Shadowhunter (Nephilim Quest Book 1)

by Leena Maria

  Miss Evelyn Harper rose to her feet. She wore something light-colored that flattered her lovely form and her wonderful blonde hair was lifted into a high knot and dressed in curls on the forehead. Her beautiful golden eyes smiled warmly at Mr. Donnelly.

  "How glad I am that you found time from your busy schedule to come and visit us," she said to her guest with a voice that rang like silver bells, and he could only bow and mutter compliments.

  "Please, do follow me. My brother will arrive shortly."

  And arrive he did – Mr. Donnelly did not know how to show his respect for this impressive man. He was very tall, had broad shoulders and black hair, and the same golden eyes as his sister. His movements were so fluid he seemed to be gliding through the air. He did not shake hands with Mr. Donnelly, but simply presented himself from across the room as Cain Harper.

  Mr. Donnelly could not help but notice that the body temperature of the siblings was quite high, but they did not seem to be ill in any way and they were not perspiring at all. They discussed matters in an educated manner, and seemed to know a great deal about Mr. Donnelly's line of expertise, which was ancient myths and cuneiform script – a writing only a few could translate as yet. Mr. Donnelly was most impressed with the fact that a young woman such as Evelyn Harper was so well educated in ancient knowledge and could talk about it with the confidence of a distinguished scholar.

  Cain Harper explained to Mr. Donnelly that he had come into possession of old manuscripts relating to his very field of study. He told Mr. Donnelly about some clay tablets that he had bought. They were from Mesopotamia, and written in cuneiform. An expert had told Mr. Harper the tablets were about the Annunaki, the gods who had created humankind. Would he be interested in reading and translating them? Any costs would be covered, of course.

  The cuneiform tablets themselves would have been enough, but the sum Mr. Harper offered to Mr. Donnelly almost made him weep. Never had he imagined that luck as great as this would arrive so suddenly and in such measure.

  He tried not to show his emotional turmoil, whilst he pretended to consider the offer. He asked a few deliberate questions in order to give the impression that he wanted to be sure the work matched his scholarly ambitions. After this he accepted, of course, and left his generous hosts with lavish hopes for fruitful cooperation in this exciting task.

  Poor Mr. Donnelly – little did he know what future had in store for him.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  54. Saving Elijah

  I spent that evening with my back turned to the big mirror in the bedroom I shared with Diana, holding a smaller mirror in my hand. Through it I watched my reflection in the big mirror, and learned how to open and close my wings. I knew instinctively how to do it, but as I was a beginner, my own wings tended to snap open like Daniel's had, that first time I had seen them. I sent the hanging lamp flying the first time I opened mine. It barely missed Diana's head and caused her to duck down in a corner of our room.

  "Hey, watch out, Birdie!" she yelled.

  "Sorry..." I made an apologetic face, "it isn't every day a girl gets her wings... not quite used to these yet."

  I fluttered my new silvery extensions. I have to admit I was excited about the wings, even with Elijah awaiting his fate in the ward.

  "You'd better not try flying without Daniel..." Diana shook her head and lifted the lamp to examine any damage to it. "You'd probably break the sound barrier with those if you tried flying now..."

  It was absolutely fascinating to watch how I could will the buds of the wings out of my back, and with little more concentration unfurl them. They reacted to my will so quickly that most of the time they just shot out like a bullet. It took great concentration to be able to slow the process even a little.

  The color was what I found most beautiful. I could stare at it endlessly – when I practiced my wing breathing, the wings expanded and withdrew ever so slightly. Though the movement of the wings was barely noticeable, the silver pulsing in the veins moved so fast it gave an almost glittering effect.

  Diana looked at me admiring my wings. She shook her head, amused.

  "If you keep up with that much longer, I swear I'll place you on top of the Christmas tree this year. Snap out of it. We have other things to do. Or I do, at least." She picked up a book on ancient Egypt - just one of the subject areas we had in common, which had brought us close together - and curled up on her bed. Soon she was immersed in her reading.

  I had to admit she was right. I needed to focus on something else. I closed my wings, feeling the odd sensation of them finding their place somewhere inside my back, and pulled on a shirt. I decided I would go see Elijah on the ward. I did not know how my wings had healed his wings, but I was glad they had. I felt happy about that at least.

  If only I'd realised how quickly my joy was going to vanish.

  I knew from the moment I walked into the ward. Elijah was sitting slumped on his bed. He had withdrawn his wings. Daniel was standing by his bed, no wings visible either, his face ashen. Lilith, Grandma and a doctor were there too, and their stunned expressions on their faces said it all.

  Elijah was infected.

  He looked up, when I stepped into the room and the pain in his eyes was like a physical blow to my heart. I seemed to hear a sad faint musical note in my mind.

  "Will you do it quickly, Daniel?" he whispered, "Now. Before I... change..."

  "No!" Daniel said through gritted teeth, "I refuse to do it! I will not kill you!"

  "But you must... As soon as I change, I will escape to the buffer zone and our secret about the gates will be out. The human we brought here cannot create a shadow whilst he's out of the buffer zone, so he can't leak the information. But I can, and I will, you know how the mind of a dark Nephilim works! I will have no loyalty to you anymore. And I have already lived for centuries, so I cannot complain about dying young."

  Daniel withdrew away from Elijah and saw me. His eyes were so full of despair that tears welled into my eyes. I felt the same huge compassion I had felt when seeing Elijah lying on the bed with his broken wings.

  "Isn't there anything that can be done?" I whispered, not really directing the words to anyone in particular.

  The doctor shook his head.

  "The infection will spread, it is like aids, or any other serious virus. Once you have it in your system, it will never leave. And there is no medication that could control it. The Nephilim have tried to find a cure for thousands of years, but there is none."

  Daniel stormed out of the room, swinging the door open with such force it shattered into two pieces, each hanging from its own hinge.

  "Elijah – we need to check your blood a second time to be sure..." the doctor approached him warily.

  "What good will that do? Maybe I should simply commit suicide right now..." Elijah spat the words out, angrily. "That way no one has to take responsibility."

  "If there is even the slightest chance..." Lilith pleaded. "Please, let us take another blood test."

  Elijah extended his arm in an angry gesture, as though he was going to punch a hole in the air. The doctor reached for a needle. I felt dizzy. It was as if I was being drawn backwards deep into my mind, through a long and narrow tunnel. I was there, but suddenly I felt as if I was far away. Then the tunnel ended and in a split second my mind expanded to reach the whole universe. There was a low buzzing there, like a swarm of bees heard from a distance. It was a kind of speech, but without words.

  "Oh..." Grandma looked suddenly in my direction and stepped back in haste, almost tripping over a chair.

  The huge emotional turmoil in my heart erupted in a single feeling - compassion - and my wings shot out under their own will, without me telling them to. I looked at them up and around me with slight wonder, and felt a new, warm pulsing sensation in my chest. It was not my physical heart; it was more like a second pulse. I looked at Elijah, and suddenly found myself on my feet, gliding to his bedside again, as I had done when I healed his wings. The doctor withd
rew hastily when I raised my hands to touch Elijah.

  My hands had changed. Suddenly they, too, began to glow with the same silvery colour as my wings. I stared at my fingers with mild disbelief – they turned transparent, whitish, and I could see the same silver pulsing in the small veins as in my wings. I could see my bones as slight shadows inside the whiteness. Then the whiteness spread to my palms, hands and wrists. I felt the second pulse within me strongly; it was beating so hard it felt as though my skin would burst. It could surely not contain it... it got stronger and stronger, and then... my hands started to sing. There was no other way to describe the sound that emanated from them – it was a constant, slowly pulsing melody, soft and pure. My fingers started to form silver strings that slowly began to weave their way through the air, bridging the short distance between my hands and Elijah's. They resembled the strings leaving a Weaver's hands, only there was no mist around them. These strings came straight out of the tips of my fingers, as though my fingers themselves had stretched forward. Or as if my very veins had suddenly extended beyond my body...

  "Impossible..." Lilith whispered.

  I don't know how Daniel knew to come back when he did, but suddenly he was there too. He saw how the strings wrapped around Elijah's arms and in a quick thrust pierced the skin in several places, and penetrated into his veins. Elijah seemed unable to move, but his eyes were round with surprise and suddenly alert.

  I was oddly detached from it all. I saw how Elijah's blood started pumping through the silver veins and into my body and I observed it as though I was floating inside my body, not quite present.

  "No!" Daniel yelled and tried to grab me. "Dana! No!"

  He fell to the ground as if he had run into an invisible force field. Elijah and I were wrapped in a silver cocoon of my wings that Daniel could not enter.

  I do not recall everything clearly after this; I only remember Elijah's big eyes merged into mine. The power looking through my eyes held him still. Others told me later how they had seen Elijah's blood rise into my left hand, disappear from sight under my human skin, somewhere mid-arm, and then appear again at the root of my wings, rising in the veins as a dark red, which slowly turned to a lighter color. The blood returned to Elijah through my right hand. While this happened, Elijah was paralyzed, unable to move, as was I.

  I felt the pain of his blood in my system. It was as though my own veins were fizzing with sparkling mineral water. I was experiencing searing pain, but it was bearable and not as bad as the pain in my back had been during my transformation into a Nephilim. In this state I only observed the sensation, but did not react to it. Despite its strength the pain was only an echo of a reality that seemed to be far away.

  Then the second pulse eased, the singing sound became subdued, and the silver tentacles withdrew from Elijah, leaving tiny droplets of blood on his wrists and arms, glistening as if they had crushed diamonds in them. The several tiny cuts the tentacles had made closed almost immediately.

  I fell unconscious onto the floor, my wings breathing so deeply they banged on the floor in spasms, making the bedside table fall and sending the chair next to the bed flying towards the glass wall, which shattered, something I only discovered afterwards. I cramped on the floor so hard at one point only my heels and head touched the floor. The... tentacles... withdrew back into my fingers, and my hands returned to normal again. Only then did my wings relax enough for others to touch me.

  I woke up on the floor. A blue-winged angel had his arms and wings tightly wrapped around me. I did not remember anything; I did not even know my name or who I was. I only felt the uncontrollable twitching of my wings. Little pearls of sweat on the beautiful young angel's forehead revealed how much strength it took him to bind my wings and my hands.

  I stared into his beautiful blue eyes for a while, wondering what magnificent color they were. Like the deep blue ocean – or the evening sky, with tiny golden speckles swimming in the blueness. My feet kept kicking the floor.

  "Dana..." he repeated, "come back, Dana!"

  Absentmindedly I wondered what a dana was.

  "Leave us!" the blue-winged one said to the others, "you are in danger! She does not know who she is, and now she too may be infected."

  I saw several people quickly leave the room, closing a door behind them that was in two pieces. How strange.

  I turned my focus on the beautiful blue eyes again. Those little golden dots swam in the vastness of them, mesmerizing me. I felt a strong emotion, much stronger than anything I had ever felt. I did not know who I was, but what I did know, was that I had never felt anything this beautiful before. I raised my head and kissed him, wrapping my arms around his neck. How I managed to free them first is beyond me. They seemed to float free from his restraining hands as if we were immaterial beings.

  His lips were hard at first, unresponsive. He tried to withdraw himself, but couldn't, my grip was so strong. I wondered why he tried to struggle, when it was so obvious he wanted it too, his eyes had revealed it to me. I looked into his eyes with wonder, not fighting him, but not letting go of him either.

  We looked into each other's eyes for an eternity. And then he suddenly responded. He took my head between his hands and kissed me back, with hard, demanding lips.

  I melted into him, and his touch turned gentler. His lips brushed mine and we wrapped around each other for a long time, our bodies matching totally. My wings relaxed inside his, finally, and he stroked them with a gentleness I did not know could ever exist. My wings answered his touch with a low, content hum.

  I could feel his heat through my clothes, and I knew he felt my burning as well. I sensed the beat of his strong heart against my chest. My heart answered back, and then we seemed to only have one heart, so tuned in unison that they beat with the same rhythm. His hands were holding me tightly now, one stroking the small of my back, one behind my neck. I could sense them trembling as he tried to gain control of his emotions. I did not want to control my emotions or myself. I pressed myself even more tightly against him and would not let him draw away from me; I wanted him to remain forever like this, tightly pressed against the whole length of my body.

  I closed my eyes, my cheek safely against his burning neck, and fell into a deep, happy slumber, still not knowing who I was.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  55. Cursed by a God

  The words of Pythia haunted Ambrogio that night. He could not sleep after the celebrations. The warnings of the goddess he had met came to his mind.

  Shortly before sunrise Ambrogio finally decided to head back to his lodgings in the village. He held the kithara in his hands, and walked slowly, admiring the waking world. Then he saw someone walking up the road leading from the town to the temple.

  She did not notice him standing there in the shadows at first, and he had a few uninterrupted moments to admire her innocent beauty. She was still very young, barely a woman. She had long black hair and delicate eyebrows. Her lips were curved into a slight smile, reflecting something she was thinking.

  Then she came close enough to see him, and stopped, scared.

  He did not move, but smiled in a friendly way at her.

  "You are out early," he said, "and I am out late."

  Her eyes registered the kithara and the laurel wreath on his head - Ambrogio wore it every day, enjoying the reaction of people when they saw it. Suddenly she smiled, recognizing the winner of the Pythian musical games.

  He lost his heart right there and then. He had never seen such a breathtaking smile. It transformed her face into something otherworldly in its beauty.

  "Be still, my heart!" Ambrogio whispered, "a living goddess!"

  She laughed aloud then - a shy, joyful laughter.

  "Where are you headed at this hour?" he asked,

  "To the temple," she answered and only now did he pay attention to the good fabric of her dress.

  She was one of the priestesses, then. He bowed to her respectfully, and let her pass.

  After this he was
in no hurry to head back home. He suddenly found the village a pleasant place, and the people also wanted to hear him sing now. The elite families invited him to their houses to hear his beautiful voice, and even paid him for it.

  And each morning he woke up early so he could meet the beautiful girl on the road to the temple.

  He soon learned her name was Selene, and that she was the youngest sister of Pythia. It was her job to take care of her sister after she gave the oracle in a trance, and before she had quite come back to her senses. At other times she served the temple.

  He had never met a kindred soul like her. It seemed they had known each other forever, and he did not dare to touch her in a disrespectful way.

  After two weeks he finally kissed her, and her innocence was obvious. She withdrew quickly, with a beautiful blush on her cheeks.

  Ambrogio noticed that someone at the temple had begun to pay attention to them. He was a nobleman, but Ambrogio did not know from where he came. He had stayed on at the temple after the end of the games.

  Obviously he was well off, because he was in no hurry to leave the temple. He was very tall, as tall as the goddess had been, and Ambrogio often saw him looking at Selene with lust in his eyes. He warned Selene never to be alone with the man, as it seemed clear what he would do. Selene said no one would dare touch her, because she was a priestess, but Ambrogio doubted this man would care about such things.

  Then Ambrogio received a message. His father had heard where his son resided, and sent him a letter ordering him to come home immediately. He threatened to disinherit Ambrogio if he did not comply.