by C. L. Coffey
I walked for miles until I caught sight of a vehicle travelling towards me. It was a brand-new silver Yukon, but to me, it looked like safety. Especially when the driver pulled up. I darted over and pulled the passenger door open. “Thank you,” I said, not even thinking twice before climbing in.
The driver was younger than I first thought. Perhaps only a few years older than me. She was really pretty, with curves I was instantly envious of, and red hair. There was nothing natural looking about the color of her hair. She had to have dyed it recently for it to be that vibrant, but I loved the cherry red. She was wearing a strange outfit for the desert, and even stranger for someone driving a car: biker pants and boots.
Her green eyes flashed with worry as she took me in, turning down the pop music that had been blasting from the stereo.
“Are you alright?” Her low tone and European accent sounded concerned.
“I am now. Do you have a phone?”
She shook her head. “But I’m only twenty minutes from a friend’s place. I’m sure he has one there. What happened to you?” Her eyes narrowed as they fell on the chain around my wrist.
“I was kidnapped.”
She stared at me for a moment before pulling open the center console and handing me a bottle of water. “You’re safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She was a little shorter than me and almost as slim. I didn’t think she could take on the man who kidnapped me, but for some reason, I still felt safer with her. She gave me a reassuring smile. “I’m Angel.”
“Kennedy.” I took the bottle of water. “Thank you.”
She put the car into drive and pulled back onto the road.
We drove in silence for a while. I kept my gaze straight ahead, but I could feel her periodically staring at me from the corner of her eye. Finally, I sighed and glanced over. “Isn’t this a slightly random place to have a vacation?”
She gave me a puzzled look. “Vacation?”
I shrugged. “Your accent?”
“I’m from New Orleans.” Seeing my look of confusion, she shook her head. “I was born in England. After my parents died, I moved to New Orleans to live with my aunt. Being out here is more business than pleasure. Are you from around here?”
“I’m not entirely sure where here is.”
“Closest city is Las Vegas,” she told me as the car slowed. We took an exit, and the road soon resembled more of a trail than an actual road. The vehicle rocked back and forth a few times as Angel maneuvered her way over and around potholes. Eventually, a single-story building came into sight. We pulled up outside, then Angel gave me another reassuring smile. “We’re here.”
I got out and started to walk around to the other side of the SUV when I heard a door open. “You’re late.”
Looking up, I locked eyes with the brown-haired guy from earlier and that knot of panic made a sudden reappearance in my stomach.
“Oh hell,” I muttered before turning to bolt.
I didn’t get very far before I was tackled to the ground by something that felt like a freight train. It was definitely human though—I worked that out when my kicking resulted in a grunt of pain. I had just about wriggled out from underneath the person when my elbow was grabbed, and I was yanked back to the ground and rolled over onto my back. Again, I started kicking and clawing at anything, earning myself a few more grunts from the pain. Then my attacker sat on me, pinning my arms to my sides.
“You can stop resisting now, Dora.” It was the green-eyed guy who kidnapped me earlier.
“Hell no.” I gasped, doing my best to wriggle out from under him again. When I realized all I was doing was bringing him closer to me, I gave up. “What the hell do you even want from me?”
“To stop resisting, for starters.”
“I am.” I grit my teeth. “You’re the one on top of me.”
“Only because I’m not entirely convinced that you’re not going to run the second I get off.” The corner of his mouth started to quirk upwards. Apparently, this was amusing him.
“Of course I’m going to run. You’re trying to kill me.”
“Actually, I’m currently trying to stop you from running.” He cocked his head. “I don’t want to kill you. At least not yet.”
“And you had to finish that with that?” I jerked my arm just to see if I could catch him off guard.
I couldn’t.
This time he grinned openly. “I’m quite content to sit here all day if I have to. You’ll get bored eventually.”
“I don’t know. I’m pretty stubborn.” Switching tactics, I tried to buck him off me. This time, I did catch him off guard—but only enough for him to fall forward. His grip didn’t loosen, however, and I found myself staring into his eyes, much too close for comfort. They were the color of grass. And I couldn’t help but appreciate them. Deep in my chest, my heart was pounding, but for a different reason. I quickly shook my head. “Fine, I give up.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Really.”
There was another moment where he just stared at me before he pulled himself up.
My mouth fell open when he offered me his hand to help me stand. I took it, half expecting this act of good will to be a trick, but it wasn’t.
He simply gestured for me to walk back towards the building I had escaped from.
“Who are you?” I asked, not liking the silence.
At my question, he did a double take. “You don’t know?”
I rolled my eyes when he wouldn’t answer. “I don’t spend my life looking at America’s Most Wanted posters.”
“You’re being serious, aren’t you?” A furrowed brow smoothed out as his eyes widened.
It was my turn to cock my head. “Is this some kind of reality TV show?”
“My name’s Gabriel,” he said, as though that would prompt a reaction.
I shrugged and continued walking. Perhaps bonding wasn’t the most appropriate thing to do with a crazy person.
Angel was waiting for us when we returned. With her hair blowing in the wind, it pulled at a memory. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. She wasn’t alone, either. She had been joined by a dark-haired male—one who was easily as good looking as Gabriel, although a little more clean-cut.
Angel and Gabriel seemed to be around the same age—somewhere in their early twenties. This guy looked older, though. Thirties, maybe?
“Are you done running?” the older guy asked.
“She said so.” Gabriel nodded although he shot me a sideways glance as if he expected me to prove him wrong.
I was certainly tempted.
This earned him a disapproving look from Angel. “Gabriel, stop teasing her.”
Teasing?
Angel’s request earned her an exasperated sigh. She ignored him and turned her attention to me. “This must be very overwhelming to you. I know I didn’t take it very well when I found out.”
“You mean beside the fact that I’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of crazy people who can’t seem to work out if they’re going to kill me or not?”
Angel looked at Gabriel. “You did tell her, didn’t you?” She shook her head, lips pursed. Her gaze fell back on me. “So no. You didn’t tell her?” she asked again, this time, growling beneath her breath.
“He was too busy trying to kill me.”
This surprised her, and she rounded on Gabriel who instantly held his hands up in defense. “She’s a nephilim.”
“But her aura...” Angel trailed off, squinting at me. She turned back to the dark-haired man. “Henry, it shouldn’t be that color. Not for a nephilim.”
“Hence trying to kill her.” Gabriel was so matter-of-fact, and yet he couldn’t understand why my instincts were pushing me to run away.
Angel folded her arms. “My opinion on that matter withstanding, do you know what this means?”
My brain was whirring a million miles a minute. My mom, as her mental health had declined, would frequently call my fath
er a fallen angel. That made me a demon in her eyes.
I was strong and fast, and apparently, I also had very high stamina, but this was…
“Will someone please tell me what kind of crazy I stepped into?”
None of this was possible—was it?
“How about we take this inside.” Angel gave me a sympathetic look.
“How about you let me go?” I muttered as they escorted me into the building and then a room which was something similar to a study or a living room. I ignored the seats and went straight to the large window that was taking up most of the wall.
“You said you wouldn’t kill the nephilim.” Angel turned, marching up to Gabriel as soon as the door closed behind her.
“This is a discussion for another time, Angel.” Gabriel shook his head. “With Michael and Grace. For now, we need to discuss what we’re to do with her.”
“She’s coming back with us,” Angel said, though the question was there in her voice. “She’s a potential, as well as a nephilim.”
The older man, Henry, shook his head. “Potential or not, you can’t bring a nephilim back to New Orleans. Not when we’re only just starting to recover. Besides, the point is moot. Gabriel turned her. She’s his ward now, even I know that.”
“Turned me into what?” I interrupted their conversation.
Three sets of eyes stared blankly at me. It was like they had forgotten I was in the room.
“What did you turn me into?” I asked again. Like hell, would I let this carry on any further without finding out what level of crazy I was dealing with. “A vampire?”
Angel looked at me, becoming stiff. Her eyes scanned over my face. Eventually, she put her hands on her hips as she turned towards the two men.
“What is it with you guys that you can’t explain what you’re doing properly. This whole Eternal Life versus Eternal Happiness really needs working on,” she said, venting her frustration at Henry.
“Eternal Life?” I repeated. “What the hell are you talking about?”
This time it was Henry’s turn to look surprised. “Angel, I don’t ask the question. That’s not in my job description. As an Angel of Death, all I do is take souls onto their next location. It’s the job of the archangels to ask the question.”
Angel turned to Gabriel and fixed an expectant look on him as she tapped her fingers against her hip.
“I didn’t ask her the question. I was hunting a nephilim,” Gabriel explained. “She presented herself as being a potential and then ran away, got hit by a car, and the driver took her to a hospital. When I went to find her, she was gone. It took me weeks to track her down in Vegas.”
Angel walked over to me and peered into my face before reaching over and prodding me. “Are you alive?”
“Yes.” I batted her hand away.
She stepped back, frowning. She turned to Henry and gave him an expectant look. “I have no experience with this.”
“I believe you have more experience than me,” Henry said before pressing his lips together. He took a step back and moved to the side of the room.
“Hey, how about you stop having conversations about me and start having them with me?” I stomped my foot in frustration.
Angel looked apologetic, but Gabriel turned to Henry, folding his arms. “I don’t know what to do. She’s a nephilim, and our orders are to kill the nephilim like we would the Fallen.”
“But she’s not just a nephilim.” Angel objected, spinning on her heel to rejoin the conversation. “Clearly she’s something else if she’s showing as a potential.”
“Which is why I haven’t killed her.” Gabriel looked back to me, his green eyes fixing on my brown ones. “Yet.”
CHAPTER FIVE
A shudder ran down my spine.
Turning, I stared out the window, wrapping my arms around myself as best I could with the shackle and chain still around my wrist. The view outside of the barren landscape was just how I felt: empty and hopeless.
And regretful.
I had always assumed my mom was struggling mentally. That she was ill. Some people were just strong. That made sense and sounded more logical than my father really being a fallen angel.
Angels weren’t real.
A story about angels had been in the news a few months back. It was all anyone could talk about at work. A man had been thrown out of a building only to be caught by an angel. She had wings like Gabriel’s, only they were electric blue instead of gold. As it was New Orleans, the streets had been packed, and there were dozens of people who had caught the incident on video.
Any sane person had written it off as a really good trick, like crop circles. Except for my mom. Only Mom was struggling with her mental health, and that had sent her into a faster spiral. We had to leave Dallas then, packing up in the middle of the night to leave the state, which was too close to New Orleans.
Mom had calmed down when we reached Phoenix. The lack of television in our apartment helped a little. But I’d kept an eye on things back in the Crescent City; things had gotten crazier back there.
When Henry said the city was recovering, he was referring to the riots that had broken out. That, I remembered clearly: New Orleans resembled a war-torn city on the news for weeks.
I thought it was all the doing of crazy religious zealots. The idea of angels actually existing was nonsense. Angels would imply there was a god, and if there really was a god, it only took one look at the world to see we had been abandoned.
He certainly wasn’t playing fair when it came to me and my mom and all the shit we’d been dealing with.
Personally, I thought the idea of there not being a god easier to swallow than being abandoned by one.
Angels … my mouth fell open as I turned back to the others. Henry and Gabriel…?
Henry said he was an Angel of Death, and Gabriel was … an archangel…?
Gabriel?
Archangel. Not just any archangel, but the archangel.
How I’d aced my GED was now a mystery.
Not that my GED was important anymore.
If one of Heaven’s greatest warriors was trying to decide whether I should live or die, I was sure that my chances weren’t great. I sighed and leaned against the window, watching as my breath fogged up the glass.
OK, I had to get out of there … again.
Even if they were human, it was three against one.
“Dora?”
I was startled from my thoughts by a hand on my shoulder, sending me swinging around with a raised fist.
Gabriel’s hand flew up, catching mine before it knocked him out. He wasn’t anticipating the chain, however, that continued to move and whip at his back. He winced, lowering his hand, still holding onto my arm. “How about we take this off?”
“How about you let me go home?” I shot back, realizing we were alone in the room now.
He stared at me for the longest time, and although his gaze made me feel ridiculously uncomfortable, I glared back. Finally, still holding onto my arm, he led me over to an armchair and sat me down, crouching beside me.
“What did you want out of life?”
I blinked. Not the question I was expecting.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, my gaze dropping to his hand which had yet to release my arm. “Go to college, graduate. Get a job with decent medical coverage and a 401K. Failing that, a job where I can afford medical insurance.”
While staring back at me, his mouth formed an ‘O’. With a sigh, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an oddly shaped key. He quickly unlocked the shackle, dropping it to the floor.
Instead of letting go of my arm, he pulled my sleeve up, looking at the Lichtenberg fractures which ended mid-way down my forearm but disappeared under the dirty turtleneck hiding them.
Before I could point out that the only reason I had those horrible scars was because of him, he turned my arm over, running his fingers gently over my skin. Tracing the words tattooed onto my wrist.
“They’re lyrics fr
om a song.” I shrugged.
“I’m familiar with Luke Goddard’s works.” His eyes never left the ink. “I’m also not surprised you’re a Follower.”
I snatched my arm back. “Don’t pretend you know me.” I snapped at him. “I couldn’t care less whether or not Luke Goddard ever gets out of that clinic, nor would I ever consider myself one of his Followers.”
Luke Goddard had been the teen pop sensation who called all his fans Followers. But I was certainly not one of them.
To be completely honest, as a person, the guy irritated me. And his fangirls were insane teens who hated everyone that didn’t like him while always making sure every song he released got to number one in the charts. Eventually, it seemed the fame had gotten to him because the last I’d heard, which was about the time things were going to hell in New Orleans, he’d checked himself into a clinic. Annoyingly enough, the words to the chorus in his first single had value to me.
“I like the lyrics.”
“Luke Goddard was a vessel Lucifer was using,” Gabriel said. “And his mind has been so damaged by being possessed by a fallen angel, that he may never leave the clinic he’s in.”
Gabriel stared at me, waiting for my reaction.
Once again, I seemed to surprise him when I started laughing.
“Luke Goddard was Lucifer? And what? He decided that the way to take over the world was to be a teen pop idol?” The idea made me laugh even harder.
Gabriel rose to his feet and folded his arms. “His actions had a lot of people fooled, including the archangels. Teen pop idol, or false idol, he had a lot of impressionable people worshiping him, and in doing so, nearly succeeded in destroying New Orleans. We’re still trying to round up the Fallen and nephilim who helped him.”
I stopped laughing. “And that’s why you came after me? You think I’m a nephilim?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Just because I don’t dress and act like Teen Barbie, doesn’t make me a nephilim.”
