by Abby Knox
Ada slowly backed away from the campfire and eased off into the darkness. Keeping her flashlight in the pocket of her hiking shorts, she concentrated on the tiny lights that led her even farther up the side trail. She walked and walked, the underbrush growing thicker as she pushed on. Soon, the trail faded completely and she was literally in the woods. The trees grew close together there, and she had to watch for tree roots. Funny, she should have been worrying about ticks, snakes, spiders, nocturnal beasts of all kinds, but she brushed those concerns aside.
I must be too drunk to worry about falling over a log and straight into the claws of a black bear.
Ada walked in total darkness except for the strange fairy lights dancing about twenty yards ahead of her, teasing her, guiding her.
This is a hallucination. Wade at the motel put something in the moonshine. This is hazing—some inside joke by the locals, and the mayor is in on it.
After some time, Ada was sweating and her legs ached. Still, her feet wanted to climb.
Just when she thought she was too exhausted to go any farther, she saw something reflected in the fairy lights besides more trees.
The moon was shining down on the Ruins.
She stopped in her tracks and took it in. Broken stones the size of her Volkswagen back home were covered in moss. She walked on, her equilibrium gradually becoming more and more elusive. The stories about the area she had found in her research were proving to be true; something was off about the magnetic pull at the top of this mountain. She had a strange sensation of going downhill, even though she was indeed still going uphill. Pulling her phone from her pocket to use the compass app, she was horrified to discover that the battery had been completely drained. “This makes no sense,” she said aloud to no one. “I charged it at the motel room.”
Something inside her was aware she was in grave danger. She knew she should flee, but she wanted to keep going, to collect data…to make a connection with the man, or creature.
She paused to dig her compass out of her backpack, along with her flashlight, and she saw exactly what she had feared. The same thing that the doomed prospectors from long ago had reported in their hastily scribbled field notes. The compass was slowly spinning, never settling on which way was north, even as she stared at it for a full minute.
If she hadn’t been feeling tipsy from the moonshine, she might have been running for her life. Instead, she felt like she should keep going deeper into that upside-down place. Rushing down to get up. Running toward darkness and danger to get closer to answers.
As she drew closer, the trees became sparser, mercifully. Ada slipped on moss-covered rocks, which, farther on, became boulders. As she continued up the steep climb, the boulders became gargantuan bricks. Monoliths the size of Stonehenge, only with thick layers of kudzu and other exotic flowering vines she could not identify.
The Ruins were even more frightening in person than in the few long-range photos she’d managed to find on the internet. No human could have built whatever used to stand here. The huge stones became more and more unsettling the higher she went, but the pull was so strong she felt like she was tumbling into it. Her fright was all mixed up with excitement and anticipation. Logic and reason were quickly losing their grip on her.
What will happen to me when I get there? It was a deep curiosity wrapped up in fear and attraction to the forbidden. She felt like Hansel and Gretel, but what sweet things awaited her? How much of a taste would she get of it before whatever was inside tried to eat her?
Shapes of the Ruins’ crumbled foundations came into view, but as she approached, the stones began to bend and change. She stopped as her breath caught in her throat. This isn’t real. How do I explain this, she reflected. An elaborate hoax? Earthquake? Hallucination brought on by extremely strong alcohol? And what was she thinking, drinking something so lethal? Ada was a lightweight with booze.
At first, she thought the foundation was falling apart even more while she watched. Stone shifted, slid, and scraped against stone. Rocks tumbled. Earth moved. The world groaned. Something was coming.
Or was she coming for it? She could not have stayed away if she’d tried, who was she kidding? But why? Wasn’t this the part in the horror movie when everyone in the theater is shouting for the heroine to run away, to gather some sense of self=preservation?
The only problem with that idea was she could not make her legs stop. This is not going to end well.
Slipping on some wet undergrowth, Ada fell to the forest floor and felt as if she was being dragged by the same unseen force. Something was pulling her, dragging her uphill through the weeds and overgrown thickets, through stinging nettles and thorns, through brush thick with stickers, but none of it stuck to her clothes or scraped her skin, or harmed her at all.
And when she stopped, when she finally came to rest on the flat surface at the top of the mountain and looked up, The Ruins were not The Ruins anymore.
It had to be a total and complete hallucination.
Impossibly, what stood before her in the middle of the dense forest on top of Bell Mountain was a church. But not exactly a church. A massive gothic cathedral and several smaller buildings in the middle of a massive clearing. The cathedral was lit up from the inside, casting an otherworldly light into the surrounding forest, in all the colors of the rainbow. Open-mouthed and barely breathing due to shock, she slowly crept around the perimeter, looking for a way inside. But why? She should run away. If only she could take some pictures, but her phone was dead.
Then she remembered the Polaroid camera in her backpack. She scrambled for it and with shaking hands snapped a photo of what she saw, then continued to walk the perimeter of the great iron fence while she waited for it to develop. At least that still works up here.
By the time she found the ornate iron gate, a whisper of gray sunrise began to peek out behind the trees to the east, though she could not hear any songbirds yet. Good gravy, how long had she been walking? Shouldn’t she be back at the motel, packing her things to go…where was it again? And to do what? She couldn’t remember. The light blazing from inside the cathedral shone through the windows and everything looked different. Less terrifying. Hazy. It called to her to come inside and get a better look, to bask in it.
Ada felt as if her body was glowing, but she looked down at her chest and knew what was happening—the light was shining through the stained glass and hitting her straight on. Her entire body was covered in multicolored light.
Anxiety began to dissipate and a tiny crumb of acceptance crept in. Still, she could not forget who she was. She was a scientist, and she knew none of this could be real. Someone was playing a massive joke on her.
And then she saw who it was, the perpetrator of this massive joke. The humanoid shape, the same one that had drawn her out into the darkness. But taller. She couldn’t make out the features, but she knew it was him, a much bigger version of the long-haired man, and fiercer, rushing at her at an alarming rate, but sticking to the shadows. He was a blur. At one moment he was behind a tree nearest the cathedral. And then he lit like a bird upon the far end of the stone fence; his silhouette could have tricked her into thinking he was a gargoyle. In the next moment, however, he slipped down the outside of the stone fence, landed on the ground with an earth-shaking tremor, and was rushing toward her; he was so near she could feel the impact of his steps.
She didn’t feel afraid of him, and this lack of fright clashed with her common senses. She should have been frightened, she should have screamed. She could not make the two opposing feelings agree with each other. But she did force her fingers to calmly work the latch of the gate. It opened with a groan of metal and she stepped inside, turning around to close the gate and shut the creature out.
The gate was much heavier from the inside; she struggled against the iron bars with all the force she could muster. But Ada’s inebriated state was the final victor. Lightheaded, dizzy, and exhausted, it seemed the sky itself was knocking her down like a newly planted tree
in a hurricane.
The earth was cool and wet. It was nice down there, she thought, as she gazed up at the technicolor cathedral windows in the woods. Everything undulated and danced around her fading vision, like a channel on an old TV set that she couldn’t get to come in right at first, and moving the antennas around helped it come in only a little.
“Wait, don’t go,” she said to the building dissolving from her vision. She weakly fought against her eyes closing.
If she ever saw the man from the Little Giant Motel again, she would have to ask him what he put in that moonshine, because that was some good shit.
Before everything went black a voice spoke aloud, not inside her thoughts.
“I’m not going anywhere, little fox.”
Chapter Ten
Samuel
Samuel had not intended to knock her out.
But neither had he intended to attach himself to a Seer. Nor had he, before this day, ever intended to lure anyone to The Ruins without their consent. He never saw himself drawing his sword for any reason, let alone to open the gates and reveal the cathedral to any human with supernatural gifts, ever.
When willing human companions were brought here, they had to have their minds altered. It was an absolute cardinal rule of being a Nephilim. Humans could not handle this much beauty, for one thing. Secondly, letting them see through all the cloaking magic was a sort of trauma, and difficult to erase from their brains once you let them go back to their normal lives. But a Seer’s mind was more complicated.
Now, Samuel was stuck with her. He could not let her go without harming her, by altering her brain, or to his community by risking exposure.
“What have I done?” he asked aloud as he watched over the sleeping female in his bed.
You showed off, is what you did. You like her and you wanted to show off your cool bachelor pad. And she passed out from the overwhelm. Well done.
So there he was, hiding a human in his dormitory.
Ada slept soundly, so soundly he worried about her health and checked her vitals. The wonders of Bell Mountain had frightened her so badly that her mind had to sleep, to process everything.
And you. You frightened her into a coma.
The greedy creature in his belly said she could take it. She can handle whatever you want to give her and more. She’s special, a Seer, and a believer in the supernatural. She knew on some level this was real already.
He allowed his eyes to examine her hair, licking like red flames against the pale pillow. He could think of no other human in real life or in art to compare her to. A prominent nose, defiant chin, sculpted cheekbones, and regal neck. Though her face was relaxed in sleep, she retained a fierceness that not even sleep could hide. He dared not touch her. She radiated the energy of someone who woke, fully alert, to snatch an intruder’s weapon at the slightest breath.
Her lips were painted the color of pink peonies, but the soft rosy flesh of her full lips beckoned him, against rational thought.
And then he did something he might never forgive himself for. He knew it was wrong, but he was already halfway there. Inside her bag, she had files on all reported paranormal creatures of this world, but he wanted to read them for himself.
Carefully, he reached into her bag and found the file folder she’d brought with her and her dead mobile phone.
The human and the angel in him collided. And the angelic side was not always good and right.
How would she respond if she woke and saw Samuel in his true form? Would she scream? Pass out again? Attack?
If his brothers caught him with a human there in his bed, he would have to explain himself. And some of his brothers were not great at listening.
They were all much better at vibrating. The vibrations kept the Nephilim alive, and cloaking made the vibrations dull and useless. All the work he had done in her mind to get her there was doubly draining.
And yet, looking down at the tiny, beautiful creature sleeping in his enormous bed, he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to slip between the covers and fold her body up in his wings. Blanket her small frame in feathers and hold her tight in his arms as she slept. Pet her hair. Touch her cheek.
Madness. Just wait for her to wake up and use your magic to calm her down. Or give her some more of that drink from the jar she dropped in the woods.
Samuel ran his thumb over the raised letters on the outside of the jar he’d found next to her when she’d fallen and passed out. He regretted her being dragged through the woods that way. He hadn’t taken into account that she might be unsteady on her feet. Against all reason, Samuel pressed his lips against the stranger’s neck. He inhaled the scent of wild summer berries and exhaled onto her the dust of stars and moons. The closeness of her skin ensnared him far beyond the temptations that had gotten him to lure her up the mountain.
He closed his eyes and saw for the first time his future.
In the kiss, he saw her. He saw the day she was born, her first words, the spelling bee championship, winning student council president, school newspaper awards. A senior class trip to the Field Museum in Chicago, where she saw a mummy for the first time and decided she would study history and anthropology.
Samuel’s life had not been easy, but it had been simple and straightforward up until then. Protect the scrolls, teach humans the things forbidden by heaven, but otherwise do what you want and wait for the end of the world. Then, you can claim your reward—seek your revenge. That was more or less their motto as Nephilim, the children who had been betrayed by heaven.
But after so many millennia, the woman, who had yet to speak real words to him out loud, had come along and he was having feelings for her. There were prophecies and destinies to consider. Humans and their free will muddled everything up.
She will make the journey easier.
But no, that couldn’t be right.
That promise was only the Watcher trying to make him feel better, to give him hope in the face of the horror that was about to take place. Full-blooded angels never needed hope. Their future lay ahead, inevitable. They existed to carry out orders; they were privy to the prophecies and resigned to bring about destiny. There was no reason to hope because, good or bad, events were foretold, and things took place no matter what one’s feelings were around it.
But humans almost always maintained a small thread of hope for the future.
He reached out a hand and threaded his fingers through her hair. Ada nuzzled his pillow and mumbled in her sleep. She would be waking up soon.
He let himself, as he was stroking her hair, rest his palm briefly on her forehead. That touch of soft, damp skin endangered them both.
He pulled away from her and stood up. Samuel would not allow himself to see it. To read her future would influence him to either guide her down a different path or to offer too much support, intentionally or not, toward meeting that destiny.
If he liked her as much as he thought he did, if he understood her like he thought he did, it was best not to be aware of her future at all.
Ada stirred again, and in the half-second before her eyes opened, Samuel vanished into the shadows.
Chapter Eleven
Ada
Only in dreams did anyone ever kiss her like that or make her feel that content.
Reality came crashing down as soon as Ada’s eyes flew open.
Her terrified gasp woke her with two thoughts. First, her head felt as if she might still be drunk and a most earth-shattering headache was on its way. Second, that was no dream kiss.
Where in the Sam Hill was she? And who had been touching her? Was it him?
Whoever it was was still there. She could feel it in the air.
Was he in this room? Where was this room, anyway?
The campsite. I was camping with those jerks from the TV show and I walked away. Why did I walk away? Fireflies, supernatural pheromones in the air, slight drunkenness? I remember walking for a long time, falling, and then flying. Flying? Yes, my stomach had done that queasy elevat
or thing…and that’s all I remember.
She felt around on her body for her phone, but she was only dressed in underwear.
Her cargo shorts and tee-shirt were gone. Oh my god, what happened last night?
And the bed was huge. Her first thought was she had passed out drunk and one of the guys from LA had taken advantage. Maybe he’d even put her on a plane with him back to some strange old Hollywood mansion, and she was trapped in some castle-owning weirdo’s sex dungeon. That must have been it.
The moonshine had caused hallucinations about up being down, down being up, sensations of flying, visions of purple fireflies, and a huge church in the woods. That man at the inn ought to get his still licensed, because he could make a fortune off the stuff.
“My bag,” she breathed, crawling to the edge of the bed, the cold air waking her up more when it hit her bare skin. She spotted her bag on a small antique table and rifled through it until she found her phone. Completely dead. She pulled out her cord and began exploring the room for an outlet, but found none.
What the hell is this place? And then she felt the urge to lie back down because her head was woozy from standing up too fast.
It was on the way back to the bed that she saw the goblet of water on the table next to a tiny bowl containing two white pills. She picked them up to examine them and saw it was a common pain reliever. However, did she trust that it was Tylenol? If it was, at least whoever had brought her here was thoughtful enough to think of her impending hangover. She drank the water with gusto but left the pills. The water could have been tainted with something dreadful, but her thirst was overwhelming. She wiped her mouth and looked around her and pouted at her useless phone.
Ada scrambled off the bed and made for the door, a massive structure with medieval-looking hinges. It was so large that someone fifteen feet tall could fit through it easily. She pulled and pulled at the iron handle, but the door did not budge.
