“This is the blood of an angel, a Nephilim.” He looked down at the senator. “Fear not, Isaiah, for you are about to be invigorated. Imagine, the blood of angels running through your veins. You will become invincible.”
Senator Black balked, his skin sheened with sweat.
“I don’t want to be invincible!”
Ethan spoke up as he took a pace closer to Patterson.
“If you’re so sure it’s the blood of angels, then why not invigorate yourself and save Senator Black the trouble.”
A cruel smile twisted Patterson’s features.
“Better to be safe than sorry.”
Senator Black gritted his teeth.
“Don’t do it,” he said to Patterson. “It’s not worth it.”
Lopez gestured with her pistol to the syringe in Patterson’s hand.
“You put that shit in him he’ll be dead within minutes. You might as well jack him full of diesel.”
Patterson’s gruesome smile crumbled into a look of pure disgust.
“How little faith you have,” he spat. “This is the first chance in history for man to reach out and touch the hand of God, and you filthy liberalist secularists would snatch it away from humanity. You would deny even the blood of God in your fear of the truth. Do you even know what ‘covenant’ means? It is a bond in blood, sovereignly administered by God.”
Ethan glanced around the theater at the transfusion lines and oxygen bottles, searching for a way to hinder the pastor for just long enough to get hold of him. Patterson was standing only ten feet away, but he was closer to the senator than Ethan was.
“Go ahead,” Patterson dared him, as though reading his thoughts. “One step and I’ll put this through his heart and finish him for good.”
“The FBI is here,” Lopez said. “It’s only a matter of time before they find this chamber.”
“Yes, it is,” Patterson agreed, “by which time this will all be over.”
“You’ll kill him,” Lopez said, her pistol fixed on the pastor. “What the hell makes you think you’ll achieve anything else?”
“This is the purest human blood in existence,” Patterson said, his eyes ablaze with the furor of the righteous, “an unbroken line that goes back to Adam’s presence in the Garden of Eden, six thousand years ago. The rest of our blood has long since been contaminated, soiled by the filth and depravity of mankind’s soulless existence, but our true bloodline came from the Levant, from Israel, from the time of the patriarchs. This blood will bring God’s children back to this Earth and with them the dawning of a new age.”
“No, it won’t,” Lopez uttered. “You’re nothing more than a murderer.”
“I am the savior!” Patterson cried out. “We have waited two thousand years for this moment, but why should we have waited at all? If we cannot find God here on Earth, then I shall bring God to us!”
Ethan glanced at Lopez before he spoke to Patterson, putting his gun on the floor and moving toward him.
“You think that by doing this you’ll find some kind of illumination. I think that you’ll plunge us all into darkness.”
“You’re already in darkness,” Patterson sneered.
Ethan judged the distance. Six feet, maybe seven.
“Are we? You know, it’s always bugged me how people like you claim to be the light, the truth, the saviors of mankind, yet you threaten to kill anyone who doesn’t believe the same things. To me, you’re the one who’s in darkness.”
Patterson edged closer to the senator as Ethan took another pace. Five feet.
“When God’s will comes to pass you and all other heathen will see the light, but it will be forever beyond your reach.”
Ethan nodded.
“Then let’s bring God’s will to pass, right now.”
In that instant Lopez fired her pistol at the light above the gurney, the shot deafeningly loud in the confines of the theater, and the entire chamber was plunged into darkness as Ethan hurled himself at the pastor.
Ethan rushed forward, intercepting Kelvin Patterson as he lunged for the gurney and smashing him aside with his body weight. He heard a crash as Patterson spun away into the refrigerator door, and faintly saw the syringe needle glinting in the light.
Behind him, he heard rather than saw Lopez scramble across to the gurney and begin unstrapping the senator.
Patterson screamed in outrage and rushed toward Ethan, who swung a wild left hook that connected with the pastor’s cheek. Ethan heard Patterson slam sideways into a bank of steel cupboards at the back of the chamber and he plunged into him, desperately searching for the syringe that Patterson still held.