I gasped the moment I looked up.
Adam stood knee-deep in the shimmering ocean tide, his white linen tunic gone, leaving his only means of dress the thin khakis now drenched in saltwater. But it wasn’t his body that took my breath away or even the way his eyes stared at me from across the way.
He had an eighteen-foot expanse of downy, black feathers veering from his shoulders in either direction.
His wings.
Here I could see them in all their glory. Not white like cute little cherubs or church angels would have you believe but black as night and dark as sin. He had told me he was damned and perhaps he was right.
But his wings were far from the most shocking event of the evening. As I stepped into the cool water beside him, I saw the truth for myself—my own set of blackened wings towered off my tiny frame and nearly forced me over into the ocean.
Was this what he didn’t want me to know?
That it wasn’t just him but me too?
We were both damned.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I didn’t know if it was where we were, or the fact that things were rapidly spinning out of my control, but when Adam reached to catch me I didn’t fight. Instead, I sank into his arms as he gently pulled us out of the ocean and back onto the shore.
“Do you believe me now, Mia?” he asked as he brushed my bangs from my face.
“Yes,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. Had he not been standing so close to me, I doubt he’d have heard me at all. “Why are you doing this?”
He turned me around to face him, holding me close enough that all I could do was look into those pale eyes. I could have ran had I wanted, but I didn’t. I had gotten the answer to my question; it just wasn’t the one I was expecting.
“Because I need you to remember,” he said simply.
“Remember what?” I asked. “How can I remember something I don’t know I forgot?”
He stepped back from embracing me so tightly though I could see it pained him to have me so close and leave it at this.
“Our lives depend on it.” His voice had finally reached a frantic level. “And I love you. I know you don’t remember, but you have to try. They’re looking for us even now. I don’t know how much longer we can stay here, but you have to figure it out quickly.”
“Who, Adam?” My eyes went wide. “Who’s looking for us?”
After a moment of silence, he answered, “The ones who clipped us and trapped us here.” His grip tightened on my arms, and I could feel a bruise starting.
“Trapped us?” Try as I might, I still drew a blank. “Trapped us where?”
“On Earth, Mia!” he yelled.
My gaze darted back to the wings on either side of me, my awareness of their presence only escalating the soreness my shoulder blades now felt. It wasn’t like they were something that grew slowly, giving me time to acclimate myself to their girth and power. Instead, they had been there the entire time, just unseen to the naked eye. It felt like the soreness that comes after tearing every muscle in one’s body and lying down for the first time, the way lactic acid builds to overwhelming proportions. Every nerve ending burned at the same time.
I wanted to double over and claw at my back, anything to distract myself from the pain I felt. But my respite would not come. It vied for my attention as I struggled to focus on Adam’s words.
“Please, Mia,” he begged, his voice choking much like the first time he had called me by such a name. Now I recognized his emotion as more than love; it was desperation.
I collapsed to the ground, my knees drenched in sand and salt, a cleansing that would have been cathartic had it been somewhere else. Instead it only brought tears to my eyes, foreign and unfamiliar, as if the process were something I had never known.
And then I wept for reasons unbeknownst to me, millennia’s worth of sorrow boiling to the forefront. I couldn’t even stop had I wanted to. I no longer knew who I was or who I had been. All I could do was pray that Adam was telling me the truth and would stay by my side.
It was a very human way of thinking after it became very apparent that human I was not.
“Seeing them for the first time in forever . . . It’s like finding a dear friend you never knew you lost,” he said as he laid a comforting hand on my shoulder and rubbed it gently. He stayed there next to me while I cried tears that continued to form though I knew not why. “I’m going to leave for a little bit while all this gets sorted out,” he said as he squatted down in front of me in the rolling tide.
“But . . . I thought you said someone was coming after us.” I stifled my tears and inhaled sharply. The thought of snot running down my face in front of him did little for my self-confidence.
“They will be,” he said softly as he cradled my face, my body turning instinctively to meet him.
My body knew him in ways that my mind didn’t. I was too scared to be afraid of him when there were so many other things to be feared. I was alone in the darkness, being guided by someone I was forced to trust if I wanted to survive.
“That’s why I have to leave.” He looked dead into my eyes, his face solemn and serious. “You will be safer without me around. You’re still considered human so you won’t stick out as bad. I’m not. They’ll find me.”
I wanted to scream and wake up from this madness. A stranger in a strange land, I was being abandoned by my guide in the wilderness of the world we now faced. “What do they want with you—with me?” I stood up and sighed, strengthening my resolve as I steadied my balance.
For the second time in such a short time, he dammed up.
“What is it, Adam?” I repeated myself. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Silence answered me again . . . and then it came.
The drop in the pit of my stomach. “They want to drag us back to Hell.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I stepped back, suddenly blinded by the light that overcame my senses. I now found myself back in the middle of the hospice parking lot with no one the wiser that I had disappeared. Paranoia clung to me like a second skin. This place, this city I had chosen, now seemed as damaged and dangerous as the rest.
Like a wild animal that caught wind of its predator, I felt the instinctive urge to run, to leave before my own survival was threatened. Middleton, Washington suddenly seemed like a tomb, a one-way hole into Hell.
I clutched my jacket tightly around me and began the trek back to the rental home. The sun had begun to wane in the time we’d been gone, and now shadows danced where they shouldn’t have been. I didn’t know what to think, what to do. Hell, I didn’t even know what to be afraid of.
I had done a lot of things in my life, but nothing bad enough that it warranted eternal damnation. It was so ironic that I wanted to cry all over again. Even if I did die, it wouldn’t matter. I’d never get to rest. Apparently I was meant to wade through the bowels of perdition.
I had walked into something far larger than myself, something I could never have foreseen.
I made it back to the rental house at lightning speed, closing the door behind me as I slipped inside. The four walls seemed comforting, as if they knew what terrors awaited me and only sought to help. I slid the deadbolt closed and twisted the main lock, letting myself collapse against the door’s wooden frame and slide down to the floor, my face already buried in my lap.
The sudden scorching pain in the back of my head should have been an indication that something was amiss, but it wasn’t until the door splintered into a thousand shards around me that it clicked.
Stumbling to my knees, I turned around to face what terror loomed on my front stoop, only to find that my assailants already had me surrounded. Before I could even scramble out of their grasp, steel chains pinned me in place. A burgundy pillowcase swooped over my head, drowning out any chance I had to see their faces.
They spoke in tongues I’d never heard before and doubted that I would ever understand. It wasn’t Hebrew, Assyrian, or anything I could recall from the years of
Linguistics courses I had taken while in college. Even if I could identify it, I still wouldn’t be able to understand anything.
I knew enough to know I wasn’t going to get out of this easily. I felt the ground spring up around me, meeting me as they forced me to it. The weight of someone’s knees in my back pinned me in place.
There was no point in struggling; that much was evident. Too bad they didn’t see it that way, a notion I further realized the moment they rammed my head into the wooden floor.
Ω
Of all the changes that had recently taken hold of my life, finding myself in unfamiliar surroundings was becoming the most regular. My hands were bound, roped off behind me so that I couldn’t escape from the chair where I found myself tethered. The distinct smell of concrete and iron permeated my nostrils, setting my senses ablaze. A cold wetness clung to the air like a second skin. Dampness sunk into my bones and left me hollow. I would think that death felt a lot like this, except someone tore the pillowcase off me, reminding me that I wasn’t dead.
We were in a warehouse, some place off the map, somewhere I doubted I would ever see again should I survive. Two men stood before me with a battalion behind them, all in matching trench coats. Every single eye poised in my direction. The man on the right was blond, fair-skinned, and embodied the arch-type of the Aryan race, but the man on the left stole my attention.
Gray-eyed with a solemn expression much too serious for one so young, his dark black hair clung to his face like an extension of his soul. At first, he simply stared at me with those piercing eyes, as if he were reading my mind. He was gorgeous, breath-taking even, but his steel gaze held me captive.
He spoke first. “Where is the other Nephilim?”
I blinked. “What?”
“The other Nephilim!” the gray-eyed man snapped at me, each word seething with disdain. “Where is he?”
I stared down at my arms for a second, searching for the words to respond to these crazies. Bruises and cuts lined my pale skin, and my head throbbed. “I don't know what you're talking about.” I did, but a lie could buy me time. At least, I thought it could.
“The Nephilim you’ve been gallivanting around with.”
I closed my eyes for a second. “I don't even know what that word means.”
The gorgeous man blinked. “What word?”
“Nephilim.” I stared him back in the eye though it took everything I had not to pass out. “What in the hell is that?”
He made some sort of clicking sound and looked back at the other men standing close to him before diverting his attention back to me. “How can you be this ignorant?”
The other man came to my rescue. “A Nephilim is a fallen angel. A damned one. A blood-betrayer.”
They were all seven sheets of crazy. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Answer me!” The alpha’s gray eyes pierced into me, bidding me to do as he commanded.
“Listen, pal,” I said through gritted teeth. “I think you’ve got the wrong person. I don’t know who you are or who he is, so why don’t you let me go, and we’ll forget—”
“Silence!” he snapped again, his voice lashing out like a whip. “Don’t play me for a fool. I know you’re hiding the other of your kind. You cannot convince us otherwise.”
One of the others cleared his throat uneasily. “It would be in your best interest to tell him what he wants to know, Eve.”
“Do not speak lest you wish to find yourself in her place.” The alpha snarled at his subordinate, the lesser of the two cowing down in submission.
I was running out of ideas; these guys were nuts. “Guys, please. I really think you have the wrong person. My name’s Amelia, Emily. Not Eve.”
Half-yelling, half-growling, the leader turned in my direction, his gray irises ablaze. His energy was palpable and real as it focused on me. Like a forceful gale before the brunt of a storm, an invisible force nearly knocked me on my ass. I struggled to keep from tipping over, a difficult feat with my limbs bound. The unsteadiness ceased long enough for my shoulder blades to burn like fire.
My blackened wings burst out from beneath my clothing, showing the world what I was.
Here in the world I’d always known, they looked as bold and beautiful as anything that existed on this plane. Like a horse shaking out its mane, they flapped and shook themselves free from their invisible chains.
The man’s eyes poured venom in my direction, the disgust present on his face. “Still think we have the wrong person, Eve?”
CHAPTER NINE
Hope, as always, was a lying bitch and fickle to the very end.
My eyes widened in horror, my reaction exactly what he had expected.
He grinned widely like a primal chimp bowing up in warning. “There’s that recognition. You do know who we speak of, don’t you, Eve?”
Adam had been right. Of course he’d been. But why hadn’t he warned me earlier, told me when I had enough time that I could do something to protect myself? Instead, I was defenseless and kidnapped, bound and tethered to a chair that wouldn’t support my massive wings. This day couldn’t get any worse.
Most people, as children, think of how “cool” would it be to have wings, but they fail to realize the simplest thing: wings, no matter how strong they were, could not free me from the ropes binding me in place.
There was no point in lying. They knew everything already. “I don’t know where he is.”
The man stepped toward me, the tanned-leather soles of his boots smacking against the cold floor as he approached. He stood just out of my reach, his eyes smoldering. “Why don’t I believe you when you tell me that?”
“Probably the same reason you kidnapped a young woman and dragged her to some random warehouse. You don’t seem like a very trusting guy.” My fear was making me brave, stupid even.
He struck me across the face before I could even dodge it, once again sending my chair rocking, only now my wings flapped to steady me. Blood pooled at the corner of my mouth, and I ran my tongue over it just to be certain. His breath latched onto my skin as he stood inches from my face, close enough that I could smell the mint on his breath. I thought breath mints strange for someone like him. Too human.
“We could make you rot and burn in Hell for every single century that you’ve missed and escaped from our grasp. You will despise whatever force that has brought you here and kept you alive for all these millennia.”
I watched the first drops of blood fall into my lap from where my head hung, doing my best not to make eye contact with the maniac. But what did I expect? Though it had come too late, Adam had, in fact, warned me. I knew someone would be coming, but I never expected it to be like this.
The others, all but the one, had remained quiet the entire time, vigilant and respectful of their leader. I could tell they lacked any real authority and existed here only as a buffer between the worlds. If nothing else, they were here to serve as backup in case I proved too much of a problem.
The fact that they saw me as a threat made me want to laugh.
I had wings that did me no good. Much like their threats.
The leader stared, his gray eyes piercing me to the core, almost as if he could see into my soul and devour it. “Listen,” I said, “you’re wasting your time. I don’t know where he’s gone or when he’ll be back. I barely even know the guy.”
The man laughed as he dug into the pocket of his trench coat for a set of leather gloves. “You really don’t get it, do you?” He thrust his hands into their fine material and pulled them up around his wrists, smoothing the gloves around his flesh like a doctor prepping for surgery, afraid of the contaminants he might encounter.
“Camael, wait,” the same man who had said something earlier spoke again, apparently this time upset enough that he chose to involve himself.
“Uriel, stay out of this,” the leader snapped as he set his sights on the metal chains piled next to my chair. Scooping them up with one hand, he lifted them into my line of
sight. “Do you know why we brought you here, Eve?”
“Because people like you don’t carry identification and money?”
Camael smiled, amused by my weak attempt at sarcasm. “I brought you here to prove a point. Two, if you want to get technical.”
“Camael,” Uriel echoed again, his voice more insistent in his warning. He glanced at me for the first time, and for a second I thought regret lurked behind his nearly blank features.
I would have thought that regret was my imagination, save for the fact that he glanced away the moment Camael draped the steel chains across the exposed parts of my neck and chest.
The significance of which didn’t hit me until the smell of burning flesh flooded my nostrils and I realized that it was my own. My nerve endings were dead so fast that I didn’t even have time to feel the shock ricochet through my body. This hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before.
The idea that the blond had somehow spared me a few seconds of pain crossed my wishful mind, but I would have no respite, a lesson I would soon learn. Camael took the second set and started to drape them over my wings. He moved so fast my eyes could hardly keep up with him.
The metal chair no longer tethered me in place, but instead kept me stayed by the pulley system above me. The chains holding me felt like a strait jacket as I hung like meat on a butcher’s hook. The pain ebbed and flowed, careening through my body as it damaged what was left of me.
Plop. Plop. Ploppp.
I didn’t even have to look down to know that it was fragments of my wings melting like tar and covering the ground in thick, black pools.
The screams came almost as quickly as the pain did, ripping its way out of my lungs and into the air surrounding me until there was nothing else. My breath came in ragged gasps as I struggled to maintain some sort of airflow between the agonizing, guttural noises my body continued to make without my permission. There wasn’t much I could do to keep the tears from falling as the pain escalated.
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