The Rephaim: Burn Part 13

I b.u.mp elbows with Jude reaching for a fresh cutting board. He grins at me, eyes bright. I grin back.

Maria watches us closely, not drinking and not saying much. It must be strange for her to have us here, blood relatives and total strangers. Or, how she must see us after everything she's heard from Jason and Dani: half-angel b.a.s.t.a.r.ds with a penchant for violence.

Jason finally starts to relax after half a gla.s.s of wine. He looks like I remember from Monterosso, but his fingers aren't callused anymore from handling salt-encrusted fishing nets. His skin is soft, devoid of the faint scars that crisscross my hands. It's fair to say he hasn't been battling demons since we last saw him. G.o.d, maybe he's never even seen a Gatekeeper or h.e.l.lion. What would that life be like?

Dinner is delicious. Even Maria admits it. As we eat, Jude interrogates Jason about what he's been doing since Monterosso. Turns out he's been busy studying-history, psychology, law and theology. And for the last few years he's been able to keep track of us, thanks to Dani.

After Dani goes to bed and the dishes are done, the conversation drifts to the inevitable subject of the Fallen. It's enough to coax Maria out of her watchful silence.

'I've never understood why they were in such a hurry to seduce human women a second time around, knowing the consequences. What were they thinking?'

Jude's laugh is short, facetious. 'They'd had a dry spell that lasted thousands of years. They weren't thinking-at least not with their brains.'

'Thanks for the visual,' I say. Maria and I experience a brief moment of solidarity.

'They weren't stable when they came out of the pit,' Jason says. 'How could they be? They'd spent millennia being tortured and then they escaped into a reality that held no good memories for them: the last time they were on earth, their offspring were murdered by the Garrison.'

Jude's amus.e.m.e.nt fades. 'Yeah, at the hands of Gabriel the merciful.'

'I guess Gabriel's mercy doesn't extend to abominations,' Jason says.

I frown. What has he seen-or learnt-since I last saw him to put that idea in his head? I may not fully understand my purpose in this life, but I've never thought of myself as an abomination.

'The nephilim must have put up a fight, surely,' Maria says.

Jude uncorks another bottle. 'There's no evidence they were warriors.'

'Or that they were adults,' Jason says quietly.

Jude pours us each another wine. He swirls his, watches it cling to the side of the gla.s.s. Finally his attention returns to Jason. 'The Fallen could have gone anywhere in the world to find women. Any thoughts on how two of them ended up in Monterosso? Did your mother ever talk about it?'

'No.' Jason hesitates, glances at Maria. 'But my grandfather did.'

We wait while he takes a sip of wine and thinks about what he wants to tell us.

'Nonno blamed himself,' he says. 'Every year on my birthday he'd drink too much grappa, then he'd pull me aside and tell me how Mamma ran wild with the gypsies the summer your mother, Ariela, came to visit.' Jason's fingers stray to the back of his neck, to the half-crescent moon marking his skin. 'To his dying breath, Nonno believed there was a connection between the rituals the girls were doing on the outskirts of our village and the arrival of the "shining ones".'

I rub my leg above my knee. The wound is aching again. 'That's not possible. The Fallen were in h.e.l.l.'

'Yeah,' Jude says, 'but we know the veil between h.e.l.l and earth isn't impenetrable. Demons can interfere here. Are you saying the Fallen found a way through?'

'Not physically,' Jason says. 'Metaphysically. Through dreams.'

'And then what?'

'The old texts talk about the Fallen teaching charms and enchantments to the women they slept with the first time around-the mothers of the murdered nephilim. Maybe it was the same with our mothers, except they taught them certain rituals before they got out of h.e.l.l.'

I frown, not quite grasping what he's saying. 'Why?'

Jason dabs at a drop of spilt wine, shapes it into a crescent.

'I think it's possible they told our mothers how to bring them through the veil. They might have been the ones who broke them out of h.e.l.l.'

THE PACT.

Much later, after Jason and Maria have gone upstairs to their respective rooms, Jude and I sit on the carpet near a toasty gas heater. He shares the last of the wine between our gla.s.ses. We lean back against the sofa, shoulders touching. He takes a sip and then lets out a deep sigh.

'I've missed this,' he says quietly.

I draw my knees to my chest. 'Me too.'

'A decade. How did we let things get this far?'

'We're pig-headed.' I give him a gentle nudge, expecting at least a half-smile. Instead, he looks at me, deadly serious.

'I think we should do it.'

'Do what?' I raise my gla.s.s. I know exactly what he means, but I need a second to focus, prepare myself.

'Try Dani's ritual.'

I feel the buzz from the alcohol now, loosening my muscles and my thoughts. 'Let's say we do, and it works. Then what? How do we deal with Semyaza and two hundred fallen angels, each with the strength to rip us apart with their bare hands?'

Jude shrugs with one shoulder. 'I guess we'll find out if Semyaza has paternal instincts.'

'Seriously, Jude, what if Nathaniel's right and all the Fallen want is payback against the Garrison for sending them to h.e.l.l?'

'If they're going to war, they're going to war. The entire Rephaim army won't be able to stop that, so what does it matter who finds them?'

I concede a nod. All this time, Nathaniel's told us our duty is to find the Fallen and hand them over to the archangels. But the chances of us ever achieving that have seemed so remote over the years that he's never had to explain how we'd actually do it.

'Maybe Nathaniel's always intended to use us as leverage to get the Fallen to cooperate: take the gamble that we mean something to them.'

'Or at the very least that they don't want to kill us.' Jude takes off his boots, sets them over by the wall. 'There's an interesting conversation for Nathaniel: "Hey fellas, I raised your kids while you've been out of the picture and made sure they want to send you back to the pit. Oh, and those virgins you deflowered? Yep, I killed 'em all."'

I think of those young girls. Seeing Nathaniel in his true form. Not understanding why he was there until it was too late.

'But why kill them? Especially Ariela. I mean, if Jason's right and she's the reason Nathaniel was free in the first place.' I can't bring myself to call Ariela our mother. She feels more real now, the reality of her more likely to wound.

'Think about it,' Jude says. 'If Semyaza is our father, then it must have been him and Orias who made contact from the pit with Ariela and Jason's mother. They taught them the ritual to tear the veil, and then seduced them. The rest of the Two Hundred then followed their lead, scattering across the globe to find their own action. How do you think Nathaniel would've felt about women who helped his brothers-in-arms disgrace themselves within hours of finally being free of the pit?'

My chest tightens. 'Manifesting in front of them was their punishment. Him in full glory. It would've blinded them. Burned their flesh to the bone...'

We sit with that horrible image for a long moment, and then the jarring reality hits again.

Semyaza is my father.

And now the ache returns, the one tied to my long-dead mother. The one that makes me feel empty and powerless. The one I've pressed down over these decades, tried to suffocate from the moment I was old enough to understand I would never know either of my parents. I want to ask Jude how he feels but it's too personal, even for us. So I ask something else.

'Is it worth dying to come face to face with Semyaza?'

He shakes his head, slowly. 'It's not just about meeting him'-although I can see in his eyes it's a big part of it-'it's about changing the status quo. The Sanctuary and the Outcasts could keep searching for the Fallen for decades-centuries. We have a chance to end it all now, find out one way or the other why we exist and what we're supposed to do with our lives. Are we tied to heaven or earth or neither?' He sinks back against the couch. 'I'm over it all, Gabe. I'm no closer to the truth than I was at the Sanctuary, and it's worse now because you're not in my life. I can't go back-s.h.i.t, I don't want to-and you're not about to join us'-he pauses in case I want to disagree, which I don't-'so something has to change.'

I think about what I want to say before I say it, turning it over in my head to make sure it comes out right. 'What do you want out of all this?'

'I don't know. Meet our father. See the Garrison snap into action. At least if they show up, we might finally find out what the endgame is.'

'Or they might kill us.'

Kill us, or worse. I don't let myself imagine the horrors of the pit if we get dragged down there with our father. 'And what if the ritual doesn't work, then what? Nothing changes.'

Jude takes a sip of wine, his eyes not leaving mine. 'We could drop off the radar. Just you and me, like we always planned.'

I blink. Does he mean that? Do I want that?

'Look, I love my crew. And we've done more damage to the Gatekeepers in the last decade than in all those years at the Sanctuary, but there's not enough of us. There's always a risk one of us is going to get hurt again...or killed. If I left for a while, everyone might finally take time out. Mya mightn't be so gung ho without me around.' He says her name cautiously, watching for my reaction.

I can see he means it-or at least he wants to-but I know it's not that easy. For a start, he'd struggle to walk away from Rafa. He always has. And I understand: I feel the same about Daisy and Micah.

'You're not going to leave your crew, Jude. Not after they've been loyal to you for a decade.'

He rubs a palm over his eyes, sighs, doesn't argue. I stand up, gla.s.s in hand. My brain always works better when I'm moving. Maria has left us a stack of blankets and pillows on the table. It tilts dangerously to one side, threatening to topple. I do a lap of the table and straighten it as I walk past.

'All right, let's break this down.' I count the options off as I go: 'One. We release the Fallen. They kill us.

'Two. We release the Fallen. The Garrison turns up, kills us and/or sends us to h.e.l.l with our father and the Two Hundred.

'Three. We release the Fallen. They make war on the Garrison and it triggers a greater war between heaven and h.e.l.l and the Garrison is distracted dealing with the Fallen-Nathaniel's worst nightmare.

'Four. We fail. Go back to the mess of our lives.' I stop near the table. 'Or five, we desert the people we care about and spend years pretending it's not destroying us day by day.'

Jude smiles at me, sad. 'We've tried that last one already, remember. It didn't work.' He puts his gla.s.s aside and gets to his feet, comes over to me. Rests a hand on the pile of linen. 'What do you want to do?'

I tilt my head back and shut my eyes, let the evening settle into me. If I return to the Sanctuary, what am I going back to? The lies are still there, the undercurrent of tension. And how would Jude and I keep this connection if we return to our lives? How would we keep our people from each other's throats every time we tried to spend time together?

Jude lets me pick all these thoughts apart until it becomes clear to me there's only one possible option. I meet his gaze.

'Let's do it.'

THE BEST LAID PLANS...

The hardest part is Dani.

'You have to take me with you: I'm the one who recites the words,' she says.

We're sitting in the kitchen, soft morning light falling on the speckled bench. I'm washing our breakfast dishes, Jude's on tea towel duty and Dani is putting away the clean plates and gla.s.ses. The room still smells of rye toast and huckleberry jam. Maria left for work an hour ago-reluctantly-and Jason is upstairs taking a shower.

'What happens if it works and we end up face to face with the Fallen?' I ask Dani.

'They won't hurt me.'

'How do you know?'

She shrugs. 'I just do.'

I can see why Maria's so nervous about trusting Dani's conviction about things based solely on what she feels. She probably used the same argument to convince her mother to let us come to their home. And now we're about to take her out of the house without her mother's permission.

'Maybe Jason should come along-'

'No,' Dani says. 'He can't be there-it can only be the three of us. And you know he's going to freak out if you tell him. We'll leave him a note.'

I catch Jude's eye. I have no idea how to talk her out of this. Clearly neither does he.

'What are you worried about?' Dani asks. 'You can bring me back any time you want-just like that.' She snaps her fingers.

The water shuts off upstairs.

'We should go now,' Dani says.

'Go where?' Jude hands her another plate.

'This is Boise. We're surrounded by forests.'

I let the water out of the sink, watch the suds collect around the drain. Try not to think about how badly this could all go wrong.

'What about your mum?' Jude presses.

'She'll be at work for hours.'

I shake my head. 'She'll have a fit.'

'As long as we don't take too long and you get me back safe and sound, Mom will get over it.'

'I seriously doubt that.' Jude leans against the bench, folds his arms and studies Dani. 'Are you sure? Really sure?'

'I'm sure.' She grabs a sticky note from the draw and carefully writes a message in neat lettering.

I'm with Gabe and Jude. Back soon. Don't worry. Dani xx She opens the fridge and presses the note on the side of the low-fat milk carton. We use a maps app on Jude's phone to pick a remote spot in a forest to the north, and then slip into our jackets and grab our swords. A door opens on the floor above us.

'Last chance,' Jude says.

'Come on, already,' Dani says, exasperated. She holds a hand out to each of us, her fingers soft and warm. I hear footsteps on the stairs.

Jude and I exchange one last, tense look and then I guide us into the void.

It's brisk in the forest, the air clear and sharp. Almost cold enough for snow, even though it's only October. Dani clutches my hand as she steadies herself. She's pale from the shift and her fingers are like ice. I lead her into a patch of sunshine and rub her hands between mine to warm them. We've arrived in a small clearing ringed by pine trees and evergreens. Jude does a quick scout and comes back. 'Just us and the great outdoors.'

My pulse picks up, more insistent. I squeeze Dani's fingers and she looks up at me, her blue eyes luminescent in the daylight. Determined. How does an eleven-year-old kid have this much courage?