Nephilim's Captive - Abby Knox

Prologue

The boy peered down into the gaping maw in the earth. “I don’t want to go. It’s so dark down there.”

The Watcher Shemyaza answered, “Your eyes will adjust.”

The young one shook his head as if denying the existence of this absolute darkness awaiting him would make it go away. “But what about our house?”

“You’re young. You can rebuild. We old ones did it over and over again. You can take it from here.”

Looking around at the foreign mountaintop and the unfamiliar valley below, the youth felt even more doubts about this place. The archangels had rounded up and relocated all the Watchers and their children without explanation. “Here? In exile? How?”

The Watcher looked up to the sky as fat drops of rain began to fall from a wound in the sky. “Don’t forget what we’ve taught you.”

“But how will we rebuild if everything is soon to be destroyed? We won’t have any humans left to help us.”

As the rain fell harder, Shemyaza had to raise his voice. “The waters will recede. The mountains will still be here. You are half of heaven and half of earth; you and your siblings will create your own stories.”

The Watcher spoke in riddles and it tested the young one’s patience. “When? When will the waters recede? The horrors are just beginning.”

“When is irrelevant. Time bends and folds and knots itself, loops around again. The order that The Authorities have created, and the humans have followed, means nothing.” More riddles.

“You confuse me when you talk about time,” said the young one.

Shemyaza patted the boy on the head, now alarmingly the same height as his own. “You’ll understand one day. I’ll be there with you.”

The way the Watcher said it didn’t imply immortality. Only people on their deathbeds phrased their words in this manner. The boy had seen enough death already to know. “Of course you will,” he replied, pushing aside the unsettling feeling of foreboding at his father’s words. After all, the Watchers were immortal—angels, descended straight from heaven to help the humans.

A sadness washed over the old Watcher’s face as the rains began to fall harder. “They have made their decision. They are sending the archangels to put an end to the Watchers. All of the Grigori will fall.”

Terror and rage swept through the boy. “No!”

“Quiet your mind.” The old one pressed a sense of calm into every creature nearby, including his young child. He could take away momentary panic, but not grief. “You are going to be well. The Watchers have to go. It’s been decided. When the archangel strikes one of us, all of us die at once. We Grigori vowed to each other. As soon as we fell in love with humans and began bearing children, we knew The Authorities were displeased. So we swore an oath that the bloodshed would be minimal; there would be no fighting, to spare our women and children any further anguish. It is the way it has to be. I’m so sorry that you have to be the one child to witness this. If your mother had lived, she’d have you squirreled away safely by now.”

Tears of shock and sadness mixed with the rain pounding at the earth, tearing at the roots of tender grass. The distant screams of drowning creatures mixed with the relentless rush of water.

The Watcher said, “The humans on the boat have already sailed away. I’ve asked Michael to make it quick.”

The young one shook his head. “I’ll have nothing left.”

“You will have the others like you. You have to promise me that you will fight to stay alive on this earth and to continue the work we started with the humans. All the knowledge in the scrolls—they need to know the truth. They deserve to know all the secrets of heaven, but you must be careful. Consider this challenge a privilege. Your existence is the only gift the Watchers will leave behind now that so many humans will die with the knowledge we’ve taught them.”

The increasingly agitated youth exploded with a distraught howl as lightning crashed and struck down a massive tree, narrowly missing them both. The clangor was barely audible over the sound of the rain and wind. “I don’t want another privilege. I don’t care about any of that. I want you, Papa!” The storm was so loud, the two of them had to speak into each other’s minds.

The old man persisted. “You inherited privilege. And unbelievable power. Near invincibility. Knowledge. A vast archive of scrolls that has already