Eternity

by Heather Terrell

  Eternity

  A Fallen Angel Novel

  Heather Terrell

  Dedication

  For Jim, Jack, and Ben, who make everything possible

  Epigraph

  “The Elect One shall arise. . . .”

  The Book of Enoch 51:1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Heather Terrell

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Michael and I stood hand in hand, the world around us nearly dark. No moon, no stars, no man-made light illuminated the night sky. It was me and Michael, alone in the blackness.

  I knew we stood on the beach, even though I could see only the barest outline of the shore. I heard the crash of the waves before us, and I felt the rough, rocky sand under my bare feet.

  I sensed that we were waiting. The air was heavy with our anticipation, and I felt the tension of Michael’s grip. What we were waiting for, I wasn’t sure.

  A hint of light appeared on the horizon. The tiniest sliver of gold, yet it was enough to brighten the terrain. White-capped waves appeared before us, and steep cliffs took shape behind us. I could discern Michael’s pale blond hair, green eyes, and beautiful face. I saw now that we stood in a familiar cove. Ransom Beach.

  Soon, the sun began its ascent in earnest. As if a lens had been focused, we saw fine details of the landscape, even the heather growing in the tiny niches of the cliffs. The world looked brighter, clearer. More perfect.

  I knew then that we had been waiting for this precise moment. I turned to Michael, and we beamed at each other in joy and understanding.

  Then somewhere, in the far, far distance, I heard the faint ringing of a bell. I tried to ignore it, but it grew louder and more persistent. Somehow, I knew that it was calling me back. Calling us back.

  From his expression, I knew that Michael had heard the bell toll and comprehended its meaning as well. The smiles disappeared from both our faces. Neither of us wanted to go. Yet we knew we must. We were being summoned.

  We tightened our grip on each other and closed our eyes.

  And we ascended.

  Chapter One

  The end of time does not start off as, well, as apocalyptically as you might think.

  The alarm went off at 6:45 like it did every school morning. As usual, I hit the snooze button once, then twice. I needed a little more sleep to banish that haunting dream of me and Michael standing on Ransom Beach. Finally, on the third irritating ring, I switched off the alarm.

  I opened my eyes a crack.

  Instead of facing Armageddon, I woke up in my bed at home as if it was a normal day. How had I gotten to Tillinghast, Maine, from Boston? My last memories were of Quincy Market and Michael, and, oh God, Ezekiel.

  I pushed aside my heavy quilt and sheets, and lowered my feet to the cold wood floor. Shivering in the crisp fall morning, I walked over to my desk to grab my black bag, the one I took with me everywhere. Surely it contained some evidence of my trip to Boston, some explanation of how I got back from there.

  I rifled through it but couldn’t locate a single thing proving I’d been to Boston or showing how I got from there to here. Not a train ticket stub, not a random coffee shop receipt, nothing with a Boston address on it. My bag contained only the usual assortment: books, scraps of notes, cell phone, and wallet.

  Was the trip to Boston a dream? And if that was a dream, was all the stuff about the Nephilim and the Elect One a dream? Had I only imagined the flying and the blood? Was my relationship with Michael a fantasy too?

  Still, I couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that the Boston trip was not a dream. Part of me longed to call Michael and ask him. But how could I do that? Would he think that his girlfriend had gone absolutely crazy? And that was assuming I actually was his girlfriend and I hadn’t dreamed that part up too. I couldn’t take the chance.

  I decided to head downstairs to grab breakfast and talk with my mom. If I’d been in Boston with Michael yesterday, she would definitely bring it up. I would use her as my litmus test for what was real and what was not.

  As I left the relative safety of my bedroom and stepped out into the hallway, I spotted a photo stuck in the corner of my mirror. I drew closer and realized that it was a picture of me and Michael from the fall dance. I sighed in relief. At least I hadn’t imagined my entire relationship with him.

  But still, there was this whole Nephilim and Elect One business to sort out. Yes, I told myself, a brief chat with my mom was just the thing to sift through my confusion. Yet, as I placed my hand on the banister leading downstairs, I was suddenly certain that this wasn’t an ordinary day, that there would be no more ordinary days.

  Chapter Two

  My mom was acting perfectly normal. Almost too normal. Or maybe I was seeing her through the lens of my own uncertainty.

  From across the kitchen counter, she asked in surprise, “Ellie, why are you still in your pajamas? You have to leave for school in five minutes.”

  I glanced around the kitchen, which appeared exactly the same as always. My mom looked like she usually did too. There she stood, unflappably cheerful and unnaturally gorgeous. Dark, lustrous hair and perfect creamy skin, with only the very beginnings of wrinkles. Having such a beautiful mother was sometimes maddening.

  Since I didn’t answer immediately—as I wasn’t sure what was safe to say—my mom walked over to me and felt my forehead. Once she was satisfied that I wasn’t feverish, she asked, “Dearest, is everything all right?”

  My mom sounded normal; my parents always called me “dearest.” Unless they were upset with me, in which case they called me by my full name, the archaic-sounding Ellspeth, which I hated.

  “I’m okay, Mom. I just woke up from a strange dream. That’s all.”

  Very, very calmly, she asked, “What was the dream, dearest?”

  “Nothing. It was only a dream. I better get ready.”

  I walked back upstairs to my bedroom, grabbed some clothes, and then headed into the bathroom. I looked at my pale blue eyes in the m
irror and brushed out my poker-straight black hair. No matter how weird I felt, no matter how changed I believed myself to be, I still looked like perfectly average Ellie, a regular teenage girl who loved reading and travel; had one really good friend, Ruth; and a new boyfriend, Michael. Yet, as I stared at myself in the mirror, I wondered how I was going to act normal, knowing what I knew. Or what I thought I knew.

  Because I woke up remembering that Michael and I were not normal. We were anything but normal. Sure, when we met, on that first day of my junior year, it felt special, and not only because I was a junior girl and he was a senior guy. I thought that special feeling meant we were falling in love. Then, within weeks, I learned that we shared extraordinary powers that, even now, seemed incredible. Michael taught me that we could read others’ thoughts by touch, even by blood. And he showed me that we could fly. We didn’t know exactly what we were, only that we were together in our ignorance.

  Michael and I had traveled to Boston to find out who, or what, we were. We learned that we were the long-awaited return of the Nephilim, the half humans and half angels described in Genesis. The Nephilim were prophesied to come at the end of time, to do what we didn’t yet know. And I was the Elect One, whatever that meant. To learn the truth, we’d had to kill Michael’s birth father, Ezekiel, who turned out to be not so nice.

  Ezekiel. Even thinking about him made certain of his words echo in my head. I heard him tell me that my beautiful parents were two of the original fallen angels mentioned in Genesis. That they were banished to roam the earth forever because they’d dared to mate with humankind and create the new Nephilim race in defiance of God. That they were striving to regain grace and so had sacrificed their immortality and angelic powers to raise me as their daughter—even though I wasn’t their birth child—and to protect me until it was time for the end.

  If it wasn’t all a dream . . . and I still wasn’t positive what was real and what was a dream. After all, my mom had made no mention of Boston.

  I trudged downstairs, leery of what the school day could bring. “I’m ready to go, Mom.”

  “Michael’s picking you up today, Ellie. Don’t you remember?”

  “I’m not grounded anymore?”

  “No, dearest. Your grounding was over this weekend.” She paused and then asked, “Are you sure that you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. I’ll just go wait for Michael.”

  After I offered her a few more assurances, I stood by the front door for Michael. The sky started to drizzle, driving out all hopes of that crisp fall day I’d hoped for. Before I had the chance to lament the changeable weather too much—or address any of the troubling questions rumbling about in my head—I heard the crunch of car tires on gravel. My heart started racing in excitement and apprehension. Michael was here. What would I say to him?

  After yelling out a final good-bye to my mom, I closed the front door behind me and walked toward his waiting car. He opened the car door for me from the inside, and I slid into his Prius. Finally, after buying myself a few seconds to compose myself by brushing the rainwater off my jacket and organizing my bag, I steeled myself and looked his way.

  “How was your night?” he asked in his low, gravelly voice. No matter how many times I heard it, I always felt like melting. He leaned over to give me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Fine,” I answered cautiously. “Yours?”

  We made small talk about homework assignments, and I glanced over at him again. For the millionth time, I was struck by his looks. He wasn’t traditionally handsome. His hair was too blond and his eyes were too light a shade of green for that, although I thought that his tawny skin and tall, leanly muscular body made the combination arresting.

  It was his smile that drew me in. I adored the way it brightened his otherwise serious face and the way it made his eyes crinkle. Most of all, I loved how his smile cut right through my attempts at a steely exterior. When he smiled at me, I knew he really saw me. Like no one else had done before.

  Briefly, I smiled back at him, and in that moment, it didn’t matter whether the memories of Boston and our powers and our role in the end days were true. All that mattered was that we were together.

  The tranquil moment didn’t last. Michael started the car, and “Cemeteries of London,” a Coldplay song, came on. He knew it was one of my favorites.

  Over the song, he said, “Feels like London out today, doesn’t it?”

  I froze. Had he said what I thought he had? We had been heading to London from Boston. Or was Michael’s reference to London a coincidence, simply explained by the song?

  “So . . . ?” I dared to ask.

  As he watched my expression, his smile softened knowingly. And I knew, with utter certainty, that Boston had not been a dream. All those memories were real. And more.

  Chapter Three

  Excitement coursed through me. Over the certainty that Boston was not a dream. Over the knowledge that my memories of Michael and the flying and the blood were real. Over the realization that, in Boston, we had finally learned who—and what—we were.

  But then, as quietly as he could over the music, Michael said, “Ignorance is the only thing that has protected you so far.” His words reminded me that the news wasn’t all good. There were strings.

  Michael and I were meant to forget the truth about who we were and what we were destined to do. Because, once we fully grasped that we were indeed the long-awaited Nephilim, the end of time countdown would begin. That knowledge and the full blossoming of our powers would make us irresistible to the fallen angels, and we would become the focus of their end-days game. To prevent the starting of the end-days clock, our parents had shielded us from birth about our real identities. As we started to uncover some truths about our natures and our identities in Boston, they tried to make us forget again with the help of angelic friends who retained their otherworldly powers.

  His words unleashed another memory, one that happened after we had returned to Tillinghast from Boston but before I’d woken up that morning. I recalled seeing my parents hand in hand, standing before a blond girl of indeterminate age. I was in the room with them, witnessing the whole exchange through some miasma, almost as though I were half asleep.

  “Tamiel,” my dad said to the girl, “are you certain this will work? She will forget?”

  “As certain as I can be of anything right now, Daniel,” the girl answered him. “You and Hananel must play your parts as well. You must cast a veil of normalcy over yourselves and all your dealings with her, so that Ellspeth will find it difficult to think of herself as anything other than a typical teenage girl.”

  My parents had failed. I knew that I wasn’t a typical teenage girl. And Michael’s parents had failed at the same task too.

  I opened my mouth, a hundred questions on the tip of my tongue, but Michael put a quieting finger over my lips. I didn’t understand. Why couldn’t we talk about this in the privacy of his car? The grave look on Michael’s face stopped any protest I considered. Instead, I was left to my own thoughts as we drove to school.

  Fear overtook the initial excitement.

  It was all too much. It couldn’t be true. I was just Ellie Faneuil. I was not some legendary biblical creature upon whom the fate of the world hinged. These thoughts kept running through my head over and over again.

  I must have looked as sick and frightened and besieged as I felt, because Michael pulled the car off the road and wrapped me in his arms. He pulled me tight against his chest. I felt his heart beating fast and his chest rising, and I realized that he was as terrified as I was.

  “It’s going to be okay, Ellie. I promise,” he whispered into my ear.

  I wanted to ask him how. How everything was going to be all right, when my entire universe had been turned upside down.

  But I couldn’t.

  Michael pushed back my long black hair from my face, twisting a strand in his fingers. He looked into my blue eyes, as pale as his own. His expression told me that he didn’
t have any answers either. Only that he loved me.

  With his full lips, he kissed me. Hard and long and deep. I could feel his breath mingle with mine, and taste his tongue on my own. With this exchange came the force of our memories, the good memories, that is. Of the long hours we had spent flying the night skies in sheer delight, of the too-short evenings we had passed entwined in each others’ bodies, and of the times we had tasted each others’ blood through our kisses.

  I wanted more. More of Michael. His blood. When our relationship first began, and I learned about the power of blood, the very thought of such an exchange repelled me. Until I learned that the slightest taste of blood gave us insights into each other’s minds and souls. When we made that exchange, it brought us a powerful intimacy and joy.

  Michael felt my need. He probably felt his own need or desire too, but he must have realized that soon neither one of us would be able to turn away from its call. And he must have known that we could not surrender to it. Or risk everything.

  “We can’t, Ellie,” Michael said as he gently pushed me away.

  “Why not?” My hunger for him was so great that I didn’t care if I sounded desperate.

  “It isn’t that I don’t want to.”

  “Then what, Michael?”

  Michael didn’t answer. Instead, he waited for my breathing to slow, and then he slid a piece of paper onto my lap.

  I reached for it. I unfolded the paper, and I recognized Michael’s scrawling script. Why was he writing to me? Why couldn’t he tell me what he needed to say? I wanted to talk to him, not read some scribbled note.

  My Ellie—

  Michael knew I loved it when he called me that. It softened me enough for any message, good or bad. Undoubtedly, this was his intention.

  We now know who we are. The Nephilim. Half human, half angel, destined to play some important role at the end. Whatever that is.