Defiant Destiny

by Madison Cumbee

  Zev smiled, Uriel stiffened ever so slightly, and the others gave no visible response. I squeezed Uriel’s fingers, and he made himself relax for me. “Do I have to be sworn to secrecy or something?”

  This time Dagan smiled. “That’d be cool.” He turned to Azra. “Can we do that? We could have some kind of ceremony with candles and robes and monks chanting on a CD in the background and Uriel could probably lend us one of his leather-bound big books that Keira could put her hand on while you told her to repeat some kind of old-sounding oath that claims she’ll never tell a living soul about us or else she’ll, I don’t know, stick a needle in her eye or some other weird saying used these days!”

  Since I couldn’t stop myself, I started laughing at Dagan’s self-compelled excitement, and the others began laughing as well. It was good to laugh; it set the comfortable mood that had been lacking before. The guild- as Uriel called them- had nothing to be worried about. I was one hundred percent on their side and would never betray their trust. I think Azra realized this because he told Dagan that no, a special oath was not necessary. Dagan was only disappointed for a few short seconds, and then he got over it. I’ve gotta give it to him- there isn’t much that can keep that boy down.

  After crushing Dagan’s bizarre hope, Azra focused his attention on me. “I would imagine you have some questions to ask…”

  I took the opening. “I do.” Like ripping off a band-aid. “Here’s an important one: Was that creep, Amir, telling the truth when he said all those things?”

  “Other than the tasteless insults and the inference that you are some sort of entertainment, yes, he spoke the truth. Odeda, Uriel, Zev, Dagan, and I had human mothers and otherworldly fathers. We are Nephilim.”

  “And Elly?”

  Azra’s miserable expression made his up-coming answer apparent. “Your friend is a Nephilim as well.” He paused to consider. And then went on to explain what it meant to be a Nephilim of the Light, that the guild was a part of the Light which meant they worked for the good of all, and what his family’s missions were and how they usually worked. Throughout his explanations, I sat transfixed on all the information I was trying to absorb. “It was our mission in coming to High Point to watch over your friend, Elly, and to keep her from falling into the Watchers’ hands.”

  “Watchers?” I asked hoarsely. I had thought I was prepared for all this, but I was finding it more difficult to accept than I had expected.

  Uriel shifted like he was about to get up, but when Zev walked out of the room, Uriel settled back and draped his arm around me, supportively. Azra answered me- he was the one who did all the talking, the others hadn’t said a word- “The Watchers are our opposition. They are beings of chaos and destruction.”

  “So… They’re demons?” I needed some kind of definite, familiar term. Zev came back into the room and handed me a glass of water. “Thanks.” I gave him, and Uriel, a small smile, and Zev returned to his standing position near Dagan.

  Azra waited for me to take a sip of the ice-cold water before he answered me. “Some Watchers, like Amir, are what you could call demons. They’re actually powerful beings from a world that existed before this one, like he said. The exact history is very mysterious; I don’t know everything about it. But the majority of Watchers are Nephilim, our kind, who chose to indulge in evil.”

  “So Elly’s real father was a demon Watcher and now she’s one of them? She’s a Nephilim Watcher?” I suppressed the tears that threatened to come. Uriel understood somehow and began running his thumb back and forth across my shoulder.

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t generalize her like that just yet. Keira, you must have hope that your friend will find the strength to turn against Amir.”

  All of this talk about Elly made me think back to a week before, when I had gone over to her house to try and talk about everything with her. I thought she was probably in the same boat as me, so maybe together we could figure out some stuff. When I rang the doorbell, I was prepared for Mrs. Johnson to tell me that Elly didn’t feel well or make up some other excuse why her car was home but she didn’t want to see me. I expected Elly to be angry with me. I don’t know why, but people seem to turn to anger when they don’t know what else they’re suppose to feel. I knew I could have easily been angry with the world at that time. But when Mrs. Johnson came to the door, I saw she had been crying, she looked even thinner than usual, and her straight brown hair was uncharacteristically messy. When she saw who it was at her door, Elly’s mom’s blood-shot blue eyes became hopeful. “Keira!” She had grabbed for me and began clinging to me as if her life depended upon it. “Tell me you know where she is and that she’s alright!” Mrs. Johnson started sobbing into my hair. “Tell me you know! Please!” She held me at arm’s length, looking at me with those wide, anticipating brown eyes that she had passed on to her daughter.

  “I thought she’d be here,” I informed her pitifully.

  Mr. Johnson came up behind his wife and cradled her while she shook with fresh sobs. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days either. Mr. Johnson then told me that Elly had been acting strangely, distant for a month or so, and that a week before, she had gone out and had never come home.

  I couldn’t shake the image of Elly’s two wonderful parents heartbroken, and I knew what they feared most—another suicide attempt. I didn’t want to think of that. “We have to get her back,” I said aloud.

  “We will,” Uriel reassured me.

  “What if something’s happened to her?”

  “Amir would not physically harm her. He will try to use her to further his quest for power,” Azra replied adamantly. “In spite of his scorn for our kind, Amir likes to surround himself with Nephilim who are devoted to him. Though, if they’re truly devoted can be debated. He has tried several times throughout history to create an army that would do his bidding. We and those like-minded have always stopped him, and we will do so again. I promise you, Keira.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had nothing to say.

  Dagan started fidgeting under the dismal mood that was slowly filling the room, but it was Odeda who spoke first. “Is anyone hungry?” She bounced up from her chair, waiting for someone to offer something she could make us instead of sitting still any longer.

  “Always the busy-body,” Uriel spoke under his breath. I barely caught what he said. Thankfully, it made me smile. And then I knew that Uriel was who I depended on; he was who I looked to whenever anything in my life, no matter how small, got me down. I had thought it was mainly his adventurous side and complete separation from life in High Point for the last decade that initially appealed to me, but it wasn’t that way now. Uriel was my other half, my better half, no matter what he said or thought.

  His family wasn’t half bad either. “I heard that,” Odeda scowled at him.

  “How?” I asked.

  “What?” she looked at me, surprised by my question.

  “How’d you hear what he said from where you are? I’m sitting right beside him, and I barely heard it.”

  “I’m only half human,” she said naturally.

  This piqued my interest. I turned my head to look at Uriel. “How good is your hearing? I’ve wondered why you sometimes react to the things I talk to Meredith about in Spanish class.”

  “You noticed that, did you?”

  “At first, only out of the corner of my eye. But after it happened several times, I began watching you all the time while I spoke to Meredith. She thought I was crazy, but I knew you could hear us!”

  “I honestly tried not to eavesdrop, but it’s very difficult sometimes,” he admitted, slightly chagrined.

  “So exactly how good is your hearing?” I inquired again. “If I ran across the street and into another house and dropped a pen, could you tell me which room I was in?”

  “No, Dr. Seuss,” he laughed. “Nephilim don’t have that good of hearing.”

  I abandoned my hope for quick, clear answers from Uriel and instead looked to Azra. “What does being a N
ephilim entail?”

  True to his form, Azra gave me a straight answer. “Our human half is dominant. We are mostly just like you but every sense is heightened. We can see more clearly, hear more distinctly, smell things more strongly,-”

  “That one’s not always that great,” Dagan put in.

  “- taste more palatably, and feel with more delicacy. We are also stronger and possess more endurance,” Azra finished.

  “So that explains the hug.” I smiled at Odeda who gave an innocent shrug and a contradictingly apologizing look in response.

  “Actually, Odeda has more strength than the rest of us,” Uriel said.

  “You go girl,” I congratulated the smallest and prettiest of the bunch.

  Odeda gave a deep bow before sitting back down, apparently believing that her previously proposed food was not needed presently.

  “Extraordinary strength is Odeda’s personal gift.” I gazed up at Uriel with a question plainly written across my face. He had to be tired of this expression, having no doubt seen it often enough, but he didn’t seem to be irritated with my constant inquiries. “It’s another part of being half angel or demon or alien or whatever you want to call us.”

  “Angel. Definitely angels.”

  “One of our kinder names,” Zev said.

  “What’s your gift?” I asked him.

  “I can understand animals; speak their language, in a way.”

  “Like Aqualad?”

  Odeda and Dagan giggled. I hadn’t meant it as a joke.

  “We aren’t cartoon characters. And I can understand any animal, not just fish,” Zev declared, seeming perturbed by my comparison.

  “Sorry.”

  Zev threw a silencing look at Dagan and Odeda.

  “Dagan commands earth,” Uriel told me next.

  “Really?” I looked at Dagan with new appreciation. “May I have a demonstration? I already know Odeda’s crazy strong and Zev’s always struck me as animal friendly…”

  “You don’t believe I can control earth,” Dagan stated with wide, incredulous eyes.

  “It’s just… hard to… I mean, I’ve never…” I sought out the reason I was being shaken into pausing at random times while I tried to explain myself. There was another vibration, and I realized Uriel was spasmodically convulsing in an attempt to not laugh. His torso would jerk forward, moving me with it.

  I hadn’t noticed we were so close. It was strange, but great, that we could be so comfortable touching like that when I’d been used to restraining myself around him. I focused back on Dagan. “What I mean to say is that I would… love to see… if you don’t mind… Would you just let it out already!?”

  Uriel snorted once and then let loose. Zev, Odeda, and even Azra joined him. After he could breathe again- barely long enough to speak- Uriel half-heartedly apologized and explained that the guild had always found the fact that Dagan had that power amusing.

  In response, a pot with a single, beautiful plant growing in it, which was sitting in the windowsill, broke quietly and four equally proportioned clumps of the fertilizer it had contained floated through the room to hover above the laughing persons. My mouth lopped open. No one seemed to notice the flying dirt because of their mirth, but they quickly became aware of it when each section fell onto its appointed jokester’s head.

  “Dagan!” Odeda roared.

  It was his turn to laugh.

  I was satisfied with this small show of power, which to me, at the time, did not seem so small. When the room was quiet again and Uriel had shaken the dirt from his hair onto the floor carefully so none of it was slung on the couch or me, he settled back in and pointed at Azra saying, “The leader of our guild has a fitting gift.”

  “Leader,” I echoed, understanding that all the signs were there for me to have figured that information out on my own.

  “I have a larger than normal brain capacity,” Azra modestly granted.

  Uriel corrected him, “Azra is brilliant. Einstein couldn’t hold a candle to him. Azra in a chess match against a world-renowned champion of the game would look like a tic-tac-toe competition between a mortal toddler and me, doodled on a napkin. But his knowledge goes beyond books and strategy; he’s pure, and he sees the clear truth in situations.”

  “I always guessed as much.”

  Azra looked surprised. “Really?”

  “Sure.” I shrugged. “From the first time I met you, it was obvious that you were unusually wise and intuitive.”

  “Then I am not doing a very good job at keeping up my cover.”

  “Azra, I don’t think you can do anything about your omnipotent eyes.”

  “You noticed it too?” Uriel asked me suddenly. “He has all-knowing eyes. I thought I was the only one he had that affect on.”

  “No, he sees everything,” I confirmed. “I knew that by the third day of school.”

  Uriel smiled at me. He was genuinely pleased to find out he wasn’t the only one under Azra’s spell. I grinned, liking that I could help him in any way.

  Azra rolled those intelligent hazel eyes of his and pointed out, “Uriel, you’re the only one left whose gift Keira doesn’t know. It’s your turn to tell her.”

  “Tell her?” Uriel asked. “I was planning on simply showing her.”

  Finally, I thought. I watched intently as Uriel reached his left hand, the one not around my shoulders, behind a pillow that was on the coach beside him. He pulled out a white rose and handed it to me.

  I took it and stared at it, waiting for something spectacular, but nothing else happened. “It’s… beautiful,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment.

  “Pick another color. Or another flower. Or anything,” he smiled at me.

  “Pick a color?” He nodded. “Blue?”

  Still grinning like a fool, Uriel reached back behind the pillow and pulled out a breath-taking blue rose and presented it to me. I gasped with comprehension, and Uriel’s smile grew wider. “You did this on our first date,” I voiced dazedly. All of that food and the daiquiris- I started piecing together the signs. Different events made more sense now. But quickly I regained my bearings and pretended to be disappointed. I sighed. “I thought you had guessed what I’d want because we thought similarly. Maybe we don’t have that much in common after all. I’ve been entirely basing this relationship on that first date.”

  Uriel’s face fell, but I saw Azra’s rise. It only took a second for Uriel to catch on. “Does that mean you don’t want the flowers then?”

  “No. It means I want to know more about your magician’s performance.”

  “Are you implying that my gift is a parlor act?” He feigned offense.

  “No, of course not. How clumsy of me- I never meant to imply anything like that.” The rest of the family seemed to be enjoying the show as I looked around at them all. When my gaze came back to Uriel, I finished my thought. “I meant to come right out and say that it’s a very impressive Halloween trick.”

  Uriel held out an empty hand in the air in front of us, and- I swear I didn’t blink- the next second, there was a miniature jack-o-lantern resting in his palm. I involuntarily jumped a fraction, an action that brought about sniggers from everyone else. “Trick or treat, my love.” Uriel gave me a quick peck on my cheek.

  “How’d you do that?”

  Uriel concentrated on the pumpkin and it disappeared as quickly as it had come. Then he turned back to me. “It’s my power, my gift.”

  “So you can make anything appear out of thin air?”

  He shook his head. “I have to have touched the thing before or at least something exactly like it; my hand has to have known its texture. Also, I have to know where to summon it from, someplace I’ve seen it before. And I can’t summon anything unreasonably large- no buildings, no cars, no people. In fact, I can’t summon anything that’s alive- no animals, no matter their size- it has something to do with the blood and breathing. And then I can also return the object to whatever I summoned it from.”

  “
Why do all of you have different gifts if you’re all Nephilim?”

  “We had different fathers. The way that each human family has a different set of physical characteristic in common or similar aptitudes is the same reason each branch of Nephilim has a different gift- genetics.”

  “So when Zev said he and Dagan were your cousins…?”

  “We’re all the same species but none of our guild is directly related to one another. Dagan and I are the closest to being family. Earlier, I told you that my father was one of the most powerful and immoral of the pure-blood Watchers. Dagan’s descended from one of them as well. It’s why our powers are more active than Zev, Azra, and Odeda’s.”

  I could tell Uriel was uncomfortable talking about his past. How could he be so hard on himself for something that he didn’t do, that wasn’t his fault? Nobody picks their parents. I decided to switch the subject slightly. “Do you use these gifts on your missions?”

  “Yes. It’s usually only in small ways, but every so often we do have to battle, so our gifts come in handy there.”

  “Battle?” I heard the fear in my own voice. “Was that what the whole we outnumber you thing was about in the parking lot with Amir?”

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about.” Uriel tried to sooth me.

  “Not worry about all of you going off to fight that creep?”

  “We haven’t been told that it is time for a battle yet,” Azra put in.

  Bloody hell, I needed pen and paper to write down all the things I was learning about. “Told?” I asked. “You’re told when to get into fights?”

  “A part of being the leader of our family is that I receive our orders from the Hierarchy.” Azra continued on, knowing that I would have more questions about this. “The Hierarchy is a group of beings who are the opposite of Amir and his kind. When the Original Watchers traveled to this earth, others from where they had come saw how the Watchers affected this world for the worse- they created discord, started wars, instilled in humans a taste for evil- the others came to attempt to undo some of the damage. They helped, but when the Watchers began having children and adding from those offspring to their numbers, the others decided that a more permanent plan had to be thought of. The Hierarchy was created, and it has been fighting against the Watchers ever since.”