The Divine Whisper (28 page)

It wasn’t good.
Not only did he not want Nicole in this sort of situation, but he also couldn’t use compulsion on her. Just the sight of them would raise red flags in her mind.

With the new information, they had to pull back and see how everything played out.

“This is ridiculous,” Gideon complained.
“Women will be the downfall of this organization. First, Malachi goes soft because his piece of ass, and now you. You need to go tell her to get lost so we can do our job.”

“Right.
I’m sorry. Have you ever met Nic? No one tells her what to do.”

“You probably could have before you fucked everything up.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, so shut it.” Gemariah felt his temper start to rise.

“Did things just get too good for you?
Too good for the man that everything comes so easily to? Let me ask you something… was it worth it?”

That was it!
Gemariah only got two steps in Gideon’s direction before Terah got between them. When he saw the other man’s laughing face, he pushed harder against the hand that was restraining him.

Even with the extra pressure, Terah never budged.
“Boys,” she snapped. “We’re on a mission now, or have you forgotten?” Her gaze swung between them both.

“You are filled with so much self-loathing that you think everyone is better than you or has it easier than you.
Here’s a newsflash. You don’t know shit, and you need to stop talking about things that you know nothing about.” Gemariah was angry, and the words poured out of his mouth.

Both men glared at each other and said nothing.
It was Terah that finally broke the silence. She laughed and said to Gideon, “You are going to be in so much trouble when I tell Trinity that you called her a piece of ass.”

All faces grimaced at the thought and then they started to laugh.
Trinity was a forced to be reckoned with, especially if Malachi was backing her.

It was the inhuman roar that caught their full attention.
All three nephilim reached for their weapons and swung their gazes toward the house.

First Gemariah saw the man that they were dragging outside.
When that same man turned his sights to where Nicole was standing, so did he. The sight of her shielding a young boy by pulling him behind her was unsettling. It was not the first time he had seen her put herself in front of a child, but there was one major difference… She had put his children
in front
of her.

He started to move out from the shadow of the house they were next to when a hand stopped him.
Terah leaned over and whispered, “Let the police handle this one. There’s no use drawing attention to ourselves if we don’t have to. It will be okay. He’s restr—”

That was as far as she got before he took off.
The man had broken loose and started to charge towards Nicole. His ears were ringing from the adrenaline running through him, but he could have sworn that the man threatened to kill her.

Gemariah was fast, but he wasn’t fast enough.
He knew that the only one dying that night was the man that had just punched his woman. Blood. That’s all he saw, all he could smell; rivers and rivers of blood, that man’s blood.

He watched as the man picked her back up.
The idiot really thought that he would hit her again? Not if he had anything to do about it.

Gemariah barreled into him, and they both fell to the ground.
When the other man tried to take time and assess the situation, Gemariah already knew where he was at, what he was doing, and what his end game was. Don’t stop until the man had breathed his last breath. That was his end game.

Gemariah was on top of him, delivering punches, right, left, then right again.
He was coherent enough to pull his punches. Not because he wanted the man to live, but because he wanted to draw it out as long as possible.

Once people realized what was happening, there were shouts, and people were tugging on him.
Obviously, they wanted him to stop, but he kept seeing Nicole fall to the ground as blood splattered from her face. Even when he felt the bolts of electricity go through him from the Taser guns, he didn’t let up.

Gemariah eventually stopped punching, and moved his hands so they were wrapped around the man’s neck.
He squeezed, and it wasn’t until the guy started to struggle, that he let up. He let the man get one good deep breath in before he smiled and squeezed again. The darkness was so near; it was as if he could reach out and touch it.

All of a sudden, something barged into him and knocked him to the side, effectively breaking his hold.
When he moved to get back up, he was held in place by an unmovable force. Gemariah was blind to anything but rage, and was unaware that it was Gideon holding him down until he whispered roughly in his ear. “You can’t go there, man. Once you go there, you can never come back from it. Trust me. You need to be here for Nicci, for your children, for us. Now snap out of it!” Gemariah was shaken hard to emphasize the last words, and he slowly blinked away the red.

Gemariah moved to get up, but was still held down.
“I’m okay. Let me up,” he said without looking at Gideon. He could tell that it was done cautious, but Gideon still let him rise.

There was a flurry of activity going on around them, but it seemed as if all the officers were keeping their distance.
I've got my work cut out for me later
, he thought. It would take a lot of energy to make all those people think what he did was right and justified.

The EMTs were frantically working on the badly beaten man while he tried to squirm to get away.

“Hold him down!
Somebody,” one yelled.

There was no way in hell Gemariah was going to touch him again.
He couldn’t be held responsible if his hands accidentally slipped and snapped the man’s fragile little neck.

“Help me,” the man moaned.

What a little shit
, he thought. The man beat on everything smaller than him, and now he’s pissing and moaning when the tables got turned. It was people like him that made Gemariah sick.

“I know you’re there.
Please, help me.”

“We’re right here, sir.
Just hold still for us.”

An EMT answered, but Gemariah didn’t think that he was talking to them.
Looking out into the crowd, he examined everyone. Looking deeper, he pulled out there emotions to see if there could be anyone working with him.

When the man started to weep, Gemariah’s attention was brought back to him.

“He left me,” he wailed.
“I failed and he left me.”

“Who,” Gemariah asked.

For the first time, the man’s eyes looked up at him. “The voice—” He stopped talking and tapped his head. “He told me to do everything.”

It was as if ice started to flow through Gemariah’s veins.
He finally knew who was behind the rush of violence. He just wanted to hear his name, to know for a fact that it was him.

“Does this voice have a name?” he spat.

Before the man could say anything, there was a loud gun shot and blood started to flow from a wound on his head. Quickly, Gemariah looked up and saw a police officer looking down at the weapon he held, with a look of astonishment.

“I don’t… I don’t know,” the officer stuttered.

He was quickly jumped from behind by one of the many surrounding officers.

“Are you going to help him out?” Gideon asked from his side.

Shaking his head, Gemariah turned to walk back to Nicole. “No, he wouldn’t have been able to be controlled that easily if he didn’t have more evil in his soul than good.” He kept walking away and there was no argument from Gideon. They both knew how compulsion worked.

Finally making it over to Nicole, he knelt down and started to try and rouse her.
After saying her name numerous times while caressing her face, and she still didn’t wake, he looked over towards Gideon.

“Can you do anything?” he asked.

“From what you’ve said about her and our abilities, I’m not sure.” Gideon reached out and grabbed her wrist. Malachi was their main healer, but Gideon had always had a mediocre amount of the ability.

Not in that case though.
He couldn’t even assess what injuries she had sustained. He looked over at Gemariah and said, “Sorry. I got nothing.”

With a growl of frustration, Gemariah bent to pick her up to take her to the human healers that were still by the dead man. He never had much confidence in them before, but he would have to trust them to help her.

When he was a couple feet away, he felt something strange on his chest where her belly was resting.
At first he thought it was the baby kicking, but soon realized that it was encompassing the entire stomach. A wave of panic consumed him, panic for her, and panic for his children. It was too soon, and he swore that what he felt was a contraction.

“Help.
You need to take her,” he rushed on when he reached them. “She’s the one that was attacked. She’s twenty five weeks pregnant with twins. She’s not waking up, and I just felt her stomach tighten.”

He had to give them credit.
One EMT quickly jumped up and ran towards the ambulance to get the gurney.

If she was surprised that Gemariah followed, she didn’t show it.
“Place her down on here,” she ordered.

Rather reluctantly, Gemariah relinquished his hold.
Before stepping back, he leaned over to kiss her forehead and whispered, “Everything will be alright. I promise.”

He never promised anyone anything.
What better way not to break any, if you don’t make them. That was different, though. That was a promise that he would die to keep. As he watched them load her into the ambulance and place an oxygen mask over her face, he thought how his promise wasn’t just for right then. He planned to somehow fix things between them and then keep that promise for the rest of his life.

******

Gemariah staggered once while walking into the hospital, enough so that Malachi had to reach over and catch him.

As much as he wanted to follow the ambulance as it sped away, he couldn’t.
There had been too many mistakes on his part that day that could eventually comprehend the welfare of his team. He couldn’t leave until it was fixed.

On occasions like that, he would usually have gone up to each person individually to alter their memories or change how they perceived the event.
It was easier to do, and easier on him. He didn’t have that sort of time or patience, though. Therefore, he gathered everyone in a group and projected a large amount of calmness and understanding before slightly changing what they thought they saw. Using that much concentrated ability always took a lot out of him, and that time was no different.

Nicole had already been seen by the time that they arrived.
Trinity sat in a chair close to the bed, and Gemariah felt grateful that she had driven ahead so Nicole wouldn’t have been alone.

“What’d they say?”
Gemariah felt a wave of dizziness and hung his head till it passed.

“Are you drunk?”
Nicole asked in outrage.

He looked up and smiled.
She knew damn well he hadn’t been drinking, but was just trying to start a fight. “No, Babe, just tired,” he said.

Trinity, I’m burned out.
You have the only chair. I would never ask if I didn’t need—

He didn’t even get to finish before she answered him.

Not happening!

Please
, he pushed out.

No.
Go crawl back in a hole where you belong.

Trinity still hadn’t forgiven him either for what he had done to her friend.

Suddenly, Malachi’s voice boomed through both of their heads.

Move! Now!

There was so much strength behind his projection that Trinity jumped and looked toward her husband. There was a look of anger on his face that Gemariah hadn’t ever seen him give Trinity before.

She was wise not to push it any farther and silently stood up before moving across the room with Malachi, who then took her arm and led her outside the room.

Gemariah looked back over at Nicole.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

She didn’t even look at him as she crossed her arms in front of her chest, successfully shutting him out.
“Fine.”

“The babies?”

At the mentioning of them, her face visibly softened. She looked down, and placed both hands on her stomach. “They’re okay. I started having contractions, but they got them stopped.”

“I know.
I talked to the doctor.”

Her head snapped up.
“She wouldn’t have done that. You’re not on the list of people that I gave them to discuss my condition with.”

“I didn’t give her much of a choice.”
The thought brought his temper rising once more. Now that he knew her and his children were well, he had some things to get off his chest.