by D B Nielsen
Scanning the skies above for stalking shadows, we now moved quietly in single file, treading carefully over mossy roots and rocks, avoiding stepping upon dead, rotting branches.
It was an uneasy, cold hour or so before twilight. The sun was already dipping low, speckling the forest floor with dancing mellow beams of light. Suddenly, I saw or felt a shadow pass overhead, the patches of dancing light winking on and off, fading and flashing before me. I shivered and froze. Widened eyes sighted obsidian wings silhouetted against the dappled forest floor. At once, Sage’s features went rigid. Every trace of wit and intelligence drowned under a flood of blank terror.
‘Did you see that?’ she whispered to Gabriel, who was just ahead.
‘Yes,’ he replied, foreseeing disaster, ‘but I also felt it. They’re moving fast, and against the wind.’
I understood all at once. Oh God! The smell! Their keen senses would pick up on our scent, especially mine!
I reacted before thought. Catching hold of Gabriel’s shoulder, I said, ‘Go! Take the Scroll and go! Run!’
‘Fi!’ Sage protested with wrenching shock.
‘It’s the only way!’ I gasped, defenceless and fighting to breathe through the anguish and fear that threatened to unman me. ‘Don’t you see? You’ll be able to travel faster without us. They won’t kill us. They can’t. Sage was right – we alone can read the map. They need us. But you–’ My voice trailed off, letting the obvious conclusion hang in the air between us.
‘We need to split up!’ Sage agreed. ‘If they find both the map and the Wise Ones, we’re all doomed! Go, Gabriel!’
Gabriel seized the bitter opening. ‘Tiens! Are you certain? St. John will kill me. But, as you say, if the Scroll and you both are captured, it will bring nothing but death and destruction.’
He seemed torn between conflicting loyalties, at war with his emotions at the cost of my logic.
‘Gabriel, use your powers and get out of here!’ I commanded, ‘I promise you, we’ll be safe!’
Uncertainty ripped him, but desperation seized his vitals, demanding a response; the urge to survive and the need to protect the Scroll framed a drive too overpowering to ignore or deny.
‘I will come back for you! Bonne chance, mes chéris!’ Gabriel saluted, unfurling his God-given heritage in a rustling of onyx feathers, searing a line of vibrant awareness across the unseen, towards the source of our fear, our hunters.
For one too brief moment, Gabriel stood before us in all his beauty – flawless pale skin, toned and muscled, ebony wings – before he launched himself into the sky, the Scroll still in his possession, intent upon drawing away the Rephaim from Sage and me. Within seconds, he was little more than an inky dot in the distance.
Sage blinked.
Her whisper of dismay met my deadpan calm. ‘What now? What should we do?’
‘Well, we can’t go home.’ Cutting off Sage’s protest, I reasoned, ‘Jasmine, Alex and Mum will be home from school by now. With St. John’s angelic blessing that he put in place at Christmas, they should be safe within the Manor House. But I don’t want to test that theory by our presence there.’
Nodding her understanding, she asked, ‘Then what? Should we go back to the cavern and wait for the others to return for us?’
I shook my head; there was no way I was going anywhere near that portal again. Instead, I replied, ‘Follow me. I know of one place they won’t expect to look for us.’
My move was caught short by Sage’s firm clasp on my forearm. ‘Fi! Are you crazy? We can’t go there!’
Resisting her, I answered, ‘Do we have a choice? It’s the one place I can guarantee they won’t think to immediately look. And, besides, if Finn is there, he’ll help us. I know it.’
Yet Sage remained adamant. ‘What if you’re wrong? What if we’re walking into a trap?’
She glanced over her shoulder to scan the forest and sky behind, searching for the Rephaim or, more likely, St. John’s return. The melting snow, the dripping, languishing trees stayed mute, offering us no sign of reassurance. The stillness of the woodland surrounds showed no trace of moving pursuit, but we couldn’t just stand around waiting like targets.
‘Please, Sage! What choice do we have? Do you want to stay here?’ My plea echoed off the rocks and tree trunks, rebounded and tinkled through the drip and trickle of melting snow and icicles.
Her instincts remained nettled. ‘No, but–’
The place where we had paused to regroup offered little in the way of cover, and no safe haven, no natural defensive outcrops to stave off attack.
I looked her in the eye, standing by my initial decision. ‘Staying here could cost us our lives. I don’t care what I said to Gabriel but, if there’s the slightest chance that we’re not the only ones who can read the map, we’re doomed. The longer we linger here, the more time we waste; we might as well be signing our own death warrants.’
I spoke common sense. My logic was sound. She knew this. But whether she wanted to wait for St. John or whether she was afraid of returning to Satis House – a stronghold of the enemy – I couldn’t be certain.
I clung to the rags of my patience as I realised that my ordeal in the Underworld had taught me one important lesson; heart and soul could not always be reconciled with the brutal demands of necessity.
Finally, she nodded.
Shaking off her grasp, already beginning to feel the welling of bruises, I pressed ahead, setting off towards the east. Darkness lay ahead of us as we travelled in the opposite direction to the setting sun. The gusts of wind that blew down wore a fine spray of moisture and the drifts of snow, making our journey uncomfortable and exhausting. The going proved tough.
Guiding us almost by instinct, my feet automatically took us in the direction of Satis House. I didn’t need a map to lead me there.
It finally struck me as ironic that we were being hunted because Sage was meant to read a map that would guide the Grigori and Nephilim to the Garden of Eden, as maps conveyed nothing to Sage’s mind, and all routes and distances usually seemed to be out of her reckoning. Yet she was clearly marked by the Seed. In turn, I had no natural ability or affinity for dead languages, but here I was expected to read a language that shouldn’t actually exist. I might have laughed out loud, but for the direness of our situation.
Passing back through the woods as we took a circuitous route to avoid detection, ancient oaks vaulted into the burnished red sky, their gnarled trunks too thick to see beyond. This was not a safe route, yet I prayed that it would be unlikely that the Rephaim would be waiting in ambush. But there was nothing for it now but to proceed; I could not revise my already desperate escape plan. Any careful, staged passage to Satis House would be a sure route to disaster, so we had no choice but to take a circuitous route that was dreadfully time consuming but perhaps the safer path.
‘I don’t like hiking through the woods,’ Sage said behind me. ‘And I’m not sure I like this plan either.’
‘Complain all you like, but I’d prefer not to be attacked.’
‘You really expect they’ll attack? Still? Wouldn’t they have followed after St. John and Gabriel?’ Sage asked quietly.
Regarding her, my hazel eyes turned shrewd. ‘Inevitable tactics. St. John’s too strong for them – if he uses his full powers. And, unless they have a seraph blade, hand-to-hand combat is quite useless – though, no doubt, they will resort to whatever means they find necessary. Gabriel will lead them a merry chase but, eventually, when they can’t gain possession of the Scroll – and I hope that they won’t – they’ll be coming back for us.’
Sage received my dreadful disclosure with no more than a choked-off gasp.
Looking at her over my shoulder, I couldn’t tell if she was silently crying. Her face was shrouded in shadows, the setting sun at her back, hampering a more detailed examination.
‘Why are we going to Satis House then?’ she asked, tugging her jacket closer to her slim frame for warmth.
‘Because we
can’t possibly hope to fight off a winged predator, let alone two,’ I replied, trudging on wearily as the woods darkened around us. ‘Not on our own.’
To Sage’s credit, she faced the dread enclosing us without begging me for useless reassurances. ‘So you think Finn will help us?’
I tossed her an insouciant smile over my shoulder, as much to shake off the pervasive gloom of my own doubts. ‘He’d better!’
‘Oh yeah? Like that, is it?’ I made her smile briefly. Chestnut coloured wisps of hair snagged out of Sage’s braid to stream behind her in the gusts of wind as she picked up her pace to walk beside me. Surveying her wan smile, the tear tracks down her dirty cheeks, I felt I owed her the truth.
‘Look, whether Finn is there or not, whether he agrees to help us or not, doesn’t matter,’ I said, determinedly, ‘If we can get to Satis House, we can trick the Rephaim into believing we’ve been caught by Louis or one of the others. Maybe it’ll buy us enough time to get home, or for Gabriel or St. John to come back for us.’
Sage threw me a sceptical look. ‘Exactly how are we going to accomplish that?’
‘We’re the fox in a foxhunt, Sage. Get it?’ I gestured to my sweat-stained clothes. ‘I have no intention of getting caught, if I can help it. But how else do you leave a false trail? How do you mask a scent? We get the hounds to follow the wrong scent.’
She was looking at me with an expression of horror on her face. ‘You’re mad! That’s never going to work!’
‘You think?’ Though hurt, I just shrugged. ‘You got any better suggestions? No? I didn’t think so.’
Emerging from the shadow of the ancient oaks, I moved stealthily through the woods, Sage following up the rear, whether she wanted to or not. She quickly caught up, hurrying along beside me. What had begun as a dash for survival was quickly becoming something else altogether; I was allowing the Rephaim to hunt us now. And I could tell that Sage was liking this plan less and less.
But even as we walked towards Satis House, I felt surprisingly alert. Staring down the barrel of a gun had given me a second wind. I took a deep breath and tried to keep my wits about me, knowing that the winged creatures could attack at any moment.
Accompanying the gravity of being a fugitive of sorts and hunted by the Rephaim, I was now starting to feel the burden of added responsibility. I felt both the onerous task of protecting and guiding my sister who, for one of the very few times in her life, was outside of her comfort zone and floundering, and I also felt the weight of responsibility for the Scroll; facing the prospect that Sage and I might actually be holding – no, more than that, be expected to decode, to read – an encrypted set of directions, a multidimensional map, to one of the most enduring mysteries of all time.
The whoosh of a passing jay with its distinctive electric-blue wings snapped me into focused awareness. Sage barely gave it notice, but then she didn’t know what to look for. Our sister, Jasmine, was the animal lover amongst us and would bring home strays and wounded animals from time to time, having a natural affinity for them. My own interest was purely aesthetic; I looked for unique colours and tried my hand at capturing birds in flight like a true photojournalist. I’d spent many hours in these woods photographing the wildlife. That’s how I knew that the woodland birds were often heard long before they were seen. They were quite shy creatures and many species would freeze or move to the other side of the tree trunk so as not to be noticed.
The high-pitched keen of a bird of prey was almost missed amongst the other sounds of the forest.
‘Stop!’ I hissed, throwing out an arm to halt Sage. ‘Shh! Quiet!’
‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered.
I didn’t answer directly. A prickling of goose bumps chased over my skin, and I froze. But then I didn’t have to provide an answer at all. Her unblinking stare traced the skies above us and I felt rather than heard her sharp intake of breath.
Folding its dull obsidian wings close to its body, it swooped with such grace and speed, it sounded like a small bomb being dropped from the heavens. The Peregrine Falcon spread its wings a moment before it reached the canopy of trees, gliding above us and to the east, in the direction of Satis House, almost as if clearing a path.
‘GO! GO! GO!’ Urging Sage to follow the bird, I gave her back a shove. ‘AFTER IT! QUICKLY!’
I had seen them already; like a swarm of black specks dotting the hellish sky as the sun folded into twilight, the Rephaim had regrouped. Now four, they rapidly closed the distance between us.
We dived through the overgrowth, digging in our heels, all Sage’s arguments silenced. Hurtling between silver birch, we drew closer still to Satis House. I could almost see its mellow stone through the gaps and breaks in the tree line. But there was worse still to come – we had not yet reached the opening where the forest gave ground to cultivated estate. The open site was indefensible against any form of attack from above and we would be vulnerable as we crossed from woods to man-made dwelling. Yet we had no choice.
Sage turned her head. Her eyes showed stark horror. ‘They’ll see us.’
‘KEEP RUNNING!’ I cried.
We were keeping pace, running shoulder to shoulder. Her hair now fell freely from her braid, whipping past her eyes, as she desperately glanced back. Putting on a burst of speed, I pulled out in front, ahead of my twin, widening the gap between us due to my natural athleticism.
We broke through the line of silver birch just as Kemwer swooped low into the converted barn no more than a hundred feet ahead of us. Thanking whatever powers were looking after us, in a glance, I took in the opening in the fence which I’d made on New Year’s Eve and made a beeline for it.
I lunged and slid in the mud like a baseball player sliding in for a home run, catching at the wire-mesh fence, tearing it back unmindful of cutting my hands. Sage scrambled through first and I took up the rear, legs pumping hard and fast as the pulse of wings beating against the wind could be heard clearly now.
Not daring to look back over my shoulder to check the Rephaim’s distance, knowing we didn’t have a second to waste, I darted after Sage as we made our way across the open stretch and under cover.
Petrol fumes and fertiliser assailed my nostrils as I ran through the old wooden barn doors of the converted barn building, a wall of darkness looming over me. Instinctively, I opened my mouth to call out to Sage and, immediately, from behind, a rough, strong hand clamped over it.
‘If you make one sound, I will kill you,’ it said, and to my utter terror, the old barn doors swung shut behind me, encasing me in endless darkness.
MELEE
CHAPTER NINE
Normally lilting, his faintly Irish accent was all but drowned out under the harshness of his tone.
‘Nod if you understand me. Do not cry out.’
Naturally, I moved my mouth to speak, but the hand clamped over it tightened still further.
‘Shh!’ He hissed a warning, pressing me back into the gloom.
I stumbled in the darkness, only managing to remain upright as I was locked tightly against Finn’s solid chest, as he dragged me backward further into the shade of the converted barn, away from the entrance.
Sometime in the last fifty years, someone had converted this large space into a garage and work shed. I’d caught a frightful glimpse of the many sharp, wicked-looking tools lining the barn walls as I’d entered, which looked something like the set of Saw. My shiver could not have gone unnoticed by my captor.
My eyes darted frantically from left to right, searching out indistinct shapes in the pitch-black of the barn. Something gingerly touched my leg, brushing up against my ankle, making me jump and kick out in frightened response. My foot connected with the hard rubber rim of a car tyre but not my assailant, and I would have cried out if it weren’t for Finn’s hand still pressed against my mouth.
‘Fi! Quick! Hide! Down here!’ Sage’s words, low and whispered, sounded in the darkness as again she tugged upon my ankle to pull me down beside her.
&nb
sp; Bloody hell! Lucky for Sage my aim had been off, otherwise I would have kicked her in the face!
As my eyes adjusted to the murkiness of the barn’s interior surrounding me, Finn released my mouth and let me go, allowing me to see that we were crouched low between large machinery; between something like a generator, and a mint-condition vintage Bentley. Perversely, I felt bereft without Finn’s arms around me, but I had no time to mourn the loss as we heard the approach of the Rephaim hunting us.
The sound of rushing wind intensified as the winged creatures circled above the barn and Satis House; the dull thud of air being struck hard drowned out all other noise from outside the building, like the clamour of wild brumbies racing across the plain. The centuries-old structure creaked and cracked in response to the tempest above, but held together, as solid as when it was first raised.
‘Phoenix, we have little time. Do what you must now or leave us to our fate.’
The words came out of shadow and, with a queer sense of desolation, I watched through the Bentley’s rear windows, distorting my view and offering little in the way of protection, as a tall figure emerged from the opposite end of the renovated garage. What little light there was in the gloomy space seemed to capture the blond locks of the approaching Nephilim.
Sage gave no cry, made not a whimper, but her breath came out in a whoosh as she hurled herself at the figure looming out of the inky blackness – not in attack but merely closing the distance between them. He caught her in his arms and held her tight but, still, his green-eyed gaze, as piercing as a cat’s, never left Finn’s face for even a moment.
What was St. John doing here?
Forgetting my initial fear, I turned angrily to stare at my captor.
‘What’s going on?’ My voice was accusatory. ‘What’s your game?’
Finn shrugged, seemingly unashamed of himself.
‘My position here is ... ambiguous, to say the least,’ he replied softly.