The Nephilim

by Greg Curtis

  There was one girl who actually bounced when she ran. Big six foot high leaps into the air as though she was on the moon. Gravity didn't seem to hold her the same way it did everyone else. One of the seniors made the ground shake whenever he got upset. And then there was a girl in the year behind hers who it seemed was mistress of the animals. Wherever she went they followed her. Birds landed beside her if she sat for too long. Cats and dogs came from out of nowhere just to be with her. Everyone here had some gift. Some had truly spectacular ones. And all she could do was open doors.

  At Westlord Academy Katz was once again a nobody.

  Actually she was less than that. The teachers had assessed her academically and looked at her records and decided that she was behind her classmates. So now she had remedial maths and English to add to her days. That was two extra classes every evening when the others would be out playing or enjoying themselves. When they could go into the town, or what little of it there was, she would be stuck reading Shakespeare or studying trigonometry. And that was before she started her detentions. They gave out detentions for everything. Being late to class, wearing make up, running in the hallways, shouting. It didn't matter what it was there would be a detention in it. In just four days she'd already earned five of them. Five hours spent studying and sitting quietly reading books in a hall by herself while the others watched TV or whatever. At the rate she was going she'd never graduate. By the time she'd reached the end of school, she'd have so many detentions awaiting her that she'd have to start over again.

  Fortunately she wasn't going to be here that long. Not if she could avoid it.

  Still, she did admit that there was at least one good thing to come out of this – though it didn’t affect her desire to leave. Even if she wasn't special any more it was good to know that she wasn't a freak.

  Or at least not the only freak. There was Mark for example. He was currently sitting next to her in the middle school lunch area playing with light while she ate her lunch. He was actually playing with it. Actually he called it bending light and he could shape it to will, turning it into amazing shapes, patterns and colours, just with his thoughts. Now that was freaky! But it was also amazing to watch the light dance in his hands.

  He called the gift an aura. Naturally every gift they had here had some strange name. Usually something to do with angels and the bible. The whole place was fixated on them. So she was a key, he had an aura and the girl with the animals had the beast touch. The girl who bounced was said to have lightness of spirit of all things. Katz had rolled her eyes when she had heard that one.

  These people were all angel mad, but in a very strange way. They all said their gifts came from the blood of angels that flowed in their veins, but none of them seemed to like the angels. In fact for the most part they seemed to regard them as giant pains in the butt.

  But pains in the butt with power. A lot seemed to be scared of them. That she sort of understood. Considering what Cassie had done to her. Katz automatically rubbed at her leg when she thought of the bitch. It still hurt a little, though apparently it could be worse. The principal might call the pain instructive, but Katz called it what it was – sadistic.

  “You know Master Timms is going to tell you off if he sees you,” Katarinka hissed at Mark.

  It wasn't that he wasn't allowed to use his gift in the school. It was just that the first ten minutes of the lunch break were set aside for eating. Everyone picked up their packed lunch from the kitchen and then sat outside in the appropriate common areas and ate it quietly while the school masters looked on. They were strict too, and even watched to make sure no one was littering and making certain that the lunch boxes they were given were returned before they could go and play. Still, at least they fed her she supposed. And the food was quite good if she was honest. What she'd been eating while she'd been on the streets with her friends hadn't been nearly so good. In fact it had been mostly what they could scrounge. But it had still been better than the orphanage and all the rules. And the nuns! Though funnily enough she was beginning to think they weren't so mean after all. Not compared to the angels.

  “I'm not hungry.”

  He probably wasn't. There was a reason he was even thinner than her. But that wasn't the point.

  “Then you sit quietly. You know the rules.”

  Why was she telling him that? Katz asked herself the obvious question, wishing she had bitten her tongue instead. It was almost as though she was siding with the masters and their endless rules. And she hated rules! But she also hated seeing others being punished for breaking them as well, and Katz knew there would be some form of punishment for what he was doing. Probably not a detention – that was for more serious rule breaking – but he might end up doing some cleaning duties.

  Of course he probably had to do some cleaning at home anyway. Mark was one of the lucky ones. He had a family.

  It had been a surprise to realise that despite the cop's words not everyone was like her. Everyone here was a nephilim that much was true, but not all of them were first's like her. Maybe only a quarter of the school were first generation. Whose fathers were actual angels as everyone kept insisting they were. But it seemed that genetics played a role in things as well. If an angel and a human had a child, the child was a nephilim. If two nephilim had a child the child was also a nephilim. And if a nephilim and a normal had a child the child was usually just a normal but maybe with a small gift. In the end that meant that three quarters of the students had families and homes to go to in town. And it meant that once more she was in a minority. An oddball even among the freaks – but not special.

  The school bell rang and Katz immediately groaned. It wasn’t the ten minute bell signalling that the students were free to go and enjoy the rest of their lunch. It was the outsiders bell. This place was full of bells. Bells to start and end classes. Bells for assemblies and lunches. Bells for announcements. This was the bell to indicate outsiders had arrived. It was a bell that she couldn’t imagine she would ever hear anywhere else.

  The sounding of the bell was a signal to the students to stop doing anything that would reveal their gifts. To ensure that that happened the senior students would be sent over to watch over the younger students just to make sure that they didn't slip up. Each senior had an assigned junior. And stranger still they actually rehearsed it, just like a fire drill. It was probably the strangest thing she'd ever imagined happening in a school. Luckily she was neither a senior nor a junior, so she just got to sit quietly and watch.

  The reason she sighed though, was because she knew the bell was being rung because of her. It had been the same every day. Some men from the Treasury visited the school every day. They were escorted directly to the principal's office before being sent away an hour later. And for that hour everyone would have to be on their best behaviour. The first day they had been visited by the three agents who had cornered her in the diner. After that it had been other agents with lawyers as they grew more determined. And all of them were here because of her. She knew it. Everyone else knew it. She had brought agents to the school and risked exposing them all.

  But at least the Academy seemed to be prepared for it. The agents left each day, without ever seeing her. That was good, though it would have been better if they'd never come at all. But she so wanted to know what was said in those meetings! Unfortunately the principal – Ms. Iron Britches as she thought of her – never discussed the matter with her.

  “What did you do?”

  Mark was staring at her as if she was a whole new type of freak. A freak among freaks. And that among freaks who still thought they were the children of angels. “That's four visits in four days. Did you kill someone?”

  “No!”

  How could he think that? And yet even as she wondered, she knew exactly how he could think such a thing. Agents coming to see her every day – that had to be serious.

  There was no doubt that the agents were determined to catch her grandfather any way they could. But at least they did
n't know that Armando was her grandfather, and she wasn't going to tell anyone. Especially not after what the fed had said about him. He was wrong of course, she didn't know if he had been lying or simply fed a bunch of lies, but she knew that what he'd said had been crap. Armando had no other children. That was why he'd been so eager to find her. And it had nothing to do with her gift despite his claims. He could never have known about it when he first found her. And he would have come a lot sooner if he could have. If it weren’t for the government hunting him.

  “Then what?”

  “I know someone and they want him.”

  “Who? Did he kill someone?”

  “No!” What was it Mark had with all this killing? “He's just a thief.”

  And yet one of the things that the muscle bound oaf had said about Armando was that he had killed people. She didn't believe him of course. You couldn't believe anyone who took as many steroids as he obviously did. But she couldn't quite disbelieve him either. She had seen her grandfather's temper a couple of times.

  “They don't send government agents after thieves.”

  “He's a very successful thief,” Katz told him with a show of pride. She was proud of her grandfather! He was simply so clever. Always two or three steps ahead of the people hunting him.

  And yet even as she defended her grandfather she knew that Mark was right about one thing. They really did want him and they wouldn’t usually have that much interest in a thief. But she also knew that it had nothing to do with his crimes. They were just an excuse. It was what he knew and who he could bring down that made him so dangerous.

  Her grandfather was an agent – or he had been. He had been involved in covering up all sorts of government crimes, and for his patriotism he had been accused of treason and threatened with a lifetime behind bars. Since he'd escaped of course, that sentence had been unofficially commuted to execution and there were shoot on sight orders out for him. But she could never tell Mark that. Nor could she tell him that if her grandfather was caught he would never stand trial. He would never even see a lawyer. He would be killed long before that happened. No one would believe that.

  So he lived off grid as he called it. Running a lot. Hiding by constantly moving and using disguises and false names. Never letting himself be seen on a street camera. Never using a credit card or a bank account. Always paying for everything in cash. And never going near anyone who knew him. He'd been doing that for thirty years. Long after any normal force should have given up. But still they chased him.

  Whatever it was that he knew had to be big. But he had made sure not to tell her his secret. Because if anyone knew or even guessed that he'd told her, then she too would be hunted remorselessly. She should be grateful for that – and she was. Still, she was more than a little curious.

  But if he wouldn't tell her what it was that he knew, he had taught her a little about how to make money. Especially through her gift. And that was good. For a time she'd thought about using it to make lots of money. It was so easy. But Armando had promised her that all they needed to do was get that one big score and then leave the country. Find a nice little island paradise somewhere where there was no extradition treaty and simply enjoy the rest of their days in the sun.

  He was right too. One big job had to be less risky than lots of little ones. And an island with sandy beaches, sunshine and servants had to be better than a cold city and life on the streets. So she had agreed.

  Until that damned bitch had turned up and ruined everything.

  The others had said she was an angel. One of many who made their lives difficult. But she wasn't. Katarinka didn't know what she was, but she knew what she wasn't. And she wasn't heavenly despite what they said. These people were just freaks – like her – not half breed angels. In fact the so called angel herself was probably just another sort of freak. Just a more powerful one than the ones who lived here.

  And as for the crap about the male angels driving the women they slept with insane, that was simply bullshit too. Or at least it was in her own mother's case. For her mother was insane thanks entirely to the government’s actions. Because they had known she was Armando's daughter and that he might one day go to her. So they'd taken steps to make sure that she was under their lock and key just in case he ever did. Though her grandfather couldn't prove it, he was sure that they'd broken her mind and locked her away, all so they could catch him. There was no history of mental breakdown in the family and she'd been a normal, happy woman before he'd escaped. But there were drugs that could bring on a full blown psychosis. Could there be anything more evil than that?

  It had broken his heart when Armando had found out what had happened to his daughter. And naturally he had wanted to go to her. But he'd also known it was a trap. And even he couldn't avoid everything they might have ready for him if they knew he was coming.

  But when this was over – when they'd made their millions and exposed the government for the pack of lying, manipulative and nasty shits they were – they would rescue her too. That was her grandfather's promise. He wanted his daughter back. He wanted her safe and free, and under the care of proper medical people and not government stooges.

  She wanted that too. That was why she'd gone along with his plans. Why she'd agreed to open the bank vault and whatever else he needed opened. It wasn't for the money, though that was tempting. It was so that she could one day have a family again. In the end that was what every kid in the orphanage had dreamed of, and though she had always denied it, she wanted it too. Besides, she wanted to get a little pay back against the government for what they had done to her. For when they'd started hunting her grandfather and locked her mother away, they hadn't just ruined their lives. They'd ruined hers as well. They should pay for that.

  “I suppose that's right.” Mark carried on, apparently unaware of the fact that she'd been away with the fairies for a bit, dreaming of a happy life and a little bit of revenge. “If he was a killer they would have sent Garrick after him and he'd be in jail by now.”

  “That arsehole!” Katz was shocked by what he said. “The freak's probably so juiced up on steroids that he couldn't find his own shadow!”

  Katz didn't like the agent, and it annoyed her that half the school seemed to consider him as some sort of hero. But she suspected they were really just impressed that one of their number had actually managed to leave this place instead of ending up imprisoned here for life.

  “Garrick? He's not an arsehole or a freak. None of us are.” Mark sounded hurt. “And he doesn't take drugs either. “He's with the FBI and they would probably test him for that.”

  “Test him? They don't need to test him! All you have to do is look at him to see that he’s on steroids!” The guy was an ape after all, with muscles everywhere. There was no way that could be natural.

  “He's a hunter. All hunters are strong. It's part of them.”

  Mark apparently wasn't giving up on defending his hero. And that bothered her. Why wasn't he supporting her?

  “If he's even that. I mean what sort of gift is hunting anyway? You can bend light with your thoughts. Doors open for me at a touch. For all you know his only gift is telling everybody he's a hunter. He could just be a big fat liar.”

  “He's not a liar. He's one of the lucky ones. He can show his gift. Use it openly because no one realises he has one. Most of the rest of us have to hide ours.”

  Mark sounded envious, something she found strange in a guy who could play with light beams. His gift was stunning, Garrick's was almost nothing compared to it – if he even had a gift – he could just be naturally good at finding people. Even her own gift was limited. All she could do was open doors, and it wasn't as if she even did anything. They just opened for her when she turned the handle.

  “He can't do anything like what you can do.”

  “No he can hunt a man across the entire world. Follow their trail no matter how well they cover it. See in the dark. Know the truth when people try to lie to him. And he has perfect aim. Garric
k's one of the Westlord Academy's proudest students. One of the youngest agents ever recruited to the FBI. And one of the few people who ever leaves this town.”

  “Know the truth?” She heard that and it bothered her, more than a little. “Like the headmistress?”

  “No. Mrs. Holdsworth has the voice. She can make you do or say anything. Garrick has the gift of veracity. He can tell when you're lying, and use that knowledge to make you own up to your lies. You can still choose not to answer – as long as you aren't lying. And he can't compel you to say or do anything else. It's only when you try to lie that he can compel the truth. But for an agent it's a useful gift.”

  “And ...” Mark ummed and ahhed for a little bit, apparently having something to say but not sure if he should. Eventually though he decided to. “He can fly.”

  “Fly?” That shocked her and she wasn't completely sure why. Not when she could watch one girl bounce six feet into the air whenever she walked anywhere.

  “Not like a bird or anything. But hunters have the gift of path finding. He can find a trail on the ground, in the sea or in the air. He can read wind currents. Plot a path not just along the ground but through the air. And he has a wing suit. He can leap out of a plane and fly and land without the need of a parachute. He knows just when to level off and when to bank and turn. And that's enough.”