by Bo Luellen
The Demon pointed at something beside him, and Henry turned to see an old oak end table that had just materialized. On top of it was a cup made of copper and decorated with Egyptian symbols. It was filled with a tea that smelled of a pungent mixture of cinnamon and honey. Henry was so thirsty and hungry that he reached down and took a sip without thinking. The flavor was shockingly good and hit his senses with a jolt of pleasure he had never felt before. Henry couldn't keep himself from smiling at the exotic flavors washing down his throat. His belly warmed, and he felt every part of his body tingle at once.
Hyde took out a cigar from his pocket and dipped the end in his drink, as he asked, "Do you like the tea?"
Jekyll took another gulp and then replied, "Yes, I’ve never tasted anything like this before."
The Angelic being struck a wood match off the side of his shoe, saying, "You should know that it's not really there, and it’s only an illusionary construct. This place you are in is a facsimile made by the force of my will. Oh, everything you interact with will taste, smell, and feel real. You could eat a steak, be beaten, or even have relations with some dark fantasy version of that woman you lusted over at your place of employment. What was her name? Dallas Webb, yes, that’s it. I could produce her now if you wish. I could ]help relieve you of some of those dogmatic quandaries in which you wrap yourself.”
Henry lurched forward from his seat and exclaimed, “No! Please, I’m fine, thank you.”
The Demon got up from his chair, puffed on his cigar, and warned, “Don’t be so quick to cut yourself off from all that is offered. I made this Study to help you during the transition. It’s a guidepost and sanctuary in case your psyche starts to collapse in on itself during the transition.”
The barefoot Henry tilted his head with concern and asked, “What exactly are you planning on showing me?”
Hyde’s eyes lit up as he replied, “Oh, my dear child, so many wonders. We must give you time to adapt first. If I was to expose you to the truth, you would fold inward on yourself. Even with your breeding, I suspect that your Angelic bloodline couldn’t compete with the countless generations of mundane inferiority that polluted my descendents. It will take time to retrain your body and mind for you to obtain our full potential."
Jekyll put down his tea and asked, "I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Angelic bloodline?"
The Fallen floated upwards, causing Henry to jump out of his seat and nearly spill his tea. The Demon looked over some of the books lining the top shelf of one of the bookcases while making a “tsk” sound. He watched as the creature playfully danced his fingers on the binding like a spider moving along a web.
As Hyde searched, he asked his guest, "I believe that lovely Professor of yours was attempting to teach you how to uncover the mysteries of the cosmos and the divine nature of God. So do enrich me with your insight. Tell me what a Nephilim is? "
He slowly sat back down and replied, "It’s the product of an unholy union between an Angel and a human female."
His host plucked a book from the shelf, put it under his arm, and exclaimed, "Excellent, Scion! Top marks! That is what the human culture was meant to believe. Like many things on your planet, it is a lie that hides the truth of it. Now that I know your bloodline, and so very intimately, I will give you what God refuses to tell your kind."
Floating down to the ground next to Henry’s chair, Hyde extended his smooth and flawless hand outwards and handed him the book. Cautiously he took the leather-bound tome and read the title to himself, Showing Henry What He Is by Edward Hyde. The intricately crafted cover had a scene of a massive Angel with its wings wrapped around a beautiful dark-skinned woman.
Henry sat it down on his lap and remarked, "Interesting title. I’m guessing this is another manufactured illusion for my benefit? Well, if I’m to learn from you through books, this is going to take a while. I'm a slow reader."
The creature picked back up his glass and replied, "You should be terrified at what you are capable of, my child."
He grabbed the edge of the book and opened it. A flash of light strobed all around him. His chair disappeared from underneath him, and Henry fell to the floor hard. He stood up quickly and noticed the Study had vanished. It was replaced with the thick air and baking sun of a humid jungle. Overhead he heard the wings of a great bird flying low overhead. The wind whipped around him as the Angel sat down on the moss-covered ground, and Henry looked into the deep blue eyes of Hyde. The Demon was outfitted with the same kind of armor he had seen on Miniel, from back in the Preserve. Instead of the brilliant and pristine set she wore, his was dull grey with deep slash marks and dents.
The Demon walked right at Henry with a full head of steam and caused the young man to stumble back in an attempt to evade the massive creature. Hyde stepped right through him as if he was a ghost and continued towards the edge of the clearing. Henry turned to see the creature stop at a collection of palm leaves and gazed through the branches.
Carefully approaching the Celestial, Henry asked, "Hyde, what is all this about?"
The Demon ignored him and stayed transfixed on something in the distance. He waved his hand in front of the Celestial’s face to no effect. Henry surmised he must be in some kind of simulation initiated by the Study. Like a shot, Hyde walked through the leaves and out into a clearing. Henry took chase and noticed the Angel was changing physically. His wings folded up and retracted into folds in his back. Henry was amazed at how his wings fit inside such a small area. The creature's shoulders and chest thickened, and Hyde’s biceps had swollen to a point where it gave the Demon the appearance of a bodybuilder.
The Angel was shapeshifted into a perfect vision of a male with astonishing speed. When it was over, the Celestial looked more like the Greek god Hercules than human. His height decreased to just under six feet, and white cloth sprang out over his body, covering him with a thin tunic.
Hyde stopped in his tracks, causing Henry to pause as he saw the Angel was staring intently again at something. He pushed through the canopy and stepped out to see what had caught the Demon’s attention. In the distance was a dark-skinned woman gathering water at a fast-moving stream. Her hair was dark with eyes that were large and brown. She looked South American and had nothing other than a piece of red cloth covering her lower body.
Around them were a dozen or more tribesmen, that Henry estimated to have come from an Incan or Mayan culture from the distant past. A warrior looked up from drinking from the stream and saw Hyde. The tanned Indian shouted something in a language he couldn't understand. The rest of the warriors picked up their weapons and moved in front of Hyde. Walking confidently towards the woman, two of the more prominent warriors advanced on Hyde with their spears.
The Demon’s voice became a resonating sound that echoed, "Teporis Torporibus."
The entire tribe dropped their weapons and fell to the ground, except for the dark-skinned focus of Hyde’s attention. Henry ran over to one and touched the man’s neck to check for a pulse. He found a steady beat, and the warrior gave a loud snoring sound as he slept.
Hyde stopped within a few feet of the terrified woman and reached for her pot she had been collecting water in. He spoke to her in their language, and she instantly went from fear to laughter. She handed him the clay pot, and Hyde sat her down on a rock next to the stream. The Angel knelt down, took her right foot, and washed it, as he sang to her. The words were in a language Henry had never heard before, but the passion of the words enthralled the Demon’s audience. A few minutes later, she pulled her foot back and attacked the Angel with a kiss.
Suddenly, Henry’s surroundings melted away and were replaced by another series of flashing strobe lights. He held his hands up in front of his face until they abated, and his eyes cleared enough to make out he was inside a primitive grass hut. In front of Henry was the woman that Hyde had fancied, who was screaming and in labor. Three women buzzed around the pregnant tribeswoman and tended to her.
In the corner of the room, a
n older woman sat on a stump and watched the birth. She had an expressionless face and wore only a skirt made of leaves and arranged with feathers. The image of Hyde floated beside the elderly tribeswoman as they both waited on the delivery of the newborn. A few moments later, a beautiful baby girl emerged amid screams and blood.
The older woman chanted and shook an ornate turtle rattler, which seemed to harm the Demon. A cloud of smoke came from the shell, and Hyde was violently pushed back several feet. The ethereal visage of the Angel shifted into one of a pure black form, with midnight black scales and salt and pepper wings. The Demon from Hell dug its feet into the soft ground and beat his divine wings hard against the banishment rite. The nursemaids left the hut screaming, as the gusts of wind from the ancient creature blew down several grass wall panels from the structure. The shaman sat and continued her song, resilient to the tantrum being thrown by the devil. Henry watched as Hyde used all his effort to move towards the mother, who held their baby close to her breast and looked up at him with loving eyes. Red glowing veins lit up as the power of the exorcism grew in strength. The Demon touched the mother of his daughter and gave a blackened kiss to the child’s head. In a flash, Hyde disappeared, and the winds died down in the hut, leaving only the mournful wails of the devil's concubine.
The air around Henry swirled and strobed, as time began to race forward. Everything was a blur except for the newborn baby, which stayed in clear focus. In a few seconds, he saw the infant child grow into a woman and take a husband. Time slowed for an instant as the now mid-twenties dark-skinned daughter of Hyde gave birth to a tanned baby boy. Once again, time-shifted forward, and Henry saw the child grow into a man. The cycle repeated as the vision gave a snapshot in the life of each child in the divine lineage. The Demon’s divinity had an effect on the reproductive system of his Scion. So each newborn was destined to be an only child. The offspring of Hyde ventured out of Peru, mixed with the Spanish, traveled to England, and eventually arrived in the Thirteen Colonies of America. From there, the bloodline moved west and settled into the Sooner State of Oklahoma.
The images slowed down to a crawl as he saw his grandmother giving birth to his father. A tightness came over his chest as a jolt of realization shot down his spine. The vision moved forward again, and the young man found himself in a Tulsa hospital, looking down at a hospital bed. His mother screamed in anguish as her only son, Henry Jekyll, arrived in the arms of a nurse. He tried to back up and turn away, but the image followed him, regardless of where he looked. Time wound down to a crawl, stopping to replay the most painful parts of his upbringing.
He saw himself as a newborn infant being given up by his mother for adoption. He witnessed his grandmother taking him from the agency and raising him for the first six months of his life. He had never been told this part of his life and stopped trying to turn away. Time clipped along again until it settled on a four-year-old Henry sitting in the corner of his childhood living room. Silently the image flowed as his mother and father argued around him, and the innocence began to drain away from the kid's face. The baby screamed in terror when they started hitting one another. A tear went down Jekyll’s face as he relived each of the defining events of his past. His body shook with grief, and old buried memories resurfaced, demanding a reckoning.
A parade of pain marched by his face, causing him to deal with deep fears and fully understand why he had had such vivid reoccurring nightmares. Henry witnessed the first time he had been beaten by his mother, bullied in high school, the first lie he told, his first kiss, the first bone his father broke in his body, and each came with a host of guilt and anguish. All through Hyde’s illusion, he wept and suffered.
The strobe effect bounced in his eyes, and he was once more in the Study, sitting in the leather chair and facing the Angel who was sitting placidly in his high back seat. The flames danced light off his face, and he struggled to catch his breath, while Hyde poured himself the last of the Whiskey. He couldn't find his words and sat there dealing with the echoes of the past.
Hyde took a long drink and remarked, "It seems I'm not the first Demon to possess you. There are quite a few that you gallantly carried around like a cross. Human memory is an odd thing. You only seem to remember the most horrible times and easily forget the most precious. All of it should be cherished as they teach us what is healthy and what is best avoided."
Henry lifted his eyes to the Demon and asked, "Am I a Nephilim?"
Hyde’s thin eyebrows lifted as he sighed and answered, "That is a complicated question, and you're not fully capable of understanding the answer. For the sake of expediency, the easiest way to answer you is yes. The divine bloodline I gifted to your ancestors flowed down the generations to you. Unlike human genetics, the Angelic DNA does not delude when mixed with substandard stock. It houses itself inside the genetic code and manifests in ways that humans couldn’t comprehend.
Some of the Fallen had children with humans that turned out to be giants, sorcerers, kings, and queens or even took on Angelic features. Those were less than successful couplings as the races of humanity are deadly and superstitious. One by one, the more outwardly remarkable Nephilim were killed off by crusaders and inquisitors looking to root out evil from the huddled sheep. Then, of course, there is the Order of Virtue…"
Henry frowned and asked, "Why did you make a child and then choose to abandon it?"
The Angel tapped his glass with a thick black fingernail and answered, "Well, as you have no doubt dealt with in your own life, we take our notes from our parents, don't we? God saw fit to impregnate a teenage girl and leave both her and her husband to raise the bastard child alone."
Henry looked disgusted, "So you did it out of spite?"
Hyde got a broad grin and answered, "The decision to cast me out was the tribe’s, not mine. While I hold my grudges, I adore irony, as many of the Fallen do. Over the centuries, I found that if I kept too close to my offspring or their lineage, it would bring attention to them. Beings of power, both ancient and new, would hunt them for their divine blood.”
Hyde rubbed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and asked, “Why is that Angel after you?”
The smile faded from the Demon as he quickly replied, “Miniel and I have a past. She is a spiteful creature that feels like she lost favor with the All-Mighty over my decision to rebel against God. I can't say she was wrong. I'm sure God’s cosmic comment card had a few marks against her for falling in love with one of the Fallen. He is a jealous God, as you might recall from your days in Sunday school, and doesn’t like competition.”
Henry opened his eyes and inquired, “So she is hunting you?”
Hyde stood up, walked over to the fireplace, and gazed into the flames as he answered, “In the early days before I started inhabiting human hosts, I flew the skies openly. I traveled the cosmos in search of fulfilling a purpose. I never wanted to fight my own kind, but Miniel wouldn’t give up the chase. She is an excellent warrior, but I’m better at hiding. Hence, the moniker “Hyde.” She would destroy anything that brought me happiness, and the lengths she would go to capture me grew with each passing century.
It wasn’t always so. At first, Miniel wanted us to return together and face judgment, hand-in-hand. I would, of course, refuse such a silly notion and then make my exit. Eventually, she stopped responding to Heaven and became obsessed with me.
I’m safe while possessing a person, and the only thing that would tip me off is the Seven Deadly Sins, a useful set of spells that only the Fallen can apply. Now, you might think that is an easy fix, just don't use it, right? The temptation was always too high not to. I am a rebel after all, and the hypocrisy humans display turns my stomach and provokes me. Mortals on this planet find it easier to cast judgment on others rather than show them guidance and mercy. Humans succumb to the allure of magnifying their own ego by tasting the unholy fruit that gives power to The Seven Deadly Sins.”
Jekyll shifted in his seat and asked, "What happens to the people you inhabit whe
n you are discovered?"
Hyde tossed his glass into the fire, causing a burst of flame, as he answered, "Only a few live. Miniel would sometimes kill my hosts, even if I jumped out well before she got there. She loves her bitterness as much as she loves me, which is a passion you will find in our bloodline. We feel deeply, we love with single-mindedness, and if we find our love scorned, our kind has no regrets about exacting a toll on whoever crosses us."
Henry looked at him with disgust and replied, "I'm nothing like you. You toy with people’s lives to avoid being judged by God."
The Angel stomped his foot on the ground and revealed a cloven hoof that turned the hardwood floor into flame. His eyes became a set of red burning embers, and his light frame stretched out, ripping through his clothes. A long set of horns grew out of the top of the Demon’s head and curled around until the points touched his cheekbone.
Henry darted around his chair as Hyde bellowed, "You are God’s child that he made in his image. You were given the unique ability to ask for forgiveness. What do you do with it? You have the audacity to make war, hurt one another, corrupt everything sacred, kill innocents, and wipe out entire species of animals without a moment’s hesitation. And why? All for the illusion of profit, glory, and control of your life. You do unspeakable acts and then ask for forgiveness, and all is washed away. Oh, my child, your race was built to die. Every day your species lives on this gift of a world, they prove through peerless displays of evil how much they have earned that damnation.
I’ve visited worlds that go eons without harming another. On your planet, not a moment goes by that a sinful act isn’t committed. Humanity warps the intent of their creator to fit whatever religious doctrine gives them more power over their followers. The worship of God was never supposed to be in the churches, with humanity on their knees, paying homage to whatever version of the Bible is most popular at the time. The gift your wretched kind has ignored was that the love of God was always in the heart. Living by that is living by Him.”