The Mephisto Club

Testament patriarch, Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, the book was struck from Hebrew scripture and discredited as apocryphal by early Christian fathers. It vanished from history, and for centuries, the text was thought to be forever lost.
    But it was not, in fact, lost. Hidden in various secret places,
The Book of Enoch
had survived. In the 1700s, intact copies of the text, translated from Greek, were discovered in Ethiopia. And in 1947, in a cave on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, a Bedouin shepherd made a magnificent discovery: jars containing ancient scrolls. From that complex of caves emerged seven fragments of
The Book of Enoch,
written in Aramaic.
    Within the pages of this long-lost text lies a mystery that continues to puzzle scholars. It is the story of The Watchers, fallen angels who had sexual congress with women, producing an unholy race that would forever plague mankind:
             
    Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the holy Watchers is their beginning and primal origin; they shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called.
             
    These mixed-race creatures, also known as Nephilim, appear in yet another ancient text,
The Book of Jubilees.
Here, also, they are described as evil and malignant. According to
Jubilees,
most Nephilim were destroyed during Noah’s time, but God allowed one tenth of their number to survive as subjects of Satan. Through their line, evil would continue to afflict the earth.
    Angels and women mating to produce hybrid monsters? This is a fantastical tale indeed, and some biblical scholars suggest quite reasonably that these matings were, in truth, simply forbidden marriages between different tribes. That the “angels” were men from the lofty line of Seth, and the women came from a much lowlier tribe, descended from Cain.
    Still, as a novelist, I could not help thinking: What if the tale of The Watchers was not merely allegory but history? What if Nephilim were real, and their descendants are still among us, still wreaking havoc?
    Throughout the history of mankind, certain people have committed acts of such appalling cruelty that one wonders if they are truly members of the human race, or if they are a violent subspecies, driven by different needs and instincts. If one believes what was written in
Enoch
and
Jubilees,
then the acts of real monsters such as mass slaughterers Pol Pot and Vlad the Impaler can be explained. Nephilim have simply co-existed alongside us, invisible predators among the prey. And when the opportunity arises, when society breaks down during wartime or civil chaos, when the force of laws cannot keep us safe, those predators come out to play.
    Only then do we discover who they really are.
    Evil has no easy explanation. Today, more than two thousand years after
The Book of Enoch
was written, we are no closer to understanding why evil exists. All we know is that it does.

A BOUT THE A UTHOR
    T ESS G ERRITSEN left a successful practice as an internist to raise her children and concentrate on her writing. She gained nationwide acclaim for her first novel of medical suspense, the
New York Times
bestseller
Harvest.
She is also the author of the bestsellers
Life Support, Bloodstream,
and
Gravity,
as well as
The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double,
and
Vanish.
Tess Gerritsen lives in Maine. Visit her website at www.tessgerritsen.com.

A LSO BY T ESS G ERRITSEN
    Harvest
    Life Support
    Bloodstream
    Gravity
    The Surgeon
    The Apprentice
    The Sinner
    Body Double
    Vanish

 
    Read on for an exciting preview
of Tess Gerritsen’s next thrilling novel
featuring Maura Isles and Jane Rizzoli
    THE SILENT GIRL

 
    ONE

SAN FRANCISCO
    A LL DAY, I HAVE BEEN WATCHING THE GIRL . She gives no indication that she’s aware of me, although my rental car is within view of the street corner where she and the other teenagers have gathered this afternoon, doing whatever bored kids do to pass the time. She looks younger than the others, but perhaps it’s because she’s Asian and petite at seventeen, just a wisp of a girl. Her black hair is cropped as short as a boy’s, and her blue jeans are ragged and torn. Not a fashion statement, I think, but a result of hard use and life on the streets. She puffs on a cigarette and exhales a cloud of smoke with the nonchalance of a street thug, an attitude that doesn’t match her pale face and delicate Chinese features. She is