Nephilim Rising: The Complete Series, page 97
part #0 of Nephilim Rising Series
The dog bolted like a greyhound coming out of a trap, its legs gathering terrific speed as it went to exactly where the ball was lying, gobbled the ball up in its mouth and then bounded back toward Frank again. "Bring it in!" Frank commanded. The dog sat in front of Frank, even though all it wanted to do was run around wild with its prize in its mouth. Frank put his hand in front of the dog's snout. "Dead!"
Fang dropped the ball into Frank's hand, and Frank roughly ruffled the dog's head. "Good boy, Fang! Good boy!"
Fang was ecstatic that he had managed to please his master, and was bouncing around all over the place. "Go on!" Frank told him. "Go play!"
Frank watched him go bounding off toward the woods, and he shook his head at the dog's boundless energy. Sometimes he wished he had the same energy as Fang. He was in his mid-forties now. His body ached all the time from the abuse he had given it over the years. Despite being a Nephilim with healing abilities, enough of the aches and pains remained to make Frank feel old and used up some days. He often wondered what he was going to be like in another ten years. Would he still be fit to do his job; to hunt? Even if he weren't, he would still do it. Being a Watcher was all he knew. It's what he would do until the day he died. And if he got too old and decrepit to take on the monsters, he would take them on in other ways, researching cases, performing rituals. Leia could do all the running around then. Maybe the other girl, Alice, too. Eva was training her up after all. As unsure of Alice as he was, Frank couldn't deny it would be nice to have an extra pair of hands around to help work the cases. The girl seemed capable enough, but there was a dark side to her that Frank couldn't see past. He wasn't saying she was malevolent in any way—at least he didn't think she was—but there was something in her that unnerved him, as though she carried a little bit of Hell with her still.
Each man is his own Heaven and his own Hell.
Milton's words couldn't have been more true, although thankfully in Frank's case, he carried more Heaven than Hell with him these days. When Leia had first mentioned that she had met her mother, Rachel, in Hell, Frank expected the news to send him into a tailspin. He had spent the last decade or more riddled with guilt over Rachel's demise. He feared hearing about her would since again dredge up all his old guilt and bad feelings. Surprisingly, though, that's not what happened. It could have been the fact that he had found out Rachel was now in Heaven that made things easier for him. Most of his guilt came from the fact that he knew she had been condemned (condemned by herself, for him) to eternal torment. Now she was finally at peace. Knowing she was at peace gave him peace also.
Then there was Peter; the King of Hell.
Jesus.
It still filled him with disbelief that Peter had ended up where he did. Frank loved his brother, always had. He never meant to hurt him when he took up with Rachel behind his back.
And yet you did.
It was done now; in the past. Peter was somewhere better now, even if it was a prison cell in Heaven.
And here I am. Still here after all of it.
He was done feeling guilty about that, though. Thanks to Eva, and to Leia, he found himself able to move on; to look forward instead of back. Between the two of them, they gave him hope for the future again, and a reason to keep going. He couldn't imagine a life without them in it now.
"Hey you." It was Leia, having just walked out the back door with two beers in her hand.
"You know its not even noon yet, right?"
"What the hell," she said, handing him one of the beers. "If you can't drink when the sun is shining, when can you?"
Frank almost laughed. "You want to be careful, girl. You're beginning to sound too much like me."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"Depends on who you're talking to."
They both smiled at each other, Frank glad to see her. Despite her seemingly sunny disposition, she still seemed troubled. Which was nothing new for Leia. She always seemed troubled, but then again, she always had a good reason to. Too often, that reason was her brother. Frank hated to see her hurt. Leia had a good heart. She didn't deserve the shit on her plate after arriving back from a place that was all shit and worse.
"I just dropped Alice off," Leia said, lifting a chair from near the back door and carrying it over onto the bone dry lawn, which was more dirt than grass.
"Oh yeah?" Frank said, grabbing a chair himself and sitting next to her. "Where to?"
Leia sighed. "Here; the woods."
Frank frowned. "What for?"
"So she could go off hunting some creature that has suddenly turned up in there."
"Yeah, Eva told me about it. And you let the girl go off on her own?"
"Didn't really have a choice, Frank. The new Alice is very...independent."
Frank looked across the back lawn to Fang, who was busy trying to dig a hole in the dirt with his front paws. Probably caught the scent of a rabbit or squirrel. "You think she'll be okay? You want to head in there after her?"
Leia thought for a moment, then shook her head. "I do, but I won't. She wants to do it on her own. I can understand that."
Frank nodded. "I know you can."
Leia glanced at him, a half smile on her face. "I can't help it if my enthusiasm gets the better of me sometimes."
"Enthusiasm? Try stubbornness."
"Well, it must run in the family then, mustn't it, Frank?"
Frank laughed. "You're right there."
"I know I am."
They both laughed this time, before lapsing into contemplative silence for a few moments. Eventually, Frank said, "So I have to ask. What about Josh?"
Leia drank from her beer and stared straight ahead. "What about him?"
"A lot of people died because of him."
"I know that."
"So something's going to have to be done. If he were anyone else, he'd have been taken care of by now."
"Taken care of? Killed, you mean?"
Frank looked away. "Something has to be done, Leia. Before he causes any more deaths, and god knows what else."
Sighing deeply, Leia leaned forward in her chair. She put her beer on the ground and covered her face with both hands for a moment, then rubbed her face wearily. Frank put his own beer down and went and crouched beside her, rubbed her back gently with his hand. "What would you do, Frank? If it was your brother?"
Frank stared at the hard ground, thinking about Peter and what he would do if Peter were running around causing murder and mayhem. There was no doubt it would be a terrible situation to be in, but Frank liked to think he could do what had to be done if it came to it.
Would I really kill my own brother?
Hey, you already did, in a way. It was partly your fault he ended up dead. Partly your fault he felt compelled to go after Rachel in Hell.
Still, it wasn't the same as having to kill him in cold blood.
"Your silence says it all, Frank," Leia said.
"I'm sorry, Leia. No one can make that call unless they are forced too."
"I am being forced to."
"You don't have to do it yourself."
"Of course I do."
Frank was about to argue with her on that, but he stopped himself. If she felt like she was the one who had to put Josh down, then so be it. There wasn't anything he could say that would change her mind. His only worry was the damage such a drastic action would do to her. Leia had come back from a lot, but would she be able to come back from killing her own brother? Frank wasn't sure she would. Certainly, she would never be the same after.
"It's your call," he said. "I'm not going to try and talk you out of it if you feel you have to be the one to do it. But I'm asking you, Leia, seriously consider the consequences of what you're thinking about doing. You may never come back from it."
He left her then. Picked up his beer and went inside the cabin. He stopped in the living room and sat down in one of the armchairs, then sighed deeply and gripped his beer so tight he feared it was going to shatter in his hand.
51
Ever since that day with Eva when she saw the bodies of those girls in the cave, Alice couldn't shift the image from her mind. It sickened her to see so much dreadful carnage, to see all those innocent girls horribly mutilated, their lives taken by something that had no right to be in this world. That's why the killings galled her so much. In Hell, such scenes of carnage were common place. It was Hell, after all. But this was a different world, a world created by the forces of light; a world meant to be a paradise (compared to places like Hell) for those who lived in it; a world of goodness and divine human spirit. But that paradise had become spoiled by invaders. It was one thing for humans to do dark and hellish things here. As despicable and wrong as those things may be, it was still their world and the humans, therefore, had a right of sorts to do what they wanted. The humans had their own justice system for taking care of the bad apples. When it came to supernatural goings on, Alice had come to see that only a handful of supernaturals existed (compared to the millions of humans) that could actually do anything about the dark forces and monstrous invaders that ravaged and took advantage of this world. Frank, Leia, Eva and all the rest like them. Only they could bring justice to the supernatural otherworld that existed here. And now, she supposed, she could count herself amongst those ranks. So she thought anyway. Time would tell whether she remained a part of that justice system, but she was beginning to realize that she didn't have much choice. Samuel—an Archangel and the one who ensured the supernatural justice system stayed in place—had all but created Alice (this version of her anyway) so she could be a part of that justice system. It would seem it was a fate she could not run from.
For now, as she stalked her way through the woods, hardly making a sound in the quiet of the morning, Alice was happy to be one of those aforementioned dealers in justice. Even though said dealers were less like superheroes and more like Judge Dredd, seeing as they were judge, jury and executioner in every case. But that's the way it had to be with the monsters of the world. Alice had spent an eternity amongst them. She knew them better than anyone in this world, and she knew that the only way to stop them was to be swift and ruthless. It was the only thing they deserved anyway.
She let her nose take her back to where the cave was. The scent of death was strong as it drifted through the trees on the almost still morning air, stronger in fact than the last time she had smelled it. And mingled with that smell of death was something else: the rancid scent of the creature who had caused the death smell in the first place; and underneath it all was the sickening, cloying stench of Hell. The creature had spread the foul aroma all over the woods. As soon as her nostrils caught it, she had to stop dead, for she was immediately transported back to Hell for a moment, trapped in the labyrinthine streets of Burzum, surrounded by filth and decay and monstrous souls of every type and description. Alice put her hand out and leaned against a tree to steady herself. Her head started to spin, and she leaned over and vomited onto the woodland floor, retching until her stomach was empty. After she had finished, she looked around as she wiped the back of her hand across her wet mouth. She feared the creature might have heard her, that perhaps it was watching her from afar, waiting for the right moment to jump her.
After taking a deep breath to settle herself, Alice continued through the woods, following the scent until she got to the cave. She stayed far back from the opening at first, crouched beside a tall pine tree as she surveyed her surroundings, searching for any sign of the foul creature. After ten minutes of watching and waiting, nothing stirred except a squirrel that ran across the forest floor beside her, causing her to turn her head sharply, pulling out one of the eight knives she had stashed on her person in various places. The squirrel stopped to stare at her a second, then bolted up the nearest tree, sensing the danger.
Alice looked toward the cave again. With the knife—a nine-inch trench knife with a serrated guard that covered her knuckles—still in her hand, she began to move slowly toward the cave, carefully picking her way through the undergrowth and broken branches, her awareness at maximum level. Not a sound in the vicinity escaped her ears. No falling leaf or flying bird escaped her vision. And no scent passed by her nose unprocessed. She kept low as she approached the cave, half expecting the creature to jump out of it at any second. But if the creature were in there, the stench of the thing would have gave it away.
Alice remained careful anyway, as she crept toward the mouth of the cave. No sunlight seemed to penetrate it. Only the black dark existed inside. And the bodies. The smell—accompanied by the constant buzzing of flies—was atrocious. Alice had smelled much worse before, though. Much worse.
She made her way into the cave, holding the knife in her right hand, her left slightly out in front of her the way Eva had shown her. A way that seemed to come naturally to Alice anyway.
Thank you, Samuel, for making me a predator.
And that is how she felt; like a predator. Even more so now that she knew Samuel had designed her that way. The dream or whatever it was, had cleared up at least some of her existential angst. She knew what she was now. The trouble was, she still had a yearning to be more, but that was probably the human in her. Humans were never happy with themselves or their lot. They always wanted more.
That was something to dwell on another time, though. Right now, as she stepped further and further into the cave, she was just a predator: a bringer of retribution and justice.
A killing machine.
Nothing else mattered except destroying the murderously dark invader from Hell that she now stalked.
Despite the cave being completely dark inside, Alice found she could still see, which she mustn't have realized last time because Eva used her grace to light up the cave. But now in the total darkness, Alice could still make out the walls of the cave surrounding her.
And the mass of decaying bodies lying before her.
Parts of bodies would be a more accurate way to describe things. The creature had torn the girl's apart as it ate their flesh and sucked the marrow from their bones. It had also defecated in various places, the stench of which was indescribable in the confines of the cave, but which hardly caused Alice to even wrinkle her nose in disgust.
Then a sound made her startle slightly. It was off to her left, on the floor. She looked down, and the sound came again. Like someone was trying unsuccessfully to breathe.
A girl was still alive on the floor, Alice soon realized. She stared blankly down at her for a moment, trying to figure out how the sad soul could even still be alive. Her body was half torn to pieces, her stomach open with intestines mostly eaten. Her arms and legs were positioned at odd angles, the bones broken. There was no flesh left on her face either, most of it having been clawed off; the rest hanging there in strips.
But the girl's eyes were still open, and they communicated fully the terrible pain she must have been in.
Alice put her knife away and knelt down beside the girl. The girl gasped horribly again, as she drew air into ragged lungs. She probably thought, if she could even still do so, that the creature had come back to finish her. She was probably begging in her own way for that to happen.
"You have suffered enough," Alice whispered. She grabbed the girl's head with both hands, before swiftly cranking it around. There was a loud crack, the sound of which seemed to bounce off the walls of the cave. Then the girl went limp. Alice carefully laid the dead girl back down on the floor. Then she took her out knife again, went to the very back of the cave and sat down next to a rotting torso. Focusing her gaze firmly forward, she began to wait.
52
It had always been Deacon's intention to tell Josh about the Black Crystal. Even if Diablo had worked out better than it did, the Black Crystal still would have been brought into play. It was just that Deacon thought Josh would need more time for the darkness to increase in him, for the Adversary to sink His hooks further into him. But it seemed to be the case that Josh's connection with the darkness had exponentially increased almost overnight. Deacon could only put this sudden acceleration in progress down to the fact that Josh was so pissed off that Diablo had failed, and that he was suffering from the emotional torture his sister was still putting him through. If Deacon had realized before that things would turn out like this, he would have deliberately planned for Diablo to be an epic failure from the start. And as for Leia, she could always be relied upon to squeeze Josh emotionally, further breaking him down, making him more malleable for the darkness to pull apart. Now, thanks to all of that pressure, Josh had within him enough dark power to use the Black Crystal, and to turn the whole city into a place so dark, it would resemble the Depths in Hell. Once Josh amplified his power through the Black Crystal, his total consummation by the darkness would be assured, and his descent into Hell would quickly follow. Nothing could stop them after that.
But first, they had to get their hands on the Black Crystal, which wasn't going to be easy. The crystal, as far as Deacon knew, was deep underground inside a locked vault; a vault which was itself inside the former Watcher High Council headquarters, the place that used to be known as the Warren by those who attended the place. Although the Watcher Council was no longer active, the many magical artifacts that the Council gathered up over the years remained in the vaults. Since the Council collapsed, a few Watchers took it upon themselves to keep protecting the Warren and the contents of its vaults. Deacon had it on good authority that one of those Watchers was Frank Swanson. If Deacon and Josh wanted the Black Crystal, they would need Frank Swanson to get it for them. Frank would never do so willingly of course, which meant Deacon would have to force Frank to get it.
He sat up in the bed he was sharing with Josh, who lay beside him sleeping. Deacon traced his fingers along the claw marks on Josh's back, some of which were deep enough to draw blood. Josh liked his sex rough, which suited Deacon just fine, who was always happy to inflict pain whenever he could.
