Treaters: Book One of the Divine Conflict.

by CJ Rutherford

  The fuck? What was happening, and who wasn’t going to be happy? And what the hell did they mean by “let” me shoot myself?

  A musical chuckle reverberated through the nothingness surrounding me. ‘He hasn’t been happy since the second age. I doubt our inaction will make him dislike us any more than he does already.’

  I felt a tug deep inside whatever I was now, and the sensation of movement reversed. Slowly, I drew away from the light back into the greyness of whatever void this was.

  ‘I have him…oh!’

  I got a sense that whomever – whatever – the male being was, it was shocked. I had no idea why. Here I was, a normal, everyday soul, off to meet his maker, when someone decides to take me on a detour. Again…what the fuck?

  Maybe that was it. Maybe there had been a mistake, and I’d been meant to go in the other direction. To be fair, it made perfect sense. If I didn’t believe in the Big Guy, why the hell should he let me into paradise?

  ‘He’s aware, Barachiel!’ said the male.

  I had no idea why he was so surprised. Of course, I was aware. I might be dead, but I still had a mind, didn’t I? Or…

  ‘That’s impossible, he can’t…oh.’ The female stopped mid-sentence. I could sense her bewilderment.

  I don’t know how I knew, but somehow, I envisioned the two of them huddling closer, lowering their voices in an attempt to prevent me from hearing them. It didn’t work. Whatever supernatural force was keeping me aware had also granted me super hearing.

  ‘How is this even possible, Uriel?’ the female whispered. ‘He’s noncorporeal; he shouldn’t be able to see or hear anything.’

  I sensed the male shrugging. ‘Yet another impossible occurrence. Tell it to get in line. Conceiving the child should also have been impossible, but we both witnessed it, and the implications of it.’

  FUUUCK!

  It happened so fast I didn’t have time to process the thought. Any thought. One minute I was in the void, confused but comfortable; the next I was zipping downward toward a spec lying far below, the ground rushing up impossibly fast, reminding me of my first parachute drop. Nothing can prepare you for the ground rush as you fall those final few yards. This was like that, times a thousand.

  I slammed, hard, inside. Then everything went black. My breath caught in my throat, and I almost choked. I could breathe! More than that, I felt my heart thump in my chest, the thrum of blood as it coursed through my veins and an incredible sense of pain centered around the top of my skull. I started to panic, realizing I couldn't see.

  Turned out that was an easy one. All I had to do was open my eyes, but I wished I hadn’t, as blinding sunlight assaulted my vision. Shit, that hurt! I put my hand up to shield my eyes, thankful I actually had a hand, before realizing the light wasn’t coming from the sky. Indeed, as I glanced around the edges of my palm I could see stars speckling the night sky. But the outline of my hand was stark against the bright light that illuminated the area like the center mound at Wrigley Field.

  Suddenly, the light dimmed, and the surrounding area was plunged into deep shadow. My eyes adjusted slowly.

  “My apologies, Jaz,” said the female voice. “We didn’t expect you to arrive so...abruptly.”

  I kept my hand up for a long moment, feeling like the kid who’d heard something move under his bed but dreaded to look.

  “Do you think he’s gone mad?” asked the male casually.

  That was it. I’d had enough, and even if I was going crazy, I wanted to have a good hard look at my delusions before grabbing the gun and doing it right this time. “He is right here,” I said, my voice raspy to my own ears. I willed my hand to drop to my side. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw next.

  Two people, a man and a woman, stood about five feet away, but if their forms were human, that was where the similarity ended.

  The woman was tall and slender, with light-colored skin and long, pale hair framing a beautifully crafted, angelic face. Typical Judeo-Christian representation of an angel, right? But … not. Her eyes, a vivid, icy blue, were cat-shaped, unblinking, and absolutely void. There was nothing behind them – no laughter, no hate, no love … no emotion of any kind. It's not that she was robotic; it was… more than that. She was utterly motionless, as if she were a statue that had been sculpted merely seconds ago, a façade made to simply stand there, unbreathing, unblinking. She glowed around the edges of her frame, and I knew she’d been the source of the blinding sunlight.

  The man was her counterpoint in almost every way. Still what could be considered human “perfection,” his smooth dark skin and static features were steeped in shadow. His outline blurred and shifted, the night seeming to roll off him, in gentle, fog-like caresses. If she were the personification of light, he was the personification of darkness.

  “Who are you?” This time, my voice sounded strong. That surprised me, considering I was close to peeing my pants.

  The two looked at each other, seeming to weigh their response, and how much, if anything, to tell me. Then the words from the void, the words that had slammed me back into my body with the force of an atomic bomb, finally registered in my brain. “You said, ‘conceiving the child…’ Was Jennifer pregnant?”

  There was no reaction. Neither being shifted uncomfortably or shared a “look” or even changed facial expression. It was maddening. In the void, I could read them … I closed my eyes to half-slits and there were the body-language tells I had been seeking. The man appeared deflated, like a child who thought his secret hadn't been overheard. The woman seemed resigned, but definitely unhappy.

  The woman smiled, and if she hadn’t been attenuating her shimmer, it might have blinded me. When she spoke, her lips moved, but in a slightly delayed, off-sync manner. “I am Barachiel, and this is Uriel." She turned to the male, communicating silently. I felt tension flow back and forth before the male nodded. “We have a proposition for you.”

  I scrambled to my feet, grabbing the Glock from where it lay a few inches from my right hand, and pointed it at them. The absurdity of it struck me even as I held the gun steady. I should have a hole the size of a grapefruit where the top of my skull rested and I didn't even have a dribble of blood staining my shirt collar.

  “I’m not doing anything until one of you tells me what the fuck is going on!” I spoke the profanity in my deadliest command voice, but neither of them as much as flinched. They didn’t seem concerned by the pistol either. I was absolutely certain it would be useless against them, but maybe…I raised the pistol to my temple. That got a reaction

  Darkness My Old Friend groaned. “Oh, please don’t do that. It gives me an awful taste in my mouth when I have to reach into the shadows.” He addressed the woman glumly. “I knew there was a reason I hadn’t done it in so long, Barachiel.”

  Gold Dust Woman shook her head to silence him. “Enough complaining, Uriel.” She turned her gaze on me. “We will explain, Jaz, as much as we can. The rest?” She hesitated, and I knew that was atypical for her. “For reasons that will become clear, you will need to find out for yourself.”

  She looked at me with those bizarre, blue eyes and in a nano second, I was completely under her spell. I knew it, but I couldn’t prevent myself from ejecting the magazine and dropping it and the pistol gently to the ground. Then, just as suddenly, I had control of my body back. For some reason, I felt a sense of soul-deep betrayal. My free will had been taken from me. Granted, it had been for only a few seconds, but it had been done.

  “I beg your pardon, Jaz,” she said, and the regret in her voice was genuine. “You are too important to us to risk having to pull your stubborn soul, once again, into your body.”

  I glanced at the gun on the ground. I could have it my hand again in under a second, but there was nothing to stop her from controlling me, so what would be the point?

  My mind went back over the last few minutes. It all seemed so impossible. “I was dead, right?”

  The dark man, Uriel, nodded, the movement barely percep
tible within the writhing mass of shadows surrounding him. “You weren’t dead yet, not strictly speaking,” Uriel amended, with a sidelong glance at the female. “If your soul had passed the point of no return, entered what your society knows as purgatory, then it would have been beyond my power to return it.”

  My head reeled. Purgatory? Soul? I studied them, trying in vain to fit them into any of my conceptions of what the afterlife might hold. Both stood straight-faced, immobile, mechanical. I couldn’t explain why, but seeing them standing there, showing a total lack of any emotion really, really, pissed me off.

  “First of all, answer my question,” I demanded. “Was Jennifer pregnant?”

  Barachiel’s light seemed to dim, her immobile expression cracking for the briefest instant, before recovering. She nodded. “She was, Jaz, which is one of the reasons you are here, alive again.”

  I put my face into my palms, pressing hard. My hands shook, and tears stung the backs of my eyes, but I wouldn’t cry; not in front of these things. I didn’t know why, but something, some intuition, told me they had their own agenda, and that my well-being didn’t fully run alongside it.

  But Jennifer had been pregnant. My mind flew back over the last few days. The glow of vitality she'd had, the occasional vomiting, the Treaters repeatedly finding us, even when we had slept far enough away so they shouldn't have been able to track us at all. We had hidden carefully, but…if Jennifer had been pregnant?

  I wanted to hit something, hard. She’d never had a chance, and again it was my fault. We hadn’t used anything…hadn’t seen the point. It was the end of the world, but if I’d kept it in my pants, then maybe Jennifer would be alive, and I wouldn’t be having this conversation with these…

  “What are you anyway?” My question had them glancing at each other again, and for the first time, I could read an expression of curiosity on their faces, as if they’d never been asked this question. “You’re clearly not human, so what are you? Ghosts? Aliens? Angels?”

  Their eyes flitted at the last word for a barely perceptible instant, but I caught it. “No…fucking…way.”

  I searched my distant memory, from back when my parents would bring me to temple. Barachiel and Uriel, Barachiel and Uriel. Why were those names so familiar? Then it hit me, and I looked at them, my eyes widening. “You aren’t just angels…you’re Archangels from the Old Testament.” I pointed at Barachiel. “But you’re supposed to be a guy.”

  The woman smiled, shaking her head in a resigned fashion. “Humans and their fascination with gender identity.”

  Uriel snorted. “To be fair, they were starting to come out of the dark ages. They might have made it too, if the Nephilim hadn’t found them.”

  That was it.

  That was the moment everything fell into place and crashed around my ears in the same instant, creating a disconnect I thought would take my sanity. It took me several seconds to sputter a response, and, as always, I was less than articulate.

  “Nephilim? Are you fucking serious? What, is this some big joke to you guys, the H.P. Lovecraft hour?”

  They exchanged bewildered glances, before Uriel’s expression brightened in understanding. He spoke in a stage whisper, as if I weren’t standing a few feet away. “The Cthulhu guy.”

  Comprehension dawned on Barachiel’s face, before a bitter smile replaced it. “Oh, him.”

  I stood, waiting for them to explain themselves, but it was clear they wanted the matter well and truly swept under the carpet. I set my jawbone and stared at them, motionless, expressionless. I’d learned that in the Corps, too. I didn’t know what it might accomplish, beyond a cramp in my jaw, but it was all I had at the moment, and, surprisingly, it seemed to work.

  Barachiel waved her hand in a dismissive fashion. “Oh, it’s not wise to invoke the name of a greater demon and then develop a fanatic following.”

  Uriel snorted. “It took Remi almost a decade to put the cork back in that particular bottle.”

  I watched them for any sign they were pulling my leg, but no. They returned to their stoic expressions. I wanted a drink. I needed several drinks.

  I didn't say it out loud, but with a wave of Barachiel's hand, the forest was gone, its silence shattered by the background music and conversation of a downtown New York nightclub. We sat in a secluded booth above the dance floor, which was packed with sweaty, drunk, energetic kids. I stiffened, then blinked, refusing to trust my senses.

  Barachiel shrugged. “It’s a construct, but you’ll find the alcohol authentic.”

  A shot glass appeared in my hand. I took a small sip, then downed it in one. Maker’s Mark. I sighed. “Heaven in a shot glass.” I raised an eyebrow at my companions. “No offense.”

  Uriel smiled. “None taken.” He had some sort of smoking, neon-green liquid in a high-ball glass, which he sipped through a straw. As he did so, the straw melted, and I watched as he fished in a shadow-secluded pocket to retrieve a handful of spares.

  Barachiel passed on the drinks. “Are you ready?”

  I didn’t know if I was. I didn’t know if I wanted to know what she was about to tell me, and a part of me believed I would have been better off if I’d reached the light before Uriel had hooked me and reeled me back to life, like I’d hooked Nessie and brought her to the skillet. That hadn’t ended too well for the fish, and I wondered if my fate would be any different. But I had questions, so I nodded.

  She looked at Uriel, who seemed to have retreated into his shadows, which now pulsed to the beat of the music. He looked levelly back at her, making no move to take the lead.

  She took a deep breath and steepled her fingers. The lights played across her features, but did nothing to compete with the glow barely restrained beneath the surface of her mask. “Where to begin,” she murmured rhetorically.

  I fixed my gaze on her. “How about you start by telling me why you bought me back?”

  Barachiel considered my question for a second, before her an actual smile crossed her statuesque features. “Oh, that one’s easy! We need you to save Jennifer and your daughter.”

  My daughter! I took a moment to absorb the news, then swallowed and nodded for her to continue.

  “As you ascertained, the ‘Treaters’ as you call them, hunt by sensing your life energy. I must commend you on your method of hiding by the way. Not many …”

  I glared at her, the intensity of my gaze making her literally lean backward. Jeeze, did all angels babble this much?

  Barachiel composed herself before continuing. “As you worked out, your method was sufficient to hide the life energy of one person, but if more than one gathered in close proximity…”

  I thought back to the night the three of us had huddled together in the hollow. The combined essences of three souls – four if you included the unborn baby – must have drawn them like a fly to a flame. “I get it,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter. They’re gone. Tray, Jennifer, the…baby. They’re all dead!”

  Uriel snorted, but tried to disguise it as choking on his drink. I wished he would.

  I stared at Barachiel. “What am I missing here?”

  She paused, and with a wave of her hand another drink appeared in my hand. “You may need that.”

  I stared at the drink and then ignored it, turning my full attention to Barachiel.

  “When the Nephilim consume a physical body, the soul’s energy becomes a part of them.” Barachiel stared back at me, grimly. “Their souls never pass on. They are trapped inside the beasts that claims them.”

  The fuck! Bile rose, along with rage. If my stomach hadn’t been empty already I’d have emptied its contents onto the table. When I spoke, it was more growl than speech and Barachiel had to lean forward to hear me.

  “You’re telling me my buddies, Jennifer, and my daughter are still alive somewhere, trapped inside those things?”

  She shook her head. “Not alive, no, but part of their soul will be aware, enough to experience the existence of the Nephilim, until they are turned.�
��

  My head snapped up. “Turned? What does that mean?”

  Uriel chuckled, bitterly. “There is only so much pain and suffering a puny human soul can experience before it breaks. And when it does, when they are given the choice…” He drifted off, turning his attention deliberately away from me and back to the drink he was nursing.

  “What is this choice bullshit?” I glared pointedly at Barachiel, who blanched at the accusation in my eyes. “It seems pretty arbitrary to me.”

  Her expression darkened. “That was… an exception. It doesn't happen. There is choice, however … Uriel is correct as well. A human soul is one of the strongest forces in the all of the universes, Jaz, but it is also a fragile thing. If it suffers enough, it breaks, and then it can be led down a path into darkness. It becomes Nephilim. It is how they reproduce, since both Heaven and Hell have turned their faces away from them. Killing them outside the plane on which they were birthed doesn't end them, you see, so … well, you can see our dilemma.”

  My head began to swim, and I debated taking another shot. I didn't. “You mean, I didn’t kill any of those bastards? Not a single one?”

  Barachiel shook her head. “I’m afraid not, Jaz. To truly kill a demon of the Nephilim, they need to be killed in whichever plane of the Hells where they were spawned.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, plane of the Hells? Spit it out, Gold Dust Woman!”

  She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, not at all bothered by the appellation or my angry tone. She was becoming as impatient with me as I had been with them the entire evening. “Oh, planes, circles…call them what you like.”

  Circles of Hell. First, Lovecraft, now Dante? The fuck?

  Barachiel vanished my glass with another gesture. It appeared Little Miss Nice Angel had left the building. “We have little time left here, human, so I shall get to the point.”

  About fucking time!

  “The fact is that your Jennifer should not have been able to conceive. The leaching of this world should have prevented the creation of any new life.”