Verchiel motioned for his men to lift the repenter from the ground, and they did just that—but he continued to examine the leader’s troubling features.
“I used to see it every time I saw my reflection,” he said as he was borne aloft by the angels of the Powers.
His words struck a sensitive chord. Verchiel’s expression changed to one of unbridled fury, and he hinged toward the repenter, a new weapon of flame taking shape. Will it be a sword to cleave my skull in two—or maybe a battle-ax to separate my head from my shoulders? he wondered. The weapon became a mace, and the angel swung with a force that would shatter mountains. It connected with the side of the prisoner’s head, and an explosion, very much like the birth of a galaxy, blossomed behind his eyes.
As he slipped into the void, he was accompanied by the fading sounds of the world he was leaving behind, the murmurs of prayer, the moan of the mountain winds, the pounding wings of vengeful angels, and the rapid-fire beating of a frightened mouse’s heart.
Then, for a time, all was blissfully silent.
CHAPTER ONE
Aaron Corbet accelerated to seventy on I-95 heading north. He turned up the volume on the cassette player and casually glanced to the right to see the angel Camael wincing as if in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Aaron asked. “Do you sense something? What is it?”
The angel shook his head, his expression wrinkling with distaste. “The noise,” he said, pointing a slender finger at the dashboard cassette player. “It brings tears to my eyes.”
Aaron smiled. “Oh, you like it?”
“No,” the angel grumbled as he shook his head. “It pains me.”
“It’s the Dave Matthews Band!” Aaron exclaimed, genuinely stunned.
“I don’t care whose band it is,” the angel growled, moving agitatedly about in the passenger seat. “It makes my eyes water.”
Annoyed, Aaron hit the eject button, and the cassette slowly emerged with a soft, mechanical whir. “There,” he said, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. “Is that better?”
The radio had come on, and the sound of Top 40 pop filled the vehicle. One of the popular boy bands—he could never tell them apart—was singing about lost love. He glanced again at Camael to see that the angel was still making a face.
“What’s wrong now? I turned off my music.”
“And I am appreciative,” the angel warrior said as he gazed out the window at the scenery whipping past. “But I find all of your so-called music to be extremely discordant. It offends my senses.”
Gabriel reared up in the back and stuck his yellow-white snout between the front seats. “I like the song about Tasty Chow,” the dog said.
Happy to be talking about anything that can end up in his stomach, Aaron thought as he squeezed the steering wheel in both hands.
“How does that song go, Aaron?” the Labrador retriever asked. “I’ve forgotten.”
“I don’t know, Gabriel,” he said, becoming more irritated. “That’s not even a real song—it’s a dog food jingle, a commercial.”
“I don’t care,” the dog said indignantly. “I like that song a lot—and the commercial is good too. It’s got kids and puppies, and they play on swings and run and jump and then the puppies eat Tasty Chow…”
Gabriel stopped mid sentence as Aaron reached out to shut off the radio, plunging the car into silence. Great, he thought as he drove, just what I needed. Without the distraction of music, his wandering mind had another opportunity to examine how completely insane his life had become.
Just over two weeks ago, on his eighteenth birthday, Aaron learned he was something called a Nephilim—the child of a human mother and an angel. Aaron never knew his biological parents, having been in foster care all his life. So when he began to exhibit rather unique abilities, like being able to speak and understand foreign languages—human and animal—he thought that maybe he was losing his mind.
Which was exactly what he was going to do if he didn’t stop thinking about this stuff. He glanced over at the powerfully built man—no, angel—sitting in the passenger seat beside him. “So what kind of music do you like?” he asked to break the silence.
Camael had once been the leader of an army—a Choir of angels, the Powers, whose purpose it was to eliminate all things offensive to God. After Lucifer’s defeat in the Great War in Heaven, many of his followers fled to Earth. Barred from Heaven, these angels began a life upon the world of man, some even taking wives and having children. It was the job of the Powers to destroy these defectors and their abominable offspring, the Nephilim.
“You are speaking to one who has heard the symphony of Creation,” the angel said in a condescending tone. “How can the sounds produced by the likes of your primitive species even compare?”
As Aaron knew, on one of his many missions to eradicate the enemies of Heaven, Camael had been made privy to a prophecy—a prophecy that described a creature, both human and angel, that would reestablish a bond between the fallen angels on Earth and God. This being—a Nephilim—would forgive these angels their sins and allow their return to Heaven. After so much violence and death, Camael thought this was truly a great thing, but his opinion was not shared by his second-in-command, a nasty piece of work that went by the name of Verchiel.
“So you don’t like any of it?” Aaron asked, dumbfounded by the angel’s broad dismissal of the entire musical spectrum. “You don’t like classical or jazz—or rock or country? None of it? Everything gives you a headache?”
The angel looked at him, eyes burning with intensity. “I haven’t had the time to sample all forms of your music,” he said. “As you are aware, I have been rather busy.”
Camael left the Powers to follow the prophecy. For thousands of years he wandered the planet, attempting to save the lives of Nephilim—hoping that each might be the one of which the prophecy foretold. Now led by Verchiel, the Powers would do anything to eliminate the blight of half-breeds from God’s world, making the prophecy but an ancient memory.
“But you’ve been here forever,” Aaron said with a disbelieving grin. “I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass, but…”
“That’s exactly what you are, boy,” Camael said, looking back out the side window. “You are the One—as well as a pain in the ass.”
So besides being a Nephilim, which was bad enough, Aaron Corbet was also the subject of the prophecy. It wasn’t something he had even been aware of—until the Powers, under Verchiel’s command, attempted to kill him. The attacks resulted in the deaths of his psychiatrist, his foster parents and a fallen angel by the name of Zeke—who had helped him finally tap into his angelic abilities and save himself.
“I’m sorry,” Aaron said, slowing down as a red sports car pulled up alongside him on the two-lane road, then sped up to pass. “It’s just that you come on all holier-than-thou because you’re an angel and everything—when in fact you really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Though I no longer associate with their Choir, I am of the Powers,” Camael said, “one of the first created by God, and it is my right to have an opinion that disagrees with yours.”
The abilities called to life with Zeke’s urgings saved not only Aaron’s life, but also the life of his dog, Gabriel. When the Labrador was struck by a car and mortally injured, Aaron called upon his latent powers and healed the dog, as a result changing Gabriel into something more than just a dog.
“You can’t have a real opinion unless you’ve actually listened to the stuff. It’s like saying you don’t like broccoli when you’ve never even tasted it,” he said, frustrated by the angel’s attitude.