I, Jequon: Part One of the Nephilim Chronicles Read online

  Unfortunately, Jesus’ words to doubting Thomas provided ample ammunition for detractors like Worley to shoot holes in this approach. From John 20:29, “…because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed…” Another dead end.

  The sound of footsteps interrupted further self-flagellation. Two men heading in his direction. Maybe a couple of the other evangelists had caught him ducking out early and were coming to check on him. Henrik hoped not. He didn’t want to deal with their forced sympathy and offers of prayer. He picked up his pace and pretended not to notice them. Just this minor exertion got his armpits working like a do-it-yourself bio-diesel reactor. So much for subtlety. His heart felt too big for his chest. His calves burned. His disdain for exercise wasn’t doing him any favors. His pursuers were closing in.

  Almost there.

  Henrik readied his key for quick insertion into the van door. The men were still a good twenty yards behind him. He’d made it. He unlocked the door without too much fumbling, climbed inside, and started the engine straight away to drown out their voices if they happened to call out to him. Plausible deniability, Henrik told himself. He depressed the clutch and shifted into reverse; gave the German 4-cylinder a little gas and eased the VW out of its space.

  Just then a strong hand squeezed his shoulder.

  He went rigid.

  “Henrik, we need to have a talk with you.”

  A droplet of hot urine dribbled out from the tip of Henrik’s penis, soiling his Fruit-of-the-Loom tighty-whities. His legs began to shake. His foot slipped off the clutch. The van lurched backward and stalled.

  “Relaaax,” the second man added. “Drive to the ocean. This won’t take long.”

  The beach. In the dark. Two strange men. Henrik found nothing relaxing about the situation.

  “W-w-wh-what do you want from me? I don’t have any money. Please. You can take my van. I haven’t seen your faces. Just let me go. Please. I won’t even file a report. It’s yours, just—”

  “I said, relax!”

  The first man still gripped Henrik’s shoulder. “We just want to talk. That’s all. Now, start the van. Pull out of here nice and easy like a normal human being.”

  As he turned over the engine Henrik caught a whiff of ammonia and multi-vitamins. He added dehydration to his list of ills. The hand retreated from his shoulder.

  “How do I know you aren’t going to hurt me?”

  “You’ll just have to take it on faith,” said the second man.

  If Henrik intended to make a run for it, now would be the time. Before they left the arena parking lot. He could build up a little momentum first and then leap out the driver’s side door, sending the van and its stowaways careening into a Mercedes or an Audi or a Prius.

  “Faith,” the man behind him repeated. “You know, like faith in God, or the faith you want fellow believers to have in your unpopular End Times teachings.”

  “That’s different!” Even as Henrik protested, he realized that the men must’ve listened to his sermon—and agreed with it.

  “Is it all that different?”

  “The way we see it,” the first man continued, “the faith we’re asking you to show, faith that we’re not going to rob you, kill you, and dump your body in the ocean is no different than someone having faith they’ll make it unscathed through the Great Tribulation.”

  The second man took over before Henrik could poke any holes in this argument. “You see? It’s the exact same kind of faith. Ninety-nine-times-out-of-a-hundred, two men get the jump on you in a parking lot at night, you’re going to die. Just like ninety-nine percent of the population is going to die when our Lord empties the cups of His wrath upon the earth. In either scenario, only persons of extreme, irrational faith believe they’re going to be spared.”

  “Problem is, most people are sheep. They lack the capacity for this kind of conviction, taking comfort only from their anonymity in the herd.”

  “What they need is a shepherd…”

  “…to protect them from the wolves.”

  “And you’re trying to be just such a shepherd, aren’t you, Henrik?”

  Henrik said nothing, but he found himself nodding in agreement.

  “Too bad you’re failing so miserably.”

  “I am.”

  “And all the while, pretend shepherds like Pastor Worley—wolves in sheep’s clothing—are leading your flock to certain slaughter.”

  Henrik turned right onto the main artery and drove west.

  “The good news, Henrik, is we can help you become a better shepherd.”

  To which the second man added, “And in return, you’ll help us hunt the wolves.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alt-Country replaces the keyboard-laced chanting I heard earlier. Sounds a little like Green Day doing a Johnny Cash cover, with some 1980’s Bengals mashed in.

  To each his own.

  Which seems to be the underlying theme of this place. Something for everyone. Three elevated stages centered against adjacent walls, three different types of action: girl-on-girl, girl-on-guy, girl-on-self. No penetration, so I guess you could call it dancing. Technically. Enclosed by this panty-triage triangle, a large dance floor awash in a sea of undulating flesh; a grinding, breathing tide of ravers pulled by their invisible exstacy-soaked moon.

  Yuri escorts us past the bar to a VIP room on the far side of this hipster / swinger / stripper hybrid. I’m in no mood for a lap dance. I want a drink. First one, chilled. Next one, body-temp.

  “Vodka?” he mouths back to me.

  I nod. He holds up two fingers to the bartender and then points to the back. He leads the way. I’m surprised these kids don’t part like the Red Sea before him. Guess he’s not that kind of gangsta.

  There are many Veingels in the crowd; their heads swivel in near perfect unison, tracking my progress. Like attracts like. Their bond with Lucian would have been even stronger.

  At the door labeled “Keep The Fuck Out” in English, Yuri knocks twice. One of his heavies escorts us inside and then leaves. We sit down at a poker table that’s seen better days and Yuri slides the five-hundred G’s less cab fare underneath. Our drinks are waiting.

  I don’t waste time with chit-chat. “How long was Lucian up there before you went to check?”

  “Forty-eight hours, almost to the minute.”

  “And how long did you wait to call me?”

  If Yuri’s not what he appears to be, I want to catch him in a lie as soon as possible. The club’s heavy Veingel presence mostly rules out SOJ involvement, as does Artemis being responsible for Lucian’s murder. But what can I say? The two snipers outside the train station leave me suspicious of the Russian.

  “Jequon, you I call immediately.”

  Immediately? I do the math: forty-eight hours, plus another twenty-four for me to arrive…meshes with the condition of the body, anyway.

  “Lucian, he was supposed to do a job for me north in Tuzla, but I hear he never make the trip. Not like him.”

  Lucian doing a job for Yuri? What the fuck?

  “Back up. You said you sent Lucian on a job. Maybe you’d better fill me in on how a Naphil finds himself taking orders from a human?”

  “Lucian, he started coming to the club a year ago. Quickly he becomes friendly with the ladies. Paying customers, they like him. My dancers, they like him too. Before long, the club is earning triple…almost all girls, until the men who live here in this city, they find out where the girls are going, and then they come also. He is good for business. I see this. I ask him what can I do to make his time here more enjoyable? He ask for nothing. Still, his money was no good to me from then on, and I make sure the girls, they keep him happy.”

  “But…”

  Yuri hesitates, fingering a cigarette burn through the felt lining of the table. “I begin to grow jealous of him.”

  I nod and take a sip from my drink. “You are an ugly motherfucker.”

  “The gi
rls who work for me, I take what I want. But knowing I repulse them…it’s not the same.” Yuri digs in his pocket for a pack of clove cigarettes.

  “Do you mind?”

  “I do. Put them away.”

  He doesn’t argue. “But Lucian, he is still just a man—I think this at the time—so I can learn something about his effect on the girls. I ask Lucian, he will tell me his secret, yes?”

  I empty the vodka and crush an ice cube between my teeth. As written in the Codes, the penalty for revealing our true nature to a non-Veingel human is severe. Not even Donors realize what we are; the feedings are disguised as part of the sex act. Anesthetic enzymes present in our saliva render the bite painless, even pleasurable, while a very subtle and short-lived hallucinogenic provides the final layer of sensual distraction. Nor does the wound need be so deep as to scar, since our saliva also thins the blood as it mixes below the skin.

  “And so he just came clean and explained to you he was Nephilim. Just like that? What did you offer him?”

  Yuri downs his vodka. Gesturing to our empty glasses, he holds up two fingers to the closed-circuit security camera mounted to the ceiling in the back corner of the room.

  “At first, Lucian, he plays dumb. Says he doesn’t have any idea what I’m asking him about. I tell him it’s nothing, and change the subject. But later I ask him why I find a dancer crying in the dressing room. This girl, she screwing me one week before. And now, Lucian, he does not talk to this girl. It was an awkward conversation. Lucian, he was eager to change subject. So again I ask him, what can I do to improve his experience here. Anything at all, I tell him. And I say this so he knows I take offense if this time he turn down my offer.”

  “And?”

  “This time, a few things he mentions. He asks if I could provide him a supply of absinthe, a spirit outlawed for some time in this country. No problem, I tell him.”

  “What else?”

  “Lucian, he wants girls from Novaya Kutaya. You’d have to be a comrade to know of this isolated place. And these girls, they must undergo blood test, he says. Not for disease, which I check for always, but for blood type. Lucian, he says to me, bring only girls with type O-negative blood. And these girls, he make clear to me, are off-limits to anyone but him.”

  I can see where this is headed. Lucian wanted a private stash of O-negs. Immune girls from a farming community so backwater, they wouldn’t appear in any of our donor databases.

  Yuri looks expectantly into the security camera and taps at his wristwatch. “Oh, I almost forget. He also want the apartment upstairs. The rent is no more than an hour’s worth of his admirer’s bar tabs, so I give it to him, no problem.”

  “Did he tell you what he needed these girls for?”

  “No. He was loyal to your people. He did not tell me what he was until much later. By then, I already guess something like that. It is said the Green Fairy, she demands her own loyalty.”

  The absinthe. With a private supply of O-negs, Lucian could keep word of his indiscretions from spreading to other Nephilim in the region. Make it less likely that reports of his crimes would reach someone like me. Or an opportunistic traitor like Artemis.

  “So, let me guess. Lucian gets all Van Gogh from the wormwood, and at some point, he fucks up. Did he feed a little too long on one of the girls? Something like that?”

  Yuri shakes his head.

  “No. But every dancer in the club, he bite already before he request the type-O girls from Russia. These…these Veingels, as you call them, they know nothing of your feeding restrictions. He tells them nothing of the ways of your people until after it is too late. The math was not favorable. There weren’t enough Russian girls to go around.”

  Shit. Math indeed. Math is why we have the Codes. Why we need Donors. If the Veingels we turn were to feed indiscriminately on non-donors, in defiance of the strict quotas dictated by the Council, then the entire 6.5 billion-plus human inhabitants of Earth would become Veingel in just ninety-seven days. The immune O-negs, outnumbered fifteen-to-one, would be sucked dry even sooner, as their newly infected neighbors overwhelmed them a quart at a time.

  “Since we’re having this conversation, you must’ve found a solution.”

  “Yes. But not before things got hectic.”

  “Define hectic.”

  Yuri points to the camera. “You’ve noticed our security measures?”

  I nod.

  “We used to offer lap dances in this room. Naturally the girls’ safety is a concern, but who wants a bouncer around when busy dry humping? It happened that the patrons, they were who needed protection. Because—”

  “The girls were hungry. So you put two-and-two-together. The O-neg request, the dancers’ new iron-rich diet, and their infatuation with Lucian. How long before you confronted him?”

  “Two days, three at most. Of course, I assume he was vampire. Thank you, Hollywood bullshit. Let me tell you, much fear I have of him. But I was even more worried about my captains in Moscow. I cannot tell them my production is down because of blood suckers. They not believe such crazy talk. Fuck it, this must stop, I tell myself. Lucian, I go to him. I figure, human or not, he seem like reasonable guy.

  “And so he was. Lucian, he hears me out—says I am right to come to him. He sets me straight about your people, about Veingels and vampires, the Sons of Jared, the donor databases, the rules of feedings, the rules of the blood. All of it. Lucian, he know he fucked up. I guess he needed to get it off his chest. Also, he want my help.”

  One of Yuri’s dancers taps lightly on the door; comes in with our second round without waiting for Yuri to invite her. She sets down the drinks and retrieves the empty glasses with shark-like indifference to her employer, her eyes never leaving mine. With regular feedings, she will look this good forever. I’m sympathetic to her intentions, but I tilt my head back the direction she came to make it clear I do not want her. She is one of Lucian’s. I have my own Veingels.

  “Nadia is a very good time, but you are welcome to one of the O-negs if it is blood you prefer,” Yuri says, misinterpreting my dismissal.

  “No. Finish the story.”

  “Of course. So, we clean up the mess. I make infected patrons bouncers and tenders of the bar. I bring in enough O-negative girls for everyone and we set up strict rotation for feeding. For my understanding in this matter, and for my continued support of his vices, he places himself at my disposal. We become comrades.”

  Alcoholic or not, it’s hard to accept a Naphil would willingly defy the Codes. Or for that matter, subordinate himself to a human. It makes me wonder if Yuri was spiking the absinthe with something far more addictive. Then again, Lucian was 3rd Generation, his susceptibility to drink and drug an unfortunate symptom of a diluted bloodline. One of many weaknesses that explain why sons born unto the fourth generation or beyond are not made aware of their lineage, or accepted into Nephilim society.

  Human frailties aside, there’s another troubling aspect to his story I need the Russian to explain. “Today you were drugged, so it’s plausible that you would have missed Artemis on his way in to ambush me. But tell me, Yuri, how was he able to slip past your security cameras undetected on the night he killed Lucian?”

  “Jequon, I am sorry, but with much respect, you are wrong about his killer. He could be involved in some other way, but Artemis, as you call him, he did not murder Lucian. It was your people’s enemy. I will show you the video.”

  Yuri’s words hit me like a sucker-punch epiphany to the solar-plexus. Muscles in my abdomen knot up like braided Kevlar; tremble like cold gelatin. Artemis didn’t kill Lucian? The Sons of Jared did? So not only did I just kill one of my own, I killed an innocent.

  I slam the second vodka, its eighty-proof bite stinging my throat and filling my eyes with moist blur. I feel stupid. Weak. A slave mastered by a century’s long simmering rage. Worse, an obedient slave, craving the lash while holding the whip, knowing every stripe will fade and every wound will heal with someone else’s bloo
d.

  Yuri must be mistaken. I didn’t hear him correctly. “You have actual footage of them coming up the stairwell? Of seven men?”

  The Russian looks away, as if embarrassed. He fails to reply fast enough to incentivize further restraint. I erupt from my seat and lift him into the air by his throat.

  “Answer me when I ask you a question! Do you have footage of men coming up the stairwell?”

  “Yes. Please. I will…show you. Let me…down.”

  Only echoes of my father’s wisdom keep me from hurling Yuri through a wall. Learn from your mistakes, my son, so that you may outlive their consequences. I lower him to his feet a more sober man than when he left them.

  “I have better,” Yuri rasps, “than the stairwell.” He coughs raggedly and clears his throat to find his voice again. “I have entire recording of his murder…from inside room. I not know how to tell you this. I feel much shame about what I see.”

  “Lucian knew about the camera?”

  Yuri sits back down in his chair, the whites of his eyes now marbleized with burst capillaries.“No, not like that. I have no surveillance inside his apartment. Only outside door. But Lucian, sometimes he have laptop next to his bed. This laptop have webcam. Many times, he record his fucking.”

  I connect the dots. “And the laptop had WiFi, which Lucian linked-up to on the same network your video cams use—the same network as the computer you use to save security footage.”

  Yuri nods. “Yes, but is not a simple matter of setting up file sharing or remote desktop. I first have to install spyware.”

  “Not exactly difficult for someone in your line of work.”

  “This is true. He use Windows PC. And, the Bratva, we have always the best hackers.”

  “And the best sex traffickers and black market pornographers.”

  “True also, but this spying was not business, and also—”

  I cut him off. “I’m sure your comrade Lucian would have been thrilled to know you were creating spank-tapes from his exploits.”

  Yuri looks down, says nothing. Flicks a piece of lint off his sleeve. He doesn’t have to say that maybe someone fresh from killing a cousin shouldn’t pass judgment. I bite down on the inside of my lip.