Ex Nihilo Read online

  Ex Nihilo

  Nazri Noor

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Fallen Reign

  Need to read more?

  Also by Nazri Noor

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  EX NIHILO

  First edition. April 20, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Nazri Noor.

  All rights reserved.

  1

  The day I turned eighteen, my body burst into flames. Worst birthday ever.

  You’d think that was bad enough. Just minutes later, a squad of angels kicked in my front door, using big, fancy words to threaten me. Abomination. Filth. Nephilim, whatever that meant.

  And you know the shittiest part? Not a single one of those assholes wished me happy birthday.

  I didn’t even know that angels existed. I believe in angels now, though. When one of them picks you up and throws you clear across the room, you don’t really have much of a choice but to believe.

  That should have knocked me out, I knew, but the fires that spontaneously combusted all over my torso seemed to have triggered some changes inside of me. I felt different in ways I couldn’t truly pinpoint – faster, I suppose, and stronger – but if it meant not dying instantly from being punched in the chest with a fist the size of a mallet, then hey, fine by me.

  But the real proof was in the pudding – essentially in how the three stooges burst into my shack and announced themselves.

  “We are warriors of the celestial host, sent from heaven to erase you from existence,” the skinny one said. “Aberration. Filth.”

  Angels are super rude, is what I’m trying to say.

  It happened in the bedroom of that rundown little shack I rented in an old man’s garden, down in Humpuck, California. It was cheap, okay? I didn’t go to school, and all I knew to do was lift things, move things, so it was all I could afford. Actually, the angels were probably doing my poor landlord a solid by basically leveling the place. It was hard to say why they were so damn mad at me.

  Calling it a bedroom was generous, because it was the only room in the entire place, all fifteen square feet of it. Kitchen, dining, living area, crammed into the same space. The toilet was behind a shower curtain. Glamorous digs, in short. Said toilet was beyond repair, too. The biggest, burliest angel had exploded it with his bare fists when he missed trying to crush me with an overhead smash. The floor was a disaster, just shattered porcelain, puddles, and debris.

  I’d been staring in the mirror when they came in, trying to figure out the golden flames that had burned my shirt off, then seared an entire pattern of scars and scorch marks into my torso before fading as quickly as they’d come. It was like being branded, a whole mess of runes appearing on my chest, stomach, and shoulders in a blaze of flaming graffiti.

  But back to the fight. Something was going to give in this push and pull, and three against one hardly seemed fair. And while I’m pretty confident about how I look without my clothes on – yeah, your boy looks lanky, but he’s got a little upper body strength, thanks – the angelic assholes had blown my front door right off its hinges, and it was a chilly day out in Humpuck. I wanted to end this fast – preferably alive – so I could dig up a jacket and work on the door situation.

  I barely dodged the fist coming straight for my face, the one attached to an arm as heavy and thick as a sandbag, which itself was attached to a body that was just one huge wall of muscle and hair. I could’ve sworn the fist was faintly blurring too, the way the air wavers over a hot desert, like it was wrapped in blistering heat, or even invisible fire.

  The fist missed and smashed into the wall behind my head, cratering the stone, sending bits of rubble scattering across the floor. Hah, I thought. Not quite fast enough to kill Mason Albrecht – but definitely strong enough to ruin a perfectly good wall. I watched, my heart pounding, as a flaming pebble rolled onto my shitty rug, setting it on fire.

  “Look, can we talk about this?” I shouted, trying to get through to the muscular angel and his two friends: a lady who liked to punch things and a scrawny guy who liked to kick a lot.

  Every last one of them was working extra hard to break me into pieces, kicking and punching with the kind of anger generally reserved for swatting at a pigeon that’s stolen your slice of pizza. Terrible analogy, but enough speed to just barely stay out of harm’s way was my only advantage. I could move, and move quick, but it wasn’t just that. It felt as though something about my perception had changed.

  I could see the attacks coming, and I could bend my body just in time to avoid yet another bone-breaking strike. Sure, I’d been in fistfights, enough to know that I’m fairly quick on my feet, but not quite muscly or strong enough to trade a lot of punches. Maybe the flames had given me slightly better reflexes, somehow. Or call it luck.

  But I knew my luck was going to run out eventually.

  “Latkiel,” the lady angel said to the one with all the muscles. “Hold the abomination down so we can kill it.”

  Abomination? Pretty rude, don’t you think? So that was more evidence of them being angels, all those odd names they kept calling each other, all of them sounding the way the name Gabriel ends. Hamiel, Cheesiel, Lunchiel – it was all the same to me. Either they were angels, or they were Tolkien elves come to life. Really angry ones.

  “Look,” I shouted, dodging another series of punches and kicks, frowning as my makeshift coffee-slash-dining table exploded in a shower of splinters. “I don’t know what you jerks want from me, but it’s pretty clear you’re not the good guys here. My landlord is going to fucking kill me. Look what you’ve done to the place.”

  “We’ll take care of your landlord next,” the woman said, throwing a broken table leg at me with such velocity that it could have staked me right through the heart. I danced out of the way just in time, and it collided with the wall behind me. More splinters and sawdust landed in my hair.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Enough.”

  I started swinging from the hip, not entirely sure why I was doing it, but instinct had taken over. My hands were clasped together, like I was trying to swat the beefy angel with an invisible bat, and even as it happened I told myself that this wasn’t going to earn me anything but a pair of broken wrists. But I kept on driving as if my hands were gripping something huge, heavy, weighty.

  Then it happened. A plume of golden fire erupted from between my fingers, flames licking then dying out quickly, leaving an enormous two-handed sword clutched in my grasp. It felt too light for its size, yet the whistling noise it made as it sliced through the air, the gleam of its edge, those were very, very real.

  The gush of blood that spurted from the angel’s torso was real, too. I blinked, watching the line of red that ran from the top of his shoulder down to his ribs where I’d slashed him. The sword in my hands vanished just as his right arm slid off his body, then crashed to the ground in a splash of gore.

  I stared, wide-eyed, first at the huge, bleeding stump where the angel’s arm used to be, then at the empty space between my fingers. What the hell had just happened?

  “I’m – I’m sorry?” I stammered, watching as the angel picked up his arm. He hadn’t screamed at all. He was definitely angrier, though, and he was swinging his severed arm right at my face.

  Shock, horror, and my own sense of self-preservation kicked in, and my legs gave under me. I slid down and fell on my butt hard as the
angel’s disembodied arm slammed into the wall above me, sending down a little rain of blood and gore.

  Fucking gross, I thought, as some of it got on my jeans. But I was all out of options, out of room to maneuver. I stared at my palms, still stunned, some part of me willing the sword back into existence as the angel raised his arm again, as his two angel buddies loomed closer to help land the killing blow –

  But a voice spoke.

  “That’s enough,” it said.

  The three angels froze in place, their eyes still burning with zealous intent.

  “But our order was to kill him,” the woman said.

  “I’m higher on the chain of command,” the new voice answered. “He can manipulate the Vestments. We weren’t expecting that.”

  I looked up, seeing a man in an outfit that walked a weird knife’s edge between stylish and trashy. His black jeans were ripped in so many places that he seemed to be wearing more bare skin than denim. He also wore a fitted sweater with similar, I guess artfully slashed cutouts. He looked very much like a model who’d been abducted from a runway, then dropped right into a bramble-filled ravine.

  Another angel? Really? But there was that one interesting thing he’d actually said. The Vestments? What the hell were the Vestments?

  “Vestments or no, the boy is an abomination,” the woman hissed. “We’re not going to stand for this.”

  “Take it up with your superiors.” The strange man grinned wryly. “Oh, wait. I’m technically one of them. I suppose I could write you up for insubordination, then. You all know how that goes.”

  The woman flinched, and as one unit the three recoiled at the sight of the man’s smile. Insubordination led to something sinister, obviously, something I didn’t care to hear about. I mean, I was still kind of aghast over the whole thing where I sliced an angel’s arm off with a two-handed sword that existed, then suddenly didn’t.

  The three angels rushed out of what was left of my shack, disappearing through the threshold. From outside, I thought I heard fluttering, the beating of giant wings.

  I found my voice again. “So, you’re sending those goons away so you can take care of me yourself. What the hell is heaven doing sending angels around to kill people?” I ran my fingers through my hair, laughing bitterly. “Did I just say that out loud? I must be going crazy.”

  The man blinked at me, an amused grin playing on his lips. “I’m not here to kill you. Quite the contrary. And no, you aren’t going crazy. I come bearing news.”

  I looked around the ruins of my shack, at the shreds and smithereens of what used to be my life.

  “Right,” I said. “I could use a distraction about now. Make it funny. Make it interesting.” I rubbed my temples. “And make it quick. I feel a headache coming on.”

  “Very well, then,” the man said, spreading his hands. “Mason Albrecht. Do not be afraid. I’m here to save you.”

  2

  “I was doing fine without you.” I rubbed at a spot on my arm, scraped from the fight. “I didn’t need you to help.”

  The man shook his head. “Impetuous. A brat. Just like your father.”

  My ears pricked up, and I scowled. “What do you know about my father? I never knew him, and I sure as hell know that you didn’t, either.”

  I hated that I was speaking in past tense, all but agreeing with the stranger. But it was true. I never knew my dad. My mom raised me on her own in the garbage fire of a town that was Humpuck, California. Humpuck. Rhymes with Upchuck, Bumfuck, Numbsuck – really, any permutation of sad, dead-end, and gross would work reasonably well.

  But mom died when I was seventeen, which was when I had to buckle down and start taking life a little more seriously. I could take care of myself. And now some weirdo dressed like a Hollywood hipster was going to stroll into the demolished remains of my home to lecture me about the past I never had?

  I scoffed, my eyes trailing from his head to his feet, and back. An angel, or so he implied, being the superior of the other three that dispersed. None of this was making any sense. These people were deranged. I was getting reeled into some peculiar, overcomplicated con. That had to be it.

  “Perhaps you’d be interested to learn that I did indeed know him.” The man smiled at me kindly, catching me off guard. “You have his eyes, and there’s some resemblance in your bone structure. And then, of course, there’s that.”

  His gaze fell from my face, lingering a little too long on my collarbone, on my chest, on the fresh pattern of brands and embellishments the eerie golden fire had left there.

  “Take a picture,” I growled. “It’ll last longer.”

  He shook his head again, the meticulously styled mane of his hair tumbling like it would in a shampoo commercial. There was something almost inhuman about the guy, all right, this otherworldly quality I could only describe as – I guess as radiance? But that didn’t make a man into an angel.

  “Let’s make this meeting a little more proper. Hello. My name is Raziel.”

  “Rah-zee-ell,” I repeated, sounding it out because it matched the names I heard from the other alleged angels before, all these words that ended in the same syllable. “And you’re – what, you’re supposed to be some kind of angel?”

  He grinned, his lips pursing, head bobbing as he looked pleased with himself. “Well, you know, not to brag, but I’m not just any angel. The angel of mysteries.” He made an exaggerated flourish with his hand, then gave a mock bow. “At your service.”

  I folded my arms. “Mysteries are not what I need right now. What I want are answers.”

  “And that’s why I’m here to offer them. Well, the ones I can openly give you, of course. I’m only here to help.” He adjusted the hem of his sweater, tugging on his collar as he cleared his throat. “Perhaps that thing about saving you earlier was a bit too much. I got a little carried away.”

  “You certainly did.” I stretched my arms, relishing the pop of my joints, then sighed. “But granted, we’ve been here a couple minutes now, and you’re the first person to walk into the place who hasn’t wanted to kill me.”

  He rushed closer, so near that I could feel his breath disturbing my hair. I frowned at him, sending the best social cue I could muster for him to stay the hell out of my personal space, but Raziel didn’t react. It was as if he didn’t know that people didn’t normally talk this close.

  “That’s exactly what I want to discuss with you, Mason. You’re in danger. You’ve awakened.” He pointed at my skin, at the designs that had so rudely and painfully burned themselves into my body. “Something has changed, and the angel half of you has been roused from its slumber. Once you were just an unlit candle in a sea of billions. Now you are a raging bonfire.”

  I held my hands up, pushing them out as I backed away, another little silent message for Raziel to keep out of my space. “Whoa. Slow down. I can barely understand what you’re telling me, and these metaphors don’t help. And did you say half angel?”

  Raziel nodded. “Why do you think those other three came and attacked you earlier? I had to bluff to save you. Heaven sees you as an abomination, Mason. Angels should not lie with the sons and daughters of men, yet here you are, the product of one such union.”

  “Hold up. Okay. So now you’re saying that my mom met an angel and – and did the nasty. And nine months later, there’s me.”

  “Exactly,” Raziel answered, calm and confident, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Get the fuck out.”

  “I – what?”

  Raziel sputtered and resisted as I shoved him across the room and towards the broken door. “Out. I don’t know what kind of game you people are trying to pull here, busting up the already shitty place I call home and then trying to recruit me into your stupid angel cult, but – ”

  “Look at the sky.” Raziel dug his heels into the ground, stumbling one last time as we crossed the threshold from the front door to the lawn outside. “Look at the horizon.”

  My jaw dropped.
A column of light was throbbing in the distance, a beam that looked like it reached up to heaven itself. It pulsed with an odd electric blue, the kind of color you simply don’t see in nature. I didn’t know much about weather phenomena and cloud formations, but no way in hell could a cloud turn into a cylinder hundreds of feet high and glow that color. It was throwing out sparks, too.

  “Then you can see it,” Raziel said softly, studying my face.

  I didn’t answer, too transfixed, and growing more and more confused by the second.

  “That is a sign, Mason. You must follow the light. It is a beacon that will lead you to your father.”

  Oh. I was done being polite. I shoved Raziel in the chest with both hands, thrilling at how he stumbled away, fighting for his footing.

  “Bullshit. You’re full of shit, Raziel, if that even is your name.” I whipped my hand out to point at the shining pillar. “That’s just a trick of the light. An optical illusion, something to do with the climate and pressure and whatever. Nothing more.”

  I knew how desperate I sounded, pulling shit out of thin air, but what else was I supposed to do? This was way too much for me to handle.

  Raziel pointed at the exact spot where the pillar of light hummed. My skin filled with goosebumps. “That,” he said, “is either a distress call, or a warning. And it was meant for you. That exact shade of blue is the color of your father’s sigils, the ones just like yours, embedded in his skin. They seal his celestial power within his body, a punishment for falling from above.”

  My fists balled at my side, and I felt my breath coming hot from my own nostrils. “Man, you really should consider a career in writing, because you’re really good at shoveling progressively larger mounds of bullshit. Why are you lying to me about all this?”