Divine Uprising

by Rachel Van Dyken

  I glanced at Adonis, but he wasn’t even looking in the same direction as I was.

  “How do you fare today? I hope it wasn’t too much trouble coming down…”

  Adonis was still looking around.

  “I’ve decided I want to talk only to you, my love… if that isn’t too much to ask?”

  “It is,” I said trying to sound bored.

  “Who are you talking to?” Adonis asked.

  “Fine.” The man gave a disappointed pout and clapped his hands. Adonis’s eyes flickered to the man, so I knew he was suddenly visible to him. “Sit.” He motioned to the couches.

  We walked around the circle and joined him.

  “Refreshments?” he asked.

  Neither I nor Adonis responded, so the man excused the waitress near us and pressed a button on his seat. The curtains around the circle closed, leaving us utterly alone.

  “I don’t work for Seekers, and I don’t work for Phantoms…” He lit a cigar. “ But I will tell you this. I don’t appreciate being told what to do or how to run my business, is that understood?”

  He didn’t let us answer.

  Brushing the jet-black hair out of his eyes, he leaned down and took a sip of the red liquid in front of him. “I’m a creature of the Underworld. We report to no one. That is, until the end, and I don’t plan on dying anytime soon, so get that out of your head, Beautiful One.” He looked seductively at Adonis, and I suddenly felt ill.

  “I’m sure you have no idea what this place is, and if you haven’t guessed it by now, I don’t feel the need to inform you.”

  “Feeders,” Adonis whispered. “They feed off blood and souls.”

  “Ah, the pretty one has a brain, does he?”

  The creature leaned forward and closed his eyes as he sniffed close to Adonis. It wasn’t lost on me that the man was somewhat, er, attracted to him. But most of the Underworld worked that way. If they were attracted to someone or something, they took it. But this man was different. He didn’t look like the Phantoms, yet he fed on souls and blood, which meant he needed them to be sustained. Phantoms could feed on anything. I quickly tried to put the pieces together.

  “You’re a descendent of the Phantoms,” I said, finally resorting to guessing. “You are third generation, which means…”

  “Yes, yes, they’ve been reproducing. Tell me something I don’t know. I grow bored of ignorant people. Where did you think the stories came from?”

  “Stories?”

  He took a long swig of liquid from his goblet. Blood trickled down his chin. He swiped at it with his hand and licked the blood away from his fingers. “Yes, the stories of vampires and werewolves? Where have you been living?”

  “The information, please?” Adonis changed the subject.

  “Ah, yes. It has come to our attention that a certain force has been… raised up? Yes, I can see by the look on your faces that much is true. Like I said, we only serve the side that benefits us. At this point that side is the Seekers, though I am loath to admit it. The Phantoms have tried to control us for far too long. We like to be left in peace. We don’t harm those who don’t wish for it. I know someone who is willing to help you.” The man turned toward me. “In fact, I think you may be familiar with him, dear girl…”

  Right, because I’m familiar with Phantoms, witches, vampires, and werewolves.

  “Seth?” the man called loudly. “Come out, dear.”

  My eyes grew large as another man suddenly appeared in our small circle.

  Crystal blue eyes that glowed like ice stared back at me. With skin a mesmerizing color of bronze and curly blonde hair, I suddenly forgot to breathe.

  “Seth, this is Athena.”

  “I know.” His voice… oh, I was in trouble. At times like those I wished I had Nike with me, but she had been out of the loop for ages. Now she only serves in the Heavenly Courts. Traitor.

  Seth was drop-dead gorgeous. He and Adonis could be brothers. Wow. I wondered if Adonis saw the beauty in front of him. I was jealous, and I was a female.

  He walked purposefully toward me, all seven feet of him. A grey muscle-shirt stretched across his broad chest.

  I felt warm and fuzzy as he took a seat next to me. His breath fanned my face as he exhaled in my personal space. I shivered a bit as his eyes seemed to pierce my cool demeanor.

  “I’ve been waiting for a thousand years to meet you, Thena.”

  “That’s it,” Adonis grumbled next to me, and before I knew it he had managed to squish himself between us. “The information please?” he demanded.

  “I am the information.” Seth winked.

  “Say hello to your new partner,” Seth announced, his words smooth and beautiful, almost as if he was singing them rather than speaking. Suddenly, it was just the three of us: me, Adonis, and apparently our new partner, against the evil of the Darkness. How bad could he be?

  Chapter Nine

  Words escaped me. The blaring loudness of the club faded into the distance as Seth rose from his seat to sit on the other side of me and put his hand on my leg. I was normally one of those personal space people. I got irritated if anyone breathed the same air, let alone touched me.

  Not Seth.

  My eyes followed the direction of his hand as his fingertips brushed my thigh. His fingers grazed my skin, and I swore in that moment I could feel the heat from his hands, even though I had layers of clothes separating us.

  “Partner?” Adonis choked out the word. I wanted to warn him not to kill unnecessarily, especially since we were supposed to be the good guys. If this guy was going to be our informant, so be it; but did he have to be so blazingly attractive?

  It was at times like these I wondered what I’d done to deserve such punishment. With Adonis on my right and Seth on my left, I felt something akin to extreme unfairness beat in my chest.

  No woman would stand a chance against even one of them.

  And I’ve got two.

  Yay.

  El and I will have words later… if, in fact, I ever did make it into Eden. I threw my eyes up to the sky for good measure, in hopes that the Creator of the universe would take note of my plight, then realized it was probably all in vain. He didn’t care about my inability to speak in front of attractive people, not with the Watchers free from the Abyss.

  “The information you know. Can’t you just tell us?” Adonis asked, clearly grasping at straws. He rose from his seat and began pacing in front of me, probably wishing he had a good reason to end Seth’s life.

  “No,” Seth answered smoothly as he brushed a blonde curl out of his eyes. Every movement he made seemed, not necessarily calculated, but smooth. Almost too smooth. Which sounded bizarre, even to my ears. There was something very off about his mannerisms.

  He knew I was thinking about him because suddenly his eyes flickered back to mine. He smiled sadly and said, “You can ask, Athena. You don’t have to hurt yourself trying to figure it out. We’ll be here all day with how slow your brain is working right now.”

  Adonis choked on his laugh then put a stern look on his face.

  “What are you?” I asked bluntly.

  “Fallen,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I’m Fallen. It’s how I’ll forever be known.”

  “Fallen from?” I asked, hoping he meant a tree or something else high and not the place I was thinking because if I was right with my guess, our newest partner was a fallen angel.

  “Really, Thena, sometimes you can be so dense, “Adonis piped in. “You’re a fallen angel? One of the Originals?”

  “We should go.” Seth rose and bit his lip. “And to answer your question, does it matter what I was? All that matters is what I am. I am defined by it, and I live by it.”

  He stretched his hands over his head, making me immediately regret having stood so close. His body was perfect. “What’s important is that we complete our mission and rendezvous. I refuse to meet with your angels. I can never look at the face of perfection again. Not without feeling… suicida
l,” he finished, and a shadow crossed his features. “So I can only be a partner to both of you until you meet with the rest of them.”

  “Right,” I said, looking to Adonis. “So what next?”

  “Next we go down.” Seth grinned happily.

  “I thought we were already there,” I replied, ready to punch the wall. If one more person talked in riddles I was going to lose my mind.

  “Just where is down?” Adonis held out his hand and possessively brought me into the cage of his body. The exact way a protective lover would have done.

  I wanted to say, “Easy, tiger,” but instead I found it sweet that he felt the need to protect me from all things male. As if I couldn’t protect myself. Please. I’d slit Seth’s throat in less than a minute if I had to.

  Except you’re losing your touch, are you not, sweet?

  I whipped my head around, desperately trying to see which direction the voice had come from.

  “Thena, you okay?” Adonis asked.

  Seth gave me an odd look. Both men waited for me to say something. The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. I nodded my head and pulled away from Adonis.

  Seth reached out and touched my skin. “Better?”

  And suddenly it was.

  “Yes, uh…”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He seemed almost embarrassed. “Ready yourselves. Where we go, no Seeker has gone before.”

  “Cute, you should tattoo that somewhere on your body,” I said under my breath.

  Adonis laughed. Seth seemed less amused. Do angels never joke? Even fallen ones?

  As Seth led us out of the club, I was half-tempted to ask him more about his life, as well as if he had wings. I’d never seen wings before. Not even Michael’s. Sometimes I wondered if they even had them. These were the things I should not have been contemplating while Seth led us down a darker hallway than before.

  “You afraid?” Adonis whispered into my ear. I closed my eyes, imagining it was just the two of us, and my stomach did a nervous flip-flop.

  “No,” I said, unsure of myself.

  “Good.” He kissed my cheek. “I’ll never leave you, Thena.”

  “Let’s go, you two,” Seth called from ahead.

  Yes, taskmaster; we’re coming.

  We walked down a series of darkened hallways that looked a lot like Hollywood’s version of a haunted house. I was fully aware things really do go bump in the night, so I’d admit to being a bit more on edge.

  We stopped in front of a giant black door. Of course, everything is black when you go down. Naturally.

  “Before you can fight your enemy, you have to know him…” Seth pushed open the door. It groaned under the pressure.

  I gasped as we walked inside a room filled with what looked like stars. Everything was black. It felt like we were standing outside of the universe looking down at the planets. I could see Earth, Jupiter, Saturn — it was trippy to say the least. The stars nearly blinded me from where I stood.

  I’ve seen some pretty crazy things in my lifetime. This had to be the coolest out of all of them.

  “Where are we?” I asked, hoping he didn’t say down one more time, lest I punch his perfectly chiseled jaw, sending him into the nearest planet on my right.

  “It’s a portal of some sort. Only a few know of its existence. And now for the story.” Seth raised his hand above his head, light shot out from his eyes and fingertips, and the room around us started to spin. I held onto Adonis for support. He was like a rock, immobile even though the room was spinning out of control.

  The noise of the spinning was just as unbearable. I was ready to cover my ears, and then everything froze. Stars were no longer on the walls, but right in front of my face, objects were paused mid-air like someone had walked in and pressed pause on a movie.

  Seth cleared his throat and closed his eyes.

  I glanced down. My feet were on the Earth, zoomed in on a small village. I waited for Seth’s voice to begin, too entranced to whine for him to hurry up.

  “The Watchers were just that. They watched from Heaven. Several stories have been told about this particular breed of angels. I find a need to clear the air concerning my relatives. The Watchers were stars. Day and night they would watch the humans. Their job was to protect them, to make sure no harm came to El’s creation. They became obsessed and entranced by the beauty of what God had created. How could they not, after being forced to watch without any sort of guidance except to protect and love?

  “So protect and love they did. But even love can turn into something evil if you allow it to become something far worse — obsession.

  “The Watchers became utterly obsessed with the women of earth. They would watch them bathe, eat, drink, dance, and laugh, and suddenly were envious that they could not join with them. That the weak men of the human race were able to mate with the women made the Watchers furious, for they had been admiring and protecting the humans for generations.”

  The room shifted, and I watched in horror as one of the stars slowly began to spin toward the earth, and another and another until two hundred stars shot straight to the ground, falling from the sky.

  “Two hundred stars fell from the sky that day.” Seth turned toward me.

  My heart was not only sick, it was heavy, for I knew the sacrifice that had been made. I could feel Adonis’s hand on my shoulder.

  Seth continued. “The Watchers fulfilled their lustful desires. They slept with the women, who soon bore them children. The children, as you know, are known as Nephilim. Many of them were destroyed in the Great Flood.”

  “But not all,” I interrupted, suddenly feeling ashamed of my heritage.

  “No, not all,” Seth said softly. “The women bore what the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans referred to as the gods. Many of the Nephilim keep the human names given them, because when they were created—”

  “We were given no names,” I interrupted. It still pained me to think about it, of the parents we’d had. The Watchers cared so little about the product of their lust that they forgot to name us.

  “Precisely,” Seth said. “The children of the Watchers were an abomination, given no identity but that of evil and sin. Out of their unholy union, Nephilim were born. And then the great battle began.”

  I watched, paralyzed, as a reenactment of the Nephilim, my people, being born took place in front of me. Humans ran away from us, frightened. And then I saw him.

  My father.

  I fought the bile that rose in my throat as I watched him seduce my mother and, in turn, possess her. She became enamored with him, yet once he’d had his fill of her, he left her. I watched as she beat at his giant body to stay with her, to stay with the child. And then I saw myself, hiding behind my mother.

  My father reached out and touched a piece of fallen hair on my shoulder.

  “We will meet again, Daughter.” His voice was thickly accented like many of the angels who’d fallen. It sounded alien yet so familiar.

  With that I watched myself turn away and hide.

  The battle was just beginning.

  Suddenly an explosion from the sky blinded me. I turned toward Adonis, and he held my trembling body. Seeing my father had been too much.

  Thousands of angels descended to the earth. Disbelief washed over me as I watched the innocent Nephilim hide with the humans, while the Watchers battled the great armies of El.

  I was once again reminded of the powers the Watchers possessed, for they were fallen stars, a race created by El, and they were magnificent. Azazeel, my father, knew how to create weapons out of iron; he also knew incantations that would confuse the armies of El. Several other Watchers knew how to read the wind, knowing the precise time to attack.

  The Watchers who stayed back were as immobile as stone. Their eyes turned completely white, rolling into the backs of their heads. Simultaneously thunderclouds appeared and threatened to take down the angelic army.

  It was then I remembered more of the stories of old. For humans now
referred to the Watchers as the Titans from ancient Greece. A chill ran down my spine. What would humans do if they knew the truth? That everything they’ve ever known, every story passed down for entertainment was, in fact, truth, and much worse than even their imaginings.

  The battle went on for seven days and seven nights, until finally, El’s army took over. Azazeel barely escaped with his life. The rest of the Watchers were chained and sent into the Abyss.

  Michael opened a hole into the earth, and Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel threw the ones who had fallen into their tormenting prison.

  “You will be judged with the rest of the human race… when the End comes,” Michael said. Fire from Heaven descended, setting a ring around the cell.

  “May you consider what you’ve done and repent, for only El can help you now.” The last words were spoken, not to give the Watchers hope, but to make them understand that with the free will they’d been given, came dealing with the consequences of choices made.

  I couldn’t handle watching the story unfold. I felt like I was reliving the most horrible experience of my existence.

  Seth cleared his throat. “Watch, Athena. There is more.”

  Michael, Raphael, and Uriel stood in the middle of the earth. Their eyes roamed around.

  “We will watch over them,” Michael said, turning to his brothers.

  “An abomination, yet still living. What shall we do?” Gabriel said as the Nephilim slowly crept out of hiding.

  “They are living, breathing beings, but not normal. We give them the choice, Brothers. We let them choose, just like El lets us choose. Their destiny is not ours to decide.” And then Michael did something I’ve never seen him do.

  He wept.

  I felt a solitary tear slip down my cheek, the memory finally coming back to me after so many years.

  I observed myself letting go of my mother’s skirts and walking slowly to the menacing-looking angels. Everyone watched in awe as I approached the weeping angel and lifted my arms. He knelt down to face me.

  I took his beautiful face in my hands, and with tears streaming down my young face, I said, “I’m sorry.”

  I was so very young still, but as Nephilim, we grew extremely fast and were able to speak within a few days of being born.