Stealing Sacred Fire Read online

Nathaniel’s face was ashen beneath his tan. He looked very old. ‘Do you see now, Melandra Maynard? Do you see what you are up against?’

  After the meeting, Nathaniel Fox led Melandra from the board-room, leaving his shocked colleagues to discuss the significance of what had occurred. In the privacy of Fox’s spacious, private office, he subjected Melandra to another lecture upon the holy work of The Children of Lamech. He spoke passionately, loudly and with evangelistic colour.

  Even after the inexplicable phenomenon in the board room, Melandra was unsettled by Fox’s zeal, sure his claims were fired only by paranoia. She found herself vacillating between unquestioning belief in the Grigori and scepticism. Fox clearly sensed this, but was patient with her indecision. He pointed out that surely she had been given more evidence than she needed to know that his words were true. A demon had manifested before them, mocking their mission.

  Melandra was still unsure what she had seen. It could have been some kind of group hallucination, invoked by their heightened emotion. And yet, as Fox talked to her persistently, passing her folder after folder of classified documents that he told her contained hard evidence, she found her pessimism fraying. She read reports, examined photographs. Before and after death. Tall, handsome people gunned down, poisoned, but who in life had controlled industries and communities through dark magic and deception. The most damning evidence to prove Fox’s words was the fact that none of these deaths had been reported in the press.

  ‘They are clever,’ Fox said, ‘and powerful. They know what we are planning and no doubt intruded into our meeting to make us aware of that. They want us to fear them, and are not afraid of us, which might be their weakness. Arrogance. But you must be careful, Melandra. Very careful.’

  Melandra was not cheered by this information. ‘So, what exactly are we dealing with? A select group? An underground movement? What numbers are involved?’

  Fox closed the last folder with a snap. ‘Not even we know how many there are of them, or how far-reaching their influence is. Many powerful men support our work, but we suspect just as many are slaves of the Grigori. You can trust no-one, but for the select few you have met in this building.’

  ‘What I’d like to know,’ Melandra said carefully, ‘is, if these people exist, why no-one’s aware of them. How have they managed to hide for so long?’

  Fox raised a single eyebrow, then smiled. ‘But, my child, we are aware of them. However, you are right to ask these questions. You must be clear in your own mind about what is going on. The Grigori have hidden among us by counting on people’s inability to accept they might exist. Angels?’ He laughed. ‘Aren’t they just artistic ornaments on religious paintings and Christmas cards?’ He shook his head. ‘The fallen ones have been idolised by writers and poets, swallowed by fiction. People see them as romantic martyrs, unaware that their descendants are very real, a passionless race that seeks to take control of the world. God cast them out of heaven for their wickedness and pride, stripped them of their divinity. Now, they are jealous and greedy. They would like to enslave all humanity. That was their original intention when they divulged secret knowledge to humanity, and it still is. Control. They look almost like us, and only a trained eye can spot them. They are seducers, Melandra, and they have waited an immeasurably long time to get their revenge. The Lord knows they are cunning and deadly. Be in no doubt about that. It might be your only defence. The last two millennia have been the centuries of Christ, and the Grigori were disabled, but now the new millennium approaches and if the Son of God is to remain its king, the Grigori must be stopped.’

  After several hours of intensive information intake, Melandra left the House of Lamech dazed with facts. Walking out into the dusk of the city, she had seen Grigori in every shadow; tall men and women on the street seemed to pause and glance at her with suspicious eyes. She had to go into a bar and have a few drinks to get a grip on herself.

  As a teenager, when she’d first tasted the forbidden luxuries of alcohol and tobacco, she’d reasoned with herself that although there was no mention in the Bible of Jesus smoking cigarettes (they weren’t invented then, after all), he had certainly drunk wine. He wouldn’t mind if she did too. No other liquor had ever touched her lips. Once, she had been caught sneaking into the college with a secret purchase wrapped in brown paper. Her teachers had expressed their disappointment, and because Melandra appeared to be an obedient girl, they had never had to chastise her again. She had become more careful. It all seemed farcical now. She had been brought up to be trained as an assassin, yet it offended them if she drank alcohol. They had looked like men and women, but their hearts had been cold and inhuman. They could kill in the name of God, and had taught her that this was a righteous and noble thing to do. She had learned to emulate their zeal and had taken pride in the accuracy of her work. Still, as yet, her skill was untried. She had killed all manner of God’s creatures, except the ones created in His image. Was she up to the task Fox had invested in her? Sometimes she felt too shaky and vulnerable to be what they wanted her to be. Her guardians had never known the real Melandra. If she met this great Shemyaza, the devil himself, would she be strong enough to stand up to him?

  After a bottle of good wine, the prospect seemed less chilling, although she still vacillated between belief and scepticism. Why was it so difficult to believe in the Grigori? After all, she believed without question in God and the love of Jesus Christ, and had felt it often during the lonely, aching years of her insular childhood. Their holy presences had sometimes seemed more real to her than those of the dour, devout women who’d raised her. Alone in her room at night, she had talked to the sorrowful man on the crucifix, which hung on her wall. He had been her only confidant. He knew her childish hopes and desires, even though she could not articulate them fully. A yearning for love, perhaps, which unacknowledged bitterness had hardened into something else. Jesus loves you, she had been told, and there had been stories of the good angels, who crouched around the throne of God, eternally singing his praises. The bad angels burned in hell. Because of the stories, she could imagine angels as spiritual beings, the messengers of God. But it was more difficult to accept Fox’s theories.

  She sighed, drew circles on the table-top with the wet base of her wine glass. This great story sustained the Children of Lamech; it was their reason for being. She had grown up with it, without even knowing it.

  Later, at home, she took down her crucifix from the wall, and touched the emaciated belly of Christ with a reverent finger. His enemies must be her enemies. ‘Is it real?’ she asked him. He looked, as always, despairing. Perhaps, now, she knew the reason why.

  Chapter Three

  Reawakening

  London

  Shemyaza had forgotten how filthy the capital city was. Even pedestrians wore masks against the polluting air nowadays. Yet still London charmed him. He sensed its great age beneath his feet and even now, closing his eyes upon the busy street, fancied he could sense its previous incarnations, when the streets had been merely mud. Perhaps it had always been filthy.

  He and Salamiel had been in the city for two days, staying at a Grigori-owned hotel hidden amongst the streets of Soho. Enniel Prussoe had arranged the accommodation for them, and had booked them in under assumed names. He assured them the hotel management was renowned for its discretion.

  Daniel had been summoned, but for some reason was delaying his return. Shem was amused by this. He knew Daniel did not like having his strings tweaked too forcefully, and the phone call he’d made to Cornwall had perhaps been a little abrupt:

  ‘What are you doing down there, Daniel? Get back here now! We have work to do.’

  Daniel’s silence had been eloquent on the other end of the line. Shem was reminded that his vizier was five years older now; a boy no longer, and perhaps not quite as malleable as in the past. To Shem, it felt as if he’d only seen Daniel a few days before. ‘So, thanks for asking after my health.’ He couldn’t help sounding sharp.

  ‘I know h
ow you are. Salamiel called Enniel as soon as you woke up.’

  ‘Salamiel and I are going to London. I want you to meet us there.’

  Daniel uttered a repressed groan. ‘What’s the hurry? What are you planning?’

  Shem noticed the reserve in Daniel’s tone, a stony reticence that had not been there before. ‘To carry on what was started. That is what you want of me, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know what we started. I don’t know how we carry on.’

  ‘You’ve changed, then.’

  Shem heard Daniel sigh down the line. ‘It all seems so unreal now. What you did here... what effect did it have? I can’t see any. Perhaps it’s pointless, and we’re kidding ourselves...’

  ‘We shouldn’t be talking about this on the phone, Daniel.’

  ‘No... Shem, I’m not sure I want to come back...’

  ‘You don’t have a choice.’

  ‘Something strange happened today.’

  Shem listened as Daniel told him about the events surrounding the eclipse. ‘That just sounds like proof to me. We have to act.’

  ‘Do what though?’

  Shem paused. ‘We need to talk. Please come to London, Daniel. I want to see you.’

  Again, a sigh. ‘OK, but we must talk, Shem, not just go haring off somewhere.’

  ‘We’ll talk. I promise.’

  ‘Give me a couple of days, will you? I want to see Lily.’

  ‘Whatever you wish. Give her my regards.’

  Shem had fought the impulse to slam down the phone. How could Daniel become so estranged? Shem knew him as a warm, compassionate creature, and had been sure of his love. Had five years eroded that loyalty?

  Attempting to banish any doubts about Daniel, Shem immersed himself in the bustle of Oxford Street, letting the crowds swirl around him like water. No-one seemed to notice him. He felt invisible.

  So much activity; most of it mindless. It was difficult to see a spiritual awakening in the land. Shem gazed into shop windows, contemptuous of the siren-allure of the colourful displays. Perhaps Daniel was right. So little seemed to have changed since his ordeal in the underworld.

  He wandered past an electrical goods mega-store, and the flickering banks of televisions in the display window caught his eye. What he saw depressed his spirits further. Every set was tuned to a channel showing a brutal public demonstration in the Middle East. Contorted faces yelled at the cameras, which flashed to pictures of burned bodies lying in a dusty village street, and scuffles with the armed forces. A strong emotion coursed through him. His homeland: gripped by war and mindless violence. What had happened to the people who had once lived there, the noble race of his ancestors? The invaders who’d raided the land after his people had been forced to flee had made it wholly their own, permeated it with their repressive creeds, destroyed and buried the knowledge of the Elders, the race who had existed even before the Anannage. He burned with a cold fury. It was all so wrong. The knowledge of the Elders belonged to the world. He had died for that belief, once.

  While the lands of his ancestors were torn by cruelty and intolerance, there could be no evolution in the world. But how could he end it? He had been shown the possibility of ultimate power in the underworld of Cornwall, but that stage of his work was over. He had been a conductor for the force, a catalyst, but he did not feel as if any shred of it remained inside him.

  Before he could continue his stroll, weighed down with melancholy, Shem’s attention was attracted to an image on the screens. He did not want to see any more violence, yet could not tear his eyes away. A struggling melee was being shown; a mass of bodies. All was confusion, yet in its midst stood a lone, motionless figure. This person was taller than those around him or her. Their face was concealed by a dark red scarf, only the eyes showed through, but they stared straight into the camera; challenging, fearless, alive.

  Shem shivered in the clammy heat of the city. It felt as if the picture had crossed time as well as distance to reach him. ‘Come,’ the eyes seemed to say. ‘We are waiting.’ He put one hand flat against the window; it felt greasy and hot beneath his palm. Were his eyes blurring or had the image on the screens gone out of focus? He blinked, and the noise of the demonstration crashed through the glass to fill his ears with its clamour. He staggered backwards, and bodies thrust against him, rough hands pushing him away, further into the midst of the crowd. At first, he thought he had somehow been propelled into the image on the screens, transported across oceans and many lands to the country of his ancestors. Then, he glimpsed shop fronts through the crowd, and realised he was still on Oxford Street, but inexplicably caught up in a marching throng. Voices called out furious slogans, but he could not understand them. What were they protesting about? He saw many dark-skinned people, a few wearing Middle-Eastern head-gear. Had the demonstration been brought to him rather than the other way around?

  Shem clawed and struggled his way to the edge of the crowd. Sightseers and shoppers had vanished, probably having sought sanctuary behind the doors of shops. Shem grabbed hold of the arm of an olive-skinned girl. She turned hot, brown eyes upon him; impatient and afire, and spoke to him sharply in a tongue he could not fathom.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Shem asked her.

  For a moment, he thought she would pull away from him. Her lips curled into a contemptuous sneer. Then, some kind of political zeal got the better of her. ‘Yarasadi!’ she snapped.

  Shem looked at her blankly. It meant nothing. ‘I’ve been away a long time. Tell me.’

  ‘My people are being murdered!’ the girl cried. ‘And your politicians look on, fearful and ignorant. We mean nothing to them, but our voices are loud!’

  ‘Yarasadi? Where? Middle East?’

  She nodded, then smiled coldly. ‘Yes. You have been away a long time! Don’t you watch the news?’

  Shem shook his head. ‘Who are your people?’

  ‘We are an ancient race, and our lands have been plundered. Now, we raise our voices in protest. Now, we are not afraid to fight! It is not too late.’ It sounded like lines from a manifesto, learned by heart.

  Shem thought the girl seemed almost crazed. She was probably nothing more than a foreign student, far removed from her roots, who was caught up in the political enthusiasms of the young, yet something about her eyes, her proud stance, touched his soul. He saw echoes of the past in her. ‘Tell me more. It’s important I know what’s happened.’

  She looked him up and down, probably assessing his pale skin and white-gold hair. He would not seem kin to her. Then, she shrugged. ‘I have to go, but you can always follow us to the meeting place. There, you will learn all you need to know, if you’re that interested.’ She glanced around, probably to look for comrades who had marched on without her.

  ‘Take me there,’ Shem said.

  The girl looked at him with suspicion. He stared deep into her eyes, exerted his will. Then without a word, the girl jerked her head to indicate ahead of her, turned away from him and began to walk quickly alongside the crowd. Shem followed. He did not let her out of his sight.

  The police were a very visible presence around the meeting hall, but here the demonstration seemed to have quietened down, most of its participants having already entered the hall. Shem caught up with his reluctant guide. She looked over her shoulder at him, clearly suspicious, although still subject to his will. She gave him a guarded half smile, and he directed the full force of his own smile upon her. ‘I am interested,’ he said. ‘You don’t know how much.’

  They walked into the shadow of the lobby, where people were milling around makeshift stalls that were adrift with pamphlets and posters. There were even T-shirts on sale; samples pinned up on boards behind the stalls. ‘Where exactly do your people come from?’ he asked her.

  ‘Our land is known by many names, but never its own. It is dismembered.’

  Shem eyed the red, gold and green banners on the walls. ‘Kurdistan,’ he said. ‘Yarasadi equates with Yezidi, Yaresan, yes?’

>   She smiled, shrugged. ‘We are seen as Kurdish yes, but our blood-lines are older than the Yezidis.’

  ‘You have kept very quiet about it for a long, long time, then!’

  She did not seem offended. ‘It is only recently that we’ve discovered who we really are. We were scattered, our memories taken from us, then a new prophet came. A messenger from the Ancient Ones. We learned of our divine blood...’ She paused. ‘Now, you think we are crazy, as most of your people do. But it is true.’

  Shem frowned and shook his head briefly. ‘I don’t think you’re crazy. Who is your prophet?’

  ‘Come, you will see.’ The girl hurried off into the crowd and Shem followed her. They came into a darkened hall, where a video was being shown on a large screen. The sound system echoed and spluttered, competing with the constant underlying hubbub of conversation. Westerners mingled with the dark-skinned crowd; photographers, journalists and those who followed causes. Children ran around, laughing and screeching, oblivious of the serious subject of the meeting.

  Shem forced himself not to turn away from the scenes being shown on the screen. The introduction to the film was clearly over: images of carnage dominated the presentation; the bodies of children rotting in the streets; ruined buildings; forlorn survivors wandering like zombies amongst the remains of a community. It reminded him of times long past, when his Nephilim sons had prompted the High Lord Anu to release the Flood. Thousands of people had died then; pathetic corpses waterlogged in mud.

  ‘Who did this?’ Shem asked in clear, low voice.

  The girl leaned towards him. ‘It is the handiwork of a man who calls himself the King of Babylon.’

  ‘There is no Babylon,’ Shem said. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘There is,’ the girl replied. ‘The king calls himself Nimnezzar.’

  Shem raised his eyebrows. He would need to find out about this king, but first there was other information to gather. He smiled reassuringly at the girl. ‘Will you tell me more about your prophet?’