by Meg Collett
“How?”
Sophia stopped working. She wiped her hands on her apron and turned around fully to face Clark. “Because your mother saw it in one of her visions.” Sophia shrugged. “So we are doing all we can to prepare.”
Since the afternoon Iris had told him about meeting his father, she hadn’t been back to his room. Clark was grateful for the space she gave him, because he still couldn’t get a handle on his anger. Even now, it threatened to overwhelm him.
“I know all about her visions,” Clark said through gritted teeth.
Frowning, Sophia said, “She loves you and your father very much. You both mean the world to her.”
“She didn’t love us enough not to leave us.” Clark took out his anger on the strawberries until their juice poured thick and seedy through the strainer. He dumped another handful in.
“She had to.”
“Why?” Clark glared at Sophia. He was going to yell that she had no idea about his family, but it occurred to him that Sophia probably knew his mother much better than he did.
“Because she saw what would happen if she didn’t.”
5
Nearly a week had passed since Clark was brought to the farm in Pennsylvania. He’d spent the last couple days with the Nephilim, helping store supplies and canned food while he waited for Michaela to return. And once he started helping Sophia, she barely let him stop.
Clark was surprised at how the Nephilim worked, because they never used their magic to help with the work. Or perhaps they chose not to use it. Either way, Clark thought it was a shame as he watched their endless laboring. They slept only a handful of hours. But they grew tired and hungry just like humans. Their backs became sore from all the lifting, but they never complained or slowed down.
Seeing the Nephilim act so human helped ease Clark’s nerves around them, but he realized the Nephilim were just as uncomfortable around him. They warily watched Clark as he moved among them, their conversations lulling to silence when he walked in the room as if they were talking about Michaela. Clark was thankful when the work took precedent over gossiping and they moved on.
Now, Clark sat deep underground in the fallout shelter where above ground hatches led down steep stairs and into a concrete bunker. The rooms were numerous and small as jail cells. Two people could barely walk abreast in the main hallway.
As he labeled and dated canned food from the floor, Sophia organized the cans he passed to her on the plastic shelves lining the walls of one of the storage rooms. He wrote small, tiny words on the lids until his hand ached. The food looked like so much, but Sophia had told Clark it would barely last a week.
He already hated the shelter. He sincerely hoped his mother was wrong, and they would never have to use the space. Anytime he mentioned the possibility that Iris was wrong, Sophia would stare at him like he was an idiot. Apparently, his mother had never been mistaken.
Clark had just handed a can to Sophia when she paused, staring at the can like it might talk to her. “What?” Clark asked, wondering if he had written something wrong. “Dude, you said pickled pears. I wrote pickled pears. And let me tell you, I will not be eating pickled pears.”
Clark made a face when Sophia looked up at him, but she didn’t laugh. “Do you love her?” she asked.
Clark instantly thought she meant Iris, but Sophia didn’t have the normal reverence reserved for when she spoke of his mother. “Love who?”
Sophia chewed on her lip like she regretted asking him. “Michaela,” she said finally.
Clark’s eyes went wide before he started laughing. “She wishes. Maybe I had a crush on her in the beginning, but not anymore. We’re just…” Clark trailed off. Doubt had begun to plague him lately. His certainty of Michaela’s return was wavering. “We’re just really close.”
Sophia’s eyes brightened with relief before she sprang up the step stool and placed the can amongst the others. “You just seem so lost without her. I didn’t know.”
Clark didn’t bother to deny it, but he did change the subject. “Why? Do you have a crush on me?”
Sophia spun around and nearly toppled off the stool. Her freckled cheeks grew pink. She stuttered, “No! No way. I just, uh, you know, I was just wondering. That’s all.” She hopped off the step and breezed past Clark into the hall. “Come on. It’s time for supper.”
With a sly grin, Clark rose from the floor and followed her, thinking this Amish farm had just gotten interesting. She was already halfway down the hall and heading for the steps to one of the outside hatches. Clark’s stomach growled as he stiffly made his way up the stairs.
When Clark emerged, the chilly wind stung his face and brought tears to his eyes. He burrowed deeper into the thick, winter jacket Sophia borrowed from a Nephil his size. She’d regained her composure enough to wait for him beside the hatch. Together they headed toward the farmhouse. Clark’s stomach rumbled when Sophia said, “Wait.”
“What?” Clark asked, distracted.
“Something’s happening.”
Sophia turned away from the kitchen’s backdoor and headed toward the front of the house. Clark groaned and reluctantly followed. He’d long since realized it was fruitless to argue with Sophia. She had ways of making him do whatever she wanted.
They rounded the corner of the house and came upon a group of Nephilim. The half-angels were crouched on the ground, leaning over something Clark couldn’t see. As Clark and Sophia drew closer, he noticed a huddle of human townspeople a few feet away from the Nephilim. The humans watched closely, their eyes and mouths pinched tight with worry and fear. Clark looked back to the Nephilim. They were close enough now that he heard their whispers.
A chill went down his back that had nothing to do with the cold air as the group of Nephilim shifted slightly, and Clark saw between them. On the ground, lying bent and broken were two recently transformed angels. Freshly dried gold blood covered their naked, luminous bodies. Their descent from Heaven must’ve been fast, because their skin was thin as lace, their features barely formed. Sophia gasped, but Clark had seen this before.
Where the angels’ wings should’ve been were two gaping craters. Twisted and splintered bones poked through the pools of blood and shredded muscle. Bruises formed across their bodies indicating severe internal damage. Nephilim held the angels’ arms and legs in case they woke up.
Sophia surged forward into the circle of Nephilim to help. She bowed her head and whispered. Clark knew the Nephilim were healing the angels, helping them, but he still turned away. Bile rose in his throat, and he took deep breaths to keep from vomiting. Before all this had happened, he didn’t even know the Nephilim existed. Now his mom was one of them.
And he had Nephil blood in his veins. The thought crept into his mind as it had many times over the last few days, but he still wasn’t ready to deal with it. He needed Michaela back before he could find the strength to tackle his own demons.
Pushing it from his mind, Clark crossed to one of the townspeople. “What happened?”
An older man with a long beard and odd hat said, “We found the angels. They had fallen from Heaven. We brought them here.”
The man spoke simply and with an accent Clark hadn’t heard from the other Nephilim. But that wasn’t what Clark focused on. Surprised, he said, “You know about the angels?”
The man looked at Clark closely through narrowed eyes. “Of course we know about the angels.”
“I mean, you know about these angels.” Clark pointed to the Nephilim in front of them. The man gave the slightest of nods, but didn’t say a word. Clark dropped it.
They all watched as the sound of bones fusing back into place filled the air. Whispering feverishly, Sophia clenched the hand of one female angel. The Nephilim’s healing techniques were much more basic than what a Watcher likely could’ve done and much more painful. Whereas a Watcher could’ve healed the angels with one word, the Nephilim could only mend the injuries and hope the angels’ bodies recovered.
Clark had se
en enough. His stomach rolled. With quick steps, he walked to the house and up to his room. A fire burned in the fireplace, warming the room enough that Clark could remove his jacket. He took off his muddy boots and settled beneath the covers. He never fell asleep, because he was too afraid to close his eyes.
A while later, his bedroom door opened. He smelled Sophia before he saw her. She settled onto the bed. When he looked up at her, he saw blood smudged across her forehead. He turned away.
“How do the townspeople know about you?” he asked.
“They’ve known since the beginning. We help them with their illnesses or harvests. In exchange, they help protect us.”
“They’ve done a good job. No one knows you exist here.”
“We make good allies,” Sophia said.
They were silent for a while. Sophia settled in next to him. Her body was warm and familiar by now. “How are they?” Clark asked finally.
“The angels? They’ll be okay.”
Clark nodded. He saw their backs and blood and remembered how he had found Michaela that day in the cave. He missed her so much right then that an actual pain stabbed through his heart.
“What if they’re fallen?” he asked quietly.
“Their eyes were still light. I don’t understand why the holy angels are doing this.” Sophia sounded upset. She stretched out beside him, taking his hand in her cold one like she needed reassurance.
Clark’s thoughts went to Zarachiel and how the Archangel had done nothing to provoke the Aethere. “They just want to prove a point,” he said. “The Aethere only care for the angels who follow them without asking questions. They’ll do anything to hurt Michaela.”
Clark turned his head away from Sophia and pressed his eyes closed. Sometimes he was okay and could make it hours without thinking about the night the Watchers attacked Michaela and him. But other times, like now, it pressed down on him like an unbearable weight.
“Are you okay?” Clark nodded, but Sophia didn’t buy it. “Does our magic still scare you? Are you having more nightmares?”
Clark had no idea how she knew about his dreams. “Yeah.”
“Our magic shouldn’t scare you. We’re not like them,” she said, and Clark knew she meant the Watchers. “We use our magic for good, like helping the townspeople when they’re sick. But we eat and sleep, live and die, just like you. Our magic is passed down in our genetics, just like your eye or hair color, and it’s nothing like it once was. The first Nephilim were said to be able to move mountains or rivers high into the sky. We can’t do that. The strongest Nephil we have seen in decades is your mother. Her visions are the strongest magic we have, which means you most likely are capable of powerful magic.” Sophia squeezed his hand when Clark paled. “It’s okay.”
“I know. I just let myself forget for a bit. Everyone acts so normal.”
“That’s understandable,” Sophia said. She took off her bonnet, and her strawberry hair spilled onto the pillow. Her honey scent enveloped and comforted him.
“Maybe she was wrong,” he murmured. “Her visions can’t be absolute if the magic has weakened over so many generations like you say.”
“Clark, look at me.” Clark turned. Sophia rose on an elbow and peered down at him. “She isn’t wrong.”
“How do you know?” Clark challenged.
Sophia pressed her lips together. When she spoke, her voice was small and tight. “The angels that fell, they told us the Aethere are demanding the End of Days.”
6
Clark’s eyelids glowed red when the light in his bedroom was flipped on. He cringed farther under the covers and groaned. “Go away.”
Clark had barely slept last night, and when he did, he wished he were awake. Dreams of Nephilim, magic words, Watchers, and Michaela crouching over him looking vicious and feral had haunted his rest. He was exhausted and really not in the mood to milk a cow.
He cracked an eyelid. Outside his window was the pitch-black darkness of early morning, too early even for milking cows. Frost covered the pane of glass. “It’s too early,” he mumbled.
“Clark.” Sophia’s tone was brittle and frightened, turning Clark’s bones to water. He sat up quickly. “You need to see this.”
“What is it? Is Mom okay? Michaela?” Clark swung his legs over the bed and struggled into his boots. His worry for his mother was almost as much as his worry for Michaela, which confused him. It was too much to process this early, so he focused on getting his clothes on.
“No. It’s something else.” Sophia turned and disappeared.
Clark hurried after her. As he traversed the dark hall, he noticed the other Nephilim’s doors were open—their bedrooms dark, sheets rumpled. Clark frowned, worried because the Nephilim were total clean freaks.
Instead of entering the kitchen at the bottom of the stairs, Sophia turned into a room Clark had never been in. He ducked under a low archway and into a den where he heard the buzz of a television. He was about to complain that no one told him there was a television when he saw the looks on the Nephilim’s faces.
“What’s wrong?” he asked to no one in particular. No one answered.
He looked to the old black and white television complete with bunny ears and tin foil. A shaky, static image filled the tiny screen. The image panned to a beach filled with dark, lumpy shadows. Clark looked closer and noticed the shadows were hundreds of dead fish.
“We keep a television in case of an emergency,” Sophia whispered. She took his hand, and they threaded through the crowd of Nephilim. Some must have come from neighboring farms to see the news, because Clark didn’t recognize half of them.
“Dead fish are an emergency?”
“There are thousands of them all along the eastern coast. Maybe even hundreds of thousands are dead. They washed ashore overnight.” The only sound in the room was Sophia’s hushed voice and the static voice of a reporter on the television, which Clark ignored.
“I’ve always been more of a chicken guy anyway…Maybe I’ll just go back to bed—”
Sophia shushed him. “No. They did this.” She meant the Watchers. All the Nephilim spoke of their forefathers in that same tone, like a mixture of revulsion and reverence. “We can smell their magic in the air. They’re coming.”
The wind howled against the house, rattling the shutters. Nerves, like tiny razorblades, crept up Clark’s insides. His vision swam. “How do you know?” he managed to ask.
“We know.”
Clark looked back at the television with dawning horror. Now the dead fish looked like the menacing omen they likely were. A reporter stood in front of a shaking camera. Around her were hundreds of people. They lined the edge of the beach, their faces tense with anticipation and almost fevered excitement as they pointed at the bodies. Clark paid attention to the reporter.
“We are broadcasting live from Virginia Beach, where countless fish and other animals have come in with the tide, dead. Biologists arriving early on the scene are estimating this to be a mass migration interference—”
A boom squawked across the television’s feeble speakers; everyone in the room jumped, including Clark. The image shook, and the reporter ducked with a piercing scream that jumbled together with the other spectators’ shrill cries, their interest quickly turning to fear. The camera panned to the sky, the lens zooming to a spot far above the ocean, nearly a mile from the beach.
The image was shaky and blurry, but clear enough for Clark to see a vortex of swirling light open through the skies far above the Atlantic Ocean. The clouds ripped apart like a fabric seam. The early morning dark sky was emblazed like the afternoon sun had suddenly risen. The ocean glowed beneath the hole.
Sophia clenched Clark’s hand. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the screen.
Black dots descended from the hole, spilling out like so many ants. Most hovered right below the clouds, but one sole dot descended right above the ocean’s spraying waves. The trembling image zoomed in even farther.
The Nephilim
hissed. Clark saw the angel’s wings on the television. Even through the grainy image, Clark noticed the misshapen and featherless wings. The angel’s hollow eye sockets were a bottomless shadow.
“The Aethere’s mercenaries,” a Nephilim behind Clark growled.
The angel was a Watcher. Clark recognized the gaunt frame, dull skin, and bony wings. Although the angel looked healthier than his kind had the last time he’d seen them, the angel wasn’t beautiful, even if it was now blessed and pardoned by Heaven. It was horrific.
The Watcher’s mouth unhinged, and a voice echoed across the water. Even from the distance between the Watcher and the beach, its voice was as clear as if it stood right in front of the camera.
“I deliver a message to the fallen Archangel Michaela. Heaven demands the Seven Seals. You, Michaela, will turn them over immediately. If you wait,” the Watcher paused and smiled cruelly, “we will unleash plagues of mass devastation on the Earth. This is your warning.”
The Watcher produced a long, gleaming sword from a sheath on its back. The cool metal glinted in the supernatural lighting. The angel thrust it above its head with a mighty howl. A flash much more singular and concentrated than lightning burst from the clouds, connecting with the tip of the Watcher’s sword.
From off screen came the sound of screams. Somewhere behind the camera, the reporter cried. The image shook on television, as did the earth beneath Clark’s feet. Pictures rattled on the walls, and vases crashed to the floor, shattering. Clark cringed, but the other Nephilim were unfazed as they stared at the television.
The Watcher didn’t hesitate. Above his head, the sword glowed as if its metal was fiery hot. He pulled the molten sword down in front of him, twisting it in his hand, and drove the flaming point into the ocean.
The water cried out as if it were an animal being gutted alive. The sound was high pitched and keening. Even through the television, it hurt Clark’s ears. The Watcher gripped the sword’s hilt. His muscles bulged, his hands quaked.
The image zoomed back out to show the water around the blade as it boiled into a thick sludge. A powerful breeze swept across the ocean toward the beach, rattling the camera. The camera angle tilted; the cameraman gagged and vomited.
