The Wildest Woods

by S. K Munt

  I leaned against the door, staring down at my winged ring and trembling. I’d done it- I’d become a king, it should have felt amazing and yet… yet I would have traded anything in the world- anything- to be just the crowned prince again that was surrounded by the family that he loved, instead of the demons that had possessed them.

  5.

  Hope Station

  Larkin

  I was halfway along the cave before I got sick of almost tripping over something every three steps and leapt up into the air, flapping my wings just once to give me height, but not so much that I was in danger of hitting the roof of the tunnel. Tears were streaming down my face, and they slipped into my ears as I increased my speed, but I closed my eyes shut against them and then shook my head trying to shake them free, gasping when I felt one, ice-cold tear hit my wings on my right and send a shiver through me. They were so sensitive! How was that even possible? They were made of feathers! If I could not feel tears touch my hair, why should I feel them on my wings?

  It only took seconds for me to reach the tunnel’s entrance once I’d taken flight and after I opened my eyes and realised how close I was to bursting through the hastily assembled blockade at the exit, I flung my wings forward, opening them out like a parachute to make myself less aerodynamic. I slowed quickly then, but my feet weren’t ready for the sudden descent so skidded across the gritty ground in a clumsy landing in my boots, squealing softly to myself. My hands hit the sheet of iron that I had placed there earlier so I flung it out of the way and then, without bothering to shut it behind me, I stepped out onto a fresh dusting of snow and glared up at the sliver of moon that was left outside, panting and then shivering uncontrollably when I felt that air swirl around me, bringing the darkness and the thick fog with it.

  Can he still hear my thoughts from here? If you can boy, you best run in the opposite direction until you can’t! Or I’ll… I sobbed and pressed a hand to my pounding heart, unsure as to how to finish that threat. What I’d wanted to do was fly, but now that I saw how thick the air had become with cloud and fog, I knew that that would be a terrible idea. We were on a mountain range covered with the skeletons of the tallest fir trees I had ever seen- I’d probably make it five feet before I ran into something and got myself killed, if that, and I didn’t want to die. I wanted to sleep yes, and to skip this current phase of my life- but not to die. Not anymore.

  But if I’m forced to spend time with a mind reader, well... I sat down on the ground and curled my wings around myself before cradling my head in my hands and weeping piteously- the only way that someone as tired and strung-out as myself could weep. It was one thing to know that Satan was able to pop into my head every time I thought about her… but to understand that someone had been intentionally poking through my private thoughts all day was mortifying. So if those pains had accompanied his every investigation then yes, he had most certainly been in my head all day while I’d thought of Kohl and Kohén… of Bastien… God! Was that why Bastien looked at him so often? Was he taking cues on how to handle me from his inside man? How DARE he!!!

  I can’t help it! A stream of consciousness slammed into mind with the power of a freight train and I gasped and dug my fingertips into my scalp as the pain jolted me. It’s my gift and my curse, all right? I can’t turn it off!

  He was coming after me! I couldn’t believe it! I told you to leave me alone!

  And I told you that there were measures you could take to guard yourself from me, remember? So stop panicking and ask the question that you want to ask: How can I keep you out of my head?

  How can I-

  Amber! Amber mutes my powers. Most of the other members of The Sequestered hate having me here as much as I hate being here, but they’ve all started keeping amber close to them because that puts up a wall, all right?

  How do I know that I can believe you?

  Because I don’t care enough what people think about me to lie! I am possibly the most honest, tactless, upfront human being you’ll ever meet and believe me when I say that I hate my power more than I hate anything, so here… take that and calm down, please! I have enough to worry about without pissing off Satan by spooking her messiah off a mountaintop!

  There was a clacking sound then and when I turned around, I saw a small dark stone roll to a stop just behind me. My head was pounding but as I reached around to pick it up, the pain dissipated. Groaning in relief, I squeezed the stone in the palm of my hand and then held it up close to my eyes, examining it. Yes, it was amber- one of the few semi-precious stones that were still around in abundance due to their lack of monetary value.

  ‘Is it safe to come out yet?’ a feeble voice asked, and I fisted the stone again as I rose and turned around to glare daggers at the red-haired boy as he emerged from inside the tunnel. He was huffing and puffing and clearly out of sorts and I was glad for that. Practically snarling, I stomped back towards him.

  ‘You tricked me!’ I snapped, getting in his face but having to stand as tall as I could in order to do so because he was longer and lankier than all of the Barachiels. ‘You pretended to be an old crone and then you robbed me of my most private thoughts!’

  ‘I pretended to be someone that didn’t matter, to see how you would treat me- a trick that one should be able to appreciate from the moral high ground that you’ve clearly set up camp on,’ the boy corrected me. ‘And I didn’t rob you; I read you. I had to find out who you were, okay-what you were made of. Satan asked me to-’

  ‘Satan knows who I am and what I’m made of!’ I interrupted. ‘So ask her anything you want to or even ask me, but stay out of my mind!’

  ‘Satan has given you rave reviews, which is why you’ve amassed the following that you already have,’ he indicated back into the tunnel, ‘but I wasn’t going to take the devil at her word, and as far as I’m concerned, only a fool would! Most of those people in there are either fools or have no choice but to put their faith in her and pray that it works out better for them than putting their faith in God has... but I am not a fool, nor am I desperate for your help, so if I was going to be forced to spend the next few years at your side, then I wanted to know what you were about before I agreed to it, okay? Dark Nephilim or not, I’m still rather picky about the company that I keep.’

  My eyebrows lifted. ‘What on earth are you talking about? Why would you have to spend a minute in my company, let alone years?’

  ‘Because I am in her debt, of course, just like you are.’ The boy sighed and sagged back against the cave wall. ‘Do you even know what a dark Nephilim is, Larkin? By definition?’

  I opened my mouth to answer in the affirmative, but nothing came out. I’d gone to say a powerful being descended from Satan that hated God because that’s what I’d been educated to believe, but my education had been strictly controlled and now I realised that a lot of things I’d learned in the past two days had contradicted with a lot of what I’d been told was the truth in Eden. ‘I… what does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘Because I am one by definition, and that’s what’s gotten me to this point, standing here with you and evidently- pissing you off.’ The boy scratched a bit of stubble on his jaw and I realised that although I’d perceived him to be about my age, I now realised that he was a little older than that, possibly even in his early twenties and not a boy at all. ‘So, do you know what a dark Nephilim is, Larkin of Eden?’

  ‘Stop calling me that,’ I said, standing back. ‘I don’t know why everyone’s calling me that because I’m not of Eden anymore-’

  ‘That’s what you’ve been called, since you were taken in. When Satan spoke to us, she referred to you as Larkin of Eden and it will stick until you’ve given them another name to call you by.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘The dark Nephilim- the true dark Nephilim that she communicated with regarding your fate before she involved mortals.’ He pushed off the wall and walked past me as he spoke. ‘And because you’re refusing to admit that you don’t understand the distin
ction between us and the rest of the slightly naughty Nephilim, I’m just going to give you the answer and save a lot of time, all right? Also, it’s much easier for me to block out other people’s mental dialogue while I’m actually articulating my own, so you’ll find that I have a habit of rambling on when I’m given the opportunity to do so-’

  ‘I thought you said this rock was protecting my-’

  ‘I can still hear some of the others that are unguarded from back in the camp and it’s very distracting so stop interrupting me, okay? Bastien could only rustle up just enough amber to protect half of them before my arrival, and the thoughts of the unguarded ones can hook me when I’m distracted and then I lose track of my own and it’s all very aggravating...’ he paused to breathe as my eyebrows lifted and did as he’d said he would- and rambled on: ‘A truly dark Nephilim is a descendant of Satan’s minions- one of her original eleven. Satan was a hateful, wrathful creature who’d been robbed of the ability to love when she made them, and so under her influence and only her influence they were a crop of twisted entities indeed… but as they went forth and bred with humans, their darkness was diluted in the same way that the archangels’ goodness was diluted; by cross-breeding. There were quite a few murderous, sadistic creations spawned by Satan’s minions in the very beginning when their bloodlines were so potent, but Satan knew that God was more likely to try and stomp her and the human race out if she couldn’t control her originals, so she called them and their darkest descendants back to hell and gave them specific titles and tasks- tasks that would keep them stimulated and sated, while preventing them from running rampant up on earth and becoming a liability to her.’

  ‘And they just agreed to that?’ I asked, sceptical as always.

  ‘For the right amount of status and power, beings will agree to anything,’ the boy said sombrely, ‘and that’s what she did- gave them stakes or shares in hell, you could say. That’s another reason why she finds it so hard to close the power gap between herself and God- because she was allowing mankind’s love for her to be divvied up between her own soul mates instead of taking it all into herself.’ My mouth fell open as I choked on a bottleneck of questions (this stuff had NOT been mentioned in the six books of creation!!!) but he wasn’t looking at me or reading my mind so he went on, oblivious to my stupefaction: ‘She didn’t have a hope in hell of keeping tabs on all of their descendants though, and after awhile, the dark Nephilim left on earth began to evolve independent of Hell’s banner and when they died and their children died, their stories and legacies usually died with them. Occasionally, a very powerful and dark Nephilim would be conceived by accident, but by the twentieth century, the descendant of a dark Nephilim was probably completely unaware of the fact that they were different to others, or so scared and ashamed of what they could do that they withdrew from society. As a result, their characters ceased to be defined by their ancestry, but shaped by their personal journeys. Therefore, a distant descendant of Miguel Barachiel was as likely to turn their back on God as a descendant of one of Satan’s minions was- if treated poorly enough.’

  ‘Nature versus nurture?’ I managed. ‘The darker a soul gets, the more they are turning away from God.’

  ‘Exactly,’ the boy was hugging himself as he gazed out at the area behind our mountain. ‘And that’s where I come into it. I am a descendant of one of Satan’s minions, Larkin, one of the few that was still very powerful. My father wanted to see what kind of child he’d have with a human woman and so he intentionally conceived me, hoping that I’d be powerful- but he was not as careful as others have been when it came to choosing a mate and so he unwittingly bred me with a woman who had dark Nephilim ancestry as well. No power, but a rough upbringing and a predilection to doing what was wrong if not properly steered towards doing what was right. You were made with an archangel so half of your character is built on a foundation of absolute lightness and purity, but I was born under the shadow of two dark souls that had not aligned themselves with Satan, but were wicked and evil nonetheless, so I am dark by nature and nurture.’ He surprised me by pulling a small box of cigarettes out of his pockets then and lighting one. ‘Ipso facto, I have been on the highway to hell since conception.’

  I stepped closer to him, fascinated by the cigarette smoke, which smelled nothing like Elijah’s cigars had. They were expensive- more expensive than semi-precious stones were in some parts, and I wondered what this boy had done to earn himself a whole box worth and a velvet cloak. ‘So is that the definition of a true dark Nephilim?’ I asked, likening this boy’s situation to the Barachiel boys that had been conceived by two Nephilim parents. They didn’t know that their mother was a light Nephilim too (or at least they hadn’t been before the previous evening) and so they’d credited their extra powers to their bloodline instead, giving Miguel’s DNA a lot more praise than was actually deserved. ‘Someone that has power on both sides of their family tree?’

  ‘Actually no,’ the boy inhaled on his smoke and then slowly breathed it out, compounding the fog, and I saw then that his face was a little crooked. One eye was just a fraction higher than the other, and his smile was slanted in a similar fashion, so those features in conjunction with his tousled, scarlet hair gave made him look rakish and wicked and almost elf-like. ‘Because like I said before, having Nephilim folks doesn’t guarantee anything- power comes from the luck of the draw. But true darkness comes only when we renounce God, and accept Satan as our saviour- and I have done that, okay?’ His eyes shifted to mine and they were so bright and glossy that I was more arrested by the intensity in them than by his shocking declaration: ‘I hate God and I am not afraid to say so.’

  I drew back a little, perplexed by how those eyes beckoned me to him while making me feel like he was still reading my every thought. ‘And you worship my mother in his stead?’

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’ His face was in profile so I could see where the cloudy moonlight was shining off his clenched jaw and the ginger stubble that graced it, and could even make out the fact that he had five studs along one of his ears- an ear that was tattooed from lobe to temple in a strange pattern that was familiar but unrecognizable. ‘I was born with wings, Larkin, human like you, but more powerful than the average crossbred Nephilim. But they were black from the beginning, and they had disintegrated by the time I turned two due to the horrible way that I was mistreated- too quickly to help me fly away from them, but not quickly enough, because people found out what I was and hated me for it. My folks were pleased that I had wings- until they fell out- and although they’d hoped that I’d prove to have powers like my father, who could manipulate wind- they were horrified when they realised that my powers were the kind that would bring them more grief than personal gain.’

  ‘They didn’t like the mind reading thing either?’

  ‘Who would?’ the boy drew back on his cigarette again, and I was struck by how fascinating he was to look at. The red hair, the bright eyes that drew you into that sapphire and steel centre, the piercings, the tattoos… even if I never saw him again after this one night, I knew that memories of his face would not be softened by time. ‘It’s bad enough that people find out about it now that I’m old enough to police myself, but when I was very young, I didn’t understand that the thoughts that I was speaking out loud and responding to weren’t my own and I didn’t know that there was a cure, so I taught my folks to hate and distrust one another, everyone we knew and me by exposing their secrets and lies and ugliest musings to anyone within earshot of me. And because the community we lived in was tiny, they couldn’t even distance themselves from me which was a headache for us all.’

  ‘Oh…’ I tried to imagine what would happen if Kohén had been able to read every thought I’d ever had, and felt my stomach knot up again- this time on the boy’s behalf. I hated his ‘gift’ but I was sure that he hated it more. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Exactly. I know you’re upset that I saw inside your mind and glimpsed things that you would never wan
t anyone else to know about, but I can assure you that uglier things have happened to me. I do not judge you for having been a victim because I have been one too… but unlike you, I didn’t have an archangel waiting in the wings to escort me to safety- I had to do that for myself, when I was seven.’

  His voice had become bitter again, and I could taste something bitter in the back of my throat. ‘Why? What happened when you were seven?’

  He exhaled more smoke before saying flatly: ‘I asked Satan to kill my father.’ I cringed but he went on: ‘I was a little kid and so it was an empty orison to a deity that I didn’t even believe in… but she answered back, and I have not been able to shake her since. She explained to me that she couldn’t kill my father for me- she can’t actually kill anyone unless they attack her while in a physical form- but she said that if I surrendered myself to her, she’d find a way to get me out of there, and that if I touched her hands in the mirror, she’d be able to get into my body and fight on my behalf.’ He flicked some ash off his cigarette. ‘I didn’t believe her and so I ignored her, and when I woke up the next morning, I was convinced that seeing her in the mirror had been a fragment of some nightmare… but that didn’t change how desperate I was to get rid of my father, and so I went on and did it myself.’

  I swallowed hard. ‘How?’

  ‘I’d rather not say, and you wouldn’t want to know anyhow.’ He sighed while my imagination ran amuck. ‘Needless to say it didn’t solve any of my problems. My mother was beside herself with anger because his death put her in a very vulnerable position, and I was too young to hide the evidence of my guilt and so it wasn’t long before his men rounded me up on her command. They’d always hated me and jumped at the opportunity to make me walk the plank, so I’d say I had about an hour and a half of freedom out from under his rule before I was-’