by K Helms
Regeliel’s eyes bulged as he strained to breathe and he knew who Mia would blame. There was only him.
“You…cannot….harm…me…” warned the Nephilim. The point of Lucifer’s nail that ached to pierce the flesh transformed into the head of a serpent that struck again and again at the giant’s throat, venom dripped from its fangs but did not pierce the skin. “Yah…will…not …allow it.”
Lucifer’s eyes shined like black diamonds and his nails retracted as he again took the visage of innocence and the flesh knit itself together and covered the nest of vipers beneath. His voice softened to a friendly almost sweet tone. “Forgive me, my king…sometimes I forget my place.” He bowed deeply with an exaggerated flourish. There was the slightest glimmer of disgust hidden beneath his words. He backed away “Please allow me to explain my place to you…Why do you think my ultimate punishment will be so great? It is because Yah knows that humans and Nephilim serve me with more loyalty than they do Him! He is a jealous God, Regeliel, but on this He knows that I am right.” Lucifer found his volume escalating again and forced himself to calm it and took on a more docile tone. “You can serve me unwittingly and be punished by Yah or you can kneel before me, serve me willingly and be punished just the same. Choices my King, serve me openly, and I will reward you. Reward is really the only difference; it’s really not so terribly complicated.
“I will never serve you, demon!” Regeliel railed against the blasphemies he had just heard.
“Actions are my praise, not words, so we shall see who you serve, Regeliel.” Lucifer laughed. “We shall see who they all serve… Yes, Regeliel, we shall see who they serve!”
Regeliel wanted to strike the demon down, wanted to rend him limb from limb, but he was unable to move. “Yah is all-powerful and you will fall before Him.”
Lucifer looked up at the knight, a look of innocence in his eyes. “What you say is true and more; He is all knowing, is He not?”
Regeliel grunted as he strained to move by force of will.
“Then wouldn’t that make me just as much a pawn as you or any other?”
The Nephilim floundered, growing angrier at his loss of words “You are trying to confuse me, deceiver.”
Lucifer smiled. “It is a conundrum, isn’t it?”
“There is no mystery devil! You may be more intelligent than I, but my heart beats stronger than yours.”
Lucifer opened his arms before him in a generous gesture. “Allow me to reward your service to me with your life, Nephilim. You have my eternal gratitude,” mockery again dripped from the words like acid from the devils lips, burning him. Just as Lucifer was not allowed to destroy Job, he was not permitted to physically kill humans or Nephilim, but he was permitted to entice them to destroy one another.
Chapter 76 - Mt. Alvernia
Eleven months after infection
Cat Island, Bahamas
Father Arnaud watched the storm that raged above Tortuga Island from the window of his room on Mt. Alvernia and prayed for the Anubis. He knew that the Anubis was gone now, but what of those that had already gone to the Ark? Arlington Neff had told him of his friend Nan and her sister and if they were to get back to this realm then that open gate must be the only option. It was the only one he could think of anyway.
Father Arnaud called two of the brothers to his chamber and they decided to take their flat bottom boat to Tortuga.
The sea was choppy, but despite their fears of the Triangle and being drawn through it, they managed to beach the craft safely.
The brothers found the dark skinned woman sitting on the beach. Mia was drenched from the rain, her long black hair hanging limp over her face and she didn’t react when they approached her.
“Child?” asked Father Arnaud, he knelt beside Mia in the wet sand and placed a hand on her shoulder, but she remained despondent. Arnaud nodded to his brothers and they helped her into the craft. Along the beach they looked toward a field just above the sandy strip and saw a farmer using a zombie yoked to his plow. The farmer’s daughter, who appeared to be about ten years old, walked before the dead man urging the zombie forward as it unwittingly plowed the field behind it. It seemed to be the same premise as hanging a carrot before a mule but this was a more grisly and disturbing scene. Father Arnaud decided to remember the farmer and daughter faces; he wasn’t sure how much of their produce they would trade for. Slavery was different than servitude. Service was voluntary and just because the zombie was a dead man that didn’t mean he should be used as a tool. He had once been human. Still, he could not bring himself to judge the farmer. How much had that man lost from this plague? He might actually be on to something as long as he could manage to control the dead and keep it from eating them.
They helped Mia on board and pushed the small boat back into the surf. Father Arnaud hoped that the woman would know how to use the phone that Neff had given him.
He looked at the woman, who was striking in her beauty but his heart ached when he saw the sadness in her eyes. She simply stared out at the sea with tears pooling in her eyes but never falling. Mia had not asked them who they were or what their intentions had been. They could have been pirates and slave traders and she would have had the same expression. He wondered why God allowed this; why He had allowed all of this. It didn’t seem right or did it? Mankind hadn’t actually been all that compassionate to one another. Yes there were some that tried to live a life in the footsteps of Christ, but most made their own paths and if they encountered another on their path then conflict arose. And Cain rose up …
The monk’s mind wandered. Able was dead, Cain had been banished, so God had given Adam and Eve another; Seth whose name meant substitution but he remembered Seth (or Set in other translations) in Egyptian mythology who was an evil god that murdered his brother Osiris.
How things become entangled. He shook the confusion from his head, knowing that it was a seed of doubt. A monk didn’t have the luxury of doubt; there was only faith and that would be enough. Wouldn’t it?
Chapter 77 – Epilogue
Graylocke Castle,
Plane of the Ark
They dined in the Hall of Heroes where four new paintings hung in places of honor. King Regeliel stood and raised his goblet of wine. “A toast!” he roared affably. His Nephilim guard rose to their feet and raised their chalices. “To our new friends and welcome guests; may they live the lives of kings, with the hearts of saints.”
Bodie and Daniel began to rise from their seats, but Regeliel raised his free hand and stilled them, “Nay, my friends you have already stood for us, now we raise ourselves and our goblets to you.”
Regeliel’s queen, Mariel stood, as did her attendants.
Regeliel continued “To Daniel Tyson, our Lupine brother…” Regeliel said, “You will be known as Otsoa; it means The Wolf,” he motioned to an attendant by the door and as the doors swung open he continued, “I present to you…Otsana.” A woman entered the hall in a flowing black gown, she wore her black hair down and the shiny waves cascaded over her shoulders. Her eyes caught the light of the candlelit chandelier and glinted like faceted topaz. She walked to the table with deliberate grace and stood beside Daniel. She lowered her head, in a bow, but never took her golden eyes from his. He was staggered by her beauty. Regeliel’s voice shook him from his trance. “She rules the Clans of the Northern Wolf and has requested to dine in the presence of the wolf that faithfully protected her king.”
Daniel continued to stare, but although she was exquisite to look upon, it was scent that held him enthralled. It was a scent he knew, not from experience, but of instinct.
Bodie, who sat between two female dwarves that fed him fruit from a bowl, elbowed his friend. “Snap out of it, baby.”
Daniel had no response, but nodded and stammered. “Uh…do you want to sit down?” he asked and motioned to the empty chair to his left.
She smiled slyly, giving a new meaning to an old word, Foxy, he thought, that’s what she looks like. He saw her elongated cani
nes and thought that it was a hungry smile as she sat in the proffered chair. Daniel could not resist sniffing her hair; it smelled like night and his olfactory triggered something in his brain that made him shudder in delight.
“Otsana…” he said dreamily, “What does it mean?”
She turned to face him and locked her golden orbs on his. “You will see when we run with Luna,” she promised then turned to look upon her king again.
Daniel had heard little of the name of Luna, but he knew the pull of her gravity none-the-less. The moon was never full… he thought.
“It only hungers.” Otsana finished for him and he stared at her with his golden eyes wide in disbelief. She turned back to him knowingly then pointed to the number 48 tattooed on his forehead. “What does that mean?” she asked frowning.
Daniel shook his head. “It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
She leaned close to him and inhaled his scent deeply with approval.
Regeliel observed all this with amusement and roared, “To Otsoa and Otsana!” He drank deeply from his goblet and the table guests followed suit. An attendant quickly refilled their goblets and Regeliel raised it again.
“To Bodie bin Barnes, the brave and strong!”
Bodie looked around the table and a goofy grin stretched beneath his beard and braided mustache. He saw his two dwarven women begin to stand. “My middle name isn’t Ben, man, it’s Lucas.”
The women giggled at either side of him and the one on the left whispered in his ear, “It means ‘son of’.”
“Oh,” he said and Shariel, his favorite to his right giggled again and smoothed his hair from his tattooed forehead affectionately.
“I see you have found favor with the Queen’s Lady-in-waiting. Does she please you, Sir Bodie?”
Bodie looked at Shariel. “Whadaya think, Mama? You think you can handle all this?” he asked as he motioned down his short length. Shariel blushed and nodded shyly.
Bodie leaned toward Daniel and whispered conspiratorially, “She’s already handled this, if you know what I mean.”
Daniel shook his head at his friend. “Yeah, that's real subtle,” Daniel said sarcastically and then looked apologetically at Otsana.
“Does this kingdom suit you, my friends?” Regeliel asked of 47 and 48.
Daniel raised his glass and closed his eyes as he basked in the scent of Otsana.
“You weren’t lyin’ about the babes, brother, this suits me just fine,” Bodie growled contentedly.
The Nephilim roared their approval.
They would rebuild The Ark upon the cairns of the fallen and the bones of the past as its foundation for the future. But Regeliel remembered the words of the Son of the Morning and shivered.
Chapter 78 – Epilogue 2
One year after infection
Shadyside, Iowa
The plains were cold and covered in eight inches of fresh powdery snow. Fat, heavy flakes fell straight down and muffled the sound of the HMMWV’s diesel engine that idled in the distance. If it hadn’t been for the poor visibility they could have seen the horizon stretch for hundreds of miles, and if it had not been night they would be able to see any of the dead approaching with ample time to put them down.
A camp fire burned, casting sweet fumes of burning corn stalks and feed corn. The flames illuminated the four bodies that lay motionless before it.
Ronald Givens, Kyle Greer, Luke Mason and Steve Dawson lay in sub-zero mummy bags with eyes frozen in terror and shock. Their blood steamed as its warmth contacted the cold, night air and the snow that it pooled into, creating a red lacework upon the packed snow beneath their bodies. Each man had a single gunshot wound between their eyes; the contents of their skulls had filled the padded hoods of the sleeping bags. The crows would eat their fill tomorrow.
Shere Howard rubbed her hands vigorously over the crackling flames. She tilted her head back and looked upward as the snow cascaded down upon her. “It’s so beautiful, isn’t it Hito?”
“Cold, though,” Hito added as he jockeyed his weight from one foot to the other. His black hair had grown even longer and hung further over his eye and he brushed it back with a gloved hand.
She walked around the fire to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. The weight of vengeance had been removed from her soul and she felt lighter and more at peace than any other time in her life. “So what do we do now?”
Hito looked into Shere’s eyes and looked long into their depths. “I don’t care, as long as it’s with you.”
She glanced at the four dead men; they seemed so tranquil and it seemed odd that she would be shocked at the dead being so still. “Maybe we have a purpose in all this death, Hito.”
Hito pulled her close. “You know…some people had turned abandoned missile silos into fortified homes back in the day.”
“That does sound nice and homey,” she said.
Hito took her by the hand, “Come on, let’s get out of the cold,” he said leading her back to where the Hummer idled in its diesel sputter.
She followed, but looked at the dead men again and saw that they were being buried, slowly by the snow. “I don’t feel so cold anymore.”
He opened the door for her. “Me neither.” He would have told her that it was because of her that he had changed, but she already knew that. She settled into the shotgun seat and he closed the door and jogged around the front of the vehicle; the headlights illuminating him and casting shadows behind.
She felt illuminated herself; her shadows were behind her now. The light of ‘purpose’ shined brightly before them regardless of what the past tried to convince them.
Chapter 79 – Epilogue 3
Easter Island
Moai stood as silent sentinels guarding the beaches from the occasional dead that trudged on shore, where sentries immediately shot the straggler then incinerated the corpse where it lay.
Although small, Easter Island was still better than any of the survivors had hoped. It was developed with homes already built. Because of its hearty tourist trade, it had plenty of scooters, dirt bikes, golf carts and even cars and heavy construction machinery. Due to necessity, because it lay so far from any continent it didn’t have traditional power and that was for the best; they were off the grid with solar panels and wind turbines. The settlers were, however, forced to travel the choppy seas to main land South America to resupply at least once a month.
In four days, when Christmas arrived, four hundred people would exchange gifts and celebrate upon their island home.
Every month the population grew as Arlington, Juanita and Laptu would bring one or two more to their new home aboard their yacht. Eventually the group of survivors would outgrow the island and pioneers would depart to find new places to call their own. For now, it would suffice.
Death had given up that moniker and had resumed the use of his real name Tony Pena. He wasn’t interested in death anymore, he had seen his fill. He reclined beside his wife Nan in a rattan chaise. Her mixed race looked like she could have been raised on the Polynesian Island. They watched the new sons of the island wrestling and running on the sandy beach of the northern part of the island. The island again heard the giggles and screams of delight from children beneath the watchful eyes of the Moai from their perches that dotted the perimeter of the island.
Mia had become somewhat of a matriarch of the island. The new inhabitants thought of her as a savior and she was. Mia still had a tendency to become distant at times, and during these moments she tended to talk to Mick as if he were beside her. Nan had wanted her sister to think about forming a new relationship with one of the men on Easter Island, but Mia had refused. Mia would move on when she was ready. Until that time, Mia would raise her son in a community of survivors that she could trust. In some ways, Mia thought that this was an almost perfect environment to raise Mickey Jr. If only her husband could have been here to witness the peace that they had found. He would have liked that.
Arlington, Juanita, and Laptu had found s
everal other suitable locations for survivors to rebuild, but they kept the information a secret from the other havens. Mostly, Laptu stayed on Easter Island where he could play with the children, occasionally he went aboard the ship with Arlington and Juanita, but he really didn’t like being enclosed in a floating tin can and he often got sea-sick from the constant motion. Besides, Laptu had found a perfect environment where everyone liked him and he didn’t have to hide.
An expansive fleet of yachts were moored in the Island’s docks as part of Nan’s idea of needing a last resort. The largest of these was Diego Dos Santos’ tanker, ‘The Croatoan’.
Arlington’s own ship flew a jolly roger from its radio antenna and had the hand painted words ‘Nita Marie’ carefully scribed on its stern. He had commissioned Tony Pena to use his ample artistic abilities else it would have looked like a first grader’s finger painting.
Arlington had initially been wary of how he would be perceived being with Juanita because of her size, but she had a heart twice the size of a normal person and she helped keep him sharp; not to mention that he really liked her breasts, real or not. She in turn didn’t mind his masses of horribly drawn tattoos or his back woods way of speaking. It was his good heart that had drawn her to stay with him; that and, Laptu.