by D. M. Pratt
Eve read in his eyes that her power pleased him. He, it, the Nephilim knew what she could not in that moment: he had met a match worthy of his magnificence.
Eve released him and stepped back again. She had him. She looked down and saw that her feet were still on the wood floor. She was leading him into the circles even though the rest of her was in an entirely different realm.
“You are amazing,” he said. “I knew you were smart. Your hair is a crown upon perfect beauty. I loved the intensity of your passion. It was hard for me to watch you all those years and know why human men had been afraid of your power.”
His words threw her. He was complimenting her on the things she loved about herself, but she had never found a man who could appreciate them. But what did he mean by, “All those years.”
“Show me or let me go,” she said.
“Do you understand who I am?” he asked.
“Only what I’ve read. According to the Bible, and Ezekiel and Genesis 6, you are a fallen Angel, a son of God love and you lusted after the daughters of men and for that you were banished. You are Kirakin.”
“No, Eve, I am Gathian.”
Now it was Eve who blinked. “But I …”
“If I gave you children, we could elevate humankind. We could stop Kirakin. It was he who harmed you and your friend.”
Eve looked at him. The reality of why he was here and what he was doing overwhelmed her.
“I saw the women you have imprisoned and enslaved to have your children.”
“Not me. Kirakin,” Beau said.
“And I’m to have children with you, or Gathian, who I’ve never seen because you worry I’ll be afraid?” Eve asked.
“To save all you worry about. To stop Kirakin. But I’ll need your help,” Beau said.
“Bullshit!” Eve said. “Show yourself to me and stop hiding behind Beau. I want to know if Beau is alive or even real. Show me. Now!”
This time it was he who stared at her. He wanted to tell her the truth. Eve could see it in his eyes. He was, for a moment, vulnerable. It was then she realized he didn’t frighten her. She took one more step back. He followed her.
Beau reached out his hand for her to take it.
“Come with me, I want to show you something.”
Everything in Eve’s mind told her not to touch him, everything except her heart and every fiber of her physical body. Her mind knew a version of her would remain in the tower by the pentagram. She took his hand as if she didn’t have the power to stop herself. He closed his fingers around her hand and they vanished.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Mac, Hanover and thirty two members of New Orleans’ finest police stood in front of their squad cars outside the ten-foot iron gate that led into Thibodaux Asylum. They were dressed in S.W.A.T. gear and had an array of weapons ready to take on whatever killer had mutilated Ms. Clarisse. Mac looked at the padlock.
“Who’s got pliers?” Hanover asked.
A large pair of three-foot wire cutters was on its way up from the back of the ranks.
Two other officers came back from walking the perimeter.
“No other openings that we can find,” the first officer said.
“Open it,” Hanover ordered.
The officer came forward and opened the cutters, placing them around a link in the enormous chain. He pressed and squeezed. Two other men joined him and together they pushed the handles together with all the force they could muster. There was a loud snap and one of the arms of the pliers fell to the ground.
Mac looked at Hanover and then the dumbfounded expressions on each of the officers.
“That’s impossible,” Hanover said.
Mac’s eyes surveyed the length of the fence. It looked solid with no visible breaks anywhere.
“Don’t suppose anyone has a blow torch?” Hanover asked.
“Anyone got a tow chain?” Mac asked.
“I do,” a young officer shouted from the back. “Twenty feet enough?”
“Bring it and we’ll find out,” Mac told him.
Hanover got what Mac was thinking.
“Pull these cars away and bring up the Humvee. Back it in,” Hanover shouted.
Everyone went into action. All the vehicles had to back out of the entry road and away from the gate. They knew when the Humvee brought it down, if they wanted their vehicles, they better be clear of the fall zone.
Eve’s car was moved and a wide circumference was cleared in front of the entrance. The police cars and officers not involved with attaching the chain stepped back and out of the way. The chain was wrapped around as several of the iron spikes multiple times, leaving enough length and a wide enough area to secure the massive chain to the Humvee.
“Let’s do it,” Hanover ordered.
The driver of the Humvee gunned the engine and slipped the gear into drive. He slowly eased forward until the chain stretched tight and pulled with twelve cylinders revving at full force against the iron gate. Both steel and iron creaked and moaned like an old man begging to die. The earth at the foot of the two brick towers cracked as wisps of mortar dust exhaled from between the bricks. But the bricks did not crumble and fall and the gate did not bend, break or fall.
“Faster,” Hanover shouted.
The driver accelerated as the wheels chewed into the soft, wet earth spitting leaves and mud in a five-foot rooster tail behind the behemoth four-wheel drive.
The steel chain snapped and whipped, smashing into an older officer, cracking both his legs and knocking him to the ground. The Humvee lurched forward, crashing into two of the police cars as all who stood watching scrambled out of the way.
“Hook it back and do it again until we rip this fucker down. Emmitt, get AJ to the hospital and someone get a welding team out here, NOW!” Hanover shouted.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Eve blinked and found herself standing with Beau in another part of the hospital. A long, dimly lit corridor reached out in either direction, lined with doors. Each door stood locked with only small barred windows inset in the upper center of each door, just large enough for someone to look out or in. Eve realized in that moment it was the first hallway she had walked through earlier. She searched for Azura Peet, the woman who’d helped her and sent her to hide in the utility closet. Azura’s room was empty. They were all empty.
“Where is she?” Eve asked.
“She’s not here yet. Not until you begin. You are the conduit, Eve. Kirakin needs you to make it happen, as do I,” Gathian said.
“Why? Why have you brought me here?” Eve asked.
“Because you are the portal,” he said. “We can seduce and give you pleasure, but until you give yourself and the first child is conceived this is all an illusion. You alone can make it real.”
“So, is this your plan or Kirakin’s?” she asked.
“In which realm?” Gathian asked her. “This is your world, the women you saw were in Kirakin’s. They were in his world”
The information he was giving her was almost impossible to process. All the women, gathered to be part of this new evolution, existed some place in the future. What the fuck was that about? The last remnants of logic that rattled in her mind shouted back at her.
With the wave of Beau’s hand, the doors and walls disappeared, and Eve could see inside each and every room, revealing fifty women in various stages of pregnancy.
“If you make love to Kirakin, they will come into this world. His children must come through you.”
He waved his hand again and she stood outside in a playground with a swing set, see-saws and sandboxes. The children, ranging from infants to young adults, played, but not with toys, they played with shimmering balls of energy. They summoned them, shaped them, froze them, set them on fire, levitated them or, with the touch of a finger, turned them into rocks, gases, food or water. Some of the children levitated themselves; some glided across the sky with the speed and agility of a hawk.
Eve’s mouth fell open. They were to be a n
ew kind of human.
“How can you know this and not be part of it?” Eve asked. “It’s wondrous. How can you not be part of it?”
“Beau is a living vessel controlled by his grandfather who is controlled by Kirakin. I stole Beau from Kirakin, entered his body and found you in Beau’s house that first night. I made love to you before Kirakin realized you were back. If you will give yourself to me, these future children will be my children… our children and through you I too can fully return.”
“I don’t understand what you want me to do?” Eve asked.
“The Nephilim came long before at the dawn of earth’s creation. We were too close to the purity of the first intelligent, energetic force you call God. We fought God and were banished. Then, the angels were created. They too struggled wanting both power and free will and many of them fell into chaos. Then, the earth and all its amazing creatures were created and evolved. We watched as humanity was born from argon into this realm. At first you humans were primitive and backwards, but your form was so beautifully irresistible. We knew you would take too long to evolve into the next levels of consciousness on your own, so we stole down and loved your kind, your human beauty, your wild passion and raw innocence commingling our genetics with yours. Through these stolen encounters we created the next evolution of humankind. Humans woke from their self-imposed sleep and discovered words, language, writing, music, art, mathematics, philosophy. Your hunger for knowledge was insatiable, beyond description. Most humans were good, but it was Kirakin’s nature to survive at all costs that was in far too many of their veins. Through him your kind tasted greed and many of you took the worst from him, from us. You took our vanity, lust, desire for power, our greed, anger and cruelty. It became your nature to inflict pain on each other when you didn’t get your way or merely for the sake of control and power. For this we were all banished from Earth and humans were left to their own accord. Kirakin’s selfishness and fascination with control and destruction drove him to find a way back after the Great Flood,” Gathian said. “Life started over and the few humans left blocked our return. Still, many carried the genetics of his bad seeds and attracted others like themselves. Like bred like to like, while Kirakin watched, waited and relished in the cruelty his evil caused. He created his incubi and sent them down to taunt and tease, but there was never a portal back. The only thing that would bring Kirakin back was if humanity’s own evil desires grew so vast it unbalanced the energetic force allowing a portal to open. Don’t you see, as a race filled with evil, you have surpassed Kirakin’s wildest expectations. Now, because of that accelerated level of evil that exists in your world, you have opened the door to him and he’s returned. This future army will be smarter and have amazing powers. They will subjugate the rest of humanity. His children will annihilate the good in humanity out of existence. He will create hell on earth.”
“No! Bullshit! I won’t believe it,” Eve asked.
“I can help you, but only if you are willing to trust and help me,” Gathian said.
“Are you saying you came down to mate with humans to make us better and instead you made us worse?”
“You held in your human nature the capacity for hatred, anger, war and violence, greed and selfishness. We just increased your intelligence to organize and implement destruction on a mass scale.”
“We have free will,” Eve said, furious at all he was saying.
“Only because you have chosen to repress your powers. Free will was your choice because we allowed it to be your choice. Humans were made to suffer because the Nephilim were punished and cast out of not only our realm, but yours. But you are the way back, Eve. Help me and together we can defeat Kirakin and stop the evil that has been unfolding.”
Eve looked at him; there was sorrow in his voice and his eyes. He was so persuasive; she felt so unsure. Where were Evine and Aria? It was as if she’d forgotten her purpose for being there.
“It’s your fault we are evil?”
“We gave you both good and evil in the children we created with you. Some of you made miracles and created beauty; others turned dark. Once you turned dark nothing could quell the insatiable hunger you humans already held deep in your genetic core. The core that made you survive at all costs.”
Eve’s mind began to calculate the enormity of what he was saying. The idea that 50 women had been impregnated in an alternate future and were carrying the future rulers of humanity was absolutely not what she thought she was going to be confronting. The process had gone beyond anything she was prepared to handle. Even if she was able to destroy these two entities, what was she going to do with 50 children suspended in an alternate realm and waiting for her to lead them through some portal? What would those children bring into the world? If she chose Kirakin, would the world and all of mankind be pure evil? If she chose Gathian…what would it mean?
Eve turned to face him. Her mind struggled with the idea that these beings could create a great storm of change and then use her to open the flood gates that could enslave humanity. Was Gathian offering a way to make the planet better? She remembered the children manipulating energy, flying, creating matter from nothing. If she had the power to bring these talents to humanity, wouldn’t they make people better, kinder, smarter and more loving than any human who has ever existed on the planet before? How would she use such powers? And then the thought of Cora erupted in her mind like a volcano.
“Where is Cora?”
“Safe,” he said.
“Why did Kirakin hurt my friend?” she asked.
“He thought he could get to you through her and she fought him,” he replied.
Eve’s body trembled with anxiety, confusion and concern.
“Cora knows how to destroy him and everything he’s worked to create,” he said. “And so do you.”
A flush of guilt and vulnerability washed over her.
“Trust me,” he said.
“How can I?” she replied. “Did you see what he did to her? How do I know you won’t do the same?”
“You don’t,” Gathian said.
Eve couldn’t breathe. She reached down and touched her stomach.
“What do you want from me?” Eve asked.
“Choose me. Make love to me in full consciousness and give me your full permission to procreate and all that I have done with the others will become real,” he said.
If it was true, and she accepted, she would initiate the plan and open the portal.
“And what of Kirakin’s children?”
“They would be recreated as mine.”
“And if I said no to you both?” Eve asked.
“If you are not impregnated tonight they will be destroyed,” Gathian told her.
“If I don’t acquiesce to you, what will you do to me?” Eve asked.
Beau looked at her. There was sadness and anger in his eyes.
“Why can’t you see the benefit of what I’m offering you?”
“Because it’s wrong. Because you hurt my friend. Because you killed two women that I know of and God knows how many more. Because there are 50 women locked away as prisoners carrying your children. How can I trust you?”
“Because you love me…Beau. Because in your heart you know what I am offering humanity. Our children will end wars and eliminate greed, hatred and destruction,” he said to her. “Let me show you what your life could be.”
She looked at him. Something inside her told her there was truth in what he was saying, but he was holding something back. If she made love to either of them she was in as much trouble as each and every one of the 50 women around her who were carrying Gathian or Kirakin’s children. Everything in her wanted to run away, but her heart told her she alone could stop what was happening.
Eve looked down through the haze of dimensions and saw that she stood between the outer white circle and the inner red. If she stepped back into the pentagram she would be safe but could not change the inevitable. If she stepped out she could bring Gathian in and destroy first him th
en Kirakin.
Eve looked up and realized she and Beau were back in the asylum just as if they’d never been gone.
“I want you,” Eve said.
Beau instantaneously moved across the hallway and wrapped himself around her. He surrounded her with his arms, and in his embrace surrounded her with his essence. A wave of the sweet scent of peppered spice and warm honey flowed over her and filled her. It captured her and bent her into a willing prisoner. His body pressed against hers as she stood in the dark quiet hallway. Beau bent down and gently kissed her more tenderly and more lovingly than he had done at any other time since their first kiss in the garden of the Gregoire estate.
“You are my Eve, and together we can create a new humanity,” he said.
“I want you, but only if you make love to me as Gathian,” Eve said.
Beau kissed her and with that kiss he took her breath away. Again the walls, doors and ceilings of the hallway melted away. The sudden change startled her and in a flush of fear she told herself she had to maintain control. She used her mind to imagine herself back in the atrium of the tower, standing where she’d laid the circles around the pentagram. She imagined the smell of iron, the smell of sulfur, the smell of cayenne, and in the next instant--immediately--that is where they stood. She stepped away from Beau. Unknowing, he followed her inside the first circle.
Eve looked into Beau’s eyes as the walls of the world around him blurred and he vanished. Soft colors of peach and amber, billowing chiffon rippled in the gentle breeze that whispered though an open window across the room. A huge four poster bed faded in around her and Beau laid her onto a bed. The mattress felt plush and soft. Silk pillows, feather down comforter and fine silk sheets slipped beneath her back in shades of cream. Golden sunlight poured through the windows of the large, well appointed room. Carpets the color of peaches and blended cream that comes in the first light of a new summer’s day stretched out across the floor. The air smelled of sweet fruit and delicate flowers. Somewhere in the distance she could smell spiced, hot coffee and warm fresh bread with butter, honey and fruit jam. It all lay in delicious piles on fine gold rimmed china plates and silver pots next to a bowl of perfectly ripe plums and succulent peaches on a table across the room. Eve could see the smoke curl up from the coffee cup and the scent called her to her feet. As she rose she saw she was dressed in a long, elegant, cream silk nightgown edged in Chantilly lace. Eve stood looking down at the lace negligee that covered her body. It was as beautiful as was everything around her. Eve stretched, feeling like a spoiled cat, happier than she’d been since she was a child. She smiled, letting her toes sink into the plush carpet, rising to stretch again. She crossed to take her coffee. It was warm and sweet and delicious.