Highborn

by Yvonne Navarro

  Mireva watched him come toward her, but for some reason, she was no longer afraid. Her racing pulse had calmed, and the lightheadedness that had been seeping through her a moment ago was also gone. Instead, everything had become clear and crisp, like she was suddenly seeing the world through an ultrasharp camera lens. This, she realized, was somehow the single most important moment of her life. She didn’t know how she knew that, or why, but everything that had happened, everything that was her, had led up to right now.

  “Get out of the way,” he said.

  “No.”

  The restroom wasn’t that big and he was across the few feet that separated them in barely more than a second. He drove forward with the knife but Mireva caught his wrist and swept it aside, fingers clamping onto his flesh with every bit of strength she had. His weight slammed her backward and vaguely she heard Professor D’Amato cry out. She tried to bring her knee up and into his crotch but there wasn’t enough room, so she settled for smashing the heel of her shoe against his instep.

  He cursed when he couldn’t yank free of her grip, then punched her in the side of the head with his other fist; Mireva didn’t feel it. She was as tall as he was and her right hand was jammed between her chest and his. As they grappled with each other, jerking back and forth, she managed to wriggle her hand up until her fingers were just past his jawline. When the tips of her nails grazed the stubble-covered flesh of his face, Mireva curled her fingers into hooks and dug in as deeply and viciously as she could. He howled and tried to jerk back but she followed, plastering her body against his and propelling him backward in an attempt to put as much distance as possible between him and the professor. Beneath her attacker’s bellows of rage was another sound—Professor D’Amato was screaming, filling the small room with the shrill sounds of attention-drawing panic.

  The two of them ricocheted off the stalls and sinks until they finally crashed against the door. She still had a lock on his knife hand, was still trying her best to maul the bastard’s face, when he whipped his head to the left and his teeth clamped down on her fingers. She shrieked and he seemed to feed on the sound of her agony, grinding down, scraping bone, then shaking his head like a wild dog. Mireva wasn’t prepared for the pain. It was overwhelming, all-consuming, like nothing she’d ever experienced. Even the noise of someone hammering on the other side of the metal bathroom door wasn’t enough to keep her mind focused on anything but the complete and utter agony ratcheting through her hand and up her forearm. Now she was the one trying to pull away and he was following her as the door was being shoved open. They were headed back toward where Professor D’Amato was—

  No!

  She had no choice but to let go with her left hand.

  Mireva brought her hand up, driving her palm against his cheekbone and jamming her thumb deep into his right eye. He staggered, braying with pain; she kept pushing backward, harder and harder. They were moving back and forth in an insane dance and she was determined to keep the distance between him and the professor. Something flashed once in the corner of her eye, then again, and he was still biting her, he was going to bite her damned fingers right off, but she was too wrapped up in the anguish of that and the overwhelming need to keep this wannabe killer away from the woman behind her to know what it was. Everything about her had condensed into this single instance in time, and she would not fail, she could not.

  And even as the left side of her neck went numb and cold and she heard Brynna and Detective Redmond shouting, Mireva was still holding on to her assailant and trying to drag him down to the cold, cold tile floor.

  BRYNNA WOULD HAVE KILLED Juan if Eran hadn’t gotten into the room first.

  When the door gave way, he almost fell into the restroom. Then he was moving forward and catching Juan’s bloody, upraised hand, fast but still not fast enough. There was so much blood—Brynna saw streaks of it running down Juan’s face, splatters on both of Mireva’s hands, a glistening red sheet of it falling from the girl’s neck downward—

  Dear God, Brynna thought. Her neck!

  Eran spun Juan away from Mireva and slammed him face-first against one of the stalls. For a single, shocked moment Mireva just stood there, perfectly balanced with her hands still up in a fighting stance. Brynna felt more than saw Eran’s head turn toward the teenager; when Mireva toppled forward, Brynna caught her and let her go gently to the floor, cradling her and feeling the girl’s life rush past her in a breeze of sweet, sun-filled ocean air that no one else in the room could smell but her. Mireva’s eyes, always so dark, lightened to a sparkling tan for just an instant, and Brynna knew that somewhere on the other side of eternity, the girl was seeing the face of God.

  Brynna pulled Mireva closer and pressed her cheek against the girl’s hair. And for the first time in all of her long, long existence, Brynna cried.

  Epilogue

  Brynna had never experienced grief like this.

  There was sorrow in Hell, of course, but it was selfish, the sorrow of the soul as it realized too late the wrongs done and the eternal damning of itself. No soul banished to Hell thought of those it had wronged or hurt or murdered; there was only the punishment to be endured, the never-ending pain of the now and the seemingly endless torment to come.

  Yet here, on an afternoon bursting with summer sunshine, birdsong, and the too-strong scent of roses and carnations, the anguish of Mireva’s family seemed to rival the worst of what she’d ever seen in Lucifer’s Kingdom. Their loss was so huge it was nearly suffocating; it coupled with the pain that Brynna was still feeling and left her bewildered and confused, helpless to sort out her own emotions as she struggled, with abject inexperience, to find something comforting to say to Ramiro and Abrienda.

  “All that,” Eran said in a low voice, “and it still ends like this.”

  They were standing on the other side of Mireva’s grave, giving the family their own space as the light blue casket was slowly lowered. Green felt had been draped over the edges of the hole to hide the dirt, but Brynna doubted that made anyone feel better—it was still a cold, dark hole in the earth. To humankind, Brynna suspected this was the worst part. It must be so very difficult for them to hold on to faith and the promise of God’s eternal light while at the same time consigning the remains of a loved one to the indifference of darkness.

  “She fulfilled her destiny,” Brynna told Eran quietly. “She did what He required, and her soul is in God’s hands now.”

  Eran’s eyes were shadowed and fixed on the small mantle of roses at the head of the casket, watching as it disappeared from sight. “Did she? How can you be sure?”

  “I felt it,” she said. “She died in my arms, and I saw her whole task and why.” He looked at her, his eyes troubled. “The woman in the bathroom, Professor D’Amato—did you notice that she went back to the science fair after all the police and medical personnel left?”

  “No. I got her statement but then I had to deal with Juan.” He practically spit out the name.

  “I think she was just trying to clear her head, and she wanted to take one more look at Mireva’s project—the girl had just saved her life. A couple of tables over was a young man who’d been trying for a scholarship for three years but never quite made it. Like Mireva, he’s smart and hardworking, but he doesn’t have the money to go to college. He always fell just a little short on his studies because he worked—his mother is disabled.”

  “What does this have to do with Mireva’s task, or whatever you call it?”

  “This was his last attempt,” Brynna said quietly. “He was going to give up this time, get a job and go to a community college part-time.” Brynna raised her head and gazed at the sky, feeling the sun on her face. “Professor D’Amato stopped at his exhibit while he was packing up. She convinced him to try one more time, told him that nothing good should ever been given up on.”

  Eran scowled. “That’s it? Mireva died for that?”

  “I could see what’s going to happen in my head,” Brynna said with a faint, sad
smile. “You see, next year he’ll win the scholarship, and someday he’ll be a doctor in the same field as that professor. They’ll meet again and she’ll mentor him, and eventually the research that he does will be pivotal in discovering a major treatment for AIDS. Without Mireva’s intervention, the professor would have died and he would have never become more than … what do you call them? A physician’s assistant.”

  Eran said nothing, and Brynna knew he was turning this over in his mind. It was hard to refute the result, the sacrifice of one for the good of many, but that didn’t lessen the pain when you had come to care for the sacrificial lamb. For her own part, Brynna sought redemption and had chosen this path to find it, yet she had never bargained for the affection she had learned as a human, had never considered that as a result of protecting a nephilim, the nephilim might die anyway. She’d never thought it would ache like this, down to her very core. Was the redemption she so desired worth the pain of caring for these humans?

  “Do they always die?” Eran asked suddenly. “Is that how it always ends?”

  Brynna blinked. “No. I have no idea how many go either way, but … no. They don’t always die.”

  He went silent again and she watched him surreptitiously as he thought about her answer, and she thought about him. Her affection for him was growing, day by day, dangerously so—she wanted to be with him, looked forward to seeing him, missed him when he wasn’t there. Yet he was so fragile, so temporary, and just being around her put him in constant danger. Lahash was still out there. He might be beaten for a time, but he would lick his wounds and return—they always did. To the cutthroat soldiers of Hell, Brynna was a walking example of what Professor D’Amato had told that young man: a prize you shouldn’t stop trying to get.

  “Look,” Eran said suddenly. “It’s Kodi.”

  Brynna followed his pointing finger and saw the blond-haired girl standing off to one side, away from the family and alone in her misery. A small bouquet of flowers was bunched in her fists and even from this distance, Brynna could see the young woman’s face was swollen and red from crying. “Come on,” Brynna said. “Let’s go talk to her.”

  Kodi stared at the ground as they walked up, too miserable to look at them. Before either Brynna or Eran could say anything, she blurted, “It’s my fault, you know. Who said I had to be the good guy and watch her damned table? If I hadn’t done that, she couldn’t have left. She would have never gone to the bathroom, would have never—”

  Brynna put her hand on the girl’s arm and squeezed. “Everything happens for a reason, Kodi. If Mireva hadn’t gone to the bathroom, that guy would have killed Professor D’Amato. It seems to me that God’s purpose was for Mireva to be there, not the other way around. And that means He meant for you to be where you were, too.”

  Kodi sniffed and dragged the fingers of one hand across her eyes, wiping angrily at the moisture. “I wouldn’t take you for a religious person.”

  Brynna smiled. “You’d be surprised at just how religious I am.”

  Kodi looked back at the grave site, where the family had turned and were slowly making their way back to their cars. Crying had made the scars on her cheek darken, and another tear glided over them. “Then you believe she’s okay, right? I mean, wherever she is.”

  Brynna slipped her arm around the girl’s shoulders and hugged her, feeling strangely fulfilled that she could offer an honest bit of reassurance. “Yes, Kodi. I really do.”

  AFTER KODI LEFT, BRYNNA and Eran walked back to his car without speaking. What was he thinking right now, this human man who was trying so stubbornly to pin his heart to hers? She didn’t know, but she thought that in time, he would tell her. In time … it was such a complicated concept. She could fight until the end of eternity, but she would never be able to eliminate all the demons under Lucifer’s control. Yet if she could make one small difference for someone, make things somehow better, then perhaps it had all been worth it.

  Eran came with her to the passenger side and unlocked the door, but as he reached to open it for her, he hesitated, then peered at her shoulder. “How did that get there?”

  She turned her head. “What?”

  “Your feather.”

  Her eyes widened and she carefully lifted the snow-colored feather from her shoulder. She held it up and they both stared at it.

  “No,” she said softly. “I still have mine.” She turned slightly and slipped her other hand inside her blouse. When she pulled it back out, her angel feather was between her fingers, a twin to the one that had drifted onto her shoulder. Held close together, their radiance intensified, shimmering with a glow that could never be replicated on Earth. “I think this is a … gift.”

  “So now you have two,” he said thoughtfully. He gave her a small, crooked smile. “At this rate, you have a long way to go before you get your wings back.”

  But Brynna only smiled. “It’s not the quantity that matters, Eran. It’s the quality.”

  She tucked the two feathers safely away and slid into the car, content for a time and knowing that she was, indeed, on the path to redemption.