The Complete Book Of Fallen Angels

by Valmore Daniels

  Jenny led me to the bed—it had a carved wooden headboard, a smaller footboard, and four posts rising up from the corners. She sat down on one edge, pulled her legs up and crossed them.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  Thomas moved over to a stuffed chair in one corner and eased himself down into it. He gave me a shy smile.

  I said, “All this is mine?” I shook my head. “What’s the catch?”

  Jenny laughed and patted the bed beside her, motioning for me to sit down. I did, but I was careful not to put my shoes on the bed.

  “There is a catch. You’re hosting a Grigori; you have to be loyal to us.”

  “Mr. Ulrich told me about the Grigori.”

  Thomas said, “That’s what we call the spirits of the angels inside us. The Grigori were created to take care of humanity.”

  “She gets it, dummy,” Jenny said.

  I asked, “So, what do I have to do?”

  “Help us change the world.”

  I asked, “How are you going to do that?”

  “We,” Jenny said, pointing to include me. “There’s a revolution coming.” I could see the anticipation in her expression. “And once we’ve taken over, then you’ll see; things will be different.”

  “Things?”

  “What,” she asked, “you like the world the way it is? We got the story on you from Aaron. I know what happened to your mother and your father. If we were in charge, that would never have happened. The morties are like children; they need someone to tell them what to do. They need someone to take care of them.”

  I felt my heart stop at the mention of my parents. I had wasted so many years despising my mother, only realizing how much I loved her at the very last. The short hour I’d spent with my father only made me feel the deep loss for all the missing years.

  I couldn’t think about it right now.

  I said, “Mr. Ulrich said something about all this, but…”

  “But, what?”

  “How can two-hundred angels—”

  “Grigori.”

  “—Grigori,” I said, nodding. “How can two hundred take over the world?”

  Jenny shared a knowing look with Thomas, then smiled at me. “You have no idea, do you?”

  “No idea about what?” I asked.

  “Our power. Each one of us has the power to crush an army, if we had to.”

  “I’m not sure I want to go to war—”

  Thomas said, “No one wants that. I mean, if you were babysitting, would you want to hurt the children in your care?”

  Tilting her head, Jenny added, “Of course, once in a while, one of them might need some discipline, right?”

  “I guess. So what are we supposed to do?” I asked. “Mr. Ulrich said there were only a few of the Grigori who’ve come back to Earth.”

  “Our job,” Thomas said, “is to watch over the Anakim here on the ranch, and protect them.”

  “Protect them from who?” I asked.

  Jenny’s face grew dark. “There are a few organizations out there who know about us. They’re working to destroy us.”

  “They don’t realize we just want what’s best for them,” Thomas said.

  With a growl, Jenny said, “More than twenty of us have been captured by them. If the fanatics find out that we’ve located some of the empties, or how we’ve identified them, they’ll hunt them down before they have a chance to become hosts.”

  “If the Grigori are powerful enough to stop an army, how are they being captured?”

  Thomas said, “We have weaknesses.”

  “Which are?”

  Jenny pushed her lips together. “There are some ancient rituals the Society knows.”

  “Society?”

  Though Thomas fidgeted, Jenny said, “Exorcists.”

  I remembered that Mr. Ulrich had said the angels possessed us.

  “Priests?”

  “Zealots,” Jenny said. “Fanatics.”

  Thomas shook his head. “They just don’t know any better. They’re afraid we’ll use our powers to do bad things.”

  In a low voice, Jenny said, “There were a few hosts who just weren’t strong enough mentally to deal with it. They went a little crazy.”

  Quickly, Thomas added, “But Sam and the others are working on the problem.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “They’re trying to find a way to match suitable Anakim with the Grigori … scientifically,” he said.

  Nodding, Jenny got up off the bed. “Once they figure that out, we’ll bring the rest of the Grigori across.”

  “Then you’ll take over the world?”

  Thomas corrected me in a clipped tone. “Take ‘care’ of the world.”

  Jenny’s gaze lingered on him for a moment, and then she said, “You’ve had a long day, Serena. You’re probably dead on your feet. We can talk more tomorrow, and we can help you understand your powers.”

  My mind was spinning in a dozen different directions. I had a hundred more questions, but she was right: it had been a very long day, and there was nothing more appealing to me than crawling into the big bed and wrapping those fluffy blankets around me.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was up before dawn.

  From the comfort of the heavy blankets and soft mattress of the immense bed, the past week seemed more like the faded memory of a bad nightmare than anything else.

  Pushing thoughts of my mother and father out of my mind, I tried to focus on Anak Acres and my role here. When Mr. Ulrich had mentioned this place, I dismissed it as nothing more than a stopover until I could run away to the West Coast. Now that I knew it was so much more than a detention camp, but a place where I could understand the fantastic changes that had happened to me, I was looking forward to staying and meeting the others. I wanted to know more about the Grigori.

  Shuffling off to the private bathroom, I spent the better part of an hour in the tub forming the water into different shapes. After making a fountain and a waterfall, I tried to create horses out of the water. They looked more like balloon animals than anything else, but I couldn’t remember having so much fun.

  A knock on the bedroom door startled me.

  It was Jenny. “Breakfast is ready downstairs.”

  “I’m almost done.”

  “Long day ahead,” she said, and then I heard the bedroom door close behind her.

  * * *

  The three of us had the table to ourselves. It was a huge spread with bacon, hash browns, hard-boiled eggs, muffins, bagels, coffee, juice, and even cereal.

  “Help yourself.” Jenny motioned to a chair.

  I asked, “Where are the others?”

  “The empties have their own kitchen,” she said.

  Thomas frowned as he spread jam on a piece of toast. “I hate when you call them that.”

  “I don’t say it to their faces.” She reached for another helping of bacon.

  “I thought there’d be more people here,” I said, digging into the breakfast, taking one of everything until my plate was full.

  Thomas bobbed his head. “There are other places around the country, each with a different cover. There’s a ‘resort’ in Florida, a ‘ranch’ in Texas, a ‘survival camp’ in Montana, and quite a few businesses set up in different cities.”

  “Oh.”

  Jenny said, “They don’t want to keep us all in the same place. Each property has one or two Grigori stationed there to protect the empt—Anakim.” She gave Thomas a sour look as she corrected herself. “We’re the only camp with young people.”

  “How many like Mr. Ulrich are out there?”

  “We try not to let too many morties know about us,” Jenny said. “But we’ve got a few of them on the payroll. Most think they’re working for a medical corporation.”

  Thomas frowned at her. “Once in a while, someone will stumble on our secret; others are recruited. Many believe in our cause, and are happy to serve us, either in the camps or in the businesses we run. Others, like Aaro
n, go out and bring Anakim back to us.”

  “So,” I asked between bites, “what else are we supposed to do, besides ‘protect’ the other kids?”

  Jenny smiled. “Pretty much anything we want.”

  “I mean, are there, like, teachers or anything?”

  “For our abilities?” she asked. I nodded, and she said, “There are only a few things you need to know, and Thomas and I will teach them to you today.” She added, “Mostly so you don’t let the power get away from you and hurt yourself.”

  At first, I didn’t understand what she meant by letting the power get the better of me, but then I recalled how the torrent of water from the river had reached out without me consciously willing it to, and how the water in the sink in the medical center had been contained without me intending it. I supposed there was a kind of instinctive reaction that might happen if I wasn’t paying attention.

  “Do you know what my ability is?” I asked.

  Jenny nodded. “Aaron thinks you are probably the host to Ananiel, angel of rain. You can control water, right?”

  I nodded, then asked, “How does he know the name of my angel for sure?”

  Thomas, finishing his toast, sat back in his chair. “He spent years studying the two hundred Grigori. He knows what to look for. Quite a few hosts have no idea what’s happening to them when they receive a Grigori.” I saw a look pass across his face, but he didn’t explain.

  Jenny spoke in a straight voice. “Thomas turned his parents into mindless zombies.”

  His face turning bright red, Thomas shouted, “They’re not zombies.” He stood up so fast his chair fell over. Without bothering to pick it back up, he stormed out of the dining room.

  “Don’t worry about him. He’ll cool off in a bit.”

  “Zombies?” I asked, wondering what kind of power Thomas had.

  “They deserved it. You know what they did to him?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “They made him sing.”

  I blinked at her, and she laughed at my reaction.

  She said, “What you don’t realize is that his Grigori is Tamlel, an angel of song.”

  “Song? What’s so horrible about that?”

  “Well,” Jenny said, “when Thomas sings, it’s so hypnotic that people get completely lost in the song. So, when Thomas received the gift—he was six at the time—his parents figured out how to cash in. They had him singing on street corners. While everyone was in a trance, they’d go around and rob them. I know, I know.” She held up a hand and shook her head. “They could have gone on a talent show and made it really big; but they were kind of paranoid or something. Not the most brilliant people in the world.

  “Anyway, this went on for a few months until a deaf man saw what was happening and reported them to the cops. Instead of surrendering when the police showed up at their apartment, his parents decided to hold Thomas hostage. Of course, being six, he was scared out of his mind, thinking his parents were going to kill him.

  “He sang so hard, I guess the song just kind of melted their brains or something. They went totally catatonic. Last I heard, they were both still in an asylum.”

  “That is horrible,” I said.

  “Thomas went from foster home to foster home until we found him and brought him here six months ago.”

  I drank the last sip out of my glass of orange juice. “How long have you been here?”

  “I was one of the first to come here, a little over a year ago. That was when Sam Lancaster and a few of the others started gathering us together.”

  “How’d he find you?” I asked.

  For the first time since I met her, Jenny looked like she didn’t want to talk. I knew better than to press her on it. If she wanted to tell me, she would. In the Youth Center, when you stuck your nose in someone else’s business, sometimes you got that nose punched.

  Jenny’s eyes hardened, and she looked out the dining room window. “My uncle had the gift, but there was something wrong with him.” She tapped her head. “I don’t know if hosting a Grigori was too much for him to handle, or if he was always that way.

  “I was twelve the first time he came into my bedroom. My parents were out, and he’d offered to stay over and watch me; but he had other ideas. When I fought back the first time he tried to take advantage of me, he showed me what he could do. We had a hamster. He pulled it out of its cage and, right there in front of my eyes, he made the hamster wither and die. It was almost like he sucked the life out of it. He said if I didn’t do as he said, or if I told anyone, he’d do to my mother what he did to the hamster.

  “For three years, I gave him what he wanted whenever he stayed over.”

  She turned to me, and I saw a cold hatred in her eyes. “One night, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I decided to try to kill him. If I couldn’t, then I’d make him use his power on me. Anything would be better than going on like that…”

  Taking a deep breath, she said, “I waited until he was on top of me, and then I used a kitchen knife I’d hidden under my pillow. I stabbed him in the neck.

  “The power rushed into me. It was heavy, like a house falling on me.”

  I thought back to yesterday, when my father died and that incredible internal force hit me a split-second before the explosion. Was that how it always was?

  With a forced smile, Jenny looked at me. “Of course, my parents freaked when they came home, and called the cops. They didn’t believe me that it was my uncle who was the criminal.

  “I tried to run, but my father grabbed my arm to stop me.” It was a long while before she said, “I never meant to hurt him.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, wondering what I would have done if I’d had my power the night my stepfather killed my mother. Would I have used it on him?

  “I spent the next few weeks out on the street, stealing food and trying not to touch anyone. Sam found me, showed me how to control my emotions so that I wouldn’t kill anyone else by accident.”

  “I can’t believe there’s an angel with that kind of power.”

  Suddenly, it made sense why Jenny had so much self-confidence for someone her age. I’d experienced a lot of posing and bluster in the Youth Center with girls pretending to be tough, but Jenny had the power to kill with a touch.

  “There are a lot of angels of death,” Jenny said, a hint of bitterness in her voice. Startling me, she laughed. “Oh, well. You can’t pick your Grigori, can you? They pick you.”

  “Do you know your angel’s name?”

  “Sam believes he’s Araklba, one of the chiefs of ten. Semjaza’s enforcer.” She stood up. “Sam says I’ll be the second-most important Grigori in the coming revolution.”

  “Who will be the first?” I asked. Surely, not Ananiel…

  “We don’t know if he’s come across yet or not. Sam says we can’t make a move until we find him.”

  Before I could ask anything more, Thomas reappeared. He looked panicked.

  Holding up his cell phone, he pointed to a text message on the screen. “Something’s happening with the Anakim.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Although the house where the other Anakim stayed was only half a mile away, Jenny hopped in a pickup truck parked out front of the main house.

  I followed after them, but the moment I reached the truck, I felt a sudden wave of nausea. Maybe I’d eaten too much, or moved too fast before I could digest my breakfast. I leaned over and held my stomach.

  “You okay?” Thomas asked.

  I put up a hand and waved him off. “Yeah. I guess I shouldn’t have had those eggs.”

  “Come on,” Jenny said to us, her voice coming out in more of a bark.

  Though my stomach protested, I nodded and forced myself to move. Thomas and I got in the passenger side.

  An instant after Thomas closed the door, we were both thrown back against the seat when Jenny floored it. The gravel road was full of potholes, and I was afraid I was going to bite my tongue off from all the bouncing around
.

  When we reached the quarters, Jenny slammed on the brakes, and I had to throw my hand out to stop from hitting my head on the dash.

  Thomas shot her an angry glare, but Jenny wasn’t paying attention. She jumped out of the truck and raced around to the back of the house. Once I got out, I heard the sounds of shouting.

  Thomas and I followed Jenny. A cramp hit me like a kick in the stomach, and I stumbled, reaching out to the wall to steady myself. I hoped I wasn’t going to puke. That would’ve been embarrassing.

  When I finally got to the back of the house, it only took me a moment to realize what was going on.

  There were seven of the other kids in a rough circle around three people. The two boys in the middle looked like they’d been in a fight; both had torn clothes, wild hair, swollen eyes, and one of them had a bloody nose. One other thing I noticed was that they were both soaking wet.

  The Anakim’s focus wasn’t on them. It was on Jethro.

  The caretaker must have tried to break up the fight. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a garden hose snaking its way from the house to the scene. Water still poured out of it onto the grass. Soon, the back yard would be a swamp.

  “What’s going on here?” Jenny demanded, ignoring the seven onlookers.

  The boy with the bloody nose pointed at Jethro. “He crossed the line.”

  I was surprised when Jenny didn’t ask about the fight, or who was to blame. She turned on the old man, who was looking more frightened than outraged.

  “You have no right to interfere in our business.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jethro said, his voice shaking. “They were fighting pretty hard.”

  “So what?” Jenny put her hands on her hips.

  “I was just … trying to stop them from hurting each other.”

  “We’re fighters,” she said. “It’s what we’re meant to do. You’re a servant. A mortie.” With a sneer, she added, “You’re nothing more than a lapdog.”

  The other Anakim were glaring at Jethro as if he were a criminal. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like the world was turned inside out. The kids were giving the adult hell, and he was backing down.