by Abby Knox
Ada returned the book to the slot in the bookcase, too hungry to concentrate anymore. Her mouth watered at the sight of the food, yet she had questions that felt equally as urgent.
Food is my bargaining chip, she thought. I need information. I crave data. And he is my source of it.
Her banging on the door was met only with silence at first.
Then, familiar footfalls.
“If you can read my mind, then why come to my door? Just stay where you are and ask me what I want,” she challenged.
The giant answered, “If you can push back into my mind, then why summon me?”
“Fair enough. But listen, I’m not going to eat that food.”
“But you’re hungry.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I can smell it on you.”
What did he say? That is not a thing. “Hunger doesn’t have an odor,” she said.
“And you call yourself an anthropologist. You humans should spend more time smelling your breath. It tells so much about a person. Hunger has an odor. Desire…of every variety…releases a scent.”
“Interesting,” she said, relieved that the flush of heat in her ears was not visible through the door, and she could not feel him pushing his vision through the wooden barrier. “Still, I’m not going to eat that.”
“Is it not good enough?”
“I’m sure it’s good,” she said, glancing over at the silver trays laden with tempting grapes, bright oranges, fried potatoes, and fragrant cheeses.
“Why not?”
“Because I want to learn a few things about you first.”
Silence.
After a long moment, he replied, “So you’re on a hunger strike? To what end, to test me? You want to find out if I’m a principled enough beast that I won’t let you starve. Is this how you plan to experiment on me?”
Ada could have let the conversation poke a hole in her spirits, but she was not deterred. “You mean you didn’t bring me up here to experiment on me? Use me in some way? Although, usually my test subjects are not aware they’re being tested, so that does drop a deuce on the whole thing.”
“I’m not familiar with that slang, but I think I understand,” he said. “Sorry to call your bluff. You compel me to behave like we’re playing a game of chess with every infernal move you make.”
“Glad to keep your attention, because I gotta say, this place is boring,” she remarked.
A smile crept into his voice when he answered, “Seems to me you’ve found a way to keep yourself…entertained.”
Ada blanched and, feeling flustered, showed all her cards too early.
“Are you under the impression that you’re a Nephilim?”
More silence.
“Whether the answer is yes or no, this knowledge will only create more solid memories, which will only be harder and harder to erase when it’s time to go.”
Ada sensed a lie. “Why did you put those books in here for me to find? You knew I would read them and ask these questions.”
“I simply grabbed a pile of books as a courtesy for you to read to pass the time.” The growing impatience in his tone told her she was getting to him."
Ada laughed derisively. “Pass the time until what? You do not expect me to believe you’re that dim-witted,” she sneered.
His exasperation emanated right through the heavy oak and iron door. “Whatever information you’re seeking, it is not meant to be shared with humans. If I say our secrets out loud, they will hear.”
“Who are they? The other Nephilim, the Seraphim, the archangels, or The Authorities?”
“You’ve been reading.”
“Yep! Guess you’ll have to kill me then,” she chirped.
The low, rumbling tone in his voice rattled the door. “I have no intention of killing you. That’s preposterous.”
“Ah, but you would choose to keep me locked up in this dungeon and let me starve instead of telling me the truth yourself.”
The giant’s voice was rising in volume. She was making him angry. “That’s not…this is not…I was protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From that television idiot.”
Ada scoffed. “Please, he’s got nothing on you, sir. You’re way more of a threat than anybody.”
“Think what you want,” he said.
“You want to know what I think? What I think is, you’re conflicted for some reason. You told yourself you’re protecting me from a bad guy to justify kidnapping me. Because that’s what you do with humans, isn’t it? You use us up and throw us away.”
She knew she was pushing too far; the giant’s breath blew through the door. She could feel his chest heaving in frustration through the wood and iron. The stone walls of her prison radiated his dissatisfaction.
“That’s not what this is!”
“Then why did you take me?!”
He’d had enough. The giant’s voice boomed and rattled the hinges on the door. “To have you for myself!”
As much as she’d thought she was ready for his outburst, she hadn’t been. The sound of it made Ada stumble backward into the bed and fall to the floor. It felt like a sudden earthquake.
“Why?” she breathed, pulling herself back up onto her feet and approaching the door again.
His voice was even, but stern. “Because I require a companion, and I haven’t had a companion in decades. I never had the will. A week ago, your name showed up out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. I found you, and when I saw you, you were mine. That was the end for me. There, now you’ve got the whole truth. Is that clear or does that make everything muddier?”
Ada stepped backward from the door and sat down on the bed.
The silence that followed was full of awkward uncertainty for them both.
“Ada?” he asked. “Are you OK? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you before. I lost my temper.”
She shook her head in shock. “You sought me out by name? You stalked me because you saw my name? Where?”
He protested. “First of all? Not stalking. Just…I needed to know who you were. And as for how your name appeared, I can’t tell you.”
“Call it what you want, but in my world, this is stalking and kidnapping and I could have you arrested. By the FBI! Do you get that kidnapping is a federal offense?”
Samuel’s half laugh, half harrumph was the haughtiest noise from him yet. “Nephilim cloak ourselves when we go into human society. No law enforcement could apprehend me, let alone hold me.”
She stood up and jumped. “Ha!”
Samuel roared, kicking his large foot against the door, and the walls shook.
Ada hooted. “Gotcha!”
Her captor’s voice rose so loud it shook her windows. “You have more trickery in you than the wicked old hag I devoured for dessert in 1442!”
Ada hopped off the bed, satisfied. “Excellent. Crone level unlocked! I take it as a compliment!”
Samuel pounded his fist on the door and the whole room shook once again like it had been hit with an earthquake. A bedpost cracked. “Do you know what you’ve done?! Have at it then! Starve for all I care!”
Ada held her stomach while she listened to him stomp away. She felt both frightened and elated, but also hungry. “I don’t need to now! My plan worked!”
She went over to the bedpost and examined the crack, then ran her fingers over the face of the warrior prince carved into the wood.
“Well,” she said. “Now we know what we’re dealing with, don’t we, Charlie?”
Ada gleefully ate every last bit from the silver tray at her bedside and it was the most delicious meal of her entire life. She felt as though she had not tasted food for weeks.
Chapter Sixteen
Samuel
His wings unfurled, Samuel angrily flew up the twisting staircase and into the gallery, determining never to set foot in his suite again. Feathers flew as he carelessly and aimlessly transported himself from room to room, slamming doors and knocking over stat
uary, yanking down tapestries, and destroying ancient relics with his fists as he rushed past.
If Dev was worried about the cathedral crumbling with the approach of some dusty old prophecy, then let him be the first to wreck this place with his bare hands by his own free will. Or as much of it as he possessed. Fuck this whole place, this prison, this hiding place that sequestered his family between heaven and hell, teasing them with human delights but always reminding him of what he couldn’t have.
Anything real or lasting was out of his reach.
He came to the center courtyard and crashed through the overgrown vines, tearing everything as he blew past, then shot up into the sky.
Destroying relics and artifacts in his home was not going to get this feeling out of his system. What was she doing to him?
This had to be a mistake.
She was impossible. She demanded all the answers for everything in her own time. He thought the books would answer her questions, but she wanted more, more, more. She wanted the answers right away. She wanted to play with his mind, force him to open up, speak the words he’d never spoken to a human before.
She was trying to make him more human than he was.
What did she want from him? Why was she such a pain in his angelic ass?
Samuel raged through the trees at twilight, not bothering to cloak himself. What did he care, it was all going to be over soon anyway. He’d so wrongly mismatched himself with this woman, but he’d have to send her back and she would tell the whole world that the Giant of Bell Mountain was half-human, half-angel, and it would be a massive uprooting. People would swarm the mountain, asking for miracles of healing, of fame and money. The lives of Nephilim all around the world would change forever because he’d brought a human female into his life for some selfish reason. He’d thought it was a connection to someone with special abilities, but he had been wrong.
She was wrong for him and he was wrong for her. He was left with the decision: risk sending her back or keeping her there until she died.
Both of those choices were impossible.
Samuel soared through the trees and aimed for the sky, bypassing flocks of grackles and crows. He felt the eyes of the night creatures waking up. The owls watched him, and bats fluttered out of their caves. Higher and higher he climbed until he was free of the treetops, higher still until he had lost sight of the valley and his home on the mountaintop was only a speck.
He knew he would reach the barrier at some point. He didn’t care. On and on he rose, his wings stretching to their limits, every feather catching and lifting him on the currents of wind, lifting him until he was above the clouds. It was truly careless behavior, he knew. He should have cloaked himself, but he didn’t care.
He hadn’t chosen this life. He hadn’t chosen to be born to a Watcher. The archangels had murdered his father and then doomed his kind to this bizarre half-life of rules and strictures and prophecies.
Fuck them. Fuck them all.
Farther on up in the atmosphere, the sky began to change from flat blue to darker royal blue to midnight blue. He looked up, and he could make out the stars. Upward he shot.
He had a fleeting thought that maybe it was all a myth. Maybe the rule wasn’t real. Maybe Malek and Gabriel and Michael and all the others had told them that The Authorities had barricaded the children of the Watchers on the earth to keep them in line. Maybe the barricade wasn’t real.
Shit, he thought, letting out a maniacal laugh. Maybe The Authorities weren’t even real, and the Four Cherubim weren’t real, and maybe all the radio frequencies came from some Joe Schmoe dusty old angel general in some back room of heaven playing chords to make them all think they were connected to a universe that didn’t even exist anymore. It made him think of the humans’ story about the Wizard of Oz. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” The line was always in the back of his mind. Maybe none of this was real.
Maybe what his Watcher had been trying to tell him was that not only was time a construct, but maybe everything around him was. Maybe he wasn’t real, and that’s why he was resigned, contented, with the idea of dying the way he was.
No sooner had he entertained the idea that the world of angels and demons and halflings was nothing but the biggest hoax ever perpetrated in the history of everything, than he crashed headlong into the invisible barrier to heaven. Samuel’s body bounced so hard, so fast, that all became a blur. When the blur stopped, he was underwater.
Like he’d been flung out of a giant celestial trebuchet, he had been rocketed backward to the earth and landed with such force that his back hit the river bottom with a concussion that cracked the earth.
Samuel looked around to gain his bearings and realized it was not the Indigo River where he’d landed. He tasted salt. He looked around him and saw saltwater sea life. A sea cucumber. Above him, floating, a majestic pod of sleeping blue whales. Calcified pieces of a shipwreck lodged in the seafloor
He had about an hour to get to the surface before he would pass out from lack of oxygen and be eaten alive by a shark or an orca, or harpooned by a fishing boat, he thought. His next thought was how lovely it would be to show Ada all the underwater beauty.
It was an automatic feeling, devoid of all sense. Had he not a minute ago been on a rampage because of her ill behavior? Did she not provoke a temper tantrum that made him unrecognizable to himself? Yet there was his lovesick brain reverting to something resembling human adolescence with thoughts of her.
The break from her had afforded him some clarity.
Well, he was going to have to go home and let her know what for. He would make sure she understood that she had to leave and never come back, that she must agree to sign a binding contract never to tell what she saw up on the mountain, and she was never to ask him any more questions. He would help her craft a narrative about her encounter with the Giant of Bell Mountain, one that would be believable and digestible to the public.
And they would forget about the entire masturbation incident. And he would forget about the cuddling, and listening to her bathe in the fountain, and massaging her arms, and kissing her temple while she slept. And gazing into her beautiful soul. All that would have to be forgotten.
He would promise to leave her better than he found her, as his kind always did with humans. He would show her how to unlock her potential and her life could change for the better. He would leave her with enough scientific evidence to prove she had borne witness to the Giant of Bell Mountain. She would be granted television interviews, book deals, movie rights, if she so desired those things.
All of that should satisfy her curiosity and that of the public. And he and his brothers would have to stay put in the abbey until the fascination blew over.
Samuel folded his wings, closed his eyes, and called on the vibrations to teleport him back home. If he’d had a tail, as the demons had, it would be tucked between his legs.
Feeling sheepish but relieved to be home with a plan to get himself out of this mess, Samuel made his way down into the courtyard, where he landed with a thud.
“Teleporting, eh? That’s a hefty bit of vibrating for a Tuesday.”
The comment came from his towheaded brother in human clothes. Reus was wearing giant-sized jeans and a tee-shirt with a picture of Sasquatch on it.
“Yes, well when the barrier bounces you back to earth, you land where you land without rhyme or reason. I ended up at the bottom of the ocean so I didn’t have much choice,” Samuel answered while squeezing the rest of the seawater from his wings onto an obliging potted fern.
Reus, usually the most congenial of the brothers, shook his head as if to say he didn’t want to hear any more. Then he cocked his head and changed the subject. “Would you know anything about missing fabric and thread from my suite? I went to work on our costumes for The Bacchanal but some of the things I had picked out were missing.”
Shaking out the last salty drops from his wings, Samuel replied, “You can get more though, right?”
&nbs
p; “That’s not the point, man. Dev said you’d been acting weird, and something is going on. I could feel it when I tuned in this morning. Something is off. There is discord. Discord always harshes my vibe and I need to find out what’s going on.”
Samuel held up his hands. “OK, I might have borrowed some cloth and thread without asking and I’m sorry. I guess I wanted to try to make my own costume this year. Just for once.”
“But why? You don’t even like to sew, you like to build. It takes me a whole day to combine elements to make fabric. Now I won’t be able to get started until tomorrow and I’ll have to magic everything to get done in time.”
“You’ll be replenished at the concert—we do this four times a year with the changing of the seasons.”
“Listen, I don’t like to be like this but, man, don’t patronize me. I know all this. Also don’t act like nothing is going on. You’re hiding something from me.”
Just then, Yael and Atlas entered the courtyard.
“I heard it too,” Yael said. “Something is off-key around here when I’m practicing, and I think I know what’s going on.”
Shit, thought Samuel. “Listen,” he said, but then a fierce-looking Zave marched in, followed by Urek, which shut them all up.
“I can’t wait to hear because whatever is happening to the fabric is also happening to the food. I just came from the pantry and items are missing. Fruit, eggs, cheese. Someone here is feeding a human.”
Urek snorted. “Yeah, and someone’s been using the kitchen. Whoever it was cleaned up after himself a little too well, like a goddamn serial killer at a crime scene. I could smell the bleach as soon as I went in to take inventory for the Great Feast. And if there’s a psychopath among us, I think we all know who it is. Don’t even try to stick up for him.”
Samuel looked to the faces of his five brothers. “Him?”
Atlas crossed his mighty arms across his chest. “Dev. He’s the only one not here. And he’s the one who is always the most excited about the Summer Bacchanal. So, he’s up to something out of the ordinary.”