by C. L. Coffey
He dropped the sword and jerked backwards.
I took advantage of his hesitation and swung my fist, landing a punch on his cheek. With the last ounce of strength that I had, using the wall behind me as a launchpad, I kicked out, sending him flying.
As he hit the ground, I ran. I made it as far as the fence, pushing my way through the cut metal, when a hand grabbed mine.
“Wait.”
I have no idea how he recovered so quickly, but I jerked my arm free. And then I was in the road.
“Dora?”
I whirled around at the sound of my name. That was the last thought in my mind as a car came around the corner, too fast to see me.
Too fast to stop.
The last thing I remembered was hitting the windshield, flying over the roof, and feeling the road engulf my consciousness.
CHAPTER THREE
“Order.” I set two plates in the hatch and pressed a bell.
“Kennedy, how many times?” an impatient voice yelled. “You have got to yell louder than that, sweetheart. We can’t hear you over Vegas out there.”
“Sorry, Marla,” I mumbled, returning back into the kitchen. That was the one thing I hated about this diner: they wanted me to shout, as well as hit the bell, when an order was ready. I was now even more reluctant to draw attention to myself.
I picked up the tray that had once been full of biscuits for the All-Day American Breakfast and took it over to the sink. There was a pile of dishes growing there, so I turned on the faucet and started filling it with warm, soapy water.
Despite the high temperature of the kitchen, I was still wearing my long-sleeved sweaters, only they had evolved into turtlenecks. They were old fashioned, and I knew I earned a few raised eyebrows from wearing them, even in the cool winter of Vegas.
As the sink filled, I rolled up my sleeves, catching sight of the scars. The doctors called them a Lichtenberg figure. Usually, they were left behind when a bolt of lightning hit a person. I didn’t remember any of it.
I’d awoken in a hospital wing with doctors hovering over me like I was a miracle to modern day science. I had been hit by lightning, and then hit by a car.
As I laid there in the hospital bed, I’d overheard a doctor and a cop talking outside, disagreeing with the witness’s statement. The driver was adamant that the lightning strike had to have happened long before he hit me as there hadn’t been a storm when he’d been driving.
The last thing I remembered was being hit with a bottle in the club. Being hit by lightning hadn’t seemed right to me. It had fallen on deaf ears when I’d tried telling them that, though.
The thing that amazed the doctors was how fast I healed. I’d gone in with facial lacerations, a broken pelvis, and some internal damage. Although I’d been in a coma, when I’d woken up only three days later, the facial lacerations were gone, the broken bones were almost healed, and the only visible remains were from the lightning strike.
However, unlike most Lichtenberg figures which only stuck around for a couple of weeks at most, mine were still there, six months later. They’d turned silvery and looked like a cross between a lightning bolt and snowflakes.
I didn’t really mind them, but they had drawn far too much attention for me. Considering I had discharged myself from the hospital and skipped out on my medical bill, I wasn’t in a hurry to be found.
We’d moved to Las Vegas the following day. I’d tried to move to LA like I’d originally planned, to be closer to the sea, but my mom was adamant.
“Vegas. We’re going to Vegas,” she insisted, again and again. She hadn’t even noticed that I’d been gone for over a week.
Using the last of what money we had, I’d paid rent on a small, one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of the city, where I hoped we would only have to stay a couple of months at most. We’d stayed in some holes before, but that place might as well have been the mouth to Hell.
I’d found a job in a kitchen in a twenty-four-hour diner, where, despite it being a twenty-four-hour city, no one seemed to want to work the graveyard shift. I snatched it right up.
My attention returned to the sink as I scrubbed at the pans and dishes before loading them into the crappy dishwasher. Like most things in this place, it was cheap, but as far as wages went, they weren’t too bad. When I glanced at the clock again, it was four a.m. and time for my last break.
Armed with a couple of slices of toast and a cup of bad coffee, I took the meal along with my shoulder bag out to the front of the diner. Four to six a.m. seemed to be the quietest time. There were a couple of hookers sitting at the counter drinking coffee, and a bulky trucker at the far end.
A table in the window, staring out at the interstate, was my usual location. Just beyond it, I could see some of the brightly lit casinos on the strip. It was a pretty, colorful skyline, and one of my favorite things about Vegas.
I pulled a pencil case out of my bag, along with a sketchbook, flipping it open to the picture I had been working on for the last few weeks. I loved drawing. When I was younger, I wanted to be a cartoon illustrator, then when I had gotten a bit older, the idea of animation appealed to me. The problem with both was that although college wasn’t a requirement, you still needed a computer. Unfortunately, that was one luxury I would never afford.
Instead, drawing was occupying my free time. I was going through a phase of backgrounds. Inspired by the strip, I’d been creating my own city. I sketched away while nibbling at the toast when a shadow fell across the page.
“Is it time…” I looked up at the ridiculously good-looking guy in front of me, feeling my face go bright red. “Hi?”
“I’m sorry. I was just passing by, and I saw your drawing,” he said, making sure to keep a few paces away.
I appreciated that, but I was still feeling uncomfortable with his presence.
“I just wanted to get a closer look.” He gave me a bright smile, showing off his perfect teeth. “You have talent.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled, turning my gaze down to the sketchbook, wishing he would go away.
I glanced back up when he didn’t move, then the large clock behind the counter caught my attention. Even though Marla clearly didn’t need me—she was sitting on a stool, flicking through a magazine—it was a perfect excuse to get myself out of his unrelenting stare.
“Excuse me,” I muttered, getting to my feet. I quickly started putting my things back into my shoulder bag when my shaky hands knocked some colored pencils to the floor.
They weren’t expensive professional pencils, but a cheap pack I’d picked up from the Dollar Store. That didn’t mean they weren’t important to me, nor was the action not embarrassing. I bent down to collect them, wondering how red my face could go as the heat went up a notch. Then, as I reached out to pick one up, the man swooped down, grabbing at it before I could, so I got his hand instead.
I froze. All I could hear was blood pounding through my ears. Not because I was holding hands with a guy, although that was mortifying in itself. But because in doing so, his hand glowed gold.
“Sorry,” he said.
Certain I was hallucinating, I glanced up at him.
I dropped his hand, jerking away from him as fast as I could which sent me colliding into the table behind me, sending it and the chairs flying, too.
He had wings.
Not wings like a traditional angel—there were no feathers there. The wings were made of light. Like millions of little golden lightning bolts hanging gracefully behind his back. As soon as I let go, they disappeared.
“What the hell is going on over there?” I heard Marla call.
The guy was giving me a suspicious look, but I didn’t stick around for whatever this was. I scrambled to my feet, abandoning my bag, and bolted for the kitchen. I didn’t stop, almost tripping into the fryer as I tore through the kitchen and out the emergency exit in the back.
I ran through the parking lot and into the street, getting a few blocks away before I stopped. What the fuck,
Kennedy?
Spotting a streetlamp, I walked over, using it to prop myself up as I tried to get myself together. When I’d taken my break, it had been close to five. The sun still hadn’t risen, and I was lurking on a street corner by myself in a shady area of the city. Strangely, I still felt safer there than I did in the diner.
The guy had wings. One minute they were there, and the next, they weren’t.
Clearly, I had imagined them. I mean, who had wings? I hadn’t been sleeping much since we moved to Vegas. And it was only a few months since I’d woken up in the hospital, so maybe I was having some form of sleep-deprivation side effect?
Just because my body was screaming for me to stay away from whoever that guy was didn’t mean I needed to react like that. I’d worked and lived in a lot of sketchy places. My instincts were trained to keep my guard up. He hadn’t done anything to me other than look at my art, but I was clearly getting bad vibes from him.
I looked down the street, finding myself in a part of the city I didn’t recognize. Slowly, I leaned my head back against the lamppost and sucked in a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm myself down. I had run much further than I thought: I really had been panicked.
The question was, what to do now? I didn’t want to go back to the diner. Not yet, anyway. Not until I had given him enough time to leave. But I probably had about five more minutes before I lost that job, and my wallet was in my bag, along with my apartment key.
“Come on, Kennedy,” I muttered, forcing myself to walk back to the diner. If nothing else, I needed my things.
I’d gone about half a block when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up again. I couldn’t see anything around me … I slowly turned.
It was the guy from the diner.
How the hell had he gotten here?
He didn’t have his wings anymore, but I was still getting the voice in the back of my head yelling at me to get out of there as quickly as I could.
“Who are you?” I asked, surprised I could get the words out. Thankfully, in the still night, my quiet voice seemed to carry.
“What are you?” He squinted.
“No one.” I sure as hell wasn’t giving him my name.
He started walking towards me then.
I didn’t think my heart was capable of beating any faster, but as he got closer, I started walking backwards before I turned and fled again, running straight into something solid. I bounced back onto the concrete, registering it was another person.
“Help me.” I reached out for him, my hand shaking as desperation clawed at my pounding heart.
I looked up and my eyes locked with his.
It was the man from the diner.
It couldn’t be … I glanced behind me, but he wasn’t there. This wasn’t his twin … What the hell?
I fell back onto my butt and started scooting backwards, refusing to take my eyes off him again.
And then he pulled out a knife.
No, it was a dagger. And it was growing. “What are you, nephilim?”
“I’m not a nephilim,” I yelled, wondering how he knew what I was. My father wasn’t really a fallen angel. My mom was struggling with reality …
Quicker than I could blink, he dropped to a crouch, his free hand aiming straight for my neck. His long fingers wrapped around it, squeezing tightly.
I grabbed at his arm, trying to free myself. And then the glow I saw earlier returned, along with the wings.
“What are you?” he asked me.
His bottle green eyes were the last things I remembered before I passed out.
I awoke with a pounding headache, and all my limbs ached. In short, it felt like the worst hangover I’d ever had.
With a groan, I rolled over. Or at least, I tried to. There was something clamped around my wrist, stopping me. I forced my eyes open, squinting as I struggled to see what was restraining me. As soon as I made out the metal cuff and chain, I bolted upright. The action had my head spinning and my side shooting with pain. “Motherfucker—”
“You’re awake then.”
Turning to the sound of a deep, sexy voice, I drank in his appearance. He was tall, with short brown hair which looked like he’d spent a fair bit of time getting it to stick up in the casual but stylish way. He wore black combat pants, and a tight-fitting, black T-shirt. If I had to guess, he looked like he was ex-military—his hair was too styled to be enlisted…
There was something familiar about him, that I somehow recognized, but I was certain I’d never met him before tonight. My pounding head wasn’t letting me put two and two together. “What the hell is going on?” I yanked at the chain. It clanked angrily against the metal headboard.
“I wouldn’t waste your energy,” he told me. “They’re enchanted.”
“Enchanted? Against what?”
“Against you,” he told me, simply.
Glancing around, I grabbed the only thing in range—my pillow—and threw it at my captor.
“Screw you,” I yelled as it bounced harmlessly off his chest. “You have no idea who you’ve kidnapped. The police will be all over you like a rash. You might as well do yourself a favor and let me go.”
He remained in the same pose—his legs slightly apart, his arms folded, and his expression stoic. “You’re, at best, a prisoner of a war that not even the police are aware of. At worst, if I can decide whether or not you are a nephilim, then you are–”
“A nephilim?” He’d called me that before and it still made as little sense as it did then. I rubbed at the side of my head, frowning at the chain as it tried to stop me. “Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t joke about things like this.”
There was something about the way he said that, so calmly, that I didn’t doubt him for a second. “Are you going to kill me?”
His green eyes darkened as he tilted his head to the side. Not for the first time, he hesitated before answering me. “I don’t know yet.”
And then it came flooding back. The green eyes. The sword.
Like a switch flipped in my head, a memory resurfaced. I remembered exactly where the Lichtenburg figures had come from, and why my body was reacting so strongly to his presence. The fact that he tried to kill me twice. Or maybe it was being held captive and scared out of my mind, but the world turned upside down again.
When I awoke the next time, I was alone in the room. I forced myself to calm down. Given the situation, my fear was natural, but passing out wasn’t going to get me anywhere, and I was sure that if I started crying, I wasn’t going to stop.
Sitting up, I curled my legs under me, examining the room more closely. Concrete floor, white walls, and a long slit of a window in the wall above the bed behind me. Save for the bed, the room was empty. I took several deep breaths, pushing back the panic that was building in my chest and turned my attention to the shackle around my wrist.
I didn’t buy for one second that they were enchanted, but the thick silver metal certainly wasn’t going to get broken by me any time soon. Neither was the chain it was attached to. The bed, on the other hand, looked to be a better option.
Using my weight and legs, I pushed the bed away from the wall, giving me enough room to slide down between the two. When I discovered the long pole was held in place by a single screw, I scooted up to it, and with one of the metal buttons from my jeans, used it as a makeshift screwdriver. The button kept slipping, and my efforts took a while, but it worked. Finally, I managed to ease the pole out and the chain off. I almost cried with relief.
The chain was heavy, but not enough to stop me from getting out of there. I ran straight over to the door only to find that it was locked. With only one other option, I went back to the bed, which having the pole removed, was now wobbly. So I carefully climbed up. I reached for the window. It was unlocked. Now standing on the bed, the window was high enough that when I stood on my toes, I could still just barely see through the glass. It was also only about a foot wide.
I didn’t care—I was getting out
that window.
Somehow, I pulled myself up and slid my legs out. I’m not fat. Truth be told, for my height, I’m probably too thin. I don’t get to buy new clothes very often. Most of my wardrobe comes from thrift shops, and there were only so many things that could hang on my lanky frame without looking awful. But today, I was glad for this. Because I was small enough to push my way through, ignoring the pain as my body scraped across the edges of the frame before I dropped down onto the ground outside.
Where the hell was I?
CHAPTER FOUR
Turning from the building, I could feel the blood running from my head again.
Given how high the sun was in the sky, it was probably around midday. The building I escaped from wasn’t hiding behind any wall or fence but was surrounded by desert. I was somewhere in the middle of a barren wilderness which had been bleached and dried by weather that was far too hot for this time of year.
I didn’t care. I just ran until the building was nothing more than a speck in the distance.
By the time the panic in my chest had eased, I’d become annoyed listening to the rhythmic clanking of the chain still wrapped around my hand. It wasn’t until I let the chain fall to my side that I noticed something odd: I wasn’t out of breath.
I’m not a runner. In fact, I’d had a habit of skipping gym class. Given the distance I just covered, I should’ve been curled up in a ball, wheezing. I should also be sweating. There was neither. In fact, I felt like I could keep on running. Then again, I had just been through something pretty traumatic. It had to be the adrenaline, right?
Not that it mattered because I was free. I could also see something periodically glinting at me in the horizon. Hoping it was just the sun reflecting off a car windshield as it drove past, I changed the direction I was running, heading towards what seemed to be a road.
I was right.
A while later, I left the sand and finally crossed onto asphalt. I took a moment to look both ways down the deserted road trying to decide which direction would be best. At that moment, my adrenaline was still pumping, but I knew it wouldn’t be much longer before my body would announce it was tired and dehydrated. With no real reason other than I was moving away from wherever I had been held, I decided to head west.
