The Naphil's Kiss (4 page)

Chapter 8

A remote part of Central Montana, 1989

“Mr. Smith, tell me the story again,” ten-year-old Josiah begged. “Tell me about my father.”

“Joe, I've told you three times this week.” The silver-haired black man sighed, frustrated by his young student's pestering.

“It's okay, Josiah,” Annie replied. “I remember it. I'll tell you.”

Josiah smiled, white teeth flashing in his café au lait face, but he was in no way deterred. “I want to hear it from your grandpa,” he told his friend.

“Well, Josiah,” Mr. Smith replied, “I'll consider it… after practice.”

Josiah commenced to whining as only a small boy can, but Mr. Smith put his hand on the child's thin back and ushered him out of the central meeting hall of the compound to the courtyard. Annie trailed along, trying not to look too eager.
Why doesn't Josiah like practice? I love it! I'd do it every day if I had the chance!

But today, it seemed, Grandpa was feeling traditional. Maybe the fact that the other elder clerics were patrolling the shooting range had something to do with it. Those old men and women didn't care for the sight of a pistol or rifle in the hands of a young girl. Grandpa handed the semi-automatic handgun to Josiah and reminded him to aim only at the target. He stood by watching the boy aim, fire, and miss. The recoil nearly knocked Josiah on his butt. Annie grinned. She could control a pistol. It was easy for her. But she had gotten some height in the last year and Josiah was still little-kid small. Annoyed at being left out of target practice, Annie crept away from her grandfather, who was showing Josiah – again – how to strengthen his stance to compensate for the recoil. She crossed the flat expanse of treeless grass which formed the courtyard to the far corner. There, against a white stone wall, a small pavilion with a bright green roof and matching columns provided shade for the six ancient specimens who, along with grandfather, provided leadership to the Order of Clerics.

She stood behind one support column and peeked at the group.
They're so OLD. That one there must be forty!
Unabashedly nosy, she listened to what they were saying.

“Yes, I know he's a unique creature, but so far he shows signs of being nothing more than what he is… a weak Naphil. He's proven himself slower, smaller, and less adept than any of his brethren,” said a woman with white hair like meringue, styled in a puffy bouffant on top of her head.

“He's young,” retorted a balding gentleman with huge glasses like car windshields perched on a short, upturned nose. “And it's been millennia since there was a new Naphil. Maybe they develop more slowly.”

“Ha!” laughed a third, another man, this one with a nimbus of silver hair and deep wrinkles on his cheeks. “He's only one quarter angel, three quarters human. We should train him as a cleric and forget about the rest. How's his father? Is he out of confinement yet? No one fights like Lucien.”

“He is to be released later this week,” said the first woman, resting her hand on one of the rough-hewn columns.

From across the lawn, the pistol sounded another deafening blast. Annie turned to look. This time Josiah was actually sitting on the ground. The shot had gone wide again, she could see. The target remained unblemished. Grandfather reached down and hauled the boy to his feet, quickly averting his face. Annie saw the flash of irritated amusement.

A sigh from behind her brought Annie's attention back to the elders.

“We'll be lucky if he even manages to become a decent cleric,” said Nimbus.

The others nodded solemnly. Then Windshield Glasses added, “As many Nephilim as we've lost in just my lifetime, I had such high hopes.”

“Stop, friends,” said Bouffant. “We are not alone. Come out, little one. We know you're there.”

Annie's stomach swooped. Face burning, she stepped out from behind the column.

“Eavesdropping, were you?” Bouffant asked her, scowling.

Annie gulped and nodded. No point in lying. She'd already been caught.

“Why?” Bouffant asked, her expression more unwelcoming than ever.

Instead of answering the question, Annie posed one of her own. “You were talking about Josiah, weren't you?”

“What concern is that of yours?” the elder snapped.

“He's my friend,” she retorted, refusing to be cowed. “There's nothing wrong with him.”

“Oh, child. If only that were true,” Windshield Glasses stepped over to her and placed one heavy hand on her slender shoulder. “But don't worry. We'll train him up. He'll become a warrior yet. Believe it.”

“Oh, I do,” Annie replied, pushing a lock of bushy light brown hair off her forehead and boldly meeting each set of eyes; blue, gray, and green, with her own dark brown ones. “He'll be the best of all of us. At least, as long as you refuse to let
me
train. After all, we have women senators and women ambassadors. Why not women warriors?”

“Now, now,” Windshield Glasses patted her head soothingly. “When you get older, you'll understand. Battles are no place for a girl, and the one we're facing is so terrible. You'll be glad to hide away in the tower.”

“Maybe
you
will,” she retorted, jerking her head away from his hand, “but no matter what it takes, I'll be on the field with the warriors.”

“Watch your tone,” Bouffant snapped, but the two men laughed indulgently and shooed her away. Sulking, Annie crept back to target practice just in time to see Josiah fire another wild shot. This time he remained standing, but the bullet went high above the target, over the stone wall at the far side of the courtyard, and embedded itself in a pine tree growing out of the hillside.

“Oh for Heaven's sake,” Annie sighed. She walked right up to Josiah and wrenched the gun from his hand, pushing him down with a nudge of her shoulder. “Do it like this.” She aimed at the target and pulled the trigger, burying a bullet just to the left of the bull's-eye. “That's how you fire a kill shot,” she told her friend. Then she tossed the pistol to the grass beside him and stalked back into the compound.

***

Three days later

Lucien stretched out to his full height. Not used to traveling by car, he'd been unprepared for the tight quarters. His almost-seven-foot frame could hardly be squeezed into the cramped interior. And then he'd been driven almost a full day without the chance to extend his limbs. This was the last phase of his punishment. During the long drive he'd remembered the day it had begun.

He'd arrived at the compound ten years earlier. It was in this white block in the Montana wilderness where all clerics lived, where the Nephilim went to heal from injuries and rest after long campaigns. This time, he'd done the unthinkable. He'd arrived with an infant in his arms. The son of a Naphil. The day was etched forever in his memory.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Stop that pounding, I'm coming,” a cranky-sounding female voice responded to his knock. The door flew open to reveal Pearl Smith, a beautiful biracial girl who'd had a crush on Lucien when she was young. Two years married, she was expecting and her belly swelled tremendously. Lucien thought she must be about due to deliver.

“Lucien!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him. He turned slightly to the side, protecting his precious bundle from her exuberance.

“What do you have there?” she asked.

“I need to see your father,” he replied, ignoring her question.

Pearl nodded, her light brown curls dancing with her movement. “Come on.” She grabbed his arm and led him to the conference room where the elder clerics, all seven of them, were seated around a wide oak table. Surrounding them on all the walls, shelf after built-in wooden shelf groaned with books, all ancient, moldy, and warped. On the table, a lambskin scroll had been carefully laid out. The margins of the document, as well as the spines of many of the books, bore a strange image embossed into the material and gilded. It was the symbol of the incubus, he had been told, though he'd never much cared for prophecy. A flared base tapered to a sharp point, like a fence finial. A gold circle was centered on the spike. Two blades, like back-curving daggers, crossed just below the circle, their `handles' affixed to the spike before crossing and curving down towards the base and upwards toward the point.

Heads of gray, white, silver, and one salt-and-pepper leaned over the treasured document. The shades had been closed to prevent sunlight from damaging the crumbling material, and only a small lamp illuminated the room. The darkness seemed to close in on Lucien like a physical touch. He longed for the hot, clean air of the desert, lightly perfumed with cactus flowers and Sarahi's sweet scent.

At the sound of the door bursting open, the four men and three women turned.

“Pearl,” Mr. Smith, the head elder, exclaimed, “you can't just interrupt a meeting like that…”

“But, Father, Lucien has come. He needs to talk to you.”

Fourteen eyes turned his direction and skewered him.

“Well, Naphil, what is so very important you couldn't wait a few minutes to brief us?”

“Mr. Smith, I…” He closed his eyes, unsure how to continue.

“You what, Lucien?” the man said, rising and crossing to him, laying a hand on his arm. His eyes fell on the baby. “And who is this little fellow? Just a few weeks old, I'll warrant. Goodness, he looks like Pearl did at that age. Whose baby is this, Lucien?”

“He's uh… mine,” Lucien managed to force out at last.

Mr. Smith looked askance at him, his brown eyes huge with shock. Though nowhere near the age of the rest of the elders seated around the table, the force of his personality showed he would be in charge in due time. He had leadership stamped all over him. The surprised eyes crinkled at the corners and the full lips fell open in a loud laugh.

“Yours? Lucien, you goof! I never knew Nephilim had a sense of humor.”

“Um, we don't,” he replied.

The laughter died instantly. Eight humans inhaled sharply.

“Lucien?” Pearl asked in a trembling voice.

Mr. Smith was still examining the baby. Josiah yawned, his tiny mouth cracking wide. And then he opened his eyes and regarded the middle-aged gentleman with a puzzled expression.

Mr. Smith's eyebrows drew together. “He is yours. I can see that. So, Lucien, second in command of all Nephilim, a general in the army of half-angels, has broken his vows. Who, may I ask, is his mother?”

“That I will not say,” Lucien replied. “But she did not abandon our child by choice. She's in a… dangerous situation.” He looked down into the green eyes which so resembled his beloved's. His heart clenched and his eyes burned. He looked up at the elder-in-training, his former sidekick, and let his desperation show. “I have broken my vow. I admit it. Punish me in any way you wish, but, please, help me with my son.”

Mr. Smith shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but Pearl jumped in ahead of him.

“Of course, Lucien. Of course. He'll need to be fed. I think I can get one of the other mothers to feed him until…” She placed her hand on her belly. “And then I'll care for him myself. Nurse him myself. I promise you, no harm will come to your baby while I live.” She leaned up. Lucien bent to receive the gentle touch of her lips on his cheek. He closed his eyes against a flood of relief, but a single tear escaped. With one arm holding Josiah, and the other around Pearl, he was unable to wipe it away, and it slipped down the length of his cheek and dropped from his chin to the floor.

“Lucien.”

He blinked, shaken from the deep memory. He stood before the same white stone wall he'd seen hundreds of times since the decision had been made to transfer one fifth of the Nephilim to North America, in the year 1712. This had been a center of angelic power long before even the distant cities of Billings, Helena, and Glendive had been built. From there, it had been easy enough to pop over to Virginia and keep an eye on the English settlers, to Louisiana to monitor the French, and to the southwest to watch the Spaniards for signs of demonic infiltration. Even now, they remained in relative isolation, despite the intrusiveness of the modern world. The Nephilim preferred it that way, as did the clerics, an order of warrior priests and scholars who supported and fought alongside their semi-angelic counterparts. Without the clerics, the Nephilim could well have been wiped out by now. And it was to them Lucien had submitted himself for punishment.

Ten years had been his sentence. Ten years at a monastery in Santa Fe, among human monks, far from his work, his friends, his son. A decade not knowing what had become of Sarahi. How it had gnawed at him, the fate of his beloved and his child being completely out of his hands. He had dedicated himself to the training prescribed for him, the deprivation and the silence. But now that time was past. Someday he would find Sarahi, but now he needed to see Josiah. As he followed the young cleric who had driven the car, he wondered if the boy had grown like a human or Naphil. At ten, a human child would be poised on the brink of adolescence. Half-angels matured much more slowly. Lucien had experienced puberty at the age of forty, just after the Great Flood.

The cleric opened a heavy wooden door and stood beside it, urging Lucien to enter.