Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) Read Online Free PDF Page B

crowd. He was a fiery lad with a passion for arguing, not the best of traits for an apkallu in training, since their order was marked by restraint and listening. But Methuselah hungered for knowledge, and loved to study and learn about everything.
    At this moment, though, he was not learning. He was teaching. And it was not an intellectual exercise, but a physical one.
    Edna swung again. He blocked her blow.
    “Is that the best you can do, you scrawny little female?”
    Methuselah burst into action, swinging one blow after another. Edna could barely keep up with the raining strikes. If she let one get through, it would leave a nasty bruise she would nurse for days.
    With each swing, Methuselah verbally challenged her strategy . “What did I teach you? Have you no counter plan? I am stronger than you, so how can you defeat me?”
    With those last words, he backed her up against the wall of the small practice room, his mace to her neck. He had used sheer strength to overwhelm her.
    He leaned in close to her face and mused, “Now, if I was a particularly wicked soldier, having worn you down, I might take my pleasure before killing you.” He was not teasing her. He wanted her to face the reality of the world.
    “Too late,” she said. He looked at her puzzled.
    “Letting you expend your energy on me was my counter plan. While you were worn out and pompously crowing into my face with your horrible breath, I was disemboweling you,” she said.
    He glanced down to see her hand with knife blade at his abdomen. She shifted it down to his groin and added, “Or severing your manhood if you prefer.”
    He smiled. “I am proud of you, Edna.” He kissed her forehead and turned to sit down for a rest.
    To him, it was just a simple peck of affection. He did not notice that the soft swift touch of his lips upon her skin almost made her swoon. She gathered herself together and plopped down next to him.
    “Why do you talk mean to me while fighting?” she asked.
    He smiled. “That is what warriors do. It is mental warfare. Wearing down the enemy inwardly as well as outwardly.”
    “Oh, I see,” she said, and added playfully, “you ogre.”
    He smiled at her. “You are hardly wet with sweat.” He was drenched from the exercise.
    “We women do not sweat, we glow.” Her look of serious reflection melted into shared laughter.
    “Edna,” he said, “You are amusing. You are a girl, yet you prefer the company and roughhousing of boys . You do not wear makeup or jewelry. You sneak around your superiors to learn sports and fighting — and you are good. You are really good. You are intellectually curious and you want to see the world, yet you are a temple virgin, dedicated to the gods.”
    It was true. Edna was a spitfire boyish girl. Her serious expression returned in an instant. She brushed a strand of hair away from her face. It was a sole loose one that had come out of her otherwise usual tightly wrapped and bound hair bun.
    “ Do not tease me, Methuselah. Girls have no choice in their placement in society. I do not want to be a boy, I just enjoy doing things that boys do. It is not that I do not have female desires as well.”
    He laughed. “That would make you the perfect wife I guess.”
    She thought to herself, Yes! And I would make you so happy .
    He interrupted her thoughts . “Those female desires will soon be opened up like a flower blossom when you engage in the Sacred Marriage rite with the god.”
    She blushed through a moment of uncomfortable silence.
    “I wish I could be married to a normal man — like you.”
    She gulped. Did she say too much?
    Methuselah looked at her seriously. “Me too, Pedna.” It was one of his many affectionate nicknames for her. He would call her “Edna Pedna,” so she had responded by calling him “Methuselah Poozelah,” and they eventually shortened them to Pedna and Poozela.
    His whole countenance changed from joy to sorrow. He knew the consequences of being betrothed to the