The Daughter of Zion

by Elicia Hyder

  Rogan grabbed Torman’s forearms and clapped what looked like two metal slap bracelets onto his wrists.

  I took a step, but Iliana turned her hand toward me. She cut me off before I could speak. “You made a deal with him. I did not.”

  Well.

  A shocking thought detonated in my mind. Iliana was now of age. She commanded not only her entourage, but all the angels in Eden.

  Iliana commands me too.

  My mouth parted.

  Torman caught my eye as Rogan led him away. “Warren! Warren, you promised!”

  I shrugged. What else could I do?

  “You’ve been gone a long time, Appa. A lot has changed while you’ve been away.”

  “Apparently.”

  “All angels suspected of being fallen are now taken into custody,” the Angel of Death Samael explained.

  “Taken where?”

  “Back to headquarters.” Iliana watched Torman and Rogan go down the hill. “We’ve been looking for this one for quite a while.”

  “Torman, why?”

  Her eyes widened a bit. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

  Yeah. Seventeen years’ worth of information, apparently.

  Rogan pulled some jungle-camouflage netting off a four-wheeler I hadn’t seen disguised in the trees. He forced Torman onto the back of it and secured him to it with his powers as a guardian.

  “Why don’t you come back to the resort with us?” Iliana nudged my side. “We can discuss everything there. Mom will want to see you.”

  “Mom?” Every nerve ending inside me stood at attention. “Sloan’s here?”

  Iliana smiled. “Yeah. About twenty minutes away by ATV. She and Da—” Her lips snapped shut.

  “It’s OK. Nathan’s your dad too,” I said gently.

  “They came over with me when we got word you and Fury were still alive.”

  “When was that?” Reuel asked.

  Iliana thought for a moment. “Ten, eleven months ago, I think. Cassiel came from Eden to tell us just before…”

  “Before what?”

  “Before the spirit line was destroyed,” Samael said, his voice tight with emotion.

  I raked my fingers through my hair. “I can’t believe it.”

  There were only a handful of angels powerful enough to destroy the spirit line. The Morning Star—the angel who’d created it—was one of them. After he was thrown out of Eden, a powerful veil kept the spirit line hidden from him—a veil I’d unintentionally destroyed when we were in Nulterra.

  “That’s only the beginning of it, I’m afraid.” Samael gripped my shoulder. “The Father, too, was outside Eden when the bridge between worlds collapsed.”

  “Shit. The Father’s on Earth?” In his human form, outside Eden, the Father was almost as limited as a mortal. I didn’t have to ask to know we’d be screwed without him in Eden.

  Samael nodded sadly. “Yes, but I’m not sure where he is at the moment. He came to help during the fever and has been traveling to take care of the sick.”

  “Fever?”

  Samael’s face fell. “There’s so much to tell you.”

  “Cassiel is here as well,” Iliana said.

  I pointed to my feet. “Like here, here?”

  “At the resort,” she said.

  There were bigger problems to worry about, but my brain quickly did the math on the situation. Every woman I’d ever had any real relationship with was on la Isla del Fuego, the Island of Fire.

  Hell of a way to begin the apocalypse.

  “Is Azrael at the resort too?” I asked.

  Samael and Iliana exchanged a loaded glance. Neither of them answered.

  My stomach twisted. “What?”

  “Azrael’s at Claymore in New Hope,” Samael said.

  I relaxed.

  Iliana’s head tilted toward her group. “Come on. Let’s go see Mom.”

  “Warren?” Reuel held up Hannah’s ethereal hand.

  “Oh.” I looked at Samael. “Without the spirit line, human souls are stuck here, aren’t they?”

  He nodded slowly, his eyes dim with concern. “It’s been a problem.”

  “I bet.”

  “But her father’s soul is still here.” Samael looked around, like Hannah’s dad might be standing behind us.

  “He’s dead, you mean?”

  “Yes. A few months ago.”

  “Well…” A worried sigh puffed out my cheeks. “Think you and Reuel can find Hannah’s father?”

  “Of course,” Samael said, bowing his head. “Then I can bring Reuel to the resort to meet you.”

  “Excellent. Thank you, Samael.”

  “It’s really the least I can do.” He turned to Reuel. “Ready?”

  Reuel looked down the hill to where Fury was crying and hugging the boy she’d given birth to, the boy who was now a grown man.

  “I’ll take care of her,” I told him.

  With a heavy sigh, he nodded.

  “We won’t be long,” Samael added.

  When they turned to leave, Hannah broke free of Reuel’s hand and ran back to me. I bent and caught her in a hug, and for a brief second, my heart was full. Like the whole dangerous trip, which had stolen the best parts of my life, wasn’t for nothing.

  I wished I could go with them to shake her father’s hand when I delivered my promise of returning her. But there was too much else to be done, and I’d only just gotten my own daughter back. As a father, I was sure Hannah’s would understand.

  I stroked her hair. “I’ll see you and your papa again.”

  I hoped that would be true, that someday I’d see them both in Eden. But unless we found a way to recreate the spirit line, Hannah would never go there.

  Neither would I. I’d be locked out of my heavenly home forever.

  Hannah scampered back to Reuel, and the three of them walked toward the mirrored Nulterra Gate.

  “You all right?” Iliana asked gently.

  “My brain hurts.” I turned toward her. “So much to process.”

  “I’m sure.” She slipped her hand into mine. “We’ll have plenty of time to catch you up.”

  I forced a smile, and we started down the hill. My eyes were on Fury and her son. “He calls himself Jett?”

  “Yeah. He also answers to Malak.”

  I stopped and spotted Rogan near the trees. “And Rogan, he’s…” I couldn’t remember the ridiculous name his biological mother, Shannon, had come up with. He looked a lot like her. Same peachy skin, same blonde hair.

  “Nico,” Iliana said with a knowing grin. “But he prefers Rogan.”

  “What’s his full name?” I asked, unable to remember.

  Iliana snickered. “Reginald Nicolas Green-Reese, the Fourth. His mother calls him Nico.”

  “Oh god, that’s right. Still, so funny.” I laughed, and it felt good. Felt good to think about anything other than reality at that moment.

  Seventeen years.

  As we neared, the other faces in the group finally came into focus. I blinked. Cruz was there, grayer now. Slimmer too. And Kane was more salt than pepper, but mostly unchanged. Still strong. Still intimidating. Another man was with them I didn’t recognize. I looked around for Enzo and didn’t see him anywhere.

  They walked over to greet me.

  “Welcome back, brother,” Kane said, first offering me his hand and then pulling me into a hug.

  I hugged Cruz next. “God, it’s good to see you,” he said, slapping me on the back.

  “Where’s Enzo?” I asked.

  “Washington probably,” Kane answered, resting his bulky arms over his rifle.

  “Washington?”

  “Works at the Pentagon, last we heard,” he said.

  “Damn.” As I turned to introduce myself to the new guy, I caught sight of Fury’s face. She was wiping her eyes as she took a step back from Jett, and she looked like she might faint.

  The new guy would have to wait.

  I touched the small of her back, and she sn
iffed. “Jett, this is Warren. Warren, this is—” She swallowed.

  I stretched out my hand. “Nice to see you again, Jett. Or should I call you Malak?”

  Jett looked at my hand for a second before he accepted it—a forced human gesture if ever I’d seen one. “Jett is fine. It’s nice to finally meet you, Warren.”

  When he released me, he turned to Iliana who was standing behind him. I put my hand on Fury’s waist. “You OK?”

  She nodded, but it was a clear no as she turned into me, burying her face in my chest. I guided her away from the group and let her cry.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” I whispered against her hair.

  Her nails dug into my sides.

  I anticipated there would be a lot of this in the coming days. First Flint, Fury’s father, sacrificing himself to get us out of Nulterra alive—now this. It was too much, even for me.

  “How did no one know this?” she asked.

  “I should have. I should’ve put it together, but I didn’t.”

  “You couldn’t have.”

  “We knew the Morning Star created Nulterra in the image of Eden. We also knew he did it in direct response to the Thousand Year Prophecy. Now it’s so clear. I should’ve seen it.”

  “There’s no way, Warren. If the Father himself didn’t know, how could you?”

  My mind drifted back to my last time in Eden. I’d seen the Father in the Throne Room where he waited for news about our journey. His words floated to my memory: “I’m sorry for all this trip is costing you, but you’ll have plenty of time with your daughter when you get back.”

  My jaw tightened. The Father had known. He’d known all along.

  Fury rested her forehead against my breastbone. “What do we do now?”

  I kissed the top of her head. “One day at a time. Or hell, maybe we’re taking it minute by minute at the moment.”

  That, at least, got her to look up and crack a smile.

  She relaxed into me again, turning her face toward Jett. The boy who was never really her son. “He’s a man.”

  “Well, technically, he’s an angel.”

  “You know what I mean.” She let out a slow breath. “John raised him.”

  Before we’d left, her ex, John McNamara, had found out he wasn’t Jett’s biological father as he’d thought. Fury hadn’t cheated on him—as an angel, Jett had no biological father—but she hadn’t told John the truth either.

  He’d threatened to leave Jett at the front gate of the Claymore compound if we were gone more than two weeks. With the time jump, we’d missed the deadline—by a lot.

  “John’s a hothead, but he’s a decent man,” I said.

  “He’s still alive. Living off the grid now, sort of close to Claymore.”

  “Not in Raleigh anymore?”

  She shook her head. “Jett said most people evacuated the major cities. There was some kind of disease outbreak a few years ago.”

  “Samael called it a fever.”

  “Didn’t you and Sloan discover that the Morning Star was developing some kind of weaponized virus at a lab in Chicago?”

  “Yeah, but if he’s responsible for the disease, then Azrael wasn’t successful in locking him up,” I said, staring out over the Nulterra Gate.

  She shuddered against me. “I can’t even think about that right now.”

  I pushed her back to arm’s length, holding onto her shoulders. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t know about you, but I could use a really strong drink.”

  “Amen.”

  Her sister, Anya, joined us. “Where’s Reuel?”

  “He and Samael took Hannah to find her father, probably at their village nearby. I’m sure he won’t be gone long.”

  “Their village?” Fury asked.

  “The spirit line is gone. There’s no way to take human souls to Eden now.”

  “So dead people are stuck here?” Fury asked.

  Anya’s eyes widened. “Like ghosts?”

  “Like ghosts,” I confirmed.

  “Whoa,” the two sisters said together.

  I looked at the bandage around Anya’s throat. “How’s your neck?”

  “Hurts. I need to see a doctor soon.”

  I blinked. “Oh shit.”

  “What?” she asked, alarmed.

  “You don’t need a doctor.” I turned toward my daughter, who was talking with Kane. “Iliana?”

  “That’s right. Iliana’s an Angel of Death and Life.”

  I watched her walk across the grass. “The most powerful being in all of existence.”

  “What’s up?” Iliana asked when she was close enough.

  “This is Fury’s sister, Anya.” The two girls—shit, I mean, women—shook hands. I put my hand under Anya’s chin, and when I tilted her head up to display the gauze surrounding her neck, she winced. “Think you can help her?”

  “Heal her, you mean?”

  I nodded.

  “Of course. Can you take off the bandage?”

  As gently as I could, I helped Anya peel off the tape and gauze. The tendons strained in her neck as we pulled the gauze away. Charred flesh pulled away with it, and blood and water drizzled down her skin. Anya cried out in pain.

  “Stop,” Iliana said. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so fresh.” She curled her hands over the top of what remained of the gauze. Then she closed her eyes, and the brightest light I’d ever seen outside Eden shrouded them both.

  I shielded my eyes with my forearm and backed up. Everyone was watching. All of SF-12 was smiling.

  The light dissipated, and Anya gasped for air as she grabbed her throat. She pulled away what remained of the bandages.

  There wasn’t so much as a scar left behind.

  “Wow!” Laughing, I clapped my hands. “That’s my girl right there! Hey, Kane, did you see that?”

  He smiled and nodded his head. “I did, sir. She’s quite impressive.”

  “Yes, she is.” I grabbed Iliana and wrapped my arms around her again.

  She gave my chest a patronizing pat. “Welcome home, Appa.”

  I kissed her forehead.

  Over her head, my eyes caught the glint of the sun off the silver case we’d carried the blood-stone cuffs in. “I need to finish something.”

  “What?” Iliana asked.

  “I swore I was going to seal the gate for good. I know Nulterra is gone, but what lies beneath that mirror is a shrine. An altar of worship for the Morning Star. I want to make sure no one ever happens upon it again.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “Come on.”

  She walked with me to the case at the gate’s edge. The rest of our group followed. I knelt down and opened the case. Inside were the sanguinite cuffs we’d used to take Fury into Nulterra.

  I pulled them out, and one by one, tossed them toward the center of the circle. The entire surface rippled with a supernatural wave. I spread my wings and lifted into the air.

  Iliana joined me.

  Stunned, I dropped a few feet. “But…” I flew in a circle around her. “You don’t have wings.”

  She smiled. “I don’t need wings.”

  “Can you do this?” I opened my hands and stretched my fingers as wide as I could spread them. Then I bent my knuckles till my hands became strained claws. Fire sparked and sizzled, then danced in my palms.

  Iliana’s eyes widened. “Whoa. That’s cool. Can you teach me?”

  There was something wildly comforting about the fact there was still a thing or two her old dad might teach her. Something told me she’d pick up the skill faster than I had.

  I extinguished the fire in one hand and held the other in front of my face. “Fire is nothing but energy, oxygen, and fuel. This air has the oxygen. I create the energy.”

  “And the fuel?”

  “Hydrogen.” I tapped my knuckles against my chest. “Our bodies have a higher concentration of it than average humans.” I let the fire go out and showed her the empty palm of my hand. “The hard
part is drawing the hydrogen to the surface of—”

  “Like this?” She focused hard on her hand, and in a few seconds, sparks ignited in her palm.

  I laughed. “Yeah. Something like that.” I shook my head. “It took me years to learn that.”

  She held up the flame and looked through it. “Now what?”

  “Now we burn the blood-stone cuffs,” I said, looking down at the salt mirror.

  I lowered until I was a few feet above the surface. I aimed my hands at the scattered pieces of blood stone. Fire shot like a blowtorch from my palms.

  At first, not much happened, but it was widely known that sanguinite had an incredibly high melting point.

  Iliana’s flame joined mine.

  The stone changed from its reddish-black to bright red. Then from red to orange. Orange to yellow. Then, finally, from yellow to blue.

  It began to lose its form, and the sanguinite melted in a wide puddle as it mixed with the salt of the mirror. It spread…and spread…until it finally spread across the surface.

  “What now?” Iliana asked over the noise of the fire.

  “Cassiel says once it’s thoroughly boiled, it will harden into a—”

  The center of the boiling mirror gave way, and the ground started rumbling and shaking. Fury and the others below steadied themselves on the trembling earth. The hole at the center of the gate widened, thick steam and smoke rising out of it.

  I dropped my hands, letting the fire go out. So did Iliana. We both rose higher into the air. Looking down into the hole, I saw liquid fire churning toward the surface.

  I spun toward Fury. “Get back! Get up the hill!”

  Our friends on the ground ran to the highest point away from the mirror. I hoped it would be enough. The hole continued spreading, the entire surface now cracking and crumbling and falling to the depths below.

  The noise was deafening. Rocks crashing against rocks. Hissing. Popping.

  I grabbed Iliana’s hand, pulling her to the side as smoke billowed up from the depths. Hot smoke that smelled like rotten eggs.

  Liquid fire, like boiling magma, roiled and bubbled its way to the surface until the giant crater was filled to the rim. The hot lava-like substance sloshing onto the grass.

  Iliana and I settled on the ground at the top of the hill with our friends.

  “Is it a volcano?” Iliana asked.

  “I don’t think so.” I reached for Fury, and she took my hand. “I believe that’s the lake of fire.”