Read Online Stealing Sacred Fire by Storm Constantine - Free Book Online Page B

God cast them out of heaven for their wickedness and pride,
stripped them of their divinity. Now, they are jealous and greedy.
They would like to enslave all humanity. That was their original
intention when they divulged secret knowledge to humanity, and it
still is. Control. They look almost like us, and only a trained eye
can spot them. They are seducers, Melandra, and they have waited an
immeasurably long time to get their revenge. The Lord knows they
are cunning and deadly. Be in no doubt about that. It might be your
only defence. The last two millennia have been the centuries of
Christ, and the Grigori were disabled, but now the new millennium
approaches and if the Son of God is to remain its king, the Grigori
must be stopped.’
    After several hours of
intensive information intake, Melandra left the House of Lamech
dazed with facts. Walking out into the dusk of the city, she had
seen Grigori in every shadow; tall men and women on the street
seemed to pause and glance at her with suspicious eyes. She had to
go into a bar and have a few drinks to get a grip on herself.
    As a teenager, when she’d first
tasted the forbidden luxuries of alcohol and tobacco, she’d
reasoned with herself that although there was no mention in the
Bible of Jesus smoking cigarettes (they weren’t invented then,
after all), he had certainly drunk wine. He wouldn’t mind if she
did too. No other liquor had ever touched her lips. Once, she had
been caught sneaking into the college with a secret purchase
wrapped in brown paper. Her teachers had expressed their
disappointment, and because Melandra appeared to be an obedient
girl, they had never had to chastise her again. She had become more
careful. It all seemed farcical now. She had been brought up to be
trained as an assassin, yet it offended them if she drank alcohol.
They had looked like men and women, but their hearts had been cold
and inhuman. They could kill in the name of God, and had taught her
that this was a righteous and noble thing to do. She had learned to
emulate their zeal and had taken pride in the accuracy of her work.
Still, as yet, her skill was untried. She had killed all manner of
God’s creatures, except the ones created in His image. Was she up
to the task Fox had invested in her? Sometimes she felt too shaky
and vulnerable to be what they wanted her to be. Her guardians had
never known the real Melandra. If she met this great Shemyaza, the
devil himself, would she be strong enough to stand up to him?
    After a bottle of good wine,
the prospect seemed less chilling, although she still vacillated
between belief and scepticism. Why was it so difficult to believe
in the Grigori? After all, she believed without question in God and
the love of Jesus Christ, and had felt it often during the lonely,
aching years of her insular childhood. Their holy presences had
sometimes seemed more real to her than those of the dour, devout
women who’d raised her. Alone in her room at night, she had talked
to the sorrowful man on the crucifix, which hung on her wall. He
had been her only confidant. He knew her childish hopes and
desires, even though she could not articulate them fully. A
yearning for love, perhaps, which unacknowledged bitterness had
hardened into something else. Jesus loves you, she had been told,
and there had been stories of the good angels, who crouched around
the throne of God, eternally singing his praises. The bad angels
burned in hell. Because of the stories, she could imagine angels as
spiritual beings, the messengers of God. But it was more difficult
to accept Fox’s theories.
    She sighed, drew circles on the
table-top with the wet base of her wine glass. This great story
sustained the Children of Lamech; it was their reason for being.
She had grown up with it, without even knowing it.
    Later, at home, she took down
her crucifix from the wall, and touched the emaciated belly of
Christ with a reverent finger. His enemies must be her enemies. ‘Is
it real?’ she