Chapter One: A Taste of Doomsday "Brothers lift hands against one another; the ties of kinship are torn; full of hate is the world and of shameless adultery; ax-time, this is, and sword-time, shields are cloven; storm-time this is, and wolf-time; the end of the Earth."                                   -the Prose Edda "And I saw, and behold, a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer."                                   -Revelations, 6:2 The red-haired woman was following him, Greg decided. He was sure of it now. He'd noticed her when he was leaving the subway, coming home after doing some research in the library; some books couldn't be downloaded from the 'net, he'd found out to his chagrin. He needed to keep his Grade Point Average up, and he was busting his ass to do so. The draft hadn't been reinstated yet, but it was just a matter of time. Every day, the news posted casualty lists. The war wasn't going well, and this time it wasn't a peacekeeping mission in some country only a Jeopardy contestant could find on a map. Two days ago, an armored assault had gotten within spitting distance of San Antonio before the Texas National Guard had contained the breakthrough. The casualty list had been particularly long that evening. Greg had been worrying about the imminent draft when he saw her, standing on the platform, apparently waiting to board the car he was leaving. The woman in the bulky overcoat stood out from among the crowd of early commuters. She was model-tall, but not skinny; even under the coat she seemed athletic and strong. Her face was model-beautiful. She could have easily made a living through her looks, although if he'd seen her face on a billboard or commercial or web site he would have remembered. Strangely enough, she had made eye contact with him and smiled. Out-of-towner, she had to be. Anybody who lived here for more than a few weeks soon learned better, or got into trouble. He'd started the three-block walk towards his dingy apartment, past the spray-painted buildings, which he'd gotten used to. Then past the burning hulk of a building that had been hit by a cruise missile New York's air defenses had knocked out of the sky. The missile hadn't hit the military targets it had been seeking; instead, the warhead had fallen on top of the building and turned it into a funeral pyre for twenty-nine people. Greg had been there, trying to comfort the survivors, helping to organize a bucket brigade. He hadn't done much good. He'd pulled out a screaming man, and had gotten burned himself, although not as badly as he'd first thought. That had been as close to the war as he wanted to get. At least, he was good enough in math that he'd been able to switch majors from history-worse than useless for a nation at war-to computer engineering, which might guarantee him a civilian job, or at least a rear-echelon military post. Or so he hoped. Greg was absorbed in his thoughts, but he never completely ignored his surroundings. Don't survive long in New York otherwise. As he turned a corner, he checked behind him. And there she was, the red-haired woman. She was half a block behind him, walking at a steady pace. Greg started worrying. For a moment, his instincts failed him. He was so concerned with the stranger behind him that he failed to notice the car parked on the opposite side of the street. It wasn't until the engine started and the car started moving that he noticed them. By then, all he could do was to scream in terror when he saw that the car was full of men with guns, all pointed at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman who'd been following him running forward, her hand outstretched. She was glowing. Then the guns spat flame and the whole world went dark. Something cold and damp was pressed against his face. Greg woke up. The woman was leaning over him, rubbing a wet handkerchief over his face. He blinked, looked around. They were in his apartment. He was lying on the faded living room couch. There was no sign of Elmo, his cat. "What . . . what happened?" he croaked. He felt exhausted, drained. "They mowed you down on the street. Then I killed them, and carried you here," the woman replied. Her voice was nice, but businesslike, like a TV's anchorwoman, or a politician. "Killed them? Shot me?" Greg struggled to his feet. That's when he realized that his shirt was full of bloody holes. "Shot me," he gasped, and fell back on the couch, his hands reaching for the wounds that had to be there. But he felt no pain, no blood on his hands. The woman smiled. "Don't worry. You're fine." She picked a plate off the living room table. It clinked as she showed it to him. There were some ten bullets and fragments of bullets on the plate. "Pulled those out of you. They really wanted you dead, child." Greg looked at the bullets-ugly chunks of metal, all deformed and twisted, like half-melted lead mushrooms. "Shot me," he whispered. Then he looked at the woman. "Did you heal me? How?" Then the obvious answer came to his mind. "Are you some kind of magician? A witch?" Magic was real. So the news had been saying since Greg was a child. He'd never seen a magician or witch in action, but, like everyone else, he knew someone who knew someone who had gotten some sorcerer's feathers ruffled, and had been cursed or burned or worse as a result. He'd only half-believed, though-until now. But the woman was shaking her head, still smiling. "No, not a witch, although I know a few, and they might have been able to save someone with multiple gunshot wounds. One of the bullets hit you in the head, though." Greg reached towards his forehead, and felt caked blood-and something thicker he hurriedly rubbed off his fingers-almost right between his eyes. "How come I'm not dead?" "Mostly, you healed yourself, Gregory Fairchild," the woman replied. "I helped somewhat, but if you couldn't heal yourself, you would have died in the seconds it took me to kill those men." "How could you kill those men?" He remembered them well enough. There had been four of them, and they all had pistols of shotguns. The woman simply gestured towards his window. "See for yourself," she said simply. Greg did. He had almost made it to his apartment when he'd been shot. From his window, he could see out the street. And he could see the car-the burning hulk of the car-lying on its side. There were a number of cop cars and fire engines at the scene. This neighborhood wasn't a Safety Zone, so a shoot-out like this had to attract attention. So she had killed them. "What-you pack a flamethrower in your purse or something?" She shook her head. "No, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve." "So you are a witch." "I already told you I'm not. Are you calling me a liar?" Greg decided that annoying a woman who had disposed of a carload of armed men was not a smart idea. Unfortunately, his mouth had other ideas. "So what are you then?" The woman stood up. There was a flash of light, and she was gone. In her place stood a taller, glowing figure. She was, if anything, more beautiful than the other, but larger, looking like an exquisitely sculpted statue. She wore a short tunic, with slits on the back for the huge feathered wings that grew there. Her eyes shone with a golden hue. "I guess you can say I'm an angel. You can call me Daele." With gulp, Greg staggered to the nearest chair and sat down just before he collapsed. The angel changed back. "Now that I've got your attention, I think we should talk." At first, Greg did most of the talking. "Before I begin, I'd like to see how much you know about the world," she told him. "That way, all I have to do is fill in the gaps as you go, and finish up afterwards." Greg nodded. She wanted to know how much he kept up with world affairs. Even now, some people did not know what was going on, caring more about sports scores than the harsh realities of war. They might not have a clue until enemy tanks were rolling down the streets of Manhattan. Greg had been a history major, though, and he had the added incentive that current affairs might determine his fate, in or out a uniform. "Okay, let's see," he started, clearing his thoughts. "I guess it happened in 2009, when everybody in Munich died." "2008, actually, but as good a beginning as any," she said. "Go on." "So, everybody in Munich wakes up dead one morning, except there is this one guy, standing on some tower, waving at the news choppers." Greg remembered the old footage, which still played on television, eight years later. The man, perhaps in his thirties, loomed over the carnage like some ancient god come to life. "He called himself the Apostle, and he created this cult around himself, the Church of Revelations." "The cult existed before the Apostle first appeared," Daele corrected. "It made its first public appearance in 2000. And it was active, long, long before then." "If you say so. Anyway, the Apostle overthrew the German government in '09 or '10, I believe." Greg remembered his father watching the news in utter disbelief, the fear that had been in his face when Greg asked him what was happening. "It was very ugly. He killed people by the carload. And then his army invaded France, almost like World War II all over again. Which of course, made no sense. France, Russia, almost everybody had nukes. Territorial conquest had become obsolete sixty-five years before. But they invaded anyway, and when the French tried to use their nukes, they found they didn't work. No explosive fission or fusion reaction has worked since the Church of Revelations started the war. Nuclear power plants still function, but nuclear bombs don't. It makes no sense. Do you know why that happened?" Daele seemed a bit taken aback by the question. "We have some . . . theories. But no, we don't know why that happened." She smiled ruefully. "To be honest, we had always assumed that nuclear weapons would play a major role during this conflict." That didn't sit well with Greg. If the angels did not know what was going on, who did? "So, with no nukes to slow him down, and with an army that had appeared overnight, complete with hordes of monsters and weird magic, the Church of Revelations conquered Europe, kicked the asses of the Americans that arrived to help, and then started spreading to other continents. Asia, South America, all over. They bombed Jerusalem and that Holy Rock the Muslims have in Saudi Arabia, and they killed the Pope. Although you angels tried to stop them." And failed, he did not add. "As I will explain shortly, 'they' angels were not 'we' angels. There is more than one group of angels-we prefer the term Seraphim, by the way-in the world. The ones that got killed did so stupidly. They waited until the humans had been utterly defeated, and then they jumped in to get slaughtered as well." Her face grew angry, and, Greg, thought, also sad. "Those brave fools. So many dead, and for nothing." Greg decided to continue. "So, the Army of Revelations continued to roll through countries. They even reached Mexico, and were stopped at the U.S. border. So now we get bombed once in a while, by stealth bombers or cruise missiles, and some say it's the end of the world and that the Dark Apostle is Satan or the Antichrist." Greg remembered who he was talking to. "Well, is he?" "In a way, he is. If you are referring to the Great Adversary, who has been mentioned in dozens of sacred writings around the world, yes, that is him. If you are thinking of Lucifer, no, it's not him. Lucifer exists, and he and his Fallen angels are quite capable of great mischief, but in some ways he's the least of our problems." She took a deep breath before continuing. "You've covered the basics. I'll try to fill in the rest. "The Church of Revelations worships an entity they call Leviathan, the Ancient Great One. They think it is God, or a god, or at least a force that will reward them with power for their services. They are wrong. "Leviathan is a being from Beyond. It is not from our reality. You and I have a closer kinship with some silicon-based life form that might live on a planet in Alpha Centauri than Leviathan has with anything that lives in this Universe. The basic building blocks of reality are made of a substance or energy pattern, which occultists call Essence or Ether. Leviathan's universe is made of a different energy, like anti-matter is to matter. The two don't mix well. When beings like Leviathan manifest on Earth, the world starts to become twisted. Water turns to blood. Children are born with strange deformities. Monsters walk the land. "You have seen the Marks, yes? The Believers who worship this monster bear them on their hands and foreheads. They are more than symbols. They are the beginning of the Taint, a connection between Leviathan and its worshippers-and through them, between Leviathan and Earth. Eventually, that Taint will transform and destroy those who bear it. "Leviathan has yet to manifest on Earth. If-or when-it does, reality as we know it will cease to exist. We will become whatever its twisted vision demands. We will lose the most precious gift of all, free will." "So what is stopping it?" Greg blurted out. "God? The angels?" "Actually, you are. Humans, that is-and you are mostly human, after all. As long as one living human refuses to accept Leviathan in his heart, there is hope." Well, that explained some things-like the attempts to forcibly convert all the conquered populations. That didn't explain the other thing she had said. "What do you mean, I'm mostly human?" "Well, you are mostly human, but one of your parents was an angel. You are Nephelim." "You mean the guy who . . ? He was an angel?" Greg had heard the tale; his parents had told him the truth when he was fifteen. His mother had been pregnant with him when she had married his father. Dad had known about it, and had adopted Greg and raised him as his own. Ma had never spoken about the other guy, who had abandoned her before she knew she was pregnant. Until now, Greg had never had any interest in learning anything about his natural father. "Yes, he was an angel of the Heavenly Host, who became enamored of a woman, and committed what their kind consider a great sin. He abandoned her in shame, and probably confessed and was punished. Which brings me to something I had mentioned earlier. Not all angels are the same. There are three major groups of angels. The identities of the larger two should be simple to guess." "Sure. Heaven and Hell," Greg said absently. "The good angels and the bad angels." "Correct. Although the goodness of the 'good' angels can sometimes be overestimated, as can the evil of the 'bad' ones. The third group is formed of angels who came to Earth long ago, to better understand Humankind. We call ourselves Watchers. We also beget children from among humans, but unlike your father, we do not abandon them. And we look for any missing orphans. Especially now, when we need all the help we can get to fight off Leviathan." Greg was only half-listening. The facts he had heard were just beginning to sink in. "So I can fly and glow in the dark when I want to?" he asked. Better to deal with the details, and not think about the rest. Daele shook here head. "No. Your human nature is stronger in some ways. Which is good. Humans were made in the likeness of the Creator, you know, while we Seraphim will never be more than servants. Some angels hate that fact-Lucifer was one of them, but he has plenty of company, both among the Heavenly Host and the Infernal Legion. "The Nephelim have a number of special abilities. For one, you are almost impossible to kill. The men who shot you were prepared to cut you to pieces, douse your body with gasoline, and then burn it to ashes. The gunshots were just meant to slow you down while they did all that. By the time I dragged you to the apartment, you had recovered from half a dozen wounds that, on a mortal, would have caused an instant kill." Greg looked at the bullets on the plate. "Neat," he said tonelessly. "So why were they trying to kill me?" "The Watchers are not the only ones looking for Nephelim. The agents of the Church also operate in America, and whenever they find one of you, they try to eliminate you before you can be discovered. And not just Nephelim, either. There are many other beings out there who threaten Leviathan. The Old Gods of myth also exist, and they have their own semi-divine children living among humans. Also, some humans have magical powers, or the Second Sight. Others are true Saints-linked to the Creator in ways we angels cannot imagine. This is a War that involves everyone, and there is no escaping one's place in the war." With a sinking sensation, Greg understood. He had been drafted after all. Except he would be fighting a side of the War few knew about.