“Deliciousness!” Grandpa yelled to us from the kitchen. “Fresh maple syrup, cinnamon, and—”
“We get it!” I cupped my hands over my mouth and sat up so I could face Ria. “Even if Nate does try to get in the Marines, he’s a short red head with too many freckles and only a modicum of muscle.”
“There you go being a journalism major again.” Ria scowled.
I rolled my eyes even as a spark of eager anticipation flared. Journalism. The writing was fun, but it was really the prospect of being able to travel that was appealing. I’d be able to see all the things I’d read about. I’d be able to meet and talk with people—quite the opposite of how Grandpa had raised me.
I shook my head. “All I’m saying is, no offense, but Nate’s a weakling. What platoon would want those scrawny calves of his? I mean, come on—they’re barely bigger than mine.”
Ria’s eyes lit up excitedly. “I’m almost at the point of convincing him to shave them. He’d look damn sexy in a kilt or something.” She arched an eyebrow with a hint of lust.
I turned away as my eyes bulged. Awkward.
We walked down the hallway and came into the kitchen. The rickety table in the center was set for four with mismatched plates, forks, and glasses. A two-foot-high mound of the most aromatic cinnamon French toast this side of Paris towered over a pile of bacon.
Not that French toast actually originated in France—Grandpa and I debated that when I was twelve—I won.
Ria and I collapsed into our chairs and stuck out our noses to inhale the steam coming off the bread. Grandpa was about to call again when Nate came through the back door and sat down.
“Secure?”
“Affirmative.” Nate nodded.
I rolled my eyes. The five padlocks on the workshop’s door were a bit overkill in my opinion, especially since all we stored in there were extra books and enough spare food to last a nuclear winter—not exactly enticing to most thieves.
“Good.” Grandpa smiled his usual, bright-eyed grin a little longer than usual.
“Yay, let’s—” Ria stabbed her fork forward, about to shank an unsuspecting piece of bread when Grandpa parried it with the metallic clink of a butter knife. A mischievous look crossed Ria’s eyes fleetingly. She had been known to duel, but hunger won out. She knew she’d never eat without appeasing Grandpa’s sense of propriety to the bearded man in the sky.
She held out her hands, palms up. Grandpa took her hand, and then mine. I bowed my head half-heartedly.
“Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this meal. Please forgive us our sins and help us to forgive others for any injuries made or secrets kept in the name of love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
“Amen, Amen!” Ria declared like a soulful Southern Baptist, stabbing a stack of French toast up to the hilt and lifting it onto her plate.
“Ominous prayer,” I said, furrowing my brow and squinting in my best impression of Grandpa whenever he suspected something. I turned first to him, then Nate.
Neither said a word.
“Fine, let the guilt of my graduation present continue to haunt you both. Lies, lies, lies. All you tell is lies!” I ended dramatically, kicking Ria to help me out.
“Lies!” she yelled with her mouth full of battered bread and powdered sugar.
Grandpa crinkled his face in disgust. It was a fight between tasting something sour and constipation.
I huffed and piled food onto my plate. Normally, if my guess about what they were doing was right, Grandpa’s eyes would look down for a moment. It was his tell, but it didn’t show its face tonight. Whatever was going on didn’t have anything to do with graduation or school or…
I shoved a bite into my mouth and chewed, immediately forgetting my last thought as sugar rushed to my brainstem.
“Bonum et malum,” Grandpa said after we all started to slow the pace at which we shoveled bite after bite of the weighty delight.
I sighed with my mouth half full of warm, sugary goodness, the beginnings of total contentment flowing through my body. “I don’t want—”
“In Latin.” He held up his hand. He’d been teaching me Latin with every other old, dead, boring language since I could crawl. I wasn’t exactly fluent, but I could say enough to get the attention off me.
“Nolo—”
“Ooh, I’ll go,” said Ria, swallowing a large mouthful. “Bonum thingy: Evey found a cute dress. Malum thingy: she still refuses to wear anything other than jeans and T-shirts to school.”
“I’m wearing makeup now, though. Aren’t you proud of me?” I simpered.
Nate laughed, the powdered sugar doing a good job at breaking his militaristic shell.
“Got something to say?” I narrowed my eyes.
He shook his head. “Nothing. I was just thinking of my own response. Good: I stopped my friend from killing some jerk.”
I blinked and saw the man’s bloodied face. I felt my lip where he’d hit me and found it wasn’t as cracked as I’d thought—it was nearly healed. How had I taken so many hits with nothing to show for it? The knot of guilt re-tightened and I set down my fork. Why did Nate have to bring that up?
“Bad: I was coerced on pain of torture into a makeup store,” Nate finished.
“Yeah, and that blush looked great on you,” said Ria.
Grandpa’s chuckle shook his whole body, laugh lines crinkling around his eyes.
“I’ll let you try it some time.” Nate grinned.
“Bonum: Nate alius emit shirt. Malis: Qui vultus amo a Boy Scout,” I said.
Grandpa laughed, and Nate shook his red mop of hair. Ria kicked my leg to translate.
“Ow. Good: Nate bought another shirt. Bad: He still looks like a Boy Scout.”
Nate narrowed his eyes and clutched the pockets on his khaki shirt. “Indiana wore these kinds of shirts.”
I couldn’t help but giggle. “Indiana was the dog’s name,” I said in my best impersonation of Sean Connery. Unfortunately, it came out more like a nasally leprechaun vacationing in Scotland.
Ria rolled her eyes. “Natey, you really need to get a new movie. Even I knew that one.”
Thunder rumbled outside, distant and yet close enough for me to feel it in my chest. Grandpa looked over his shoulder. “How about a quiz?”
“Don’t normal families just watch TV with dinner?” Ria sighed.
My eyes narrowed. I didn’t remember seeing a report of a storm earlier today.
“Whose flaming sword guards the gates of Eden?” Grandpa smiled like he hadn’t heard her.
“Uriel’s,” said Nate.
I wagged my finger, caught up in the moment to show-up Nate on a Bible quiz. He always beat me. “Bible doesn’t say that.”
Nate raised one red eyebrow and pursed his lips like he knew for a fact he was right.
“What is God’s sign that he will never destroy the world with water again?”
“Rainbow,” Ria and Nate said at the same time. Ria narrowed her eyes and barred her teeth, ever the competitor.
“What were the children of angels and humans called?”
“Nephilim.” I picked up my fork again and pushed in the syrupy bite that would send me over the edge of fullness. I smiled while I chewed, leaning back in victory, a welcome distraction for my mind. The Bible was rather interesting when you just accepted it as a bunch of myths. Not quite as enticing as the Greeks, but hey.
Grandpa nodded. “You get ten more points if you can explain more.”
Just like Whose Line is it Anyway? the points didn’t matter.
I shoveled in another bite. Tonight’s win would be punctuated by all of them having to roll me out of this kitchen. “Nephilim were a bunch of super-powered people created by angels and humans makin’ whoopee. Super strong, but they were all killed in the flood.”
“Makin’ whoopee?” Ria shook her head in embarrassment. “All those old-timey phrases Grampy drilled in your head are going to make you super cool one day, Evey.”
Grandpa nodded and s
ucked in a sharp breath. “You’re right. That’s all it says, but the Bible leaves out what’s not important to salvation. Christ’s message is clear. The history of the Nephilim is not.” He paused and scratched his short gray hair. “The Nephilim that you know of are actually known as Blood Nephilim—beings related by blood with Fallen angels and humans, and you’re right, they were wiped out in the flood.”
“Maybe we should—” Nate started.
Grandpa silenced him with a look and reached to the counter behind him, grabbing something I couldn’t see. “They were extremely powerful and deadly to the rest of humanity. Because of that, God wiped them out, but that wasn’t the end.”
Nate got up and looked out the kitchen window as another roll of thunder thudded through the air.
My mouth went dry. Why was he telling us all this? This wasn’t how the game went.
“The Blood Nephilim were so dangerous that after God destroyed them, he forbade the Fallen from mating with humans again or they would suffer eternal imprisonment.” He sighed, the lines on his face more pronounced than ever. “But there was still an angelic war between good and evil, and humanity was a natural resource for them. The Fallen and the Heavenly Host found a loophole—a way to create new Nephilim without being imprisoned eternally.”
My eyes widened as his speech got faster and faster. My pulse quickened.
“Instead of mating with humanity, angels transferred part of their essence—their souls—to a chosen few humans. The grafted pieces of essence gave them the power to fight in the angels’ battles. These new Nephilim—born not of blood, but of essence—are known as the Graced.”
Ok, he’s officially lost it. This totally explains why he’s been acting so strange.
I dropped my fork to the plate just as a massive boom of thunder thudded through the ground and rattled the plates and glasses.
“Whoa!” Ria grabbed the table, a giggle on her lips, her eyes wide with excitement.
“They’re almost here,” said Nate, his back turned to me as he stared out the window intently.
Grandpa’s face drained of all remaining color. Nate turned toward him as if waiting for orders. Grandpa hesitated, and then gave him a curt nod.
“What’s going on?” I said, my voice far away from my body, my mind misfiring.
Nate disappeared.
I sucked in a sharp breath and blinked again, looking for him.
Grandpa adjusted his grip and revealed a knife as he turned to me. “Don’t scream,” he whispered.
CHAPTER FOUR
He sliced the knife across his palm, blood sticking to the blade.
“What the frak!” I jumped up out of my seat and lunged for him, grabbing his wrist, twisting, and knocking the knife out of his hand. Ria clapped her hands over her mouth, stifling a scream.
The knife clattered to the floor, and I kicked it under the lip of the cabinet. Grandpa didn’t even seem to notice. He pumped the fingers of his injured hand in and out to make the crimson liquid cover his palm.
I tried to hold his other wrist to keep him from moving, but before I realized it, he had twisted and freed himself. He stepped over to the window above the sink and smeared the blood across the top.
My pulse thudded against the side of my throat as I gaped at him—eyes wide with disbelief. What do I do? This was never one of the thousand scenarios he had me run through in disaster drills—the scenario where he went crazy. “Grandpa—” I said, breathlessly.
He shushed me and smeared more blood above the door to the porch. He muttered something under his breath and moved on to the other windows in the living room.
The rusty gears in my mind strained and finally clicked together into something that made at least some sense. “Ria, call 9-1-1.”
Ria sat frozen with her mouth half open until I snapped my fingers. “Call them,” I said in my best calm but assertive voice. Underneath, it felt like every part of me was shaking.
Ria pulled out her phone, and I turned back to the living room. He was still spreading his own blood on our walls. “Grandpa, you need to talk to me. What’s going on?”
He turned to me with guilt stampeding out of his eyes. It was the same expression he used whenever he talked about Mom, whenever he was sorry. “We don’t have much time.”
“For what?” I shook my head. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
He smeared his palm along the last living room window and his eyes softened. “Evelyn, this is going to sound strange.”
“More than it looks right now?” I scoffed and looked back at Ria.
She held the phone next to her ear but shook her head. It wasn’t going through.
Grandpa exhaled through his nose and locked his gaze with mine, his eyes completely focused, clear.
I couldn’t look away. I held onto them like an anchor.
“I haven’t been fair to you. I should have told you a long time ago, from the beginning, but I thought that if you knew, you’d never escape it, never have a chance at a normal life,” he said, his voice shaking.
“Escape what?” I shook my head. None of this made any sense.
“Your future,” he said, his eyelids drooping before he took another deep breath. “You’re a Nephilim, Evelyn. You’re one of the Graced.”
I raised my eyebrows and dropped my jaw. It was like I was talking to a different person—someone who took over his body, made him cut himself, and say things that didn’t make sense. This wasn’t my Grandpa anymore. He wouldn’t do this, joke like this.
“She’s an…angel?” said Ria, dumbfounded.
I turned and looked at her like she was even crazier than Grandpa. How was anyone even following this conversation? There was no logic to it.
“A Graced Nephilim,” Grandpa said, still looking at me intently. “She’s graced with angelic essence—given a piece of an angel’s soul and power.”
Another rumble of thunder sounded outside.
“They’re almost here.” Grandpa looked back over his shoulder as he rounded into the kitchen again. The wrinkles and age spots on his skin were more pronounced than ever. “Ria, get the go-bags. Hurry.”
Ria nodded, her eyes wide, and ran down the hall.
I clenched my fingernails into my palm. “Stop! This is crazy. I’m not a…stop this! It’s not funny anymore.”
Ria plopped two small duffel bags to the floor just as the back door slammed shut and a gust of wind tossed chocolate hair over my face.
“The outer defenses won’t hold. We have to get you out of here, Sir,” said Nate, suddenly at my side.
“Where did you—?” Ria looked back and forth from the door to Nate.
“No.” Grandpa shook his head and looked at Nate intently. “This is the safest place for us. The Babylonians would need an army and—”
“They have it,” Nate interrupted, his back rigid and his eyes staring into Grandpa’s. “There’s a cloud of pure demon essence, but I don’t think it’s the Babylonians. I don’t know what it is.”
Grandpa swallowed, and I held my breath. He thinks I’m a Nephilim. He thinks there’s something after us. Either he was crazy or this was real. This can’t be real.
The earth and air grumbled, and the house shook from the floor up. Plates and mugs fell out of the cabinets.
I looked around like it was all a dream—a very bad dream.
Grandpa grabbed Ria’s and my hands and pulled us down toward the floor. Nate already had the panel open that led into the cellar. We fumbled down the steps, and Nate closed the door behind us, snuffing out most of the light. Several jars of fruits and vegetables that lined wooden shelves in the shallow, cement-lined pit had fallen and splattered on the floor. The ground appeared to rumble less down here, but the creaking wood above us seemed to disagree.
“We should get to the workshop’s bunker.” Nate looked at the corner of the cellar where a barrel concealed a narrow, fifty-foot tunnel that led to a steel-plated bunker capable of withstanding a category five hurricane. No
true survivalist built a house without a secret hideout, and Grandpa was no exception.
Grandpa shook his head. “The Passover protection is stronger.”
I looked down at his hand and immediately understood the reference—the Israelites put blood over their doorways for the angel of death to pass over them and only attack the Egyptians.
I swallowed hard and grabbed Ria’s hand. Those stories couldn’t be real. It was just another myth, a—
She squeezed my hand back as a stray beam of light from the floorboards above lit her terrified face.
Nate’s hand strained on the leather strap of the panel above our heads, waiting for something, the impact, the army to come crashing down on the house and claw through the door.
We didn’t have to wait long.
Like a forest of trees all snapping in half at once, the house collapsed above us. Metal pipes and wood and tile and dishes splintered and rained down on the floor above with a crashing wave of dust.
I held my breath and closed my eyes, confusion and disbelief snapping through my bones with every sound.
Grandpa grunted and pulled me forward. I pulled Ria, and we crawled through the tunnel toward the workshop as fast as we could. Nate, the last person through the tunnel, slammed the metal panel shut in the slightly larger hiding spot. The emergency generator had already kicked on to bathe us in florescent light.
Grandpa slumped beside Ria in the corner as tears fell down her cheeks, the straps of the go-bags clutched in her hand. He patted her head as she cried into his shoulder. His eyes drooped, and his mouth hung open—more defeated than I’d ever seen him.
I knelt down and took his hand, drawing strength from his weakness. “Tell me what to do.”
He looked up like I’d woken him from a dream, his eyes whirling around until they grabbed on to my necklace like a life preserver. “I got that for her, you know—when it was whole.”
I caressed the single-wing pendant and the cracked blue stone that would have connected it to the other half. It had been my mom’s before she died.
“I tried to protect her, but he took her from me. He killed her, and I couldn’t stop him.” He squeezed my hand and kept his gaze on the pendant, tears threatening to flood past his eyelids.
Iron Inheritance Page 3
