WE KNOW.
The thought makes me sick. Someone, something, knows that I’m Nephilim. A part of me still longs to just sow these devils and be done with it. It would satisfyingly punctuate this operation and ensure its success. My initial brainstorming with Jan got the ball rolling toward a non-sowing solution, but with each passing minute I’m increasingly convinced those options won’t work. I need to do this my way, and I need her to accept her role as a piece in my game. If I should need to toss her into the water like chum, I won’t tolerate her resisting and dragging me overboard too. The question is, how do I convince Jan to surrender to my authority when so many before me have failed?
CHAPTER TEN
The next several hours of work are anything but productive as I spend them plotting the end of this regrettable chapter in Pentastar’s history and engaging in a series of rousing internal debates about Jan. The overcast evening sky obscures tonight’s sunset behind dreary, sherbet-infused clouds and as my car delivers me to my apartment building, specks of rain tap out a rhythmic prelude to the upcoming downpour. I arrive at the top-floor landing and see my repaired but unpainted apartment door standing strong before me. The unnerving memory of last night’s invasion creeps into my mind and rattles the peace that grew during the day’s distractions.
WE KNOW.
I have lost the advantage of anonymity. No, I didn’t lose it; it was taken from me.
My keys sway and jingle as I fumble for the right one. Thankfully, Norma, my landlord, just had my locks moved over from my original door. It’s become normal for me to have to overwrite muscle memory since I started performing sowings. I instinctively go for the tarnished key with worn teeth that unlocks the family farmhouse, but each of these operations draws me into new spaces that never feel like home with new keys that I never fully break in.
On the other side of the door I expect to be greeted by yesterday’s untouched wreckage, but as I enter my apartment I find things much tidier. The pleasant surprise soothes my nerves and brings a smile to my face. The couch cushions are returned to their proper place with the torn side down. Although not in the correct spots, the intact wall décor is rehung and the other unbroken items are all set neatly on the coffee table. All the bits of glass, wood, and porcelain are swept and dumped in the trash.
On the counter, a piece of notebook paper trembles downstream of an air vent. It lies on the exact same spot as last night’s bloody message. As I approach the note, the blue cursive handwriting comes into focus.
Mr. Verity,
Gerald and I just want to say that you seem like a nice man and you’ve been a great tenant. We’re saddened that anyone would do this to you and feel some responsibility since this is our building and we care about our tenants’ security. We were more than happy to clean things up the best we could and we upgraded your door so everything is steel. I appreciate you offering to pay for the repairs but we’ve got it covered.
We’re happy to report that our hallway and entrance security cameras recorded the intruder. From the video, it doesn’t look like he took anything. We would be happy to provide you with a copy of the video so you can file a police report, but we know you value your privacy so we’ll leave that to you.
We don’t want to pry into your business, but if you’ve gotten yourself into some kind of jam and need to talk to someone, our pastor would be happy to listen. Let us know if you need anything.
Sincerely,
Norma and Gerald Thompson
I set the note back onto the counter. Norma is the brave developer who bought, owns, and manages this property with her husband Gerald. They’re a kind elderly couple who decided late in life to dabble in land development. If I was forced to say good things about humanity, I would start with them. I can’t imagine ever seeing humans as family, but they treat everyone in their life as though they’re a cherished relative.
The rain has gradually increased from a soft drizzle to a steady shower the sound of one drop indiscernible from another. I grab my phone and check the time: 7:15 p.m. Late, but not too late to call Norma. With the board meeting less than two days away, I need to have a look at that surveillance footage as soon as possible. Any insight into the intruder’s identity will help me devise a better plan of attack for Pentastar. I dial Norma’s number and wait two rings before the line opens up.
“Hello?” she answers.
“Hi, Mrs. Thompson. This is Ted Verity.”
“Mr. Verity, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Norma?”
“I’ll call you Norma when you call me Ted,” I argue playfully. Maybe it’s a byproduct of prepaying six months’ rent or maybe it’s something else, but we’ve clicked ever since we first met. Our rapport developed organically and effortlessly.
“Fine, fine. Ted, I take it you got our letter.”
“Yes, I got your letter and I want to thank you for everything you did today.”
“It’s our pleasure. They did quite a number on your place. Is everything okay?” she asks. Her use of the word “they” grabs my attention, even though it makes sense. The bloody note said “we” and there was enough destruction to assume it was caused by multiple people.
“Yes, as good as it could be under the circumstances. I was wondering, though, is it possible for you to send that surveillance video to me via email?”
Norma covers the microphone poorly as she relays my request to her husband. The phone picks up Gerald’s distant voice as he explains how to attach the video to an email. Norma, confused, tells Gerald he’ll have to do it himself because she doesn’t know how. She puts the phone back up to her ear and continues.
“Yeah, Ted, we can do that. I’m going to have Ger do it because I don’t meet the ten percent rule. Do you know that rule, Ted?”
“I think I know the one.”
“The one that says you have to be ten percent smarter than the computer? Well, I’m not!” she hoots and hollers with a healthy belly laugh.
“Oh, cut yourself some slack. Computers are impossible to keep up with no matter how smart you are,” I respond through my smile. They remind me of the grandparents I imagined as a kid. I never met mine.
“Okay, okay. Ger wants to know if we should just use the email from your rental application or if there’s a different one?”
“The one from the application will work fine. Thank you, Mrs. Thompson. Your kindness has had a greater impact than you could possibly know. You and your husband are good people.”
“NORMA. And you’re welcome, Ted. We pray for you, son. Every night lately.”
“Thank you for that.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll watch Gerald send this video through the email as soon as we hang up. That way he won’t forget! We’ll talk soon.”
“Talk soon, Mrs. Thom…Norma. Tell Gerald I say hello.”
I hang up and set my phone on the counter. Patience is not my forte, and waiting for the Thompson’s email will be torturous if I don’t find something to keep me busy. Organizing the remaining clutter from the break-in serves as a suitable diversion for a whole five minutes before I find myself sitting in my armchair, twiddling my thumbs. I’d eat something, but the thought of looking upon the one who knows my true identity has ruined my appetite. Anxiety holds my stomach in its gnarled grip and, outside, the rain shower becomes a historic downpour.
In the stillness of this empty room, my solitude removes its mask and again reveals itself as loneliness. It’s not that I want someone else to be here with me. I’d be happy just knowing there is someone out there who has my back the way Melody has Drake’s. It feels like a betrayal to suggest the fallibility of anything I was raised to believe. But after spending the day with Jan and experiencing Norma and Gerald’s thoughtful kindness, it has never seemed more apparent that my life is lacking. I switch off the cracked, shadeless table lamp and leave my chair for a better view of the storm. As I look out at the blurry yellow rectangles checkered up the nearest high-rise apartment, I imagine the people within sh
aring a meal around the dinner table, curling up on the couch to watch a movie, and helping their kids with homework.
Behind each window lies a different story, none of them perfect, but all of them sewn together with a common thread: love. I don’t know much about love, but I do know that it requires vulnerability and sacrifice to obtain, neither of which I’m accustomed to doing. I’m not seeking romantic love with Jan. I don’t even fully know if I can trust her, but I am craving companionship at some level. At the very least, Jan is the enemy of my enemy and, therefore, my friend.
Love? Companionship? A human friend?
Thoughts like that bring my shameful inner conflict into the spotlight. But no matter how real those feelings are, they’re always met with a warning. In a voice that is more my father’s than my own, I’m reminded that my sacred mission is best accomplished free of entanglements, that to even consider fraternizing with humanity is a violation of everything a noble Nephilim stands for, and that me pursuing love is no different than a dog chasing its tail. However enraptured I become with its buoyant flicking and wagging like a summoning index finger, the whimsical promises of love will wither in reality’s corrosive atmosphere. All I’ll have to show for my time and energy are my own teeth marks and the humiliation earned in my foolishness.
No, Jan is not a friend and don’t need her companionship. What I need is for this operation to be over. I need to return to the farmhouse refreshed by the crisp, clean flavor of justice served. Jan is nothing more than a means to that end.
Barely audible over the volume of water smacking my windows, a blip sounds from the kitchen counter: my email. I turn from the window and race to my phone. It’s from Gerald. My tablet’s larger screen will let me see more detail so I pop the latches on my briefcase and slide it out. The attachment opens faster than I can stifle the shivers of excitement in my spine. My fingertip thumps with each pounding heartbeat as I touch play.
The tablet screen glows with a grayscale still life of the parking lot. I tap the screen to confirm the movement of the progress bar. Eerily motionless given last night’s breeze, the young shrubs and trees extend rigidly from their roots. Being a mostly empty building, only three cars sit slotted in parking spaces. Bright stars glimmer where the streetlights reflect off their glass and metal. In the distant background, a set of headlights move slowly from left to right across the frame. Contrary to the timestamp, it looks more like midnight than 8:07 p.m. When this video was recorded, I was on my ride along with Drake and Lewis.
A streetlight suddenly cuts out, leaving half of the screen black. The bushes and trees on the bright side of the parking lot begin to shake before that streetlight also flickers and dies. Total darkness. I lean closer to my tablet, hoping to make out any variation in the deenergized pixels. My eyes are bombarded when both lights reignite at once, washing the camera in blinding white. I reflexively snap my eyes shut then spy through my eyelashes as the camera adjusts its exposure, revealing three dark figures who walk swiftly and smoothly through the parking lot. Their backlit position leaves their features shrouded in shadow, but their silhouettes reveal their tremendous size—broad enough shoulders and long enough bones to intimidate even me.
The outside footage catches several frames in which the faraway figures’ faces are partially lit, but the small handful of dots only reveal a gaunt, human-like appearance that could just be a Halloween mask. With each step closer, it becomes apparent that they’re wearing long coats with hoods over their heads and seem to have knowledge of the camera’s location. The closer they get the more downward their gaze, concealing their identities until the entrance lights flash and the video dissolves into static.
The recording, now colorized, switches cameras flight by flight, and I watch as they ascend the stairwell to my floor at a leisurely pace. This was no hasty smash and grab. Still facing downward and shrouded by their hoods, one of them takes a post at my door while the other, the biggest of the three, moves straight to the camera’s position in the upper corner of the landing. Without looking up, he draws a blade from within his jacket and slams the pommel straight into the lens. It cracks in webbed lines that render parts of the video unintelligible.
He slowly removes the hood from his hairless head and looks directly into the camera. I pause the playback. There are no masks. A gaunt, fractured, and distorted face fills my tablet screen, a taunt that even when I see him I won’t see him. Black-and-white or color, it makes no difference, because his flesh is gray and his eyes black and soulless. Unable to make a positive identification, I take a screenshot and move on. I can barely make out the creature’s blurry, mosaic movements as he kicks my door repeatedly until it relents. He’s inside.
An uneventful twenty minutes follows during which the one guarding my door never even flinches until the other two exit my apartment. The big one stops a step outside my door and, before the largest unbroken piece of camera lens, raises his right index finger that is darkened with my blood.
WE KNOW.
He recoils his finger straight into his mouth and pulls it out clean. Unafraid of and unaffected by the seed, the being walks past his accomplices, who follow him down the stairs. The recording switches cameras back to the main entrance, which is once again working, and I stare in fascinated horror as the three figures move across the asphalt. The lights over the parking lot strobe rapidly. The bushes and trees violently whip to and fro. As the figures step into the shadows, I look ahead to the next pool of light, but they never emerge from the darkness. They simply vanish into the night, bringing a sudden stop to the flickering and swaying.
A full progress bar marks the end of the playback. I open my gallery and look again upon the face that will skulk around every blind corner and slink in every twitching shadow within my mind. The enormous size and exotic features of the man, the flickering lights, and the man’s immunity to the seed scream Nephilim, but I’ve never seen a Nephilim like him. It’s not just his physical appearance, but also his behavior. The point of Nephilim existence is to be able to walk amongst humanity without detection, but that man walked along a public street into an occupied apartment building and allowed himself to be recorded in his full Nephilim form. Such unhinged brazenness is beyond irresponsible, it’s downright reckless. Of course, in the larger context of a Nephilim breaking into and trashing my apartment, such brazenness appears to be in his nature.
The intruder’s dead eyes watch me through the screen, and for a moment I feel as though he can see me now. I glare back boldly to overcome the knot of fear that’s lodged in my chest, but it doesn’t work. Why is a guardian of truth breaking the law and risking the exposure of our race’s existence? What led him to me and what does he want? He broke in, took my secret for himself, and spoiled a sacred vial, and here I am left with no answers, no privacy, no allies, nothing.
It occurs to me that an ancient prescript as oppressive as gravity is at work and can be seen throughout reality: the good guys always play from a disadvantage. Our respect for authority and our self-imposed limitations form a barrier between us and our goals. If we dare cast aside our limitations to win by any means then we’ve entered the wasteland of moral ambiguity. Those who wander here see themselves as the good guy of the story, forced by a broken world to employ evil methods in the hope of fixing it, but in so doing they forfeit their goodness and bow to the broken system; Dave is a prime example.
In that sense, good versus evil has always been an underdog saga. As long as I refuse to bend the rules, abominations like this rogue Nephilim will always have the upper hand. Lucky for me, some of my self-imposed limitations have nothing to do with morality; they’re simply pragmatic. It’s not impossible or immoral for me to reveal my true nature to humans. We aren’t bound by anything more than the warnings of history. The last time the Nephilim lived out in the open it nearly brought about a global extinction. But that was millennia ago, and humanity has changed. Clearly my enemy has no fear of such consequences, and he’s using it to his advantage.
At this point, they haven’t divulged my true nature to the authorities, but they also gave me no hint as to what they want from me. It’s entirely possible they don’t want anything from me at all, that their goal was just to intimidate. They know I’m Nephilim, they know where I live, there are several of them working together, and they don’t fear my angelic blood. I am intimidated. I also feel confident that this creature is the malevolent force behind Pentastar’s evil. That’s why he made himself known as soon as I started sowing targets. If he’s trying to run me off, he failed. In fact, he’s piqued my interest. If he’s the source of evil, then Jan was telling the truth and is just another victim of his game.
My path forward has become clear. I need to level the playing field and I can’t do that without recruiting more pieces to be maneuvered. I also know just how to make Jan one of those pieces, eager to do my bidding and sacrifice for the greater good. Before the board meeting, I’ll reveal to Jan that I’m Nephilim and invite her to be my ally. The risk/reward analysis is simple. She either accepts the role as a piece in my game, or she becomes a threat to my confidentiality and I sow her, which was the original plan anyway. If she’s as innocent as she says, she’ll come out of the sowing better for it. If not, she’ll kill herself, an acceptable risk when the reward is completing this mission and returning to my farmhouse by the end of the week.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The same dreary rain clouds that unleashed a torrential downpour ten hours earlier still blanket the Port Ellis skyline. Snagged on the city’s spires and antennas, they failed to make their escape in the night and are now smothering out the sun’s light and warmth. Each manmade summit of sufficient height gradually fades into the floating droplets that pulsate slowly with red iridescence. The lethargic crimson strobes are beacons mounted atop the titanic landmarks of earthly empires.
Verity Rising (Gods of Deceit Book 1) Page 11