The Night Everything Fell Apart (The Nephilim Book 1)(23)
He was, once again, covered in blood. It streaked his chest and arms, spattered his jeans. The scent of it infused his brain with images of death. He wanted to kill again. Craved the visceral sensation of flesh and sinew ripping from bone.
He went to the well. The pump worked a bit more easily this time. Water spilled into the stone trough. He scrubbed his face and torso as best as he could, and then ducked his head beneath the stream. The shock cleared his mind. He began to feel, marginally, like himself. Whoever the hell that was.
He entered the front hall on silent feet. To his left and right lay the parlor and the library. After a brief hesitation, he entered the library. So many hours spent here. His father, alpha of the Druid clan, had been a Nephil of profound power, as well as a scholar and philosopher. He’d been a master of the three Druid elements: stone, wood, and water. Weather had obeyed his command, and his illusions had been beautiful and intricate. When he called his deepest magic, his illusions became reality.
Even Tristan’s magic had its limits, though. Druidry could transform illusions into reality, but only on a small scale. It couldn’t cause the moon to disappear or create a mountain where none had been before. In addition, Druid transformations were restricted to the physical realm. Druidry couldn’t affect the stock markets or bring about world peace. It couldn’t change a person’s core beliefs or cause them to fall in or out of love. And the transformations lasted only a short time. After a time—a minute, an hour, a day—the new reality faded back into the old.
Arthur’s father had stressed the history of their race and ancestral line. Samyaza, forefather of all Druids, had been the leader of the Watcher angels. His offspring, like all the Nephilim, bore the curse delivered by Raphael. Nephilim possessed no souls. Their lives were limited to one hundred twenty years, after which they passed into Oblivion.
Another facet of the curse encouraged instinctive hatred among Nephilim of rival tribes. Where Nephil clans intersected, violence and a struggle for domination was inevitable. Each clan wielded a unique fragment of Heavenly magic inherited from their Watcher ancestor. Raphael’s curse was designed to insure those fragments of magic were never reunited.
The Nephilim who survived Raphael’s vengeance spread out all over the Earth. Samyaza’s descendants migrated to the European continent and became the Druid priests of the Celtic people. Other Nephil lines traveled east, west, and south, but no matter where they settled, their magical powers soon elevated them to positions of honor in the local human cultures.
Nephilim did not reproduce easily, and birthed few females, but through the millennia, the clans endured. Matings of a Nephil male and female produced Nephil offspring, and, because human witches were distant descendants of Nephilim, the offspring of a Nephil male and a human witch also perpetuated the line. Nephil dormants were indistinguishable from human children. Because of this, dormants who grew up apart from the clans often were unaware of their heritage.
Unawares lived short, precarious lives. If a chance near-death experience triggered their transformation from dormant to adept status, they were catapulted into the Ordeal without a guide.
Insanity and death soon followed. But unawares who never experienced an NDE fared no better. A dormant who reached the age twenty-five without transitioning experienced cellular mutations. The result was terminal cancer, with death before age thirty a certainty.
Most aware Nephilim, living among their own kind, viewed the human race as a commodity to be used and discarded at whim. Arthur’s ancestor, Merlin, had challenged that notion. Merlin had viewed humans as his beloved brothers and sisters, worthy of love and protection. It was a radical, even heretical, notion.
Merlin’s life remained shrouded in the past. For reasons unknown, none of his progeny had inherited his memories. Before Arthur’s birth, his mother, Alwen, had been Merlin’s last living direct descendant. This was why, Arthur knew, his father had mated with her. Tristan had hoped his own vast power, combined with Alwen’s heritage, would produce a child strong enough to inherit Merlin’s memories and magic.
Had his father’s efforts been in vain? Time would tell, Arthur supposed. He left the library and wandered into the parlor. It was a large room, with twin fireplaces and comfortable seating. A round table and six chairs nestled in the curve of a bow window. The sideboard bore decanters of whiskey and port, still half full.
He remembered this room alive with the laughter and camaraderie of his father’s relations. The London kin had visited often. He’d been in awe of Percival, his father’s tall, austere uncle. Brax and Avalyn, his father’s younger twin siblings, had treated Arthur like a little brother. Less frequent, but no less welcome, had been the visits of his Scots kin, Morgana and Magnus. The twin brother and sister had been much alike, with shocks of white running through their black hair, and accents almost too thick to decipher. Collum, another Scots cousin, had been a warm, jovial sort. There’d been other relations as well, and several human witch consorts. Their faces and names were all jumbled in Arthur’s memory now.
Unlike Mab. Arthur remembered her from his early years most distinctly. She and Evander had come to T?’r Cythraul rarely, and only when summoned by Tristan. The last visit had occurred a year before Arthur’s parents’ murder.
Arthur, on the cusp of adolescence, had been struck almost speechless by the American’s harsh, voluptuous beauty and the huge, raw ruby nestled sensuously between her breasts. Her eyes were a vibrant shade of blue, her hair, pin-straight and pure black. Her American accent, a Texas drawl, had sent shivers up his spine.