by Leena Maria
I turned my hands in the faint light of the stars. They looked perfectly normal now, and I could not see any special spots from which the odd strings of light and color could come out. There were no tiny holes anywhere, just smooth, soft skin.
Who was I? What was I? Where had the Watchers come from? Was the story true that they took human wives and created my kind? Were they an alien species from space? Was I an alien, then? I sure felt like one...
Standing there, looking into the night, I felt very lonely. I could never again be an ordinary human and the only ones of my kind around were Daniel and Elijah. And there were so many dangerous, dark Nephilim out there in the world. The likes of Angel. Even if I did manage to keep safe, I would lose all my loved ones and live on long after them. Somehow I was not able to feel joy about being given such a long life span. What if I grew tired of living? What if everything began to feel like meaningless, endless repetition?
I lowered my hands and looked at the stars again. Were the dark Nephilim flying there even now? How about the good ones? Where did they live? What was the council of Nephilim I had been told about?
And then there was Daniel.
I felt almost physical pain when I thought of him – my soul and my whole body longed for him, and all my defenses were down – I had read about what falling in love felt like, but I had never expected an emotion this strong: as if I had a hole in my chest where my heart used to be and a throbbing, raw, delicious and painful emotion was drawing me in like a moth to a flame. At the heart of that flame was Daniel. And I did not even try to stop myself from burning up in it.
After healing Elijah, when I had lost the remembrance of who I was, I had been pure emotion and my love for Daniel had revealed itself in its full force. Maybe I had driven him away from me for good with my behavior? Yet he had answered to my emotions in a way that made my knees buckle when I thought of it. The crushes I had had at school felt like pitiful jokes compared to this.
What was becoming of my life?
The stars did not answer. I leaned my cheek on the window frame. It felt cool against my hot skin. It was strange – I could feel that my body temperature was oddly high, but I did not feel ill. I wondered how high my temperature actually was – it felt somewhat similar to the time I had influenza. It was definitely higher, but obviously not high enough to cause coagulation in my body.
My senses were getting sharper too. Even though the window was closed, I could hear the little sounds the animals outside made. The rustlings of mice, the calls of the night birds – and if I listened closely, it was as though I heard a slight background sound to all of this. It seemed to come from above, as if the stars themselves were singing. And oddly enough this... song for the lack of a better word... seemed to resonate back from Diana. Still, this impression was so slight I probably imagined it.
Also the night did not look dark to me anymore. It was as though I was looking at it through some sort of infrared binoculars. I could see that living things gave off a faint glow – the branches of the trees against the black sky were clearly visible to me. The light of the stars was much stronger than it had been before – and the whole sky had more stars than I had ever seen. The lights of a nearby city formed a strong semi-circle on the horizon to the left.
I put my fingertips on the window glass and traced a distant tree's outline on it. My fingers began to glow faintly, and the silver strings began to form as a mist on the tips of the fingers. Curious, I let them appear, and kept drawing the tree onto the glass.
I began to feel slight vertigo, but did not stop doodling the tree onto the window. Then I felt that I was being sucked into a tunnel again, this time forward and suddenly I was outside. I was not standing safely on the ground – oh no. I was standing on a tree branch, and the Centre was across the field. Quickly I hugged the trunk before falling down.
Wow. I had transferred myself to the same tree I had been doodling on the window! It had to be so. The threads seemed to connect into things I was pointing at! I hugged the tree trunk and felt a bit giddy. What if I tried again?
I looked at the scenery. Then I started to trace the outline of the roof of the Centre. It took a while for the strings to appear from my fingers, but I learned they seemed to respond to thought just like my wings. When I concentrated on the thought of flowing energy through my hands, they appeared. They did not shoot out with the same speed as the first time, so maybe I had learned to control them a bit.
I kept tracing the roof and chimneys of the Centre, and after a few strokes the strings began to set to the form of the roof in the air – much as though I had been drawing with a white pen onto a dark paper. I began to feel the same vertigo as before, and suddenly the world seemed to run past me while I stayed in place.
I was on the roof. I understood that maybe this was not the wisest place to be – it was steep, and slippery. I grabbed the chimney next to me to stabilize myself.
Better get off the roof, I decided. For a while, I considered trying flying down, but that would probably not be a very good idea. Firstly: I did not know how to fly – or even if I instinctively did, with my uncontrolled weaving skills I might end up anywhere. And secondly: I had no idea how visible my wings would be in the middle of the night. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to myself. Who knew how many spa guests were looking out from their windows with their cell phone cameras at the ready. Thankfully the chimney was between me and the windows of the spa.
I looked across to the other side of the wrought iron gate and decided I'd go there. Only I did not want to draw the gate with my fingers – I might end up on top of it, and the spikes were veritable lances. I decided to go to the little hill behind the gate and started drawing its gently sloping side with my hands. Its outline soon appeared as a silvery line in the air, and in a second I was standing on top of the hill, behind the bushes facing the gate.
Only I wasn't alone. When I looked at the bushes at the foot of the hill, I could clearly see three shadows there. With my sharpened senses they might as well have been decorated with Christmas lights. Now that I saw easily in the dark, I also saw the lack of light more clearly. And these shadows were like holes in the lighter fabric of the world. I could even see clearly the cord that left their bodies from their neck and vanished into the air after a few inches. Their lifeline to their masters.
This was the third time that I'd seen shadows (or fourth, if I counted the short video), and I understood full well where the stories of werewolves came from. These crouching figures reminded me of wolves. Still they had a definite human quality about them – there were clearly waists and hands. Two had snouts like a wolf or a dog, and one had a head that looked completely human.
They had not noticed me and I wanted it to stay that way. Luckily the wind blew from the direction of the shadows, towards me. I stood absolutely still, so as not to draw attention to myself, and only moving one finger I began to draw the outline of the balcony on the facade of the Center. I knew it led to the hall on the upper floor right next to Lilith's office.
I was there in an instant and tried to open the door. Closed, of course. I had seen a light on Lilith's window, and so I tried to stay in the shade by the doorway and knocked on the balcony door.
Someone with ears just as keen as mine opened the door. I looked into Elijah's eyes.
"Quick!" I pushed him inside, stepped out of the balcony, and slammed the door shut.
"Wow! What happened?" Elijah observed me with an amused look in his bright eyes. "You were smoking out there and someone saw you?"
"Shadows. Three of them."
"Shadows? Here?" Elijah turned serious in an instant. "Where, exactly?"
"On the other side of the gate. They are hiding in the bushes at the foot of the hill on the far side of the gate."
"And how did you happen to see them?" Elijah's eyebrow rose in exactly the same way as Daniel's did.
I waved my fingers and he noticed the silver threads flowing weightlessly in the air and nodd
ed in understanding.
"Oh, I see. You wove out threads and... but you'd better draw those back in before you end up somewhere without intending to..."
"Oh, right."
I concentrated for a while and imagined withdrawing my energy to the center of my chest. My fingers stung a little, and then the silver threads vanished.
Elijah was already knocking on Lilith's door. She opened it as if she had been standing behind it, and I began to wonder if she ever slept. She was always in her study. Reggie was also in the room, by a side table laden with books, with a faraway look in his eyes.
"Three shadows, outside the gate," Elijah said.
Lilith walked to the window and closed the curtains. Then she picked up her cell phone.
"Layla? There are three shadows outside the gate... Where exactly?" she asked Elijah.
"In the bushes at the foot of the hill, opposite to the gate," I replied.
Slight surprise in Lilith's eyes revealed she had not expected me to answer, but she did not ask anything.
"You heard that? Ok. Come here, and we'll do what needs to be done."
In two minutes Grandma was there.
"We should kill them now." Grandma voiced her opinion without hesitation.
"I'm not sure..." Lilith hesitated. "Perhaps we shouldn't..."
"Explain." Grandma looked like a horse chomping on the bit - I could see she wanted to go right after the shadows.
"Maybe we should invite Daniel in here first." Lilith picked up her mobile phone.
Somehow I found it rather hilarious that angels needed cell phones. Or half-angels, if you will.
Daniel came through the door almost immediately. Lilith told him about the shadows.
"Should we kill them or not?" she asked, "If we do, they will know that we know they have found us. If we leave them there, we may have more time to prepare, if they are planning an attack."
Elijah and Daniel stood side by side, equally tall and equally handsome. One dark-haired, the other blonde, both with slightly wavy hair, broad shoulders and lean bodies. I only had eyes for Daniel.
"Wise words," Daniel said, adding "Truth is, I can only wonder how it took them so long to find us."
"They may have found this place when they were chasing me and Dana from the university," Grandma tapped her finger to her cheek. "Reggie did open the car window for a while, and with the shadows' keen sense of smell one of them must have caught our trail."
Daniel nodded, and did not seem angry with this.
"And because I rescued Dana from Angel, she knows that I will be where Dana is too. Yes, I suspect they know about us now. We must warn everyone against leaving this building. The guards are up as we speak because we have always been on alert. I still think they do not know about the gate, or we would have seen an attack by now."
Daniel thought for a while.
"We shall have to leave, Layla, Dana, myself and Elijah. We shall show ourselves to them in some distant location and draw their attention there. And this place will stay as quiet as possible, except for the spa."
Everyone else was of the same opinion. I had no opinion. If I could leave with Daniel, I would go anywhere.
"But first, we'll go and have a little discussion with our prisoner from the city of Immortals." Daniel opened the door and stepped out. "We need some information, and I am not sure he will talk to ordinary people. Come, Elijah."
They turned, and we all followed them as if his invitation extended to us too. We went out of Lilith's office and down the stairs to the hall, where Lilith went to speak to the guards. We continued down another flight of steps, and then to the floor below the ground, to the prison level.
CHAPTER SIXTY
60. Mr. Donnelly's Past
Mr. Donnelly's face was the picture of confusion as he glanced around his prison once again.
This welcoming room did not resemble in the slightest the miserable cells under the council hall in the City of Immortals. In comparison, this prison was a luxury apartment, save for the fact that it was windowless.
He had a bedroom with a decent - no, a very comfortable - bed and coverings, a living room with a sofa and also a little kitchen. He had a fridge with beverages, and a book shelf full of novels. And as for the bathroom – that was the height of luxury. A real bath tub, a machine for shaving, and a water closet. And a shower. This was so novel to him that he spent a lot of time turning it on and off and adjusting the heat of the water, even chuckling to himself when the spray splashed the tiled walls or floor.
The strangest thing was the treadmill in the corner of the room. He had figured out how it worked by standing on it and pressing "start". Thankfully the machine had been set to such a low speed he managed to stay on board when it began to move. Mr .Donnelly liked it; his thoughts had always been keenest when he walked and that was something he used to do all day along the long corridors of the library in the City of Immortals.
Looking back, he realised that he had been incredibly naive to accept what his masters had said at face value. This was not at all what he had been told to expect if the "others" caught anyone from the City of Immortals. According to his previous masters, he should have been in chains in a wet cellar with rats, eating mouldy bread. If they gave their prisoners food at all, that was – starving them was something they were all told to expect if caught by the others. The meals he had been served on a tray here were excellent and nutritious and he was coming to like the mincemeat steak in a bun, with salad and cheese and mayonnaise on it and chips - they called them "fries" - on the side.
He sat on the sofa, immersed in the book called "The Fellowship of the Ring" that he'd started a few days earlier. He knew there were two more volumes to come and was looking forward to continuing the adventure. Somehow the world in the book resembled the world of the Immortals. The wizards and elves could make things happen by uttering the right words, just as they could in the City of the Immortals, using the material of the buffer zone. After thousands of years the Immortals had created a fantastic world - in every sense of the word - on their own level.
He thought back to that fateful first meeting. When he had learned the true nature of his benefactors, he had fainted. For an analytical mind like his it was not easy to take in the huge wings they opened up in his front of him one day.
Cain and Evelyn Harper had revealed that they were not siblings, but father and daughter. Their youthful appearance meant that their true relationship to each other would not have been believable in the human world, hence their pretence to be brother and sister.
It was flattering that they had revealed their secret to him. He had been a religious person all his life, and this proof of the existence of angels had, at first, made him thank the Lord and begin to read his Bible with renewed enthusiasm in the evenings. The only thing that left him wondering was that angels could have children. Surely that required certain... behaviour...not usually connected with angels.
Then they had told him they came from another world, and he believed that too. Of course they did. When they said they could take him there, and he could live there and never die, he almost fainted with joy. He sold his book shop. It meant nothing to him now, when he thought of the immense knowledge and time that would be available to him in the City. He paid all his debts just to keep his good name (even though his debtors could never have found him again), packed his bags and arrived at the Harper house on the day of departure. And what a departure...
His arrival in the land of the Immortals, holding the hot hand of the beautiful Evelyn Harper, was indelibly etched on his memory.
A whole new world opened up in front of him, right at the edge of ordinary reality. There were fields, mountains, lakes, rivers... and the City....it was like no earthly city and yet it sometimes reminded him of places that he knew. Different ages were reflected in the blend of architecture, from medieval towers and turrets, to modern city houses. He soon learned that this was because the inhabitants were from different ages of human history
, and as they did not die, it was natural that they should create the appearance of their own age and place in their immediate surroundings.
At first he viewed everything in a state of wonder. He was given a position as a librarian, and enjoyed his research into ancient myths. Books were brought to the library all the time, so he never lacked work or resources.
Of course he noticed the odd-looking shadowy figures on the streets of the city. He asked about these, and was told they were the servants of the Immortals. And the weirdest thing was – people living in the city could create them themselves!
Mr. Donnelly was eager to learn, and with the help of his library assistant, he learned to "mould the clay". Wonderingly, using only his mind, he slowly learned to create physical things from the material he simply scooped from the ground.
He was told that this whole world of theirs consisted of mouldable energy. And that the solid structures stayed solid only because of the attention that was paid to them. If an object was created, and people lost interest in it, it slowly disintegrated and disappeared. Renewed focus to it brought it back into a more solid form. To begin with, Mr Donnelly found this endlessly fascinating.
Now Mr. Donnelly understood those houses and statues in the city that had become shadowy. Their forms had faded. Their colours were not as bright, and sometimes you could almost see through them.
Mr. Donnelly was given an unoccupied house and he spent many hours wondering how simply looking at it made it rebuild itself.
He started with the walls, obviously, and after he had been looking at them with keen attention for a few days, they had definitely become solid. He then continued with the floors, the door, the roof, the windows... until he finally had a very cosy little house of his own, only a block from the huge library building.