The Fallen

“And is that how the first Nephilim were born?” Aaron asked.

The fallen angel nodded. “You catch on quick. Yep, the Grigori are to blame for that whole mess—but not entirely.” Zeke stood up and sloughed off his coat, draping it over the foot of the bed. “We weren’t the only angels to find the human ladies attractive. There were others, deserters from the Great War in Heaven. They came to Earth to hide.”

A Great War in Heaven; Aaron recalled the subject from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. He’d read it in Mr. O’Leary’s sophomore English class. “So that wasn’t fiction?” he asked the Grigori. “There really was a war between angels?”

Zeke plopped himself back down on the bed. Aaron noticed a cigarette in one of his hands.

“It was real all right,” Zeke answered.

He pinched the end of the cigarette between two fingers and tightly squeezed shut his eyes. Suddenly Aaron saw a flame and smoke. Zeke had lit the cigarette with his fingers. I’m dreaming, he thought.

“The Grigori weren’t there for it, but from what I hear, it was pretty awful.” The old angel took a drag and held it. He tilted his head back and blew the smoke into the air above him to form a billowing gray cloud.

“Not supposed to smoke in here either,” he said, “but I can’t help it. A real bitch to quit.”

He took another puff and let it flow from his nostrils. “The Morningstar really blew it,” Zeke said, returning to times past. “He didn’t know how good he had it.”

Aaron was confused. “The Morningstar?”

Zeke puffed greedily on the cigarette as if it were the last one he would ever have. “Lucifer. Lucifer Morningstar? Was once the right hand of God then got greedy? He and those who followed his lead screwed up even bigger than we did.”

The room stank of smoke and Aaron wished there were a window to open. He waved his hand in front of his face in an attempt to breathe untainted air.

“Compared to what happened to him, we got off easy.”

Gabriel started to dream as he lay on the floor; his legs twitched and paddled as if he were chasing something. Aaron gri

He turned his attention back to Zeke. “You were punished?”

Zeke nodded ever so slowly, his eyes gazing off into the past as he remembered. “We were banished to Earth, never to see Heaven again. We wanted to be human so badly, we could live among them forever, they said.” He sucked the cigarette down to the filter trying to get every last bit of carcinogen into his body.

“That wasn’t so bad—was it?” Aaron asked, caution in his voice.

Zeke rubbed the tip of the cigarette’s filter dead against the bedframe and flicked it to the floor. “Nah,” he said in a dismissive tone. “Not really. It was what we wanted anyway.”

Aaron could sense the angel’s growing unrest. Zeke reached behind himself and began to rub the back of his neck and shoulder blades.

“Except they took our wings,” he said. There was a tremble in his voice.

“Who…who took your wings?” Aaron asked.

“Who do you think?” Zeke answered sharply as he continued to rub his back and shoulders. “The Powers. They cut off our wings and…and they killed our children.”

Zeke quickly swabbed at his eyes, smearing away any trace of emotion. Aaron wondered how long it had been since the angel had spoken of his past.

“They’re ruthless, Aaron,” he said. “They can sense when a Nephilim is reaching maturity—sometimes before. They hunt it down and kill it before it can gain full use of its birthright. That’s why I did what I did—to give you a fighting chance.”

Gabriel came suddenly awake as if sensing the pervasive atmosphere of sadness that now seemed to fill the tiny room with the cigarette smoke.

“What is wrong?” the dog asked, looking from Aaron to Zeke.

“Is that how you get even?” Aaron asked. “When you find us, you do something to turn us completely into Nephilim? Is that how you get back at the Powers for what they took from you?”

Zeke sadly shook his head. “I learned long ago not to interfere.”

“And those others you’ve encountered—the Powers killed them?”

“Probably,” Zeke said in a whisper. “Eventually.”

“Why me then?” Aaron asked the fallen angel. “Why did you do it for me and not the others?”

Zeke shrugged. “I really don’t know,” he answered. “Something told me you’re special.”

CHAPTER SIX

Inside the V.I. Lenin nuclear power plant, twenty-five kilometers upstream from the Ukraine city of Chernobyl, an angel screamed in rage.

Verchiel flung open two reinforced steel doors in the dilapidated structure that housed the number four reactor, the one that had exploded in 1986 rendering much of the surrounding Ukrainian countryside uninhabitable. In his time stationed upon this world, he had borne witness to the destructive potential of the human animal many times over, and wondered with disgust how long it would be before they destroyed themselves once and for all.

The master of the Powers strode into the reactor room, followed closely by six of his elite soldiers and the wild-eyed feral child held in check with collar and leash. The child coughed and sneezed as clouds of thick radioactive dust, undisturbed since the plant officially closed just a few years before, billowed into the air with their passing.

The explosion here had released forty times the amount of radioactivity unleashed by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even now radiation levels were still incredibly high and quite dangerous to all forms of life. But that was of little concern to the nuclear power plant’s current residents—or its visitors.

Verchiel stopped and stared with displeasure. The vast chamber had been turned into a place of worship, a makeshift church. An altar of sorts was laid out before him. Hundreds of candles of various sizes burned in front of a crude painting depicting an angelic being in the loving embrace of a mortal woman. And hovering in the sky above this coupling was an infant, a child glowing like the sun. Four figures, dressed in heavy woolen robes, knelt before the altar in silent prayer. Priests of the profane beliefs. They showed no sign that they were aware of his presence.

“Sacrilege!” Verchiel bellowed, his booming voice echoing off the concrete-and-metal walls of the high-ceilinged reactor chamber.

One of the figures stirred from his benediction, muttered something beneath his breath, and bowed his head to the shrine before he stood. The others continued their silent worship.

“Welcome to our holy place,” he said.

“You disappoint me, Byleth,” Verchiel responded as the figure at the crude altar gradually turned to face him. “A deserter and a disgrace to your host, but this…” He gestured to the shrine. “It offends the Almighty to the core of His Being.”

Byleth smiled piously and strolled closer, hands clasped before him. “Does it really, Verchiel? Does the belief in a prophecy that preaches the reuniting of God with His fallen children really offend Him?” The robed angel stopped before them. “Or does it simply offend you?” Again Byleth smiled.

“What happened to you, Byleth?” Verchiel asked. “You were one of my finest soldiers. What made you fall so far from His grace?”

The angel chuckled softly as his hands disappeared inside the sleeves of his robe. “Is this usually what you ask before you kill us?”

Verchiel’s lip curled back in a sneer. “It is merely an attempt to understand how you could turn your back upon a sacred duty to the Creator of all things.”

“You must know these things before you condemn us to death?” Byleth asked, his gaze unwavering.

“Yes, before you are executed for your crimes,” the Powers’ commander answered. “A chance to purge yourself of guilt before the inevitable.”