The Nephilim (42 page)

“Yes. Apparently the agent's holster was damaged. There was a piece of metal lodged in it. And when he put away his weapon it caught the hair trigger, thereby discharging the weapon.”

“Which is why weapons should be holstered with their safeties on.” What she was talking about sounded like a rookie mistake, and not something an agent should do. And why was the agent's holster even damaged? It should have been replaced the moment he'd discovered it was.

But then as Maricia gave up on trying to control herself and started laughing he started to wonder what the hell was going on. Especially when Katarinka was practically on the floor in hysterics by then.

It was then though that an uncomfortable thought began to make itself heard in his tired brain. There had only been one FBI agent in the room at that time as far as he knew. And there had certainly only been one agent holstering his weapon. And no agent should have a weapon with a hair trigger and a broken safety. All of which lead to one inescapable conclusion.

“I shot myself?!” The traitorous words tumbled out of his mouth by themselves.

He couldn't believe it! It just wasn't right after everything he'd been through. And it absolutely wasn't fair. But when the two of them lost all control he knew it was true. He'd shot himself. Just at the moment when he was celebrating his greatest triumph, he'd shot himself. In the arse. Naturally he wasn't going to get any sympathy.

“Forty stitches ... All the way down your thigh ... And the doctor couldn't stop complaining as he sewed ... Something about how much work you keep giving him.” Maricia gasped it out between bouts of uncontrollable laughter. “He said you shouldn't be allowed a gun. Not even a toy one!”

Then she tossed him a copy of the morning paper and he read the headline. “Agent Shoots His Butt Off.
”
It was the lead story on the front page, and his photo was front and centre.

After that she gave up trying to speak for a while, and he just had to lie there and listen to the pair of them braying away like mules. Actually it was worse than that – they actually had tears streaming down their faces. And there was nothing he could do to stop them. Nothing except yell at them a little and tell them to go and find him some coffee. They did that eventually, tumbling out of the ward arm in arm and still laughing as they headed down the corridor. All, while he tried not to turn red or cry.

Officer involved shooting. There was paperwork for that. Endless paperwork. He should know. He'd been filling out enough of those forms lately. But right at the top of the top form were the two lines he dreaded filling out. Name of the officer shot. And the name of the shooter. Right beside one another. And it was going to be his name on both. He so did not want to have to fill out that form.

He put that out of his mind as best he could as his sense of duty returned to him. And he still had to find out what was happening with Benedict. He was a nephilim as well as an agent.

“Cassie.” She was suddenly there with him, the moment he called her, looking every bit as serious as she always did. But that was better than looking worried or laughing her face off.

“Child you do know I am not simply at your beck and call.” But the fact that she had come suggested she wasn't actually too busy to see him.

“Apologies. I just needed to know about Benedict.”

“Lost in his own personal nightmare. He is being cared for in another part of the hospital under guard. But it will be a long time before he is well.”

“He will never be well.”

That was the one thing he knew. He'd first understood it on the night that Cassie had told him what had happened to the thief. How he had become what he was. But that message had been reinforced from the battle. Even as he thought of him, he remembered that sad dust covered figure lying in the rubble and ranting at no one, and he knew that whatever had happened to his mind, it would not be fixed. That was a worrying thing.

He had never driven a man mad before. He'd never even thought he could. But in the end it had been so easy. A testament to just how badly damaged Benedict had been. And how desperately he had hidden it. There was something profoundly frightening in that. Especially when he thought about his mother and realised that what had happened to Benedict could too easily happen to her.  It made him ask himself; just how much was she hiding underneath her pretence of sanity? How deep did the damage really go? He really didn't want that. He also realised that it could happen to a great many other people as well. And that maybe it had. There were so many of them who needed help and probably a great many who never got it. That had to change.

“And the secrets he revealed?”

“Still hidden, and we hope likely to remain that way for a while.”

“Good.”

It was a relief but perhaps not as much of one as it should have been. Not when his two visitors were still laughing their heads off somewhere down the hall. They clearly couldn't be that worried. All of which left him with only one thing to do. And it was the memory of Benedict lying there lost in his madness that told him that it had to be done. That, together with a childhood memory of his own mother sitting in the kitchen of their tiny apartment, crying helplessly. A memory that he knew many others shared. This nightmare should have been fixed long ago.

“Now it's time to make a deal, you and me.”

“A deal?” Finally he saw a flicker of emotion in her. A slight narrowing of the eyes as she became suspicious. A minute raising of the voice as she felt a tiny bit of outrage at his presumption. “I suppose you want to bargain for your job back?”

“No.” It was a strange thing for him to say. Strange to hear the word come out of his mouth as he addressed an angel. But not half as strange as what was coming. “I am an agent of the FBI. I will or won't remain as such. But that is my decision not yours.” Of course he knew he was just blustering there. Cassie held all the cards and he could scream and yell for as long as he wanted about the injustice of it all but it wouldn't help. It just felt good to say it.

“Child – .”

“No!” Garrick could hear the protest coming and he cut her off a little bluntly. “We will be making a deal about our people. My people, your children. An arrangement.”

“If there is one thing that this mess has taught me it is that the Choir has been failing in its duty of care. And for far too long. That has to stop.”

“Child!”

He heard the warning in her voice and ignored it.

“No
Aunt
Cassie. From this day on we will take care of our own.
All
of our own. There can be no more mistakes.”

He had no mandate for saying it. He didn't know if he would be supported by the others – especially when he had an idea of how much work was going to be involved. But he knew it had to be done.

“Whenever one of the Choir sleeps with a human from now on we will be told. You will give us the names and contact details for the human so that we can provide them with care. And you will inform us whether a child has been conceived. There will be no more of our people raised in broken homes by broken parents.”

And there would be no more mothers crying helplessly for no reason while their frightened children looked on.

“Child.”

“I am
not
a child Cassie. I am a grown man. And more than that I am a nephilim. I have a duty to my people. You have a duty to your children. It's time we both started doing our duty.”

“The rules –.”

“– Do not prevent you from giving us that information.” He cut her off again. “Those that the Choir have slept with already know of your existence. There is nothing more to tell them that they do not already know. And any children would be nephilim. And the one thing we know is that both parents and children need help.”

“We cannot allow any more Armando Benedict's to be created.”

It was the one thing she had to hear. Benedict was the Choir's failure. But he was their failure as well. Had someone found him and helped him, counselled him in some way shortly after, then it was doubtful he would have become the danger to them all that he had become. Likewise many other people would be alive as well.

The Choir had failed to live by their rules. And the nephilim had failed to look past their own needs to think of others. There was no shortage of blame to go around. But this wasn't about blame. It was about making things better.

“I will speak to the others.”

And with that the angel was gone, leaving him there with the two women who had just arrived back in the room with coffee cups in their hands. At least they'd stopped laughing. In fact Maricia was looking suddenly very serious. Garrick cut her off before she could ask.

“It's time to fix this mess.”

It was. That was the one thing he'd finally come to realise. They had a problem and it had to be fixed. And since the Choir weren't going to do it, they had to. It was time for his people to stand up for themselves.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Three weeks later found Garrick standing in front of the foundations to his new house, wondering how long it would be before it was ready for him to move in to. Quite a while he guessed when all they'd managed to do was pour the slab so far. Still, it was in progress and he'd wanted to see it while he was still in the city. He was getting tired of motel living – even when the insurance company was paying. But at least the company was prepared to renew his policy now that Benedict was in jail and it looked like his home wasn't going to be blown up again. Happy enough that they might not even raise his premiums – too much.

They'd paid for a new truck too, and that at least was something he could enjoy for the moment. Once his backside healed enough for him to sit in it comfortably that was. And even if it was only him.

“
Why a truck?” Maricia interrupted his enjoyment with the same complaint she'd been repeating ever since he'd picked up his new wheels a week before. “Why this gas guzzling monstrosity instead of a nice comfortable car?”

“High ground clearance, four wheel drive, plenty of load capacity and a full cabin. And it's not that thirsty since it's a hybrid.”

“It's ugly and takes up half the road!”

“And we're late!” Katarinka called out to them from the back seat, impatient to get going.

Except that now she was known as Katz. Garrick wasn't quite sure when that had happened or why. But at least she wasn't still being referred to as “the suspect”, or worse “the defendant”. Maricia even said she was working hard at school. Improving her grades. And she had a boyfriend, not that she would ever admit it. Someone called Mark.

“There's plenty of time kid. They're not going to throw your mother out on to the street you know.” Katz' mother was one of the few people being let out of jail lately that he was happy to see released. The others he wasn't so pleased about.

The three Treasury agents had been discharged. They were unemployed and lucky not to be facing serious charges, but when the investigators had back tracked their way through some of Benedict's previous abodes they'd found evidence that he'd been behind their madness. They really had been duped. As for Treasury itself, heads were rolling at every level. Benedict really had had his claws in them deep. But then heads were rolling in other agencies, including the bureau. Only a few there, but each one was like another bullet in his guts.

As for Detective Warren, he'd made a simple one off statement to the effect that he'd never meant to shoot Garrick, just threaten him a little, and it had all been a drastic misunderstanding. That was enough it seemed to keep him not only out of jail, but employed. Garrick wasn't exactly thrilled about that, but common sense told him there was no value in arguing about it. Especially when with Benedict out of the way the detective was free of him and no longer an enemy.

Even the assassins who had come after him were now in witness protection. He wasn't quite sure why.