Rise of the Nephilim (12 page)

Jude’s mind reeled. Surely that woman didn’t have that kind of power! He lay on the ground in shock trying to envision the invisible projectile that had been hurled at them. A quick damage check revealed no wounds, and Eric’s colorful description of the situation indicated he was okay and just as surprised as Jude.

Another crack rang out, accompanied by a scream. This time, Jude could tell the noise had come from behind them in the alleyway. His stomach knotted up and turned sour. Only one thing lay behind them at the moment.

“Emily!” he shouted and jumped to his feet and ran back the way they came. The woman on the street became a distant memory, as he picked up speed. He could hear Eric yelling at him to slow down, but nothing could keep him from his objective. His mind was now soaking in adrenaline and running on pure instinct.

The hundred yards or so it took to reach the area where he had left the rest of the group felt as if it was only a few steps in his current state of mind. He blindly rounded the corner at full speed, clipping his shoulder against the corner of the building by accident. The force of the impact sent him spinning to the ground, as the white-washed limestone wall broke apart and showered him with debris. He managed to roll over, but was pinned to the ground by Gallo’s foot.

“What the hell, man?” he asked incredulously. “Where is everyone?”

He saw Brad’s pistol in the priest’s hand. His blood ran cold. Gallo jovial eyes had been replaced with a predator’s

“Antonio, where is Emily?”

Gallo remained silent and aimed the gun down at Jude’s face. Jude closed his eyes and braced for death.

He heard another gunshot, but he didn’t feel any pain. Gallo released an inhuman sound and Jude heard the clatter of the weapon against the ground. He opened his eyes again and saw the priest holding his upper arm, blood dripping from his elbow. Eric had caught up and opened fire on him.

Gallo ran, as deflected bullets dug themselves into the surrounding concrete and plaster, and disappeared around a corner.

Jude propped himself up and found himself staring straight into Brad’s vacant eyes. Blood oozed down the side of his head from the hole in his temple. Jude retched, but still retained some clarity. He had to find Emily. He stood up weakly and stumbled a little further down the alley, calling her name. He passed a row of garbage cans and finally heard a faint voice answering back.

Emily was there, lying among the refuse where she had been tossed. A bloody dagger of broken glass lay at her side, where she had pulled it from her abdomen. She was holding a makeshift compress to the wound, but a deep red stain was already blossoming around her hands and was pooling underneath her. She was quickly turning a sickly grayish hue.

“Oh my God!” Jude said in disbelief as he knelt down beside her and helped her press down the strip of cloth. “What the hell happened?”

“We were betrayed,” she replied painfully. “Is Brad…?”

“He’s dead,” Jude said sadly. “Just hold on ok? Eric!” He yelled behind him. “Eric, get an ambulance now!” He turned back to Emily. “What happened to Gallo? Are you going to be ok?”

“Gallo… is Nephilim,” Emily whispered before coughing up blood. “Azazel has seduced him.”

Jude tried to keep her talking and awake, “Stay with me! What do you mean about him being Nephilim? How long has he been like that?”

“I don’t know,” replied Emily. “He hid it well. Jude, please be careful. Azazel is ruthless. You are not safe as long as he considers you a threat. You must flee.”

Jude gave a nervous laugh, as he strained to listen for the faint approach of emergency sirens responding to the gunfire, “Come on now. I can’t go anywhere with you like this. You just take it easy, ok? Inanna, can’t you do anything?”

“I’m sorry, Jude,” the Grigori answered through Emily. The musical undertone of her voice was fading. “It’s too late.”

“Dammit, Inanna! You can’t just give up on her! What kind of celestial being are you, if you just abandon her now?”

Emily’s face smiled ruefully, “I can’t even do that now, Jude. We’ve been together for too long, and the power I’ve expended today solidified the entanglement. Emily and I will go into the void together. Jude, please save Antonio. Tell him I forgive him.”

Tears rolled down Jude’s face. “The ambulance will be here soon. Don’t let go, ok. You’re going to be alright”

Emily’s eyelids were beginning to droop. She gazed into the growing pool of blood flowing from her wound, fighting for each wet, ragged breath.

“It’s ok, Jude,” she said in a hollow voice, as tears began to flow down her face also. “Thank you for reminding me what it was like to feel again. I wish we could have had more time together.”

She gave his hand a hard squeeze, and Emily’s voice returned. “I just…. want you to know that both of us…. Inanna and I…..”

She paused to catch her breath again, and her body slowly sagged. Jude waited, willing her to move again, but she remained still. Through the curtain of tears that veiled his vision, he reached out and closed Emily’s eyes.

“I love you too,” he whispered, as he cradled her head in his hands and stroked her soft black hair. For the first time in ages, he wept.

Eric met the paramedics at the entrance to the alleyway, as they responded to reports of the shooting called in by frantic bystanders out on the street. Despite his lack of knowledge of the local dialect, he was able to communicate his need and urgency well enough to get them to follow him swiftly. Jude stumbled up to them and pointed down the alleyway. They ran past him, but Eric stopped him to make sure he was okay. He noticed the blood on Jude’s suit jacket.

“Jude!” Eric yelled, shaking him out of his daze. “What happened back there? Don’t tell me…”

“She’s dead,” Jude managed to choke out. “He killed her…”

Eric continued to pry him for information. “You mean Gallo? Why did he do that? What happened to Brad?”

Jude finally made eye contact with Eric and shook his head. “Brad didn’t make it. Gallo… is one of them now.”

Eric was dumbfounded. “Oh my God… We need to go now, Jude. We have to get out of Geneva.”

“I can’t just leave her here!” Jude screamed, as Eric began pulling him away.

“You can’t help her now!” Eric hissed. “Don’t you see, Jude? We’re going to be hunted like rats if we don’t get out of here as soon as possible. If Gallo is possessed, then every plan we’ve made up until now is compromised. If we go anywhere near the hotel or the conference center again, we’re probably as good as dead. If we stay here, then we’ll have to deal with the police, and we’ll be sitting ducks. We need to catch the first train out of here.”

Jude nodded reflexively and followed behind Eric away from the remains of their friends. It was hard to believe Emily was gone. She and Inanna had been so strong, but in their one moment of weakness, he had not been there. And what about Gallo? How long had he been under Nephilim control? Jude knew the man had been acting out of character lately, but he would never have imagined this scenario. Where could they turn?

“We have to get back to the Vatican,” he suggested to Eric. “I have unfinished business there.”

“Do you think that’s safe?” Eric asked. “What if others within the Vatican have been taken? If you didn’t notice, every single one of those things back at the conference was using a religious figure as a conduit.”

“I don’t know how they got to so many of them,” Jude insisted, “but we do know it can be safer where people have strong convictions. I need to report to the Vicar, at the very least.”

Eric mulled over Jude’s suggestion. “Okay. I’ll get you to the Vatican. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks, Eric,” Jude said, managing a weak smile.

Jude ditched his jacket in the alleyway to avoid unwanted attention. The men snuck away through the gathering crowd to get a peek at the incident and walked down the street. He noted that the mysterious lady had long since disappeared. Eric suggested that they sneak inside a nearby department store and purchase new clothes to disguise themselves long enough to escape. Jude exchanged the remainder of his dirty suit and tie for a white T-shirt, khaki pants, and a leather jacket, topped with a grey toboggan and aviator sunglasses. He looked at himself in the shop mirror, imagining that if anyone saw him now, they might assume he was some tourist backpacking through the area. He met up with Eric near the entrance. The former marine had also dressed down into a polo, slacks, and loafers, looking nothing like the regimental security professional he was. Satisfied with their new attire, they ventured outside and flagged down a taxi.

“
Fahr uns nach dem Bahnhof, bitte,
” Eric commanded the driver, as they slid into the back seat, “Drive us to the train station.” The man grunted an affirmative and set the car into motion. The short ride to the station was a silent one. Both men watched the passing urban landscape, listlessly trying to grasp the gravity of their situation in the small window of relaxation afforded them. After twenty minutes, the cab stopped at the main entrance of the long, flat face of the Genève-Cornavin rail station. While Eric paid the cabbie, Jude turned around to observe their proposed escape route. The beige concrete façade looked as if it belonged to any number of European federal buildings, but the distinctive white-on-red opposing-arrow symbol of the Swiss railway and the large Swiss clock fixed on the atrium window marked its purpose well.

“What do the letters ‘SSB CFF FFS’ on the side of the building stand for?” Jude asked Eric when he had sent the driver on his way.

“The SSB stands for
Schweizerische Bundesbahnen
, or Swiss Federal Railway in English,” instructed Eric. The other two acronyms are the same in French and Italian, since we are so close to both borders. Two of the platforms here are actually non-stop to France, but we are going to Zurich then Rome.”

“Glad you know the language,” Jude said appreciatively.

Eric responded, “My family moved to the United States to get away from the Nazi takeover of Germany. My grandparents insisted we maintain our heritage and taught me to be fluent in German as well as English. It’s turned out to be incredibly handy in my line of work. That’s enough dawdling, though. Let’s go.”

Jude took one last look at the building, as they passed underneath its brushed-steel awning and into the main hallway toward the ticket booths. The hallway looked as if it had been renovated recently into a sleek, modern mixture of bright-colored stained wood and glass. The next train to Zurich would not be leaving for another thirty minutes, so after the two bought their tickets, they proceeded down the concourse toward the platforms reserved for the France-bound trains. Eric saw the confusion on Jude’s face and explained that it was a precaution, in case they were recognized later. They managed to grab some seats in view of a digital schedule board to track their train’s arrival.

Eric wandered down the hall to phone his superiors. Jude attempted to begin the book he had acquired to keep him occupied on the nine to ten hour train ride back to Rome, but all he could think about was Emily. His betrayal of her trust was compounded by the regret of leaving her body lying in some back alley of a foreign city, buried among the trash. His session of self-loathing was interrupted, however, when he noticed a small group of people gathering around a bank of televisions on the other end of the platform. From their reactions, he could easily guess the networks were covering the attack on the conference center.

He crept behind the chattering onlookers and tried to ignore a few ladies who were openly sobbing on the neighboring benches. He focused on the large, flat-screen displays and looked for one in English. With luck, he spied one streaming a feed from BBC news. At the moment, the image on the screen showed an aerial view of the conference center that panned between the makeshift command center occupied by Swiss peacekeeping forces and the ruins of the main entrance.

“…. Authorities are calling this one of the worst attacks in recent memory, and the entire world is in an uproar,” announced the reporter over the footage. “We have initial reports of over two hundred people dead and three hundred unaccounted for, most of them prominent religious figures. No known terrorist organization is currently claiming responsibility. The Swiss police force has issued a moratorium on giving details to the press, so we will continue to update you as soon as we are able.”

The scene cut away to a studio where the anchors began speculating with pundits via live feed on who could be responsible for the attack and why. The sound faded away into the background, as Jude reflected on the attack. Was it really just few short hours ago? It seemed like half a lifetime. Jude staring blankly at the screen, as the talking heads argued. Suddenly, the screen cut away again to the head anchor. A large “Breaking News” banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

“This just in from our sister station in America. It seems they have been provided footage of the attack from an anonymous source. We don’t quite know what to make of it yet, but I must warn you that what you are about to see is very disturbing. If you are sensitive to such things, please change the channel now.”

The feed transported viewers back to the lecture hall and displayed earlier footage of a wizened Buddhist monk in the middle of his presentation. Suddenly, the picture shook violently, as the stage exploded in a rain of smoke, wood, and blood. The blast wave knocked the camera askew, so that half of the screen was focused on the railing in front of it, but the lower area of the auditorium was still visible amid the flickering light and electrical interference. Screams and prayers of the fleeing and dying blended together in a sickening cacophony of a dozen different languages before the gunshots began.

Damn,
thought Jude to himself.
Did they catch us on camera?

With bated breath, Jude watched the two men he and Emily had encountered in the auditorium enter the frame, taking potshots off screen at the crowd. A wounded evangelist, in what had been an expensive-looking suit, reached forward and grabbed one of the intruders’ legs and seemed to be pleading for his life. The armed man laughed and took out a pistol from his hip holster. He pointed it down at the begging man. His partner, a Jewish rabbi, stayed his hand and bent down to talk to the preacher. The audio was too faint to hear, but the rabbi smiled and reached down, as if to help the man up. Instead of assisting him, however, the cleric jerked him up and tossed him against the wall, as if he weighed nothing. The broken archbishop convulsed spasmodically for a few moments, then lay still. The two men began looking around for more chaos to cause before the static on the camera grew too intense to make out any discernable images. The feed had been effectively cut.

The gathering crowd of bystanders watching the news feed gasped in horror and disbelief at what they had witnessed. Whispers began to run rampant among them, the word
Demon
surfacing on many tongues. Jude slipped away quietly to look for Eric. He breathed a small sigh of relief that he had avoided a surprise television appearance.

Captain Beaulac stood in the police command center, furiously chewing a fresh stick of gum, as he waited for the final teams to clear their areas. Most of the intruders had been dispatched, but two or three had managed to slip through the blockade in the confusion. He cursed his bad luck that no captives had been taken. His superiors would rake him over the coals for such a poor performance. He had to remind himself, though, that the job was only halfway complete. Now began the arduous task of identifying the dead. So many good people had died today.

His radio chirped for attention on the table in front of him, and he quickly snatched it up. “
Parlez-moi!
Speak to me!”

“Sir,” one of his lieutenants spoke,” we have detained a priest at checkpoint two who wishes to speak to you. He says he has information regarding the attack.”

“I’ll be right there,” Beaulac said excitedly. He gathered up his jacket and hurried out of the tent toward the southern perimeter of the cordon. A few minutes later, he reached his destination and greeted his subordinate. The man led him over to a bench to meet this supposedly knowledgeable priest.

The police captain was surprised to recognize the priest that was part of with the group he had released not long ago. The man was still bleeding from a fresh bandage on his arm, and was so pale that he may have been close to going into shock. “Hello again, Father…”

“Gallo,” the priest finished, as he stood shakily.

“That’s correct,” Beaulac acknowledged. “Forgive me for not remembering. I have been dealing with so much today. What has happened to you? Where are your companions?”

Gallo began to cry. “The woman and one of the bodyguards are dead. The other two... I don’t know.”

Beaulac perked up at this. An attack outside the perimeter was bad news indeed. “Was it more of those terrorists? Where were you, exactly?”

Gallo shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure where we were. All I know is that Mister Sullivan led us down a back alley, then he and the other man turned and attacked us. I barely managed to make it out alive!”

Beaulac felt a knot form in the pit of his stomach. Did he really allow two suspects to escape? He grabbed Gallo by his shoulders, “Tell me, why did they do this? Did they say anything?”

Gallo shied away from the policeman’s fervor. “He just laughed, as I ran away and said that it didn’t matter. He said I would end up dead eventually. Captain, Jude was a close friend. I don’t want believe he is responsible for what happened, but he was one of the organizers of this event. You don’t think he could have planted his own agents in the crowd, do you?”

Beaulac turned ashen at what the holy man said. If everything he said was accurate, the peace of his beloved city was in even more danger.

Gallo grabbed the officer’s arm and looked into his eyes. Waves of reassurance emanated from him and enveloped Beaulac. “Peace be with you, Mister Beaulac. I’m willing to help in any way I am able.”

Eric stepped into an alcove sporting a bevy of payphones, so he could report back to TacShield. He slid his corporate credit card into the reader on the machine and dialed Commander Reynolds’ direct line.

“Reynolds here,” answered his superior in a weary voice.

“Hello, Commander. It’s Strauss,” Eric said tentatively.

“Strauss? Thank God you’re still alive! What in bloody hell is going on over there? You’re the only one to report in.”