“Did you not see what happened to my house? I’m in this, whether I want to be or not.”
My mother nodded. “The boy’s right.”
“Does my father know about you, Mrs. Peterson?” Adam asked, turning the attention to my mother.
“The senior members of the church know I’m… something.” She laughed. “I’m not sure what they think I am, to tell the truth, but they feel that I’m trustworthy, that I have a direct line to the supreme power.”
“And do you?”
“I don’t know about a direct line, Adam,” she murmured. “But we talk from time to time. And I can tell you that he does exist.”
“I figured he did after I saw Helen’s wings.” Adam smiled brightly at the memory. “Dawn, I want to see yours.”
There was an eerie silence as all eyes but Adam’s avoided mine.
“Dawn doesn’t have wings,” my mother answered before I had to.
“Huh? If she’s like Helen, shouldn’t she have wings?”
“Her father and I were stripped of ours, which in turn means she was stripped, too. Helen was raised by adoptive parents. Dawn has to earn hers.” My mother looked sadly at me.
Adam frowned. “How does she do that?”
“I don’t know,” my mother whispered. This was something she didn’t really want to discuss, I could tell.
“I understand,” said Adam, nodding and looking wise. “So, will you tell me what you all know about what’s going on in town right now?” He was moving on to another subject, letting my mother off the hook.
“It’s true that I know more about these murders than most people do,” my mother conceded. “Many things you thought weren’t real, are. There is truth in many of the stories going round. Noreen and Nathaniel were attacked by a vampire. It probably followed Noreen when she snuck out of her house. Nathaniel was probably looking around where his girlfriend’s body was found and instead the vampire found him.”
Adam looked incredulous. “Vampires?”
“Like I said, you will learn that many things you thought weren’t real really do exist.”
“I would think you guys nuts if it wasn’t for Helen and her wings,” Adam muttered.
“I had to share it with someone,” Helen explained for the benefit of everyone else. “Nobody was answering my questions about where I came from, or how they found me. Adam was the only person that I trusted besides my adoptive mother.”
I could tell she felt like she had to give an explanation as to why she had done the one thing that we weren’t supposed to do, expose ourselves to the human world.
“You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” Nick said suddenly, standing up and leaving the room.
“You guys need someone with you who won’t attract attention,” Adam told the rest of us.
“How are we going to attract attention?” I said, laughed dryly.
“With all due respect, Dawn, if I didn’t know you I would be scared shitless of you,” Adam informed me. “And Helen… well, she may look sweet but she can be downright ruthless.”
Helen let out a hearty laugh and looked at me. “I always loved his humor.”
I grinned, but then my phone began to buzz in my back pocket. I took it out and frowned.
“I have to take this,” I said, getting up and walking out of the living room. They were still laughing together when I reached my bedroom and shut the door.
Chapter Thirteen: Revelations
“Hey,” I said, trying to sound bright and excited.
“Hey,” replied Aaron on the other end of the line. “Did you hear?”
“Yeah, of course I heard. My mom had to tiptoe around the subject before she told me and Adam.” I sat down on my bed.
“I heard Adam was staying with you,” he went on. “Bummer about what happened to his house.”
He sounded odd. Was that a hint of jealousy that I heard in his voice?
“It was scary, Aaron,” I said, biting my thumbnail.
“I’m sure it was, babe. I just wish I knew what was going on in our town. Nothing ever happens in Midvale and now we are having this slew of murders.” He sighed. “I’m just worried every second that I’m not with you.”
“What are you worried about? I’m a tough girl.” I laughed.
“So was Noreen and look what happened to her,” he said not joining in the laughter. “Now Nathan… I’ve known that boy since kindergarten. It sucks that he’s gone. He really was a good guy.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty shocking,” I said, trying to sound a suitably sympathetic note. Actually, I did think it was horrible that they had died, and the way they had died was beyond tragic, though it still didn’t change how they had treated me before it happened.
“I don’t want you to go anywhere alone. If you have to go outside for a smoke you take Adam with you,” he demanded.
“Aaron, I don’t smoke.”
“That isn’t the point I’m trying to make. The point is that I don’t want you by yourself for a second. If I could be there to keep an eye on you I would. I love you, Dawn. I don’t want anything to happen to you, not before you realize you love me, too.” He was being dead serious. His tone was demanding but sweet. I knew he meant well, but he didn’t know what I was capable of if something tried to kill me.
“I promise, Aaron, nothing is going to happen to me.”
Each time he said “I love you” it drove a stake through my heart. I loved Wesley, and right now nothing was changing the fact that all I wanted was my blue-eyed boy back with me. Why couldn’t he just break the contract? It would make things so much easier on both of us. Yes, I enjoyed spending time with him. Yes, he made me laugh. But it was just wrong, wrong to keep him stringing along behind me. I should have listened to my father instead of letting my mouth talk me into something that I wasn’t ready for.
You are going to wind up in a situation that you can’t get out of. I could hear my father’s voice ringing in my ears.
“Aaron, I’m so sorry I can’t say it back to you,” I whispered into the phone.
“No worries, babe. I know what is going on in your heart. I’ve been there. Nothing hurts more than losing your first love.” At least he was sweet enough to understand.
“I need to get back to Adam before Helen eats him alive,” I said. I broke off when I heard a gasp on the other end of the line.
“Helen who?” he asked me. I detected more than a trace of fear in his voice.
“Helen Price. Do you know her?”
“You could say that. We went to school together,” he said lightly. “Does she know about us?”
“Yeah. Aaron, is there something I need to know?”
“No. Nothing important, anyway. Listen, I’m going to come and see you later today.”
That was completely out of the blue. I hadn’t been expecting him to drive out there to see me. I had felt that would be asking too much. He had done that for me before, though, after Wesley had appeared in my house. However, the way he acted when he learned that Helen was staying with us made my pulse go quicker.
“Okay. That sounds great. I can’t wait!” I lied.
“Until then, my love. Behave!” He laughed as he hung up the phone.
I put my phone back in my pocket and returned to the living room, where Adam and Helen were deep in a discussion about super-powers. I should have known that Nick’s comment about the Justice League would spark further discussion of such things.
“Can I ask you a question, Helen?” I interrupted. What Aaron had said was bothering me.
“Yeah, sure.” She smiled at me, completely clueless about the question that I was about to unleash on her.
“How do you know Aaron?”
She hardly flinched. “I should have known this was going to come up sooner or later.”
“When your boyfriend asks you if another girl knows the two of you are together it raises a flag.” I crossed my arms and star
ed at her.
Adam avoided my eyes. He knew something as well. I could read it all over his face.
“I went out briefly with Aaron,” Helen said nonchalantly.
“Briefly?” I asked, glaring at Adam, who still refused to meet my gaze.
“Yes. He was the first person that I met when I got here. We went on a few dates but when things started to feel awkward I ended it.” She was acting like it was nothing. Not only had she managed to get her claws into Adam, she had managed the same with Aaron. This girl was getting on my nerves again.
“Please tell me you had no connection to Wesley,” I breathed.
“No, Wesley wasn’t even there yet. He was living high and mighty in Harrisville with his little redhead girlfriend.” She gave me a sour smile. Apparently I had hit a nerve now.
“Dawn, can I speak with you?” Nick said, standing in the doorway and inviting me into the room next door.
I welcomed the interruption. Any more confessions from Helen and my head was going to explode.
“Listen,” Nick said as soon as we were alone, “I need to clarify something. I know that Wesley called you. Your mother told me. She said he told you that Miranda wants to burn Heaven and Hell?”
“Yeah, but it was a rushed conversation,” I said, remembering.
Nick pouted. “I feel it’s time that I explain a few things to you. If Miranda was to successfully kill all four of the Wardens the purebloods would be next. I’m beginning to think she has ambitions to rule. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with Heaven or Hell; she wants to destroy them. If she managed to actually complete the task it would wipe out all purebloods and humans on this planet and all other planes. To put it bluntly, the hybrid race would be able to take control of the world. They would be able to turn it into the paradise that she has in her head: death, dismay, hate… the world would be nothing more than a living hell.”
“So she wants to dispose of those who are pure and replace them with the mixed offspring of said beings?” I asked. “Aren’t we considered hybrids? Resulting from the mixing of two separate bloods?”
“Something like that, I guess. I wouldn’t quite put us in the category that Miranda’s mother wants to put the others in. There is a reason we are mixed, but quite a few others were created almost by accident. It was just a fluke, the result of a tryst or a meeting in a bar: then poof… baby.” He looked toward the other room and then back at me. “There is more to Miranda’s mother than the stories state. It was in the late 1400s when her mother was turned. She was a noble woman by birth, raised to take over her father’s land once she married. The thing is, the woman she thought was her mother wasn’t. Her mother was an angel, one of the last to actually conceive a child before your mother.” He looked at me intently, as though he was checking that I understood.
“When her mother was turned the process went loopy. It shouldn’t have happened that way. In fact, her blood should have caused the vampire to combust. But it didn’t.” He stopped.
“So she slipped through the cracks. Her human blood took precedence over the angel blood, allowing her to be turned?” I asked.
He looked surprised that I arrived at my answer so readily. “Yeah… I think that is how it happened. When her mother met Xic she was enamored by him. There is something in demons that brings out infatuation among angels. I think it’s the concept that it is forbidden. Anyway, they were in love until she became pregnant. He spooked and ran off to Hell where she could not follow him. This infuriated her. Four months later she had Miranda, or Lilliana. She put it in her daughter’s head that all purebloods were the same, that they leave their children in fear of being reprimanded.”
“So she became the self-proclaimed hybrid queen,” I speculated.
He nodded at me in agreement. “Lilliana met John while he was on vacation in Germany with his college friends. He was reluctant at first, but the fire in his blood was drawn to her.”
I raised an eyebrow at the mention of fire.
“It’s an expression, Dawn,” he said quickly. “It doesn’t mean that he actually has fire in his veins.”
I relaxed and let him continue with his story.
“You see, the Neutralizer most times doesn’t even know what he is until someone else brings it out of him. John was a good man. He loved Krista very much, but Miranda brought out a part of him that lay dormant. The bloodline had been in his family for generations; he was just the first one to be identified.”
I nodded. “How do you know all of this stuff? I mean, my dad thinks that Miranda’s mother is dead. Said she was staked a hundred years ago.”
“Your father has been on Earth for eighteen years. He’s missed a lot in the underworld. This is no secret anymore, however it was only found out only recently. All angels and demons were put on high alert once it was discovered that the mother lived.”
That all made sense. My father had been out of the loop, but Mara hadn’t.
“So why did Wesley call me?” I was done with the back story.
“He saw something. I don’t know what.” He sighed. “He probably saw an outcome that was in Miranda’s favor and it scared him, so he wanted you to know that the others were in danger. The thing is, he did this before you even knew what you were.”
“You think him telling me stopped the event from actually happening?” I asked.
“There’s only one way to find out,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
“How?”
“We just ask Helen what it was that attacked her.”
My mind was in a whirl as I followed Nick back to the living room. I had to sort things out in my head. According to his story, the hybrid queen was a mixed-blood creation like myself and the others. She was indeed powerful and dangerous. She had a bone to pick with the purebloods because she had been abandoned by both her mother and her lover. It was easy to see her as a jaded soul, one that just wanted revenge after being wronged.
So, of course, an obvious way to get that revenge was to set the world aflame. If all the purebloods were gone the remaining hybrids would coexist and at some point actually create the perfect being, a mixture of all bloods.
However, to make it possible to burn both Heaven and Hell she would have to render the elements immobile. In other words, she would have to kill us. Since it was forbidden for the bloods to mix there would be no way for the purebloods to knock out another group of four Wardens. If for any reason they could, it would be at least a decade before the new Wardens would be of any age to confront her. That would make them easy targets for the queen’s army.
As far as I could see Miranda was acting just like the general of an army. Since her mother was supposed to be dead, she had been tasked with the creation of a militia. Miranda had been created with both vampire and demon blood, which meant she could only pass one trait to her progeny. Her offspring would be predominantly demon or predominantly vampire. That split her forces in two, with some who lived on souls and some who lived on blood. The only thing that I couldn’t grasp was the fact that Miranda’s mother was half angel. Had the vampire blood in her caused her to flip?
I really needed to write all of this down before bits and pieces started going off in different directions and I lost any grasp that I had on the subject, but first Nick wanted to question Helen about the attack.
“Helen?” Nick said, interrupting the conversation she was having with Adam.
“What’s up, Nick?”
“You said you were attacked and that was why you came here sooner than you were supposed to.”
“Yeah, some red-headed bitch busted through the front door of my apartment. She had two boys with her.”
I felt a sudden chill.
“What happened?” asked Nick.
“The taller boy looked extremely ill. He was pale and his eyes were glazed over. He looked like he would blow away if the wind hit him just right. He left as soon as the door was busted. However, the other boy was intim
idating. He had the darkest eyes and the cruelest smile. When he lunged for me I moved out of the way before he could get me but my powers wouldn’t work against them. I ran out the door and straight into the other boy. Before the redhead and her henchman came out he grabbed me and said ‘Midvale, find Dawn in Midvale’.”
My pulse quickened. She had talked to my Wesley!
“I made it out of there by the skin of my teeth. When I looked over my shoulder the redhead grabbed the sick boy by the back of the neck and flung him to the ground. I turned away and just ran.” She shivered. “I did think it odd that he mentioned Dawn’s name but I didn’t know quite what to make of it.”
“He’s found a loophole,” Nick murmured, looking at me. “The boy is a genius.”
“Who was he?” Helen asked, glancing at me.
“That was Wesley.” I tried but I couldn’t keep the longing out of my voice.
“I’m sorry, he didn’t look too good, Dawn,” she said sorrowfully.
I tried to hold back my tears. “Yeah, Krista told me that Miranda takes what she wants from him without letting him be replenished first.”
“How does Wesley fit into all of this?” Adam chimed in.
“Wesley is a harbinger,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“What’s a harbinger?”
“A harbinger’s like a seer,” Helen answered. “Only they don’t see the future by reading palms, they have visions like Nick, in picture form. When he has a vision he draws.”
“That explains a lot,” Adam said under his breath.
***
Aaron didn’t show up that day. I waited till long into the evening, listening for the sound of his truck coming up the drive. When I heard nothing I tried calling, but it went straight to voicemail. I kept thinking that the vampires had got him. I was still awake at midnight when my phone started to buzz on the coffee table.
“Aaron!” I exclaimed the moment I picked up the phone.
“Calm down, babe.” He laughed on the other end.
“Are you okay?” I demanded.
Of course he was okay! He was talking to me.
“I’m fine. I just forgot to charge my phone. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get out there to see you. My mom won’t let me leave the house.” He groaned.
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