Nephilim Rising
Angelic Hosts Series, Book 4, Part 6
Protected by the Tau…
Berto crossed the street and stepped onto the curb. The sun overhead shone brightly, but in the distance, storm clouds gathered. The air thickened with humidity, a sure sign that rain would pour down within the hour. He opened the gate in the chain-link fence entering Mr. Diaz’s yard. If he was going to get the grass mowed before the downpour, he needed to hurry. He hoped Antonio was awake, and that he’d been sincere in his offer to continue allowing him to care for the yard. The money helped ease his sister’s burden.
The young man ascended the steps to the porch and knocked on the front door. A loud crash greeted his knock accompanied by an inhuman howling.
Alarm filled him.
“Antonio!” Berto pounded on the door hard, calling out. “Are you okay? It’s Berto. Let me in!” He tried the doorknob, jiggling the handle.
A screech ripped through the cacophony of pounding and shouting. The door swung inward, yanking the doorknob out of Berto’s hand. Something large, blackened, and smoldering rushed out, knocking him down as it ran past. Antonio followed, in furious pursuit.
The smoldering thing moved fast, and after half a block, left Antonio in its wake. He stopped dead in the middle of the street, bent over and panting in exertion, staring in the direction it had gone. Downtown.
Straightening, Antonio turned and looked back at Berto as if suddenly realizing he was there. He jogged back, running up the steps, and offering a hand up.
“Are you okay? Anything broken?” He proceeded to pat the younger man down. “Tell me where it hurts.”
Wide-eyed, Berto swatted his hands away.
“I’m cool. Just got the wind knocked out of me, that’s all. What the heck was that?” he pointed toward the street, hand shaking.
Antonio’s blue-green eyes narrowed. “I have no idea, man. It attacked me. It was in my house.” He shook his head trying to make sense of it all.
“It stinks!” Nose wrinkled, Berto waved his hands in front of his face to clear the air. “It looked like a burnt body, but that’s impossible, right?”
Bits and pieces of his conversation with Hector flashed through Antonio’s mind. The biggest takeaway from his uncle’s strange revelations the night before was that there was another world that existed just beneath the one they lived in, one that was filled with terrifying impossibilities.
“I couldn’t say, Berto. I don’t know what that was.” He was shaken.
“You should call the police.”
“And tell them what, exactly? They’d think we were both crazy.”
“Then what?” Berto asked.
“I think I need to tell my Tio Hector.” Antonio stood, hands on hips. He glanced over at Berto. “What’re you doing here anyhow?”
Berto shoved his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts in attempt to calm their trembling. “I came to mow the yard. You did say I could still take care of it. I mean, if you want. I could just go.” He backed away, sure now he’d overstepped.
“No,” Antonio reached out, clapping him on the shoulder. “No, I meant it. I just didn’t know today was the day.” He looked around at the yard noticing the tall grass and the weeds trying to take over the cracks in the sidewalk. “Yeah, I guess it needs some help. You know where everything is, I take it?”
“Yeah, in the shed out back.”
“Good. Go ahead. I have to talk to Hector.” Antonio descended the steps, heading towards the next house over. He turned back, concerned. “If you see that thing again, or anything like it, shout for me. I’m right next door, alright?”
Berto looked up and down the street, suddenly unsure all over again, but not wanting to appear afraid. “I will.”
“Good. Be right back.”
***
Esteban Del Fuego steepled his fingers, resting his arms on the desk. He sat straight, rigid as a board as he stared a hole into Cinder’s wildly morphing face. One minute she was beautiful, human, with flowing, flaming red hair, and the next, a burned-out husk of rotting flesh, smoldering, peeling, and as empty as her eye sockets.
“So, you failed!” he began.
“No! I found him. I found the next guardian,” she insisted, banging a clubbed stump of a hand on the arm of the chair.
“Then why is he still alive? You said yourself that he lives, that you could not defeat him.” Del Fuego sneered over the last words, inflicting as much humiliation into them as he could knowing it would incense the demon.
“He is not merely human. He can’t be. He was too strong. I can destroy a human as easily as snapping a twig, but this one has inhuman strength. I don’t think he is even aware of this. He did not recognize what I am.”
Esteban pondered Cinder’s words. If the new guardian was immortal, it would create no end of problems for him. His plan relied upon gaining the key.
“What was he doing when you found him. Explain it to me again.” He sat back.
“He was staring at a clock on the mantle. Just staring, nothing more. I don’t know why. He sensed my presence, taking away the element of surprise. When I went for him, he countered, fighting like an animal.”
The idea that anyone could either surprise his pet demon or manage to fight her off set off alarm bells in Del Fuego. His mind discarded that unpleasant thought for the moment. “Tell me about the clock. The one he was staring at. What did it look like?”
Cinder passed into her human glamour, appearing the lovely redhead once again. A look of concentration settled over her face, marring the brow above her emerald-green eyes.
“Just a clock. Carved wood, old and rusted.”
“Old?” Esteban latched onto the word. “How old would you say? And what of the carvings. Picture it in your mind and tell me.”
She closed her eyes, recalling the moments before the fight, before the young man knew she was there. She’d watched his back, saw him setting the clock back on the mantle from over his shoulder.
“Hand-carved wood. Hammered metal. There’s a saint at the top,” she sneered.
“Which one? How is he shown?”
“A wolf and a lamb surround him,” she continued.
“St. Francis!” He banged his hand on the desk. Damned Franciscans! “What else?”
“Swirls with elegant Ts in the center. Lots of them all the way around the casing.”
“The Tau! Magic. It’s magic. The Tau represents the gate to Hell. It must be the key or the box protecting it! Cinder,” he snapped his fingers, “you must bring me the clock!”
She opened her eyes and sat forward. “But what of the man? He knew I was there, and now he’ll be on guard.”
He fumed hearing the cowardice in her voice. “What is his name?”
“Diaz. Antonio Diaz. His father was Eugenio Diaz, the one who passed. He must’ve been the previous guardian.”
Esteban drummed his fingers on the polished oak surface of the desk, thinking. “And where there is a Guardian, there is always a Watcher. He will be in touch with this Watcher. Follow him. Find out who the Watcher is and report back. In the meantime, give me the address. I will handle what you’ve failed to accomplish.” His displeasure was evident.
“No, master, I can do it! I will do anything for you,” she whined.
Dark eyes pinned her where she sat. “And you will. Tonight, I shall flay the flesh from your bones one crack of the whip at a time, and you will not scream.”
Cinder began to smile.
“Not in your demon form, dear Cinder, but in your human form.” A sinister sneer spread across his lips. She could handle anything in demon form. In fact, it would be a pleasure for her in that case. He did not wish to bring her pleasure, however.
She blanched. In her human form, she would feel the pain differently. In her womanly skin, the barbs from his whip would rip the creamy covering from her piece by piece. It had been a long time since she’d experienced such torture. Even demons had their limits, but she’d shown weakness, and now, her master would remind her, in the most excruciatingly painful way, that failure would not be tolerated.
“Yes, master.”
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