The Nephilim (38 page)

“Although you believe we have abandoned you and choose to leave you at the mercy of those who would do you harm, we have not. We are just bound by the rules. Rules that we know are right. We hope those rules will protect you, and sometimes when they are not enough, we dance as you put it. But the one thing we know for certain is that when we disobey the rules, it can end very badly. This is what happened. One of our number tried to dance with Armando. To help him. But then when her work was done, she forgot the rules. She was too young. And because of her youth a mistake happened.”

“And from that mistake everything that has gone wrong has followed.”

In the moonlight and shadows Cassie's face looked somehow almost alien. As though she was wearing a mask. But in that moment he almost thought he saw a shadow of regret flicker across it. A trace of humanity.

“There was a child produced from the union, a nephilim with a gift greater than any your people have ever seen. A gift the child was unable to handle. That child is with us still, being cared for. But he will never walk among your people.”

He'd never been going to was Garrick's understanding. Those who were raised by their mothers in the Choir did not ever walk with them. But he had to wonder if maybe there was something else in what she was saying. Something bad. Maybe one day he'd ask.

“Armando was also affected greatly. Terribly. His gift was awakened and transformed. He was born with the gift for reading the soul, and had the mistake not been made he would perhaps have become a capable healer of the mind in time. But after he lay with our sister his gift blossomed into something far more than that. You call it the hunting of secrets. But it is not truly that. That is just what he uses it for. It is the gift of knowing. When Armando sees another he can know not just his soul but his thoughts. He can see what is hidden.”

She was talking about a telepath Garrick realised. And not just a simple mind reader. There were several gifts among the people that ran along those lines, the most common being the gift of the one heart or empathy. There were many who could know another's feelings. There were a few who could speak without words, speaking the silent tongue as it was called. But she was talking about more than that. Benedict could see everything within a mind.

Garrick shuddered a little at the thought. To see what was hidden in a mind, even those things that were not being thought of; that was a powerful ability. And in the wrong hands it was a dangerous one. Very dangerous.

Benedict's were of course, the very definition of the wrong hands. And knowing what he was Garrick could suddenly see how Benedict had done what he had done. The knowledge of people's thoughts gave him access to passwords and codes, to organizations, and most dangerous of all, to the hidden secrets in people's lives. That was power. Power he had used to manipulate the Treasury agents. Using his gift to find their fears and then using those fears to turn them into weapons against him. But it was in Detective Warren that Garrick could suddenly see the full power of his gift used badly. The detective was a good man and a good officer. But he had been broken. That was why the marks written in his soul by Benedict had been so deep. He had used his gift against him. He had done what no nephilim was allowed to. And he could not be stopped because he was not a nephilim.

“But as Armando's gift was awakened, the other consequences of the union also occurred,” Cassie carried on. “For a time he lost his reason. And when it returned he was not the child he had been.”

“Your doctors call it post traumatic shock. But it is truly not. It is simply the consequence of the mind being exposed to that which it is not ready for. That which it can never truly comprehend. Some – most – shy away from that knowledge instinctively. It becomes a terror in their minds that they cannot face. But Armando's gift was in the reading of souls. He not only could not shy away, he saw far more deeply than others could. And because he was so young, that knowledge destroyed him.”

“What now walks in the body of Armando Benedict today is not the man he was intended to become. Instead he is a truly broken man. But also someone who has pushed all of that terror aside and replaced it with narcissism. Uncontrollable, unmitigated narcissism. It is a need within him. He uses it to drive away the fear. And it is why he will not stop. It is not the wealth that drives him. The wealth is only the façade. It is the sense of triumph. Of accomplishment. It is that which dominates his soul and which he must have.”

“His gift works only partially. It would work perfectly if his mind were not so damaged. But it works well enough when he has a goal to achieve.”

“And while we whisper to him as we do with all those who have free will, it does not work with him. Because while he can see us as can the other descendants, at his most primal level he refuses to acknowledge what his eyes show him. We can stand right in front of him, talk to him, and know his eyes see us and his ears hear our words, and yet he will know nothing of us. To him we are a part of that great and dark part of his mind that he can never face. So he pushes us away in his fear. He makes himself blind and deaf to us. And he concentrates only on his need. It is the only thing within his soul that he can make sense of, and so it becomes everything to him. And as long as he concentrates on it he does not have to think on the rest.”

“Shit!”

Garrick softly whispered the profanity to the night sky, not knowing what else to say. And in fact the word seemed to sum up his thoughts on the matter perfectly. Because there was nothing he could do to fix the mess. Absolutely nothing at all. Because if Benedict was as she said then he would always be a threat. In jail or out of it.

But it explained so much. A normal with a powerful gift and a broken mind. He understood the latter only too well. He had seen it in his own mother. And it had frightened him as a child to see her so badly affected and to have no idea how to help her. It had been more than frightening. She was his mother, his world, and if she fell apart so did it.

She was stronger these days. Better than she had been when he was a child. Something for which he was infinitely grateful. But still, there were places that her thoughts could not travel. Dark places that she could not face. And if she did try to go there, or even linger too long beside them, it usually ended up in a stay in an institution for a few days or weeks. Happiness for her was about not thinking about certain events in her life. And therapy for her was largely about concentrating on positive things. And time of course. For thirty five years that had been her life. Ever since he had been conceived.

Benedict though had a gift of sight. He had apparently been able to see deeper into the abyss, and whatever had stared back at him had damaged him far more terribly than most. Even having suffered through the various attacks launched on him by Benedict, Garrick found himself feeling somewhat sorry for the thief. Mainly because he had seen what his mother had been through. That was not the sort of thing he would wish on anyone.

But it also worried him. Benedict had been sixteen when he'd had his affair. He was sixty eight now. That was fifty two years of dealing with his nightmare, and by the sounds of things, not dealing with it very well. Fifty two years of wandering further and further off the rails. Fifty two years of growing desperation. And fifty two years of building his network of contacts and puppets within the various departments. No wonder he was so dangerous. And the question became; what else could he do?

“Cassie, the other hunters will have to be told. His gift is what's made him so dangerous to me. It will make him dangerous to them as well.”

And it would. Their quarry was a hunter of a sort, and that was something that had never happened before. Even now he could imagine that Benedict was focusing on them, finding out who was hunting him and finding their vulnerabilities, and they had to understand that. They had to know what they were facing.

“It's being done.”

And with that she vanished. Still, it left him wondering. Wondering why she had come when he called and had chosen to answer this question. He wasn't foolish enough to believe that what he'd heard was an apology. It wasn't. In the entire history of the world the Choir had never apologised for anything. They weren't about to start now with him. But it was still an admission of guilt of some sort, and that was new.

Nor had she come just because he'd called. If the others were being told then this was not about him. It was a plan of some sort. His calling and her arrival had been some sort of coincidence. Or else they had just been waiting for one of them to call. He suspected it was probably the latter.

Still, for a moment she had seemed almost human. Vulnerable and guilty. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or bad.

But there was still a question that needed to be asked, and one that he had never imagined he would consider. Still he asked it.

“Cassie, what will happen to him when he is captured? When he no longer has a feeling of victory to protect him from the darkness within him?” And his thought was that it would be bad. Very bad. It would make even what his mother had been through seem minor.

There was no answer of course. Just the sound of the breeze gently flowing through the distant trees. He probably shouldn't have expected one.

Chapter Twenty Five

Maricia was in the Olmstead Council Chambers when the call came in, and it caught her a little by surprise. The heads of Diogenes and the Mayor were in the middle of a meeting and they shouldn’t have been disturbed. Then again, maybe it was good to take a break. Especially when the negotiations were going awkwardly.

It wasn't that there was any real disagreement in principle. There wasn't. Diogenes needed a new repository and the abandoned winery on the edge of town would be perfect. It already had massive underground cellars and more could be dug with little effort. Dug and then concealed. Also, the same things that made a wine cellar perfect for keeping wine, made it good for preserving documents. Stable temperatures, humidity that could be completely controlled, no direct sunlight and not much vibration.

It would be their first repository on American soil. America was a young country and they'd been in business for thousands of years. Their repositories had all been built long before America had even been discovered. But perhaps the time had come.

And then there was the location. Olmstead was a good place for one. It was close enough to a major city, namely New York, to give them access to airports, major transport links, the major institutions Diogenes dealt with and the various laboratory facilities they needed. But it was also far enough away that they could work in seclusion with no one bothering them. The fact that it was located within a town of nephilim who were already masters of keeping a low profile, would also add an extra layer of security to their operation.

As for the town, it could use the injection of cash that Diogenes would bring with them. For while Diogenes as an organisation was responsible for the storage of the Choir's words, the occasional release of a few of them when it was considered appropriate, and covering up the nephilim's occasional failings, it also had a commercial side.

Diogenes also ran an internationally renown business as experts in antiquities. Documenting, restoring and authenticating ancient writings. They had a worldwide reputation for their skills. Moreover the business was lucrative. Museums across the world and other institutions paid them enormous amounts of money for their expertise and their seal of authenticity. So the new repository would mean anything up to a dozen staff and their families living and working in the town. Similarly another dozen Specialist Collections agents like herself would be travelling back and forth.

All of that meant trade for the town. Then there would be an increased revenue for the town through the rates as well, which as Garrick had long ago pointed out, were not inconsiderable in Olmstead. And as an added bonus they would agree to teach some new classes at the Westlord Academy. Historical conservation, art restoration and ancient studies were being discussed. Maybe in time it would even become a degree course.

In theory the arrangement was a good one for both of them. In practice it would probably be as well. It was the interpersonal stuff that was getting in the way.

For the nephilim it was the thought of having outsiders among them that was difficult to handle. And to them her people were outsiders. They might be distant descendants, but the reality was that save for their ability to see the Choir they were normal people. And most of them had had no contact with the nephilim save in the most nebulous way. A great uncle or an aunt who had had a gift. A distant ancestor remembered only in family stories. And sometimes not even that. The people who made up Diogenes lived almost completely normal lives. And they had nothing to hide. No gifts to conceal.