The master of the Powers strode into the reactor room, followed closely by six of his elite soldiers and the wild-eyed feral child held in check with collar and leash. The child coughed and sneezed as clouds of thick radioactive dust, undisturbed since the plant officially closed just a few years before, billowed into the air with their passing.
The explosion here had released forty times the amount of radioactivity unleashed by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even now radiation levels were still incredibly high and quite dangerous to all forms of life. But that was of little concern to the nuclear power plant’s current residents—or its visitors.
Verchiel stopped and stared with displeasure. The vast chamber had been turned into a place of worship, a makeshift church. An altar of sorts was laid out before him. Hundreds of candles of various sizes burned in front of a crude painting depicting an angelic being in the loving embrace of a mortal woman. And hovering in the sky above this coupling was an infant, a child glowing like the sun. Four figures, dressed in heavy woolen robes, knelt before the altar in silent prayer. Priests of the profane beliefs. They showed no sign that they were aware of his presence.
“Sacrilege!” Verchiel bellowed, his booming voice echoing off the concrete-and-metal walls of the high-ceilinged reactor chamber.
One of the figures stirred from his benediction, muttered something beneath his breath, and bowed his head to the shrine before he stood. The others continued their silent worship.
“Welcome to our holy place,” he said.
“You disappoint me, Byleth,” Verchiel responded as the figure at the crude altar gradually turned to face him. “A deserter and a disgrace to your host, but this…” He gestured to the shrine. “It offends the Almighty to the core of His Being.”
Byleth smiled piously and strolled closer, hands clasped before him. “Does it really, Verchiel? Does the belief in a prophecy that preaches the reuniting of God with His fallen children really offend Him?” The robed angel stopped before them. “Or does it simply offend you?” Again Byleth smiled.
“What happened to you, Byleth?” Verchiel asked. “You were one of my finest soldiers. What made you fall so far from His grace?”
The angel chuckled softly as his hands disappeared inside the sleeves of his robe. “Is this usually what you ask before you kill us?”
Verchiel’s lip curled back in a sneer. “It is merely an attempt to understand how you could turn your back upon a sacred duty to the Creator of all things.”
“You must know these things before you condemn us to death?” Byleth asked, his gaze unwavering.
“Yes, before you are executed for your crimes,” the Powers’ commander answered. “A chance to purge yourself of guilt before the inevitable.”
“I see,” the priest said thoughtfully. “Has Camael answered for his crimes?”
Verchiel was silent, an explosive rage building inside him.
The priest smiled, pleased with the lack of response. “That is good,” Byleth said. “As long as he lives, there’s a chance that—”
“It is only a matter of time before the traitor meets with his much deserved fate,” Verchiel interrupted, his words dripping with malice.
“Did you feel it, Verchiel?” the angel asked, one of his hands leaving the confines of his robe to gently touch his forehead. “Just a few glorious hours ago, did you feel it come into its own?”
“I felt nothing,” Verchiel lied. He had been en route to Ukraine when he felt the psychic disturbance. The angel had been tracking half-breeds for hundreds of thousands of years and never had he felt an emergence so strong. It concerned him. “And if I had, what more could it be but the manifestation of another blemish upon the Creator’s world? Something to hunt down and eradicate before it has the opportunity to offend any further.”
The boy began to cough and Byleth sadly gazed at the human child who struggled against the confines of his leash.
“That poor creature should never have been brought here, Verchiel,” the angel priest said. “The poisons in this air will do it irreparable harm.”
Verchiel gazed at the creature with complete disinterest and looked back to the priest. “How else was I to find you in a timely manner?” he asked. “If it should die then so be it; I’ll find another monkey to help with my hunt.”
The others at the altar were standing now and had turned to watch the encounter. They all wore the same idiotic grin and Verchiel could not wait to see it burned from their faces.
“There is desperation in your tone, Verchiel. You felt it as strongly as we,” Byleth said as he shared a moment with his fellow worshippers. “And you are afraid—afraid that the prophecy is coming to fruition.”
Verchiel snarled and spread his wings, knocking Byleth to the floor by the altar in a cloud of radioactive dust. “What black sorcery did the human seer use to corrupt so many of you? Tell me so I might have any who practice such poisonous villainy scoured from the planet.”
“Always so dramatic, Verchiel,” Byleth said, struggling to his feet. “There was no magic, no corrupting spell. Nothing but a vision of unification and an end to the violence.”
A sword of fire grew in Verchiel’s hand. The larger particles of irradiated dust and dirt in the air sparked as they drifted into contact with the divine flame. Following his lead, his soldiers each manifested blazing weapons as well.
“And what has this idyllic vision brought you thus far?” asked the Powers’ leader. “You hide yourself away in the poisoned wastelands created by the animals, denying your true place in the order of things. Is this some kind of punishment, Byleth? Do you think that this half-breed prophet you imagine is coming will look upon you fondly because of it?” Verchiel said with disgust. “Pathetic.”
“This place and the poisoned land around it reminds us of what we were and what we have become,” Byleth explained. “Once, we were filled with His holy virtue, on a mission to wipe away evil—but we were tainted by the violence and a self-righteousness that said we were acting in His name.”
“Everything I do, I do for Him,” Verchiel replied, his fiery blade burning brighter and radiating an intense heat.
“That is what you believe to be true,” Byleth said. “But there is another way—a way without death, a way that brings the end of our exile and the beginning of our redemption.” The angel held out his hand, directing Verchiel to look upon the altar. “This is the way, Verchiel. This is our future.”
Verchiel shook his head. “No, it is blasphemy.” He raised a hand to his soldiers behind him. “Remove them from the altar,” he commanded.
The Powers leaped into the air, their wings stirring choking clouds of fine, radioactive debris.
“We will fight you, Verchiel!” Byleth cried. A weapon of fire grew in his grip, and others blazed up in the hands of his fellow believers, yet they seemed pitiful by comparison to the swords of the Powers. Feeble wings grew from their backs.
“Look at you,” Verchiel said as he strode toward them and their sacred shrine. “Belief in this heresy has reduced you to mere shadows of your former glory. How sad.”
“Our past sins have made us thus,” Byleth bellowed in anger as he leaped at Verchiel, his sword held high.
But he was intercepted by the savagery of Verchiel’s elite guard and forced to the ground beneath their weight. Verchiel watched with great amusement as the priests were hauled away from their shrine.
“This is the future, you say?” he asked as he looked from them to the burning candles and crude artwork.
They struggled against their captors, but the Powers’ soldiers held them fast. “It won’t end with us,” Byleth hissed. “That which has been foretold now walks among us.”
Verchiel looked to the altar, fiery indignation burning in his breast. “I see no future here,” he said as he flapped his powerful wings. The mighty gusts of air extinguished the candles and toppled the offensive painting. “All I see is the end.”
Verchiel grinned malicio
usly as he turned back to the priests, but his triumph quickly turned to confusion when he noted the serene looks upon their faces.
“It’s far from over, Verchiel,” Byleth said. “Look for yourself,” he added with a tilt of his head toward the altar.
The Powers’ leader turned and watched with horror as the candles, one by one, began to re-ignite. In a burst of fury, he spread his wings and launched himself toward the grinning priest, once a soldier in his service. Savagely he thrust the end of his fiery blade into Byleth’s chest, reveling in the change of his expression from a grin of the enlightened to one of excruciating pain.
Byleth’s fellow priests gasped in unison. “Please,” one of his fellow believers plaintively whispered.
Verchiel leaned in close, watching the flesh of the renegade angel’s face bubble and blacken as he burned from within. “They beg for mercy, but alas, their words fall upon deaf ears.”
Byleth slid to the floor, Verchiel’s blade still within him, his heavy robes beginning to ignite. “And…and how are your words received, Verchiel?” He gasped as he lifted his head, puddles of liquid flesh sizzling upon the dust-covered ground. “What does the Lord of Lords have to say when you speak?”
Verchiel pulled his sword from the priest’s chest. “The Almighty and I…we do not need to converse.”
Byleth smiled hideously, his teeth nothing more than charred nubs protruding from oozing black gums. “As I imagined.”
Verchiel felt his ire rise. “That amuses you, Byleth? My lack of communication with the Heavenly Father makes you smile in the face of your imminent death?”
His body awash in flames, the priest slowly raised his charred, skeletal hands to the sides of his face—to where his ears used to be. “Deaf…ears,” Byleth whispered. “Deaf ears.” And then he began to laugh.
The sound enraged Verchiel. He pulled back his arm and brought the heavenly blade down upon the burning priest once, twice, three times, reducing his offender to ash. Then he turned from the smoking remains to face his prisoners. “This is what the profanity of your beliefs has brought you,” he said, directing their attention to the ruin of their master.
The sword of flame receded to nothing, and Verchiel strode away toward the doors that would take him from the poisonous chamber.
“Kill them,” he said, void of emotion, his back to them. “I want to forget they ever existed.”
And he left the room, the screams of the dying priests escorting him on his journey, the malignant words of an ancient prophecy feverishly swirling around in his mind.
Michael Jonas glanced at his watch. He set his pen down on top of the insurance forms he was in the process of completing and picked up the phone.
Where is he? the psychiatrist wondered.
The dial tone droned in his ear as he searched for Aaron’s phone number in his file. He punched in the numbers and listened as it began to ring.
Aaron Corbet had been nothing but punctual all the years that he’d treated him, and Jonas found it odd that he would simply blow off their appointment, especially after their discussion yesterday morning.
He would have been lying if he had said he wasn’t fascinated by the rather unique talent the young man had exhibited; in all his twenty-five years of practicing he’d never seen anything quite so bizarre and yet, exciting. Certainly Aaron could be delusional, and was already fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and Latin, but his gut told him no. Jonas grew eager with the thought of the papers he might publish on this specific case, and the accolades he would receive from his peers.
“Hello?” answered a woman’s voice from the other end of the line.
“Yes, hi,” Jonas said in greeting. “Is Aaron there please?”
“No, he’s not,” the woman replied. “Can I ask who’s calling?”
He would need to be cautious; patient-doctor confidentiality was an issue. “This is Michael Jonas,” he responded professionally. “Is this Mrs. Stanley?”
“Yes, Dr. Jonas. How are you? Aaron went out with the dog early this morning and he hasn’t returned.” There was a pause and Jonas knew what was coming next. After being a psychiatrist for so many years he could read people and their reactions. “Is there a problem, Doctor? Is…is Aaron going to see you again?”
She was concerned and he wanted to put her mind at ease without sharing Aaron’s personal business.
“No need for panic, Mrs. Stanley. I’m just checking in, calling to see how he’s doing. Would you have him get in touch with me when he comes in? I should be at the office until well after six.”
“Certainly, Doctor,” she said, less tension in her tone. “I’ll give him the message.”
“Thanks so much, Mrs. Stanley. You have a good day.”
“Same to you,” she responded, and hung up.
Jonas returned the receiver to the cradle and again glanced at his watch. Interesting, he thought. Aaron went out early and no one’s seen him since. Jonas wondered if he had frightened him away. Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned his friend at Mass General.
The cartoon image of a scholarly paper with flapping wings flying out a window danced across his mind and he smiled. Jonas reached for his pen to resume his weekly paperwork and saw that he wasn’t alone.
“Jesus Christ!” he gasped as he threw himself back against his chair, startled.
A man stood in front of his desk. He appeared older, but was tall, striking, and although he wore a suit, Jonas could see that he was in good physical condition.
“How did you get in here?” Jonas asked nervously.
The man simply stood staring at the desktop. He seemed to be studying Jonas’s paperwork.
“Can I help you with something, Mr. …?”
The stranger said nothing, continuing to gaze at the top of the desk. And then he raised his head and looked at Jonas. He was handsome in a distinguished kind of way. He reminded the psychiatrist of the actor who used to play James Bond, and later starred in that movie about the Russian submarine. But it was his eyes that were strangely different. There was something wrong with them. Jonas thought of the eyes of a stuffed owl that his grandmother had kept on display at her summer cottage in Maine: dark black in the center and encircled with gold.
“Camael,” the stranger answered in a powerful timbre. “I am Camael—and I’ve come in search of the child.”
Camael tilted his head back and sniffed the air. “The child was here,” he said as he turned in a slow circle, “not long ago—a day perhaps.” He moved closer to the desk, the sour smell of the human’s fear mixing with the strong essence of the Nephilim. It was a masculine odor, a male scent. “I mean the child no harm, but it is imperative that I find him.”
Dr. Jonas stood and slammed his meaty hands down onto the desktop aggressively. “Listen,” he said, “I don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about.”
The psychiatrist was a large man. He might have been powerful once, but the years had been unkind and his body had gone to seed. He pointed a square finger authoritatively to the door. “So I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
As if on cue, the office door swung slowly open and Camael snarled as two of Verchiel’s Powers came into the room.
The two took notice of him immediately and emitted a snakelike hiss from their mouths. “The betrayer,” spat one with a head of jet-black hair, his body lowering to a readied crouch. It had been millennia since Camael had last commanded them, but he believed this one was called Hadriel.
“What the hell is going on here?” the human blustered. “Leave my office at once or I’m going to…”
“Silence, ape!” the other angel warned. Camael knew the name of this one for certain. He was Cassiel, one of Verchiel’s crueler operatives.
“I strongly advise you to take cover, Doctor,” Camael warned. He did not take his eyes from the Powers, feeling that special calm before battle slowly wash over him.
“This ape is going to call the police,” the flustered psychiatrist said as he reach
ed for the telephone on his desk.
Cassiel moved as a blur. His hand shot out and from his fingertips a searing white light emanated. “I asked you to be quiet.”
The doctor screamed out in agony as his body burst into flame. He fell back against the wall and crumpled to the floor, completely engulfed by fire. He twitched and thrashed in excruciating death and everywhere he touched began to burn as well.
Camael used the distraction to strike. In his mind he saw the weapon he wanted and it formed in his grasp, composed of heavenly fire. He attacked, swinging the burning blade at Hadriel, who seemed engrossed in the psychiatrist’s death throes. But the angel reacted quickly, summoning a weapon of his own, a spear—and blocking the swipe that would have certainly taken his head.
The weapons clashed, sounding like the grumble of thunder.
“The great Camael,” Hadriel taunted as he pushed him away and thrust forward with the burning spear. “One of our greatest, reduced to living amongst the human animals.”
Camael sidestepped to avoid the spear thrust and brought his blade down, cutting his attacker’s weapon explosively in two. “You talk too much, Hadriel,” he said as he stepped in close and lashed out, the pommel of the sword connecting with the side of the soldier’s head, bringing him to his knees. “A human trait, I believe,” Camael said to the stunned angel.
Camael heard the whisper of another weapon cutting through the air. He unfurled his wings and flew upward as Cassiel’s sword passed harmlessly beneath him.
“Are you lonely, Camael?” Cassiel asked as he too pushed off from the floor and spread his wings to join him in the air.
Camael parried Cassiel’s next thrust and maneuvered in closer. He brought a knee up sharply into the angel’s stomach. “My mission is all the company I need,” he said as he drove his forehead into the angel’s face. “I’ve grown to enjoy my solitude.”
Cassiel plummeted to the floor.
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