Requiem (14 page)

Her eyes widened a bit, and
she raised her hands, her fingers flared. “This, Nina! This! When
protecting you and your father became difficult for the Ryel’s,
when dark things began surrounding our home on a daily
basis…his
death
.
Honestly, Nina! What else could I mean?” she said,
exasperated.

“
Okay. Okay, I'm sorry,” I
said to calm her.

She relaxed, and then smoothed her
expression. “Now, if you don’t mind, I really must be going,” she
said, brushing past Jared.

Jared’s features tightened, instantly
metamorphosing to anger. “I’m trying to save Nina’s life, and
you’re worried about being on time for a party?”

Cynthia looked back at me with a sad
expression. “It’s a mother’s duty to protect her child. But
sometimes, we must let them save themselves.”

Her words stung me. Our relationship was
never what one may call close, but when the occasion called for it,
she extended some emotion. She had never been cruel or unkind, but
at that moment, I felt like an orphan.

My mother walked to the waiting car quickly,
disappearing when Robert closed the door behind her.

Jared pulled me into his arms, and I let my
cheek burn against his chest.

“
I can’t imagine how you
must feel right now,” Jared whispered against the top of my hair.
“But I want you to remember two things: Cynthia feels helpless, and
that’s not a feeling she deals well with, and I want to remind you
that I love you, and that love is unlike anything I’ve ever felt
before. If she makes you feel unworthy or unwanted in any way…know
that every breath you take is precious to me.”

I nodded, unable to thank him for the words
I didn’t even know myself that I needed to hear.

We walked to the large staircase, and I
slumped to the first step. “I don’t want to…I can’t think about her
anymore.”

Jared nodded once. “So let’s think about
what she said.”

A small laugh escaped my throat. “That I’m
the woman in Hell’s prophecy? I’ve been told several things in the
last twenty-four hours that are, quite frankly, ridiculous, and
Cynthia’s story gets the prize.”

Jared didn’t smile. “What if it’s true? It’s
not like Cynthia is the most creative person on the planet. Why
would she lie?”

I craned my neck, looking
at him in disbelief. “Jared? I can’t
believe
you’re falling for her
nonsense! My father never wanted children? That’s absurd! Jack was
the best father anyone could ever hope for. You’ve said it
yourself…he worshiped me.”

“
Cynthia didn’t say he
didn’t like children. I took it as he hoped to prevent something.
We need to do a little digging in your ancestry.”

I rolled my eyes. “Wild goose chase. You’re
wasting time even discussing this.”

“
What do you know about
your family?” he asked.

“
What do you know
about
your
family?” I retorted.

Jared’s brows moved in. “I have an uncle in
South Dakota. My grandparents are gone, you know that.”

“
So are mine. My parents
were only children, Jared. I have no family to speak
of.”

“
So we start with the
grandparents on Jack’s side,” he said, standing. “Where does
Cynthia keep stuff like that?”

“
Stuff like
what?”

“
Family albums, newspaper
cut outs…a family tree?”

“
I’ve never seen anything
like that,” I shrugged.

Jared sighed. “Jack has a coat of arms in
his office. You can’t tell me family wasn’t important to him.”

I cupped my chin in my hand and thought for
a moment. Cynthia’s words replayed in my head. Kim’s story and
Cynthia’s were now meshed together— intertwined because of the
prophecy, and the book it came from. Somehow life was even less
normal than when a demon stood in my apartment. I felt like a
freak.

“
My father’s office…” I
trailed off.

“
You thought of something?”
Jared said, pulling me to my feet.

My eyes widened. “Last year, when I was in
Jack’s office for the Port of Providence file, one of his cabinets
were locked. I never found the keys to it. When I found the file I
was looking for, I sort of forgot about it.”

Jared pulled me to my feet, quickly climbing
the stairs. I tugged on the drawers of the row of file cabinets
until I found one that wouldn’t budge. “That’s it,” I said. “The
keys in the desk don’t work. I’ve tried them.”

Jared looked around the room, and then
casually yanked the drawer. It made a loud popping noise, but it
opened easily enough—for Jared.

“
Well, that’s one way to do
it,” I grinned.

Jared fingered through each of the papers.
“You start with the bottom drawer. We’ll meet in the middle.”

I sat on my knees, pulling open my
designated drawer. Old pictures, bank accounts overseas, but
nothing about family. The familiar frustration from the last time I
had spent rummaging through his office for clues clouded my
brain.

Jared powered through three drawers before I
finished one, but when he reached the fourth, he stopped. He held a
paper in front of his face, and then looked beyond it to the
adjacent wall.

“
What is it?” I asked.
Before he could answer, I noted that it was drawing of a coat of
arms, similar to the one hanging from the wall.

“
Does the Franks mean
anything to you, Nina?” he asked.

I shook my head, pushing myself to my feet.
“No. Should it?”

“
You’re Irish, aren’t
you?”

“
Yeah? So?” Some days I had
patience for his step-by-step approach of getting to the truth.
This was not one of those days.

“
It’s a common
misconception. Surely Jack wouldn’t display something that didn’t
specifically belong to him.”

“
You lost me,” I said,
hoping he would get to the point.

“
Coats Of Arms were
designed to designate a knight whose face would’ve been covered
during battle. They are inherited from father to son, so it
wouldn’t make sense to have a ‘Grey’ coat of arms for an entire
family or last name. Jack wasn’t the type to buy into that
nonsense, so this must be the original, passed down.”

“
Okay.”

Jared scanned the drawing. “This is similar,
but it’s not the same. And it’s unlike any crest or coat of arms
I’ve ever seen.”

Jared handed the paper to me, and I recoiled
at the misshapen beast. It had the body of a large cat, perhaps a
panther or leopard, and large paws, I guessed to be the paws of a
bear. Seven heads ascended from its body, with horns, and crowns
sitting atop those horns. It was grotesque.

“
This is our family’s coat
of arms? Sick,” I said, handing the drawing back to Jared. “No
wonder Jack changed it. He couldn’t hang something that monstrous
on the wall.”

“
This is very similar to
the creature in Revelations,” Jared said, staring at the twisted
black lines on the paper. The heads, the horns, the
crowns….”

“
What
creature
?” I said, wary.

Jared made a face, and then
pored over the other files in the drawer. He stopped for a moment,
and then leaned in closer to the document he had paused on. His
shoulders slumped. “
Agh
…no,” he whispered, his head falling forward.

“
What is it?” I said,
afraid of what he might say.

He nervously rubbed the back of his neck,
pulling the paper from the drawer. He looked once more, and then
shut his eyes tight.

I fidgeted. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

His eyes slowly opened, and the twin storms
of his irises sent panic throughout my body. He glanced at the coat
of arms on the wall. “I promise you, Nina. You don’t want to
know.”

“
I think I have to know at
this point,” I said, pulling the paper from his hand.

Jared shook his head. “I can still figure
out how to save you without you knowing everything. We’ve talked
about that before. Trust me when I say that you don’t want to know
this.”

I lowered my eyes to the paper. It was a
list of names, similar to a family tree, but it only followed one
line. My name was at the bottom. Higher on the list, names like
Dagobert the third, and Clovis the first. The name at the top,
Merovius, had two fathers: King Clodian; the other name caused my
legs to disappear, and I dropped the paper to the floor.

Jared supported my weight. “Sweetheart?” he
said, pulling my chin up so that he could see into my eyes. He
lifted me into his arms and carried me to Jack’s desk chair,
kneeling before me.

“
What…what does that mean?
What the hell is a Beast of the Sea?” I wailed.

Jared shook his head. “It’s just a story,
Nina, nothing more.”

“
Tell me,” I
whispered.

Jared’s jaws fluttered. “I don’t want
to.”

“
What am I?”

A small smile touched Jared’s mouth. “You’re
human. You just have some pretty potent blood running through your
veins.”

“
I need to know,” I said,
touching his cheek with my fingertips.

Jared seemed just as horrified as I was. In
the beginning, he had tortured himself over bringing me into his
world, stealing away my mundane life forever. Now it was I that
regretted involving him in my life—we were both spiraling into a
nightmare that didn't seem to end.

Jared sighed. “Merovingians. You’re a
Merovingian, Nina. A very long time ago, your family ruled with
divine power, under the belief that they are direct descendants of
Jesus Christ.”

“
Jesus didn’t have
children,” I scoffed.

“
They myth is that Jesus
and Mary Magdalene were married, and their children are the
ancestors of the Merovingian blood line. It’s known in less human
circles that the story was perpetuated to keep the Merovingians in
power. There are people even today that believe it.”

“
So you’re saying it’s not
true? That's a relief. I'm at least somewhat less of a
freak.”

Jared looked away, cautiously choosing his
next words. “Have you heard of the Nephilim, Nina?”

I shook my head, dreading where his story
would go.

“
Okay,” he said, “Have you
heard of the story of David and Goliath?”

“
Yeah,” I sniffed, “The
skinny kid that threw a rock at a giant’s head and killed
him.”

“
Goliath was not one of a
kind. He had family, people…Antediluvian Giants. Some called them
Anakim, other refer to them as Nephilim. They had many tribes, and
their remains have been found, measuring anywhere from nine and a
half feet to fourteen feet. Some have two full rows of teeth. They
were different; not completely human. The Holy Bible acknowledges
their origin in Genesis:
‘That the sons of
God saw the daughters of men were fair, and they took them wives of
all which they chose. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days,
and also after, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of
men, and they bore children unto them.’
”

“
Sons of God? Like the ones
Cynthia was talking about?” I asked.

“
Yes. Angels.”

“
Do you know the whole
Bible by heart?” I asked, attempting to detour the frightening
thought swirling in my mind.

“
Most of it,” he said, a
corner of his mouth slightly turning up. It vanished as quickly as
it appeared. “God wiped out the Nephilim with the great flood
because their blood was contaminated. He needed a direct line from
Adam to Abraham, because that is the blood line that was prophesied
to bring the Messiah. Noah was his way to decontaminate the blood
line, and assure the prophecy would come about.”

“
My brain hurts,” I
complained, rubbing my head.

Jared kissed my hair, wrapping his arms
around me. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” he whispered
softly. “Jack didn’t want children because he knew he carried
Nephilim blood, and the Merovingians are part of the prophecy in
the Naissance de Demoniac. He knew when I fell in love with you,
that you and I would meet all of the requirements.”

“
What requirements?” My
voice was muffled from pushing my face into his chest.

“
A prophecy requires
certain elements to come together in order to come to fruition,
Nina. A descendant of the Nephilim procreating with a Hybrid…it’s
the perfect storm. Remember when Eli told us that only seven other
human/hybrid cases had happened since the dawn of time? How many of
those humans do you think were Merovingian? Jack knew you were the
woman in the book because he knew what he was...and what I was.
Once he knew I was in love with you, he made the decision to steal
Shax’s book to try to find a way to protect you.”

“
From what?” I cringed. I
kept asking questions I didn’t want the answers to.

He lifted my chin to face him. “That’s why
we need the book. I need to find out what interest they might have
in a child we might have. I don’t know if they want it to happen,
or they will fight to prevent it. It depends on what that scenario
means for Hell.”

“
Wait…,” I said, my mind
finally focusing enough to form coherent thoughts, “you said the
Nephilim were wiped out in the big flood. So how can I be related
to them?”

Jared raised his eyebrows once, sighing.
“That was a tactic used to keep Jesus’ blood line pure. That
doesn’t mean fallen angels taking human women didn’t happen after
that.”