by Vicki Keire
Without a word he flipped his arm wrist-up and yanked off the bandage. I winced. I felt queasy every single time I looked at it. Seventeen stitches from mid-wrist to just below the crook of his elbow.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated automatically as he slid back into the seat next to me.
“Don’t.” He touched my forearm, drummed against it lightly with his fingers. “It’s not your fault.” His smile was more bitter than graceful, but it was there. “I’m getting a little better. There’s hope I’ll figure this human thing out eventually.” But the closeness we’d shared, the thoughtless, automatic joy at sharing a morning together, was gone.
“Well.” Logan swirled a spoonful of honey into his green tea. “I, for one, was only trying to save you from drinking any more of that awful crap. Coffee is bad for you.” He grinned, trying to lighten the mood, saluting us with his mug. “Green tea is full of anti-oxidants. The body is a temple.” He leaned back in his chair, radiating smugness. “Especially mine.”
“Weeds, Logan,” I shot back as I drained almost a third of the pot into my huge blue plastic mug. As part of his recovery regime, Logan’s health kick was understandable, but there were some lines I just would not cross. “You’re drinking weeds.”
“Healthy weeds.”
“Whatever.” I smiled around my mouthful of muffin. I’d missed picking on him mercilessly. I’d held back the worst of my attacks when he’d been so sick. “That’s why you have to drown the taste with enough honey to send a normal person into sugar shock. And that’s got to be so healthy. Right, Ethan?” I choked down my half-chewed muffin, eager to include Ethan in my attack. “Logan can be the healthiest diabetic in Whit…”
But Ethan wasn’t listening, and judging from his face, he hadn’t been for a while. The newspaper Logan had been so absorbed in earlier drooped between his fingers like wet laundry. His was bone-white and had the most lost expression I had ever seen on his human face. I scrambled to read over his shoulder.
“Jesus, Cas! Watch it!” Logan yelled, snatching his precious tea out of my path. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Not me,” I insisted. “Ethan? What’s wrong?”
He had Logan’s full attention too, now. “Look,” he said, indicating the paper. He placed it on the table between us. “Did either of you read this earlier?” Carefully, with shaking hands, he smoothed the front page completely flat. “Did either of you pay attention?”
“That’s not even a Whitfield paper,” I said defensively, “so no. Plus I’ve been lectured at since my feet hit the floor this morning. I’ve had no time.”
“I picked it up because there’s a music festival in Birmingham next weekend. I just wanted to see who was playing.” Logan came to stand over my shoulder and leaned in close.
Ethan pointed to a headline on the front page, his finger white with pressure as if he could drill down through the surface of the table itself. Heiress Abducted, the headline screamed in gigantic black letters. I leaned in so close to Ethan our shoulders touched. “Twelve year old Caroline Bedford was taken from the family estate in Vestavia last night, despite some of the best private security in the country,” I read aloud. “Bedford is the only daughter of shipping magnate Nathan Bedford. Police have no suspects and no ransom has been demanded. Mr. Bedford has issued a one million dollar reward for Caroline’s safe return.” I frowned; it was terrible news, but I didn’t understand why Ethan was so upset he literally shook against me. He slammed his fist down against a black and white security camera photo. I leaned in closer. I could feel Logan’s hot breath against my ear.
A girl in a white nightgown and slippers. Long blond hair. A terrified blur of a face, the picture too grainy to make out distinct features beyond the usual trademarks of terror: wide mouth and eyes, head thrown back, arms flailing. Taken in what looked like a hallway with busy wallpaper, two dark figures held her. One gripped her around the waist, and the other seemed to be acting as lookout. Dressed all in black, they looked like army commandos or mercenaries of some kind. They wore form-fitting black clothing, bulky jackets, and huge dark blurry backpacks.
“I noticed those backpacks right away,” Logan said quietly. Something darkly chilling slid its way down the back of my neck at his tone. “Ethan? Do you see it?”
“Those aren’t backpacks,” Ethan said at last. He pulled me against him, his arms a circle around me. I leaned into him and leant him my warmth. “They’re abyss wings. Dark Nephilim. They’re taking her into the Dark Realms.”
Time stopped.
The three of us stood in shocked silence. “Dark Nephilim,” I said at last. I stared at the two creatures, at the terrified girl. Something else bothered me. Something wasn’t right. “Ethan,” I said at last, a horrible suspicion blooming like acid in my stomach. “Look. Do you see that?” At the girl’s side, there was a very faint blur. The more I stared, the more convinced I became that it was a spectral shape. I sagged down into my chair.
He didn’t answer me. He didn’t have to. The acid in my stomach had been joined by an icy cold fear that traveled across my body in waves. His hands, warm and human and trembling, reached for mine.
“What?” I felt Logan’s solid warmth against my right side, fierce and reliable. He leaned closer to the picture. “What do you see?”
I turned and buried my face in Ethan’s cotton and juniper scent. I didn’t need to look again. “I think there’s something there, Logan. A shape of some kind, just sitting there, glued to her side. It’s easy to mistake it for camera blur, but I don’t think that’s what it is. I just can’t tell what, exactly.”
I heard Logan pacing, the solid wood floorboards a familiar bass thump behind me. “What the hell is happening, then?” he demanded, his voice threaded with that combination of fear and anger he used when anything threatened family. “What does it mean? Dark Nephilim kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl with some kind of blurry friend in the photo? Why?”
“Gifts are different,” Ethan said simply, still grimly fascinated by the newspaper. “What Caspia can do is pretty rare. Maybe this girl can do something else.”
“Like what?” I demanded, but Ethan was silent, studying the grainy photo.
“What else does it say?” Logan grabbed the paper and held it between whitened knuckles. “Mr. Bedford describes Caroline as a shy girl, more comfortable with animals than people: ‘...so gentle birds eat out of her hands. She’s never even been to school. She must be terrified.’ The sole survivor of a car accident that killed her mother, Caroline Bedford is multimillionaire Nathan Bedford’s only heir.” Logan’s finger’s had made holes in the newspaper where he clutched it.
Ethan cupped my face in his hands. He spoke gently but with unmistakable seriousness. “Someone has kidnapped at least one Nephilim descendent with gifted blood.” My knees went wobbly at his words, but his hands held me by the forearms, bracing my body just as his presence steadied my insides.
“But why?” I choked out. “Why take a twelve-year-old girl to the Dark Realms? What use could she possibly be?” The blue green eyes I loved so much had no answers, only sorrow. And fear.
“You can draw the future, Caspia. This girl’s father said she could charm wild birds to her hand. That was probably not an exaggeration. Nephilim descendents have different kinds of gifts. The gift of Caroline Bedford’s blood probably connects her to animals in some way. The shape at her side, if that’s what it is, could be anything. I won’t pretend to know everything about gifts.”
“Gifted blood,” my brother repeated slowly. The words hung in the air of our apartment, heavy with meaning. Gifted blood, like the ability to draw the future, or summon Light and Shadows. “But… why?” Logan’s hand rested against the small of my back as he repeated my earlier question. I hadn’t seen him move, but I was grateful for his presence, for both of them, surrounding me, supporting me. “I didn’t even think there were that many Nephilim descendants. None of this makes sense. How do we know it’s not just some random kidnapping
?”
I knew with sick, utter certainty that this was not just some random kidnapping. I fought the urge to run back into my room and hide there. “Asheroth,” I said, giving in to the urge to pace. “He’s been trying to warn me. He keeps saying things like a war is coming, or that terrible evil roams the streets. I wrote it off as more of his rantings.”
Ethan returned to the table and began clearing away the remains of breakfast. It was a real testament to how distracted we all were that we let him. “Those were not just random kidnappers in that picture, Logan. Birmingham is too close. We have to treat this as a warning. Caspia, we never caught the demon that tracked you last winter. Add kidnappings into the mix, and it’s not safe to go wandering by yourself.” He fixed me with one of his darkest glares before turning to Logan. “You too. You both go out in pairs.”
“But,” Logan started to protest.
“He’s right,” I interrupted, tempted to tell him about the changes I’d seen in my brother’s eyes. But there had been enough revelations for one morning. “Just because you haven’t erupted into Shadows yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen, or that you don’t have some other ability. And we don’t even know who’s being targeted, exactly. It could be anyone with Nephilim blood, gifted or not.”
“But that’s ridiculous. I can’t do anything. I never have been able to,” Logan protested. I could tell it upset him, the idea of having a chaperone everywhere he went. I fought down annoyance. So it was fine for me, but he got to play by different rules? That was so Logan.
“We don’t know what they’re after,” Ethan added evenly. Only then did I realize he had managed to clear most of the table without dropping a single thing. Of course, the plates and cups were all melamine, so it wouldn’t have mattered if he did. But it still made me happy to see his hand-eye coordination improving. I gave him my sunniest, most encouraging smile. “We should start checking the newspapers for any unusual disappearances. Let’s focus on the nearest big cities; I’ll take Nashville or Atlanta, whichever you don’t want, Cas, and Logan, if you…”
Too late, I saw it coming. Too late, I cried out for him to stop. I watched the glass coffee pot shatter, smashed against the wall as Ethan simultaneously misjudged the distance to the kitchen counter and lost his balance. Glass and hot coffee soaked into the wall, the floorboards, and Ethan, who stood perfectly still while the mess settled around him. He’d learned by now that the best way to react to broken glass was to freeze in place until the shattering was over, otherwise he risked making the situation worse by slicing himself up even more.
“Sorry,” he said at last in a tight, angry voice as the last shards of glass dropped to the wooden floor with a chiming sound.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, carefully navigating pools of coffee and razor-sharp glass. Logan followed silently with the broom. He began the familiar drill of cleaning up. My job was Ethan triage; only after that would I return to help with clean up.
“I don’t know.” His shoulders drooped. “What was that? Coffee pot number five?”
“Something like that,” I murmured. Actually, it was the seventh, but he didn’t need to know that. I shook glass out of his ruined t-shirt and bit my lip. “You’ve got some glass embedded in your arms, Ethan. I’m going to have to use tweezers.”
He watched the blood welling up around tiny shards of glass stuck in his skin. “Fine,” he said as I took his hand gently in my own and led him into the bathroom for what had become our all-too familiar ritual. “Caspia,” he said at last, after the de-glassing was nearly complete but before I’d doused him with peroxide.
“Mmm?” I smiled as softly as I could. He looked like a lost little boy, perched on the edge of the bathtub, surrounded by our brand new, ridiculously overstocked first aid kit.
“It gets better, doesn’t it?” My eyes drew close together, narrowing down his question. “Being human. It gets easier. It has to, right?”
I bit back the first answer: that I had been born this way, that I had never known anyone before him who had to learn, that it sure as hell hadn’t gotten easier for me. “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. I perched on the tub beside him. “I think that depends on the human.” I wrapped my pinky finger around his and bumped his shoulder. “Tell you a secret.” My lips brushed the shell of his ear. “I’m a better human since you came to me.”
I couldn’t improve his balance or hand-eye coordination, but at least I could still make him smile.
Chapter Four:
Shadow Lessons
I stood on the edge of the leaf-covered path, watching as the Navau River snagged part of a scorched tree limb from its swollen banks and swept it up into its racing tide. So far, I’d watched three fairly large scorched tree limbs travel down the Navau. They all came from the same maimed tree. The damage was my fault. All part of my training, Ethan tried to reassure me.
Several successive days of relentless cold gray rain had pushed Whitfield’s second largest river almost to flood levels. As a result, the Navau’s normally peaceful, meandering green-tinged waters now raced by choked up with all kinds of debris. I could see trash, branches, bottles, and the occasional swollen dead fish.
“Caspia.”
I shifted my weight backwards when he spoke my name, feeling my boots sink slightly into the damp pines needles and decomposing leaves. I couldn’t help myself, even though I tried to ignore him. Sometimes my body still reacted as if he was a full-blooded Nephilim, straining towards him as if the angelic blood that once bonded us had not been erased forever.
“Caspia,” he repeated, closer this time. “We should try again.” Right against me, his breath warm and damp across my left cheek, I knew I could lean all the way back and rest comfortably against him. He would catch me. He always did.
“It’s so ugly after the early spring rains. The river, I mean.” I wanted to feel his breath across my cheek again. It had not been that long ago when Ethan did not breathe at all. “It’s flat gray. Like my eyes, before you came to me.”
Ethan’s hands clamped down on my shoulders and spun me to face him. My world narrowed to an annoyed teacher-boyfriend with a mouth twisted in amusement or impatience or both. “I did come to you. More than once. And your eyes are far from flat gray now.” He tucked my hair, loose and damp with sweat at the temples, behind my ears. “They’re molten silver. They get brighter the more we practice.”
With a groan, I collapsed against his shoulder. “I can’t keep this up much longer. I’m going to run out of Shadows, I swear.” Truthfully, I just didn’t want to practice anymore. I was tired and aching and I didn’t feel any closer to learning control. All we’d proven after hours of trying was that the Dark Realm energy that made up the Shadows responded to me very quickly, and I didn’t like it. How could I summon Shadows so easily unless there was something dark and terrible about me?
Ethan’s laugh was very deep. I felt, rather than heard it, as he hugged me with one arm. “Impossible. You can’t run out of Shadows. There’s a limitless supply.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” I muttered. Either he didn’t hear me, or he ignored my rebellious mumblings.
“We’re working on your ability to control them. We have to perfect your skill, Caspia, so you can fight off any demon kidnappers who come for you. Now, come on.” He held me by the forearm like a truculent child and marched me down the path, deeper into the bare pine forest.
“Remind me again why we’re doing this,” I hissed through gritted teeth as I unbuttoned my black leather jacket and positioned myself in a rare patch of sunlight. The air was still chilly, but working with Ethan was hard, sweaty labor. He was merciless. I was a pathetic pupil but he wouldn’t let me stop, determined to train me until I could fight Dark Nephilim kidnappers with one arm tied behind my back.
“Besides learning to protect yourself, you’re the best defense we’ve got.” He paced backwards until he stood about six feet away, facing me.
“Asheroth says it’s forbidd
en, for humans to do this kind of thing. It’s dangerous and will attract the wrong kind of attention.” It was risky to play the Asheroth card, but I hated feeling the Shadows slither across my skin. The sensation was never exactly the same twice, but it was always some kind of mixture of the mental and the physical. In the session before I’d taken a break to stare at the river, handling them had given me that creepy feeling I got when I felt like I was being watched but no one was really there. Combined with the physical sensation of cold wet snakes crawling over my arms, no wonder I didn’t want to continue with our practice session.
Ethan bristled, as he always did when I brought up the name of the Nephilim who’d abducted me and attacked him. “It’s more dangerous to leave you unable to defend yourself, with only Asheroth to call on if you get in trouble. We have enemies, remember? Not just you, but your brother, as well.”
“But we’ve been doing it for hours,” I whined. “It’s already late afternoon!”
“Only a little more,” he coaxed, and I sighed.
My head hurt and my eyes were beginning to burn, but in his way, Ethan was as stubborn as I was. It was easier to get it over with. My fingers twitched, exactly as they did when I wanted to draw something. I flexed my hands and tried to concentrate. I didn’t have to look to see what was happening. Faint Shadows, like the lightest charcoal shading, would be wreathing my fingers. That’s how it started.
“Good,” I heard Ethan say. His voice was strong and steady. He hadn’t panicked or gotten angry with me once, even when I partially destroyed the one hundred year old oak tree with a particularly strong and uncontrolled line of Shadow. Ethan just held me and let me sob in terror. After he’d gotten me far away from the unstable tree.
Then he made me start again. He wouldn’t let me quit, he said, until I’d realized it was just an accident. One hell of an accident, I thought grimly. I bet the tree didn’t think so. I’d blasted pieces of that poor oak tree all over the park. Sure, the swollen Navau had taken care of some of it. But only a small bomb could cause the kind of damage I’d done to that tree. How was I going to cover that up, let alone deal with something that destructive living inside me?
