by Joy Nash
“Sir. May I help you?” The offer, spoken in accented English to his back, was spiced with disapproval.
He turned to find a darkly handsome young man. Longish black hair, olive complexion, soulful brown eyes. Not a Nephil. A human. He wore shirt and tie, pressed black slacks, and a blazer sporting the Institute’s crest. He seemed, to Michael’s eye, less than comfortable in the restrictive garb, as if he were used to more casual attire.
Michael stood a little straighter and concentrated on projecting a relentlessly human aura. His black jeans and vintage military jacket presented exactly the look he wanted. For today, he’d added a messenger bag, its strap slung across his chest. A nice, casual touch of human student realism, if he did say so himself.
“This courtyard is private,” the man said. “Students and faculty only.”
“I didn’t realize.” Michael offered an apologetic smile. He tried to place the man’s accent. Middle Eastern, he thought. Israeli, maybe? “I came through the gate and—”
“Impossible. The gate is kept locked.”
“Really?” He added a guileless blink. “I had no trouble entering.” It wasn’t a lie.
The man looked skeptical. “Nonetheless. You must allow me to escort you out.”
“Actually,” Michael countered, “I’ve traveled all the way from England, hoping I might tour the Institute. I’d like to apply for admission.”
“Ah.” The man’s expression eased a fraction. “We have many British students. Some from the United States as well. Most of our classes are taught in English, as the Institute’s work is international in scope. What is your area of study?”
“The Ancient Middle East.”
“Precisely my interest as well. I suggest you visit the admissions office. The door is around the corner, accessible from the street. They can provide further information and arrange a tour on the weekend.”
“Unfortunately,” Michael said, “I’ll have left Prague by then. Perhaps you could give me a brief tour now? Informally?” He held out his hand. “My name is Michael, by the way. Michael...Santángel. And you are?”
After a brief hesitation, the man shook Michael’s hand. “Dr. Shimon Ben-Meir, archeologist. I’m at liberty for the next hour. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to show you around. Come.” He nodded toward the mahogany doors.
Michael murmured his thanks as he fell into step beside his host. “When does the next term begin?”
He kept up a steady stream of questions as Ben-Meir guided him through several ground floor passageways, pausing to allow Michael to peer into classrooms, offices, and laboratories. A few passing students eyed him curiously. He nodded in return. The Institute was, as Raphael had said, a bona-fide center of learning, no matter that the director was a Nephil. Its facilities were a curious mix of modern comfort and old-style graciousness. Michael sensed nothing amiss with any of it.
He let his senses roam, seeking any sign that Fortunato’s celestial spirit had passed this way. He encountered nothing.
There had to be something. The little cherub could hardly have vanished into thin air. “The Institute’s founder is well respected in the international academic community,” Michael commented as they climbed a marble staircase.
“That is very true. Professor Vaclav Dusek is a highly respected scholar of antiquities.”
“I’m sure he’s a busy man, but I’d very much like to meet him. Could you perhaps arrange a brief interview?”
Ben-Meir paused at the top of the stair. “That will not be possible, I’m afraid. The professor is out of the country at the moment. I am acting as director in his absence.”
Michael wondered if Ben-Meir knew the man he worked for was a demon. “Do you teach classes as well?”
“Not normally, no. In fact, I’ve spent the better part of the last year off-site, on an archeological expedition.”
“Where?”
“Axum. It is in—”
“Ethiopia,” Michael said. “The Ark of the Covenant is said to be preserved there.”
Ben-Meir’s brows rose. “That is true. Unfortunately, only the high priest of Axum is permitted to view the relic, keeping its true provenance a mystery.”
“And the archeological expedition you mentioned? Was it successful?”
“I believe so,” he said, but offered no further elucidation. Pausing before a pair of gilded panel doors, he pushed the right leaf open and stood back. “The Institute’s library,” he said. “A place of study and awe.”
The space was impressively lofty. The mansion’s former ballroom, Ben-Meir explained, now fitted with long wooden reading tables, glass-topped display cases, and tall oaken bookshelves fronted by rolling ladders. Delicate chandeliers hung from the deep-coffered ceiling.
A few students sat at the table studying various documents. Leather bound tomes, illuminated manuscripts, parchment scrolls, and even stone tablets. All wore white gloves and paper face masks.
“The university’s collection of ancient materials is unparalleled,” Ben-Meir said. “Our most prized artifacts come from Biblical lands. We take the utmost care with their preservation. Yet we also believe the treasures must be accessible for study.”
He guided Michael along a series of cases in which fragments of ancient scrolls were displayed in humidity-controlled compartments. He halted before an especially fragile specimen, displayed alone, in a round case a short distance apart from the others.
“From Israel,” he said. “Recovered from a cave near the ancient city of Qumran. It’s a fragment from the apocryphal Book of Enoch.”
Michael bent his head over the case. The dark bit of parchment was no larger than his palm, its edges ragged, the lettering almost unintelligible. It’d been a couple centuries since he’d deciphered any ancient Aramaic, but, as he scanned the text, one word jumped out as if it’d been written in fire.
Nephilim.
He straightened. No wonder this fragment had been given pride of place.
They left the library, descending the grand stair to a marbled entry hall. The tour was almost at an end and Michael’s frustration was growing. Perhaps Fortunato hadn’t been here after all. But if that were the case, where in Heaven’s name could the cherub be?
The stair didn’t end at street level. A narrower flight continued downward, closed off at a lower landing by a plain mahogany door. Michael was about to look away when a glittering bit of something, resting on the second step down, caught his eye. His heartbeat accelerated. When his guide turned to speak with an approaching student, Michael stooped and picked it up. He studied it gravely before closing his fingers around it.
“What occupies the lower floors?” he asked Ben-Meir when the student had left.
“Storage, mainly. A few old laboratories which are no longer in use.”
Not likely. Michael sensed a vast amount of open space beneath his feet. There were, at a minimum, four lower levels, each one darker than the one above. But in all that darkness, Michael didn’t sense even a single spark of celestial light. Fortunato wasn’t there, either.
Ben-Meir escorted him back through the courtyard. The archeologist bid him good day and locked the main gates behind him. Once on the sidewalk, Michael gazed up at the iron angel and demon, locked in eternal enmity.
He opened his fist and looked down at his hand. An iridescent feather, a perfect match to the five already in his possession, sparkled in his palm. This was beyond serious. Fortunato wasn’t inside the Institute now, but he had been. How? Why? And where was he now?
The Prague Institute for the Study of Man hid far too many secrets for Michael’s comfort. The dark subterranean levels, for example. Nothing good could be going on there.
Michael looked left and right down the sidewalk. No one seemed to be paying him any mind, so he willed his fleshy body to fade into nothingness. Once in spirit form, he drifted through the marble-faced walls of the Institute.
As he suspected, the door to the lower level was locked. He passed through it and fou
nd himself in a long corridor. As Ben-Meir had said, the rooms on either side appeared deserted. Michael returned to the stair and drifted down another flight.
This level proved more instructive. He discovered a room that appeared to be an alchemic laboratory. Long worktables were littered with glass beakers and flasks, some with distilling tubes attached, set above gas burners. Cauldrons hung above stoves heated by wood or coal. Rows of test tubes, filled with powders and liquids of every color imaginable, lined the far wall. Copper pots and urns, and glass and ceramic canisters, stood neatly arranged on a table below. One particularly large glass bottle was filled with a dark crimson liquid. He leaned close and sniffed it. Blood. Human blood.
All this faded to the back of Michael’s mind as he focused on a long, golden platform, vaguely coffin-like, which occupied the center of the room. A container, he realized, though the hinges, and the cracks where the lid met the sides were barely visible. Even stranger, the oversized box was constructed of a substance he’d only rarely encountered.
Alchemical gold. Though the material held its shape with perfect corners and precise lines, it wasn’t completely solid. The surface shifted and moved. What’s more, an aura of...life...surrounded it. Most odd, considering it was the work of a Nephil. He reached out a hand to touch it. It felt like...nothing. Nothing at all.
What was in that golden box? His senses gave no hint. His angelic perception couldn’t pass through it. Was Fortunato trapped inside? He thought it unlikely. Even the most powerful Nephil couldn’t contain a celestial life force.
Shaking his head, he drifted back to the stairwell. Another level lay below this one, but when he reached the locked door at the bottom of the stair he received a shock. He couldn’t pass through. What was worse, the surrounding walls were just as impenetrable. Gravely troubled, Michael returned to the level above and tried sinking through the floor. He couldn’t do that, either.
Vaclav Dusek’s magic could block the will of an archangel. How in Heaven’s name could that be?
THIRTEEN
“Where do you think Jack went?”
Cybele picked up a black and white kitten. She stroked its tiny head and murmured sweet nothings. It tangled its claws in her blouse.
Arthur blew out a breath. The nausea he’d experienced during dinner had faded to a sour taste in his mouth. A vague rage lingered. His body’s reaction was all out of proportion to the situation. Yes, religious rituals were difficult for a Nephil to endure, but Mr. Spencer’s prayer at dinner hadn’t been all that sincere.
Arthur had been reacting to Jack.
He tried to puzzle it out, but it was difficult to think with his nerves angry and jangling. The urge to shift and kill was growing stronger by the minute. He wanted to order Cybele to return to their room while he waged battle with his demon nature. There was a less than zero chance she’d obey, however, so he didn’t bother wasting his breath.
They’d excused themselves from the dinner table after Jack’s precipitous departure. They waited barely ten minutes before slipping out of the house after him. The litter of barn kittens had been easy enough to find. But Jack himself was nowhere to be found. They’d checked the barn, the chicken coop, and all the surrounding area. The only creatures visible in the bordering fields were sheep.
“He couldn’t have gone far,” Arthur grumbled.
Cybele paused in the motion of stroking a kitten. “Do you think he really heard moans on the hill?”
“I don’t think he’s lying. He fairly oozes goodness and innocence.” Arthur suspected that’s what had made him so nauseous.
“True,” said Cybele, frowning. “He’s even got a glow about him.”
Arthur shot her a look. “You saw that, too?”
“Yes. Faintly.” Cybele detached the kitten’s claws from her blouse. “So if he’s not lying about the moaning, what do you think he heard?”
“Not Merlin,” Arthur said flatly. “Maybe a demon.” He didn’t have much experience with demons—they tended to avoid areas already inhabited by Nephilim.
“A demon, way out here in the middle of nowhere?” Cybele said dubiously. She returned the ball of black fluff to its mother and siblings. “Don’t demons prefer populated areas? They can’t do much damage without a human host.”
“I suppose,” Arthur said. But what the hell else could it be?
They left the barn. The night was very dark. An access road started behind the barn and ran between two fenced fields. About a quarter mile down this path stood the stone ruin he’d seen from the window, barely visible through a screen of vegetation.
Cybele’s eyes followed his gaze. “Maybe he’s in there.”
“Maybe.”
Their passage down the trail raised the soft bleating of sheep on either side. Though Arthur could see perfectly well in the dark, he knew Cybele couldn’t. He called a handful of hellfire, and was heartened to discover he could contain it in a compact, controlled burn. He released the sparkling globe into the air. It drifted obediently before them.
Cybele grinned. “Nice.”
As magical accomplishments went, it was a small thing. Hardly worth the intense pride Cybele’s praise sparked. But the effort marked the first time he’d truly felt in control of his magic. Maybe there was hope, after all.
The stone ruin turned out to be an abandoned stable. Half the roof beams had collapsed and the rest looked ready to go in the next stiff wind. The place was choked with brambles and saplings. Broken branches and a trail of fresh footsteps led them past a row of stalls. At the end of the passage, a fallen beam and a good deal of crushed roofing blocked their path.
Jack had scraped a path under the debris. Arthur caught Cybele’s quick grimace. She wasn’t fond of enclosed spaces. Evander’s preferred form of punishment for dormants was twenty-four hours locked in the cellar.
“I’ll go in and take a look,” he said. “You wait here.”
“No. I’ll go with you.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. After a moment’s hesitation, Arthur ducked under the beam, widening the path as much as he could as he went through. Cybele sucked in a gulp of air and made a wild lunge through the barrier. He caught her on the other side. He could feel her heart pounding.
“I’m fine,” she said, pushing him away and standing on her own. He caused his hellfire to flare brightly, illuminating the space more evenly. She sent him a grateful glance.
He looked around. They’d entered the stable’s tack room, and it was a mess. Mold climbed the walls. Rotten saddles and other bits of disintegrating leather lay matted together on the floor.
“Ugh.” Cybele hugged her torso. “Mouse droppings.”
Arthur prowled the space, looking for hidden nooks or exits. He found nothing. “If Jack was here earlier, he’s gone now.” He straightened, rubbing the back of his neck. “Damn. Where could he have gotten to?”
“Maybe it doesn’t even matter,” Cybele said with a sigh. “So what if he thought he heard moaning? He probably imagined it.”
“Maybe. But his grandparents said he barely spoke before. Something caused him to start babbling.”
“The foreign lodger?” Cybele asked. “Do you think the man could have molested Jack?”
“Damn,” Arthur said. “I hope not. But something must have happened recently.”
“Let’s just look for the cave on our own like we planned,” Cybele said. She eyed the gap in the debris through which they’d entered. “Though I’m not thrilled about going through there again, that’s for sure.”
They retraced their path. Once back in the open air, Cybele sank down on an overturned water trough and gulped several deep breaths of clean air.
Arthur laid his hand on her upper back. “You ok?”
“Fine.”
That was bullshit if he’d ever heard it, but she wouldn’t appreciate him calling her on it. She needed a few minutes to regain her composure, though.
“I want to take a look from above,” he s
aid. “Maybe I’ll spot something we’ve missed. Wait for me here?”
She nodded.
He walked a short way down the access road. His neck was stiff. He stretched it, working out the kinks. Then he closed his eyes and spread his arms.
For one long, fluid moment his body was suspended in time and form. The sensation of shifting, previously a spasm of gut-wrenching agony, now felt as natural as a morning stretch. His demon essence, as terrifying and unpredictable as it still was, no longer felt like a foreign thing. It wasn’t, he realized. His Nephil nature was an intrinsic part of his self. His most basic identity.
Heat glowed behind his eyes. Sparks gathered in his hands. Dark opal hues pulsated under his skin. His wings unfolded on a whisper. Energy—fierce, limitless—surged into his muscles.
He took to the sky with his eyes still closed, aware that Cybele was almost certainly tracking his flight. He battled an unholy urge to reverse course and fall on her. To tear off her clothes and plunge into her body.
He wanted her desperately, but for the first time since surprising her at Tŷ’r Cythraul, he felt as though he was the master of his lust. They would make love again, but not just yet. Not while his haphazard skills and the power difference between them threatened her life.
He rounded Merlin’s Hill, his expanded Nephil senses absorbing his surroundings in a way his human self could never have imagined. Subtleties previously ignored were suddenly obvious. His ears detected the rustle of the wind, the bleat of sheep, the hoot of an owl. He knew the scurry of rodents and insects, the pulse of life hidden in the heartwood of every tree. Myriad scents reached his nostrils: wood smoke, exhaust fumes, sheep dung. The earliest flowers of spring.
He flew over the summit and banked to the left, then began a slow descending spiral around the site. He and Cybele had tramped over much of the ground below during their afternoon exploration. They hadn’t, however, noticed a particular rocky dip of land, overrun with brambles. Nor the hidden face of a boulder, split in two by a deep crevice, just wide enough for a person—a very slender person—to pass through.