I cleared my throat, interrupting their heated argument. They turned to look at me.
“I’ve got places to be. An heirloom to get back.”
Eae spluttered. “You will not go after the Seal. It belongs with me, if it belongs with anyone!” he met my eyes, his wings flaring out. “I. Am. Eae. The Demon Thwarter! Of course I should have it!” he hissed pompously.
Nate frowned at his display. “I’m pretty sure she can do whatever she fucking pleases, Your Holiness.” Eae rounded on him, redirecting his fury into a fresh argument.
“And I’m a firm believer that heirlooms should stay in the family,” I said casually.
My words cut them both off like a glass crashing to the floor at a dinner party. They stilled, and then slowly turned to look at me. “What?” Nate asked, staring into my eyes.
“Nameless seems to think that I’m descended from King Solomon, that I can control the Seal all by myself. Wants me to use it for him, but I’ve got other plans.”
“Cool name,” Nate muttered almost subconsciously, as his brain tried to process the rest of what I had said. Then he was slowly nodding to himself, as if finding facts to back up my claim – at least enough to merit a debate.
“Nameless is not a cool name. It is not even an Angel’s name,” Eae hissed, sounding on the edge of violence.
“He said he changed his name.”
Eae blinked. “That wouldn’t change who he is…” he said, frowning.
I shrugged. “He thinks that the other Angels are too proud, reminiscing about the glory days with their powerful names,” I arched an eyebrow at him pointedly, enjoying his resulting scowl, “and forgetting their duties. He chose to adopt a new moniker.”
As Eae processed that, Beckett’s words came to mind, supporting my suspicion of Eae. As many mistakes as Beckett had made recently, he’d gotten at least one thing right. The Angels don’t care about us. Never have. They have their own agendas and will crush anyone who stands in their way.
“You believe him?” Nate asked me. “That you’re related to King Solomon?”
I met his eyes and nodded confidently.
I didn’t, though. Not really. Sure, it explained a lot of weird things about me, but I didn’t have any real proof. Thinking about that, I realized that the only real proof would be to slip on the Seal of Solomon and throw myself against the Fallen Angels trapped inside.
Do or die.
But I didn’t let any of this show on my face. I needed Eae in a very specific situation.
“It will destroy you,” Eae finally said, forcing calm into his voice, trying a new tactic. “Even if it didn’t, no man should wield that power. It is too seductive. Too tempting.”
I leaned forward. “Not sure if you noticed, but I’m not a man.”
Nate smirked, but still rolled his eyes. That hadn’t been what Eae meant, and I knew it.
Eae studied me suspiciously. “How did you get the ring in the first place?”
I doubled down on my mental block, making sure it was rock solid. “I didn’t know I had it.”
Eae studied me with even greater suspicion, and I could tell he was unsuccessfully trying to probe my mind. And his failure was both pissing him off and making him uncertain.
“If you want it so badly, maybe you could just go ask Nameless for it,” I offered. “If he declines, you two can go off to a field in Kansas to duke it out. Blame the aftermath on a Superman sighting.”
Eae snorted, and I realized that as much as he thwarted demons, allegedly, he was not as confident in his ability to face-off against his fellow Angel. An unnamed one. Hell, Nameless could end up being the Archangel Michael or something, for all anyone knew.
Nate cleared his throat, interrupting us. I looked over to see him staring down Eae. “Kansas City belongs to Callie, and you are an unwelcome visitor. I didn’t ask you here to support your own motives, Eae. You promised to share what you found with her.” Eae’s face darkened, but he didn’t speak. “And I’m holding you to that, Angel,” Nate warned him in a very frosty tone.
Like Nate had just plucked his feathers, Eae shivered. “As agreed,” he said through gritted teeth. “We can discuss the Seal of Solomon at a later time,” he added not sounding the least bit pleased about it, but not daring to break his word.
Or possibly to stand up against Nate.
I stared from one to the other. “What are you talking about?” I asked, frowning uncertainly.
Eae lowered his eyes. “It’s about your parents,” he said in a surprisingly sympathetic tone. I took a step back instinctively, shaking my head. How… had I forgotten about that?
Nate had told me – what felt like a lifetime ago – that he would get Eae to look into my parents. Had the Seal of Solomon really kept me from remembering such a burning desire to discover their background?
Had Eae been right about the seduction of the Seal?
Nate cleared his throat delicately and I slowly turned to look at him. “I found them, Callie…” Eae grunted meaningfully. “Well, I helped find them,” Nate clarified. “If you need me, I’ll be outside.” He smiled sadly and turned to leave.
I flung out a hand, latching onto his sleeve, stunned that he was just walking away. Leaving me to face this alone. “I might need a… friend to lean on,” I whispered, my heart beginning to beat faster. My parents. I had wanted information about them for so long, but…
Right now?
Nate was shaking his head firmly. “You don’t need to lean on anyone, Callie. In fact, it might do you some good to… wobble a little.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Excuse me? It sounds like you’re saying I could stand to be knocked down a peg or two.”
Nate blinked, caught off guard. “What? No. I meant…” his eyes grew distant, and whatever he was remembering, hurt him. “Look, I’ve had to have a talk like… this,” he said, waving a hand at Eae. “I thought I wanted friends with me, needed friends with me, for support. But I learned that using a crutch only delays the healing. Meaning you won’t see your fall coming, and it will hit you when you least expect it, knocking you on your ass at the worst possible moment. Sometimes… we need to stand and take the punches. Be prepared to fall at a time of our own choosing. The blows will hurt, but…” he smiled encouragingly, “things like this are supposed to hurt, right? It means your heart is still open. Not broken…”
I realized I was sobbing softly, irrationally angry at him for being… right.
“You don’t need me to help you take off your Band-Aids.” He squared his shoulders, lifting his chin. “And I respect you too much to be your crutch, Callie…” He subconsciously scratched at his chest as he spoke, right where he wore the coin necklace that disguised his Horseman’s Mask. The Horseman of Hope. Something about that tickled my memory.
Then he was walking away, disappearing into the darkness.
Leaving me with the Angel.
Chapter 46
I sat down in the center of my circle, staring as Eae sat directly before me.
I mentally prepared myself for the emotional beat-down ahead. I knew it wasn’t going to be a happily ever after story, because – spoiler alert – I already knew a demon killed them in the end. Johnathan had bragged to me about it while trying to torture me to death.
But I’d never read the first chapters of their book. Or the prequel.
“Your mother was a dark wizard,” he said, watching me with an expressionless face.
I stared at him in silence, imagining ripping off his wings by hand. Luckily, he couldn’t read my thoughts, so I relished in it for a few moments. I don’t know why the statement angered me so much. It wasn’t like I had ever known her. She could have been a polka-dotted owl for all I knew. For all it mattered. She had abandoned me. Left me on the steps of the church. And I’d once had the audacity to actually believe that I had been touched by heaven. Eae’s single statement had just ripped through that like a paper target at a RPG testing facility.
“Explai
n,” I managed in a whisper.
Eae’s face was merciless as he nodded. “A dark wizard,” he repeated in a monotone. “She employed black magic. Sacrifices, rituals, murder. A truly despicable person. The works.”
I felt myself growing cold, wanting to scream and snarl and hurt something. “Your bedside manner is truly overwhelming,” I said in a dangerously calm tone.
He didn’t react. He just continued to watch me. I took a deep breath, forcing the rage down. “Fine. So, you think I’m broken. That’s why you don’t trust me. But you forget that I’m my own woman, Angel. I have free will, remember?”
His lips thinned, but he continued to watch me, staring straight into my eyes. It was more than a little unnerving. As if he was trying to read my gray matter, or considering how best to dissect me. Where to slice first. Or maybe he sensed something within me. The Sphinx. The Whispers.
No. I had that part of me locked down. Maybe that was why he was staring at me so intently, wondering why all he could hear was white noise.
“Stop staring, creep. Talk.”
He narrowed his eyes one last time, as if not best pleased. “It is good that you accept your mother’s past, because that was well behind her when you came into the picture.”
I gritted my teeth, barely forcing the words out. “I’ve wondered how your wings would look nailed to the wall of my living room… But I don’t like to be cruel.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously as he picked up on my indirect insult. “Let’s not pretend that I’m a nice childhood friend. I’m an Angel. Eae, the Demon Thwarter.” The room pulsed and I felt an unseen physical force slightly press against me. He watched my reaction, and… didn’t look best pleased when he realized that I wasn’t sobbing and crying bloody tears of rapture. “You are an anomaly,” he continued, frowning pensively. “It is my duty to make sure that anomalies do not put the Realm of Man at risk. So, yes. I’m testing you. Reading into your responses. Tracking your pulse. Trying to read your mind.” I smiled smugly and he realized he had inadvertently admitted to failing at the mind-reading thing, which I was betting wasn’t usual for him.
“At least I can still ward us,” he continued. “No one can eavesdrop with me nearby. I’m blocking them.”
I kept my face blank. Was he talking about Phix? The Whispers? Both? I nodded as if I wasn’t concerned, although I hoped Phix wasn’t suddenly murdering everyone in town in her quest to find me.
She hadn’t sounded pleased when Eae kidnapped me.
“I’m still waiting for you to show me why I shouldn’t redecorate my living room.”
He snarled. “Be careful what you wish for, Little Nephilim. I will show you the fable of Titus and Constance. Your father and mother.” And he grabbed my entire face with one hand before I could react to hearing my father’s name for the first time.
Chapter 47
I found myself in the middle of the deep, dark woods – you know the place – creepy tendrils of fog drifting about like a nest of snakes, creepy ravens cawing in the darkened branches, a wolf howling, perhaps, and imagined eyes everywhere I looked.
Except the place was slightly hazy, as if made of smoke. A reflection of a memory. Despite it being night, there was an ambient glow to the woods, with neon flashes in my peripheral vision, like little crackles of electricity and motes of sparkling, multicolored dust forming the construct of the scene around us. The details faded into these hazy sparks around the edges, wherever I wasn’t directly looking.
I reached out to touch a bush, and my hand went right through it with a small disruption of neon sparks. So, not real. I began to wonder if Eae had designed this whole thing – this virtual reality – to play me. To manipulate me. Only one way to find out.
I walked towards a flickering light around a bend in the path ahead. I came upon a small clearing, the trees forming a thick canopy above, only allowing a fraction of moonlight through to stab the ground like a prison of lunar beams.
A woman knelt before two dead friends. Constance. My mother. I had never seen her before.
And she was sobbing with grief. My so-called evil mother was crying by herself, and it hurt something surprisingly deep inside me to witness it.
Eae’s whispered voice rolled across the wind, tickling my ears, narrating the scene.
Constance was a highly dangerous dark wizard. Titus – a well-respected Nephilim – was sent to kill her. He found her like this, crying over these two fallen witches. One dead, one soon on her way to death.
I glanced up to find a man standing across the small clearing, a white glow limning his silhouette. My father… staring at… my mother.
My parents. Enemies.
I shivered, eyes watering with sudden longing. I was so close. They looked so real…
It wasn’t clear if the witches had been allies or enemies, Eae’s voice continued, but Titus found this dangerous, dark wizard crying for them…
Constance slowly looked up to stare at Titus – her executioner. She didn’t react aggressively. In fact, she began to sob harder. Not in defeat, but… with genuine grief.
Titus… frowned, unsure what to make of it all. He was a tall, strong, pale-haired man with bright, penetrating eyes. I studied them, recognizing the coolly rational thoughts racing through his mind. Was Constance attempting to deceive him?
The scene warped as Eae continued speaking in my ears, the world rebuilding right before my eyes into a wide cavern, complete with a cell tucked in one corner.
Against all orders, Titus showed mercy to Constance. He decided to capture rather than kill her. He locked her away and allowed her to recover from both her supposed grief and the wounds she had been hiding from him. Even though he didn’t properly ward her cell – a test – she never once tried to escape…
I watched as Constance sat silently in her cell. She looked so similar to me that I couldn’t have denied our relation if I wanted to. Because in this memory, she looked to be maybe in her early thirties. Her hair was blonde, a beautiful golden color, and despite her captivity in the cell, she was not covered in filth.
Titus knelt before the cell, watching her as if she were a bug in a box. He didn’t speak. Only stared unblinking at this evil, dark wizard he had captured. It was easier to make out his features now, revealing an angular, chiseled face beneath his messy pale hair.
Constance stared right back at him, her chin propped in her palm, seeming just as curious and wary of Titus as he was of her. No hatred or romance shone in either set of eyes. They just watched each other, as if trying to understand the actions of their opponent.
A Nephilim who had disobeyed orders to let a dark wizard live.
A dark wizard who had grieved over two dead witches, not fighting her captor.
“Is this a new interrogation technique, Nephilim?” Constance finally asked him in an amused tone, head still propped in her palm as she used her free hand to tap the iron bar with a fingernail. “We both know this isn’t sufficiently warded. Do you attempt to offer me hope? Salvation? Only to take it away at the last moment when I try to break free and you shut me down, filling me with despair?” She chuckled mirthlessly, lowering her finger from the bars. “There is no hope for what I’ve done, Nephilim. Either finish this or give me to someone who will. I don’t have the courage to end it myself, and don’t appreciate being studied like an experiment.”
Titus’ eyes might have widened a fraction at her honesty, or perhaps in surprise at her seeing through his plan, but he otherwise continued to sit motionless. But he looked more tense, now.
Something about the vision changed, and I was suddenly watching it in fast forward. Titus never moved. But Constance was now shifting from spot to spot within her cell, sleeping, sitting, standing at the bars to watch her captor, kneeling on the ground, meditating, and even praying.
She never tried to break out and he never moved.
Maybe my father had been trying to break her. With silence.
Eae spoke softly, his voice drifting to my
ears like a lover’s sigh. At first, he didn’t believe her. Vigilantly waiting for her to reveal her true nature, to show him that he had made a terrible mistake in allowing her to live rather than killing her in the woods.
That he should have obeyed his command rather than succumbing to her momentary display of compassion for her fallen sisters. That his duty to God had been ignored for no purpose.
He kept her as his captive for months… but never remained in the same place for long…
I gasped as the scene changed, blurring with activity for a moment, slowing only for a few seconds to reveal a startling new scene before blurring again to reveal another.
Them riding camels through an endless twilight desert, staring at each other pensively. Blur. Both hunkered back to back in an icy cavern. Blur.
Them hacking and slashing through a forgotten jungle with stained, rusted machetes. Blur.
Caves, caves, and caves – all different geographies and topographies – one of them always on lookout as the other slept. Blur.
Eae continued as more and more visions of their travels whisked before my eyes. Constance soon realized that they were on the run from his own brothers – the Nephilim – who hunted him day and night for his betrayal in saving her life. It… baffled her.
He was nothing like she had feared but was an oath-breaking Nephilim.
And she equally baffled him – a remorseful dark wizard…
They had become accomplices, no longer captor and captive.
They had unknowingly freed each other from their bonds of servitude – chains of dark magic and Heavenly fires. Neither understood exactly when it had changed, or why, or how, but they accepted that they had abandoned all prior oaths in exchange for an oath to watch out for each other. Unwitting partners.
The visions slowed again…
Titus carrying my mother’s bleeding, unconscious form through a broken, burning city, screaming at her. “Don’t die on me, yet, Constance… Don’t. Die. Yet!” As tears ran down his soiled, unshaven cheeks. Blur.
Angel's Roar: Feathers and Fire Book 4 Page 22