The Watchers (45 page)

“So the mystery remains,” Abby said adamantly. “Why am I, a white girl brought to Christ by my white mother, apparently a member of this African Sisterhood? And why are the Sisterhood's enemies trying so desperately not only to keep me from growing but destroy me outright?”

“Because you represent two things they fear greatly: first, a healing in some of our deepest wounds, and second, a dramatic opportunity to grow the Watchers family in some whole new places. You are the greatest hope we have encountered in many, many years, Abby.”

“But it still doesn't make sense. How, if the Sisterhood has remained confined along tight ethnic lines for so long, did I suddenly become the first breakout?”

Rulaz shook her head with a look of bewilderment. “That is why I am, unfortunately, not the end of your quest. You still have much digging to do.”

Dylan walked up to a wedge of shadow alongside the intersection of David Street and Christian Quarter Road, raised his arms and threw them around the form of a lanky man of thirty, which suddenly materialized from the gloom.

“Reuven, I am so glad you came. I wasn't sure you would.”

“You have a pretty incredible story, Dylan. If I didn't know what kind of man you were, I would have called out Shin Bet on
you
.”

“I understand. And you haven't heard half the story yet. I've been through quite an adventure in the last couple weeks. Tell me though, are you armed? Do you have weapons? Do you have some backup?”

Reuven pulled aside a strap from his shoulder, revealing a machine gun. “This is all I could manage. Of course I can call in reinforcements the moment they're needed. But first, Dylan, you're going to have to tell me more.”

Dylan stepped aside and allowed Sarha to step up. “Sarha, this is my friend Reuven, who is an officer with the government. He's going to help us. Reuven, you did bring the metal detector like I asked?”

He nodded.

“Good. Sarha is actually going to point these guys out for us.” Dylan then took the wand and walked on ahead.

Reuven gave Dylan another incredulous look. Why in the world, if Dylan was so confident of his claim, would he have to rely on this young African nun to find these evildoers? He had known Dylan as a tightly wound yet professional and levelheaded special ops soldier. What had happened? Had the city claimed another victim of its famed Jerusalem Syndrome—that state of religious mania that gripped otherwise sane individuals in delusions of religious apparitions and apocalypse?

In either case, he would certainly stick around and find out.

Dylan and the young woman had already melted back into the crowd that packed Christian Quarter Road. Reuven decided it was worth finding out, and followed them.

But the rejoining did not come easily. For some reason, the pair had not chosen to simply merge back into the sluggish flow of people along the bazaar street, but to weave furiously through the bodies at top speed. Reuven was out of breath and thoroughly frustrated by the time he caught up with them again.

When he caught sight of their faces, he forgot his emotions altogether. Both of them now stood stock-still in the street. Their eyes were wide open and fixed straight ahead. Reuven followed their gaze . . .

. . . to a group of about a dozen monks, turning onto Douk el Sharabba.

He watched warily as Dylan passed them quickly on the right, averting his eyes. The men seemed to be headed toward the front doors of the Holy Sepulchre, but as they entered the small plaza before it, Dylan had preceded them and was quickly shutting the church's two large doors.

“Gentlemen!” Dylan called out to the group in a loud, echoing voice. “Due to security concerns, we must reluctantly subject you to a metal-detector search today. No weaponlike objects will be allowed inside the church. He then waved the metal-detector wand above his head for emphasis.

The men said nothing, but just turned to their leader, an old man wearing a brutally dark scowl who began to visibly tense and look about them as though anticipating some kind of fight.

Reuven glanced over at the young nun. She had now shut her eyes and seemed to be praying fervently, one arm extended toward the group. Amazingly enough, it appeared that one, two, then half a dozen other women were joining her, only one in a nun's habit, yet all of them adopting the same expression and gestures.

A silent, coiled tension descended upon the plaza.

CHAPTER
_
65

From the rooftop overhead, Rulaz had detected it too. She stopped speaking with Abby, hurried over to the edge and pointed down.

“It looks as if Dylan has confronted the first group, along with some more Watchers. They're praying to expel and banish the demons possessing most of these men. Let's join them . . .”

And they too held out their hands and began praying fervently.

Dylan wasted no time approaching the eldest monk with his metal detector, and the device wasted no time producing a loud, obnoxious squawk. Without a word, his eyes piercing Dylan with invisible daggers, the old man slowly reached into his cowl and retrieved something that, although expected, nevertheless provoked a loud gasp from the women watching.

The scythe was new, untried, and its half circle glinted cruelly in the sun.

The monk neither offered the weapon to Dylan nor did he drop it. Instead, he held the scythe high, and as he did the other men followed suit, filling the plaza with shards of sharply reflected light.

Reuven, without knowing why, found himself turning around his machine gun and seeking out the trigger with his right index finger.

The women's prayers suddenly became audible, and pleading.

Two of the monks nearest the row of women turned and lunged toward the women.

The plaza erupted into chaos.

The two out-of-control monks, as soon as they touched the women, were thrown to the ground in a fury of growling, screaming, and wild gesticulations.

Dylan swiftly broke the old one's arm with a dual twist and karate chop, kicked the man off his feet, and took up the scythe. In a split second he became a one-man killing machine, a whirl of spinning limbs, fists, and kicks against which the Scythians were no match. These men may have been hardened killers skilled with their scythes, but none were martial arts experts.

For his part, Reuven did not make a conscious choice to enter the conflict. Two monks had leaped on him, intent on gaining control of the machine gun. A deadly roar rang out across the square and the men fell dead, followed by three more who were attacking Watchers beside him.

But even as he concentrated fiercely on controlling his fire and not accidentally shooting any bystanders, Reuven's peripheral vision revealed to him something else which made no sense.

The remaining monks had thrown themselves on the ground and were rolling around, growling like animals and foaming at the mouth. It was almost as if some invisible sound frequency had assaulted something inside their heads and ripped their sanity from their skulls.

He stopped firing and stared at what was taking place. The monks were rolling away from a single direction—that of the women, their loud prayers and their outstretched hands. One of the men even faced the group and held out a hand like someone begging for mercy.

Reuven looked around. The entire group was either dead or incapacitated by this bizarre madness.

“Dylan!” he called out. “What in the world is going on here?”

Up on the rooftop, Rulaz did not dwell on the victory unfolding below, but immediately turned back to Abby.

“Where were we?” she asked the young American.

“Please tell me about these enemies of ours. I've found them to be vicious and resourceful. And they seem incredibly intent on killing me.”

Her host stared at her with a sudden, cold fire. “Abigail, do you truly wish for me to tell of such evil? I will tell you: it is not something I discuss, ever. I do not wish to invite darkness of that kind into my mind.”

Abby thought about it for a while. “No, I believe that if I am to solve this mystery, I need to know.”

“Fine. But first let us pray for protection, even as I merely speak of these things. We are exposed out here, and we need as much cover as our Lord will grant us if such words are to leave our lips.”

They both prayed briefly, individually.

A few minutes later, Rulaz asked, “Have you ever heard of the book of Enoch?”

Abby shook her head slowly, searching her memory. “I might have heard of the person, but not a book.”

“That is most people's response. Enoch was a well-known figure.

But the book that bears his name happens to be one which my church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, includes as Scripture. Even many conservative Protestants regard Enoch as a most unique member of the noncanonical writings, or books not voted to be part of Holy Scripture by the Council of Laodicea. By the way, that council voted it out of the canon because Enoch had been rejected by the Jews. However, the Jewish scholars had rejected it only because it contained prophetic references to Jesus Christ. Anyway—many of the early Church Fathers quoted from the book of Enoch, from Tertullian to Clement of Alexandria. Enoch is even quoted in the so-called canonical Scripture, the book of Jude.”

“I never heard any of this before,” admitted Abby.

“But the reason I bring it up is because the first part of the book of Enoch is titled
The Book of Watchers
. It describes how, early in history, God had ordained a special group of angels to watch over the affairs of mankind and teach us many of the most glorious artistic and technical innovations. These were the original Watchers. However, at one point, the Watchers became enamored with the beauty of earthly women and conspired to take them as their wives and lovers. This they did, in violation of every command of God, and you might cast a blanket over the consequences by saying simply, and without fear of being vulgar, that all hell broke loose. God cast the Watchers down and condemned them to wander the earth forever, without the ability to possess or interact with human beings as before.”

Rulaz paused and leaned forward, and as she did it seemed her face visibly darkened.

“That is what Enoch's book says. Now hear what we believe happened after that. It is well known that demons have a desire to inhabit human form, which makes any human lust or hunger seem microscopic by comparison. And that was denied to them forever. So it turned out the only way these wandering demons could slake their great hunger, and their lust for human contact, was by gorging themselves on human suffering itself. Think of it as a refined form of spiritual nectar, a concentrated byproduct. Yet the only suffering powerful enough to satiate them was that of the dying process. So these condemned demons made contact with a small group of renegade soldiers, and then deceived these men by inducing them to kill others in exchange for some of the great secrets and lore of the ages. That is how the Brotherhood of the Scythe was born. And that is their primary purpose: to procure the evil nourishment these foul beings crave.”

“If these wandering Watchers can't possess humans, then what just happened down there? Why were so many cast from those men?”

“Those were other, opportunistic, even ordinary demons, if you will. Think about it. You cannot devote yourself to sadistic murder without opening yourself up to, and being driven by, profound evil.”

“How does this relate to our group called Watchers?”

“I believe the earthly Watchers, by which I mean
us
, were ordained by a new angelic host of Holy Watchers, as the faithful of their heavenly ranks were called, in order to assist the unfallen angels in resisting and destroying this horde wherever possible. We have always opposed them. We have always sought them out—even in the Sisterhood's most far-flung and isolated clusters. Over time, we have become mortal enemies to each other. And so it seems fated to always be.”

Abby reared back in her sitting perch against the wall. “I can't believe all this,” she said. “It's almost too much to digest, let alone how it all relates to my mystery.”

“Tell me about your mother,” Rulaz asked gently.

Abby's face fell and a pall of sadness came over her features. “I never really knew my mother.”

She went on to explain how her mother had disappeared during her childhood, how her father had later divorced her mom
in absentia
and remarried, and that he'd long urged his daughter to let go as it concerned her mom, and to move on with her life.

Rulaz fixed Abby with a fierce gaze. “That is where our healing lies, my Sister. For you, and for us all. Heal the rift. Go to her.”

“I can't,” Abby replied. “I don't know where she is.”

“Please,” Rulaz insisted. “Try to find her. I can't tell you why, but I feel God telling me that it will lead to the breach you seek to heal. Everything depends on it . . .” She looked at the sky and winced. “What a fouling of this beautiful city.”

Abby finally gave in to her curiosity and looked out above her, feeling her Sight almost beckoning her.

She almost fell backward. What assaulted her spiritual senses reminded her of a word she'd learned that year in an art appreciation class—
chiaroscuro
, or a sharp contrast between light and shadow. Blinding white light shot and waved all over the sky as intoxicatingly beautiful angels waged battle, punctuated by horribly distorted pockets of sheer blackness which, if she cared to focus, would resolve into the forms of ghastly and nightmarish beasts, grappling and struggling furiously.

She turned away. Even a moment's look seemed to have sucked all the strength and initiative from her body.

“Look over there,” said Rulaz, pointing to the side, down toward el-Takiya Street.

The second group of so-called monks had now entered the horrific scene. Their elderly leader's arm was pointing upward, straight at them. The men ran over to the metal staircase and began sprinting up its steps.