Nephilim's Captive - Abby Knox Page 0,1

been locked away in the underground caves. You must swear to me you’ll protect that. And that when the time comes, you will deliver the humans into the new earth and fight to claim your thrones in heaven.”

The young one bellowed, wanting none of this. “Tell Michael to take me with you because this sounds like hell to me!”

The Watcher laughed. “You do not want to make comparisons to hell. You do not know what I’ve seen.”

“When have you seen hell?”

The look the old one gave would haunt the child forever. “You ask that ‘when’ question again. Hell, heaven, and earth and all places in the universe have claimed me many times over. This existence is a blessing beyond all of it. But it’s going to end soon.”

“I don’t accept it!” shouted the young one.

The father looked like he could laugh but didn’t want to cause hurt feelings. “You have your mother’s obstinate nature.”

“I miss her.”

“So do I. But you will see her again.”

The young one shook his head. He knew it wasn’t lies; angels couldn't lie. Even fallen angels, which was what the Watchers became as soon as they rebelled and married human women.

The strange smile remained on the Watcher’s face even as the figure made of white fire sailed out of the slash in the sky where the rain poured out. Impossibly, the figure blazed brighter and brighter despite the torrential rain cascading from the gape in the sky.

The Watcher Shemyaza eyed the young half-human/half-angel. He kept his eyes on him and did not turn his eyes skyward.

“You will meet another one. Someone like your mother. She will make the journey easier.”

The obstinate youth shook his head. “It won’t matter.”

Ignoring this, the Watcher said, “In the meantime, Michael chose to disregard my request to not let you see me die this way.”

“What?!”

Shemyaza’s potent sense of calm had lost its grip on the boy, but the Watcher pressed on to equip his son, unto his last breath. “Stay on course, boy. Heaven is not our enemy.”

The blazing archangel landed with feet that shook the ground. Boulders fell off cliffs at the impact, prompting a mudslide that threatened the entire mountain on which they stood. Displaced mud squelched and water hissed around the archangel’s fiery feet as he approached them.

Michael drew his flaming sword. The youth knew he should look away but would not take his eyes off the Watcher. With chilling precision, the archangel slashed a fatally deep “X” across the Watcher’s back. Shemyaza’s fierce gaze slipped into a nightmarish blankness before falling face-first into the mud. The son stared wide-eyed at the wounds, so deep it had not only ended a life but symbolically crossed out the source of the Grigori’s power: the place from which the wings grew. Blood, mud, water, and feathers came together in a dreadful mixture on the ground.

Shemyaza had been so delighted on the day he discovered his young son carried enough angel DNA that his body could make wings. How many times had the young one watched in awe when his father showed him how to release them? If only the young giant had learned faster, he would have flown after the murdering archangel, who had disappeared into the ether.

The boy giant could scarcely believe he’d watched his great, angelic father’s murder. No struggle. No fight. The son’s anguished cry overpowered the deafening sound of rushing waters, if only for a second. At the same moment, thousands of loved ones all over the earth joined in simultaneous howls of grief, shock, fright, and anger. Only Shemyaza had received the physical blow, but all the Grigori had fallen dead at once in front of their children and wives. The cries all together rent through the onslaught of the waters as all the Watchers collapsed and died in front of their eyes.

The noises of horror did not matter to the archangels, who were only generals carrying out orders, but the grief and the terror were recorded in the scrolls. And the scrolls stayed dry in the hidden place under the earth.

And so, the children of earth and heaven stayed together and survived.

Once it was discovered that the giant children survived the flood, The Authorities sent the Angel of Barrenness over them; they would not be able to reproduce. They were spared death, for they were not responsible for their cursed existence, so The Authorities gave them that small mercy.

Those halflings—sometimes called monsters, sometimes called giants or Nephilim—were the rudderless children who survived the near-total