“Good afternoon, Angie.”
He smiled, and I wondered if she was the first pureblood he had met face to face. At the same time I was wondering how he knew my mother’s name.
“Nicky? Is that you?” my mother exclaimed.
I threw my hands in the air and screamed. What the Hell was going on? Why did it always feel like I was the last person to know anything?
“In the flesh!” Nick answered, wrapping my mother in a huge hug and swinging her in circles while she giggled.
“How’s your mother?” Mom asked when he put her down.
I could feel the frustration percolating in me. I was about to explode.
“Quite well. She sends her love.”
My mother looked at me and grinned. “Dawny, this is Nick Peterson. Mary’s son!”
She said this like I was supposed to remember him from somewhere. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I accidentally shot a fireball at the wall, earning a look of disapproval.
“Mary’s son? As in your sister-in-law?” I asked slowly. I wanted to make sure I was on the same page as them. I didn’t remember this Nick; I remembered a much smaller-framed man.
“Yes!” she squealed. “You were, what, sixteen the last time you saw him.”
I looked at Nick, who had this guilty expression on his face. He could have told me all of this during our conversation. He didn’t have to be so mysterious in order to get his point across. If I had known he was family the whole ordeal would have been much easier to handle.
“Dawn, I didn’t mean to keep the information from you,” he said. “But if you had known that I was connected to that part of your past, I suspected you wouldn’t have talked to me.” Then he glanced at my mother. “Have you had any demons here recently?” he asked innocently.
My mother smiled and blushed. “Yes, but I let him go home to his wife.” She sighed.
My dad had been gone for a few weeks now. I had to admit this was the first time she had properly smiled since he left. There was still some form of magic between the two of them. Maybe they couldn’t be together, but they still harbored strong feelings for each other.
“So why do we get to enjoy the pleasure of your company?” she asked, changing the subject. “Are you on an epic mission?”
“You could say that.” His smile faded.
“Oh.” My mother clearly sensed his seriousness. “I see. What is it that you need? What are you searching for?”
“I think you know why I’m here.” He shot a look at me. “Angie, she has to know the truth.”
“I know, I know.” She threw her hands in their air. “I was just hoping that there would be no need to find her.” She smiled a small frail smile in my direction. “Remember when I told you that your ascending had begun? The increase in your power and your pull to different levels was extraordinary. Though you cannot control it, yet, it looks like you have made your way down the path to the reason you were born.”
“What are you talking about, Mom?” I crossed my arms in fear that I might shoot flames at her if she said the wrong thing.
“I’m talking about your birthright.” She looked at Nick and shook her head at him. “She’s not ready to know, yet.”
“She has to know, Angie. She needs to know everything.” He touched her on her shoulder, and she wiped a tear from her eyes.
“What do I need to know?” I groaned with impatience. What was the matter with these people?
I sensed that up to this point, I had only been told just enough to give me a basic understanding of what I was. Now I saw that my “intended” was very different from what I had “supposed” it to be. I had always been kept on the outside looking in, with minimal knowledge of who and what I was. I had thought I had it all figured out. All I had to do was choose a side, and I could live a relatively normal life. I was really getting tired of the rules changing like this.
“Your step-father was a Protector,” my mother said, biting her lip. “After your father and I split, I was alone. I needed something that would mask my existence in this world. The equalizers were after me. The best way to not be Angelina Weathers was to become Angie Peterson. When I changed who I was, they stopped searching for me.” She glanced at Nick. “We didn’t love each other at first; it was all arranged by the church. And, in fact, we didn’t love each other in the truest sense until right before he died. Everything had been just for convenience in the beginning. When you moved in, his duties increased. He was very attached to you.”
“He sure had a funny way of showing it,” I muttered. “So you’re telling me that man who messed around with you your whole marriage was hired to keep you alive?”
I gritted my teeth. I had been living this huge lie. Everything seemed to have been predetermined. Wesley’s mother knew me before I knew him. Nick was my cousin in one life, but a prophet in another. Now my stepfather was revealed to be a Protector. Finally, I was a warden. Whatever that was.
“At first, yes,” my mother answered. She glanced at the floor, and then back at her nephew. “So, Nick, what are you? Did you get Protector or Prophet blood?” She didn’t seem to be trying to change the subject so much as trying to find out what she was facing by telling me all of this.
“Prophet, like my mother,” Nick replied proudly.
“May I see them?” My mother asked, pointing at his back. Her eyes were glistening, and there was a small amount of perspiration on her top lip. She was excited about something.
“Of course!”
Nick took off his shirt and turned his back to us. I caught my breath. This man was beautiful. I may have swooned for a few seconds, though not in the way that I did when I looked into Wesley’s eyes on my first day of class. Then these huge gray wings burst from his shoulder-blades. He turned round, grinning.
“Pretty amazing, huh?” he said, stretching them a little.
My mother looked sad for a brief moment, then reached out and touched one of the beautiful gray feathers. Her fingertips lingered on the silky plumes just long enough to allow a single tear to roll down her cheek. I knew she missed having wings, but I hadn’t realized she missed them this much.
“They’re gorgeous, Nicky.” She hugged him round the neck.
“I thought you said that you weren’t immortal?” I protested. I was beyond tired of everyone lying to me. Now that some truths were coming out I was going to make sure that I got nothing but the truth from this point on.
“I said I hadn’t been here since the beginning of time,” he reminded me. “I earned my wings. It’s not like I was born with them.”
I shot him an irritated glare. A tricky little prophet he was turning out to be. I wasn’t born with wings either, but in my case it was because my parents had been stripped of theirs. Another thought struck me. Did this mean that I had a chance to earn them?
“Come on, you two, let’s go to the living room,” suggested my mother with a sigh. “This is going to be a long story, so we might as well make ourselves comfortable.”
Nick put his wings away and returned the shirt to his back. I have to admit that for a second I was disappointed.
He shot me a glance at me from the corner of his eye. “Like what you see, demon girl?” he teased.
I glared back at him. “Have no fear, you won’t get your claim on me.”
I turned to follow my mother to the living room. This cousin of mine was going to drive me crazy.
***
“When I first met Greta and Greg it was the day your father and I were banished,” my mother told me. “They took us in and gave us a home until we were able to get on our feet. Thankfully, your father had several offshore accounts that had built interest over the centuries he wandered the Earth looking for souls. So we have always done well, money-wise.”
She cleared her throat.
“We bought a house with cash, thinking that we would be able to stay there forever. We didn’t realize that we were not the only non-humans
on Earth. I don’t think you realize how hard it was to grasp the idea that there were other creatures like us in this world. We were never told about them, at least in nothing more than ghost stories.”
I glared at my mother. I knew exactly what she was talking about. I had gone from thinking we were the only ones like us to finding out there were far more than just “us,” knocking about the place. Let’s not forget, I had been stalked by a vampire and beaten by a demon.
“I told you that Greta was already pregnant when I met her. Well, you and Wesley share the same birthday. The difference between you is that you were born healthy, while he was born sickly and premature.” She fumbled with her dress. “I only know this from a letter I received after Wesley was born. It was the only letter I ever received from Greta before we split. Anyway, we entrusted the house to the Jensens, allowing them full access to the property. We knew we couldn’t go back, but we had hope that, one day, you would be able to. Now, I told you I always knew she was special, that she had a gift, but that I never knew what it was. Recently I have been able to confirm her bloodline, and establish that Wesley carries the same blood.”
“So he is just like his mother, then?” I asked, feeling my chest tighten. It wasn’t that I hadn’t had the thought on my own; it was the fact that it was confirmed. Wesley was in no way human. He was just as much non-human as I was. You would think this would have brought me some comfort, but you would be thinking wrong: it only brought dread.
“Yes, that would seem to be the case,” my mother said, frowning.
“What about Melissa?” I inquired. If one child had the gene then wouldn’t a second child share that same inheritable factor? I didn’t know how the blood thing worked between human and non-human, but it seemed plausible. If a child receives half their genes from one parent and half from the other it was quite possible that Melissa had the same blood in her veins.
“No, Melissa was fortunate enough to be just a regular girl.” My mother smiled. “Just so you know, Greg didn’t even know until I told him.”
“Makes you wonder if Greta ever knew. How did you find all this out, Mom?” I eyed her suspiciously.
“I have friends in high places, let’s not forget that.” She winked.
“I get it.” I answered. She was always going to have her secrets. Just like each time something happened, and she ran to her room to make a phone call.
“Can I get back to my story now?” she asked sternly. I nodded, and she continued.
“Your father didn’t know what John was when he condemned him to Hell. He had no idea he was a Neutralizer, that the blood was in him. He had no clue either that Miranda had already started the change within John in order to recruit him for her side. John himself didn’t know what he was, if it comes to that. I only found out after I ran into his father at church. He was talking about the unclean mixes, the muddied blood of the righteous and how it needed to be neutralized and any unions declared unholy. Basically he was saying that the church should prohibit the mixing of any blood. Those who were guilty must be exterminated. He wasn’t just talking about the holy and the unholy, he meant any blood that was not the same.”
“So John was raised in a very racially controlled environment?” I queried.
Regardless of how the boy was raised, he was the epitome of evil in my eyes, and I still wanted him dead. Was it bad that I did not feel that my emotions were wrong? Didn’t I have a reason to hate him?
“He was, yes,” my mother replied. “Which makes it even more interesting that his parents allowed him to be with Krista, seeing how her adoptive parents were different bloods.” She shot me a sour look.
“Well, that is interesting,” I said.
There was a moment of silence. I jumped when my mother spoke again.
“So here is my theory on Miranda so far. She has the Neutralizer to take out the Wardens, and the Harbinger to make sure that the job is successful. She will not attack until Wesley tells her that the outcome will be in her favor. John is there to make the Warden’s powers weak and unusable, so Miranda can kill them and send them wherever it is she plans on sending them. That is why I panicked when you said she wanted to burn Heaven and Hell.”
“So what does this have to do with me being a Warden?” I asked cautiously.
“There are four Wardens. I’m sure that Nick has told you about them, how they were the first created. They each hold a piece of their core. When God found out about the union between your father and I, I was able to keep you, but only with the understanding that you would be one of them. He told me that I would learn your element when you were older. I prayed for Earth, since I so enjoyed the many great things it offered us. I wanted to plant gardens and have you help me make them grow, and we would be surrounded by beauty.”
“That explains all the gardens we had together in the past,” I said, laughing bitterly.
“Then the day came. I stood in that field, scared to death of what was happening to you. When I told you to release the power, I wasn’t expecting fire. You burned everything in that field to the ground!” She paused to wipe a tear from her eye.
“As if the charred sheets and the flaming curtains weren’t enough of an indication,” I said humorlessly.
“I couldn’t understand how something so powerful could come from someone so small. When you put your hands out and let the power go it was an amazing sight. From one hand shot the red flames of your father, while from your left hand came the white flames you inherited from me.”
“So the power was balanced.” I felt oddly proud of myself.
“This last year has been the most trying for me, watching the fire build in you, seeing you fight to control it, has been exhausting. Seeing you engulfed in flames, because your emotions were just too much for you, holding your hand on Christmas morning as the fire seared through your heart.” She wiped another tear from her eye.
“There are Carriers, beings who control only one side in this world. I’m sure Nick has explained it to you. They don’t really protect their element so much as carry it. Half the time they don’t even know what they are. They go about their daily lives wishing to have amazing power without ever realizing that it is already in them, that the itch they feel in their fingertips is really the power wanting to come out and play.”
I stopped her. “So you are saying that I carry both sides of the flame, that I am, in fact, the fire Warden?” I was beginning to feel overwhelmed. Could it be possible that I really was this gifted being that Nick had been talking about? I squinted at my mother. “What happens if I die?”
My mother looked at Nick with narrowed eyes. This was not a question that my mother wanted to answer. I could see that for certain.
“If you were to die, fire would die with you. It would be reborn again only if there was another union between Heaven and Hell and a child resulted from that union. Until then you would sit in Purgatory, waiting for your power to pass to another or, in a few odd cases, to be resurrected by your sisters.” She was struggling to remain calm. “Such unions are forbidden, which makes you the last to be born with the blood of both sides. I’m not saying that it couldn’t happen again, but it would have to be something extraordinary.”
“So you’re telling me that if I die, I pretty much screw all of humanity?” I said. “That’s quite a responsibility to lay on an eighteen-year-old.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but, yes, it’s quite a task. That was why I was hoping that I would never have to tell you. It’s not that I didn’t want to. There was never a need. Miranda has made things more complicated, however, with her diabolical plans.” My mother looked at Nick. “Was that enough for you?”
“That will do for now,” he said, glancing at me. “Do you have any questions?”
“Where do I begin?” I said, putting my head in my hands.
Chapter Seven: Krista
My mother invited Nick to stay with us in the spare bedroom. He thanked her for her hospita
lity, after which they stayed in the living room, talking while I took a few moments to get away by making the bed for him, and fetching him some fresh clothes that had belonged to my stepfather.
“I understand that it’s a lot to take in,” I heard Nick say behind me as I finished putting the comforter on the bed. I wasn’t aware that he had even entered the room.
“Yeah, it is,” I said, turning to look at him.
“I’m here to make sure you find the others.”
“Krista came to me in a dream and told me about her second chance. When will she become whole again?” I thought it worth asking, though I wasn’t sure if he could answer the question.
“I don’t know. I assume when the next Warden shows. Not that you aren’t strong enough to bring her back. I just think that the power of Earth is the only way she can be revived successfully.”
“How do we do it? How do we bring her back?”
“We will have to go to her grave. Meaning, we have a road trip in our future. I cannot tell you when, though, Dawn. As much as I want to, that is one thing that remains uncertain.” He reached out and touched my shoulders.
“Who is Earth?” I gently enquired.
“Her name is Helen Price. She lived in Midvale a few years ago. Came here to save someone when they cried out for help.” He gave me a smile. “She’s a great girl.”
“I know who she is,” I said, my voice cracking. “She saved Adam.”
“Who’s Adam?”
“My best friend,” I answered. It was true, too. Adam was my best friend, and there was no denying it. He had been there for me through anything and everything.
“How do you know she was here for him?” Nick asked.
“He told me.”
“Well, isn’t this interesting?” he said softly, almost to himself.
“I’m worn out, so I think I’m going to bed now,” I told him. “I think we have a pretty busy day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I agree. I have to find the Water Warden still. It’s a taxing business.” He stretched.
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