“I don’t know if you should do that, honey,” her father cautioned.
Lily presented the food to the Lab, and he gently plucked it from her hand, swallowing it in one gulp. Thank you, Lily, he thought, looking into her eyes.
“You’re welcome,” she responded with a pretty smile.
Lily’s father walked over, carrying his own sandwich in one hand. “Okay,” he said, trying to steer the child back toward the table. “I think the doggie’s had enough. Say good-bye now.”
Gabriel stared intently at the man. “Before I go,” he directed his thoughts toward Lily’s father, “can I have a bite of your sandwich?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the man tore off a piece of his hamburger and tossed it to the Lab.
Gabriel was satisfied. The painful pangs of his empty belly had been temporarily assuaged with the help of Lily and her parents—it had been awfully generous of them to share their lunch—and he was heading back to join Aaron, exploring as he went.
The tinkling of a chain was the first thing to capture his attention, and then he became aware of her scent.
Gabriel stopped at the beginning of an overgrown path that led to a small area designated for children. He noticed some swings, a tiny slide, and a wooden playhouse shaped like a train. Again came the jangle of a chain, and from behind the playhouse appeared another dog, her nose pressed to the sand as she followed a scent that had caught her fancy.
Gabriel’s tail began to wag furiously as he padded down the path and barked a friendly greeting. How good is this? he thought. A full belly and now somebody to play with.
The female flinched, startled by his approach. Her tail wagged cautiously. She, too, was a yellow Labrador retriever and she wore a pretty, red bandanna around her neck, as well as the chain.
He moved closer. “I’m Gabriel.”
The female continued to stare, and he noticed that the hackles of fur at the back of her neck had begun to rise.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said soothingly. “I just want to play.” He lay down on the ground to show her that he meant no harm. “What’s your name?”
The female moved slowly toward him, sniffing at the air, searching for signs of a threat. How odd, thought Gabriel. Maybe her family doesn’t let her play with other dogs. “I’m Gabriel,” he said again.
“Tobie,” she replied, hackles still raised.
“Hello, Tobie. Do you want to chase me?” he asked pleasantly, rising to all fours.
Tobie sniffed at him again and growled nervously. Slowly, she began to back away, her tail bending between her legs.
Gabriel was confused. “What’s the matter?” he asked, advancing toward her. “You don’t have to chase me if you don’t want to—I could chase you instead.”
Tobie snapped at him with a bark, her lips peeled back in a fierce snarl as she continued to back toward the playhouse.
Gabriel stopped. “What’s wrong?” he asked, genuinely concerned and quite disappointed. “Why won’t you play with me?”
“Not dog,” Tobie growled as she sniffed the air around him. “Different,” she spat, and fled around the playhouse in the direction she’d come.
Gabriel was stunned. At first, he had no idea what Tobie meant, but then he thought of that day when he had almost died. He flinched, remembering the intensity of the pain he had felt when the car struck him. Aaron had done something to him that day, had laid his hands upon him and made the pain go away. That was the day everything became clearer.
The day he became different?
He left the play area, his mind considering the idea that he might not be a dog anymore, when he heard Aaron call. Gabriel quickened his pace and joined his friend and Camael. They were cleaning up their trash and getting ready to resume their journey.
“Where’ve you been?” Aaron asked as they headed toward the parking lot.
“Around,” Gabriel replied, not feeling much like talking.
A car on its way out of the lot passed them as they waited to cross to their own vehicle. In the back, he saw Tobie staring intently at him. It wasn’t only the window glass that separated him from her, he thought sadly as he watched the car head down the road.
“Are you all right?” Aaron asked as he bent to scratch under the dog’s chin.
“I’m fine,” Gabriel answered, unsure of his own words—recalling the truth revealed in another’s.
“Not dog. Different.”
Interlude One
“THIS WILL sting, my liege.”
Verchiel hissed with displeasure as the healer laid a dripping cloth on the mottled skin of his bare arm.
“Why do I not heal, Kraus?” the leader of the Powers asked.
The blind man patted down the saturated material and reached for another patch of cloth soaking in a wooden bowl of healing oil, made from plants extinct since Cain took the life of his brother, Abel. “It is not my place to say, my lord,” he said, his unseeing eyes glistening white in the faint light streaming through the skylight of the old classroom.
The abandoned school on the grounds of the Saint Athanasius Church, in western Massachusetts, had been the Powers’ home since the battle with the Nephilim. This was where they plotted—awaiting the opportunity to continue their war against those who would question their authority upon the world of God’s man.
Verchiel shifted uncomfortably in the high-backed wooden chair, stolen from the church next door, as the healer laid yet another cloth upon his burn-scarred flesh. “Then answer me this: Do these wounds resemble injuries sustained in a freak act of nature, or do they bear the signature of a more—divine influence?”
He was trying to isolate the cause of the intense agony that had been his constant companion since he was struck by lightning during his battle with Aaron Corbet. The angel wanted to push the pain aside, to box it up and place it far away. But the pain would not leave him. It stayed, a reminder that he might have offended his Creator—and was being punished for his insolence.
“It is my job to heal, Great Verchiel,” Kraus said. “I would not presume to—”
Verchiel suddenly sprang up from his seat, the heavy wooden chair flipping backward as his wings unfurled to their awesome span. Kraus stumbled as winds stirred by the angel’s wings pushed against him.
“I grant you permission, ape,” the angel growled over the pounding clamor caused by the flapping of his wings. “Tell me what you feel in your primitive heart.” His hands touched the scars upon his chest as he spoke. “Tell me if you believe it was the hand of God that touched me in this way!”
“Mercy, my master!” Kraus cried, cowering upon the floor. “I am but a lowly servant. Please do not make me think of such things!”
“I will tell you, Verchiel,” said a voice from across the room.
Verchiel slowly turned his attention to a dark corner of the classroom, where a large cage of iron was hanging from the ceiling, its bars etched with arcane markings. It swayed in the turbulence caused by his anger. The stranger taken from the monastery in the Serbian Mountains peered out from between the iron bars, the expression on his gaunt face intense.
“Do you care to hear what I have to say?” he asked, his voice a dry whisper.
“Ah, our prisoner is awake,” Verchiel said. “I thought the injuries inflicted by my soldiers would have kept you down for far longer than this.”
The prisoner clutched the bars of his cage with dirty hands. “I’ve endured worse,” he said. “Sometimes it is the price one must pay.”
Verchiel’s wings closed, retracting beneath the flesh of his bare back. “Indeed,” the angel snarled.
Kraus still cowered upon the floor, head bowed. “You will leave me now,” Verchiel said, dismissing the human healer. “Take your things and go.”
“Yes, my lord,” the blind man said, gathering up the satchel containing his tools of healing and carefully feeling his way to the exit.
“Why do they do it?” the prisoner asked as he watched the healer depart. “
What perverse need is satisfied by the degradation we heap upon them? It’s a question I’ve gone round and round with for years.”
“Perhaps we give their mundane lives purpose,” Verchiel responded, advancing toward the cage. “Providing them with something that was lacking when they lived among their own kind.” Verchiel stopped before the hanging cage and gazed into the eyes of his prisoner. “Or maybe they are just not as intelligent as we think,” he said with perverse amusement.
“And that’s reason enough to exploit and abuse them?” the prisoner asked.
“So be it, if it serves a greater good. They are aiding us in carrying out God’s will. They are serving their Creator—as well as ours. Can you not think of a more fulfilling purpose?”
Still dressed in the tattered brown robes of the Serbian monastery, the prisoner sat down with a smile, leaning back against the bars of the cage. “And you seriously have to wonder what it was that struck you down?” He chuckled, making reference to Verchiel’s scars. “Wouldn’t think you were that dense, but then again…”
Verchiel loomed closer, peering through black iron bars. “Please share with me your thoughts,” he whispered. “I’m eager to hear the perceptions of one such as you—the most renowned of the fallen. Yes, please, what is the Lord God thinking these days?”
The prisoner casually reached within his robes and withdrew the mouse. Gently, he touched the top of its pointed head with the tip of his finger as it crawled about on his open palm. “That I couldn’t tell you, Verchiel,” he said, looking up as the tiny creature scuttled up the front of his robe to his shoulder. “It’s been quite some time since the Creator and I last spoke. But looking at your current condition, I’d have to guess that He’s none too happy with you either.”
And then the prisoner smiled—a smile filled with warmth and love, and so stunningly beautiful. How could he not have once been the most favored of God’s children?
Verchiel felt his rage grow, and it took all the self-control he could muster to not reach into the cage and rend his captive limb from limb. “And I am to believe the likes of you”—the Powers’ leader growled reaching out to clutch the bars of the cage—“the Prince of Lies?”
“Touché,” the prisoner said, as the mouse explored the top of his head. “But remember,” he said with a grin, “I have had some experience in these matters.”
Chapter Three
TRUDGING THROUGH the wood, in search of his prey, Mufgar, chieftain of the Deheboryn Orisha, knew that his decision the previous night had been the right one.
With his primitive elemental magicks, Mufgar had coerced the dirt, rock, and stone of the tunnel system in which they traveled to alter its labyrinthian course and open a passageway to the surface. “We will never catch a scent down here,” he had said to his party as the dirt face of a nearby wall became like a thing of liquid, swirling and falling away to reveal a newly fashioned tunnel that ascended to the surface. “It is on the land above where our destiny awaits us.”
Mufgar had thanked the elements for their assistance, leaving an offering of dried fruit before beginning his ascension into the new morning sun. It had been eight hours since he and his tribe had emerged from below, eight hours since any had spoken a word to him.
He sensed their anger, their fear, and their disappointment over the judgment he had passed upon them. He was truly sorry that they questioned his decision, but he knew they would not abandon their duty to their masters. They would hunt the Nephilim as the Powers had ordered, capture him, and earn their freedom. That is how it will be, he thought, remembering the strange vision he’d had while sleeping. A vision of success.
Mufgar raised his hand to stop their progress through the dense wood. He listened carefully to sounds around him, the chirping of various birds, the rustling of the wind through trees heavy with leaves—and something else.
“Is it the Nephilim, Mufgar?” Tehom hissed at his side, raising his spear and looking nervously about the forest.
“No,” the Orisha Chieftain said. He listened again to the sounds way off in the distance, the sounds of machines. What are they called? He searched his brain for the strange-sounding word. Automobiles, he remembered with great satisfaction. “Not the Nephilim,” he whispered, “but vehicles that will bring him to us.”
Mufgar pointed through the woods to somewhere off in the distance. “I saw it in a vision of my own,” he said, deciding to share his experience with his subjects, to give them faith in his leadership. He turned and glared at Shokad. “As I slept, I, too, had a vision. A vision that the Nephilim would come to us—”
The shaman quickly looked away with a scowl upon his ancient features.
“—and he would fall against our might.” Mufgar raised his spear in an attempt to rally his hunters. “And for our bravery, Lord Verchiel bestowed upon us our freedom, and we found the location of the blessed Safe Place
.”
The Orishas all bowed their malformed heads, blessing themselves furiously.
It had been the strangest dream, as clear as the day they hunted in now. It was all there for him, all the answers he had sought. The doubts he had been experiencing since the last council all dispelled like smoke in the wind. A holy vision had been bestowed upon him, maybe from the spirits of the great creators themselves, a vision that told him they would be victorious. He could ask for nothing better.
Mufgar turned to the shaman, who lagged behind. The old Orisha squatted down and took a handful of bones and smooth, shiny rocks from a purse at his side.
“You do not trust your chieftain’s sleeping visions, Shokad?” he asked the shaman.
The old creature said nothing as he tossed the bones and stones onto the ground before him. His wings unfurled and fluttered nervously as he began to read the results of his throw.
“Hmmmm,” he grumbled, rubbing his chin as he discerned the signs.
“What do they say, Shokad?” Mufgar asked. “Do the bones and stones speak of victory and freedom?”
The old Orisha was silent as he gathered up his tools of divination and returned them to his purse.
“Speak, shaman,” Mufgar ordered. “Your chief commands you to reveal what you have seen.”
“The bones and stones speak of death,” Shokad said gravely.
Zawar and Tehom gasped beside him. “Death?” Tehom asked in a voice filled with dread.
“Death … but for whom?” Zawar wanted to know.
Shokad shook his head, the bones in his hair rattling as they struck one another. “They were not specific, but I can imagine no less for those who would go up against the might of the Nephilim.” He glared at Mufgar, challenging his word as chief.
“But what of those who abandon the wishes of their masters?” Mufgar asked in return. “What is the fate of those who defy the Powers? Is the edict of that not death as well?”
The shaman scowled. “Possibly,” he answered, “but it does not change the fact that death is our companion. We must choose our path wisely, or we may never have the opportunity to seek out the paradise that has long eluded us.”
Zawar and Tehom glanced at each other, the conflicting messages of chief and shaman bringing the curse of dissension to their ranks.
“Great Mufgar,” Zawar whispered as he looked about the woods, searching for any telltale signs of imminent death, “how do we choose?” Mufgar looked back toward the sounds of the road in the distance. “There is only one choice,” he said, moving away from them toward the road. “The hunt—and from that shall spring our freedom.” He didn’t even turn to see if they were following. Mufgar did not need to, for he knew that they were behind him. He had seen it in his dream.
••••
Aaron kept his speed at forty-five and continued down the winding, back road. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel as the excitement continued to build within him. They were getting closer to their destination, he could feel it thrumming in his body. “Is it just me, or do you feel this too?” he asked. r />
Camael grunted, staring at the twisting road before them.
“What?” Aaron said. “Do you see something?” The angel remained silent, squinting as if trying to see more clearly ahead. Aaron couldn’t take it anymore. The sensation he felt was akin to a guy with an orange flag at the finishing line. He was close—to what, he wasn’t exactly sure, but his body was telling him that this is where they were supposed to be. “What do you see, for Christ’s sake!” he yelled.
Camael slowly turned his attention from the windshield to the boy. His gaze was steely, cold.
“Sorry,” Aaron said, attempting to squelch the feeling of unbridled excitement that coursed through his body. “It’s just that I think we’ve found where they’ve taken Stevie—I’m excited. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
The angel turned back to the road before them and pointed. “In the distance, not too far from here, I see a town.”
Aaron waited a minute, but Camael offered no more. “That’s it?” he asked impatiently. “That’s all you see, a town?”
Gabriel, who had been in a deep, snoring sleep in the backseat, began to stir. In the rearview mirror, Aaron could see the Lab sit up, languidly licking his chops as he surveyed his surroundings.
“Where’s the town?” the dog asked. “All I see is woods.”
“Camael sees it in the distance,” Aaron answered. “I’ve got a feeling that it might be where Verchiel has taken Stevie.”
“There is something about this town,” Camael said slowly, his eyes closed in concentration, his hand slowly stroking his silver goatee. “But I cannot discern what it is. It perplexes me.”
Aaron reached over to the glove compartment and popped it open. The angel recoiled, but Aaron paid him little mind as he rummaged through the compartment while trying to keep his eyes on the road and the car in its lane. “What’s it called? Maybe I can find it on the map,” he said, slamming the glove compartment closed and shaking the map out in his lap.
“It is called Blithe,” Camael said. “I believe the settlement would be considered quite old, by human standards.”