Rise of the Nephilim Page 16

  “Good,” Jude said and rolled on his side, so he could watch the news broadcast. The text crawl was in French, but he didn’t need to be able to read or understand the language to know what the story was about. Father Gallo’s slender frame stood behind a podium giving a speech.

  “Turn up the volume!” He urged Eva.

  “Hey Eric, come quick! Gallo is on TV!”

  Gallo’s voice was being dubbed over by a French translator, but Eva offered to help decipher his address. “He’s discussing our escape and Lorenzo’s suicide.” She paused to listen more, then gasped. “He’s been given authority over the investigation for the entire European Union!”

  “Damn,” cursed Eric. “There’s no way he could do that so quickly without help. He must have allies within the European Council.”

  Jude shook his head. “I’m glad we are on our way back to the States.”

  “We’ll have to watch our backs,” Eric warned. “If the Nephilim have infiltrated the EU, I could argue our own government might be in a similar state. I hate to even think about it.”

  Jude couldn’t help but agree.

  * * *

  Mike desperately swigged his coffee, praying for it to continue giving him more energy than was being sapped away by his work schedule. He and his team had been working for almost forty-eight hours straight under the obsessive prodding of his superiors in an effort to find the fugitives. Interpol was being incredibly uncooperative and claiming the right to jurisdiction in the investigation in Europe.

  A couple of suits higher up the bureaucratic food chain had come down to supervise the operation. They had kicked Mike’s boss out of his own office, while making jabs at his prowess to complete the current task. His boss had been furious at the initial prospect of being cut out of the intelligence loop, and he made sure to take it out on his inferiors. Mike felt a chill when he looked at the two men now heading his department. He swore his computer monitor flickered whenever one of them walked by. Whatever was happening out there in the world, he was sure the shadow of its influence fell over the NSA, and it terrified Mike.

  He kept his mind occupied by obsessively following events as they unfolded. According to the priest leading the manhunt in Italy, the Vicar’s apparent suicide in lieu of questioning was indirect proof of Jude Sullivan’s guilt. This Antonio Gallo had been bootstrapped through the ranks of the investigation, which was surprising considering he seemed to be just a simple priest. It didn’t make sense that he was commanding so much power in the span of a few days. It was even stranger that the phone call the man had made to the strangers in their midst would agitate them the way it had.

  Mike’s group was now tasked with finding a private jet that had illegally taken off from some dusty airport on the coast of Italy. The hanger was owned by a Leonardo Forzi, a venture capitalist and philanthropist based primarily in Europe. High definition enhancement of the security footage provided by the airport confirmed that Jude and Sullivan were definitely with him.

  The take-off from the airport was the last any intelligence agency had seen of Forzi’s plane. The man had managed to disable all effective means of electronically tracking the vehicle, making it virtually invisible to everything but the naked eye. Wherever they were going, they had the ability to travel virtually undetected half a hemisphere in any direction.

  Something didn’t smell right about the whole situation, though. Mike’s intuition was sending chills down his spine. No one had apprehended any of the escaped gunmen yet or even knew their names. They were instead chasing down men with little to no evidence outside of the testimony of the priest. Whatever was happening, he knew that all he wanted was to get away from all of this.

  Chapter Thirty

  The G450 landed in Teterboro, New Jersey, an airport that serviced the needs of affluent New Yorkers by providing private charters and hangers to store personal aircraft away from the metropolitan bustle. Leo stored the jet in a nondescript hanger and led the group to an attached garage, which turned out to be a small motor pool for trips into and around the city. He rummaged inside a key box hanging on the wall, pulled out a fob, and walked past a sleek, silver Bentley and a vintage Rolls Royce limousine before coming to a halt in front of a black Cadillac Escalade with mirrored windows. He tapped the remote start button, and the big automobile roared to life.

  “Everyone in,” he commanded. “We need as much of a head start as we can muster, before someone figures out we are here.” He caught Jude staring lovingly at the Rolls Royce. “It’s a beauty, no? Maybe one day when we aren’t being pursued, I will take you for a drive. We can’t afford to turn any heads today, though.”

  “You have a deal,” Jude said, salivating over the idea of driving such a mobile work of art.

  “Sweetie,” Leo called to his wife. “Do you care to drive? We need to avoid recognition in the city at all costs, and you are the least likely to be identified at the moment, no offense.”

  “None taken,” she returned in a sing-song voice, as she grabbed the keys from him.

  The four of them climbed into the car. Jude and Eric stowed themselves away into the second passenger row of the SUV to shield themselves behind the treated windows, while Leo sat in the first row to help navigate. The drive to Manhattan was a relatively short one, only about eleven miles, but the amount of traffic generated by eight million denizens and an estimated forty-five million annual visitors stretched their travel time out to almost an hour.

  Once they finally made it into the city, they followed the traffic up 8th Avenue before merging onto Broadway. Eva maneuvered the vehicle along the Hudson River and turned onto one of the cross streets. Jude missed which one, but he was certain it was somewhere in the mid-one hundreds. He had never been this far north on the island before, so there were no familiar landmarks to help him place himself.

  Further down the block, Eva turned left into a wide alleyway between two residential buildings and stopped at a gate that blocked further transit. Leo handed her a small device with a screen that displayed a series of numbers across it. Jude recognized it as a security token, a keychain device that gave the user access to regularly changing passcodes. Eva entered the code on the token, and the gate swung aside to reveal a ramp leading down into an underground parking area. Once the Escalade was inside and safely stored, Leo ushered them out and toward a dull, gray metal door that was half-hidden in shadow.

  Leo approached the door and moved his mouth, emitting the same strange infrasonic whispering Emily done had once before. After he finished his esoteric song, the door clicked and swung open automatically. Beyond the threshold was a clean concrete hallway lit by soft white fluorescent bulbs. Midway down the corridor, another pathway intersected their own. Leo turned right and motioned for them to follow close. He pushed open another door further down the passage, revealing a flight of stairs that lead them further underground.

  They reached the bottom of the stairwell and found themselves in front of a large steel door that looked more like it belonged on the entrance to a bank vault than some forgotten, subterranean corner of the city. Once they stepped through to the other side, Jude understood why such precaution was taken.

  His mouth dropped, as they emerged into a large chamber overlooking a maze of bookshelves and antiques. Dim lighting provided an ambience not unlike a nineteenth century study, with accent lighting displaying the most important pieces in the underground collection. His eyes darted from a Rembrandt oil painting hanging on the wall to a set of shogun armor standing on display to antique Turkish rugs on the floor. The mahogany walled room was an homage to human art and achievement spanning continents and centuries. Two-story book shelves filled with dusty tomes in dozens of languages, the topics of which Jude could only imagine, lined the walls and created a maze of passages within the bunker.

  “Wow…” was all he could muster. Leo paused for a moment to let them take it all in. Eric wandered off a little to the right to inspect a large case filled with early pistolas and mu
skets. “How is all of this here?”

  “It’s been collected throughout the ages by the secret order of Nephilim hunters that call themselves the Aspides,” Leo explained briefly. “I’ll explain more once we get further in.”

  “Aspides… It’s Greek for shields, right? ” Jude asked. “What an appropriate name...” He grabbed Eric by the arm as they walked past and took him in tow. A few turns through the collected memorabilia of the ages brought them to the middle of the underground wonder. The tight corridor created by the multitude of display cases and shelves gave way to a central atrium at that point.

  Jude surmised from the heavy scrollwork carved into the sides and legs that the massive wooden table dominating the center of the space must have had some Germanic origin. Two men and a woman were sitting there, drinks in hand, as if they had been waiting on the party to arrive for some time.

  “Good afternoon, everyone,” greeted Leo. “Sorry we’re late. Traffic and all…”

  The triad stood up to greet the new arrivals, while Leo helped his wife into her seat. The eldest, a Japanese man appearing to be in his late sixties, shook Jude’s hand first and introduced himself as Prometheus. The younger man, a fiery red-head calling himself Hephaestus, followed suit. The woman, a lithe African-American, who exuded a stern military aura, gracefully grasped Jude’s hand and announced herself as Artemis.

  Formalities complete, the entire party sat down at the long table, and Leo began the meeting. “Now, Misters Sullivan and Strauss, I’m sure you have many questions, so please, ask away.”

  Jude cleared his throat and began, “Thank you for granting us refuge. Leo has told us you hunt Nephilim, but do not identify with Grigori philosophy. Pardon me for my ignorance, but I thought any Grigori that rejected their ideals was considered Nephilim.”

  Prometheus shook his head, “The brothers and sisters we left behind are so rigidly devoted to the original mission that any deviation is treated as heresy, but that does not make us anything like the Nephilim. We chose to leave and interact with humanity for reasons other than power and greed.”

  Artemis nodded and picked up the conversation, “All of us have had more contact with mankind than most of the others. We grew to love the civilizations we fostered and began to intervene directly in their lives. We couldn’t stand to see our children defiled and destroyed by the Nephilim. A few of us began to despise our brethren’s inaction and finally shunned the Great Mission. Now we could hunt the fallen ourselves.”

  “Why didn’t Inanna come to you first?” Jude asked as he felt his anger rising. “Surely she knew how to contact you.”

  Artemis sighed and propped her elbows on the table, “Even now, the Grigori try to hold on to their pacifism. Azazel is perpetually on the prowl for an opportunity to seize control. I wish we would have made an example of him and his ilk five thousand years ago, instead of allowing their disease to fester.”

  “There’s no time for regrets now,” Eric interjected. “Please tell me you have some way of killing these bastards that is a little more effective than waiting for them to bond with their hosts. I don’t want to kill innocent people knowing my true enemy can just waft away and return in some other form.”

  Prometheus and Artemis both looked at Hephaestus expectantly. Jude had thought Prometheus was in charge from the way he acted and talked, but he realized he may have been wrong. Hephaestus looked pensive, as if finding the right words to say. “We do not have the technology to do so,” he explained, “Our companions have had to make do by holding them back with politics and conventional weaponry.”

  Prometheus reached over and patted Jude’s arm, “Don’t think that Inanna died in vain. Her actions were rash and naïve, but it tells me that sentiment among the Grigori may be shifting our direction. She also forced Azazel to act before his entire support network was in place.”

  “Before it was in place?!” Jude looked at her incredulously. “He has impunity in all Europe for Christ’s sake!”

  Prometheus rubbed his palms together. “He has political support from a few of his kind in strategic positions in government. The rest of his power right now is due to panic and fear. He doesn’t have the means or the numbers to subjugate the human race like he plans, especially if they decide to fight back. That is why it’s imperative we convince the Grigori to help us before his emissaries find more people to control. Unfortunately, if it were as simple as asking, we would have done it already. Like I said before, we are outcasts, equivalent to Nephilim in their eyes. You, however, have been in close contact with one of their own. They may listen to you.”

  The prospect of becoming a diplomat for these ethereal creatures thrilled Jude. His whole life, he had searched for a moment like this, and now he was on the threshold of breaking through the veil. He vigorously nodded his assent. “Yes, I’ll do it. When do we begin?”

  “We can be prepared in an hour,” Prometheus said. He pushed his chair back, signaling the end of the meeting. “Thank you, Mister Sullivan, you are doing us and your kind a great service through this. And thank you, Apollo, for getting everyone here safely. Feel free to explore the vault, while we convene.”

  The three Aspides left together, quietly talking amongst themselves. Jude turned to Leo. “So these names are all code names, right? When they call you Apollo, they don’t really mean…”

  “That was a name I was known by, once upon a time,” Leo said with a sly grin, as he helped his wife out of her seat. “Just don’t believe most of the stories you’ve heard about me, or any of us, for that matter. The majority of them are pure fabrications.”

  “Well, now you have to talk about it!” Jude insisted, as they meandered through the shelves.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jude’s reverie at listening to Leo’s description of life in the ancient Mediterranean regions and the quibbling of the team entrusted with its care was broken by Prometheus’s call to reconvene the proceedings. Disappointed, Jude and the party returned to the central area to meet with the three members of the outcast group.

  “We are ready to begin,” Prometheus stated. “If you will follow us, we have a room specially prepared for the parlay.” He took the lead and motioned them to the other side of the stacks. Along the wall of this section of the large vault ran a row of metal and glass doors. Jude looked left and peered inside as they passed, but all he could glimpse through the windows were a smattering of office and laboratory equipment, the uses of which were lost to him. Prometheus stopped near one of the doors and moved aside to allow Hephaestus to open it.

  The laboratory displayed a duality of soft white plastic and gleaming chrome that was a testament to its sterility. The central feature of the room was a retrofitted dental chair surrounded by electronic equipment. A knot of wiring snaked from the command center, comprised of a desk with multiple screens situated next to a small bank of computer servers, to a helmet affixed to the head board along with several other miscellaneous sensors.

  “Don’t worry,” Hephaestus reassured Jude after spying the apprehension creeping up on the man’s face. “It isn’t as scary as it looks.”

  “What is it, exactly?” Jude asked.

  “It’s a device I’ve been toying with to help expand human consciousness,” the man replied, as he began booting up the machines around him. “It should temporarily project your mentality onto the universal plane.”

  “Should?” Eric asked incredulously. “Do you mean you don’t know whether it works or not?”

  Hephaestus laughed, “Well, the theory is sound. It’s based off of our own technology, after all, and I’ve manufactured most of the necessary parts myself. The primary unknown is human physiology. It’s so drastically different from our own that a few extrapolations had to be made. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to test it. Eva is the only human that has visited us here, and Leo would destroy me.”

  “What do you think, Leo?” Jude looked to his travelling companion to gauge the situation.

 
Leo laughed and patted Jude’s shoulder. “It’s true. I would. Don’t worry so much about the chair. Hephaestus is a fantastic engineer.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “In fact, he’s one of the Architects.”

  Jude gasped and gave Hephaestus a startled look. “Really? Do the other Grigori know that?”

  Hephaestus kept performing his checks, but continued to respond, “Not at all. I’ve kept my identity a secret all these millennia, because the last thing I ever wanted was to be worshipped. Our original goal has been misappropriated by zealots, regardless of how good their intentions may have begun. Humans shouldn’t suffer because of our own politics.”

  Eric broke out in exasperation, “So you do know how to make weapons to fight the Nephilim!”

  Hephaestus gave him an annoyed look, “I know you are a soldier, so it’s hard for you to understand, but I am staunchly against propagating weapons of war, especially the ones I know how to build. They would change your world forever or wipe it out completely. We have done well enough in the past keeping them in check while also allowing your kind to pave their own path.”

  He finished his diagnostics and gave the machine a fatherly pat, “Now, Mister Sullivan. This procedure is non-invasive. I haven’t anticipated anything in my designs that would cause you any bodily harm, so don’t be afraid. The only other course of action I could recommend is to somehow convince a Grigori emissary to come here and take control of your friend, if Mister Strauss is up for that.”

  Behind the auburn-haired scientist, Eric vehemently shook his head. Jude sighed and finally capitulated, allowing himself to be strapped into the chair. The apparatus itself was comfortable enough, thankfully. Jude began to relax, as Leo and Hephaestus methodically attached EEG and EKG sensors to him.

  Satisfied with the preparations, Leo stepped back to toy with the displays, while Hephaestus lowered the helmet over Jude’s head. A plastic shield hovered over his eyes; the inner side was covered with LEDs and a mass of unidentifiable circuitry. Hephaestus snapped it in place, and the world plunged into darkness. His only connection to the outside world became his voice and his ears. He opened his mouth to ask what the electronics were for, when he felt the prick of the needle in his jugular and the simultaneous hiss of an injection gun. He gasped, as he felt the foreign liquid being forced into him hit the walls of his veins.