CHAPTER 22
Sampson
I didn’t want to come back. Only duty, and the bonds of friendship so strong they’ve tied us like family, compelled me to return to the MFD when asked.
Pete had screeched something about an inferno and that I was needed for the job, but when I tried to ask questions, he just hung up, claiming he had to run.
When we pulled in front of Nina’s house, he pointed me at the tree.
At first, I didn’t get it. Then, when I finally took in my surroundings, I thought I’d find her there, up on a branch, refusing to come down until I talked to her.
Maybe starving. Maybe with her wrists slashed, I don’t know.
My heart hammered so hard, I couldn’t think.
All I could picture was a world without her in it, and all because of me.
But instead, she found me gazing into the empty branches as if I wasn’t right in the head.
And now I’ve ended our life together. Again.
I turn away. It’s as hard as walking straight onto a sword. It takes all my resolve, and then some.
“Sampson.”
Turning back to her, by contrast, is like falling off my feet onto a featherbed of flowers.
“Here’s the thing, Sampson. I get that you don’t want me involved with the giants.
I don’t want me involved, either. I don’t want you involved with them.
So, maybe the answer to their existence is moving to Arizona, but I think the better course would be to stay right here in Mossburg where people love you and will watch out for you.
And me. Because if you leave me, they can get to me, right?
They know you love me, and when you piss them off… ”
“Stop.” I hold up my hand, my insides squirming like I’ve eaten a bucket of live bait.
“…and you know that you’re going to piss them off. You have a talent for it. So, what happens then?”
She waits while I try to formulate a response, an argument. Trouble is, I can’t find any words.
She takes a few steps towards me. “You’re wrong about moving.”
“I can’t stay here and not be with you, Nina,” I point out, finally catching my answer in the truth. “I’m not strong enough. I’ll… die.” From longing. From absence. From watching her find someone less complicated to love.
She nods and offers me a small smile. “Me, too. So, we’ll stay together, just like we planned a week ago, before Xy messed with your head.”
“He didn’t mess with my head. He just gave me some facts.” But her idea of me staying with her to protect her… that has legs, and not only because it’s what I want to hear with every cell in my body, but also because the Neph are assholes.
They’d use her. They’d use anyone to get what they want.
She takes another step. “Xy was wrong about a few important facts, and he’s wrong about you being cursed.
” Nina begins to pace, three short steps in each direction on an invisible line.
Suddenly, anger catches her features. She jabs the air between us.
“And fuck you for believing him without trying to stay with me and work out how to fight. Fuck you for falling for his shit.”
“I didn’t… I don’t… Wrong about what?”
I snap back at her, already at the end of my tolerance. It’s hard to ignore the instinct to simply pick her up and take her far away, far from where my life fell apart. But it would never be far enough from the cursed being that I am. I can’t escape me even if I could escape the other giants.
Though, Nina has a point. She would be safer if I stayed in Mossburg. But how can I bear it? Maybe drugs? How much opium would I need to ingest to forget about my breaking heart? But if I’m drugged, how can I protect her?
“First off, something huge. You love me, right? Right?”
A long sigh escapes me. “You know I do. I just told you that I do.”
She nods, looking triumphant. “Right. But loving me, a lowly human, means that you’re not some bastard who thinks he’s better than me, like the other Nephilim do. You’re different.”
“I’m not sure that’s the sterling argument you think it is, Jelly Bean. You’re special, that’s why I love you. Besides, the Watchers mated with human women. They fell in love with them. Lust and love are part of the angelic makeup.”
She frowns at my answer. “I think that’s where you’re wrong.
I’ve been doing a little more research. What Xy said about the Watchers taking human wives because they needed a legal way to grab power?
They did what they had to do to get what they wanted.
Otherwise, they would have had to deal with the armies of God moving against them, and there were only two hundred of them aligned against…
well, a multitude. So, lust? Sure. I’m sure they felt lust. Love?
Real love?” She rubs her arms. “I doubt it. They wouldn’t have damned their children if they were capable of feeling the emotion.
They would have known their rebellion would damn their line, but they didn’t care.
But you care, because you’re capable of real love. You’re not like them.”
“Wrong terminology. It’s not that I’m not like them. It’s that I’m different from us, because I am them.”
She apparently didn’t expect that answer, and she obviously doesn’t like it. Her frown deepens, and she circles her hand. “Fine. You’re genetically one of them, but emotionally, you’re as different as the moon from cheese. Also, you don’t like living on your own, do you?”
“Not wanting to live on my own won’t convince me to let you come live with me, Nina.”
“Xy said that giants don’t like living with others, but you’re always with other people. You thrive in company. You love people. I’ve seen it. You know it.”
She’s not wrong there. The truth is, before she moved in with me, I avoided my home. I preferred sharing living quarters with the other guys on duty at the MFD station.
I hate being alone.
Which doesn’t really make a difference. Today’s giants are solitary creatures, but it wasn’t always like that.
Once upon a time, they formed tribes, cities, even governments, and though they enslaved humans, they never lived in isolation.
That only happened after the species was decimated and resources grew scarce.
Still, Xy was correct about giants liking to live apart now. The other Nepht were happy to greet me, and just as happy to leave me to the Premier’s care. They couldn’t stand being with each other—or humanity—for any lengthy period of time. Hell, I just found out that they still eat humans.
Which is also something else I’d never do. Not ever. But I don’t mention it to Nina. I don’t want to give her any further ammunition for her arguments. Bad enough they’re already taking root inside me.
Because that’s three differences, isn’t it? I love easily, I love and need community, and I won’t ever eat a human being. Heck, I won’t ever harm a human being, not if I can help it. Being a firefighter is all about saving lives, not taking them.
I haven’t thought of those disparities lumped together before. It’s not a lot, but it’s… something.
For the first time, my heart gives a little thump, as if it recognizes the tiny lifeline Nina’s thrown at me. Sure, the disparities between me and my evil brethren are miniscule, but they do exist.
“And second,” she continues, counting off on her fingers, “I don’t care what your parents were, or which of them was cursed, if any of them truly were.
You’re taking specious declarations from the defeated about a victor as truth, and that’s just stupid.
As Xy said, the pig doesn’t speak well of the butcher, and in this analogy, the giants are the pigs.
” She blows out a long breath before adding, “If there’s a God, then He isn’t hateful.
Everything says He’s fair. Period. If He cursed other giants, it’s not because of what they were born, but because they deserved it.
But you?” She shakes her head. “Remember what Xy said about free will?”
I do. He said the devil insisted on it. “But that’s the devil he was talking about. Wrong entity.”
She shakes her head. “No. Sammy, don’t you see?
Free will is the essential law of the universe.
It’s baked into everything, and everyone.
It’s the basis of every religion on earth.
It’s the most fundamental part of being alive.
” Her small smile is like a gust of sunlight blowing through me.
“Look, I have no idea why we exist, or what the actual friggin’ purpose of life really is, or even if any of this theology or mythology is true, but I’ve always known, always accepted, that we’re measured by the choices that we make.
And I think you’ve always thought likewise; otherwise, you wouldn’t have striven so hard to be the best man you could possibly be.
The best man I’ve ever met,” she adds in a softer voice.
“Maybe I was wrong to try.” Though my words hold all the nauseating feel of a lie, because I can’t believe that what I’m saying is true. Logic says that if choices don’t matter, if what I do on earth doesn’t matter in some afterlife, then there’s no point to anything.
She folds her hands in front of her, clasping them together.
“Then go ahead and be evil. If free will doesn’t matter, then why not eat people when the urge strikes you?
” She holds out her arm. “Here. Take a bite. Go ahead. It doesn’t matter, right?
You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, so go ahead. I bet I taste good.”
“Nina.” My stomach turns.
She drops her arm. “If there’s no free will, then you can steal, kill, maim whenever you feel like it…
and it doesn’t matter, because you’re only following some demented programming.
Plus, you’ll be going to Hell anyway, unless there is no afterlife, no God, no punishment, no reward.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. If there’s no free will, nothing matters. ”
“Nina.” But my heart is beating so fast, I’m waiting for it to jump right out of my chest like I’m some cartoon character.