Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (195 page)

“She seems like a nice girl. What happened?”

“To make a long story short, I took an unauthorized hiatus in order to be with her. Sophia was beautiful, great fun, and a wonderful person. Over time I revealed myself to her and we did what has been forbidden since the dawn of humankind.”

“You fell in love.” Hope gave him a look of compassion.

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that.”

“Wait a minute, you mean—”

“I married her. And worse still...”

She leaned closer.

“Is that even possible?” she said.

“When I choose to take on a physical form, I’m fully human, though I still possess what you consider supernatural abilities.”

“So did you have a son or a daughter?”

“I’ll show you.”

A little girl with golden hair and shining sapphire eyes stood smiling in front of them. A very familiar-looking little girl.

“This is...this was Clara,” Nick said.

Hope knelt down and looked straight at her, knowing that as a construct, this child was just a figment of Nick’s memory. Nonetheless she touched Clara’s hair, ran her fingers down the braided pigtails around which little red bows were tied.

Then smiled and leapt to her feet.

“She looks like Chloe.”

“The resemblance is striking. I can’t help wondering if there’s a reason I was assigned to escort Chloe. But since I’d been demoted to reaper, I didn’t get to ask those questions.”

“Demoted? What for?”

“Well, I assume that’s what happened. After all, I’d broken just about every law—I was grateful it wasn’t anything worse than being reassigned to the mundane work of ushering souls.”

Staring incredulously at the little construct of Clara, Hope circled her while she spoke to Nick.

“Why is it so wrong for angels to fall in love with humans? Marry them, have children with them?”

“From what I’ve been told, certain humans and angels did have children eons ago, with dangerous results. It’s all rather vague, but supposedly there’s a danger of their offspring becoming highly powerful, unstable beings with a thirst for blood, some of them extraordinarily intelligent and irresistibly beautiful.”

“Were they angels or human?”

“A hybrid of both called Nephilim. Several cultures cite the presence of Nephilim in their history. Outside of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, other civilizations have their own terminology. But I’ve never seen one. Doubt they even exist.”

“So why make such stringent laws over a matter of speculation?”

“My thoughts, exactly. Still, if Nephilim are real and have in fact abused their power to wreak all kinds of havoc on mankind, of course there’s cause for concern. Believers speculate that some of history’s greatest minds, most powerful rulers, and cruelest dictators were Nephilim.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, there’s an infamous list of Nephilim, but I consider the whole thing apocryphal. Among them are Ch’in Shih-huan-ti, Caligula, Ghengis Khan, Herod the Great, Vlad Tepes—”

“Vlad the Impaler?”

He nodded.

“Dracula was a Nephilim! And I suppose Hitler’s on the list?”

“Absolutely.”

Hope closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened, she pointed to the Clara-construct.

“How about her?”

“Even those who believe in Nephilim don’t know if they all turn out evil—they don’t even know if Nephilim are mortal or immortal. In my mind, they hold to those myths in order to justify angel laws that will deter us from intermingling with humans.”

“So what went wrong with you and Sophia?” She was eager to know—he understood why and admired her for it. Now, the dread of reliving the story gave way to a need to share it with her.

“After Sophia and I married she noticed I never got ill, never looked tired, and after some years never showed signs of aging. She said I was distant, somehow—even though we were close as could be, in so many ways. She asked questions I wouldn’t answer, then insisted there was something standing between us, something important, she just knew it—of course she was right.

“So I told her the truth. Then I told her I was willing to give up my angel nature and become a human to be with her. I thought she’d be happy—but the last thing she wanted was for me to renounce my angel status and lose my immortality and other supernatural attributes. No, she wanted to know all about them, even craved some of them for herself—you know, the eternal youth, the limitless energy...and in retrospect, the power.”

“I can see why.” Hope was eyeing him with great interest.

“I told her to let it go, it wasn’t worth it. Our love was enough.” Nick’s voice dropped. “Only it wasn’t, for Sophia. She became obsessed with the supernatural—I only learned by overhearing a conversation. She’d been secretly consulting with some kind of dark occultists about how she could tap into it. I warned her it wasn’t safe—she dismissed it, saying I was just threatened by her.”

“But what about Clara?” Hope said.

“Right. Well, since Sophia was never around—sometimes staying away for weeks at a time, and eventually leaving home for good—I had to raise Clara on my own. She grew into the loveliest, gentlest girl you could ever imagine. She couldn’t possibly have been a Nephilim—she was sweeter than any angel I’d ever known.”

Nick reached out to touch the Clara-construct, but she vanished before his hand reached it. Hope gave him a sympathetic smile.

“Did Sophia ever come back?”

From the corner of his eye, Nick thought he saw something move. He turned to look and saw nothing but the freeze-frame image of turn of the century London. But he sensed something dark and cold—and close by.

“Nick?”

“One day she did,” he said, lowering his eyes.
“But she’d changed.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

WHEN THE STORM HIT, IT DIDN’T COME in the form of smartphone photos but rather a security camera video from the Hotel Pacifica. In the brief montage of clips Jon saw himself walking out of the elevator with Maria, saw Maria draping her arms around his neck and kissing him as she pulled him into the hotel room, saw himself coming out of the room, looking around—furtively—and hurrying to the elevator. One creative version put raunchy music in the background and looped the split-second moment when Jon and Maria’s faces came within striking distance, just before the door obscured the view. Of course it had gone viral, getting two million hits on YouTube within hours of its posting.

Sitting in his office behind a locked door—his “Do Not Disturb” cue to his staff—Jon leaned his head back against the soft leather of his chair in an attempt to ease the tension in his knotted shoulder and neck muscles.

What am I going to do?

With each passing hour, he anticipated a mortally wounded Elaine bursting through the door and demanding that he tell her who the bimbo on the tape was. Next would be a call from his manager informing him that speaking engagements and book deal had been canceled. Divorce would give him a way out of their marriage which had all but died after Matthew’s birth. It had only taken a year after the wedding for her true colors to show.

If she doesn’t file, I will.
But the more he thought about divorce
,
the worse he felt. What would happen to Matthew? And the truth was, he loved Elaine. It had only been half a day, but somehow the fact that he’d allowed himself to consider ending their marriage made him realize how much he really cared for her.

With his suitcase packed, he left the office. Might as well drive down to San Diego and check into the hotel a week early, avoid Elaine’s raking him over the coals for the video.

He just needed some time away to sort things out.

Jon got into his car and tried to pray, but the words wouldn’t come out. Angry thoughts kept wrenching his heart, overwhelming any sense of repentance. Four words ran through his mind as he sped down the I-5:

You did nothing wrong...

His heart, it seemed, wasn’t buying it. The frustration of needing to pray, wanting to pray tormented him until, like David before Nathan the prophet who’d confronted him about his selfish pride and sin, the Shepherd King’s song came to mind:

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Cast me not away from Your presence,

And take not Your Holy Spirit from me.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

“YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF THE HERNANDEZ BRANCH,” Eduardo said, his voice like sandpaper.

“Thank you for stating the obvious. Don’t make me guess.”

“Lito, since you were a child, you had a reputation.”

“A good one, no?”

“Well, that depends. You were always a do-things-right, play-fair type of kid. Your Papi admired you for that.”

Lito huffed. “I doubt it.”

“Well, okay, maybe it annoyed him a bit. But he knew you would treat people fair.”

Eduardo choked on a cloud of smoke and began coughing—more and more violently. Lito cracked open a bottle of Arrowhead water and held it out, but the old man waved it off as he heaved and coughed.

“I need...a real drink.”

Lito put the bottle in his hand and closed his fingers around it.

“It’s all I have right now.”

Eduardo took a grudging swallow and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“Lito, Lito, Lito. Get real. You’re head of a drug cartel, not a charity.”

“The drugs are just one of our revenue streams. We own other businesses—legitimate businesses—and we could have more.”

The old man glared at him. “Don’t let anyone in the organization
ever
hear you talk like that. They’ll see you as weak, and you already got enough to worry about.”

“What do you mean?”

“I tried to handle this on my own, but that idiot Alfonso went and messed everything up.”

“Does any of this have to do with the Hernandez branch?”

“I’m getting to that, okay? Young people these days. So impatient.”

In fact, Lito
was
losing his patience. But Eduardo was probably the only person from Papi’s generation he could trust. Probably the only person, period. So he sat back in his chair, put his feet up on his desk and hands behind his head.

“I’ve got all day.”

“Look, it’s for two reasons you don’t know about the Hernandez branch. First, your father didn’t want you to. And second, it’s too profitable an operation to risk you jeopardizing things with your boy scout ways.”

“So what’s the profit from? Alcohol, gambling, merchandise?”

“Some might consider it merchandise.” Eduardo puffed another cloud of smoke.

“You’re going to have to get a lot more specific.”

“Soon as I tell you? You’re going to wish I never did.”

“The longer you put it off, the more you’re going to wish you never stalled.”

“All right.” Eduardo sighed. “The Hernandez branch deals in...human assets.”

“You make it sound like a temp agency.”

“No, Lito. Think about it.”

It should not have come as a shock, but it did. He knew other cartels had no qualms about it, and it wasn’t unthinkable that Papi would do it given his lack of morals. But Lito had never imagined working in this kind of commerce.

“Don’t tell me you’re talking about human trafficking?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s unacceptable!”

“This kind of thing has been going on since before you were born, before any of us were born.”

“It’s slavery. Do you know what they do with—of course you do. How could this have gone on all this time and nobody told me?”

The old man’s considerable belly bounced as he laughed.

“Because we knew how you’d react.”

“We? Who,
you and Alfonso
?” Lito was shouting.

“Your Papi and me! He made me promise not to tell you because he knew you’d want to shut it down.”

Eduardo was right. Papi had known him too well.

But Lito also knew that his men would never allow him to jeopardize everything they’d worked for, sacrificed for, broken the law for—just because among all the things to which he turned a blind eye, he had a conscience about a particular trade.