The Angel Stone

The guard was so mesmerized by the game that he didn’t see Ralph creeping across the floor until he was practically under his feet. Ralph sat up and squeaked.

“Oi!” The guard shouted, narrowly missing Ralph as he tipped forward in his chair and spilled his bag of Cheetos on the floor. Ralph dodged under his legs and ran a circle around the guard, who spun trying to keep up with him and then toppled dizzily over to one side. Soheila giggled at the sight, but I was too worried for Ralph’s safety to enjoy the spectacle. The trow might have been slow, but he was huge. One misstep and Ralph was mouse soup. But Ralph nimbly evaded the lumbering guard and took off across the floor away from us, with the guard in hot pursuit. We could hear his footsteps pounding toward the opposite side of the building.

“Come on,” Frank said, clamping Soheila on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

A tremor passed through Soheila at Frank’s touch. She pretended to need something from her backpack while Frank took the lead. Glancing at her, I saw a flush of crimson in her cheeks. She looked up at me, her eyes wide, her pupils dilated. “Hurry!” she commanded, expelling a gust of air that nearly knocked me over. I wanted to comfort her, but I knew that the last thing she wanted right now was to be touched by a human, so I followed Frank through the dimly lit lobby of Main Hall, past bulletin boards where the magenta Alpha flyers glowed in the dark with a malevolent radioactive sheen. Soheila caught up with us on the stairs. At the top, Frank held us back with a restraining arm while he checked that the hall was clear, then motioned for us to follow, backs against the wall, to the dean’s office. When we reached it, Soheila stepped in front of Frank and held her hand over the doorknob.

“It’s warded,” she said. “One touch and it will send an alarm signal to Duncan Laird.”

“Then we won’t touch it,” I said. I raised both hands and focused my attention on the door. As a doorkeeper, I could dissolve wards. Ironically, it was Duncan Laird who had commenced my education in wards this past summer. Since then I’d been studying Wheelock’s Spellcraft and had learned how to open warded doors. The trick was to fit the opening spell between the wards, like a skeleton key slipping into a lock.

“Adulterina clavis,” I murmured, sending the words into the spaces between the intricate labyrinth of wards Duncan had erected. I felt the words still tethered to me, navigating around the wards. Something clicked … and the door swung open.

“Brava, Callie!” Soheila whispered. “That was a very sophisticated spell.”

“Yeah,” Frank agreed, entering the office. “What was it? It sounded like adulterous key.”

“It’s a Latin expression for a skeleton key,” I said, beaming with pride.

“Well, if you don’t get tenure, you’ve got a brilliant future as a cat burglar ahead of you.”

Soheila tsked. “Of course Callie will get tenure—once we expel the nephilim, that is.”

“We’ll all be out of a job if we don’t get rid of them,” Frank said, looking around at the array of diplomas that hung over Laird’s desk. “Sheesh, this guy’s got more degrees than a thermometer.”

Soheila giggled. “That’s terrible, Frank.”

“Yeah, but you laughed, didn’t you?”

I was glad to see Frank and Soheila kidding around. I left them studying Duncan’s academic degrees and addressed myself to the filing cabinet where I had seen him put the foreign package. It was warded, as well, but far less elaborately than the door. I easily maneuvered an opening spell around the wards and opened the second drawer from the top. The package was stuck between two folders labeled in Greek letters.

“What’s with all the Greek?” I asked as I pulled out the package.

“It’s the preferred language of the nephilim,” Soheila replied, turning away from the framed diplomas to look at the documents I’d removed from the package. I’d studied Greek in college but never taken to it as well as to Latin. My Greek teacher was a crazy man with a pointy beard, who used to slam the Liddell and Scott lexicon on his desk if we mistranslated a passage of Homer. I passed the documents on to Soheila. “It’s rumored that one of Alexander the Great’s generals was a nephilim and that he used Alexander’s conquests to spread the rule of the nephilim.”

“We think they then held key positions in the Roman Empire,” Frank added, joining us at the desk. “And in the Roman Catholic Church after that. I think I may have had a few as priests when I was in Catholic school.”

“But I thought the nephilim were descended from elves, not angels.”

“They were,” Soheila replied, “but the nephilim weren’t happy with that origin story, so they created the story that they were descended from angels. They believed that when their fathers mated with human women, they created monsters, which the fathers then turned their backs on—the way God turns his back on the fallen angels. They say that when the last elf died, he shed a tear for his children and the tear turned into a stone.”

“The angel stone,” Frank said. “I thought that was just a story.”

Soheila laughed, a melodious sound that rustled the papers spread out on the desk. “What else do we have but stories? The angel stone is the one token that has power over the nephilim. I’ve heard that the witch hunts were finally stopped by using the angel stone.”

“It’s true that the witch hunts were the last we’d heard of the nephilim,” Frank said. “We thought they’d died out.”

“But clearly they simply went into hiding,” Soheila said. She held up a handful of papers from the desk. “There are reports here from heads of government and financial institutions. They’re everywhere. These are letters congratulating Duncan Laird on his takeover of Fairwick. They were planning this for years.”

“But why Fairwick?” I asked. “Why would a little Northeast liberal arts college be so important to them?”

“Because we had the last door,” Soheila answered. “The nephilim knew that the fey would stop them from taking their next step.”

“Their next step?” I asked. But Frank and Soheila were too engaged in reading the papers to answer right away. If only my Greek were better, I thought, picking up one of the indecipherable pages. But then I recalled one of Wheelock’s translation spells.

“Convertere,” I said. Instantly, the words on the page resolved into English. The letter was from the president of a Swiss bank, assuring Duncan Laird that he had full support for Project NextGen.

“What’s this Project NextGen?” I asked.

Soheila looked up from the page she was reading. All the color had drained out of her face. Her amber- brown eyes had turned a sickly yellow. “I believe they are planning to use Fairwick students for breeding.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“That’s … that’s …” I stuttered, unable to come up with the words to describe my disgust. Frank had no such trouble.

“Loathsome, despicable, and subhuman.”

“Savages!” Soheila hissed, her breath singeing the corners of the papers. I’d felt her breath warm the air, but I’d never before seen it burn. “We must alert the witch communities and remaining fey about what the nephilim are planning.”

“But who can we trust?” Frank asked, scowling. “The nephilim are using their Aelvesgold to bribe fey and witch alike. It’s not just the trows. The fenoderee and the pixies have signed oaths of allegiance to the nephilim.” Frank held up two documents with heavy wax seals affixed to them.

“We must do something,” Soheila insisted. “We can’t stand by and let these evil bastards prey on innocent young women.”

“As long as the nephilim have the only source of Aelvesgold, we won’t be able to trust anyone who depends on the stuff—” A look from Soheila cut him off. “I don’t mean you, of course.”

“How do you know, Frank? How do you know I won’t turn you both in to Duncan Laird for a bit of Aelvesgold?” Soheila asked bitterly. “I need it as much as any creature of the otherworld.”

“I trust you because I know you,” Frank said, looking into her eyes. His hand moved toward hers but she snatched it away, sparks flying from her fingertips. Soheila’s eyes glittered like gold coins, and Frank looked away,