Rise of the Nephilim (18 page)

The muted
rat-a-tat
of gunplay continued for some time. Jude watched through the thick bulletproof glass window, sometimes catching a body flying across the room or the flash of electricity. Their view of the battle was frustratingly obstructed by the shelves of memorabilia.

A shadow appeared down the passageway, preceding whoever was heading toward them. “Hey, someone’s coming,” Jude called out to the others.

“Who is it?” Eric asked, as he and Eva crowded to the window.

“I can’t tell,” Jude worriedly admitted.

The silhouette grew longer, as its owner came closer to the alcove. The group remained hopeful that they were about to greet an ally, but these hopes were dashed as a wall of a man marched around the corner. He was a stereotypical military type wearing gray fatigues with no distinguishable markings. His left arm was badly burned, and his chest was covered with blood. It was hard to tell whether it was his own or someone else’s. He looked around for a few seconds until his wandering gaze fell upon the display case. A wicked smile crept across his face, and he approached the entrance to the armory.

The group sat quietly, hoping the danger would pass, but the hulking brute began tugging at the wood. Frustration crossed his face for a split second, before he tore the entire thing from the wall.

“Get back!” Eric commanded Jude and Eva. “Let me handle this.”

The man approached the steel and knocked. “Hello, in there. Would you be so kind as to come out for me? I know some people who would like to talk to you.”

“We’re fine in here, thanks,” Eric shouted through the glass. “I think we’ll just stay until one of our friends comes to retrieve us.”

The man laughed, “Then you may be in there a while. We’ll own this compound soon enough. It’s only a matter of time before they are all dead.”

“You’re lying!” Eva accused, as she rushed to the door.

“Then why don’t you come out and see?” The man taunted.

Jude grabbed Eva and led her away from the door. He sat her down on one of the benches along the middle of the room and tried to console her.

Eric countered back at the intruder,” We aren’t that stupid. Nice try.”

“Fine,” the man said as he threw his weapon to the ground. “I guess I’ll have to come in and get you.” He rushed toward the door, lowered his shoulder, and rammed into it. The resulting shock was far greater than it should have been for a single man against such a thick sheet of metal.

“He’s definitely Nephilim,” Jude said, feeling the bile rising to his throat.

“What do we do now?” Eva asked in a frightened squeak.

“We prepare,” he answered her and reached up and grabbed two pistols off the wall, keeping one for himself and giving one to her.

The monster outside continued to ram the door, as they armed themselves for the inevitable confrontation. The steel slab was beginning to warp inwards from the inhuman force being applied to it with each blow. Eric was already crouched in front of the wall opposite the door, machine gun at the ready.

The besieged entryway finally fell from its hinges and their ruthless antagonizer burst forth into the room, with his arms crossed in front of him. Eric opened fire and the entire scene devolved into a slow motion drama. The man was bulletproof, withstanding the hail of bullets like some invincible Titan. Jude noticed the sparks of the projectiles striking the walls around him. The Nephilim was using the same repulsion technique that Emily had used back at the conference.

Eric’s magazine ran out of bullets, and he scrambled to load another one before the Nephilim could react. He had just raised his gun back to a firing position, when his body was thrown against the wall. He let out a groan and held his right shoulder where he had taken the brunt of the impact.

Jude tried to pull off a quick shot at the man’s head, but missed by an inch. The bullet embedded itself in the concrete next to his head. The man looked over at Jude, rage in his eyes. “How dare you, stupid human!”

He took a few large strides, pushing Eva to the ground as he passed her, and caught Jude by the throat. He lifted Jude off the ground and pinned him against the wall like a ragdoll. Jude dropped his gun and grabbed the man’s arm, trying to relieve the pressure and keep himself from choking. Mercenary sneered nastily at him. “If Azazel didn’t want you alive, I would snap your little neck right now. We are your masters, and you will do as you’re told. Do you understand me?”

Jude tried to spit in his face, but his lower jaw didn’t have enough room to move in the man’s firm grip. “Do you understand me?” The man repeated his question and shook Jude like a ragdoll.

“I understand,” Eva said quietly from behind him, a split second before the attacker’s face deformed from the force of the hollow point exiting through his forehead. A black smoky substance escaped, screaming through the hole, and the body fell.

Jude hit the ground and fell to his knees in a coughing fit. He looked up gratefully at Eva. She was beginning to shake, as her adrenaline rush subsided. “Thanks Eva,” he wheezed softly, “that was amazing. Eric, are you okay?”

Eric moaned from the floor, “I’ll live. I think he dislocated my shoulder, though.”

The sounds of the conflict outside had quieted down.

“I’ll go get help,” Jude offered, as he found his footing. “Eva, will you look after Eric for a bit?”

“Sure,” she said. “Be careful out there, ok?”

“I will,” he assured her. “It sounds like things are dying down out there.”

Eva asked, “You don’t think he was telling the truth about the others, do you?”

Jude shook his head and tried to maintain an air of confidence. He grabbed his discarded pistol off the floor and ventured forth to discover the outcome of the conflict. He slowly navigated a few turns of the corridor, until he spied the central meeting area. There, he saw Artemis sitting on top of the meeting table stitching up a gash on her thigh and talking to what looked like a homeless woman.

He gripped his weapon cautiously, unsure of the situation, and slowly came forward. The lady noticed him and motioned to Artemis. Artemis gave him a grim smile and motioned him over with a flick of her head. She continued sewing herself up, while he made his way to her.

“It’s good to see you safe, Mister Sullivan,” she said with her usual professionalism. “How are the others?”

“One of those guys got in, but we managed to take care of him,” he reported, as he continued eying the stranger. “Eric hurt his shoulder, but with some medical attention, he’ll be okay. How is everyone else?”

Artemis winced, as she pulled the last stitch and tied off the wound. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know. If it hadn’t been for her, I may not have made it at all.”

The vagrant woman held out her dirty hand to Jude, “Greetings, Mister Sullivan. It’s a pleasure to meet you in physical form.”

“You are Grigori, then?” Jude guessed.

“Indeed,” the woman said. “We came as quickly as we could. Unfortunately, haste limited our choice of nearby hosts. This poor soul is not healthy enough to endure much strain.”

“She worked well enough for a surprise counterattack,” Artemis offered warmly. “Thank you again for your help, sister. It has been too long since we conversed.”

Iris squeezed her shoulder, “Let’s hope this is the beginning of a reconciliation between the
Aspides
and the Council. Many of us sympathized with your ideals, but were too afraid of exile to take a stand. Please, forgive my cowardice.”

Jude shifted nervously, as he began wondering about the rest of the team. “Please, excuse me ladies, I’ll let you catch up. I really need to find Eric some treatment.”

Artemis nodded, “Check the labs. Hephaestus should be back there. He will get you what you need.”

“Thanks, Artemis,” Jude said. “I’m glad to see you’re okay.” He hurried off down the corridor leading back to the labs. The entire place was in shambles. Books were tossed everywhere from fallen shelves, shards of glass littered the floor, and priceless artifacts were in pieces. Among the wreckage, bodies clothed in familiar gray uniforms lay bloodied and contorted. He was glad now, that he had not been in the thick of the battle.

He emerged from the maze of chaos into the relative cleanliness of the laboratory section. It seemed as if the conflict didn’t make it back this far. He spied Hephaestus working over a table in the first medical room and knocked on the glass to get his attention.

The Irishman looked up and walked over to open the door for him. “Jude, it’s good to see you in one piece. I was just finishing up with Prometheus, if you would like to come in. Be careful, though, his body is in bad shape.”

“Will do,” Jude agreed. “By the way, could you go check on Eric, when you get a chance? He was injured during the fight and needs some attention.”

“I’ll head there right now,” Hephaestus answered somberly and wandered off in the direction of the armory. Jude walked over to the table and surveyed the damage. Prometheus’s right arm had been crushed at the shoulder. It was a nasty bit of savagery that made Jude happy it had been dressed and bandaged before he arrived. Hephaestus had done his best to dress the wound and stop any bleeding, but the man’s face was already turning a sickly pale color. Death was coming soon.

“Hello, Jude,” the
Aspides
elder greeted him, a faint wheeze coming from a punctured lung. “We did it. The Grigori finally came.”

“They did,” he agreed. “What about you? You’re still able to transfer out of this body, right?”

“I am,” Prometheus responded weakly. “I don’t want to leave him alone like this, though. I’m going to stay until the end. I owe him that much.”

Jude nodded, “That’s very respectable. Please, come back to us, when you are able. I’ll leave you in peace until then. I’m going to go find Leo.” He turned and left Prometheus to comfort his host’s last minutes.

“Jude... wait…” the
Aspides
leader called out behind him weakly. “Leo….”

Jude stopped. He felt a dread sense of foreboding in the way Prometheus had called him back. “Where is he, Prometheus?”

“He’s next door, to the right,” the old man finally whispered. “He wasn’t as strong as he thought, the old fool… Not against so many... Please, find a way to break it to Eva gently. We all care for her.”

Jude backed out of the room silently and hurried to the neighboring medical bay. On the table was a great white sheet conforming loosely to the shape of a human body. Loosely, Jude realized, because some of the parts were angled in a fashion that were quite inhuman. He held his breath in sheer dread, as he pulled the sheet away from the body. There lay Leo, his face broken and bruised from what looked to have been a tremendous beating. Jude shuddered to think what the rest of his body was like underneath the fabric.

“Sleep well, Apollo,” he said quietly, as he replaced the sheet and stood there shaking, trying to maintain his composure. First, Emily and now Leo… All of these remarkable people he’d met were dying before he’d even gotten the chance to know them. He was tired of running. From now on, he would face these Nephilim head to head.

He stumbled out of the room and fell to his knees, as he lost control of his emotions. He heard people running toward him, as he sobbed.

“Jude, did you find Leo?” Eva questioned with a wild undertone in her voice.

He didn’t answer… couldn’t answer. He simply shook his head and continued crying.

“Tell me where Leo is, Jude!” She grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him upright, so he was forced to look her in the face. He couldn’t look her in the eye, but this was all the confirmation she needed. Tears also began forming in her eyes, as all of her fears were realized.

“No… No, no, no…” She said, as she backed away in disbelief. Jude finally found control of his body again and pointed behind him to the room he had just left. She ran past him as fast as she could.

“Hephaestus told us,” Eric said softly. His arm had been set in a sling, but he held out his good hand to help Jude stand to his feet. A wail arose from the room behind them.

Jude turned to go to her, but Eric held his arm firmly. Jude began to protest, but Eric shook his head. “Don’t go. There’s nothing we can do for her. Just let her mourn. Come on, I need to go back and talk to Artemis.”

The two men left Eva behind to return to the central area. They were halfway there, when they heard a gunshot ring out. Jude cringed and listened carefully, prepared for another fight. He breathed a sigh of relief, when all he heard was silence. It was only then he realized that Eva’s crying had stopped.

Eric left Jude sleeping soundly on the dental chair, where he had been hooked up to a tangle of wires and equipment not more than forty minutes before. The man had flown into a rage over his failure to prevent Eva from harming herself, even going so far as to try to blame Eric for her loss. He attempted to throw a few punches at his face, but Eric managed to fend him off with his one good hand. It took Hephaestus to sedate him, before he caused too much damage to himself, and the two had stowed him away in the lab. They needed peace to plan their next move, while they waited on their new found comrades to find more suitable bodies.

Eric knew he should be upset over Eva and Leo’s deaths, but he had gone numb somewhere between Geneva and New York. War had crept upon him and covered him once again with its tattered, bloody cowl. His training was kicking in, and he was more or less running on autopilot at this point.

“Where do we go now?” he asked, as he and Artemis pow-wowed amid the shambles of the underground reliquary. “We can’t stay here for much longer. There’s no telling when Azazel’s guys will come back.”

She sat on the ground, cleaning her pistol. “We have an emergency shelter in the mountains upstate, but we can’t leave until Prometheus’s new host is ready. Hephaestus found him a viable body at one of the local hospitals, even if it’s somewhat young. It should be ready to inhabit any time now.”

“How did you manage to sneak a coma patient out of the hospital?” Eric mused. “Nope, never mind. I don’t want to know. Why won’t the Nephilim do that? Wouldn’t that solve the possession problem?”

“It won’t,” Artemis promised grimly. “They only know how to consume and dominate. Why take a host with nothing, when you can control someone already wealthy or in power? Why take a nobody, when you can insert yourself directly into the good life? The same goes for all of the technology Hephaestus has developed here. If anything, all they would use it for is for their own gain. No, all of our records and machinery will be destroyed when we abandon this place. We can rebuild again later.”

“That really is a shame,” Eric observed, as he looked around at the antiques in his field of view.

“These pieces will be just a few of countless lost pages in the annals of history, Eric,” Artemis said in a blasé manner. “I’ve seen more of it disappear, than you could ever imagine.”

“What’s most important is that we see this through to the end”, a new voice interjected, “especially now that we have some support.” They both looked over to see a Japanese man in his late twenties leaning against a display case. He was wearing a simple ensemble of blue jeans and a green striped button-down shirt. He walked over to the two carefully, still unsure of his new body.

“Good to see you back, Prometheus,” Artemis saluted the man in military fashion.

“It’s good to be back,” her superior added, as he opened and closed his hands to get comfortable with his new muscles. “It’s odd, though, to not have a human mind to share it with. This one was quite brain dead, poor kid.”

Artemis shot him a grin, as she pushed herself off the ground to inspect his new physique, “You’re such a traditionalist. You know you can last much longer in an empty body without getting anchored. Won’t it also be nice to fight without risking another life?”

“As always, you make a good point,” Prometheus admitted, as he continued to flex his new muscles. “We need to gather our things and prepare to leave as soon as our new allies return.

“That’s another thing that worries me,” Eric confessed. “Why did only seven Grigori come to help us? Where are the rest?”

“More will come in due time,” Prometheus assured him. “It’s hard to overcome dogma so quickly. I’m sure many of them are afraid they will fall to temptation, just like the Nephilim. We must be patient.”

“And hope we aren’t all dead before that happens,” Eric muttered under his breath.

Prometheus continued on, ignoring Eric’s comment. “At any rate, will you help Hephaestus rouse Jude? Hopefully, he’ll be a little more tractable after being sedated for a while.”

Eric nodded and left the two behind to discuss their plans. He threaded his way back to the labs to meet Hephaestus and figure out how to deal with his belligerent companion. As he arrived, he saw that the engineer had already begun applying straps to the chair as a precaution before waking him.

“Good, you’re here,” Hephaestus greeted him absently, when he entered the room. The man’s shock of red hair shook continuously back and forth, as he monitored Jude’s vitals and measured out a dose from a medicine bottle marked
Narcan
. The drug was designed to wake patients up quickly from sedation. “Stand over here and get ready to hold him. He may come out of this trying to fight.”

Eric stood on his directed mark and braced himself, as Hephaestus inoculated Jude in the thigh. Almost a minute passed, before Jude began to stir. He shot up in the chair with a wild look in his eyes, as they slowly began to focus again. He shook his head to fight off the effects of the drug and gazed at the two.

“You…” He sputtered. “Why did you…?”

“You lost control of your emotions, Mister Sullivan,” Hephaestus explained. “You were a danger to yourself and others, so you needed to rest for a little while.”

Eric gripped Jude’s shoulder with his good hand and tried to give him his best sympathetic look. “I’m sorry we weren’t there for Eva, man. I’m so not sure she wouldn’t have tried to hurt herself later, though. At least she and Leo are together now.”

Jude flashed him an angry look, before the fire in his eyes died away. He hunched his shoulders and slurred, “You’re right. I know you are. I’m not a soldier like you, though. I’ve seen more death than I ever cared to see in my lifetime.”

“It never gets better. You just learn to live with it. Let’s get out of here, huh?” Eric said, as Jude slid onto the floor and caught himself as his knees gave out. Eric offered him his uninjured side to lean on, and they slowly left the room.

Jude groggily fought to overcome the mix of sedative and stimulant battling for supremacy in his brain. The effort to maintain his equilibrium left the next few hours a series of abbreviated memories. In one of the instances, he remembered seeing the seven Grigori return from finding new hosts for the journey to the other safehouse. In another instance, he recalled a memorial ceremony for Leo and Eva. They lay side-by-side on separate gurneys, their hands clasped together to bridge the gap between them in eternity. Eric stood at attention, while the Grigori and Aspides sang a lilting, unmetered eulogy in their native tongue. He faintly remembered his own tears, as the haunting unintelligible lyrics drew them from his eyes.

The staccato of recollections ended, as he stared at the entrance to the underground shelter from the rear window of Leo’s SUV. The last rays of daylight were dancing off of the windows of the neighboring buildings, making it difficult to see inside the small roofed parking pavilion. He was sad to leave behind so many priceless artifacts. Suddenly, he felt the rumble of a large underground explosion shake the vehicle and saw pillars of smoke billow forth from the door, desperate to escape the inferno within. The world went dark again.

One of the alerts on Mike’s computer’s electronic dashboard furiously blinked bright red and yellow. He leaned in to study which parameters had been met to trigger this particular message. It was a report of some type of explosion and subsequent fire in the basement levels of a building in upper Manhattan. Intriguingly, the basement level did not exist in the building plans, which had stumped the first responders on the scene. Even more interesting was the fact that local news agencies were reporting the event to be a localized earthquake, nothing more.

His intuition told him to look into this anomaly further. He hooked into the public surveillance network to see if he could spot anything of further interest. A high-definition traffic camera pointed down the street, happening to catch the entrance to the narrow alleyway leading to the structure. He tapped into the server containing footage stored over the last few hours.

He began at the moment the fire engines and police cars arrived at the scene and rewound from there. Two SUVs appeared out of the top right corner and seemingly backed into the corridor. He let it play forward a bit in slow motion, but he couldn’t make out the occupants.

Disappointed, he continued backward in hope of spotting anything of value. He stopped when he saw an unmarked van pull up in front of the passage and unload a group of figures dressed in urban combat gear. They brandished their weapons and disappeared out of his field of view.

Excitement began to well up inside of him. Could this be related to the two fugitives they had been looking for so diligently? The squad of mercenaries had obviously never made it back out, unless they were in the SUVs. He kept going, hoping he would see the vehicles arrive.

It took a few minutes to scroll back over the last few hours’ worth of footage, but his patience was well rewarded, as one of the SUVs appeared back out of the alleyway and out of view in the bottom left corner of the screen. The angle and resolution of the camera allowed him to read every letter and number on the automobile’s license plate.

He stopped and furtively looked around the low-walled cubicle farm to make sure no one around him could see what he was doing. The last thing he wanted to do was share in any possible triumph. He was tired of being berated and bullied by his boss. Things had been especially hard the last few days, so he really needed a win.

Assured that his work was currently unnoticed, he returned to his screen. He pulled up the New York Department of Motor Vehicles database and ran a quick query on the plate. His eyes widened as the results appeared. The car belonged to Leonardo Forzi! They had been at the mysterious sanctuary, but something had gone horribly wrong. It looked like their only option was to evacuate. He decided he had to tell his boss his findings. Maybe it would score him a little slack.

Mike stood up and briskly covered the distance to his supervisor’s door. He could hear his boss once again clashing with the two G-men. Mike didn’t care about interrupting, not with the juicy intelligence he currently possessed. He firmly gripped the handle and twisted it downward, preparing to make a grand entrance, but stopped as he heard one of the men inside say “New York”. He put his ear to the door, worried they may have beat him to the punch.

“… Can’t be trusted to finish a simple task,” he heard one of the suited men finish.

“Just give me some more time,” his boss pleaded. “We didn’t know so many of those damned Aspides were still around.”

“Sullivan’s escaped us again, Asmodeus,” the other man said threateningly. “We were lucky to find him again so fast, but now he is in contact with the Grigori. We will have to muster significantly more resources in order to find him again. Azazel must be notified.”

“No!” his boss cried. “Give me a few more days. I’ll find him again.”

“Fine,” his anonymous antagonist responded. “After that, though, Azazel will come himself. Our people in Congress are already pushing for a motion to cooperate fully in the manhunt for Mister Sullivan and his companions. The public is so frightened right now, that even a whisper of his presence will send them into a frenzy to hand over their freedoms in exchange for protection.”

Mike gasped at the conversation he was hearing. He released the handle and backed away from the door. He placed his hand to his forehead and wiped away the cold film of sweat that had accumulated during his impromptu voyeur session. He knew something odd was happening, but he had no idea what half of that conversation meant. The only thing he knew was that this Azazel seemed poised to gain impunity to do whatever he pleased, while the United States government turned a blind eye. He would have no part in it.

He tried to calmly walk back to his desk, wondering who else in the office might be privy to these secret plans. When he returned, he did a quick bit of research into Forzi’s SUV and hacked into its GPS signal. The signal itself was intermittent, but he was able to get approximate coordinates. He punched them into a map and found that the last estimated location was somewhere in the mountains in upstate New York.

Mike deleted all data he could find on his computer regarding his farce of an investigation and uploaded a little present into the network. The computer virus had once begun as a harmless exercise to simulate an attack on the NSA network and detect any gaps in the system’s protective measures. As his career stalled and soured, he had diligently continued to work on it in secret. He had always meant for it to either become the project that skyrocketed him to the top or the righteous revenge he deserved for being passed over so many times.

He now knew what he needed to do with it. He pulled out the small flash drive where he housed the sole copy of the program and inserted it into his computer. Once he executed the file, the countdown began on a virtual nuclear bomb.

He got up and stretched and walked out into the hallway as if to use the restroom. He passed the armed guards and escaped into a parking lot awash with orange light from the sodium bulbs overhead. An hour later, the program had finished replicating itself into all of the other computers connected to the network, as well as the servers hosting the local intranet and redundant backup hard drives.

Thirty minutes after that, the attack began. Monitors began to freeze, causing some mild irritation. What the analysts at their cubicles didn’t know was that the frozen screens were merely illusions. Internally, hard drives were fervently deleting and corrupting entire servers’ worth of files to render any recently gathered data useless. By the time anyone realized what was happening, the no recorded trace of Jude or any of his known accomplices over the past twenty four hours was recoverable. Unnoticed in the furor caused by the catastrophe, Mike Carpenter had disappeared from not only the building, but from all public government databases.