Nephilim Excerpt
© Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.


Chapter One:
Alone in the dark, Art MacKenzie slouched on a torn sofa in his disheveled studio apartment. His bare feet rested on the single piece of furniture from his marriage he still possessed: a coffee table with one leg missing. He sipped slowly from a dirty glass and felt the Grand Marnier warm its way down his throat, adding to the fire that already burned in his belly. He took another sip, this time a longer one, closed his eyes, and relived it all one more time. *** He runs frantically down a hospital corridor and slams into the door of the emergency room. It bursts open, crashing against the wall, the noise reverberating, startling doctors, patients, and nurses who look up at him, wide-eyed. He steps into the room and stops. His eyes dart wildly from person to person, one hand pushing his hair off his forehead as he tries to catch his breath. His chest heaves - to get here, he has run faster and harder than he has ever run in his life. He knows he must appear crazy, but he doesn't care. He draws a deep breath, so deep it hurts, and bellows: "Maggie!" No one answers. His heart hammers in his chest, feeling as if it will burst through the bone and muscle as it pounds. "Mr. MacKenzie?" someone asks. His muscles tense. "I'm MacKenzie," he blurts out. A nurse rises from her chair behind the nurses' station and scurries to him. She grabs his hand and rushes him down a hallway. And there is Maggie, his wife. She doesn't see him at first. Her hands and tear-stained face are pressed against the observation window, as if she were trying to melt through the glass. Mac touches her shoulder; she jumps, and then they look at each other for an agonizing second, neither saying a word. Mac takes her hand, and together they watch a team of doctors and nurses working desperately on a young boy. Their son, Art junior. The sheets that cover him are soaked with his blood. His short brownish hair is matted and wet with blood and perspiration. His hand hangs limply over the side of the table. He is fragile, helpless, alone, and defenseless against what has happened and is happening to him, and Mac wants only to rush in and hold him, to wash away the blood from his forehead, to see his hazel eyes and crooked smile. He can imagine the scene, so comforting: he would simply walk into the operating room and tell the doctors that everything is all right, it's just a slight bruise, no need for all of this. Everyone can go home now. A faint but alarming sound reaches Mac through the window, shattering his daydream. It comes from a monitor at the head of Art's gurney. Mac has seen the movies, the television shows - he doesn't need to be a doctor to know that his son's heart has flat-lined. The doctor who appears to head the team grabs a syringe held out to him by a nurse. He plunges the needle into Art's chest and pumps its liquid in. He stares at the monitor and looks for a change. The heart doesn't respond. Mac is tortured by "if onlys." If only Art had been sitting in a different seat in the family's van, there might have been less damage. If only the firemen had been able to free him from the twisted wreck more quickly. If only the rush-hour traffic hadn't been so heavy, delaying the ambulance on its way to the hospital. If only he hadn't lost so much blood. So much blood . . . "Come on . . . Come on!" The doctor shouts, pressing Art's chest with such power Mac is surprised his son doesn't fall through the table. Maggie squeezes Mac's hand; when he looks at her, he sees that she is biting her lower lip with such force blood runs down her chin. There's panic in the operating room now; the monitor's long, droning, monotone note seems to be terrifying everyone. There's cursing and yelling. Instruments are flung to the floor; people rush back and forth, undoubtedly carrying out logical, preassigned tasks, but to Mac it merely seems the pointless, random scurrying of panic, back and forth, from one end of the room to the other. Mac can't see his son now because of the crowd of milling, frantic doctors and nurses, ten people trying with all the skill they collectively possess to bring Mac's son back. And still the note drones on. *** MacKenzie took another sip of Grand Marnier. He was almost numb . . . ready to pass out. The liquor worked like it always did, numbing the pain, the wound that festered in him. Two years since little Art died. Two years, and the pain lingered. He felt the room spin as he sipped again. Hovering on the verge of consciousness, he sometimes fell into a dreamlike state, then came out of it, back into a waking stupor, back to watching meaningless images on the TV. His line of consciousness blurred, and as he slipped away, he heard a quiet voice that he at first assumed came from the TV. "I'll take your pain. I'll take your pain." His last thought as he tumbled into the oblivion of sleep, only vaguely aware of the half-full glass falling from his hand, was to wonder how he could hear the TV when the sound was turned down.

The Unholy Deception Excerpt
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Chapter: 28….days before the planetary alignment.

Israeli desert: The robed man leaned on his staff and paused between two large boulders. He had walked throughout the remainder of the morning, his sandaled feet picking their way through the rugged terrain; and the path he had traveled wound its way over and across a wadi, a dry stream, for several miles. He suddenly stopped, for his eyes had spotted a slight movement in the desert before him. He moved closer, always with his staff in front of him. The thing moved, and he knew it was an asp, a very poisonous snake lying directly in front of him.“One bite from you, my friend, will leave a man dead in less than minute,” he said out loud. He moved closer, and the asp coiled itself and flicked its tongue out of its mouth several times, testing to see what was approaching.The asp coiled itself tightly, and then without warning shot forward toward the intruder. The man had anticipated this, and remained a safe distance away where he knew the snake could not reach. He slowly placed his staff on the ground in front of him. He watched as it began to move, to change its appearance, and become a living thing. A few moments later the staff had become a very large asp that wiggled in front of him. He watched as it approached the smaller snake, and then, without warning began to devour it, choking it down its throat in several jerking motions. The tail of the snake being eaten wiggled furiously from its mouth, and then it too disappeared. The man reached down and grabbed the large asp by the tail, and the form began to change again. It grew rigid, and once again became the staff that he held in his hand. He paused at the spot where the snake had been ‘eaten’, and glanced at land-marks in the distance that he had memorized long ago. He got his bearings, then, continued on his journey.

The Revealing Excerpt
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Prelude:
Nazi Germany, the Last Days of the Third Reich Wolfgang Von Schverdt hurried up the last few steps of the Fuehrerbunke, the vast underground complex that Adolph Hitler had constructed for his protection, and had made his home for the last 105 days of his life. Pushing open a heavy steel door, he saw an overcast May sky, his first glimpse of daylight in over a week. Then he gasped in astonishment at the twisted steel, broken concrete, and rubble that surrounded him . . . all that was left of the Reichschancellery. The Allied bombing had been unrelenting, pounding Berlin day and night without letting up, until much of the city had been reduced to ashes. An ubiquitous layer of dust and smoke, combined with the smell of rotting corpses and seared flesh, created a living hell. Von Schverdt breathed the foul air deeply, enjoying it, tasting it with the tip of his tongue. He loved the smell of war, relished it, was born for it. If only that madman, Hitler, had not proven to be such a weak vessel, things might have been different. If only someone else with more vitality had been chosen . . .He let his thoughts slip away as his adjutant, who carried two overstuffed satchels of papers, caught up with him. Von Schverdt picked his way through the rubble to where the garden had once been. There he came upon a small group of Nazi SS who were dousing two bodies with gasoline. A captain who noticed Von Schverdt snapped to attention. Heil, Hitler! he shouted as another soldier threw a match on the gasoline which exploded in a rush of flames. Look around you, you idiot! The war is over, Von Schverdt said, and glared at the man. The captain, unsure how to react, remained at attention. Von Schverdt walked closer to the shallow pit and looked at the bodies of Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun, his mistress. He gathered a mouthful of saliva and spat toward the flaming bodies, then pivoted on the heels of his boots and walked away. He turned up the sleeve of his black leather greatcoat and glanced at his watch. It was almost five. He had less than an hour to meet the Americans and surrender. A burst of machine gun fire sounded very close, and he reacted with a start. The Russians will be here soon. That realization made him hurry toward a car that was waiting nearby. Shortly after Hitler had committed suicide by shooting himself, General Wolfgang Von Schverdt had made a series of telephone calls to the Americans from his private room in the Fuehrers bunker. He had offered them information, and as he had expected, they had responded eagerly. Others in the bunker had begun to flee, knowing that capture by the Russians would mean imprisonment or death. Those remaining in the bunker had all agreed that it would be better to surrender to the Americans than to fall into the hands of the Red Army. Von Schverdt stepped next to the waiting car. He glanced at the driver. Little more than a boy, he thought. Heil, Hitler, the youth blurted. Von Schverdt smiled with feigned affection. Heil, Hitler, he responded, and returned the salute. His adjutant, Heinz, struggled with two bulging satchels, put them down a moment to rest, and then, getting a fresh grip, continued toward the car. Von Schverdt leaned against the car and watched as the man approached. Put them in the back, Von Schverdt ordered as he stepped away from the car. Ja vol, Heinz puffed, as he set the briefcases down and opened the rear door of the car. He lifted one of them, set it on the floor of the backseat, and then turned to retrieve the other. Von Schverdt watched Heinzs every move, as he slowly undid the leather strap on his holster and brought the P.38 to his side, fitting the silencer to it. Its a pity, he thought, Heinz has been loyal. Still . . . Von Schverdt waited until the man had finished his task and faced him, awaiting new orders. Von Schverdt raised the handgun and Heinz took a step backward, a mixture of terror and confusion filling his face. No, Herr Von Schver... Von Schverdt fired once, and the bullet went neatly through the forehead of the man, the force of it driving him into the rear door of the car, where his lifeless body slumped to the ground. Von Schverdt moved, catlike, to the drivers door, opened it, and caught the boy by the oversized sleeve of his uniform, and yanked him out of the car. The boy fell in a heap at Von Schverdts feet and began to claw at his boots, crying out for mercy. Von Schverdt fired once and the boy lay still. He unfastened the silencer, reholstered his sidearm, and as he did so, noticed that a few spots of blood had splattered on his boots. He went over and wiped them off on the dead boys pant legs. That done, he slid into the drivers seat and sped off to his meeting place with the Americans. The drive was treacherous. More than once he fired his gun to ward off those attempting to hijack his car. At one point a group of fleeing women and children clogged the road. Von Schverdt held his hand on the horn, but didnt slow the car. Women and children scrambled to get out of the way. One old woman tripped and fell on the road in front of the speeding car. Von Schverdt ran over her, not even glancing in the rearview mirror as the car sped on. Desperate times require desperate measures, he reminded himself. Theres nothing left . . . Theyve destroyed everything, he thought, as the car rolled by block after block of leveled, smoldering buildings. He had trouble getting his bearings, as many of the street signs were missing, and most of the familiar landmarks that would have aided him had vanished. He stopped the car and looked around, trying to get a sense of where he was. Nothing here . . . But wait. He noticed the base of a statue by the side of the road, all that was left of a beautiful bronze sculpture he had once admired. He turned the car, stepped hard on the gas pedal, and the car lurched forward. Only a few more miles and then, the Americans. The thought made him anxious. How much of his work had been destroyed, or discovered? He gripped the steering wheel tighter. A short time later he saw a roadblock with an American flag flying alongside it and a dozen armed American GIs brandishing rifles. To the left a machine gun nest was lined by rows of sandbags. Von Schverdt slowed the car and stopped twenty yards away from the roadblock. He opened the door of the car and stepped out, being careful to raise his hands over his head as he did so. One of the Americans shouted to him in very bad German, Ubergeben sie sich mit ihren hande hoch! (Surrender with your hands up.) Von Schverdt raised his hands higher and stood motionless. More shouting, this time from behind the roadblock. Four GIs approached. Another one called out, Bewegen siesich weg von den auto. (Move away from the car.) Von Schverdt chuckled. Idiots, he thought. How could they have beaten us? His mind raced back to a better time, years ago in Nuremberg, when Hitler was cresting to the peak of his power just before the war. Thousands of flashlights, each held by Hitler