"Or anyone associated with them, as I'm sure you've experienced too."
The memory of the apothecary couple surfaced, and I nodded. "More than I'd care to know."
"Good, that means we're on the same page." Clasping his hand together on his lap, he leaned closer to me. "Now that I've finally found you, we can finally work on finding your Watcher."
Finishing the last bit of tea, I carefully set the cup onto the tray before rising up from my chair. "And that's where you're wrong. There is no Watcher for me in this world. Now, I have a brother to go home and protect while I still can, excuse me."
I walked past an open-mouthed Serena, who looked from me to Ari in shock. Descending up the steps, I ignored the terse whispers coming from the living room, urging Ari to follow me.
My hand had just begun to swing the bedroom door shut when something blocked it. I stared down to see a broken-in cowboy boot wedged between the door and its frame.
"Essallie, hear me out," Ari pleaded softly.
"There's nothing to hear out," I said, releasing the door and crossing the room to stop alongside the bed. "I'm thankful Serena brought you to me, really I am, but you're wasting your time."
"Are you so sure of that?"
"Yes, I am."
"Then why did you come here?" Ari came closer. "Why return to a place that labels you an outcast?"
"I... I don't know." My fingertips brushed over the crumbled sheets. I couldn't look him in the eyes, for the truth was even I didn't know exactly why I'd come here. "Serena just seemed like the only person who could help me at the time."
"From what?"
"From everything! Anywhere I turn I'm joined at the hip with demons trying to kill me. Demons killing my family and leaving me to pick up the bloody mess. So pardon me, but I need to get home to the last family member that means something to me, before another creature tries to leave me a corpse in place of someone I love."
"Is he really your brother?"
I paused. "Oh yes, thank you for reminding me of my Mother's discrepancy. Brother or half-brother, it doesn't matter. He's all I have left."
Something in my desperate stare must have triggered a thought in Ari's mind. "So your Watcher means nothing to you?"
"I already told you, I don't have one," I snapped.
His eyebrows bunched in confusion. "Then you've already ascended?"
I shook my head, and Ari looked even more confused than before. My chest rose and fell in a long, desperately needed sigh, my body collapsing in a crumbled heap onto the bed. "He died before we could bond. A demon killed him."
A flicker of emotions crossed his face, finally settling for a mix between pain and sympathy. Crossing the room, he settled alongside me. "I'm sorry."
"So am I." I chewed on my upper lip, anything to stop the burning sensation of tears collecting in my eyes. "He was the one who showed me this place, this world, not once with an ulterior motive at hand. He was a gentleman, and will forever be missed."
"If he's as good as you say he is, then I'm betting he died doing the noble thing." Ari reached forward to take my hand, using his free one to swipe just under my eyes. "He wouldn't want you to cry."
I hiccuped and stared at Ari, numbly nodding my head. He had a point; if Leo saw me like this, blubbering every time he was mentioned, I had no doubt he would have teased me. But it was so much more than Leo now- my grandparents, Kayden, Abigail, Jayson- so many people had been dragged under my wings, and I was supposed to protect and appease them when I could barely protect myself.
"There was an instant connection between us, like two magnets clicking together. I had never felt such a thing. I'm certain he was my Watcher."
"Wait," Ari started, his face turning into a puzzling mask of confusion yet again. "You aren't certain he was yours?"
"Not officially, no-" I said warily.
He pulled back from me, eyebrows as high as his hair line. "Essallie, are you telling me you've been throwing your life away on an assumption that this one person, out of eight billion, was the magical one for you? Did you not consult the scriptures?"
His question was sharp, like a smack to the bare skin during a blizzard in the North Pole. "I'm almost positive he was mine! No one else connected with me on such an immediate level."
"So what? If I connect with a puppy in the pound, does that mean I have to take it home, even if I'm certain to be allergic?" Ari rolled his eyes to the heavens, muttering in a language I didn't understand. His glowering eyes came back to rest on me. "There are ways to make sure you have the right person, Essallie. A list is complied and updated any time a new child of Nephilim comes into birth."
"It doesn't matter!" I stood up, throwing my hand skyward. "You're missing the point. I have the last important part of my family back home, no doubt going mad from the cryptic way I ended things yesterday because I thought I was going to die. The game has changed, and Jayson needs me. I can't imagine him defending himself against a bloodthirsty demon following my scent, much like I couldn't imagine my grandparents doing so before they died."
"You should listen to yourself," Ari scolded me, and I couldn't contain my shock. "You're surrendering your life on the basis of a circumstantial feeling! Even if this person was your Watcher and he is dead-"
"He's most definitely dead."
"-you can't just give up and quit life. That's not how living works, sorry to piss on your pity party. When a cancer patient gets a diagnosis, they don't simply just stop living life. They fight, Essallie, fight like hell against every mutant cell in their body. From the moment I met you I knew you were a fighter, now I'm not so sure someone so weak and pitiful could have ever been a fighter."
"You," I jabbed a finger at his face, vivid. "You know nothing about me. You don't know the level of pain and misery I have had to endure my entire life! You weren't there the nights my Mother would chase me throughout the house, trying to kill me because she knew I was a poison that had infiltrated her home." Fire sparked, engulfing my knuckles in a bright display of blue hues. "You weren't there the day I watched my first love try to sell me to a demon for eternal youth. You weren't there, slipping and sliding in the puddles of blood, finding my my two lifelong guardians gutted like wild game for dinner. So take your assumptions of me not being able to fight and shove it right up your ass!"
I waited for him to jump back at me, to rebut my snarky defense and belittle me further. Instead, he gave a small and soft clap, his eyes a smoldering aquamarine. "Now that," he said. "Is the Essallie I met. About time, too. I was beginning to lose hope."
My jaw dropped. I had walked right into his trap and bit the bait; he had been antagonizing me, waiting for the fury to ignite from within. As much as I wanted to be infuriated with him, I had to give him a hand in his undermining behavior.
Extinguishing the flames from my hands, I crossed them over my chest, feet still firmly planted on the floor. "This changes nothing. I'm still going home to my brother."
"Do you think he's in immediate danger?"
"Yes."
"And do you think he'd be okay with you coming home to protect him, if he knew you would be sacrificing your life in the process?"
I hesitated. "Yes."
"Essallie."
"Okay, okay," I bitterly replied, narrowing my eyes. "No, he wouldn't."
"Good," he nodded. "We're clear of one lie, now let's clear the other. Is he in immediate danger?"
I started to say yes again, only to stop. In our last phone conversation, I had instructed him to go straight to Abigail and to stay near her. No explanation why, just to do it. And deep down I knew, even though he was a stubborn boy, he would have listened and gone to her. Abigail would have instantly understood why, and probably would have told Kayden too. Despite Abigail's lack of sensibility, I knew she'd have Jayson's best interest at heart and protect him until I would return.
Sighing, I said, "No."
A triumphant smile spread over Ari's lips. "Excellent. Then I'm sure he won't mind you go
ne for a few days while we find out about your Watcher." He rose off the bed, coming to stand directly in front of me, both hands gently placed on my shoulders. "And if this person really was yours, then we'll figure things out from there."
Against the burning urge to sneer at him, I gave a small smile and relaxed the tension in my shoulders. A glimmer of hope, like a diamond among the rough, seemed to peek out from under the surface of my daunting nightmare for a life. Maybe there was a chance that, against all odds, something good could come from my odd and undesired existence.
And if not, I could always watch them all burn.
CHAPTER SIX
BEAT IN YOUR HEART
"This looks absolutely ridiculous."
I was standing in the middle of the sunken living room, arms crossed in resistance over my chest. Long, spinning twists of navy fabric covered every inch of my body in an elegant high-collared robe. It instantly reminded me of something a witch or sorceress would wear while hovering over a book of incantations, weaving a spell of eternal love between herself and a ravishing stable boy.
Serena glared at me under her beautiful black lashes. She had been crouched low, doing her best to hem the robe without butchering it.
I turned my head to look at the clock on the mantle. Ari had taken off for a little, promising to be back within the hour, and it had already been over an hour and a half. Where in the hell could he be?
I started to shift my weight when I felt a sharp tap sting my leg. "Do you ever stand still?" Serena grumbled under her breath.
"Hey, I'm not the one that decided new clothes were in order," I coolly remarked, making faces at her. "My shirt and pants were perfectly fine."
"Of course they were," Serena packed as much sarcasm as she could into the four little words. "If you want everyone in Charon to know who you are. At least while you wear this you'll have a little coverage. Smell less like death, too."
"I did not smell like death."
"Oh, you certainly did." She pulled out a pair of scissors from the small sewing box alongside her. "And at least that scar of yours is covered up, too."
Blowing out the air from my cheeks, I muttered an offensive word under my breath. Serena began to cut into the fabric using a part of household scissors, carefully snipping so the remaining half of the dress brushed the tips of my toes.
"Serena?"
"Hrmm?"
"Why do the buildings get darker the further you leave the main road in Charon?"
The sound of cutting fabric came to a stop, and I looked down to see her free hand comb through the mess of caramel curls on her head. She seemed to consider my question for a minute, mulling over the answer edging on her tongue.
"Centuries upon millennia ago, when Charon was first formed, it was like a crystal paradise," Serena began, her eyes glazing over to a faraway stare. Her fingers inched down to her cheek, absentmindedly tracing the edges of her blue mark. "The first Queen, the True Queen as we call her, made it into a place of love, of endless possibilities. She was one of the first Nephilim to have been created.
"For countless lifetimes, she reigned with a pure heart and angelic soul. She married another Nephilim, and together they created two daughters, Harmony and Ebony. Harmony had tragically passed in an accident, leaving Ebony the sole heir to the throne. When her mother eventually passed, legend has it she made Ebony promise to keep their bloodline true, and marry another Nephilim. It would never happen."
It was as if Serena had painted a picture for us both to step into; I imagined an even more beautiful, crystal version of Charon, suspended in a state of perfection for centuries. Lead by a gentle, but powerful woman who did everything in her power to embrace the sacred blood in her veins.
Serena went on, her words continuing the visual in my head. "What Ebony had never shared with her mother is that she rejected her bloodline, and all the purity that came with it. As her name is dark, she aimed to be slathered in ink, and in her ultimate defiance on her mother's dying wish, married a demon and gave birth to his child. A corruption, a half-breed torn between two worlds at ultimate extremes."
"But would that child not be of three? Human, angel, and demon?"
She nodded. "Indeed, the child was, and for centuries after, the line continued, fathered by demons, all children born male. Until Lucretia. She is the last of the legacy, and unable to have children."
I felt like my head was crunching in on itself. Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I tried to wrap my mind around the problem Serena was trying to spell out in front of me. "So Nephilim can have children, and demon can have children too, but mix them together and they can't?"
"In a sense, yes. A hybrid of Nephilim and demon who is male can have children, but a female cannot."
The light bulb went off in my head. "And Lucretia is a female, and a mix of both."
Serena's faint smile told me I was on the same page. "Exactly. At first, no one knew, and who could have expected it when all the males could produce children?"
Of course no one would know. Never once had there been a question that a Nephilim-demon mix could father a child, and the last female had been Ebony, who had only been Nephilim. I wondered if there was a type of genetic incompatibility between the two when bound together in a female.
My mind circled back to the original question at hand. "But how does the history of the throne have to do with the buildings being grey?"
"I wasn't finished," she flicked my kneecap, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "When Queen Lucretia took her place on the throne, we knew things would be different in Charon. Over time, our kingdom had tarnished and dulled, ruined by the negative energy. Lucretia had decided to instate a new plot for the land, and had all the buildings redone in white marble. However, the residue from the demonic presence and negative energy within Charon has stained the town. Only the center strip had been unaffected, no doubt by some work of magic the True Queen had implemented all those years ago."
Was that why Nephilim were so heavily disliked in Charon? Because we were the beginning of a long, dark existence in the murky undertow? I couldn't help but feel sad for the people who chose to think such things; being of one species, mixed or not, didn't make you a monster. It's the actions and decisions people make that turn them into monsters, not their blood.
Serena had just finished snipping off the last end of fabric when the sound of the door opening and closing reached our ears. Ari bounded into the room, a small black box tucked under an arm. I noticed he had changed out of the clothes he'd been wearing earlier, having traded in the all-black get up for a casual white t-shirt, worn in jeans, and the dark brown leather jacket I had first seen him in. A small golden chain peeked from the collar of his t-shirt.
He reached up to scratch his head before giving me a small smile and concealed wink. "Sorry, took a little longer than I thought." Leaning at an angle to see around the billowing waves of fabric, he spotted Serena. "Are you done playing with your pretty life-size doll?"
She stood up and pouted, staring at me through half-lidded eyes. "I just wish she had hair to work with. You can't really do anything with what she's got going on."
I reached up to touch the ends of my short cut, frowning. "Hey, I like my hair, thank you very much."
"Obviously, you didn't like it enough," she half-mocked, sticking her tongue out at me.
"Oh hush before I give you a matching crop," I pretended to threaten her. With wide eyes, she instantly rose her hands to grab at the mass of hair framing her petite face. I turned my attention to the black box Ari still held under his arm. "What's in the box?"
Wiggling his eyebrows, he challenged me. "Do you really want to know what's in a small, compact, black box?"
I ran through a quick list in my head, then nodded. "Worst case scenario, it's a sex toy or dead shrunken heads." My face scrunched up in disgust. "Or fish. On second thought, let it be dead shrunken heads."
He blinked at me in complete disbelief. "Wow. How often does your mind circle the g
utter?"
"Circle the gutter?" I let out a loud laugh. "Hate to shatter your perfect image, but I don't circle the gutter. I do, however, live in the sewer of dirty minds, and the smell never leaves you no matter how far you climb out of it."
Mouth opening to speak, he took a step forward, then backtracked and shook his head. "I can already see you pulling jokes in a desperate situation just to liven the mood. Great."
Serena stepped forward, snatching the box from the crook of Ari's arm. "You two bicker and banter like a married pair, good heavens. And all over a..." She lifted the lid of the box and looked down, trailing off. Her eyes flickered up to Ari's. "How did you manage to get these?"
Taking the box back from her hands, he offered a graceful shrug of the shoulders. "Just a little twisting of the arm, nothing more. I had Lilix call in a few favors." Reaching into the box, he pulled out a matching pair of dark green teardrop earrings, each one individually wire wrapped like my glass heart pendant.
"Assuming I have to wear them," I said, reaching out for the pair. "What do they do?"
"They're a cloaking device, well, sort of." Ari frowned, pulling his eyebrows together as his face looked pinched. "Think part cloaking device, part decoy item. They don't really cover you like an invisibility cloak, but they distract everyone who looks at you into thinking you're either someone else or not really there at all."
Carefully taking one of the earrings, I examined it curiously in my outstretched palm. The same swirl sat at the clasp of the earring, matching perfectly to my pendant. As if in reply, the small heart on my chest began to glow, small waves of heat radiating off of it.
I heard Ari gasp, and looked up. He had a wicked, triumphant smile on his face as he watched me, as if he had just found his own diamond in the rough. Against the glow he looked like a true angel, from the rich and even tone of his unblemished skin to the brilliance glimmering in his eyes.
"Even better," he said when the glowing had finally stopped. "Both objects have been gifted by the same angel. Now I know you'll be alright." Handing me the second earring, I put on both. "Only the best Vens in all of Charon could spot you, and I highly doubt the Queen is out to kill you, otherwise you'd have been dead by now for sure."
Obumbrate (The Illumine Series) Page 8
