shook his head. “I’m glad we are on our way back to the States.”

“We’ll have to watch our backs,” Eric warned. “If the Nephilim have infiltrated the EU, I could argue our own government might be in a similar state. I hate to even think about it.”

Jude couldn’t help but agree.

Mike desperately swigged his coffee, praying for it to continue giving him more energy than was being sapped away by his work schedule. He and his team had been working for almost forty-eight hours straight under the obsessive prodding of his superiors in an effort to find the fugitives. Interpol was being incredibly uncooperative and claiming the right to jurisdiction in the investigation in Europe.

A couple of suits higher up the bureaucratic food chain had come down to supervise the operation. They had kicked Mike’s boss out of his own office, while making jabs at his prowess to complete the current task. His boss had been furious at the initial prospect of being cut out of the intelligence loop, and he made sure to take it out on his inferiors. Mike felt a chill when he looked at the two men now heading his department. He swore his computer monitor flickered whenever one of them walked by. Whatever was happening out there in the world, he was sure the shadow of its influence fell over the NSA, and it terrified Mike.

He kept his mind occupied by obsessively following events as they unfolded. According to the priest leading the manhunt in Italy, the Vicar’s apparent suicide in lieu of questioning was indirect proof of Jude Sullivan’s guilt. This Antonio Gallo had been bootstrapped through the ranks of the investigation, which was surprising considering he seemed to be just a simple priest. It didn’t make sense that he was commanding so much power in the span of a few days. It was even stranger that the phone call the man had made to the strangers in their midst would agitate them the way it had.

Mike’s group was now tasked with finding a private jet that had illegally taken off from some dusty airport on the coast of Italy. The hanger was owned by a Leonardo Forzi, a venture capitalist and philanthropist based primarily in Europe. High definition enhancement of the security footage provided by the airport confirmed that Jude and Sullivan were definitely with him.

The take-off from the airport was the last any intelligence agency had seen of Forzi’s plane. The man had managed to disable all effective means of electronically tracking the vehicle, making it virtually invisible to everything but the naked eye. Wherever they were going, they had the ability to travel virtually undetected half a hemisphere in any direction.

Something didn’t smell right about the whole situation, though. Mike’s intuition was sending chills down his spine. No one had apprehended any of the escaped gunmen yet or even knew their names. They were instead chasing down men with little to no evidence outside of the testimony of the priest. Whatever was happening, he knew that all he wanted was to get away from all of this.

The G450 landed in Teterboro, New Jersey, an airport that serviced the needs of affluent New Yorkers by providing private charters and hangers to store personal aircraft away from the metropolitan bustle. Leo stored the jet in a nondescript hanger and led the group to an attached garage, which turned out to be a small motor pool for trips into and around the city. He rummaged inside a key box hanging on the wall, pulled out a fob, and walked past a sleek, silver Bentley and a vintage Rolls Royce limousine before coming to a halt in front of a black Cadillac Escalade with mirrored windows. He tapped the remote start button, and the big automobile roared to life.

“Everyone in,” he commanded. “We need as much of a head start as we can muster, before someone figures out we are here.” He caught Jude staring lovingly at the Rolls Royce. “It’s a beauty, no? Maybe one day when we aren’t being pursued, I will take you for a drive. We can’t afford to turn any heads today, though.”

“You have a deal,” Jude said, salivating over the idea of driving such a mobile work of art.

“Sweetie,” Leo called to his wife. “Do you care to drive? We need to avoid recognition in the city at all costs, and you are the least likely to be identified at the moment, no offense.”

“None taken,” she returned in a sing-song voice, as she grabbed the keys from him.

The four of them climbed into the car. Jude and Eric stowed themselves away into the second passenger row of the SUV to shield themselves behind the treated windows, while Leo sat in the first row to help navigate. The drive to Manhattan was a relatively short one, only about eleven miles, but the amount of traffic generated by eight million denizens and an estimated forty-five million annual visitors stretched their travel time out to almost an hour.

Once they finally made it into the city, they followed the traffic up 8
th
Avenue before merging onto Broadway. Eva maneuvered the vehicle along the Hudson River and turned onto one of the cross streets. Jude missed which one, but he was certain it was somewhere in the mid-one hundreds. He had never been this far north on the island before, so there were no familiar landmarks to help him place himself. 

Further down the block, Eva turned left into a wide alleyway between two residential buildings and stopped at a gate that blocked further transit. Leo handed her a small device with a screen that displayed a series of numbers across it. Jude recognized it as a security token, a keychain device that gave the user access to regularly changing passcodes. Eva entered the code on the token, and the gate swung aside to reveal a ramp leading down into an underground parking area. Once the Escalade was inside and safely stored, Leo ushered them out and toward a dull, gray metal door that was half-hidden in shadow.

Leo approached the door and moved his mouth, emitting the same strange infrasonic whispering Emily done had once before. After he finished his esoteric song, the door clicked and swung open automatically. Beyond the threshold was a clean concrete hallway lit by soft white fluorescent bulbs. Midway down the corridor, another pathway intersected their own. Leo turned right and motioned for them to follow close. He pushed open another door further down the passage, revealing a flight of stairs that lead them further underground.

They reached the bottom of the stairwell and found themselves in front of a large steel door that looked more like it belonged on the entrance to a bank vault than some forgotten, subterranean corner of the city. Once they stepped through to the other side, Jude understood why such precaution was taken.

His mouth dropped, as they emerged into a large chamber overlooking a maze of bookshelves and antiques. Dim lighting provided an ambience not unlike a nineteenth century study, with accent lighting displaying the most important pieces in the underground collection. His eyes darted from a Rembrandt oil painting hanging on the wall to a set of shogun armor standing on display to antique Turkish rugs on the floor. The mahogany walled room was an homage to human art and achievement spanning continents and centuries. Two-story book shelves filled with dusty tomes in dozens of languages, the topics of which Jude could only imagine, lined the walls and created a maze of passages within the bunker.

“Wow…” was all he could muster. Leo paused for a moment to let them take it all in. Eric wandered off a little to the right to inspect a large case filled with early pistolas and muskets. “How is all of this here?”

“It’s been collected throughout the ages by the secret order of Nephilim hunters that call themselves the
Aspides
,” Leo explained briefly. “I’ll explain more once we get further in.”

“
Aspides
… It’s Greek for shields, right? ” Jude asked. “What an appropriate name...” He grabbed Eric by the arm as they walked past and took him in tow. A few turns through the collected memorabilia of the ages brought them to the middle of the underground wonder. The tight corridor created by the multitude of display cases and shelves gave way to a central atrium at that point.

Jude surmised from the heavy scrollwork carved into the sides and legs that the massive wooden table dominating the center of the space must have had some Germanic origin. Two men and a woman were sitting there, drinks in hand, as if they had been waiting on the party to arrive for some time.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” greeted Leo. “Sorry we’re late. Traffic and all…”

The triad stood up to greet the new arrivals, while Leo helped his wife into her seat. The eldest, a Japanese man appearing to be in his late sixties, shook Jude’s hand first and introduced himself as Prometheus. The younger man, a fiery red-head calling himself Hephaestus, followed suit. The woman, a lithe African-American, who exuded a stern military aura, gracefully grasped Jude’s hand and announced herself as Artemis.

Formalities complete, the entire party sat down at the long table, and Leo began the meeting. “Now, Misters Sullivan and Strauss, I’m sure you have many questions, so please, ask away.”

Jude cleared his throat and began, “Thank you for granting us refuge. Leo has told us you hunt Nephilim, but do not identify with Grigori philosophy. Pardon me for my ignorance, but I thought any Grigori that rejected their ideals was considered Nephilim.”

Prometheus shook his head, “The brothers and sisters we left behind are so rigidly devoted to the original mission that any deviation is treated as heresy, but that does not make us anything like the Nephilim. We chose to leave and interact with humanity for reasons other than power and greed.”

Artemis nodded and picked up the conversation, “All of us have had more contact with mankind than most of the others. We grew to love the civilizations we fostered and began to intervene directly in their lives. We couldn’t stand to see our children defiled and destroyed by the Nephilim. A few of us began to despise our brethren’s inaction and finally shunned the Great Mission. Now we could hunt the fallen ourselves.”

“Why didn’t Inanna come to you first?” Jude asked as he felt his anger rising. “Surely she knew how to contact you.”

Artemis sighed and propped her elbows on the table, “Even now, the Grigori try to hold on to their pacifism. Azazel is perpetually on the prowl for an opportunity to seize control. I wish we would have made an example of him and his ilk five thousand years ago, instead of allowing their disease to fester.”

“There’s no time for regrets now,” Eric interjected. “Please tell me you have some way of killing these bastards that is a little more effective than waiting for them to bond with their hosts. I don’t want to kill innocent people knowing my true enemy can just waft away and return in some other form.”

Prometheus and Artemis both looked at Hephaestus expectantly. Jude had thought Prometheus was in charge from the way he acted and talked, but he realized he may have been wrong. Hephaestus looked pensive, as if finding the right words to say. “We do not have the technology to do so,” he explained, “Our companions have had to make do by holding them back with politics and conventional weaponry.”

Prometheus reached over and patted Jude’s arm, “Don’t think that Inanna died in vain. Her actions were rash and naïve, but it tells me that sentiment among the Grigori may be shifting our direction. She also forced Azazel to act before his entire support network was in place.”

“
Before
it was in place?!” Jude looked at her incredulously. “He has impunity in all Europe for Christ’s sake!”

Prometheus rubbed his palms together. “He has political support from a few of his kind in strategic positions in government. The rest of his power right now is due to panic and fear. He doesn’t have the means or the numbers to subjugate the human race like he plans, especially if they decide to fight back. That is why it’s imperative we convince the Grigori to help us before his emissaries find more people to control. Unfortunately, if it were as simple as asking, we would have done it already. Like I said before, we are outcasts, equivalent to Nephilim in their eyes. You, however, have been in close contact with one of their own. They may listen to you.”

The prospect of becoming a diplomat for these ethereal creatures thrilled Jude. His whole life, he had searched for a moment like this, and now he was on the threshold of breaking through the veil. He vigorously nodded his assent. “Yes, I’ll do it. When do we begin?”

“We can be prepared in an hour,” Prometheus said. He pushed his chair back, signaling the end of the meeting. “Thank you, Mister Sullivan, you are doing us and your kind a great service through this. And thank you, Apollo, for getting everyone here safely. Feel free to explore the vault, while we convene.”

The three
Aspides
left together, quietly talking amongst themselves. Jude turned to Leo. “So these names are all code names, right? When they call you Apollo, they don’t really mean…”

“That was a name I was known by, once upon a time,” Leo said with a sly grin, as he helped his wife out of her seat. “Just don’t believe most of the stories you’ve heard about me, or any of us, for that matter. The majority of them are pure fabrications.”

“Well, now you
have
to talk about it!” Jude insisted, as they meandered through the shelves.