by R. D. Brady
“Okay,” Laney said. “Maybe all the paperwork is worth it. Come on.” She tugged Jake down the hall, the smile dropping from her face as the worries about Danny’s text started to crowd her mind once again.
“We’ll find them,” Jake murmured next to her.
She didn’t ask how he knew what she was thinking. He just always seemed to. And his voice held no doubt—only confidence. It made her own confidence increase a little. She, Jake, and Henry had taken on incredible odds before. This situation would just be one more opportunity to succeed. She leaned into him. “Yes, we will.”
They turned the corner together and could hear Danny and Henry talking. “Lou’s here. You should go say hi,” Henry said.
Danny groaned. “Henry…”
“What? She’s nice.”
Laney smiled and shook her head.
Before they reached the door, Jake stopped her and tipped her face up toward his. “Just remember, whatever it is, we face it together. Okay?”
Laney nodded as she reached up to kiss him. “Together.”
CHAPTER 6
Medford, Oregon
Reverend Nathaniel Grayston stepped to the pulpit. The squirming in the seats stopped automatically, as did the whispers and quiet murmurs. All eyes turned to him. The only sound was the hum of the tall fans blowing the hot air around the big tent.
Nathaniel nodded, pleased with the response. For a man who had been largely overlooked his entire life, these last few years of his ministry had been ego enhancing.
Nathaniel had no illusions about his appearance. He was not a tall man, nor an imposing one. But he knew his words would ignite his followers. His congregation was small but it grew every week.
He glanced around the “church.” The tent traveled with them from venue to venue. It took hours for his followers to set up, but it was worth it. The beams of the tent were draped in a deep red fabric that contrasted with the white of the tent itself.
An eight-foot-tall crucifix hung behind Nathaniel on the portable stage. Jesus, bloodied and scarred, looked down on him, as if to give Nathaniel his blessing.
His congregants sat on metal folding chairs. More than half of the attendees were male. The majority of them wore some sign of their military background. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were a boon to his ministry. All those lost souls in need of guidance.
And it is my honor to provide them with it, Nathaniel thought as he placed his worn Bible on the podium. The Old Testament was dog-eared, marked with words or insights. The New Testament was practically pristine. Jesus was a divine force, but the true message of God could be found in the Old, not the New Testament.
“My friends,” Nathaniel began, casting his eyes over the group. Although the tent was filled to capacity, none of the one hundred twenty people said a word, their attention rapt, except for a few in the back who looked around uneasily. There were always doubting Thomases in the crowd—at least at the beginning.
All of those in attendance had been invited to attend due to their support of Nathaniel’s weekly online sermons, with, of course, a few of his already devout followers sprinkled throughout the crowd. Now was the time to solidify these supporters to the cause.
“My friends,” he said again, mentally discarding the sermon he had prepared. These people needed to know their duty. They needed to know what they risked through their inaction.
“We have been much blessed. We have been born into a country the likes of which the world has never known. Many of you have helped defend the freedoms and ideals of that country and have lost friends along the way. We are forever in your debt.”
He paused, allowing his words to wash over the crowd.
“But now, another, even more insidious, danger has appeared. And we have been chosen to fulfill God’s word—to protect the innocent, to protect the faithful. God is not pleased with our sinful ways.”
Nathaniel picked up the Bible, holding it above his head, his voice louder. “‘I will execute judgment on him with plague and bloodshed; I will pour down torrents of rain, hailstones and burning sulfur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him.
“These are our God’s words. He has been unhappy in the past and mankind has paid the price. He is unhappy again. The time of the judgment has begun. Are you ready?”
He peered at a man in the second row, waiting for the man to nod back. Then Nathaniel scanned the crowd, making eye contact with others. “Are you? And you?”
“I’m ready.” A muscular man with a shaved head in the third row stood, his back straight. Tyrell Nichols, Nathaniel’s right-hand man. Tyrell kept his eyes locked on Nathaniel, his commitment apparent to everyone there.
And the tidal wave of proclamations began.
“Me too.”
“I’m ready.”
“I’m with you, Father.”
The noise increased, and soon almost all in the tent were standing, declaring their unity. Nathaniel let the outpouring continue for a few seconds more before he put up a hand, waving everyone back into their seats.
He nodded, coming to the front of the stage. “I never doubted it, my friends. You have all been called to God’s mission, just as I have. And what a glorious duty it is: the ushering in of a new age, a better age. We will save the human race from this danger. We will show them the way.”
His voice took on a hushed, urgent whisper. “But to do this, we must become God’s weapon. We must strike down evil where we see it, no matter what face it hides behind.
“We have known we are the chosen people. Now God has instilled within us a glorious duty. It is not an easy task, but we must stay the path. The consequences of failure are too steep for us to pay, but the rewards for success are great.”
His congregation nodded back at him, their faces serious.
Nathaniel opened up his Bible to the passage he had highlighted. “For the Lord God said, ‘Upon the wicked He will rain snares; Fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup.’ We, my friends, have been chosen by God for this duty. You who hear His call, you who are lost: fear not, for God has a plan for you. All that you have been through, all that you have seen has been designed by God Himself to bring you to this moment—to bring you to Him. We will be God’s righteous weapon. We are the chosen ones of God. How many of you will answer His call?”
A few people called out.
“I will!”
“Yes!”
Nathaniel eyed the crowd, pulling his voice from deep in his soul. “I said, How many of you will answer God’s call?”
The tent thundered with the voices calling back at him. Nathaniel smiled as his flock shouted their affirmations of their duty. He finally waved his hands to quiet them down. It took a few minutes for them to return from their blissful states.
Nathaniel’s eyes lingered on the blond teenager in the front row. The boy met his gaze unblinking, his devotion apparent. He had none of Nathaniel’s features, only his mother’s.
Nathaniel peered into the eyes of his son, holding up the Bible. “This is our God. These are His words. This is our duty.”
CHAPTER 7
Laney stepped into Danny’s office, Jake right behind her. While Jake said hello to Danny and Moxy, Laney’s eyes traveled across the monitors.
As usual, Danny had six monitors running, each presenting different data. Laney knew they weren’t all regarding the “potentials,” as they’d come to call the kids they were looking for. Danny’s brilliant mind made it difficult for him to focus on only one project at a time. He needed to be constantly challenged.
Fifteen years old, Danny had reminded Laney of Elliot from the movie E.T. when she’d first met him. Big freckles dotted his cheeks, dark brown hair fell over his eyes, and he always looked like he could use a few hamburgers. But Laney knew eating wasn’t a problem: he put away more than his body weight in fries.
Danny concluded his conversation with Jake and gestured to the monitors in front of him. “I found more.”
“We
found more,” came a voice from the desk.
Jake reached over and grabbed the iPad, propping it up. “Hi, Dom. Sorry—didn’t see you there.”
“Dom” was Dr. Dominic Radcliffe, a brilliant agoraphobic who also worked for the Chandler Group. His hair was a little longer than usual, making the halo of salt and pepper curls springing from his head that much bigger. His glasses were patched with tape and kept slipping down his nose.
Dom grinned and gave them all a wave.
“How’d you find them?” Laney asked.
“We used my database,” Dom said.
Back when this all began, they’d learned that Dom had created a database with the present and past incarnations of the Fallen. He’d been aware of their existence for decades longer than anyone else, and they had been playing catch-up ever since.
Jake was about to cut in, but Laney shook her head at him. She knew from experience that it would be faster to let Danny and Dom explain their methodology rather than ask them for the results. Dom had sometimes sent her result printouts with not-so-descriptive variable names like “X23.” She’d learned the hard way that having them explain everything in their own way usually saved time in the long run.
“The problem has been trying to tease out the kids we’re looking for from all the kids that go missing every year,” Danny said.
Dom cut in. “Do you have any idea how many kids go missing annually?”
“Eight hundred thousand,” Laney replied.
Dom’s expression was one of comic shock.
Laney tried not to feel exasperated. Geniuses always seemed surprised when other people were brighter than they expected. “I do actually have a Ph.D. in criminology, Dom.”
“Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that,” Dom said.
Most people do, Laney thought. Her academic career felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. “And the problem,” Laney said, “is that the majority of those missing kids are either familial abductions or runaways.”
Danny nodded. “Right. So we had to figure out a way to pull out the stranger abductions. Occasionally there’s a witness and a police report that helped, so we tapped into those files first. But even then, we couldn’t tell anything about the nature of the child grabbed.”
“That’s where my database came into play,” Dom said.
“I cross referenced Dom’s data with birth records going back twenty years to see if anything popped,” Danny said.
“And it did,” Dom added.
Danny nodded. “Then for those names, I cross-referenced against missing kid reports as well as just general information, like school records about current whereabouts, in case for some reason the kids weren’t reported as missing. I added in the information about the kids we already know about and the ones we found in Amar’s files. Then I added in some variables for what I called ‘specialness’—extreme physical capabilities—”
“Or psychic capabilities,” Dom chimed in.
Psychic abilities? Laney thought. How the heck did they do that? But she kept her thoughts to herself. She’d ask later.
“Right. And we finally got our results,” Danny said.
“And you found some kids?” Jake asked.
Danny nodded as he handed Laney a sheet with an output table. He handed the same sheet to Jake and Henry. Laney’s eyes scrolled over the report, thankful that Danny had at least created variable names with some actual meaning this time.
She stopped when she got to the age variable. She ran her hand across the sheet to make sure she had linked the right coefficients with the right variable. Then she looked up, knowing the disbelief was on her face.
Danny nodded at her, his face serious. “You found it.”
Laney shook her head. “This can’t be right.”
“What?” Henry asked, staring at his own sheet. Laney glanced at Jake and he nodded back at her. He’d seen it too.
Dom was more sober than Laney had ever seen him. “It is. We’ve run it again and again, adjusting variables, reworking the coding. The results are always the same.”
Danny’s voice was quiet. “They’re not grabbing teenagers this time. This time they’re grabbing children.”
CHAPTER 8
Baltimore, Maryland
Henry sat down heavily in a chair, dread filling him.
Laney was making Danny go over the methodology again. Dom had gone off to work on some other project; he didn’t take well to having his work questioned.
Henry knew Laney was looking for something Danny and Dom had missed. But he also knew she didn’t expect to find anything. After all, the chances of two super-geniuses messing up was pretty slim.
Henry only half listened to their conversation. Mostly he studied Danny. The boy’s face was drawn and there were bags under his eyes. Henry knew those signs: Danny hadn’t slept last night. No doubt he’d been hunched over his computer, trying to find more info on the missing kids. Henry closed his eyes. It’s not supposed to be like this. He opened them again. This was not the life he wanted for Danny.
Laney sat back in her chair. “So there’s no doubt about it: they’re going after children.”
Danny nodded.
Laney grabbed the output sheet and glanced at the variables. “And if I’m reading this correctly, the oldest is ten and the youngest—” She swallowed. “One.”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “We found them in the files. Twin boys, age thirteen months.”
Henry felt like he was going to be sick. He looked over and saw Laney swallow hard. Laney had raised Max since he was a baby. This had to be hitting her pretty hard. Even Jake looked shaky as he spoke. “Okay, we’re looking at, what, a dozen cases?”
Danny nodded. “Probably a little more than that.”
Henry looked at Danny for a moment before he understood what he meant. “You’ve only been able to track the nephilim. If Fallen are being tracked too, the numbers will be higher.”
Danny nodded. “And the strangest part of this is that all the abductions have occurred within the last month.”
Henry felt nauseated again. He knew that the chances of finding a kid alive were reduced dramatically the longer a case went unsolved.
“But why grab them at all?” Danny asked. “Having one parent with powers doesn’t guarantee the child will have abilities, right?”
“Actually in most cases, the children don’t,” Henry said.
“Have any of these kids demonstrated any abilities?” Laney asked.
Danny shook his head. “Not that we could find. I mean, they’re too young to come into their abilities, aren’t they?”
Henry thought of Jen, who’d come into her powers early. He spoke slowly. “Usually, people are older, yes.”
“So, why even take them?” Danny asked, his eyes big, the confusion and fear plain on his face. “They’re too young to come into their powers anytime soon. They’re not a threat.”
Henry was once again reminded of how young and innocent Danny really was. He had been isolated from the world in many ways, and his intelligence put yet another barrier between him and the rest of the world. Henry hated that Danny had become involved in this.
Jake spoke, his voice gentle. “They’re not a threat right now. But one day they will be. Maybe someone wants to take care of them before then.”
“Because in a few years, humans won’t be able to hurt them,” Laney said.
Jake turned to her. “You think it’s humans?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Has there been any sign of the kids since they disappeared?” Jake asked.
Danny shook his head. “We’re still cross-referencing with hospitals and… morgues. But so far, none of the kids we’ve identified have shown up anywhere. They’re just gone.”
Laney leaned back. “Well, maybe that’s good news. Maybe they’re just being held somewhere.”
Or maybe someone buried them where no one will find them. Henry wanted to chase the voice away, but he knew it was all too re
asonable a thought. After all, these graves would be awfully small.
He knew how easy it was to hide a body—or twelve. Look at Jimmy Hoffa or many of the victims of suspected serial killers. Even today, no one was sure just how many people Ted Bundy had killed. And the Green River Killer managed to kill for years before anyone even realized who he was.
Were these disappearances the work of a serial killer as well—one targeting nephilim? Or was it something else? A picture of John Jamelske popped into his mind. He’d abducted four different girls between 1998 and 2003 in upstate New York. He kept them for an extended period of time and then let them go. And no one was the wiser.
“How did whoever took them find them?” Jake asked, pulling Henry from his dark thoughts.
Danny shrugged. “I guess they could have done what we did.”
Laney nodded. “I suppose, but that feels kind of piecemeal. And there are probably more kids we haven’t identified using your methodology. So how did whoever grabbed them find them? Or even know, for that matter, that they were potentials?”
“I don’t know.” Danny hit a button on his keyboard. “These are the kids that Dom and I uncovered.”
Henry stared at a little boy who couldn’t be any older than three. “They’re all so young.”
“Is there anything from the investigations?” Jake asked.
“I only just started going through them, but there’s not much so far. No video. No trace evidence. The kids are just gone.” Danny bit his lip, his hair falling into his eyes, but Henry read the sadness there.
And Henry couldn’t stand it. He spoke before he even knew what he was going to say. “Well this is good work. Why don’t you send us everything and then you can go take Moxy for a walk or something? We can finish this up.”
Danny looked over at him. “What?”
Henry ignored Laney’s and Jake’s dual expressions of shock. “I just don’t think it’s necessary for you to be part of this.”
“Part of this?” Danny asked. “The only reason you even know about this is because of me.”