Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) (14 page)

"He's both."

Gideon sat down heavily on the railroad tie.
"I can't believe this."

Barny started to laugh. "Oh, this shit is
too fucking rich."

"Are you sure?" Lily asked.

Jessie looked from one face to the next,
biting her lip. "Yes, of course. What's wrong?"

Lily sat next to Gideon. "I think I'm going
to be sick."

"What's wrong?"

"You just told everyone that we're the spawn
of Satan, that's what's wrong," Delilah said.

"Stop!" Barny fought to catch his breath.
"I'm fucking dying. You guys are fucking killing me."

Jessie folded her arms. "We are bright and
luminous creatures, half flesh, half celestial, a glory to God's
creation. I don't see what you're all so upset about."

"Stop laughing Barny!" Lily said. "This
isn't fucking funny."

Barny wiped a tear from his eye. "No, it's
very fucking funny."

"What's wrong?" Jessie asked.

"Does this make us antichrists?" Gideon
asked.

"What? That doesn't even make any sense,"
Barny said.

"He's right," Jessie said. "Lucifer and the
Antichrist are different."

"How can you not see how this is a problem?"
Lily asked. "We're... we're unclean. Tainted. Evil by nature."

Jessie ran a hand through Lily's hair. "Oh,
no. Oh dear. No. You all... you're confusing secular ideas of what
our father is with the reality of the Bible. That's not what our
Church teaches at all."

She stepped away towards the desert, then
turned back to her half-siblings. "I was afraid, too, when he first
spoke to me. But our father is an angel, my loves. Chosen by God
for the most sacred of tasks. To rebel. Do you think this did not
serve God? Do you think even an angel as powerful as our father is
somehow beyond His will?"

It seemed like the sun's last rays were
casting a halo around Jessie, and when she spoke, Lily could hear
the truth in her words. Or was it just what she wanted to hear? Was
she just grasping out for anything to hold onto, anything that
would mean salvation?

"Forget the false words of the secular
world. Let go of the ideas that other denominations have tried to
infect your faith with. To sin is to die a spiritual death, and
angels cannot die. Angels cannot sin. They have no immortal soul to
imperil. They are spiritual extensions of God's will."

Delilah spoke with some hesitation. "I
remember reading somewhere that the figures of Satan and Lucifer
were different originally. Like they were merged in the Middle Ages
and mixed in with different pagan gods, too."

"Whatever the spiritual truth is," Jessie
said, "God created our father as part of His divine plan. He was
meant to rebel. He was meant to fall. It is impossible to not serve
the Creator."

"Will you listen to yourselves?" Barny
sneered. "You're grasping at straws. Just accept what we are."

"Barny!" Lily stepped down from the railroad
tie.

"No, he's right," Jessie said. "Who we are
is also part of God's plan. We were given life by the grace of God,
and He imbued us with the nature of our essence. Who our father is,
what he has done, what he is... none of that is as important as
what the Lord wants of us."

"What does God want from us?" Gideon asked.
"Why... why were we created?"

Jessie smiled almost sadly. "God speaks to
me through visions, but He talks to all of us in the everyday. You
just need to learn to see the signs, to hear His words."

"That's not very helpful," Barny said. "Want
to cut the benevolent mystic crap and just tell us straight?"

"What God wants of us is the easiest thing
in the world. He tells us, simply, obviously, in the very core of
who we are. He created us with urges and impulses, to serve His
plan with the very fact of who we are. Just as it is for all of
humanity."

Barny glanced at Gideon. "What if our
impulses are destructive? Harmful?"

"Sadistic," Gideon said, glaring back.

Barny chuckled and walked away, shaking his
head.

"We are as He made us. For most people I
would say that they were trials to overcome, hurdles of faith.
Angels are not tested, they are just to be as He made them."

"And us?" Lily asked. "Half-human
half-angel?"

"I don't know. Genesis calls them men of
renown, implying they were heroes. The Book of Enoch says the
spirits of the Nephilim who survived the flood were turned into
demons to try and lead men astray."

"That's not very helpful," Lily said, almost
overcome by a sudden wave of nausea.

"I'm sorry," Jessie said. "I can only say
that my nature leads me to a life of compassion. That is who He
made me to be. Only you can know who He has made you to be."

***

Lily's first impulse
was to turn her back on the others and head home through the
darkness. Her head felt fuzzy, and coherent thought came only
reluctantly. She'd wanted answers, she'd wanted the truth, but
facing it was harder than she thought it would be. Maybe if it was
anything else, like ghosts or vampires or werewolves or just magic,
she could have managed to cope with it. But angels? And
demons?

She considered herself a good Christian. Her
father was a Deacon. She went to church every Sunday. But the
International Church of Christ Everlasting had always taught that
the supernatural elements of the Bible were largely allegory,
stories told to emphasize certain tenets of faith. There was God
the creator, of course, and his son Jesus, and the apostles and
saints, but the angels and the Devil, most of the miracles? There
were no winged men with swords of fire. There was no goatee'd man
with a pitchfork on a throne overlooking a lake of fire. Hell was a
metaphor for the rejection of God's love. Satan was the impulse to
turn your back on compassion.

Nobody really believed in any of that other
stuff. Nobody sensible.

And now she was supposed to just believe
that she was the Devil's daughter, like in some cheesy horror
film?

She'd accepted that she and the other
orphans were different. That they had these superhuman
capabilities. Why was it that a radioactive spider-bite was easier
to accept than the Devil?

What did that say about her as a
Christian?

The silence grew thick and oppressive, each
of the Nephilim sitting in a different corner of the Spot, lost in
their own thoughts.

Barny had wandered off first, while the
others were still talking. He hadn't gone far, just far enough to
start building a bonfire. It seemed almost an automatic response,
something he defaulted to, a familiar activity from dozens of
previous gatherings at the abandoned drive-in. His eyes were
distant, but he didn't falter, neatly stacking branches and blocks
of wood from the back of his pick-up before packing in dry
newspaper and scrub as tinder.

Did he bring the wood with him for this
meeting, Lily wondered? Or did he just drive around like that,
prepared in case a spontaneous bonfire should break out?

Gideon was walking along the rusted steel
parking-lot fence, dragging a stick along its ribbed surface,
kicking the occasional bit of gravel out of his way. He, too,
looked lost in thought. Unlike Barny, Gideon would occasionally
glance up at the others briefly before continuing along his way. He
was muttering something, though Lily couldn't make out what it was
under the noise his stick was making.

She realized that given how far from her he
was, she shouldn't be able to tell that he was muttering anything.
Normally. Was this another gift of her father's dark heritage? A
superhuman sense of hearing?

Delilah was off on her own, sitting on a log
near the dilapidated concession stand, poking at the dirt with a
stick. She was the least fathomable one, younger than the others,
but so intelligent as to be almost alien. What did people that
smart even think about? Lily was no slouch, but something about the
girl's intellect intimidated her. Still, maybe she could come up
with the answers where Jessie's Biblical understanding had left
off.

Maybe.

Jessie herself had remained where they'd
been talking before the others had split away. It was obvious that
she was troubled, biting her lip, watching the others one after
another. Lily made eye-contact with her whenever she glanced in her
direction, but Jessie made no attempt to come join her. What did
the girl expect, dropping the Lucifer-bomb on them like that? Like
it wasn't this sudden traumatic blow, discovering that you were
part devil?

That was Jessie's problem. She was so strong
in her faith that it was difficult for her to realize that other
people weren't. That even the other members of her community lived
largely secular lifestyles. That sometimes, maybe, people who
believed in and belonged to the church didn't necessarily even
believe in God.

Or at least Lily didn't. Not that she'd ever
have told anyone. She wasn't a, you know, atheist. She just thought
that He was another story, like the devil, like the flood, like
Adam and Eve. It hadn't mattered to her that He might not have been
really real, because she loved the Church and she loved her father.
Her foster father.

But now? If this was real, if she was
half-angel, if she was the devil's daughter, then obviously God was
real too. Right?

"Hold up." Delilah had walked over to where
Barny was kneeling in front of his bonfire branches, lighter in
hand. She stood, arms crossed, behind him.

"What?"

"I was thinking. You said you could burn
things? With your hands?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you do that now?" She nodded towards
the tinder. "Show us, I mean."

Barny glanced towards Lily, and then Gideon.
"Sure, I guess."

Lily was surprised that he seemed nervous,
putting his lighter away and waiting for the group to gather.

"How do you do it?" Delilah asked.

Barny wiggled his fingers. "It's hard to
explain. I just sort of tense my muscles and concentrate, and then
my hand starts to heat up."

"Show us?"

"Okay." Barny looked at his hand for a
moment.

He reached into the branches and placed it
on his kindling. After a few seconds tendrils of smoke started to
rise from below his palm. The dry brush and newspaper ignited, and
Barny drew his hand back quickly.

"Did that hurt?" Jessie asked.

"It feels warm," Barny said. "Tingles.
Doesn't hurt."

"Are you immune to fire?" Gideon asked.

"Are you? Why don't you find out?"

Glowering at Barny, the redhead brought his
hand close to the flame, drawing it back before it got too close.
"No."

"Interesting," Delilah said. "We're
manifesting different powers."

"Don't call them that," Barny said.

"Powers?"

"It sounds dumb. Like from a comic
book."

She adjusted her glasses. "What should we
call them then?"

"Gifts?" Jessie suggested. "They are gifts
from God, after all."

"I'm not really comfortable with that." Lily
said.

"Why not?"

"Melchizedek." Lily looked away from the
fire, towards the desert. "What if we end up like him? Looking like
him? That doesn't sound like a gift to me."

"Who cares what we call them," Gideon
said.

"We have to refer to them somehow," Delilah
said. "Call them abilities."

"Fine, whatever," Barny said.

"Wherever they come from, we have them,"
Delilah said. "We should try and discern their parameters. See what
their limitations are. See what they can do."

"It's a good idea," Lily said. "In case the
men looking for Melchizedek show up. Take an interest in us."

"And so we don't accidentally hurt anyone,"
Gideon said.

Barny snorted. "Fine, whatever. How do you
want to do this?"

"Just one second." Delilah ran over to her
dirt bike, a broad smile across her face. She returned with pen and
paper in hand. "Let's start by listing what abilities you've
noticed."

"I'm stronger. Faster. I can make my body
heat up."

"Not just the hands?" Delilah asked.

"Anywhere if I concentrate."

Delilah wrote in her notebook. "How hot can
you get?"

Barny pulled a small object out of his
pocket. It was thin, the length of his palm, and uneven, with
regularly spaced grooves and spindles. "I made this out of
sand."

"You did?" Lily asked.

It was translucent, glass, shining in the
firelight. "Took me almost ten minutes. Wanted to see if I could do
it."

"Holy shit," Delilah said. "There's a high
lime content in the sands around Laton, but you're talking over
two-thousand degrees, Barny."

"I am amused that you just know this," Barny
said.

"He melted through my bike pretty quickly,"
Gideon said.

"Aluminum's melting point is lower," Delilah
said. "And your bike is probably an aluminum alloy."

"Point is he owes me a bike."

"Nobody cares about your bike," Delilah
said. "What powers... abilities... do you have?"

Gideon folded his arms. "I'm strong. Tough.
Fast."

"How strong?"

He pointed at Barny. "Stronger than
him."

"That's debatable," Barny said.

"Fuck you, I beat your ass."

"I wasn't expecting it."

"Beat. Your. Ass."

"We need to get an accurate measurement of
how strong you are," Delilah said. "Barny, how much does your truck
weigh?"

"He's not lifting my truck," Barny said.

"Come on, this is important!"

"Why?"

Delilah spoke quickly, waving her pen around
for emphasis. "The more data we gather, the better we quantify the
changes we've undergone. The degree of change seems to be different
for each of us. There has to be a reason for that."

"So?"

"Understanding the reason will help us
predict what's happening to us. What will happen to us."