Illuminate

by C. L. Fennell

  I looked back to the picture and felt my heart breaking for her. She was so sad, so lost and alone, and she knew where I was this whole time.

  “Why didn’t she contact me?” I asked and wiped my tears from my eyes. “I thought she was dead.”

  “I don’t know, but I have a feeling she was trying to protect you.”

  I knew she was right, it was what Raven had always done. But did she have to stay away from me to do it? I wanted my sister. I’d wanted her back for as long as she’d been gone, and the whole time she knew where I was. Or at least for the last few years. If it had been the other way around I couldn't have stayed away from her.

  “I want to find her,” I said and Andi smiled.

  “I know.” She stood and moved to the other side of the desk, taking a seat and propping her elbows on the top. “There’s something else I should let you know.”

  I leaned back and closed the file, I could go through it later when I was alone.

  “The girl you knew when you were little isn’t the same. She might be protecting you, but it doesn’t change what she’s become.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked and Andi exhaled loudly before looking away from me. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what she said next, and I was right. It sucked the breath from my lungs.

  “She’s an assassin, sweetheart. The most dangerous one currently alive.”

  Chapter thirty-one

  Max

  I was happy to see Sara and Reed, relieved to know they were okay, but my mind was somewhere else. When I’d passed out it was the strangest thing, I was aware of my surrounding, but no longer in them. Shifting through the darkness until it felt like someone reached inside me and pulled me to them.

  Lucifer was smiling widely when I came face to face with him, and I’d spent the first few minutes in shock. We walked around a broken city, one devoid of color and crumbling around us, and he told me some of his history. He said he’d tricked Andi into letting him out of his chains and used the time he was free to gather all the demons who had broken out of their dimension, aka.. Hell. It was weird listening to him talk about the past from his side, considering everything I’d heard from everyone else.

  We stopped at an old building where he told me he would meet Andi, and before we walked inside a flash of light landed beside us.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the Angel said and I cocked my head to the side. He looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. His large frame and light blond hair reassembled my fathers, but he was a bit different. He turned his silver eyes on me and I took a step back.

  “Relax, Michael. I’m not staying long but the kid needed some guidance.”

  Michael. The archangel who’d lived on Earth for years and helped the others before the war, the one I’d overheard had a thing for Andi back in the day. Which to me was beyond creepy considering how old the guy was.

  “Yes, I can see that.” He turned back to Lucifer and patted his shoulder. “Father is looking for you, so be quick.”

  “Sir, yes, sir.” Lucifer saluted and then bowed at the waist, I couldn’t contain my snort.

  “Would you stop doing that? It’s ridiculous and offensive,” Micheal said and looked back to me. “Take care of yourself, Max.” In the same flash he appeared, he disappeared.

  “Sorry about him,” Lucifer said and opened the door for me to enter. “He thinks I’m going to fall again so he likes to tighten the leash every once in a while.”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course not. I made the mistake once, and I wouldn’t dream of making it again. Michael’s not so bad, I just like giving him a hard time. He’s too serious, I keep telling him he’s aging himself with all the stress he carries around.”

  We found a couple chairs and sat, then Lucifer started talking about how I used my power to alter the way Chief Addison’s mind worked. He said he was proud of the way I handled myself, but in the future, I should refrain from doing such things. Using that sort of power could be addicting, he said. It could become habit forming or even take control of me completely. I told him I didn’t like using it and had no plans to continue.

  Then he asked me about Misty and I stiffened.

  “Relax, son. I’ve been watching you two for years, and I gotta say, I think she’s too good for you,” he said and I jerked around to him. He was smiling and when I met his eyes, he winked. “Just messin’ with you. Jeez, you’re too much like my brother.” He shook his head and leaned forward, using his hands to prop his chin up.

  “You need to enjoy your life while you’re young, and the girl is perfect for you, just as you’re perfect for her. My only advice would be to make sure she knows how you feel because girls like Misty don’t wait around forever. If you’re not careful someone else will come along and give her what she needs, while you get left on the sidelines- forever trapped in the friend zone.”

  I shook my head, acknowledging his words but too caught off guard to focus on them.

  “You’re nothing like I’d imagined.”

  “I know,” he said and stood up, dusting his pants off and stepping over to the broken window. “It’s because I don’t have horns, isn’t it?”

  We stayed a bit longer and he gave me some more advice, more serious than he’d been prior, which I was thankful for. I didn’t know how to take a joking Lucifer, to be honest. He smirked when I’d tilted my head, hearing Misty’s voice from somewhere in the distance.

  “It’s time,” he said and hugged me with one arm. “If you ever need me, just call my name and I’ll be there.”

  “Is that the lyrics...” He laughed and slipped, leaving me in Hell alone.

  Misty’s voice got louder in my mind and I sat to listen. She was talking about her past, the things people had done to her, and then she told me about her sister. I knew the dark-haired girl looked like her but hearing her say it made me hurt for her. The pain in her voice was obvious.

  After she stopped talking I got up and walked around, looking at the difference between that dimension and my own. I leaned against a wall and closed my eyes, willing myself back to her.

  When they cracked open, she was breathing heavily on my chest and I closed my arms around her. Wanting to comfort her after the things I’d heard, but also feeling the need to be closer to her for myself. There were so many things I needed to talk to her about, and I knew it would need to be sooner rather than later. Misty and I were not going to grow apart, I’d make sure of it.

  The next morning I got up and made my way down the stairs, wondering why everyone had left me to sleep in Misty’s room, and wondering where she was.

  I found them all in the kitchen, staring at the man sitting across from them who was crying like a child. Gary Addison was feeling the full effects of my mind shift, and I didn’t feel an ounce of remorse. But the look on Sebastian’s face when I entered the room reminded me I had some explaining to do, and some reassurances to give.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Misty nearly knocked me over when she barreled into the kitchen with Harvey and Levi following close behind. She turned quickly and gave me a hug, then looked back to the others.

  “We’re ready,” she said and waved Levi forward. He placed his laptop in front of Addison and handed him a sheet of paper.

  The man was nothing like he’d been twenty-four hours before, but the speech he gave still held the powerful tone he’d always used. After he was finished talking, Levi took the computer to the counter and Misty moved to the other side of the room. Her parents asked her what she’d found and she started telling them about the video they’d put together and how Levi was going to loop it on all stations for the next forty-eight hours. The pride in their faces as they listened to her was apparent, it was probably showing on mine, too.

  Misty was truly a beautiful person, inside and out, and there was something about her that’d always pulled me in. Even as kids, when I hated everyone and trusted no one, she broke through my walls and attached herself to my hear
t. I couldn’t stop my eyes from traveling down her body, and sticking to her bare legs for a few minutes longer than appropriate. But the shorts she was wearing were much shorter than her normal ones and tighter than her pajama’s. Her hair was braided to the side, and makeup was minimal, the way I’d always preferred. She was gorgeous with it, but just as much without, and for some reason, her smile was genuine when she wasn’t wearing a mask.

  A throat cleared next to me and I looked over, meeting Reed and Charles' raised eyebrows. I grinned and looked away.

  “Better watch those eyes, kid. I can only hold the man back for so long,” Reed said and Charles grunted, but I ignored them and moved closer to Misty.

  She wrapped her arm around my waist from the side and leaned her head on my chest when I put mine around her shoulder. Sebastian narrowed his eyes but said nothing, and Andi smiled.

  “Okay, we’re live.” Levi flipped the screen around so we could see the video, and turned up the sound so Misty could hear from our place in the back, knowing she wouldn’t get any closer.

  The first clip was a mix of riots from history, things we’d learned about in school but most of us too young to have been there for. The people were fighting in the streets, police shooting some and beating others, thugs burning down buildings and lighting cars on fire. Young people attacking old people, groups violently beating a single person. It was pure madness.

  It switched to another clip, one I vaguely remember. Demons flooding the streets and people following like sheep with rage on their faces. The world was darker then, covered in a blanket of shadows, and the marked were overtaking the innocent.

  The first voice over was Levi.

  “Our history has shown us how to fail and how to succeed. The violence in these clips are real, the world had been overtaken with evil and we all suffered for it. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault but our own.”

  The next was Harvey.

  “We allowed ourselves to be conditioned and herded, we accepted it as a way of life and by doing so, we allowed evil to control us.”

  A man beating a woman on the side of the road while people continued to walk past without stopping. Kids throwing rocks and kicking an older homeless man, and a child being bullied by other kids and pushed around between a circle of them. Women wearing hijabs being yelled at on a public bus, and people of all colors being prosecuted for crimes they didn’t commit.

  “We became the absolute worst versions of humanity, lowering ourselves to a point we no longer had morals or felt compassion. And those who did feel empathy didn’t have the strength to stand up against the masses.”

  A clip showing an old man being dragged from his car and beaten by multiple younger guys, and the person holding the camera asking someone if they should stop it. Those around her said no and to mind her own business, some even laughed at the man on the ground. Another was a woman in dirty clothes running from person to person begging for help, they all pushed her away and the one recording asked a man if she was okay, he said he didn’t care and she needed to get a job. The woman didn’t look homeless, she looked like she'd been abused, but none of them cared enough to stop and ask. The clips got shorter and moved faster. A blind kid being beaten up by three teenagers. A girl being sexually assaulted while a room full of others watched. An older woman being mugged by men and pushed to the ground, the people around her kept walking, not one of them stopping to help her.

  It made me sick to my stomach.

  “And then there was those who wanted war, those who used the media to push their own agenda’s,” Levi said.

  News reports and people being interviewed, blaming one race or another, claiming it was the fault of leaders or religions. Placing the blame on anyone but themselves, and saying it was time for a change. But the way they thought the change should happen was through violence.

  “We almost destroyed our world once, and then we went to war.”

  A video of Andi and Sebastian walking down the street and fighting demons had my eye shifting around the room. I didn’t realize there was footage of this. You see them taking out hundreds of them, along with the Watchers, nephilim, and Guardians who were there to help. It cuts to the stage where Misty and I were in a cage, and I was trying to hold her away from the fallen angel in front of us.

  “We fought together in the end. Humans, Guardians, nephilim, and Watchers... and we won.”

  It showed people helping each other pick vegetables and fruit, and others working together to rebuild. Thomas herding hundreds of lost kids through a building when he was trying to help find their parents. The other Watchers were writing down lists of people who were still missing. You didn’t see anger on their faces, or disgust against anyone. There was no violence or hatred, simply a world full of people trying to start over. The next voice was Misty.

  “We had the opportunity for greatness, but we began to slip back in our old ways,” she said and the video cut out before her face appeared on the screen. She was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room and clasping her hands in her lap. The smile on her face was sad but still beautiful.

  “My name is Misty and I think I’m seventeen, although it's hard to know because I've never known my birthday. I’m a nephilim who was taken by a research company when I was a baby, me and my twin both were.” Her blue eyes were pinned to the camera, sucking me in just like the others in the room, the same way I’m sure they were for anyone who was watching.

  “We were taken by Chief Addison and tortured. Strapped to metal tables and forced to release power we didn’t know how to use. He electrocuted me over a hundred times and stabbed my sister twice as many for trying to protect me. When my sister was killed I ran away and ended up in the hands of someone just as evil. I was sold to an abusive family, then another and another, until I was finally sold to The Society when I was around seven or eight. They kept me in cages, me along with other nephilim children, and hid us under churches,” she said and looked away.

  “You’re doing good,” Levi said from behind the camera and Misty nodded.

  “We were rescued by the woman who you saw fighting the demons, someone most of you have probably heard of. Her name is Andi, and she’s a nephilim and Guardian, the only one of her kind. I was lucky enough that she fell in love with me as I did her, and after the war, she decided to adopt me. My life completely turned around when I became apart of her family, and I couldn’t be more grateful for it. But my life is still not easy.”

  She inhaled deeply and smiled another sad one, letting her mask of strength fall off completely. She was open and bare, willing to share her raw pain with the world.

  “I think I’m seventeen and I’m afraid to go to town. I don’t get to hang out with my friends or go shopping by myself... because I’m nephilim. And despite the changes in the world, the prejudice against us is strong enough to keep me from living my life. A life I never asked for and powers I never chose.”

  It cut to a clip of human kids playing in a park, then to another of nephilim kids playing in a separate one. If you didn’t know how to see the difference, you wouldn’t know there was one.

  “We’re not so different, nephilim and humans, and we could learn and grow together. I won’t lie and say there are no bad nephilim because there are, just as there are bad humans. But that shouldn’t mean we can’t coexist peacefully. I can’t speak for everyone, but I just want to live.”

  She raised a palm and held out a small spark.

  “This is what I can do, but it shouldn’t be the reason I’m afraid to leave my house alone.”

  The last clip is of the school. Human and nephilim kids playing together, gym class where they teach humans to defend themselves, and nephilim learn to control their powers.

  "I'm a nephilim, and I live in the same world as you, wanting the same kind of life you get to live."

  I squeezed my hand on her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. She was brave for what she’d said, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. I turned back to the
computer when Addison’s voice came on, giving the speech I’d heard him reading.

  He told the world what he’d done, and begged them for forgiveness. He admitted to kidnapping hundreds and testing them, blending DNA and creating a new race of hybrids. He ended with his advice to learn to live together, or sit back and watch the world crumble.

  Chapter thirty-two

  Misty

  “So, you guys realize we have graduation tomorrow,” Levi said and laid back with his hands behind his head. “We should have a party.”

  We’d come to the roof after watching the video and were sitting with our legs dangling over the edge.

  “And where do you think we should have it?” Harvey asked and laid beside him.

  “The field behind my house is open,” Max said and bumped my shoulder.

  “Or not.” I bumped him like he’d done me and smiled. “Who wants to have a graduation party where some of their teachers live?”

  “True...” he said and wrapped his arm around me, pulling me closer to his side. Max had been showing more affection in the last few hours than he had in the years we’d been friends. I wasn’t complaining at all, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t confused. I wondered if he remembered saying he loved me before he passed out.

  We spent the next hour talking about what we planned for the next year and then went our separate ways. I went to my room and changed my clothes, mortified by the fact I’d forgotten to change out of my work out shorts.

  I laid on the bed and pulled the file Andi gave me out to look through. There wasn’t much there, which was disappointing. It was mainly facts and stats about her training and test scores, I was surprised to see they hadn’t gone down but she’d stopped testing years ago. It said she had a no-fail rate for missions, but didn’t give details about them. There was a write up about her behavioral issues, stating she refused to speak to anyone, and when she did it was no more than a couple words to belittle them. I smiled about that, thinking about how sassy she was when we were little. A knock at my door had me closing the files and sliding it under my pillow.