I guess it runs in the family.
Chapter 2
We didn’t go home right away. Instead, I found myself sitting on a mortuary gurney as one of the local MEs worked to set my broken arm. He had already finished tending Wes’ injuries.
Wes laid still on the other gurney, eyes closed, as the wonders of morphine transported him from a world of pain to a world of candy gum drops.
I really hoped to join him there soon.
The morgue at North Memorial Hospital was the domain of Dr. Peter Cole, one of the few Damian trusted with our secrets. It’s always good to have a doctor on call, even if most of his patients were already dead.
The florescent lights and smell of antiseptic were almost like home to me. We had been here many times before. Hell, my first time behind the wheel was to rush Damian here before he bled out.
Peter was brilliant. Should have been a world-class surgeon, or something, saving lives, not wasted on determining the cause of death of people who were no longer here to care.
Something had happened, something he wouldn’t talk about, to lead him to a life hidden in the basement.
Don’t get me wrong; I was appreciative. We couldn’t go through the front door of the hospital without revealing what we are.
Not unless we wanted to be registered, transported to a ghetto to live out our miserable lives while being under the control of the sentinels.
Even though he was human, I thought of him as a reincarnation of Superman. Or maybe Dumbledore. He worked magic, saving Damian’s life countless times. We owed him a debt we could never pay back.
I’ve never known a time when Peter wasn’t in our lives. He was like the cool uncle that always snuck me candy before dinner.
He looked over his shoulder at Damian, who paced across the pristine ceramic tile.
“Where were you when this happened?” he asked, an accusing tone in his voice.
“Trying to do my job.”
“You should have left her at home.”
“Don’t tell me how to parent,” Damian grumbled under his breath, too low for Peter’s human ears.
There wasn’t much of an age difference between them. Damian was 34 and Peter was 37. But Peter had always been protective of us. Must be a doctor/patient thing.
“She’s still a kid. She’s not ready to be your sidekick,” Peter said as he stitched up the gash above my right eye. I didn’t even remember getting the scratch.
Damian snorted and looked pointedly at me. “She was supposed to stay in the car.”
“You thought she’d listen? When has that ever happened?”
My ears burned with indignation. “I’m sitting right here. Talk to me, not about me.”
Peter turned back to stare down at me, anger flashing in his usually warm chocolate eyes. “This isn’t a game, child. There is no restart button if you croak.”
His emphasis on the word child told me everything I needed to know about what he thought of me. It was like he was waiting for me to shoot a deer, drag the carcass home, and mount its antlers on my wall before he’d acknowledge I wasn’t a kid anymore.
I laughed, trying to lighten the mood and hide my annoyance. “Croak? Like a frog?”
I waited for my joke to have the desired effect but neither of them looked amused. “You know because the demon was a frog.”
Not even a half-hearted smile.
Tough room.
“A frog?” Peter asked. “How does a frog do this kind of damage to you?”
“It was a big frog.”
Damian sighed. “It was a kappa demon, not a frog. Which you’d know if you ever did the homework I assign.”
I shrugged. Bad idea. Pain spread through my body. When were these pain-killers going to kick in?
“Looked like a frog to me.”
Peter finished poking needles near my eye. “All done. How are you feeling?”
“Like a giant frog kicked my ass.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Try not to pick fights with things much bigger than you.”
“He started it,” I lied.
He gave me a quick peck on my forehead. “Well, my fierce little warrior, all you can do now is rest and let your body heal.”
I nodded. Unlike a human, it wouldn’t take months for me to recover. Maybe a week tops. There were downsides to being half-demon, but magical healing wasn’t one of them.
“Make sure she doesn’t chase after another demon until she’s one hundred percent, Damian.”
“Don’t worry,” Damian said. “I’ll shackle her in the basement if I have to.”
“Fun,” I muttered, unsure if he was joking or serious.
It’s not like he’d ever punished me that severely but then again I’d never almost gotten myself and Wes killed before.
“I’ll do better next time,” I promised.
Damian shook his head. “There isn’t going to be a next time. Your focus from now on will be school.”
“Seriously? You didn’t even finish high school, and you’ve done all right. I don’t need a degree to catch bad guys.”
“I want better for you, niblet. You think this is the life I would have chosen if I had a choice?”
There it was. He didn’t say it outright, but the meaning was clear in his words. I was a burden. I always had been.
Our mother had left me with Damian when I was an infant to go to the grocery store. We hadn’t seen her since.
She could be dead for all I knew, but Damian was convinced she wasn’t. He never told me why he was so sure she was out there somewhere. But I trusted his judgment.
He knew her. I didn’t.
At sixteen, Damian had quit school to take care of me. It’s not like I could go into foster care, being non-human and all. His dreams, desires, life were put on hold for eighteen years.
Now that I was grown, it was his time to be first.
“You could increase my training,” I said, hopeful. I’d been waiting for years to upgrade my stick to a real blade. “Then I’ll be better prepared.”
Damian scoffed. “You know how to get away if something nasty comes at you. That’s enough.”
Fleeing wasn’t my style. “I’m not a coward.”
“I’d rather you be a coward than a corpse,” he said, his voice resigned to the fact that no matter how hard he tried to convince me to stay out of trouble, I would somehow always find it.
I looked away from him, not able to meet his eyes anymore. A vision of the untouched college applications stacked on our kitchen table infested my brain. All the schools he wanted me to go to were at least a hundred miles away.
It was like he wanted to get rid of me, wash his hands of the responsibility of taking care of me, all under the guise of keeping me safe.
The only safe place in the world as far as I was concerned was by his side. Why didn’t he get that?
“I’m eighteen. You can’t boss me around anymore.”
I didn’t need to look at him to know his face was a tomato. I knew him well enough.
“I’m your big brother. I’m always going to boss you around.”
He kept his voice low like he was struggling to contain the depth of disappointment he had in me, turning words that should have been playful painful instead.
“I don’t have to listen.”
I might as well have stuck out my tongue and stomped my feet like a toddler. I was the unstoppable force railing against his unmovable objections. We were both too stubborn to admit weakness and back down.
“No, you don’t. Free will being such a bitch and all.” Distress warred with vexation at my defiance. “When will you learn that I only want the best for you?”
He came over where I sat and cupped my face in his cool hands. He pressed his forehead against mine, his warm breath tickling my nose.
“The last thing I want is to see you getting stitched up in the Morgue.”
He pulled away, the tension in his face aging him ten years. I’m pretty sure I was responsible
for the dusting of gray hair at his temples.
“But by all means, if you want to be that stupid, Lexus, then maybe there’s no helping you.”
I said nothing in response. What could I say really? Not to worry about me? That from now on I’ll be good? We would both know it was a lie and I had too much respect for him to pretend to be something I’m not.
I’m not the girl that waits at home baking cookies as a battle rages across town. Maybe I wasn’t ready to face the evils of this world head on alone, but I had Damian. I just had to convince him that he needed me, too.
He turned his attention to Wes, who was now sitting up. Barely.
“Why the hell didn’t you shoot him in the head?”
Wes shrugged as if Damian’s harsh words didn’t affect him but his facade couldn’t mask the downcast puppy eyes.
“You said we needed him alive to get paid.”
Damian sighed and ran fingers through his thick, chestnut brown hair. “What have I told you time and time again? What comes first?”
Wes swallowed and glanced over at me. The guilt written on his face didn’t belong there.
“I fucked up,” he said faintly as if the words themselves hurt.
It wasn’t fair for Damian to blame him.
“Damian, if you don’t calm down, you’re going to give yourself an aneurysm.”
“Oh?” Sarcasm dripped from his tongue like venom. “That your professional opinion?”
He didn’t wait for me to respond before stomping out the morgue and slamming the door behind him. Maybe out there he’d cool off. And maybe I’d live to see a man build a home on Mars.
“Children,” Peter mumbled under his breath as he shook his head.
The heavy-duty painkillers Peter had pilfered from the hospital’s medicine cabinet finally kicked in. I was feeling pretty fine right about now. I hopped off the gurney and traipsed over to Wes like a drunk pixie.
I wrapped my good arm around him and pulled him close. He returned my hug as I nuzzled into his neck. The scent of sandalwood, blood, and man sweat invaded my nose. An interesting combination and not as unpleasant as it sounds.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, only loud enough for my ears.
I hugged tighter. “If it weren't for you, I’d be dead. Don’t let Damian tell you otherwise.”
He sighed. I could tell he didn’t believe my words. He was almost as overprotective of me as my brother. Must be a guy thing.
I pulled away from him. My body went cold at the loss of his warmth. I shivered, wanting to press myself against his heat. He’d probably get the wrong idea if I did so, though.
One of his eyes was swollen shut. He looked like he had gotten into a fight with a bear and lost.
Tomorrow he’d look worse.
“I almost got you killed. I should be the one apologizing,” I said.
“Yeah, you’re right.” The crooked smile on his face reassured me that he wouldn’t hold a grudge. “So where’s my apology?”
I kissed him on the cheek. “Next time shoot them in the head.”
“That’s not an apology.”
I giggled. “Sorry, but it was kinda your fault, too.”
He smirked. “You suck at apologies.”
“I didn’t ask for you to rush to my rescue.”
The smile disappeared from his split lip. “Sweetheart, I’ll always come to your rescue.”
He was like a storybook prince. Only this is real life, and there are no happy endings.
Chapter 3
There is nothing worse than coming back to school after a long vacation and finding out you have a research paper on the downfall of the Roman Empire due the next day.
Damian had kept me home for two weeks, a signed doctor’s note from Peter excusing me. It was amazing that the school never figured out the guy worked in the morgue.
Then again they had bigger things to worry about. Like preventing stabbings in the hallways and blow jobs in the boy’s bathroom.
By the third day, I’d been begging to go back, bored out of my skull. There was only so much daytime TV I could handle. I’d started to have dreams with Bob Barker barking “come on down.”
I never won the Price is Right, of course. Even in my dreams, my luck sucks.
He hadn’t budged, even when all the bones had healed and all that was left was the bruising on my face that made me look like a domestic abuse victim.
Maybe he was just worried about CPS.
The first thing I learned upon returning to the jungle known as high school was that we had a paper due in Mrs. Carter’s history class tomorrow. I was wholly unprepared. I hadn’t touched the stack of homework my best friend had dropped off with my brother. I had more important matters to attend to, like finding out if Kendall Hart would ever wake up from her coma.
Mrs. Carter, the unsympathetic jerk that she was, denied my request for an extension.
Which is why I was spending my lunch surrounded by thick tomes scribbling like mad in the school library.
The library was my home away from home. The place was deserted, like usual. Most of the other students had a life, one that didn’t involve musty old books.
They didn’t know what they were missing.
Sure they had friends and sports and other extracurricular activities. But how many of them could say they traveled with a hobbit to destroy the ring of power or rode a dragon in Pern or got stabbed in the heart on their uncle’s wedding day?
The school couldn’t afford anything fancy. The only reason we even had the books we did was because the librarian, Miss Frear, had brought her private collection.
It was a big collection.
The place always smelled like vanilla. And not the cheap kind from aerosol cans. Rather the comforting musk one can only get from one hundred dollar candles. Or you know, magic.
Miss Frear filled the area with her mouthwatering aroma. She was an adhene, a demon who had once been an angel. That is until they followed the old gods into a life of debauchery and excess, losing their divinity and gaining a lifetime, or in her case eternity, of damnation.
You would think she would be bitter after all these years. Instead, she was the nicest person I’d ever met.
She posed no danger to the humans infesting the halls. Not all demons want to rape and pillage. Some just want to share their love, or in this case wisdom, with our broken world.
It was beautiful in a way.
I was about half-done with my paper when my best friend, Elena, rushed over to me, brown eyes bright with excitement.
With unblemished ebony skin, pouty lips, and curves that made all the boy’s drool, she looked like she belonged on the cover of Rolling Stone, not trapped in the purgatory of public school.
She wore her hair naturally. I envied the tightly coiled cloud-like curls that created a halo around her heart-shaped face.
She sat down across from me, unable to keep from bouncing in her seat. Elena was generally a bundle of energy but today must have been extra special.
If she opened her mouth, I was never going to get this done in time.
“Guess what?” she asked, dooming me to an F.
I sighed and put down my pen. I know my priorities. School would eventually end, but Elena and I would be friends forever.
“I don’t know. What?”
If she noticed the exasperation in my voice, she ignored it, her enthusiasm unabated.
“Remember the new kid I told you about?”
“Mr. Gorgeous with a side of sexy?” I quoted.
I’d been hearing about him for over a month now. Still hadn’t met him. Still didn’t want to.
“While you were avoiding me, we spent a lot of time together.”
“You’re welcome.”
I had made excuses the whole time I was healing to keep her from coming to see me while I was busted up. We kept in touch over the phone, but her calls had become less frequent as the days went by. Now I knew why.
I hadn’t even met him ye
t, and I already didn’t like him.
She gazed into the distance, lost to whatever daydream played in her head. I bet a picket fence, two and a half kids, and a golden retriever was involved. “He’s so much more amazing than I expected.”
Elena tended to be a bit boy crazy, having a new crush every few weeks. It’s not like she’s fickle or something. It was just the reality of her latest object of affection never lived up to the fantasy.
Never before had she ignored me for a guy, though. She was either pissed at my unexplained absence, or I had some competition for being number one in her life.
I avoided guys like the plague. The only one I had ever had more than a few sentence conversation with was Wes. And he didn’t count.
Don’t get me wrong. I get all tingly over boys just like any other straight teenage girl. Hormones and all that.
I just can’t risk getting close to another human. It was hard enough to hide my half-demoness from Elena. The only non-humans I knew were my brother and Wes.
And Wes wouldn’t touch me with someone else’s ten-foot pole. He liked having all of his limbs attached too much.
“I asked him to meet us here. I can’t wait for you to meet him.” She bristled with manic pixie energy as she stared at the entrance of the library. “I think he’s the one.”
Elena was the kind of girl who devoured steamy romance novels, watched all the chick-flicks, and subscribed to the belief that there was one person, in the billions that existed in the world, she was meant to be with.
She wanted to be a Disney princess and have her prince sweep her off her feet. No one else would do. She kept her standards impossibly high.
I think it would be sad if there were only one person out there for me. I mean, the odds of actually finding that person was one in six billion. Not odds I would bet on.
She is the unrealistic romantic.
I’m the pessimistic realist.
We balance each other out.
I decided to play stupid. It was more fun that way. “The one to bring balance to the force?”
Her lips lifted in a half-smile. No one else appreciated my geek references like she did.
Nephilim Falling (Trenton Investigations) Page 2