Nephilim War: Book 2

by Adrienne Kama

  Finally, with scraped hands and a small gash on her forehead from running into a wall, she came to a stop. “I can’t see a thing, Azriel.”

  “I can.”

  A small tremor of fear went through her at how distant his voice sounded. Sure, she had acquired some of Raven’s abilities, but that wouldn’t help her while she tried to find her way in a foreign tunnel in total darkness. “I need help.”

  “But I thought you’d rather stumble about in the dark than have me touch you.”

  His voice sounded even further away.

  He was still walking. He wasn’t going to stop. He’d leave her there. And she couldn’t see. She was blind. “Azriel!” she called.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Azriel!”

  Silence. She couldn’t even hear the crunch of gravel beneath his boots anymore.

  She realized suddenly she was alone. He’d left her alone in the corridor.

  “Azriel!”

  Nothing.

  Raven. Raven. Raven, she thought. Swallowing down a tide of panic, she raised her arms and set her hands against the cavern corridor walls. She wasn’t that data entry clerk who was afraid of her own shadow anymore. She’d seen too many things, experienced too many things to give up on herself now. She could do this.

  She slid her hands over the slimy surface and a shiver of fear ran up her spine. She wouldn’t wonder what was covering the walls to make them so grimy, she’d focus on the task at hand. “Move it,” she told herself. “Walk.”

  She took a step forward. Then, she took another step. Then, three more. Maybe if she focused on proceeding in this manner she could stay calm. Maybe she’d even catch up to Azriel, but even as she had that thought, she heard the crunch of gravel behind her.

  She froze and listened.

  Her heart pounded in earnest. The crunching wasn’t like the sound Azriel made when he walked. This sound was different. It was louder, uneven. It wasn’t the sound of one person walking in the pass behind her, but the sound of feet. Many feet.

  Pure, unadulterated fear had her moving again. She kept her hands pressed to the wall and tried to focus on going forward. But even as she moved, the sound got closer.

  Something was coming. And fast.

  “Azriel?” she tried. But there was no answer.

  She jogged. Her footfalls were jerky, but she was moving faster than she had been a minute ago.

  Just stay calm, she told herself. He’s trying to scare you. And doing a very good job.

  When she heard a chorus of phlegmy growls behind her, she screamed. She forgot about safety, forgot about the fact that she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, and ran full out. Her hands scraped across the rough surface of the wall, but she didn’t care. She screamed and ran. But even over the sound of her own voice in the small pathway, she heard laughter.

  They were chasing her.

  “Azriel!” she screamed. “Azriel!”

  She pumped her legs and prayed she wouldn’t fall or run into a wall.

  The air felt thick around her as she moved, and she had to force herself to breathe it. Her fear had ceased to be fear anymore. She was terrified.

  The sound of running feet behind her was closer.

  They were coming.

  Was it her imagination, or could she feel the breath of something on the back of her neck? Then, there was the laughter again. They were closer. So close, they could touch her.

  “Azriel!”

  She felt something—a grasping hand—graze her back.

  “Azriel! Help me!”

  She slammed into a wall and fell flat on her back. She tried to scramble to her feet, but was shoved hard to the ground. The wind came out of her on a gasp.

  A blaze of white light swallowed the darkness, and a gust of wind whipped through the corridor. Flashes of lighting streaked above her and she got a glimpse of Azriel—what she’d thought to be a wall—standing over her, hands lifted in the air. She flipped onto her stomach, intending to cover her head, but when she caught sight of three deformed creatures scurrying away, she scrambled to her knees and hid behind Azriel’s leg instead.

  From her vantage point and with the crystalline white light shining through the corridor, she had a clear view of the creatures. They looked almost human. She realized as the deformed shapes straightened to stand erect that they were human…or at least, more human-like than she’d first imagined. But their exposed fangs and grasping claws ruined the human façade. The thought of those things stalking her in the tunnels made her skin crawl. How many of these things were down here, and what would they have done to her had they caught her? Thoughts like that made her feel no shame in hovering behind Azriel. She was behaving in a cowardly fashion, but anyone in her position would do the same thing.

  “Master,” the tallest among them—who wasn’t nearly Azriel’s size—pleaded in a garbled, lisping voice when he stopped running. “Forgive?”

  “Lovely lady,” said another. His voice sounded as high and plaintive as the first. “The pretty lady tempted us.”

  “Not hurt lady,” the first said. “Only look.”

  “Yes, we only look at the pretty lady. Master’s pretty lady. Make sure Master’s pretty lady doesn’t hurt herself in the portal.”

  Azriel seemed to be considering them. He stood still, arms down at his sides, as they spoke. “I told you she wasn’t to be touched,” he said finally.

  “And we obey, Master,” said the first.

  “Is that so?” Azriel lifted a finger and white light flickered at its tip.

  The sight of this sent the creatures into a panic. They threw themselves on the ground, whining and pleading in earnest. The sound was awful. The first crawled forward on his stomach, face turned down in supplication.

  Charity got to her feet and took a step back.

  “If you obeyed me,” Azriel said, “I wouldn’t have heard her screaming. Isn’t that right?”

  The beast slithered over the rocks. When it reached Azriel, it stretched its neck in an attempt to grovel at his boots. Azriel grunted in disgust and stepped away from it.

  “Master is kind. Master is merciful,” the third said, slithering on the floor behind its companion.

  Azriel twirled his finger and a swirl of red light danced at the tip. “Master is fed up.”

  A burst of red flame turned the corridor crimson, and the ugly creatures howled. One by one they collapsed, face down.

  They didn’t move. An eddy of smoke drifted up from their still bodies.

  “They’re dead?” she asked in a small voice.

  Azriel casually turned his back on the fallen creatures and gazed down at her. “Are you ready to cooperate now?” he asked, holding out his hand.

  She didn’t answer; instead, she leapt at him. She laced her fingers with his and held tight. She latched her free hand around his wrist and pressed close to him.

  “I’m ready to cooperate,” she said as the bright light faded.

  “I bet you are.”

  He led her forward into the darkness.

  After a while, when her breathing had steadied and she felt herself again, she risked speaking. “Were they some sort of ghoul?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “Rogues.”

  She didn’t know what a rogue was, so she tried to clarify. “Your minions?”

  “A man has to take whatever assistance he can find.”

  “But you’re not a man.”

  “Nevertheless, help is help.”

  “Are there ghouls down here, too?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “How many creatures are down here?”

  “The ghouls live here. I don’t know how many. Thousands.”

  She cringed. “Thousands? Or are you trying to scare me?”

  “If I said hundreds, would you be any less scared? Or even if I said dozens?”

  “I suppose not.” She ground her teeth, but pressed closer to him for safety. “What did you do
to the…rogues, is it?”

  “Rogues are vampires. And I burned them. From the inside. Less messy that way.”

  She stumbled. “From the inside?” she repeated. An image of searing flesh flickered in her mind before she was able to shut it out. “If I weren’t Nephilim, you would have left me to die.”

  “Now, that would be a waste,” he said in a low voice. “I haven’t tasted of you yet. I can promise you, I won’t let you die before that happens.”

  “You’re delusional and…” Glancing around at the blackness of the corridor, she thought better of finishing the sentence. Like it or not, her life was in Azriel’s hands. Angering him again wouldn’t be a smart thing for her to do. Also, angering a being that could burn her alive, from the inside, wasn’t too bright. She wondered if she should have run before they entered the cavern, used what little skill she had to aid in her escape. The further they traveled into this black abyss, the less likely her escape looked.

  “Irresistible,” he finished her sentence.

  He held her hand at his side. She felt the swell of his glutes as he walked, and the muscle contractions in his thigh. There was nothing soft about Azriel. Every inch of his body felt as hard and unyielding as steel. Even his personality was hard and unyielding. He’d set his sights on capturing her, and he’d been relentless until he succeeded. He’d made up his mind to destroy the massive estate they’d passed before reaching the caverns, and he’d done so with deadly precision. How many ghouls had he sent to raid the estate? Had he sent any of those rogue things? Azriel was cold and calculating, as immovable as a mountain, but there had to be some kindness in him. He’d been created as an angel, after all. And he’d fought on the side of God during the Great War. Surely, there had been good in him once.

  “You were good once,” she said before she had time to think better of it.

  “If I left you alone here,” he said, “and there were no ghouls or rogue vampires to torment you, how long do you think you’d last?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine it.”

  “No? How about I leave you alone in one of the cavern rooms? You have nothing to fear from the ghouls or the rogues, they won’t risk bothering you again. I’ll leave you—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “You can’t do that. You need me.”

  “You’ll be here when I return. Say, I leave you for a day. What’s a day?”

  “No.”

  “A day, alone in the dark. There are worse things.”

  She focused on the corridor ahead, on the blackness that surrounded her and imagined being alone here without Azriel to lead her. Sudden fear washed over her. She squeezed his hand tighter, as if doing so would prevent him from removing her if he decided that was what he wanted to do. “I understand,” she said. “You suffered in your prison.”

  “Like no other has suffered. Even Lucifer was exiled with his legion of followers. Raven was exiled with the Watchers, but I was imprisoned alone in utter darkness. Was what I did worse than what Lucifer did? Did I challenge God’s dominion? No. I gave men magic, the only means to defend themselves against the Nephilim. God watched as his creations were slaughtered alive, as the Nephilim made food of them, and only I cared enough to act. For that, I was sent into the bowels of the earth to languish for thousands of years. No companionship, no one to talk to, no one to touch me.”

  “You interfered. You perverted man’s innocence.”

  “Did I, now?”

  “Raven said you taught men the secrets of heaven. He said you changed while you were on earth, became evil—”

  The corridor came alive with light.

  Azriel spun her to face him and pressed her to the wall, caging her within the circle of his arms. “Am I evil?” he demanded. “Look at me. Look at my face. Do you see a demon or an angel before you?”

  She looked up and into his eyes, at the crazed light that blazed in them. Then, she took in the perfectly formed features of his face, his lips and nose. He was beautiful. “An angel,” she said.

  “Ghouls were once man-like, like vampires are now. But centuries of evil made them what they are today. The imps were once man-like, too. But their countenances are far worse to look on than ghouls. I’m not evil.”

  Chapter Three

  Alaric reclined in his seat and gazed out the airplane window at the cloudless night. Beyond the glass, the moon seemed no more substantial than a fluorescent orb of light mere miles out of his reach, but he knew such optical illusion was as much a deception as his promise to Raven that all of the Alliance would fall neatly into step behind him. He’d see to it they did, but it wouldn’t be as easy as he’d made it out to be. His kind, the vampyr, would of course follow him. He was their chosen leader, after all; but the beastmen wouldn’t be so easy to convince. There would be much debate and backbiting, accusations cast and loyalties sworn; but in the end, he would get the job done. There wasn’t any alternative.

  Then, there was the matter of the rogues. What part would they play in all of this? Those immortals who refused to pay heed to the rules of the Alliance, but lived lives that mirrored every horror movie ever made about immortals. They not only fed on the flesh and blood of humans, they did so to the point of death, something forbidden by the Alliance. It was permissible to drink human blood, that was how immortals lived; but to kill an innocent human was a violation.

  “What do you think he’s done with her?”

  Alaric pulled his gaze from the window, glanced at Damon and shrugged, too emotionally drained for words. The last hours before daylight on the previous evening had been a flurry of activity. In the initial moments after Azriel had stolen Charity, they had all stood there, staring at each other and the empty space where she had stood as though her kidnapping had been a dream. But as the last of her screams echoed off the distant mountains, reality set in.

  Raven had flown in pursuit of Charity and Azriel, but had quickly lost their trail. Azriel, the architect of the black arts, could have disappeared easily into the night with Charity, and in fact he had. When Raven returned, he’d been in a rage. His fury was so great, it had taken all of them to restrain him.

  Too soon after that, the sun had begun its inexorable rise. Alaric and Damon had had no choice but to seek shelter and rest in their rooms. When they’d awakened the following evening, they’d found the house empty. Alaric didn’t want to think about the debilitating fear that gripped him those first waking moments when he’d remembered what happened—that fear of knowing Azriel was out there with Charity, doing his best to win her to his side. Losing Charity put Azriel one step closer to freeing the Nephilim.

  In the dark of Alaric’s house, Damon had found a scrawled message tucked into an edge of the computer monitor screen in the library. It was from Myrddin, and it was brief.

  We go in search of Charity. Go to the Alliance, make them see our cause. The situation is dire.

  Now, in the quiet comfort of his plane, Alaric wondered if Raven’s rage was due more to his feelings for Charity than to his fear for the fate of the world.

  “What now?”

  “What now,” Alaric repeated, allowing his German accent to deepen the way it always did when he was tired. “What now is you hush yourself so I can think.”

  Damon scowled. Alaric supposed if he were a woman, he’d be dazzled by the look of abject misery on Damon’s face. He couldn’t fault Damon, however; the creature didn’t seem to have any idea how alluring he was to women. All plum-red and black hair and piercing green eyes. Eyes that were completely incapable of hiding his feelings. Right now, Damon was sitting at attention, left ankle propped on his right knee and his tight blue jeans clinging to him. His hair fell loose past his shoulders and his gaze was locked on Alaric.

  “But I can help, Alaric. I can do more than you think.”

  Ah, Alaric thought, and that Spanish accent of his. Sighing heavily, he turned to Damon again. “We go home to Baltimore—”

  “But I though we were going to New
York.”

  “We go home to meet with your brother, Nuno. Save Figlio, who has completely lost all reason and gone into hiding like the overgrown child he is, Nuno is the most influential among the beastmen. If I can meet with him before the covens gather, I’ll have a better chance of swaying him to our way of thinking. With him as our ally, the beastmen are more likely to follow us.”

  “If Figlio were here—”

  “Damn Figlio, anyway. I’ll just have to make the beastmen see reason.”

  “Damn him, indeed. Even Nuno was angry when Figlio wasn’t made Coven Lord. That yet another vampire should rise to rule. As if Figlio were fit to lead.”

  “Oh, Figlio could lead. Make no mistake on that account. But does Figlio want to lead? The entire concept of the Alliance is burdensome to Figlio. It’s nothing more than a necessary evil to him. He feared being made Coven Lord, Damon. When I was named Dimitri’s successor, I could feel Figlio’s relief. The brute actually took me to opera to celebrate.” Alaric laughed. “Pagliacci, if you can imagine. My favorite opera, but the very idea of us at the Met was ludicrous in the extreme. Here you have Placido Domingo singing his heart out, ‘Laugh, Pagliacci, play the clown,’ as he says; and you have New York’s elite, dressed to the nines in their designer clothes. And there you have the two of us: werewolf and vampire, dressed in finely tailored suits and playing at being cultured humans when all the while, the scent of human flesh drove us nearly insane with hunger. It was laughable, really. We watched the opera, had cocktails with a collection of beautiful people who had immediately spotted us and gathered us to them as their own. Then Figlio and I, still in our opera finery, took two particularly alluring females to our hotel room and leisurely fed on them. I enjoyed myself immensely.”

  Damon frowned. “How monstrous.”

  “Indeed. You have barely a hundred years, Damon, so you don’t know the horror our kind was in the old days, especially before the Alliance. Imagine feeding on humans in ninth century Europe, when all was superstition and dark forebodings. Better yet, in the fifth century, the time of the Barbarians. Ah, but I miss those days.”