by N. P. Martin
I shook my head at her. "All right, all right…"
I pushed the key in the lock, turned it, and then hesitated for another second before finally sliding up the shutter to a darkened room that was clearly filled with stuff. Kasey barged past me and turned on the light just as I was sliding the shutter back down. "Holy shit," she breathed.
When I turned around, I was just as shocked at what I saw. "Holy shit…"
"Exactly." Kasey sounded slightly awestruck by the contents of the room.
All I could do was shake my head as I looked around. "I had no idea…"
"That your mom was some sort of survivalist, or hunter, or…are those M16’s? Jesus, those are M16’s."
There was more than a few M16’s in the room. One entire wall was covered with weapons of all kinds: swords, knives, clubs, machetes, tomahawks, crossbows, and a shit load of guns and rifles. It was like she was expecting a war.
Or she was fighting one.
It was a jarring thought, and all the more so because it felt true. Suddenly, the puzzle in my mind started to make some sort of crazy sense, though not so much that I could create any kind of big, detailed picture. I was still working in broad strokes on a canvas I could hardly see. Yet I knew in my bones that my mother must’ve been an active participant in some sort of war or vendetta. But against whom?
Demons.
It clicked then. The words of the demon that attacked me and Kasey echoed in my mind once more: You don’t know what you are.
Was I someone who was supposed to fight the demons that were clearly everywhere in the world? To fight evil, as cliched and Hollywood as it sounds, but which was nonetheless the only obvious conclusion I could come to.
My mom’s constance absenteeism when I was growing up suddenly made sense. She wasn’t absent through frequent business trips as my father always said. My mother was no businesswoman, I knew that even back then. But you believe your parents, right?
Not anymore, though. The truth was, my mother had been off fighting a war, one my "kind" undertook on behalf of all the humans unable to see the trees from the forest, or able to harness a power helping them to do so
There was simply no other explanation. The implications of that for me were also staggering, so much so that I had to lean against the wall for a moment to stop myself from fainting. It felt like my mind had had begun to shatter at all of the ramifications of the past six months, particularly the past few days, and I just wasn’t sure how I was going to piece it back to together again, or what form it would take afterward.
"Leia?" Kasey said. "You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something."
I nodded absently. "It kinda feels that way…"
"Does any of this stuff make sense to you? I mean, there’s some really weird shit in here. There are jars and bottles filled with…fuck, I don’t know what. Maybe your mom was a witch or something. It’s the only thing that would explain half of this stuff." She kicked a box of old books on the floor. "The spell books are also a dead giveaway, if you ask me."
Kasey was right. Everything in the room seemed to point toward the occult and supernatural in some way, right down to the weird glyphs carved into many of the weapons. Which of course made perfect sense, if you were fighting against supernatural beings straight out of a Sorcerer’s Creed novel. It also made me wonder what else was out there that I didn’t know about.
A fuckton of stuff, I was beginning to think.
I spent the next while going over the contents of the room, eventually coming across a leather-bound journal that sat atop a number of other books that appeared to be written in Latin. Upon further examination, the journal seemed to have belonged to my mother. It was her name on the first page, and somehow I knew it was her handwriting as well. I only glanced at a few of the pages, but almost all of them contained drawings of monstrous looking beings, unsurprisingly like the demons I saw every day. When I sensed Kasey behind me, I quickly snapped the journal shut.
"I’ve figured it out," Kasey said. "Your mom was one of those dominatrix types. I mean, check out this outfit over here." She pointed to some sort of leather outfit that was hanging from a hook on the wall. It looked like something a superhero would wear, and I had trouble picturing my mother in it. Or rather, I had trouble with the idea of my mother being in it.
Suddenly, I felt a massive sense of betrayal well up, to the point where I clenched my teeth and fists as if I was going to hit something. As soon as I felt the power in me begin to rise, I quickly dialed back my emotions in case I exploded in front of Kasey. It was all well and good having this newfound power, but I still didn’t know the first thing about it. I didn’t know how dangerous it was yet, and now was not the time to find out.
"Fuck it, Kasey," I said. "Let’s get out of here. My damn head is spinning."
"Yeah," Kasey said, turning her nose up once more at the room. "So is mine, to be honest."
Before I left, I grabbed the journal from off the stack of books, and tucked it under my arm.
When I’d locked up, I went back to the reception desk to see Hector, while Kasey went to the car to roll a joint. Before that, though, I took a small knife from my mother’s collection without Kasey seeing, and slipped it into my jacket. With all the demons I’d been seeing lately, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have some protection on me, though I wasn’t sure if a simple knife would cut it, excuse the pun and all.
At the reception desk, Hector looked over the top of his porno mag at me. "You get what you came for?" he asked me.
I leaned my arms on the counter. "And what would that be?"
"In your case, I’d say answers, or perhaps just more mystery on top of mystery."
"I’d say both."
Hector smiled without coming across as sleazy as he did earlier. "That unit down there was bought outright by your mother dearest," he said. "Now that she isn’t around anymore, it belongs to you, along with everything in it. That’s how I usually work things in these situations."
It hadn’t occurred to me when I was in the unit that everything in it now belonged to me, and Josh, of course, though he had already made it clear he wanted no part of my quest for answers. So I guess it all really was mine.
The question still remained, though.
Now that I had it, what was I supposed to do with it all?
More importantly, did I actually want it all now that I had it?
7
Before I dropped her off, Kasey tried to persuade me to come inside with her, so we could share a bottle of vodka she apparently had stashed. For the first time in months, though, I had no interest in getting out of my head, and that’s because I no longer felt like I was running from something. Now, it felt like I was running toward something at a speed I could hardly control. It was scary, sure, but undeniably thrilling. It was also exciting to have finally found some answers to the questions I had been carrying around for years. Like who was my mother, and why did a demon take her away? The storage locker and its contents went some way to answering that question. I was hoping the journal I’d found in there would fill in the many gaps that still existed in my knowledge.
After I drove off, leaving a somewhat disappointed Kasey behind, my thoughts turned to Josh. It was now evening, and I’d had his Mustang all day. No doubt he had been trying to contact me all day. Knowing this would be the case, I’d turned my phone off after I left the house earlier. I decided to pull over somewhere so I could give him a call, to try to smooth things over a little before I arrived home. The last thing I wanted was to get into a massive argument with him, which would no doubt upset Diane and make me look like the bad guy in her eyes yet again.
On my way through town, I spotted a small, empty parking lot at the back of a minimart. I swung the Mustang into the parking lot and shut off the engine before taking my phone out of my jacket. After switching it on, over a dozen text messages came through, all from Josh:
WHAT THE FUCK! YOU STOLE MY FUCKING CAR!!!
WHEN ARE YOU PLANNING
ON BRINGING MY RIDE BACK?
ANSWER MY FUCKING TEXTS!
I HAVE PLANS SOON. I NEED MY DAMN CAR!!
YOU ARE SO DEAD.
I shook my head at that last one. He was majorly pissed, but the most he would give me would be a death stare and a few choice words. Josh had never hurt me in his life, though he no doubt felt like it at times. I would give him a call, smooth things over before I got home. Only, when I rang his phone, it just kept ringing before going to voicemail. Strange, I thought. He would normally answer straight away, if only to bawl his frustrations at me. I tried again, but there was still no answer. The same on the third and forth time I tried.
"What the fuck, Josh?" I muttered. "Are you that pissed off that you won’t even answer the damn phone to me?"
The irony of the situation was not lost on me, but I tried ringing once more nonetheless, with no success. So I sent him a text instead:
ON MY WAY HOME.
I couldn’t think of anything else to write. There was no point in telling him not to be mad. That would be like telling a lion not to eat the baby antelope standing in front of it. He would have his say, no matter what.
I put my phone inside my jacket, and then just sat there for a moment staring out the window at nothing. It felt a lot like my life was unravelling right then, but as to whether good or bad, I was yet to decide. There was no denying I felt more alive and engaged than I had done for a long time. Was that a sign everything was moving in the right direction, despite how fucked up and crazy things were? Only time would tell on that score.
I could hardly remain still in my seat I was so wired and hyped up, and I decided I needed to calm down. So I fished Josh’s weed out of the glove box and rolled myself a joint. A few puffs would be enough to settle me. As the car filled with thick, pungent smoke, I rolled the window halfway down to allow the smoke to escape. Within minutes, I felt calmer as I relaxed back into the seat. Then I reached behind me and grabbed my mother’s journal from the back seat, placing it in my lap so I could look through it while I finished the joint. But as I went to open the journal, something fell out of it: a CD in a plastic slipcase with my name on it.
"What the fuck?" I said as I held the disc up for inspection. It was kind of jarring to see my name written on it. Clearly, and for whatever reason, my mother had left the disc for me to find.
The question is, what’s on it?
Despite the weed, my heart started racing with anticipation and undeniable excitement. On a whim, I inserted the disc into the car’s CD player. "Maybe she’s left a mix tape," I said, the weed making me smile at that one. My smile disappeared when the CD player displayed an error message, which meant there was no readable audio files on the disc. Which also meant it was either a data disc, or a video disc. Either way, I needed a computer to read it.
It just so happened, though, that Josh kept a laptop under the driver’s seat. He used it to keep track of all his business dealings, and to watch cage fighting while he awaited his customers. He often said that was the worst part of being a dealer, the waiting around on people to turn up, especially where suppliers are concerned. Apparently gangsters are always late.
As the butterflies in my belly fluttered madly, I opened the laptop and inserted the disc, practically holding my breath as it loaded. Then a folder opened, showing a single video file, which I double clicked immediately.
My eyes widened as the video image popped up, showing an empty chair sitting in what had to be the storage unit. I immediately recognized the array of weapons in the background, and the jars and boxes lying around everywhere. Then I noticed the date on the video. Heart-wrenchingly, I realized it was stamped for July 10th 2006, at 1:30pm, just 11 hours before demons irrevocably changed our lives forever. At that point, I had to stop the video, if only to give my mind a chance to comprehend what I was watching, and what I was about to watch. The enormity of the event was overwhelming, not to mention hard to believe. I mean, my mother was about to appear on screen, a woman I hadn’t seen in over eleven years. A woman I harbored so much anger and resentment toward, and yet still so much love. A woman whom I just knew was about to implode my life all over again. Staring out the window, I had a flashback of that night, of us all having dinner as a family. We dined on spaghetti and meatballs, our parents both laughing about how Josh and I had stained our chins orangey-red as we sucked up the strings of pasta bliss, a meal I've never eaten even a single time since.
A few seconds after I hit play on the video again, my mother appeared on screen, and sat down in the chair to face the camera. My chest heaved as soon as I saw her face.
It’s really her.
A hand went to my mouth as tears welled up in my eyes, and all I could do was stare at her on the screen, hardly knowing what to think or feel.
Then she smiled, and said, "Hello, Leia," as if she was really there in the storage unit at that very moment, looking right at me. I had a sudden urge to stop the video once more, but I was afraid that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to turn it back on again. So I took a few shuttering breaths to try to calm myself, tossed the remainder of the joint out the window, and waited on my mother to speak again.
She continued staring at the camera for long moments, as if she wasn’t sure how to begin. While she deliberated, I took in everything about her: the thick dark hair that hung past her shoulders; the steely blue-gray eyes set into her sculpted, and still young face; the sinewy arms, covered in small scars that she never explained; the almost effortless sense of confidence she put out, as well as strength through hard-won experience. How did I miss these things about her when I was young? She never gave me cause to think she was anything other than a businesswoman. The version of my mother I was looking at now was like a different person. I knew without a doubt that this version was the real one, not the half-baked version I knew growing up.
Once again, my sense of betrayal was stoked by the fact that she hid her real self from her own children. I wasn’t sure that any explanation she could’ve given in the video would suffice to quell that sense of betrayal in me. Even the sadness she was trying hard to hide, for my sake probably, didn’t mean much to me at that moment.
"Well," she said finally, staring straight into the camera. "If things go down the way I soon expect them to, you probably hate me right now." She shook her head. "Not much has gone to plan lately, and I may have done something incredibly stupid, to be honest with you. I don’t even know why…well, I do know why I did it, but that doesn’t make my actions any less stupid…" She trailed off as she looked down at the ground for a moment, then she fixed her blue-gray eyes on the camera again.
"Long story short, Leia, I’ve fucked up, and it’s highly likely that I won’t be around anymore very soon." She stopped for a second to swallow down her rising emotions. "This is why I’m making this video, inside this storage unit, which you’ve obviously already found if you’re watching this. The thing is, Leia…I need to tell you some things in case no one else does. I can’t rely on your father to be honest with you and Josh about who you both are. Your father doesn’t really acknowledge that part of himself much anymore, and I know he wants you and your brother to be normal people, which, you know, is just fucking ridiculous." She shook her head almost in anger. "I love your father to death, but he’s never been much of a realist, especially when it comes to sheltering you and Josh from your true heritage. So I want to make sure, Leia, that you know who you truly are. Your father would hate me if he knew I was making this video, because he’s going to try and keep you out of the life, but you can’t run from the life, Leia. It always catches up with you."
While she paused to light a cigarette (I didn’t even know she smoked), I realized I was crying because she was talking about my father as if he was still alive and still with us. She clearly didn’t expect him to die. She thought she was the only one in danger. She also just confirmed what I had strongly suspected for months now. That I wasn’t normal, and neither was Josh.
"All right," my
mother said after blowing out a long stream of smoke. "Listen up, Leia. This is important. As hard as it probably is for you to believe, you aren’t completely human. A significant part of your makeup consists of angel DNA, as hard as that might be for you to believe, but it’s true. Your father is the same, and so am I. We’re called Nephilim, and being one is nowhere near as glamorous or holy as it sounds. It’s the complete opposite, in fact, but there’s not much you can do about that. You’ll just have to accept it. Assuming my friend Barbara keeps to her word, which I know she will, you won’t be watching this until you’re past eighteen.
"So I’m taking it you’re already seeing demons and monsters everywhere you go. Don’t panic. As crazy as it sounds, that’s all normal. It’s your new reality, so you better get used to it. No amount of running or hiding, or pretending to be someone else, is going to change that. The sooner you realize that, the better. The truth is, I planned on raising you and Josh as Nephilim from the beginning, but your father…he insisted…" She shook her, her lips mashed together. "It doesn’t matter now. He can’t stop you from becoming what you already are. He’ll just be delaying the inevitable."
My mother took one last drag of her cigarette before stamping the butt out on the floor. Then she casually raised one hand, palm up, and held it in front of her. A second later, a sphere of brilliant white light appeared in her hand, a light I recognized instantly, and which gave me a thrill even looking at it.
"You see this?" she said. "This is what makes you special, Leia, amongst other things. This is grace, the pure essence of an archangel, or a form of it anyway. This is what’s going to make you faster, stronger and more powerful than any human ever could be. It’s also what’s going to save your life when the monsters come calling, and they will come calling at some point, Leia, trust me on that.
"We’re soldiers in a war that’s been waging for millennia, a war that’s become so dirty that no one even knows who is in charge anymore, or what the damn point of it all is, if there ever was a point. All I know is, the evil keeps coming, and we’re the only ones around willing to do anything about it. That’s why we were created in the first place. We’re the first defense against evil, Leia, the barrier between all those monsters you’re seeing, and the humans they seek to prey on. That’s our only purpose in life, and you need to embrace that, Leia. If you try to run from it, I promise you it will end badly. Evil will find you, and you won’t be ready, so you need to be ready, Leia. Your father is running, which is why I’d be surprised if he’s even still alive in your time. I know that sounds horribly harsh, but you’ll understand where I’m coming from soon enough. Our kind don’t get to run from our destiny, and that’s the cold, hard truth."
