I’d nearly made up my mind to run from the conference room, when the door opened and in stepped Luke. His normally warm smile was replaced by a weary and grim frown. He was followed by Esther and four other Nephilim who I vaguely recalled meeting at the party last week.
One was a woman in a striking red blouse with dark skin and bright red lipstick. The remaining three were men. One, I thought his name might have been Frederick, looked like he was in his sixties and had a thick head of gray hair. The second was of a similar age and had a shaved smooth head. The last was the eldest. He walked carefully, like a man well into his eighties, and sat across from me. I felt his eyes on my face, and looked up to see him cleaning his glasses on a cloth while he studied me.
“This is quite the surprise,” he said after everyone had seated themselves around the table. “Quite the surprise indeed. Never in my eight hundred and three years have I seen anything like it.”
I almost had to pick my jaw up from the table. Eight hundred and three years was a long time to live. He might not be a fierce warrior anymore, but he looked great for such an old man.
“Yes, quite,” Luke added. “We’re all in shock. None more than Lizzy, I imagine.”
My voice still wasn’t working. I simply nodded at him.
“How do we know that?” the beautiful dark woman with the red blouse spoke up. “How can we be sure she didn’t know about this all along and was sent here by demons? This could be a new strategy.”
“Lizzy is innocent, I assure you.” Luke placed his hands on the table in front of him. His voice was calm, but he closed his hands in tight fists. “After she was rescued from a terrible ordeal, I tested her myself to make sure she wasn’t possessed. She has done nothing worth suspicion.”
“Until now,” she replied.
“Ariana, please.” Luke held up one hand. “You know that a mere human, or even a possessed human, would not be capable of hijacking that ceremony. Only a Nephilim can be chosen as a partner. She must be one of us.”
I nearly fell out of my chair. A Nephilim? He had to be joking. That wasn’t possible.
“Is that a disappointing revelation, my dear?” the elder across the table asked me. He’d finished cleaning his lenses and put them back on his face.
“Uh…no.” I swallowed, trying to force my throat to work. “Not disappointing. I just…I just don’t know how it could be possible.”
At that moment, the door to the hallway swung open and Gabe stood there. I flinched at the look of rage on his face. He took one look around the room and then strode in, slamming the door behind him.
“I need to be here for this.” His voice was deadly tense. “I should be a part of this conversation.”
Esther stood, blocking the last empty chair. “You may only stay if it’s okay with Lizzy. If she wants you to wait outside, you’ll have to go.”
I blinked at him. The idea that I had any sort of say in this meeting was refreshing. Gabe’s anger was frightening, but he might as well stay. He had as big of a right as anyone. Maybe he could talk some sense into the board and tell them that I’m not a Nephilim. I’m just me. A mistake.
The board all turned to me, expecting an answer. Having seven pairs of eyes on me all at once made me want to hide below the polished surface of the conference table.
“It’s okay. He can stay.” My voice sounded small, even to my ears.
Gabe turned back to Esther, who cleared the way for him to sit. He dropped his hands on the table and looked my way, but I avoided his eyes. I didn’t want to see the disappointment that I knew would be there. After waiting for so long for the perfect partner, he got me. What a joke.
“Gabe, I know you’re worked up about the partnership rite, but first we have to get to the bottom of how this happened.” Luke ran a hand through his graying hair and sighed.
“I know,” he answered. “I just want the board to know that I trust Lizzy completely. She didn’t do anything wrong. As strange as this was, she is innocent of any demon plot. I swear it.”
I couldn’t keep the look of shock off my face. All I wanted to do was jump across the table and kiss him hard on those beautiful lips of his.
“Thank you for your input, Gabe,” Luke said. “I’m sure everyone else here will come to feel the same way. What we need to ask now is how did a Nephilim get misplaced?” He turned to me, his pale blue eyes intense in that moment. “Tell us about your parents, young lady.”
“I’m not sure what I can say.”
There wasn’t much to tell. Granny wasn’t exactly a waterfall of information. She’d kept most of her memories of my mother locked up tight.
“I have no clue who my father was. My mother ran away from our town a couple of years before she had me. When she came back, she was pregnant. She died when I was born.”
That was it, in a nutshell. Everything that Granny had divulged about my family history.
Luke tilted his head. “Who raised you?”
“Granny. My mother’s mother. Her real name is Ethel Redding, but everyone in town has called her Granny for as long as I can remember.”
Ariana pressed her hands on the table and stood. “This is a waste of time, Luke. The Hell Gate has been leaking more demons than ever over the past two decades. We’ve lost more Nephilim than I care to count in that time.” She pointed a perfectly manicured red fingernail at me. “This is just another attempt of theirs to destroy us.”
All the elders broke into an angry discussion once more, while I leaned back into the soft cushion of my chair. I didn’t want to be the source of their problems. I hadn’t come to the manor to break it apart. If they knew about my plans to leave, maybe they’d stop arguing about me.
“I’m leaving, if that makes you feel better,” I shouted above the noise. “With me gone, no one can claim that I was a part of a demonic plot. It’ll be better that way.”
The elders stopped arguing to look at me. Gabe, on the other hand, sprung from his chair and banged his fist on the table.
“You’re not leaving,” he shouted. “That demon is still out there hunting for you and she’ll stop at nothing until you’re found. We can’t protect you out there. You belong here and the ceremony only proved that.”
“But Gabe…” I didn’t want to say what was on the tip of my tongue. If I left, he wouldn’t have to put up with me as a partner. He could find someone stronger and more worthy of him. Someone who’d trained a lifetime to fight alongside him.
His mouth set in a stubborn line. “No. You can’t. Like it or not, we’re partners now, remember?”
I sighed into my hands. We were getting nowhere.
“Lizzy, just one more question and we’ll call it a night.” Luke placed his hand on my shoulder, drawing my attention away from the elders who were still standing around the table like they wanted to restart their argument. “Tell me. What was your mother’s name?”
It wasn’t easy to forget the name of the woman I’d killed in childbirth. Granny had named me after her. Maybe she thought it was a suitable punishment, to bear her name as a reminder of my curse.
“Elizabeth Quinn Redding,” I told him with a shrug. “Same as me.”
Esther gasped as Luke fell back in his seat, a glazed expression coming over his face. I looked back and forth between them, searching for some kind of explanation for their reaction.
“Elizabeth Quinn? Can it be?” Esther asked after a full minute of shocked silence. “Is it truly her?”
Luke shook his head back and forth. His mouth had fallen open.
“It has to be, dear sister.”
“You can’t seriously think…?” Ariana crossed her arms. “It’s just another trap, Luke.”
“You don’t understand.” He stood up and pushed his chair back. “My wife shared a secret with me before the demons took her. A secret that I only shared with one other person – my sister, Esther.”
I was getting the feeling everyone in the room knew something I didn’t. It was starting to frustrat
e me to be so out of the loop.
“What secret?”
Luke turned to me, his eyes full of profound sadness and longing.
“That she was with child."
"I'm sorry, but what does that have to do with me?"
Luke spread his fingers on the glossy surface of the table, and inhaled a large breath before answering.
"My wife's name was Elizabeth Quinn. When she was taken by the demons, I thought that our unborn child had died with her. If I’d known there was the tiniest chance she’d survived, I never would’ve stopped looking for you.”
“Wait, what?” I took a step back when he tried to touch my cheek. “What are you saying?”
“We know now why the partnership rite worked on you. Why you’re Nephilim. You are my daughter. You are my blood.”
The elders burst into argument again, but I didn’t pay them any attention. My mind was racing a hundred miles an hour. If I was getting this right, Luke was claiming to be my father. And if that was true, then this was where my mother had disappeared to before she gave birth to me. She’d left Hanna for a better life in Westward Manor. Why she ever left, was beyond me.
I’d always longed for a father to come take me away from Hanna, and love me the way I imagined my mother would’ve loved me. But that had only been a fairy tale. A sweet dream to entertain my restless nights when Granny had been particularly harsh. And yet, he was real. Flesh and blood, standing in front of me. Three hundred and twenty years old. Which meant I would live a long life, too.
Luke and I stared at each other, the rest of the room falling away. I could see the same longing in his eyes, accompanied now by hope. My stomach clenched at the thought of Luke finding out I wasn't the perfect daughter he'd always wanted. Granny had always found fault in me. It wouldn't take him long to learn that I had a hard time following rules. I hoped he could be more forgiving than Granny.
All the while, a thought buzzed at the back of my mind like a horsefly refusing to go away. Something from the night of the ball. A small factoid that remained embedded in my conscious, but nagged me all the same. I concentrated on it for a moment and then gasped. Luke had told me that his spot on the board was supposed to be passed down to his children. If I was Luke’s daughter, that meant I was next in line for his position. Gabe would automatically lose his spot.
I looked up in time to see Gabe’s back as he flew out of the conference room, not bothering to say goodbye.
Chapter Nineteen
The knock on our bedroom door tore me from a fitful sleep. From the way Raquel snored with her mouth wide open, she wouldn’t be answering it. I threw the sheets off and pulled a light sweater over my pajamas.
Last night had left me with a throbbing headache. After the meeting with the board ended, Luke had walked me back to my room and broken the news to Raquel. She’d been ecstatic to learn we were cousins, and would’ve woken everyone up in the manor to tell them, if Luke had let her. The news hadn’t really sunk in with me yet.
Now that I knew he was my father, I could see bits of myself in him. Same brown wavy hair. Same skin tone. And the same pale blue eyes that Granny had hated. But still, it didn’t seem real.
I rubbed my blurry eyes and opened the door to find Gabe standing there, already dressed in a fitted brown t-shirt, khaki pants, and combat boots. His sword hung from the belt on his back.
“Time to get up,” he said, leaning on the door frame with a maddeningly cool demeanor and a frown etched on his face. “Your training begins today.”
Training? What training?
“What time is it…?”
“It doesn’t matter what time it is, demons can attack at any hour,” he snapped, his green eyes flashing. “You’ve lived twenty-one years among humans and have a long way to go to catch up. We start today.”
I took a step back from the door as he fumed in the hall. This wasn’t the Gabe I was used to seeing. I should’ve known he’d take losing his spot on the board personally.
“Fine,” I told him, running my hands through my messy bedhead and reaching snarls at the end.
In terms of picking my battles, this was one I could pass on. Maybe it would make Gabe feel a little better to take out some of his frustration during a training session.
“Just give me a couple of minutes to change. I’ll be right back.”
I left him standing outside the door and threw on clothes I thought might work for training. Raquel’s spandex shorts and one of her sporty tank top. All skin tight, of course. They made me pine for the loose t-shirts and shorts that filled my drawers at Granny’s house. At least those clothes left a little more to the imagination.
Minutes later, Gabe and I strode across the northern lawn in tense silence. I wracked my brains for something to say – anything to lighten the mood, but couldn’t think of anything. He led me into the training complex and immediately, I was distracted by the enormous facility.
Five padded fighting rings took up the middle of the room. To my left was an assortment of boxing equipment and bags. On the back wall hung a selection of weapons, everything from swords to daggers to wooden sticks.
When I swung to the right, I saw a shooting range with three stalls and a shorter one for daggers. In a loft above the fighting rings was an area for weight sets and cardio machines. It was an athlete’s dream. Too bad I never was any good at sports.
Bree and Dominic were the only people in the training facility. They had already jumped on the weights and waved to us as we walked in. Gabe didn’t return their greeting. He marched in to the furthest fighting mat and planted his feet in the middle of it, waving me over.
“You are Nephilim now. That means you are sworn to protect the world from demons and their kind. It’s in your blood. You won’t be able to fight the urge.”
I thought about what he was saying. Maybe that urge was what had pulled me into the southern woods all those years. I didn’t know it then, but I was drawn to the Nephilim’s cause.
“There are several stages of training,” Gabe continued. “We’ll incorporate your studies with the physical, to make sure we make as much progress as possible. The first thing to learn are the different types of demons.”
I cocked my head at him. The idea that there were different kinds of demons had never occurred to me.
“The demons I saw in the woods all looked the same to me.”
“That’s because they were ferals. They’re the most common. Wild, unpredictable, pretty much animals. They’re the grunts of the demon world, and the first soldiers out the gate. Ninety percent of the demons we kill are ferals.”
“But there are others?”
“Yes.” Gabe held up three fingers. “There are the ferals, the deceivers, and the six Princes of Hell.”
Something told me I didn’t want to know about the others, but I asked anyway.
“How are they different?”
He raked a hand through his hair. “The six princes have never stepped foot on Earth, so you won’t have to worry about them for now.”
Oh great. Cross one thing off the ever expanding list of things I’d have to learn.
“Occasionally, the deceivers slipped through the gate,” Gabe continued. “They’re the ones with the brains and the cunning. Your goddess is a deceiver. She slipped through our fingers and has managed to survive a long time for being so near a Nephilim site. Her human host has rotted away over time from the evil it houses.”
I shivered at the memory of the goddess and her fleshy tongue against my skin. She’d been so close to having me for supper.
“Before a demon takes a human host, they all look the same. But when a feral grabs a human, its eyes become bloodshot and red. If a deceiver possesses a human, they’re undetectable, except by the test we put you through. A human’s eyes turn entirely black if they’re possessed.”
“And to think,” I said with a grin. “You didn’t even have to put me through that demon test. If only we knew then I was a Nephilim.”
�
�Doesn’t matter,” Gabe snarled. “The deceivers will stop at nothing to exterminate the Nephilim. You cannot risk anything if you want to survive in this world for very long, Lizzy.”
Yeesh. Someone couldn’t take a joke.
Gabe shook his head and his voice quieted. “That’s enough of that. Now, I want to know how well you fight. After I assess your skills, we’ll develop a training plan.” He unstrapped his sword and dropped it outside the ring. Taking a wide stance on the mat, he nodded. “Let’s begin.”
For a full ten seconds, I stared at him dumbly. Surely he didn’t want me to just charge at him. Gabe could kill me with one pinky. No way was I going to attack him.
“Come on,” he growled.
I shrugged and walked closer. Now was his chance to see how truly uncoordinated I really was.
“You want me to punch you or something?”
The only fight I’d ever seen was on the local cable Granny sometimes turned on in the evenings. We’d watched some of the old Batman shows. Those fight moves weren’t exactly killer.
“Attack me like I’m a demon,” he said. “You won’t hurt me. Give me your all.”
I sighed. So much for letting him get his frustration out. It sounded like it would be me doing all the heavy lifting. Spreading my legs apart like Gabe, I balled my hands into fists. It felt ridiculous, like I was pretending to be a ninja or something. Even six year old kids could fight better than me.
Stepping forward with my right leg, I punched out with my right arm at his chest. He snatched my fist and pulled it toward him, spinning me around faster than I could blink. Before I knew it, he had me pulled tight against his chest, his hand at my throat. He growled in my ear, releasing me before the heat of his body against mine got to my head.
“Weak. Try again.”
Rolling my eyes, I took the same stance. He was going to have to start at ground zero if he wanted to train me. This time, I aimed a kick at his thigh. With blinding speed, he grabbed my heel and yanked it up, dropping me hard on my back. Even with the padded floor, the way my head hit the ground had me seeing stars.
Heart of a Demon: A New Adult Paranormal Romance Page 12