The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences (The Second Coming Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences

  Second Coming Chronicles Book 2

  Terry James

  The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences

  Second Coming Chronicles Book 2

  Terry James

  CKN Christian Publishing

  An Imprint of Wolfpack Publishing

  6032 Wheat Penny Avenue

  Las Vegas, NV 89122

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  Copyright © 2018 by Terry James (as revised)

  Characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-64119-379-5

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  A Look At: Revelations

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  About Terry James

  The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences

  Prologue

  Jerusalem – Midnight - January 1, 2000

  Yusfi Shabatt hated this duty. But better than going on the Hamas raiding parties that usually meant death to most of those who tried to kill the Jews. Guarding the golden-domed place of the stone was easy. Although he was supposed to watch for Jews to try to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Dome of the Rock, he knew better. Other than an occasional gathering of the Jew-dogs to try and place a temple cornerstone, as they called it, the Jews posed no threat. Many times, he had been called upon to commit acts that the leaders could then blame on the Jews.

  His thoughts, and standing, wearied him. He would rest from this non-essential duty.

  Yusfi leaned the Russian-made automatic assault rifle against the wall of the small structure and sat upon the hard surface of Mount Moriah with his knees up while he nodded. He would get some sleep this night of darkness, lit only by the occasional stars that peeked between the sky-spaces in the growing cloud cover.

  His eyelids grew heavy the moment he rested the back of his burnoosed head against the stucco and stone wall. However, rumbles of thunder caused him to come to full consciousness, his dark brown eyes glistening with the lightning illumination of the gathering storm. This meant rain. He would have to go to the hut a few dozen steps nearer the divine mosque.

  Before he could rise, he saw in the distance, almost at the center of the flat surface of Moriah, a strange thing. He would view this more closely, so retrieved the weapon and started walking toward the spewing light that seemed to be erupting from the ground.

  Lightning flashed brightly, making visible with daylight clarity the area toward which he moved. He saw it then: a huge, human-shaped figure, but four times taller than a human. It was black and looked to be boiling. It sparked brilliant, dagger-like shards of light, and the spectacle caused the Arab’s mouth to drop in amazement.

  Another figure appeared suddenly–as large as the other, but so bright that it hurt his eyes, causing him to shield them with his forearm. He let the rifle slip from his grip. He didn’t notice it falling to the ground, his eyes now wide with astonishment.

  The two monstrous creatures clashed, accompanied by an earth-vibrating clap of thunder.

  Yusfi Shabatt stood paralyzed, mesmerized by the spectacular battle that raged at the center of the Mount’s surface. The figures, their bodies firing bursts of light and illuminated by the horrendous lightning that occasionally made the surrounding places like midday, grew to enormous size, rising from the top of Moriah to the lightning’s very source from the storm.

  The rain began cascading while the wind blew in gale force, causing Yusfi to go to his knees and lean into it on the palms and heels of his hands to maintain his position on the ground. Still, he watched the monsters wrestling at the Mount’s center. They seemed to explode with each crash in their lightning-producing clashes.

  A blinding bolt leaped from the heavens, joined by a thousand other flickers. The result was a massive strike that knifed through the combatants, and an explosion of thunderous sound that caused Yusfi to hold his ears in pain. He looked to the place where the things had struggled. There lingered a beam of light that spread near the top to form what looked to be a crossbeam upon the radiant column. It looked like a gigantic cross, he thought while witnessing the scene that changed in less than a second.

  The Arab was dumbfounded by the evolving visions at the base of the cross of light. Two infant-like figures seemed to float in viscous liquid, their beautiful little faces, cherubic; their eyes glowing with colors that held Yusfi’s own eyes transfixed upon them. The children began growing from infancy through toddlerhood and the teen years, then into young adulthood. Then they stood while the fierce winds blew about them and lightning viciously fractured the tumultuous clouds above Moriah.

  Within moments, all changed back into the night as it had been before the storm had come.

  January 18, 2000, Tora Bora, Afghanistan

  Yosri Fouda fumbled with the tripod, becoming frustrated that the knob wouldn’t tighten to affix the camera at its apex. He was a filmmaker, not a mechanic, he grumbled, growling his displeasure through clinched teeth.

  Ziad Jarrah nudged him aside, frowning in concentration while he shook the camera so that its bottom screw hole accepted the bolt jutting from the top of the tripod. He twisted the camera, and the action accomplished the attachment Yosri Fouda wanted.

  “One shouldn’t attempt such difficult tasks without proper degrees,” the Saudi said in Arabic, looking into Fouda’s eyes.

  Everyone in the dark cave-chamber laughed, causing Fouda to shake his fist in the air, and then draw his hands together in a prayerful pose, holding them aloft. The laughter grew louder, and then subsided when a tall human form walked into the chamber from an adjoining tunnel.

  “It is good to laugh,” the man said, seeing the faces grow somber upon his entrance. “We shall laugh much more. The Zionist devils will not be as amused,” Osama bin Laden said, walking toward Mohammed Atta and handing him some pages of text in Arabic.

  “Allah is great!” one of the men shouted in Arabic. The others picked up the chant.

  “Allah be praised! Allah is great!”

  “Death to the Zionists! Death to the Jew! Death to America!”

  Yosri Fouda carefully framed the shouting men, who gesticulated wildly, thrusting fists into the air and holding hands that were pressed together over their heads in a gesture of praise to Allah.

  Osama, who at 6’ 5” stood a head taller than the tallest of the celebrants, had move
d out of camera range. His eyes dilated, becoming solid black while he watched the gleeful laughter and prancing of his fellow conspirators. A guttural snicker came from deep within his throat when Mohammed Atta began to read from the pages before the camera.

  “Allah be praised, for he is great,” the Saudi began. “Our deaths are but entrance into life eternal. Allah be praised. We are chosen to bring everlasting glory to Allah and his mighty prophet Mohammed. So, let it be! The eternal realm of Allah and his prophet is come at last. I pledge my life, my will, my all, to the great god Allah!”

  Osama bin Laden ducked his cloth-wrapped head, bowing his thin frame into the tunnel and exiting the chamber, leaving the filming process behind.

  The Al-Qaida leader emerged into the frigid White Mountain air momentarily, his gaze liquid pools of black. As he looked to the peaks to the north, a sinister smile crossed his illness-emaciated face.

  A brilliant white disk hovered silently to the right of the tallest spire. It darkened slightly, then grew to the brightness of the sun. The disk shot upward at incredible speed, then vanished.

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday, September 11, 2001, New York City

  Blake Robbins glanced at the clock on the wall next to Megan Kafka’s desk.

  “8:41,” he said beneath his breath, before taking his first sip of black coffee from his second cup of the morning. Time to finally settle in at the computer and get started.

  He made his way through two small offices to his own corner office on the north side of Two World Trade Center Tower. He stopped to look out the huge window, noticing black specks in the distance. The freighters moved imperceptibly upon unusually blue Atlantic waters, from his 88th floor perspective. This was going to be a beautiful, clear day, he thought, contemplating the plane ride to D.C. a little later in the morning. He had already booted up the computer, and the most recent instructions from the European Union interlocutors in London were electronically etched upon the monitor screen. He pulled the chair so that it rolled far enough from the desk for him to slip between its burgundy leather-covered arms.

  He placed the mug to the right of the mouse pad and began manipulating the mouse. The text scrolled, and he read the day’s negotiating points for dealing with the United States Department of Defense and Boeing’s defense contractors.

  “The black projects relevant to the transactions must be integrated within the general appropriations, if we are to move forward. Priority is that the devices involved in the R technology be included. Allies must trust each other.”

  Blake intertwined his long fingers with the dark hair that thickly padded the back of his head. He stretched and reached to retrieve the mug while keeping his eyes trained on the screen.

  Meagan Kafka interrupted his concentration.

  “It’s 8:45,” she said from his office doorway. “The car will be waiting.”

  “Just got to make a couple of notes. Tell the driver I need 15 minutes, will you, Meggie?”

  “Flight’s at 9:45,” the secretary said with a tinge of urgency in her voice.

  “I know, I know. I’ll try to make it 10 minutes.”

  He again put his fingers together at the back of his head and stretched his body before bringing his hands down and rubbing his eyes with his index fingers. While he read the text, he heard a rumbling noise and the screen went dead. The office around him darkened; the light no longer streamed into the room from the large windows.

  Blake looked to his surroundings, trying to make sense of the strange, growing darkness.

  When he looked back at the monitor, his eyes met blood-red text against the screen’s blackness.

  Megan stopped stuffing the several portfolio pouches with papers her boss would need for the meeting with the Pentagon and Transportec people. She looked puzzled, cocking her head in curiosity; hearing a rumbling and feeling the building vibrate. She reached to take her cup of tea from the credenza behind her desk, sipped the liquid, and returned to filling Robbins’ attaché case.

  Megan again sensed something was wrong and walked through the other offices to that of Blake Robbins.

  “Blake.” She saw the top of Robbins’ head just above the high-backed chair. The secretary moved to his side, getting no response.

  “Blake?”

  His face was a mask of non-expression, his eyes staring at the screen where red letters were displayed against the blackness.

  “Kingdom come,” Megan whispered the words she read.

  “Blake!”

  She shook her boss’ shoulders. His pupils were fully dilated, with none of the blue iris showing around the black.

  “Blake! Something’s happened in the building! We need to find out!” She shook him again and tried to make him look at her instead of at the screen. “Blake, what’s wrong?!”

  Looking out the windows of the executive’s office, her eyes were drawn to the north World Trade Center tower 120 feet from her own building. She screamed, “Oh! My Lord!”

  Smoke and flaming debris showered from the windows high on the building’s south side. She again tried to get Robbins’ attention, but gave up and ran out of his office. Opening the door leading into the hallway, she saw people fleeing their offices, their faces projecting the puzzlement and fear that clutched them.

  “Somebody said a plane hit Tower One just above us!” a man holding a cell phone to his ear shouted to the others. “We’ve got to get out!”

  Megan ran back through the offices into that of Robbins, where he sat, still staring at the screen.

  “Tower One has been hit by a plane or something, Blake! They’re saying we need to get out…Now!”

  She tried to tug him from the chair, but his body was rigid, and could not be budged. So, she ran to find help in getting him out. In the hallway milled confused, excited people. Someone was yelling that the south tower wasn’t affected, that it hadn’t been hit by whatever had struck the north tower.

  “Would a couple of you guys help me get my boss out of the office? He can’t move for some reason,” Megan said to a large black man, who shook his head “no.”

  “Sorry, but we’ve got to get to the top and see if there are some helicopters, or something we can do to help those up there on Tower One.” He hurried in the direction of the steel fire door leading to a stairwell.

  The people seemed eerily quiet, despite the hallway traffic. There was no panic, just a rush to get to the elevators and stair wells at the skyscraper’s center.

  Megan trotted through the offices again, finding Blake walking toward her, staring straight ahead. He had put on his suit coat, and walked in his normal stride, passing her without a word. His eyes still looked like black marbles.

  “Blake!” she shouted while he continued past her desk and opened the door to the hallway.

  “Blake! Wait!”

  She grabbed her purse from the credenza and ran to catch up.

  “Where are we going, Blake? What are we going to do?”

  The young woman expelled the questions between inhalations of trying to catch her breath while they entered the elevator and ascended toward the top of the tower.

  “We’re going up, not down?” she asked in a perplexed tone.

  His face seemed that of a mannequin, its eyes painted totally black. Megan’s eyes filled with tears, fear welling within her thoughts.

  “Where are we going?” she asked him again.

  Robbins didn’t acknowledge that he heard her, or that he was even aware she shared the elevator with him.

  “You’re scaring me,” she said, softly whimpering the words. Robbins remained transfixed on some unseen point of reference directly ahead.

  Megan never had been on one of the tower’s elevators with less than a dozen people. Now there were only Blake Robbins and herself moving quickly up the shaft in the large conveyance. The fact that they did not stop even once poked at her troubled thoughts while she watched the illuminating numbers move across the top of the elevator: 90, 91, 92, 93, 94…
/>   At 109, the elevator stopped, the doors opening to a group of men in business suits and others in work uniforms.

  “The doors to the roof are locked, if that’s what you’ve got in mind,” one of the maintenance men said. “It takes a special code to get up there, and we don’t have it.”

  “It will take about 10 minutes to get the electronic locks opened,” one of the maintenance men was saying to several of the businessmen. “And, that’s if they will let anybody up there. Not likely to do that… All that radar stuff, and the lure to the crazies, you know?”

  Blake Robbins didn’t seem to hear the man’s words, walking past the four men and opening the door to the building’s top floor. While they ascended the steps, several men and women met them on their way down.

  “They’ve locked the doors,” one woman said while they continued to climb.

  Megan looked into the woman’s troubled eyes and smiled her acknowledgment and concern.

  “Blake, they say the doors are locked,” she said, while Robbins made the turn on the stairwell to climb the last series of steps.

  He said nothing, taking the last few steps, then turning to push a door that opened into a wide walkway that led to a row of double doors along one wall. The words, “To the Roof,” were emblazoned in large red illuminated letters above the doors.