“The Book of Genesis mentions in passing the very deeds in this tome’s sixth chapter,” he explained, holding a book that was wrapped in vellum and appeared very old. “Unfortunately, the Bible only briefly discusses the topic that this book expounds on, as if our sacred text wanted to avoid going into the lurid details.”
“What book is this?”
“The Book of Enoch. And your husband wants chapters six and seven read at the ceremony.”
“Book of Enoch? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”
Martin stirred in his chair. At first, I thought he was excited. But as Father Graham started to explain, he wriggled in his seat, as if wondering whether to interrupt.
“The Book of Enoch,” the priest said, placing the plain-covered book in front of me, “is a prophetic work that foretells the future of mankind, from the moment man first came into being. The oldest copies came from Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia.”
“How interesting,” I said, drawing out the word, infinitely curious, which made Martin squirm even more. “And what is it about this story that paints women in a bad light, Father?”
“I’m getting to that,” the old priest mumbled. “It tells what happened to man after we were cast out of Eden. And what led to the Second Fall from Grace.”
“The Second Fall?”
“Well, according to the Scriptures, we tested God’s patience twice. The first time was when Adam and Eve were kicked out of paradise and into the mortal world. The Lord could have stricken down our forefathers at that very moment but instead forgave them. They adapted to their new reality and went forth and multiplied.”
“So the Second Fall came when . . . ?”
“When those descendants perished in the Great Flood,” he said.
Father Graham recounted the story of creation like an anchor reading the evening news. And I wanted to know more.
“Let me see if I understand what you’re saying, Father. You’re trying to tell me this Book of Enoch is antediluvian, written before Noah and the ark?”
“Not exactly. The author writes about antediluvian occurrences between the time of the First and Second Falls from Grace. But when the text was actually written is a mystery. The text doesn’t mention Adam and Eve, which is surprising, but it does go into great detail about why God sent the Great Flood. And the text indicates the information came from none other than the prophet Enoch.
I pressed on, giving my fiancé a sideways glance. “So tell me, Father, why do you think Martin wants this read at our wedding? Does it speak of love?”
James Graham stared at me gravely with his steely blue eyes, as if readying to warn me about some great danger ahead.
“What your soon-to-be husband wants read during the ceremony is at the beginning of the book, my child . . . Actually, why don’t you read it for yourself? I’m not sure I can say whether it speaks of love or not.”
The priest handed me the open book. A silken blue bookmark marked the page.
Beautiful calligraphy set off the first letter of the text, which was divided into concise paragraphs. It had been printed in an ornate, Gothic script, mixing red and black letters against rich, resplendent paper. I read the title of that section out loud:
The fall of the angels; the demoralization of mankind; the intercession of angels on behalf of man. God’s judgment against the angels. The Messianic Kingdom.
Just reading that made me uneasy. At first, I couldn’t see how this had anything to do with my wedding. And as Father Graham and Martin both fell silent to listen to me read, I pressed on:
And it came to pass, when the children of men had multiplied, and unto them were born the most beautiful of daughters; the angels, the sons of God, saw them and lusted after them, and said to each other, “Let us choose from the daughters of man so that we may have children of our own.”
Ah, so this is the part about love, I thought.
So I continued to read:
And the leader among them said to them, “I fear you will not carry out your plan, and thus I, and I alone, will bear the burden of this great sin.”
They all responded: “Let us all swear an oath to each other, that we be cursed lest we carry out our deed.”
And together, they swore under penalty of anathema to execute their plan. They were two hundred in their number, and they descended to Ardis, the peak of Mount Hermon. And they would recall this as the place where they had made an oath to one another.
“Now, flip to the next bookmark. The green one,” Father Graham said. “Read the entire page, please.”
Martin interrupted. “We’re not using that next part in the reading . . .”
“No. But your fiancée should at least know this part. Julia”—he touched my hand gently—“please read it.”
I obeyed and continued.
He and the others each took women. Each chose one and would go to her. And in time, they would teach the women many things, spells and incantations, the cutting of roots and the science of plants and herbs.
And together, their unions brought forth onto the world giants, Titans three thousand ells tall. They devoured all of the fruits of man’s labor until there was nothing left to consume.
And then, the giants turned against man and devoured them, as well. And they sinned against the birds and the beasts, the reptiles and the fish, until they eventually ate each other’s flesh and blood.
And the earth condemned the violence.
For a long time, the three of us remained silent.
Father Graham seemed to respect that silence. But it scared me. The story seemed to be about a sinful union, one that brought forth an abominable new species that needed to be extinguished.
“Well, Julia, there you have it,” Martin said brightly, trying to ease the tension. “See? It’s just an old story of love. In fact, the oldest love story, after Adam and Eve’s.”
Father Graham had a different opinion. “It’s a story of a forbidden love, Martin. It never should have been.”
“Oh, Father,” Martin griped. “Thanks to that love, the sons of God, a species of angels superior to the human race, were able to share their knowledge of science with Adam and Eve’s descendants. And if the book is right, they married women on earth, bettering our species. What’s wrong with that? Their bloodlines benefited all of humanity. Those were the first instances of marriage in human history. Sacred marriages—hierogamy. Unions between God and man.”
“Impure unions, Martin!” the priest shouted, before quieting again. “They brought us only misfortune, and that’s why God decided to wipe them from the earth with the Great Flood. Hardly an appropriate story to tell on a wedding day.”
“But, Father,” I said softly, trying to ease the tone the conversation had taken, “this is all just a myth . . .”
I regretted saying those words as soon as they left my mouth.
Father Graham shot up from the kitchen stool and snatched the Book of Enoch from my hands. If he was holding back before, he certainly wasn’t anymore.
“A myth?” he scoffed. “I only wish it were all a myth! This book is the only thing we have that truly tells us what happened before the Flood. There’s no other text to tell us our true origins.”
“But even the Flood is a myth, Father,” I said insistently.
“Now, wait just a minute,” Martin cut in. “Remember what I told you about our family’s interest in John Dee?”
I nodded. It was still burning in my mind.
Martin sighed. “Well, let me let you in on something else. They study him because he was the first person from the Western world to use the Book of Enoch to look scientifically at the Great Flood. That episode, whether it was confined to the Mesopotamian area or whether it was as widespread as climate change, was real. And it happened not once but twice. The last time was some eight or nine thousand years ago. Dee was the first to deduce that from the book that was just in your hands.”
“You really believe the Great Flood happened?” I asked, stun
ned.
“Of course.”
“Still, why do you want this read at our wedding?”
“My family’s spent generations studying Dee, Enoch and the origins of mankind. My mother learned extinct languages just so she could read the Book of Enoch in its original form. Dad studied physics just so he could apply technical, scientific terms to the metaphors for heaven and how Enoch might have traveled there. And I studied biology and climatology so I could confirm that what the prophet writes about in the book actually happened sometime between the first and second floods, between 12000 and 9000 B.C., more or less. This is my way of . . . paying homage to my roots. My parents and I are last in a long line of caretakers of this legacy.”
“Is that right?” I said, not believing a word of it.
“He’s telling the truth, Julia,” Father Graham said. “John Dee was just a link in the chain. So was Roger Bacon, a brilliant Franciscan monk from the thirteenth century. And Paracelsus, the doctor. Emanuel Swedenborg, the mystic. Sir Isaac Newton. And lot of others who remain anonymous in history.”
“Julia, two hundred years before a Scottish explorer named James Bruce found the first known copy of the Book of Enoch, John Dee had already learned all its secrets.”
“With the adamants,” I said.
“Exactly!” Martin said, a smile making his face glow. “Dee discovered that because the holy angels ignored God’s will and bred with our ancestors, divine blood courses through our veins . . . And he learned something else: that God’s ire did not end with Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden or with the Great Flood.”
“What do you mean?”
“The adamants told of a third Fall from Grace, one that the Book of Enoch also foretells. One that, sooner or later, will be fulfilled in a trial of fire . . . Our species is in danger again, Julia. And that’s why I wanted to mark our wedding day with this story. Because one day, you and I may have to save our world together . . .”
28
The iridescent cloud that had been wafting over the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela descended to ground level like a dense fog that filled every corner and recess. It spread in all directions until it seemed everything was thick with its energy.
And once it spread over man and machine, its effects were immediate. That radiant plasma could sap the energy from any electrical device and the strength from man or beast. Only special clothing, like that worn by the men from the helicopter in the plaza, could withstand its supernatural force, to a degree. The material was designed to redirect electrical charges into the earth beneath them.
“Okay. Let’s move!”
The sheikh knew what had to be done as soon as the Amrak was activated. He had ordered his men to snap special lights covered in lead-lined fabric onto their submachine guns and double-time it toward the only building the police had been guarding. It was clear that was where Julia Álvarez was being kept.
The three of them darted between the fallen bodies of police officers. Some of them had collapsed against the door to the café, staring vacantly and glassy eyed into nothingness. Inside, they found the waiter slumped on the floor, his face twisted in a grotesque expression, broken dishes all around him.
“How long will the Amrak’s effect last, master?”
The question from Waasfi, the young man with the ponytail and the snake tattoo on his cheek, made the sheikh stop in his tracks. “It’s not a matter of how long it lasts, but rather how long a person can withstand its effect. Some of them may never wake from this, brother. That’s how powerful it is.”
Their lights swept back and forth across the foggy café.
“Find the woman you saw in the cathedral,” the sheikh said to the young man.
They walked silently toward the back of the café. All of the tables were empty, except one. A tall man, thick and brawny, lay facedown on the ground. Next to him, there was the body of a woman. She had collapsed into a kneeling position. Her head was pinned into her chest, like a broken doll’s.
Waasfi lifted her chin.
It was her. Julia. She stared blankly into the void, as if death—or whatever it was the Amrak caused—had caught her in midconversation. She has the most beautiful eyes, he thought.
When the beam of his light flashed across her face, her pupils shrank.
The Armenian smiled.
“She’s over here,” he called out.
The sheikh barely noticed. He was squatting over the large American in the black suit and was trying to roll him over to get a better look.
When he finally did, a shadow passed over the sheikh’s face.
“Is something wrong?”
Their leader shook his head, worried. “You were right, Waasfi. They’re on Martin’s trail. I know this man . . .”
29
Images came rushing back, flowing over my eyes and flooding my mind.
I’ve died, I said to myself, over and over. All that remains is the darkness.
But I was wrong.
Another memory flashed across my eyes, one so strong my head spun. I’d always imagined that when your life flashed before your eyes, it played from the beginning, like a movie. But I guess I was wrong about that, too. Because now I was seeing Martin pulling one of his damn seer stones out of my purse and slapping it onto Father Graham’s kitchen table.
“Here it is!” he said.
Instinctively, I pulled my own out and placed it next to his.
“Is that what I think it is, Martin?”
“John Dee’s. Both of them.”
“The adamants?”
Martin nodded.
“I’d heard your mother talk so much about them. But I never imagined they’d look like this.”
“Everyone always expects a polished gemstone. Ostentatious. Regal. Something like Dee’s smoking mirror.”
“What the hell is a smoking mirror?”
The two of them just smiled at me.
“When John Dee died, most of his library and his collection of artifacts ended up in the hands of a British antiques dealer named Elias Ashmole,” Martin said. “He was one of the founders of the Royal Society of London and a champion of modern science. But he had a secret: He also believed it was not only possible but necessary to communicate with angels. And then he stumbled onto the ‘smoking mirror’ among Dee’s knickknacks and tried to use it for that very purpose. It actually wasn’t a mirror as we know it today, but a highly polished obsidian slate, probably made by the Aztecs. It’s housed in the British Museum today.”
“But at least the mirror looks somewhat exotic,” the priest scoffed. “These stones look just . . . ordinary.”
“You’re absolutely right, Father. If someone didn’t know about their origin, they might look right past them—until someone taps their power. That’s why every time we move, we declare them at customs, leaving a trail in case we ever lose them.”
“Do you plan to take them out of England?”
“Maybe . . .”
“Have you been able to determine if the adamants are earthly?”
The priest’s question surprised me, but no more than Martin’s answer.
“They only look that way, Father,” he said. “My mother might say she hasn’t been able to find anything like them anywhere else on Earth.”
The old priest rubbed one of the adamants again eagerly.
“And where did she find them?” I asked.
“They came with an old copy of the Book of Enoch, which had been handed down in our family. They had been embedded in the leather binding. In the old days, it was customary to decorate the cover of a book with precious stones.”
“Do you know if other copies of the book had similar stones embedded in the same way?”
“I don’t. If there are any, they’ve never been found. My parents spent years looking for other adamants, and all they could find were historical references to similar stones. Mostly as part of legends or in journals of the conquistadors, that kind of thing. Actually, they’re pretty popular in Am
erican folklore.”
“In America?” I asked.
Father Graham, who had been fiddling with the adamants, handed them to Martin before responding. “References to the adamants are as ubiquitous as the Great Flood, my child,” he said. “Have you ever heard the story of Naymlap? It’s famous in Peru.”
The priest seemed pleased to tell the story.
“Naymlap was a mysterious sailor—before the time of Columbus—who landed on the coast of Peru after he was guided by a stone similar to these. He told the natives he could hear his gods through it and never lost his way.”
“Interesting . . . Father, do you know what the earliest mention of the stones is?”
“That’s easy,” he said, smiling. “The Sumerians were the first to use them. The best-known of them was a so-called Adapa—Sumer’s version of Adam—who ascended into the land of the gods. The parallels between him and Enoch are so great that many scholars think they were one and the same.”
Then Father Graham fell silent for a moment, as if trying to order his thoughts before continuing.
“Ancient books are filled with those kinds of unexplainable parallels. Regardless of their culture or country of origin.”
“What exactly did you study, Father?” I asked.
“Comparative mythology. Stories about the Great Flood, to be exact.”
He continued.
“The Flood is the most widespread ancient story of humankind, my child. And the details are similar the world over. Every version, be it Babylonian or Central American, tells the same story and speaks to a similar primal fear. Sumer’s Utnapishtim, for example, could be Noah’s identical twin. So was Greece’s Deucalion, the son of Prometheus. Or Manu, the protagonist in Hindu’s Rig Veda, whose ark ran aground on a mountaintop during the flood. According to the stories, all of them survived the Great Flood because God warned them ahead of time and told each of them to build an ark of very precise measurements.”
“Not an ark. The ark,” Martin said. “The Sumerian clay tablets that tell the epic of Gilgamesh also refer to the building of a boat with the same dimensions as the one in the Bible. The only difference is that the Sumerian epic tells the story of King Gilgamesh’s effort to meet the only survivor of the Great Flood: Utnapishtim.”
The Lost Angel Page 9