"You won't find anything of mine on their walls," she spoke in clipped tones and glanced over at the wall. "They find mine too vulgar. Might upset the other loonies, you see."
"Good to see you too Mother," I sighed and took my seat again. She sat two seats away, arms crossed reflexively across her chest. Almost every picture of my childhood she had her arms in that pose, but then I never understood why.
She gave me a once-over, her eyes narrowing to slits. "Good to see the demon has still kept you alive. Then again, I doubt you'd do him much good dead."
"No demon is keeping me alive," I bit my cheek to keep my tone reigned in. The heat in my arms raced up and down, ready for any sign of uncontrollable emotion. "Or maybe there is, I don't know. But you're going to explain this to me first." I pulled the letter from my coat pocket and pushed it down the table.
Her eyes locked onto the paper like it was a bug ready to be squished. "You went into my personal belongings?"
"Don't play vulnerable now, Mother. It doesn't suit you," I snapped. "I want you to read that and tell me just who the hell is Michael."
She lifted her head to stare at me with a gaze strong enough to pierce through my heart. "Michael," she breathed. "Is a worthless, ungrateful, disgusting boil of a man." A shaking breath escaped her lips as I watched the stare melt into sorrow. Her bony arms wrapped around her frame as tight as they would go as she fought to keep herself together. "And I loved him dearly."
"Jayson said our father's name was Harry."
"Harry." Now it was her turn to sigh. "Harry was a loyal man and he loved his son very much. But he never loved you. You're the permanent proof that I fell in love with a fool who left me once his task was complete."
I shook my head and tried to add two and two together. "I don't understand. So Michael is my father but he left you knowing you had a baby on the way?"
"Your father," she said with a hysterical laugh. "Let me tell you about your father. Imagine you're in the middle of a crisis and no one can help you. No one but this beautiful man who just happens to lure you home and tell you that together we could have an eternity of love and happiness. That was Michael.
"He said he was here for a mission, which I chalked up to the local church, silly me. I should have put it all together when a month passed and he still hadn't left. But I didn't want to think of that. For the first time in almost two years a man had told me he loved me, that he had wanted me. You wouldn't know what that's like, to have your husband not want to touch you but some handsome mystery man who will.
"After two months of never-ending passion I found out I was pregnant. I knew right from the beginning it wasn't Harry's. So I told Michael, thinking it would promote him to ask my hand, take Jayson and I and make a perfect family. Instead he sat me down, promised me to always love the child inside of me, and left."
I sat there, stunned. What did you say to something like that? What could you say knowing that you were the product of a failed marriage, a broken home? I tried to swallow and found my throat raw and dry like I'd screamed for hours on end.
"Come on," I heard her say, my head immediately snapping up to see her spiteful stare back in place as if she were willing me to wither away. "Did you really think anything different before you came here with that paper?"
My head shook mechanically. "I didn't...not like this. He left you, Mom, who does that?"
"An angel creating his army." She said it so simply, the roll of her shoulders practically sending me into a violent rage. "He said one day he'd be back for you, back for us. I first thought it meant after your birth. But time passed and before I knew it five years had come and gone and still my lovely angel never came back. The only good that ever came from your birth was that you were an afternoon baby. Everything else has only been of loss and heartache and betrayal of your father."
"Good to know I was such a burden. Did he say anything else?" I pressed past her childish jibes.
She started to shake her head but stopped. "Oh, yes, he did." Her hands reached up around her neck and fumbled for something just under her turtleneck. A long silver chain with a delicate wire wrapped white glass heart was pushed across the table towards me. Her lips curled into a catty sneer as she spoke. "He said when you'd see me to give this to you. It was the only thing your father left me that was pure."
I nodded a numb thanks to her and rose from my seat, clutching the pendant in my hand. Without looking up I said, "Guess you were right after all. I guess I really am monster." She stayed silent as I brushed past her and left but it wasn't until I was somewhere on the highway that I could shake off the feeling that she had been staring at me with a malicious gleefulness. Maybe she was finally happy to know I had accepted my own fate.
E L E V E N
"You're not putting in enough effort. Come on, Essallie, you can do better than this."
I stood in front of Kayden, panting as if I had run the longest marathon of my life at full speed. Not even two days had passed since I had ventured out to see my Mother that Kayden had started harping on me about controlling my abilities. We stood outside in my backyard amidst snow-soaked branches, the barren clay earth beneath my feet a welcoming reminder that life wasn't always filled with the frozen white stuff.
"So what? I don't need to prove anything to you," I wheezed out between gasps for air. My lungs burned as a sharp acidic taste lapped against the back of my throat. Rolling down onto the ground I winced and yanked up my sleeves to see fresh new bruises forming just as the old ones were starting to die off. Kayden had said it was because I wasn't using my gift more effectively, or as he put it, 'on a constant basis.' I had told him some days I just didn't feel like setting things on fire and wondering if I was going to accidentally reduce my brother to ashes.
I saw his faint shadow on the ground shake it's head while he muttered something low in a language I didn't understand. "I'm trying to help you and this is the thanks I get? Someone's not getting their World's Favorite Nephilim coffee cup this year."
"You wouldn't know help if it bit you in the-" I stopped and let out a frustrated sigh. "Nevermind. I'm not in the mood for your games today, Kayden."
He stood a few feet away, running his hand through his hair with a bored expression. "Ah, yes, because preparing for the eventual is a game. Silly me. Let's try a new game. How about Monopoly?"
I kicked at the dirt and walked past him towards the house. "Screw your Monopoly."
"What's the matter? Didn't have a good time with Mommy the other day?"
I knew it was a ruse specifically meant to set me off. I shouldn't have reacted, but something within me snapped and ripped at the seams to welcome every venomous thought front and center. A raw scream escaped my throat before I realized it, red coloring everything before me. Something inside of me whispered in a wild tone and I responded without thought, my arms snaking out to release two streams of fire that wrapped around Kayden and sealed him in a constricting grasp. Closing my hands into fists the bands wrapped tighter, his clothes and skin burning wherever the fire touched.
Hands locked I brought them to a cross over my chest, the bands of flame carrying Kayden's dragging frame to stand in front of me. "Who are you," I spat out, "to say anything to me? You only want me to figure this out so you can kill me and move on in your existence as a slimy little leech roaming the plains."
Kayden didn't struggle against the fire; if anything he was grinning, enjoying my display of unbridled power. "You don't understand, you haven't been around as long as I have." A new coil of fire wrapped across his cheek and began to scorch the flesh. "You're a creature created for war. What do you think is going to happen?"
"Nothing is going to h-"
"I'll tell you what's going to happen. Someone is going to find out what you are and use you like the weapon you are meant to be. They're going to drop you in the middle of a war zone and expect you to clear it without hesitation. Are you prepared to defend yourself against the masses of demonic creatures intend on killing you t
o save their own skin?"
With a shove I released him from his prison, the fire pushing him back halfway across the backyard. He collapsed onto the ground gasping for air, the picture reminding me of a fish out of water. "Don't you ever bring my Mother into this ever again. Understand?"
He stood up and examined the cluster of burns and lacerations covering his body. "Now that's the kind of power I was talking about," he said while prodding at a deep cut on his forearm. Slowly he let his arm dissolve into nothing and reappear intact and unharmed, flexing his fingers for good measure. "Was that so hard?"
"You're impossible," I muttered and turned back and went inside before I let loose on Kayden again. Only next time I'd probably do more than leave him with a couple of cuts and burns.
The next morning I sat in English hunched over my desk, scribbling violently on a paper. I was starting to feel the drain of my inconsistent emotional state. Food had lost its appeal and sleep was something only the dead were capable of achieving.
A polite cough sounded behind me. "That was a pretty picture, you know."
I turned up and looked to my side. Leo sat on the edge of my desk with his arms light folded across his chest. Small strands of his thick blonde hair hid most of his brilliant blue eyes. He looked past me to the paper strewn across my desk, one of my eye drawings staring unseeing up at both of us. Small scribbles criss-crossed over half of the eye, making it look like the eye was turning black with disease, violence, or murderous death.
My shoulders rose and fell and I went back to making more scribbles across the details of the iris. "Yeah, I thought it was a good picture at one point too. Too bad we're all disillusioned."
His hand reached out gently to take the pencil from my hand. "There's no illusion in your art, only exposed truth." With a swift move he snapped the pencil in half over his knee and placed both broken pieces on top of my picture. "You look upset. Everything okay?"
I bit back the sigh I ached to let out, to spill every single detail of my unforgiving nightmare that I was nothing more than a blessed dragon in human skin. Since the night of the bonfire Leo seemed to be everywhere I didn't want him to be. We ran into each other in the halls, classes, were assigned as project partners, anywhere I looked he'd be nearby. As if some kind of gravitational pull kept him in my personal orbit, teasing me with things I couldn't have. It could have been doable if Ursula wasn't constantly glued to his hip, shooting daggers at me at any given chance.
I stole a quick glance around the room. No sight of her overly blonde hair. "Shouldn't you be with your precious porcelain doll?"
His jaw set for a moment before he rolled his shoulders and let out a small breath. "It's nice to get away from the things that suffocate you sometimes. But you still haven't answered my question."
I gave him a bitter smile. "If I told you what was wrong you'd call me crazy."
"Normalcy is overrated." He learned further onto my desk, closing the distance between us until he was hovering above me. "You'd be surprised by how many people hide secrets in this place."
My stomach gave a little roll as I tried to figure out just what he meant by hiding secrets. Heat came off of his skin in waves, begging me to come closer. An image of my fingers running along the skin of his palms, his arms, and up to his neck confused me. Where the hell was this all coming from?
"I...I..." My words caught in my throat. I tried to form the sentence I had planned on saying in my head when a sharp, hot light protruded from my chest. Leo and I immediately looked down, and just under my navy hoodie I felt the heart pendant my Mother had given me move. I wrapped a hand around it and stared up at Leo in horror. "Did you see-?"
The door to the classroom opened and our disgruntled teacher stomped inside with an armful of jackets and scarves. "Seats, students! Seats!"
Leo turned back to me for a quick moment. "I'll see you later."
I nodded and prepared to sit through class with a tight knot in my gut. What did Leo think he saw? What if he coughed it up to magic? Wasn't there some sort of law forbidding supernaturals from displaying magic to humans? There had to be, there always was in books and movies. It was practically the golden freaking rule.
Yep, I'm screwed.
The second the bell rang I was over at Leo's desk, my books crammed uncomfortably in my arms. I had to make sure to talk him out of whatever he saw, just in case.
He glanced up and grinned in amusement. "Eager to continue where we left of, eh?"
"Something like that."
"Good. Follow me." He shuffled his books into a leather messenger bag and slipped it onto his shoulder. We walked out into the hallway and breezed past the lockers and office and headed straight for the parking lot. "Do you trust me?"
I stopped following him and looked up in confusion. "Should I trust you?"
A small sad laugh escaped his lips. "Probably not, but I'm the only one who can tell you about what you are. There's more to Nephilim than that terrible book Ursula has in her collection," he said the word with repulsion.
"Wait, so you know?"
He nodded.
"And you didn't tell me? I just spent the past 40 minutes back there thinking I was going to have to decapitate you or something to keep you quiet about this." I held up the necklace from under my hoodie.
"A trinket from your Maker, no doubt," Leo said and came over to inspect the pendant. "I saw it light up but I can't tell you why. Sometimes it's a demon ward, other times it's for finding your soul mate."
But it didn't glow around Kayden, that much I was sure of. I shook my head to clear the thoughts and re-focus on the main topic. "What do you know about me?"
His eyes danced with mischief and glee, a smirk spreading across his face. "Maybe everything. Maybe nothing at all. You'll have to come with me if you want to find out."
"Fine." I was resolved. I had to know more about what I was, even if it did mean driving off with a guy I barely knew claiming to know more. Besides, I could always just set the car on fire let him burn to a crisp if he tried anything funny. Buckled into our seats I snuck a glance at him out of the corner of my eyes. "Care to tell me where we're going?"
"Nope. But I'll tell you one thing. Where we're going," he reversed the car and pulled out of the parking lot. "That collection of Ursula's is a mere prick of blood compared to the ones you'll soon see."
T W E L V E
"Essallie, wake up."
I jolted awake in my seat and threw my hands out in front of me automatically, the rush of heat in my veins lighting fire on my hands. We were still inside of the car, parked outside of a little indie bookstore in what appeared to be some small town in the middle of nowhere.
A silhouette moved next to me. Leo's voice spoke in low tones in my ear. "Please don't light up my parent's car. They haven't finished paying it off yet."
Oh, right. My mind replayed the last few hours over to bring me to speed. Leo knowing I was half-human, the glowing pendant around my neck, the car ride to a place with tons of books. Slowly the fire dulled to a dim flicker on my fingertips before extinguishing itself.
I looked up to see the small neon sign hanging above the tiny shop in front of us. "You're kidding, right? This place is smaller than my bedroom."
Leo bit his lip to stiffen a laugh. He looked half crossed to say something but stopped and pursed his lips. "You'd think a girl like yourself, the living proof of magic, would put two and two together."
I opened my mouth to retort but he stepped out of the car and motioned for me to follow him. Heat blazed through the door as we stepped inside, and I quickly understood why it was so hot. The shop was cramped and opaque to the point where even light bulbs made little difference in illuminating anything. Every potential walking spot was crammed with clusters of books of all shapes and sizes, the dust thick enough to form thick coating over the skin like gloves.
Twisting through narrow passageways I did my best to avoid stepping on anything. "Who the hell owns this place?"
"My famil
y," he answered without looking back. I followed him around a tightly wound corner. "It's been here since the '30s but no one's actually ran the place since the 70's. We put up wards to keep the occasional human from stumbling upon it and calling the township to demolish it."
Wards? I thought back to one of my favorite fantasy movies where witches casted wards to keep people away from their secret altar. Which meant if they had wards they were protecting something, too. "Is there another book in here on my kind?"
"A book on Nephilim in here? I'd sure as hell hope not. That'd be one heck of a way to ruin something crafted in sacrificed blood." He stopped in front of a shelf in what looked like the furthest corner of the building.
"That book I read was done in blood?" I felt a little nauseous just from recalling it.
"All books on Nephilim are. It's to seal in the history so no one can alter it later or erase it from history. You can't destroy one of those books once it's been properly sealed. Anyone who tries dies." He pushed against the shelf uselessly. "Can't remember how to open it. Shoot."
I stared past him at the shelf and spotted one book that looked freshly cleaned of dust. "That one. Pull it." I said, pointing at the small blue novel. "That's how they do it in the movies. Secret bookcase 101."
Leo stared at me, eyebrows arched high into his hair. He gave the book a light push and the shelf shuddered, swinging inside to reveal a blaze of white light bright enough to reveal the whole room. "Anyone ever told you that too much television is bad and inaccurate?" He ushered me inside and the bookcase softly clicked shut behind us.
It was as if the world had done a 180 around us, swapping everything that was once grimy and old for polished and new. Bookshelves of freshly bound leather and fabric stood neat rows, the floors clean and polished to perfection. White marble pillars connected to high golden arches rested between each bookshelf and held the stained glass ceiling in place.
I couldn't help it; I stared slack-jawed in awe at the pristine perfection around me. Turning to see Leo's impressed grin I felt a light bulb dim to life in my head. "Let me guess. This is also your family's, isn't it?"
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