“Would that have been so bad?”
He shook his head. “Better a revenant than a nephilim. Better a hound of hell, a gorgon with snakes in her hair, better a cosmic spawn that devours everything that lives and breathes.”
I furrowed my brows. This was personal. GC placed his hand on mine and gave me an apologetic smile. I wasn’t supposed to take the old man seriously.
“Tell me about the nephilim. Why do you hate their kind so much?”
“They are the true embodiment of sin. Don’t you know what they did to Heaven and Earth?” He leaned over the table and emphasized every word. “They united them through sin.”
I cocked an eyebrow. He was exaggerating, wasn’t he? Half an hour spent in the presence of this man, and I already knew he wasn’t going to tell me anything useful. But I’d made the journey here, and it hadn’t been a pleasant journey at all, so I could as well let him speak.
“When God created the heavens, he made the angels immortal and perfect.”
“I thought angels aren’t immortal…”
“They were back then. Not anymore. Let me tell the story, girl, and you’ll understand. God created the angels, and Satan created the demons. Satan didn’t have the power to make his demons immortal, so in the end, he just gave them long lives and called it a day. I remember Satan… He was a laid-back fellow who didn’t concern himself with such details. Perfection, sin, immortality… it was all the same to him. He liked to tinker with his demon matrices in his spare time, experiment… Soon, Hell was filled with demons of all shapes and sizes. It got so crowded that Satan actually congratulated himself for not trying too hard to make them immortal. The bastards were copulating like crazy, demon spawn sprouting all over the place. He sent them to Earth so he could have some peace and quiet. God, though…” He laughed out loud. “He thought He’d found the secret sauce to populating Heaven with exactly as many immortal angels, archangels, seraphim, and cherubim as he liked without risking it ever getting too crowded. You see, girl, the problem with these two guys was that neither of them liked to be alone in their immense, boundless power, but they didn’t like to be surrounded by too many servants, either. If they could snap their fingers, make live beings with individual thoughts and experience appear out of nowhere, then snap their fingers again and reduce them to dust… that would’ve been just grand. But it’s not how this universe works. It has laws, and those laws must be respected even by God and Satan.”
He was getting off track. “What was the secret sauce? How did God make them perfect and immortal?”
“He never gave them genitals.”
I was speechless.
He laughed, finding my shock delectable.
“That’s right. No penises, no vaginas.”
I was pretty sure my ex-archangel had always had a penis. Although… it was a fascinating concept – lose your wings and gain a cock. It wasn’t what had happened in Heaven, though, as Apis the First was about to reveal.
“God sent his angels to Earth, too, because why wouldn’t he parade his creation just like Satan was parading his?”
“Wait. Aren’t humans God’s creation, too?”
He shook his head, disappointed by my lack of knowledge. He turned to GC: “Where did you find her, boy? Under a rock?”
GC laughed, like the moron that he was, and I elbowed him hard.
“Story for another time,” said the old man. “The angels landed on Earth, among humans, mages, vampires, shifters, and so on, and when they saw the unique, frail, ephemeral beauty of the human women, they had no eyes for anyone or anything else. A group of them later known as the Watchers – because they watched and watched and couldn’t look away – fell in love with the human females and married them. To their dismay, they soon discovered they couldn’t offer their wives what they most desired: pleasures of the flesh, and the babies that came after. So, they went back to Heaven and begged the Lord to fix them, because for sure, by omitting to give them what literally everyone on Earth and below it had, he’d gotten their anatomy wrong. You can imagine how that ended.” He chuckled. “God said no, and the angels made their opinion known by letting out a string of curses they’d learned from their mortal wives. Back on Earth, they soon figured out they
didn’t need God at all. Mages could do the job just as well. And that’s how angels got genitals and nephilim were born.”
“Hm.” There was something I was missing. “So, why the hate?”
“Don’t you understand? Angels were the only creatures in this universe that were truly pure, perfect, and immortal. The moment the Watchers got genitals, what do you think happened? Mages tampered with God’s creation, and there were consequences. All the angels in Heaven suddenly got genitals and lost their immortality. Innocence was gone from the world. And all because the Watchers wanted children with their human wives. All because of the nephilim.”
“I don’t see how…”
“The tragedy of it all shook the heavens so terribly that the very fabric of the universe was damaged. Portals opened all over the world, and cosmic creatures that should’ve never set foot – or paw, or tentacle, or claw – in this universe came through, swallowed whole communities, and went to sleep under the ground to better digest their food. To close the portals, God, Satan, and false gods alike had to work together. And we closed them, but we never managed to send the cosmic beings back. The Great Old One who made you what you are now is one of them. Fortunately, as long as the portals are closed, they will sleep.”
My heart started beating faster. I thought I was coming to learn about Morningstar, and I was instead learning about the Great Old Ones.
“But they can be banished, can’t they?” I asked, excited. “I already know they can’t be killed, but they can be sent back to their world.”
The man shook his head. “In theory. But I don’t think the answer you seek is here, in this universe. One would have to travel to their universe to learn how they can be banished.”
I was mildly disappointed, but I told myself this was still something. Something I hadn’t known before, and now I knew. Another piece of the puzzle, too precious to be discarded.
“Nephilim are sin itself. They almost destroyed everything and everyone.”