by S. L. Naeole
I nodded grimly. “You infected my dreams, pretended to be my mother and told me to get Robert to break the laws of the Nephilim.”
“Yes. It would have been perfect; you would’ve been executed and he’d be turned mortal, thus making it that much simpler to kill him. But you couldn’t even do that, could you? You couldn’t make him desire you enough,” he laughed mockingly.
I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that Robert had desired me far too much for either of our good and that it had been me that had put a stop to it, but there was no point in trying to argue. His madness was too far gone.
Madness—that’s what it was! I looked at him, at the way his entire body shook from the crazed laughter that poured out from him, the darkness that had taken over and turned him into a monstrous creature that no longer resembled the beautiful angel that had stood before me just moments earlier. I knew that this was the fate that awaited Robert if I lived.
“You’re Innominate, too,” I whispered.
“Finally, she gets it,” he muttered sarcastically. “How ironic that my protégé and I would receive the exact same call and neither of us can seem to answer it. You end up becoming his wing-bringer; he becomes the gatekeeper to Heaven and Hell; I lose my honor, my place amongst my kind. He gets everything for defying who he is and what he’s supposed to do, while I get nothing!
“I gave up everything, everything that ever mattered to me in order to be what I was told I was meant to be. I made the sacrifices that N’Uriel was unable to make. Why should he profit from his failure?”
He was seething, saliva slipping back and forth between the tight spaces of his teeth, the hot, angry red glow that surrounded him giving him an almost devilish appearance that did nothing to help boost my courage as I shrunk back in mute fear.
He noticed this and a cackle broke the silence that I had been unable to fill with a reply. One hand grabbed my face, squeezing my cheeks and forcing my mouth into a moue as he stared at me with his horrifically empty face.
“I want you to know that all of that will change. N’Uriel’s death is guaranteed now. He will die by his own hand, and it will be because of you. And you will watch it happen. Consider it a going away present.”
“You’re sick and wrong,” I said in fierce denial. “He’s going to live, no matter what you do.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
He clicked his tongue in disapproval before laughter began to pour out of him, his pitch colored eyes seemingly growing darker as he made his intentions clear. “Oh, Grace. The plan is to keep you alive and torture you—mentally and physically—until your pain and suffering causes Robert’s rage to consume him.
“He will be unable to do anything to stop me from doing whatever it is I want to you.” He trailed a finger down my face, running over my mouth, his sharp nail slicing my bottom lip and trailing the blood that seeped from it down my chin. He let his finger fall negligently off my jaw and onto my chest where it glided downwards…
“And I will do whatever I want.”
“You can’t do that,” I gasped, struggling to pull away from his vise-like grip. “You can’t!”
Another crazed laugh burst forth from him, shaking his entire body, the vibrations traveling into me and causing my arms to rattle against my side, my hands painfully slamming into me with each tiny quiver.
“Who’s going to stop me? You? You’ll be helping me; seeing this through your eyes, feeling the pain and humiliation that you’ve gone through will be enough to finish him.
“He’ll be too overcome with rage and the darkness inside of him will prevent anyone from being able to reason with him—including you. Heaven help whoever is around him when that happens. Just think; what if he’s surrounded by his family, his new brother-in-law, perhaps even your family. Oh, the carnage that he will cause…”
“Why?” I sobbed, unable to fight the fear and anger any longer. “Why are you doing this?”
He smiled triumphantly. “Well now, finally you show some genuine emotion.” He released my face and held his palm up to my chin, catching the tears that fell, hot and heavy, down my face.
“I think I’ll save a few of them and give them to N’Uriel when he arrives—if he even left, of course. But if he didn’t, that makes for an interesting question, doesn’t it? How can he just stand there and watch as I hit you, kiss you, and touch you?”
“Shut-up, just shut-up!” I shouted. He would not make me doubt Robert again. I’d spent too much time doing that and I would not let his venomous words infect me like they had the last time. I wouldn’t do that to Robert. I fully believed that he’d left like I asked him to, that he hadn’t seen anything.
Sam let me go and sighed when I fell to the ground, my legs too weak from sorrow to carry my weight. “I’m sorry that things have to be this way. You truly are unique, Grace—one of a kind, really—and if there was a way to keep you around and still get rid of N’Uriel, I might think about it—you look like you could be a great way to pass the time—but I’m afraid that that’s simply not possible. Not with what you know and what you are.”
“What I am? Do you hate humans that much?” My voice was scratchy, the words coming out in fitful coughs.
“No. I adore humans. They make wonderful pets. My Miki had the right idea. No, Grace. I don’t hate humans. I hate half-breeds.”
“That’s it? Good God, you sanctimonious jerk!” I spat. “You hate me for something I had no control over? I didn’t get to choose my parents anymore than your father was able to choose you for a son-”
“Oh, so you’ve met my father. I'll bet he just fell head over heels in love with you, didn’t he?”
“I feel sorry for you, Sam. You’ve tried so hard to be something that you simply aren’t cut out to be and failed miserably.”
“And what exactly is that?”
“An angel,” I replied smugly, tilting my head up so that he could see my defiance.
“Oh, was that supposed to hurt my feelings?” he laughed before reaching down to grab a hold of my head, his fingers spanning out to my temples, and pull me up to my feet. “Enough with the pleasantries. Our audience has arrived.” He turned me around to face the parking lot as two pairs of headlights swerved in.
“What’s going on?”
“The show is starting, Grace. Put your game face on, it’s time to catch ourselves a king.”
CHECK
Two cars pulled into gravel filled stalls and I recognized them instantly, the small, white SUV especially causing my heart to drop and my feet propelling me forward to try and tell them to turn around, to go back. I tried to scream a warning, but a strong hand clamped over my mouth, the clucking of disapproval taking up where my voice should have carried.
“Now, now; we can’t be rude to our guests. They’ve come at my invitation. It wouldn’t do for our hostess to tell them to turn around and go home now, would it?”
I struggled against him, but he dragged me back, my feet kicking against him, my useless hands trying to pry his fingers from around my face, but my own were too stiff and numb to be anything but useless lumps of flesh. Finally bored with my feeble attempts at escape, Sam grabbed an arm and mercilessly pinned it behind me, causing my back to arch painfully and my body to still.
“That’s a good girl. Now, smile for Daddy.”
I shook my head and sealed my eyes shut, not wanting to see who approached us but unable to keep the knowledge of who it was from tearing a hole within me. Sam’s ominous words were repeating themselves in my head.
“He’ll be too overcome with rage, and the darkness inside of him will prevent anyone from being able to reason with him—including you. Heaven help whoever is around him when that happens. Just think; what if he’s surrounded by his family, his new brother-in-law, perhaps even your family. Oh, the carnage that he will cause…”
A silent sob; it was all that I allowed as I heard the footsteps approaching, the crunching of gravel before the collapse of soggy grass
beneath several pairs of heavy, intent feet.
“Oh my God! Grace!”
Dad’s voice floated to me and carried with it his panic at seeing me in such a state. I wanted to tell him that everything was going to be okay, I wanted him to believe me and then leave, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. He’d already seen too much.
Sam removed his hand from my mouth and his voice drifted from him in soft waves of pleasure as he spoke. “Welcome, James. It’s so nice to see you again after all this time.”
My eyes flew open to stare at my father, whose eyes suddenly lit up with recognition at the dark figure that stood before him. “You know each other?”
Dad’s gaze returned to me and he nodded with hesitation, “Y-yes.”
“How?”
Sam’s deep laugh shook behind me as he tightened his grip on my arm. “Oh, I think James should explain that to you, shouldn’t you, James?”
There. I saw it there: the flash of guilt behind my dad’s eyes. Seeing it, and recognizing it for what it was—that startled me. And he knew that I saw it, that I caught it, and that only brought the guilt forward, turning his mouth slack. His shoulders sank, his entire posture changing from concerned and defensive to defeated and remorseful in as much time as it took for my own face to fall.
“Dad?”
“Grace, I…I don’t know what to say.”
Behind him, Janice’s face was pale. She looked about as clueless as I felt, and the worry that lined her brows was proof enough that whatever secret it was that Dad was keeping, it had been his alone.
My eyes bulged as I caught a movement beside her, what I saw a frightening vision that turned everything inside of me cold. Graham stood there, his face badly beaten, his body wobbling on weak legs. But seeing him that way—I had not expected so much damage, not when being turned had given him the ability to heal himself—was not what shocked me. I stared in disbelief as his arm was held in the white-knuckled grip of Erica Hamilton, her face bearing a blank smile, her eyes vacantly staring out in front of her.
And beside her, wearing that same unaffected expression as that of Erica was Mr. Branke, his hands hanging loosely at his side, as though he didn’t know what to do with them.
“What. Is. Going. On?” My breath was staggered, the staccato rhythm throwing everything inside of me off kilter. My eyes whipped back to Dad’s, his expression mirroring the same shock I felt.
“Graham said that you needed us, that it was an emergency. We left him at the house with Matthew. Who’s watching Matthew, Graham? Where’s the baby?”
Graham’s head hung in silence.
“Wait,” I heard my own voice call out. “Graham told you to come here?”
He turned around, incredulity now mingling with the pained look that marred his face. “Yes. Yes, he did, but I swear, he was still there when we left. We left him with the baby… Grace, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can only assume that it’s my fault-”
“Dad,” I began, pulling against Sam’s grip and stifling a scream as he pulled back. I felt the burning in my shoulder, knew that it was threatening to dislocate at any moment, and bit my lip to keep from crying out. “Dad, this isn’t your fault.”
“Yes it is, Grace. It is. I should’ve told you, I should’ve told you when your mom died but I couldn’t—you’d lost so much, been through so much I didn’t think it was fair to you to put such a burden on you,” he explained, his voice wavering with emotion. He looked at Janice and tried to ease her confusion with a comforting hand, but she simply stared at him with wide eyes.
“Before we moved here, long before I met your mother, I was a very different person. There are things in this world that you can’t possibly imagine, Grace, things that cannot be explained. There are secrets that could destroy everything that humanity stands for, destroy humanity itself. And—I have to tell you that I grew up in a family that kept those secrets.”
I could see his mouth moving, see his hands gesturing as he continued his explanation but the only thing that registered with me was that my father was admitting to me that he knew far more about Robert’s world than either of us were aware of.
“You’re a-” I started, but Sam jerked my arm up higher against my back and my accusation was silenced with the swift sharpness of pain, allowing my father to continue—unaware that I already knew what he was going to say.
He inhaled deeply, and exhaled slowly, as if the gravity of what he would reveal could somehow be alleviated with such a simple gesture. His eyes were heavy and dark with the guilt that I had spied there earlier, and the circles that formed beneath them seemed to appear as if by magic, aging him markedly.
“My family is responsible for protecting the darkest of secrets, but I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t do it, so I chose to leave the family, to give up the life that I knew and this pissed them off. Shortly after, I met your mother and she was like a breath of fresh air compared to the hell I’d seen. And then Sam showed up.
“I knew immediately what he was, and why he had come. He’s one of the dark angels who deals in nothing but evil. He told me he wasn’t going to kill me, but only if I did something for him. As long as he allowed me my freedom, let me live, I was willing to do whatever it was that he wanted.
“I had escaped my family’s evil and couldn’t give up the life of light and goodness that I’d tasted—it would have been like giving up breathing. But I didn’t realize the price that I’d eventually have to pay until it was too late. Whatever my regrets, it was done. I gave Sam my vow—I owed him my life.”
“Did you hear that, Grace?” Sam whispered into my ear. “Your father keeps secrets, too. And one of them is that I own him.”
“No,” I shouted. “No, it’s not true.”
“Oh, but it is,” Sam said softly, his voice a gentle caress against my ear. “Now, ask your father what it cost him to keep his miserable human life. Ask him what other secrets he’s kept.”
My eyes focused on my dad’s, and I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know any of it. I knew that whatever it was that he would tell me, it was going to change the way that I saw him, the father that I had always known, and I didn’t want that. “No.”
“Ask him!” Sam growled suddenly, yanking my arm up once more, the sickening crunch and pop of my shoulder as it dislocated drowned out by my dad’s shouting at Sam to stop.
“No,” I whimpered once more as my useless arm was released and I sank to the ground. My head fell softly into the grass, the tall, unkempt blades cutting off my view.
“Well then, we’ll just make him tell you, won’t we?” Sam said with contemptuous amusement.
“James, no!”
“Mr. Shelley!”
Graham and Janice’s cries caused my head to rise, and I watched in horror as Mr. Branke forced my father to the ground. A foot was pressed firmly at his back, while a rough hand held onto Dad’s hair, forcing his head back, his neck straining at the unnatural angle.
“Now then, tell your daughter what you promised me in exchange for me sparing your life, James,” Sam commanded in a strangely relaxed tone.
“Grace, I…” his eyes looked at me and then closed, unable to face me as his confession spilled forth. “I promised him that he could take your mother’s life.”
“No!”
I heard the cry of denial, but did it come from me? I couldn’t say. There was so much that his confession did to me just then. My chest felt raw, as though it had been dragged through the gravel and dust, and left open to fester with the truth. My eyes were fixed on Dad’s face as the emotions that always run in packs when your life has been forever altered by the gory honesty of deceit tore through me at a rapid pace. And I saw what it did to my father’s composure as he began to weep, the guilt too much to accept anymore.
His head shook and he began to blubber out things that made no sense to me. Nothing would make sense to me anymore—not after this.
“It’s depressing to hear that he exchanged his
life for your mother’s, isn’t it? And look at what he’s done with that life; he’s now the manager of one of the crappiest grocery store franchises in Ohio. Makes you proud, doesn’t it, Grace?” Sam laughed evilly.
Dad’s raised voice burst through the laughter. “No, Grace. You don’t understand. Your mother knew! She knew everything; she always did—it was impossible to keep a secret from her. I begged her to forgive me, to forgive my weakness, and she asked me to forgive her. Can you believe that? She actually asked for my forgiveness. I asked her why and she told me-”
“James, STOP!”
A rush of wind swirled all around us like a miniature tornado, whistling as though it itself was the strong voice that halted my father’s words like a knife slitting a throat. The air grew cold and I saw my breath begin to fog as it escaped my lips.
From where I lay, I saw Mr. Branke’s grip loosen, and Dad’s head fall forward at the sudden slack. Erica, too, let go of Graham, who now looked completely unscathed, his bruises gone. He rushed over to help Janice, who seemed frozen in place, not by the sudden drop in temperature, but by everything that she had just heard.
Like the moon suddenly appearing from behind a dark cloud, Ameila was there, standing between us. Her wings were outstretched, like snowy curtains, her dark hair floating around her head like a carbon halo. She didn’t touch the ground and instead hovered above the grass, her bare feet just barely kissing the unkempt blades.
“James, you foolish, impetuous human; you should have kept your silence and said nothing. You know what Sam is, what he’s capable of, and yet you fell into his trap so easily. This was not what I intended to happen when I sent you here,” she scolded.
“Why?” I questioned.
Her face turned to me, her eyes small and full of remorse. “You may feel that with all of the emotions boiling inside of you that you’re capable of taking on the world, but you aren’t ready for this, Grace.”
