Nephilim Rising: The Complete Series, page 96
part #0 of Nephilim Rising Series
"Hi, Alice," Leia said with a smile.
"Hi, Leia," Alice said back, hardly able to look at the girl she considered to be her sister. The dream, or whatever it was she had just come out off—her meeting with Samuel—was still fresh in her mind. All she could think about was how much Leia would hate her if she knew what she was planning on doing. Not that Alice had made any firm decision in her mind about killing Josh, but she also knew that she was only putting it off. Samuel had made it clear what had to be done; had made clear the consequences if it wasn't done. Did she really want to be the one who allowed a war to start; who allowed the very destruction of the world? At the same time, did she want to be hated by the only people she could call family, because she killed one of their own?
"I was thinking, Alice," Leia said. "That we could maybe take a drive somewhere. I could show you some of the sights, or we could just drive, whatever you want to do."
Alice hovered awkwardly by the fridge. "May I have some orange juice?" she asked Eva.
"Of course, Alice," Eva said. "You don't have to ask. This is your home now."
Eva was looking at her like she thought something was up. Alice kept her head down as she opened the fridge, her long fringe hiding most of her face.
"So what do you think?" Leia said, as Alice poured herself a glass of the orange juice.
"About what?" Alice said.
"About going for a drive," Leia said, exchanging a glance with Eva, making Alice even more uncomfortable than she already was.
Alice drank her orange juice in one go, then put the glass on the worktop. "Let's go then."
"Oh, okay." Leia took a last drink from her coffee mug and stood up. "I'll see you, Eva."
"Bye, Leia," Eva said, before turning around to look at Alice. "Are you okay, Alice?"
Alice nodded, anxious now to get out of the house, but also anxious about sitting with Leia in the car. "Yes," she said.
Eva didn't seem convinced, though she nodded. "Have fun with Leia."
Alice did her best to smile, then left the kitchen, walking outside to the car with Leia. When they got inside, Leia started the engine and the radio came on, sounding out some old rock song. "Any musical preferences yet?" Leia asked.
Although she hadn't exactly had a chance to explore the culture of this new world yet—as strange as it all seemed—she had managed to spend a few hours with the digital radio Eva had left in her room for her. Unsurprisingly, she was drawn to the darker forms of music, like industrial, some metal and also dark electronic music. "Not sure," she said. "Maybe Tool. I liked them."
"Tool? Okay, at least we know you have good taste." Leia smiled at her. Alice smiled awkwardly back before looking out the window. "Anyway, it just so happens I have Tool in here somewhere." She took a handful of CDs out of the glove box and started sorting through them. "I know, right? Who still uses CDs? Me; because I'm just a nineteen year old dinosaur. Ah, here we go..." She stuck the CD in the player and the first heavy guitar chords came through the speakers, followed by the drums. The vocals kicked in just as Leia pulled out into the early morning traffic.
Alice wound her window down and took out a pair of dark sunglasses she had bought when Eva took her shopping. She felt better after slipping them on, not as exposed. The music sounded good. She didn't think she would ever tire of such magic. Even through her dark mood, the music was still great. Outside, the sun was once again shining high in the sky. Alice was still in awe of the fact that the sun rose as it did every single day. Even though she now knew the science behind it all, it still filled her with wonder that something so large, so beautiful and so powerful, could just hang in space like that, so far away and yet seeming so close from an earthbound vantage point. This world was filled with such beautiful mysteries, that it seemed to her a shame that such daily wonders should be overshadowed constantly by the way things were; by the way people here were. This world was much too beautiful—much too holy—for human beings to live in; for any being to live in. This world was stolen from nature, which is all that should really be in existence here: just nature, with no deluded conscious beings to fuck it all up with the shit they sprayed over everything in their wake.
"You're quiet."
Alice turned her head to Leia. "What?"
"I said you're quiet. Everything okay?"
She so wanted to tell Leia everything: about the dream; about Samuel; about what Samuel had told her do; about what would happen if she didn't do it. "I'm okay. Just...still getting used to everything."
Leia nodded, slipping on her own sunglasses, her long dark hair billowing in the breeze blowing through the car. "So am I in a way. It's been hard since coming back here."
"I'm sure it has. I guess with everything else happening as well..."
"With Josh, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, well, his dastardly plan didn't work out as well as he thought it would, did it?" She gestured out the window. "Take a look around. You see a city crumbling to its knees?"
Alice shook her head. "No."
"Exactly. That means things are under control."
"People still died, though."
Leia looked at Alice, and then looked away again. "Yeah, they did."
"Is your brother going to get away with murder?"
Leia's driving suddenly became more erratic as they drove through downtown, swerving around other cars, cursing at people on bikes. Finally she slammed on the brakes and banged the steering wheel when she had to stop suddenly for a car that pulled out in front of her. "Fucking idiot!" she shouted.
Alice shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have..."
Leia sighed after taking a deep breath. "No, Alice, it's fine. And you're right. My brother shouldn't get away with murder."
"I didn't mean—"
"Seriously, Alice. It's fine. You said nothing wrong."
Alice turned her head and stared out the window as Leia continued driving, a bit more calmly this time.
I hurt her.
She couldn't help feeling bad about it. Josh was not Leia's fault. Alice had to remember that. She also had to remember that Josh and Leia were twins. Leia would always love her brother, no matter what he did.
Which is why she can't be trusted when it comes to him.
It was overwhelming, being suddenly thrust into these situations. It was hard enough dealing with the fact that she was a different person now in almost every respect, but to also find herself being pulled into situations that were not of her making—situations she barely understood half the time— that was proving to be too much. At the moment, she just felt like running away, perhaps going to live in the woods somewhere, away from people, away from everyone, just her and the blessed silence, and the stillness of nature. Did that make her a "freak" as they say here? If it did, she didn't care. Looking back, she'd always been a freak, in the sense that she didn't really belong. In Hell, she had been an innocent amongst all the sinners. An innocent child born into the worst place in the universe. No child should ever have been born into a place like Hell. Yet she was, and that made her a freak. It made her a freak in this new world too. She guessed it would probably always be so.
"So where shall we go?" Leia asked, appearing to be doing her best to remain upbeat.
"I'd like to go to the cabin, please," Alice said.
"The cabin? Why? There's plenty of other places we can go."
"There's something I need to do there."
Leia frowned. "What would you need to do?"
"Hunt."
"Hunt what?"
"The creature in the woods. The one that killed those girls."
"And what, you're going to do it on your own?"
Alice nodded. "Yes."
Leia stopped the car for a red light and turned to look at Alice for a moment. "This is really weird, you know."
It was Alice's turn to frown. "What is?"
"You, being like this. It's...a little hard to get used to. I mean, only a while ago you were still the little girl I saved from Hell, the one who could hardly string a sentence together. Now, you're..."
"What?"
A freak?
"Grown up, I guess."
Leia started driving again, passing a crime scene that the police were still processing, more than likely caused in all the chaos the night before. Neither said a whole lot on the rest of the journey to the cabin. Both of them appeared to be too preoccupied with their own thoughts anyway. When they got to the cabin, Leia shut of the engine and they both sat in silence for a moment, before Leia said, "Listen Alice. I'm not even going to try and talk you out of going into those woods. Something tells me you won't listen, and besides, you're under no obligation to listen to me anyway. I may have gotten you here, but you're free to go or do whatever you want. I hope you know that."
Alice smiled and nodded. "I know that, Leia."
"In saying that, I hope you don't go anywhere. I see you as family now, Alice. You still mean as much to me now as you did in Hell; maybe even more so." She took Alice's hand and squeezed, a gesture that seemed to cut through Alice's dark interior, bringing with it a spark of light that made her feel connected to Leia. She loved that sense of connection now as much as she did when she had first felt it in Hell.
"You mean a lot to me too, Leia," Alice said, hoping she didn't sound too cold about it.
"Maybe when this whole Josh thing is sorted out, we can hang out more. What do you think?"
Alice had to force a smile. All she could think about was Leia's face, what it would look like when she found out Alice had killed her brother. The betrayal in her eyes. "Yes, that sounds good." She pulled her hand away from Leia's then, uttered a goodbye as she got out of the car, and practically ran off into the woods.
49
He'd been up all night, watching the news coverage of the Diablo Scourge as the press were calling it. Yes, the name had gotten around—the press needed something to lock onto, blaming terrorists for flooding the streets with the deadly Diablo—but unfortunately, the "Scourge" itself didn't go as planned. The drug effected those who swallowed it exactly as Josh and Deacon had initially planned, but they had both underestimated the response of the city authorities. Josh had fully expected the city to be overrun with psychotics, causing destruction and mayhem wherever they went. This was the case for a short while, but somehow, the local cops and the Feds had managed to get the situation under control pretty quickly. Too damn quickly. This was in part due to the hard line they took with the people who were on the drug. At some point, the authorities had decided that anyone who took Diablo was too dangerous and unpredictable to try and apprehend, so in most cases they were shot on the spot. By the time the dawn light began to creep over the city, dozens and dozens of people were dead, both the victims of the Diablo-possessed young people, and the Diablo-psychotics themselves. Rows and rows of black body bags lined the streets as the authorities stacked them all up like rubbish ready to be collected and disposed off. Neither the people in the city, nor the media, dared criticize the hard-line actions of the authorities. The Diablo freaks were simply too dangerous to approach. A number of cops had tried to apprehend the drug-fueled psychotics at first, but they had paid for their actions with their lives, as the psychotics they were trying to apprehend turned on them, in many cases jumping on the cops like rabid dogs, tearing and clawing at them with their hands, and biting them with their teeth. In the end, the only way to stop them was to shoot them, and even then, the psychotics proved hard to put down. Diablo seemed to give them extra strength, and an ability to not feel any pain at all. The cops would pump the Diablo-possessed full of bullets, and the possessed would just keep coming. Eventually, the authorities switched to heavier artillery, using high caliber automatic weapons that practically cut those they shot to shreds. Incredible scenes of violence and bloodshed played out all over the city for several hours, most of it broadcast live on the news and social media channels. It was a disturbing stage show that people safely away from the carnage seemed to lap up.
Josh sat in the penthouse alone until dawn, watching everything play out on the big screen TV. Deacon was nowhere to be found, having left after he and Josh had had sex, saying he had business to attend to. As usual, he neglected to mention what that business was, muttering something about "demon business"; and as usual, Josh didn't push him on it. As much as he liked Deacon's company, Josh also needed time alone. It seemed like the stronger his dark desires became, the more time he needed alone. The darkness in him demanded it. At times, it felt like there was a living entity inside him, constantly whispering in his ear, telling him what he needed to do. And the strange thing was, Deacon seemed to know that Josh carried a dark passenger with him, and that Josh needed to be alone so he could spend time with that dark passenger.
Up on the roof of the penthouse, Josh stood and looked out onto the city before him. He had been up there since dawn, becoming gradually more despondent at the fact that the city was not on its knees as he had expected it to be. His dark passenger stirred within him, also dissatisfied at the way things had turned out. As he stood topless on the roof, the early morning sun bathing him in yellow light—making him look almost angelic as the suns rays highlighted the curves of his sculpted body and lightened his normally dark brown eyes to a whiskey color—he brought his hands together and formed a sphere of energy about the size of a soccer ball, the energy dark red—almost black—in the center, fading out to a lighter shade of red around the edges. He turned the sphere of energy in his hands like he was sculpting it. It calmed him to do so.
His grace used to be a yellowish color. It was never truly white, the way Leia's was. The last year or so, that yellowish energy had gotten darker and darker, as hues of red and black overcame the lighter tones. The darkening of his grace coincided with the darkening of his mind, when he first began to acknowledge the dark passenger that resided in him. Staring at the energy in his hands now, it gave him some satisfaction to see that the energy had further darkened in color since the last time he checked. Eventually it would turn completely black, like Deacon's Hellion magic.
"You look like a demi-god standing there," a voice said from behind him.
"I wish you'd stop appearing behind me like that all the time, Deacon," Josh said without looking around at the demon.
Deacon walked over and stood beside him. "I like surprising people."
Josh turned his head slowly to look at his demon lover. "Some of these days, I might surprise you."
They stared at each other for a moment, Deacon's eyes searching Josh's. "And what does that mean?"
Shaking his head, Josh said, "Forget it."
Deacon continued staring for another moment, then he shook his head at Josh's strange behavior. "Anyway, speaking of surprises...I have one for you."
"Oh yeah?"
"Why you being so caustic?"
Josh stared, saying nothing, then shook his head and looked back over the city again.
Deacon put a hand on Josh's bare shoulder. Josh tensed at his touch, but didn't pull away. "Hey, I know you're pissed off that Diablo didn't go as planned, but you're acting like it was a total loss when it wasn't. We've weakened the city, Josh. We drew blood; spread fear."
Josh laughed and shook his head. "We were playing games, nothing more. It doesn't mater now anyway. This debacle has only made me realize what needs to be done." His gaze drew slowly across the rooftops of the city. "All of it needs wiped out. This entire planet needs to be wiped out. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I am going to do it. I won't stop until every last soul on this planet has been squashed out of existence."
His dark passenger stirred restlessly inside him as he said the words, as though it would like nothing better than to extend its dark reach out into the souls of every living thing in the world, infecting it, poisoning it. Destroying it.
Darkness wanted only to prevail. He was going to help it do that, not stopping until it did.
"I like your thinking," Deacon said, like a serpent hissing beside Josh. "And it just so happens that I know of the perfect tool for which to help you do that."
Josh looked at him. "What are you talking about?"
"The Black Crystal."
"The Black Crystal? What is that?"
"A one of a kind device, forged by one of the greatest dark alchemists to ever grace Hell—King Mordred. You can thank your sister for bringing about his demise, by the way."
Josh snorted. "Figures. What's this thing do?"
"It amplifies the power that is inside the user; amplifies it to an awesome degree."
"How awesome?"
"Let's just say, with the right kind of power going through it, nothing in this city or the next would escape its influence."
Josh liked the sound of that, his dark passenger stirring again. "And what's the right kind of power?"
Deacon smiled and pressed his hand into Josh's chest. "Your power, Josh. What else?"
50
Fang sat in front of Frank on the sparse grass out the back of the cabin, the black Labrador's coat shining like a bottle in the already hot morning sun. The dog was sitting on its haunches, at attention, its light brown eyes focused on the tennis ball Frank was holding. Fang had been waiting impatiently for over two minutes on Frank throwing the ball, but Frank merely stood with it in his hand, staring at the dog, forcing Fang to remain patient. Then finally Frank threw the ball about twenty yards ahead, where it landed and rolled toward the woods. Fang's head was turned, watching where the ball was going, his body taut as he wanted nothing more than to race after the ball. "Wait," Frank growled.
Fang looked at Frank, then the ball, then back at Frank again, almost willing Frank with its eyes to give the command. Frank told Fang to wait again, and Fang shifted restlessly on the spot, looking like it was about to explode with eagerness to run after the ball. Frank was trying to teach the dog discipline. Fang needed to be able to take commands without running wild all the time. Finally, Frank looked at the dog and said, "Fetch it up!"
