Black Halo (Grace Series)

by S. L. Naeole

  “My…what?”

  “Your tears; I told you I was saving them to give to him.” He gazed at Robert triumphantly, the corona of light that glimmered around him a deep sapphire that glittered with gold as his happiness and satisfaction combined, the light casting an eerie greenish haze across the tar colored gloss of his eyes. “Do you believe me now?”

  “Stop this, Samael!”

  Ameila’s commanding voice was so strong, so physically and audibly powerful, it forced me onto the ground by sheer sound alone. I rolled to my side, grunting at the pain in my shoulder and arm, and saw that Graham, Janice, and Dad had also been affected by it and were all equally stunned by what had just happened, their heads held up while their bodies lay prone on the ground in shock.

  “You call humans puppets, but you fail to see that you’re more of a puppet than they are. You think that the Thrones prevented you from killing Avi because of protocol? They did so on my orders, you arrogant child.” She blazed, literally blazed with fury as she threw a dagger-like gaze at Sam. The air around her was superheated, the color white hot as it whipped her hair and her gown up into spiraling, swirling masses of white and black wisps.

  “Why would you do something like that?” Sam looked puzzled, and for once, I empathized with him.

  “Yes. Why?”

  Ameila turned her head towards me, my question one that she had not anticipated, and a raw sadness crossed her face as she answered, “Because I had to, but more so because she asked me to.”

  HEARTSONG

  “That’s ridiculous!” Sam raged.

  I shuddered at the sight of the featherless spines that were all that remained of his wings. They stuck out like sharp and grotesque antlers, a mottled gray against the necrotic darkness of his skin.

  “Perhaps it is to you, but this isn’t about you, Samael. It never was,” Ameila said to him snidely. She drifted towards me and held her hands out. “Your mother wanted you to know the truth, Grace, but not like this. It was never her intention for you to find out this way.”

  “Find out the truth? What truth? What the hell is truth when my entire life has been a complete and total lie? My father lied to me, my mother lied to me, Robert lied to me… Even you lied to me. Sam’s right, everyone was right. I shouldn’t even exist. I’m a freak of nature.”

  I backed away from her. “You said my mom asked you to do this. Why?”

  “Because that was her path. That’s what she had to do.”

  “That’s utter bullshit and you know it!” I accused. I heard the rush of footsteps behind me and I turned just in time to see my father come up beside me. He gave me a quick glance and cast his gaze at Sam, shuddering at what he saw. His eyes returned to Ameila and his voice became a plea.

  “Ameila, you said it yourself, she’s not ready for this,” he began, obviously now uncomfortable with the truth that he had been ready to reveal just minutes earlier. “Please, she’s been through so much…”

  “No, James. It’s time she learned the truth. It’s too late to keep her in the dark, and pointless to try any longer.”

  With a defeated sinking of his shoulders, he nodded and took several retreating steps, stopping only when he realized he couldn’t stand beside Janice, whose face bore visibly the emotions that tore at me from the inside. When he stopped, I stared at him, incredulous that he’d simply bow down and shy away like…a puppet.

  “That’s not it at all, Grace,” Ameila assured. “I just understand now what I couldn’t before, and what your mother did. She knew what was expected of her, what her path demanded she follow. She didn’t expect to fall in love with your father. She didn’t expect for him to be the one to make everything suddenly make sense.

  “But that’s what happens when you fall in love, whether you’re human or angel or something else. It’s why James couldn’t figure out what she was, and why she couldn’t tell him until later. It’s also why she didn’t question what she had to do.

  “It was at her insistence that I revealed to the Seraphim what she had done, that she’d married a human. Unsurprisingly, most of them were unconcerned, reasoning that there were no consequences to be had because what could happen with a female angel and a human male?”

  “She happened!” Sam cursed, his finger thrown out, pointing at me like a weapon.

  Ameila laughed. My eyes blinked at the sound, unable to comprehend why she would do such a thing.

  “Had you been born during the time of the Grigori, you’d know that the Nephilim are born only from the human womb. A human male cannot produce a child with a female angel; we do not procreate that way.

  “Had you chosen to find a mate and move on, you’d have witnessed this for yourself. Instead, you spent thousands of years holding onto the memories of a monster that would have sooner turned this earth into an ocean of zombies and feed you to them than love you.”

  “Then…how?” I asked. I didn’t understand; Ameila was right about that. I looked Dad and saw the look on his face, saw the way this revelation changed the way he looked at me. It was like I had suddenly become a stranger to him, much as he was now to me.

  “While Sam was finalizing his plans for your father, your mother had her sentence carried out.”

  “Sentence? But-”

  She raised one hand, a request to halt the question that hung on the tip of my tongue. “Please. Wait until I am done.” She held her pause until she was sure I wouldn’t interrupt anymore and then sighed, her hand lowering—both of them lowering in acceptance of the fact that I wasn’t feeling charitable at all towards her.

  “Your father’s life was spared because Death saw no violation; James knew nothing of what your mother was at the time. But your mother received the harshest of punishments; she had her immortality stripped from her,

  Ameila walked over to my father and I saw her face grow pleading. “Avi—I’m sorry, I keep referring to her by the name I’ve known to be hers since as far as my memory takes me, but she wasn’t Avi when she died was she? No. She was Abigail, to you and I must remember and respect that.

  “Abigail did not intend to cause you such guilt over your decision, James. It was painful for her, even after she became human, to keep such a deception from you. But even though she eventually told you what she had been, she couldn’t tell you everything. She couldn’t tell you that the reason she knew about Sam’s offer was because she had set it up. She needed you to say yes, needed you to be human and not electus.”

  “But why? Why couldn’t she let me know beforehand? Why did she need for me to go into it so ignorant of everything and then make such a decision?” Dad asked, his face pained by so many lies; his as well as mom’s.

  “Because you needed to make the decision on your own, as a simple man fighting for his life.”

  “Did she have that little faith in me?”

  “No. She had every faith in you, James. That’s why she did what she did.”

  I stretched my hand towards Robert, needing his support as Ameila went on, but he seemed to be lost in his thoughts, consumed by them as he listened to the words and heard the whispered secrets in the minds around him. I wanted to comfort him; I wanted him to tell me what he was thinking to ease the burdens that weighed on him, but something Ameila said forced my head to whip around.

  “And Samael knows that I speak the truth because she knew him better than anyone, didn’t she? Your mother knew far more about you than you care to admit, far more about yourself than even you are aware.”

  My…

  “Mom?”

  Dad’s outraged cry, Sam’s mocking laughter, and Graham’s exclamation of shock all did nothing to drown out the pounding of denial inside of me. There was no way, no possible way that I could be related to Sam.

  “You’re lying.”

  Ameila’s somber eyes flicked over to mine. “I’m not, Grace. I may have kept many things from you, but I never lied about them and I never will. You and Samael share the same mother, but your mother stopped being an
angel long before you were conceived.”

  “Then that means-”

  “Yes, that means that you’re not Nephilim.”

  “That’s a lie!” Sam’s shouted as he flew towards me, his black, claw-like hand open, reaching for my throat.

  Robert stepped into his path, a black veil of protection before me, and blocked him from reaching his goal. “Back off,” Robert growled. He had taken on a defensive stance, his hands balled up into iron fists at his sides as he held his arms out protectively, keeping a safe distance between Sam and me.

  “You overstep your bounds, brother. She’s mine!” Sam hissed over Robert’s shoulder. “You have no claim to her; you gave up that right when you chose to turn your back on your call. Besides-” he glanced at me and smirked as he returned to the same relaxed, unaffected state he’d been in just moments before his outburst “-she prefers my touch over yours.”

  My eyes widened in shock at the lie as I realized what he was doing. He looked at Robert and the thoughts once again flowed between them, a stream of hated innuendo and insinuations, and I knew that Robert was seeing Sam with his hands on me, his mouth forced onto mine.

  I wanted to close my eyes, shut out the visions that I knew were staining Robert’s mind with their foulness, but I could no sooner remove them from my mind. They had been burned into my memory just as much as any other event had.

  Robert’s wings—kept calmly gathered behind him—began to unfold and stretch out. The dark feathers gave off a rainbow sheen in the pale light, and I watched as they shimmered and shook with the angry vibrations that seemed to come from deep within him, touching whatever was near him with its own rattling.

  The skin on my arms began to tingle, and I gasped as my eyes took in the deepening purple bruises on my hands, the intricate geometrical pattern having worked its way up my forearm and now encroaching beyond my elbows. “Robert?”

  I eased myself around the feathered wall that he had created between Sam and me, and stood in front of him. I looked into his face and my heart lurched within the walls of my chest as I saw the same dark, honeycombed webbing cross over the smooth skin of his forehead, the silver in his eyes gone now, everything absorbed by the darkness that was creeping through him, consuming him.

  “Robert, stop,” I whispered, and pressed a swollen hand against him. I blocked out the pain as I shoved against him, trying desperately to get him to realize what Sam was doing.

  He put his hands on you, his mouth on you—your brother. The thought stabbed at my mind, red-hot with its anger, and I fell to my knees at the searing and sudden pain.

  “Grace!”

  The sounds of feet rushing towards me, the feeling of arms reaching to lift me and pull me back up were drowned out by the continuing barrage of thoughts that attacked my mind with their burning sting.

  You let him touch you—you let him do those things to you. You should have stopped him!

  My voice rang out, shrill and desperate as each painful word stabbed at me. The arms that were dragging me away suddenly stopped their relentless pulling. “I did! I did stop him! Nothing happened! Don’t let him do this to you, Robert. Don’t let him destroy your faith in me—it’s what he wants!”

  Robert’s hands went to his head, cradling it as though my words were causing him the same untold pain that his had done mine. I struggled with the hands that held me, tearing myself away from them to return to his side, needing him to believe me, needing him to not let the evil seed that Sam had planted take hold in his fertile mind.

  But I was too late.

  And Sam knowingly laughed behind me, the bitter laugh of a joyless win.

  “You see, brother? You’re not safe from betrayal…from anyone. Of course, that’s not all of it, is it Ameila?”

  From where I stood, I could see that Ameila’s face, though it had paled, grew even more defiant. More secrets, more deceit, and there was little I could do to keep them from being revealed.

  “No.”

  Sam began to do a sort of dance as he floated above the ground, unusually blissful as he rolled his hand, indicating that Ameila should continue.

  I didn’t want her to.

  She didn’t want to.

  But the truth wouldn’t be kept from Robert any longer. He turned to face her and she closed her eyes at what she saw, the disappointment and hurt that only a mother could feel quite evident by the lines that chiseled themselves into her fine skin. Ameila’s composure was difficult to take in.

  She was always so stoic, so statuesque in everything that she did, and yet she suddenly appeared vulnerable. I didn’t like it. She remained still for what felt like an eternity, I assumed because she was taking a moment to compose herself. When she finally opened her eyes, it was to send an icy, silver glare in Sam’s direction, neutralizing his gleeful expression and painting on his face one that resembled something akin to fear.

  “Samael, do you think you’ve won? Do you think the stolen thoughts of those who better you in every way have somehow given you the edge here? You want to know the truth? You want to hear what your mother kept from you? Fine.

  “Avi didn’t want you; you were a duty for her, an obligation that she had to meet because of who she was. She only joined with your father so that our numbers could increase, and always looked at you as her only regret. She gave life to the most pathetic angel in our entire history. You couldn’t love properly and you can’t hate properly. She was the best of us and she gave birth to the worst.

  With a dismissive wave of her hand, she removed her gaze from him and focused her attention on me, giving me a woeful smile as she did so. “Grace, your name, your soul sang in her heart just as loudly as any call. She knew that you had to be born. You were as much her destiny as her own death was, and she could not escape it. She didn’t want to. She wanted you more than anything. More than immortality, more than life, more than divinity.

  “But she needed me to help her. She might have been mortal, but she still wasn’t human, and just as I helped Hanina to conceive Robert, I helped your mother conceive you.”

  I stood there on shaky on my feet, staring into the grey abyss of Ameila’s eyes. How odd that a few words could turn even the strongest foundation to rubble simply by uttering them in specific combinations. In the shortest of time spans, the relationship I had formed with the memory of my mother was reduced to nothing but a fairytale.

  Ameila’s fingers closed over mine in a painful reminder that she still held on to me. “No, no Grace. Your mother loved you! From the moment she felt your life within her, there could be no bond as close or as pure. She didn’t tell you any of this because she wanted to keep you safe.

  “Your life was in jeopardy the moment your name became more than just a thought. Samael still wanted to kill her. If you knew about what she’d been, what your father had been, it would have compromised everything that she sacrificed to have you.”

  I couldn’t focus on what she was saying as a question began to form in my mind. “If I was conceived the same way Robert was, then that means-”

  “This is preposterous!” Sam bit out, cutting me off. He already knew what I was thinking, the idea abhorrent to him. “That half-breed is no angel.”

  “No. You’re right, Samael. Grace may have been conceived in the same manner as N’Uriel, but she is not an angel, just as she is not Nephilim. Her birth was as natural as any human birth could be.”

  “Then explain, if she’s not Nephilim, why she must die,” Robert demanded, his voice sounding strange, as though he were far away from us though he was standing right beside me.

  Sam grunted in satisfaction as Ameila’s eyes grew pained, and it wasn’t from what she saw in Robert’s face. It was from what she was about to tell him.

  “It’s because though she was conceived to be born, she wasn't born to live."

  This sent Robert into a silent fury; he bristled as a rumbling began within him. Ameila tried to ease his frustration, her calm voice acting like a dampener on the fi
re that flared inside of him.

  "Robert, please understand me when I say this to you, I did this for you. I did this for the both of you. Grace’s birth was wanted—she was wanted very much—but it’s her destiny to die. Abigail knew that Grace would be your wing-bringer. She knew what Grace would be to you. It’s why we came back here when we did, why I insisted you put on this high school charade. She is your path, your destiny."

  “My destiny? Did you know that my destiny would be to kill her? Did you know that as well?” Robert’s gruff voice did nothing to shake Ameila, who slowly nodded her head in confirmation.

  A roar of pain filled the field. Robert’s wings began to rise and fall, while Sam’s malicious cackling filled in the void that the mournful cry left behind as it faded into the night.

  “Oh this is better than I expected. Mothers suck, don’t they?”

  Robert turned around and this time, I couldn’t prevent a pained sob from escaping me when I saw that his face and his torso had been swallowed by blackness. He looked at me as though I were a stranger, the rage within him, fed by this final betrayal, finally taking hold.

  “No, Robert, don’t,” I whimpered when he walked past me, his goal clear, his target patiently waiting as he stalked his prey.

  “That's right, brother," Sam taunted. "You know where this is going." He took several slow steps backwards, smiling in anticipation.

  I turned to face Ameila. "You did this. You could have told him the truth before any of this ever happened. You could have prevented all of this!"

  "And then he'd have refused to come back to Heath, and everything your mother sacrificed to ensure that you were born and that you survived that car accident would have been in vain."

  "What did my mother sacrifice to keep me alive? She knew she was going to die before I was even born—she planned it for crying out loud—she sacrificed nothing but me!"

  Ameila sighed and looked at me with undiluted pity in her eyes. “Your judgment is being clouded by your anger, so much so that you can’t see what’s right in front of you. Why do you think you survived that accident, Grace?"