Paris, sixteen years ago

 

            Running for her life was nothing new for Alexia Blake, but running with two small children in tow was something she’d prayed never to have to experience. Footsteps ringing out on the wet concrete, she tightened her grip on the bundle of blankets in her arms whilst tugging insistently on the small, delicate hand encased in her own.

            “Rapidement, Aurelie, ma chérie! Nous doit se dépêcher!” Alexia urged, glancing back into the narrow, flushed face of her five-year-old daughter. Quickly, Aurelie, my darling! We must hurry! Aurelie’s eyes, golden as heavenly fire, were wide and serious as she nodded and increased her pace accordingly.

            “Maman?” Aurelie entreated. “Est le méchant nous chasser?”

            Alexia didn’t slow her pace any, but her heart lurched in sympathy for the tremor of fear she could hear in her daughter’s words.

            Pulling her down a nearby alley, she stopped in the shelter of a shadowed shop doorway to catch her breath for a second. With some manoeuvring of the baby in her arms, Alexia dropped to her knees beside the frightened little girl, bracing her free hand on her skinny shoulder. Aurelie’s hair, the inky black of a starless night, had escaped from her braid, and wisped in tendrils around her innocent, cherubic face.

            “Ma mignonne,” Alexia murmured. “Que tout ira bien.” Everything will be fine. Alexia wished she could believe her own words, but she didn’t have the naivety of a child on her side. She leaned forwards, the bundle in her arms stirring sleepily, and pressed a soft kiss to her daughter’s forehead. She took a few seconds to memorize the feeling, the slightly damp skin, and the scent of lilacs. It would probably be the last chance she would ever have to kiss her daughter.

            It was a kiss goodbye, and only Alexia knew it.

            “Ou est Papa?” Aurelie whispered, her voice cracking on the last word. There was a flash of agony in Alexia’s own chest, like a knife sharply bisecting her heart.

            “Il est parti.”

            Alexia didn’t feel ashamed of the lie. It was just another necessary story to protect her children, and one that they would eventually learn to be false. However, by that point, Alexia could only pray that they would be safe, safe far beyond their father’s reach.

            “Allons-y, Aura. Maintenant.”

            “Adrian est encore endormi, non?” Aura checked, taking her mother’s hand again. Alexia glanced into the bundle of blankets, peering down with anxious maternal eyes to see that her son’s eyelids were still tightly closed. His jet-black lashes formed a delicate crescent fringe across the pale skin of his cheeks.

            “Oui,” Alexia answered. “Il dort.”

            Alexia led her daughter through street after street, never slowing her pace. Aurelie kept up valiantly, but her little legs must have been protesting with overuse long before they reached their destination.

            Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris. It shone like a beacon of hope to Alexia, promising sanctuary for the two creatures in the entire cosmos whose welfare meant everything to her. She ushered her daughter through the gate ahead of her, slipping slightly on the worn, wet paving stones, and together they raced towards the curving doors.

            Releasing Aurelie’s hand yet again, Alexia raised her fist and pounded on the heavy wood. Her strength must’ve been pure adrenaline, because the force of her knock actually caused the doors to rattle slightly.

            She waited with tense nerves for what felt like an age, until the door opened.

            A pair of bright blue eyes stared back at her through the gap.

            “You are late, Mademoiselle Blake.” The speaker was addressing her in English, as she had known that he would. It was the language of her girlhood, the language of her beloved father, long-dead now. She set her jaw.

            “Forgive me, we were followed.” Her accent held no trace of the lilting French she had spoken so easily to her terrified daughter. Aurelie tugged at Alexia’s hand, demanding her attention. “Oui, Aura, ma mignonne?”

            “Je ne comprend pas!” she complained. “Qu'est-ce que tu dis?”

            Alexia almost smiled, despite the gravity of their situation. It had been weeks since she’d heard her daughter whining like a normal child. And she could only imagine how frustrating it must be; to be five years old and not be able to understand the language your own mother was conversing in.

            She patted Aura’s cheek gently, silently asking for her patience, and her daughter relented with a huff. Alexia turned back to the watchful sky-blue eyes of the man behind the door.

            “I need you to take Aurelie and Adrian. To keep them safe. As a favour to my father. And to me.”

            “You said when you left the Brotherhood that you wanted to have nothing to do with this life, or raise a family in it,” the man intoned flatly. “I haven’t forgotten the way you turned your back on us all, Lexie.”

            Lexie. It was a name that Alexia hadn’t heard in years, and, like her father’s tongue, it conjured up a torrent of memories she’d rather keep forgotten.

            “Please. I’m begging you, Cassiel.” She sucked in a breath. “You know that I wouldn’t come to you if there was another way. I don’t want them involved in the Brotherhood. But I can’t keep them hidden without you.”

            “Hidden from whom?” Cassiel asked sharply.

            Alexia couldn’t answer. She bit down on her lip, hard, unwilling to voice aloud her own stupidity. She had been raised in the way of the Brotherhood of Enoch, taught everything that she needed to know in order to prevent such a situation occurring, and yet, she had been duped, like all the other women before her. Like her own mother was.

            “I – I can’t, Cassiel.”

            “Lexie…”

            “Please. They are blood of your blood, Cassiel. Please protect them.”

            “And what of you?” His eyes flickered from Aura’s shadowed form on the porch steps and back up to her mother’s face. “Who will protect you?”

            “Nobody can protect me.” Alexia’s tone held all the finality of a death sentence. “Here… take Adrian from me…”

            She adjusted the stirring child, ready to hand him over. Brushing her lips once against his temple, she breathed a last expression of love before holding him out to Cassiel. Cassiel shifted the door so that it opened a bit wider, reaching out two muscled arms through the gap to divest her of the child.

            Gently, she felt his weight leave her arms, transferred to a much safer set.

            He was so small, Alexia thought. Not quite two years old, and he would never know his mother. Never know how much she loved him. Tears burned in her eyes, but she held them back, dropping to her knees beside her daughter.

            “Aurelie, je t’aime. Je t’aime plus que ma vie.” Pulling her into a hug, she allowed one tear to escape into Aurelie’s ebony hair. 

            “Moi aussi, Maman.” Alexia could hear the confusion in Aura’s voice, but she couldn’t bear to rectify it. She couldn’t bear to explain that she would be leaving her daughter for good. Nor could she lie, so instead, she said nothing at all.

            “Lexie!”

            Alexia turned at the sound of Cassiel’s gasp. He was holding Adrian, his body still half-hidden by the door, and was gaping down in open-mouthed horror at his eyes. Eyes which were blinking back at him, a curious, fiery gold.

            “His eyes… that colour…”

            She knew what he was seeing. There was no sense in denying it.

            “Now you understand?”

            “Alexia, what have you done?”

            At these words, Cassiel flung the door all the way back, and actually stepped forwards into the flickering light of the entrance lamp, obscuring everything else in shadow. He was an uncommonly tall man, easily seven feet high… if you could even call him a man at all.

            At Alexia’s side, Aurelie gave a startled little cry.

            Cassiel’s blue eyes were filled with horrified rage as he glared down at Alexia, his auburn waves practically standing on end, but that wasn’t what had elicited such a violent reaction from the little girl.

            No. That reaction was because she had seen the huge, curving protrusions blossoming out of his shoulder blades at last. They filled up the entire doorway – great, sloping arches coated in iridescent white feathers.

            Wings.

            “You fool, Lexie. You idiotic, damnable girl.” He glanced down at Aurelie, whose golden eyes were stretched so wide it looked as though they were about to fall right out of her head. “Your children are damned.”

            “No,” Alexia said coldly, bringing her chin up. “They are pure. They are Nephilim.”

2: Four Months Ago

Four Months Ago

 

London

 

         Adrian

 

            Standing on the banks of the Thames, in the part of Canary Wharf where the shadows were darkest, I peered over Gabriel’s shoulder, squinting down at the dark shape in the ghoulish moonlight.

            It was a corpse, and not the first one to show up along the river bank this week. It was, however, the first one to be discovered by the two of us on patrol.

            “We should poke her with a stick, or something,” I suggested. “Make sure that she’s really dead.”

            Gabriel swung around to gape at me in abject horror, grey eyes like steel. “She’s dead, Adrian. She’s eviscerated. What more proof do you need?”

            I shrugged, a sharp jerk of my shoulders. “It was only a suggestion. Better safe than sorry, as they say.” Measuring the appalled look on his face, a look that showed no signs of abating, I smirked. “No?”

            “No. Absolutely not.”

            I slugged him lightly on the shoulder, making his frame rock a little with the motion. “Lighten up, will you? You’re so serious all the time.”

            Gabriel’s lips mashed into a thin line. Tossing back short gold curls leached silver by the moonlight he arched one eyebrow at me. “We can’t all have your macabre sense of humour, you know.”

            “Or any sense of humour, in your case,” I shot back.            

            With the infinite patience that Gabriel seemed to store up and reserve for me whenever I got into one my moods, he bent forward and brushed a few stray strands of blonde hair from the dead girl’s face. “Have a little respect, won’t you? Look at her, Ade. She’s not that much older than we are.”

            Obediently, my eyes flickered over her body, focusing in on her face. Gabe was right – the girl was in her early twenties at the most. Her eyes, glassy and pale, stared unseeingly up at the night sky above. I imagined that she would’ve been pretty, if she’d had some colour, and spark – hell, some life in her. Gabriel is right, I thought miserably. I should care more.

            A hundred faces of a hundred dead bodies flashed through my mind right then, like some morbid flip-book of horror. I had never been great with names, but I never forgot a face. Especially the face of someone who’d been killed. A harmless human caught in the crossfire of a war that’s existence they didn’t even believe in. It happened so frequently that, after a while, you started to lose perspective. You got desensitized.

            Death didn’t bother me like it used to.

            “What are we going to do with her?” I murmured, dropping to my knees in the damp grass beside my best friend.

            “We can’t move her. The police need to find her body, so that they’ll be able to inform her family. If we bury her, nobody will ever know what happened.”

            “Is that necessarily a bad thing? Surely hope is better than nothing.”

            Gabriel studied the dead girl’s face for a long moment, his teeth worrying his bottom lip. “False hope is cruel,” he eventually answered.

            A gust of wind caught at the back of my jacket, then, sending goosebumps up my spine as the breeze blew my black hair into even more disarray than usual. I gripped my elbows, shivering. “Okay, well, then, can we move? It’s freezing.”

            Sighing mournfully, Gabriel slid two fingers over the girl’s eyelids, shutting her vacant stare off from the rest of the world. If it weren’t for the blood saturating the ground around her, or the gaping wound in her abdomen, she would look as though she were sleeping.

            “Deus tecum,” he muttered, straightening up.

            “You said the words of farewell, not of death,” I pointed out, as soon as he turned away from the body.

            “She wasn’t Nephilim.”

            “Like that makes a difference when you’re cold in the ground.”

            Gabriel rounded on me with another exasperated huff. “Adrian. You’re doing it again.”

            “Doing what?”

            “Being intentionally annoying.” Gabriel swept past me and set off at a brisk pace, headed for the distant orange glow of the streetlamps. After a second’s hesitation, I followed him, jogging until I caught up.

            Neither of us spoke as we walked. Neither of us really had the energy for words. It was always this way when we arrived too late to be of any use – we’d walk back the way we came in silence, the bitter sting of failure piercing through us with every step. Gabriel felt it worse than me – he felt everything so strongly. I used to view that as kind of a weakness, but I didn’t anymore. It took a special kind of strength to feel each loss, each failed save, as painfully as the very first, and yet somehow find the will to keep going.

            In all honesty, I envied him. His endless empathy made him just that little bit more human than I could ever be.

            It wasn’t until we were close to the pavement once more that I decided I couldn’t bear the defeated silence. “If we hurry, we might still catch whatever did this.”

            “Whatever killed her is long gone, Ade. We were too late.” Gabe’s voice held all the weariness of the world.

            I refused to wilt the same way my friend was. “But, just say that…”

            “It’s no use.”

            We stepped into the glow of a streetlight, just then, and Gabriel’s features were thrown into sharp relief. I’d always thought that Gabriel resembled the portraits of angels painted over the centuries by humans. His face was slightly less angular than mine, softer somehow. His square jaw was clean-shaven, and tanned the same light gold as the rest of him, just a few shades lighter than the curls hanging over his forehead. Normally, his eyes were like polished silver, but the weight of his emotions had darkened them to a stormy grey. They met mine evenly.

            I could see my own face reflected back in their mercury depths. I looked eerily pale in the amber light, my eyes two bright, burning pinpricks of gold set into my face. The shadows highlighted the sharp angles of my cheekbones, the hollow of my cheeks just below, the line of dark stubble kissing the edge of my jaw. My hair, raven-black, was a stark contrast to my alabaster complexion. I had none of Gabriel’s golden grace – I was a study in juxtapositions. Like always, I wasn’t entirely sure whether that was a good thing or not.

            “Why are you looking at me like that?” Gabe demanded, and I refocused my gaze hastily on the street, unwilling to admit that I’d actually been looking at my own reflection in his eyes.

            I toyed for a moment with the hem of my jacket – black, like the rest of my ensemble. We always patrolled in black, because it was much easier to blend with the shadows when you were dressed as one yourself. My weapons belt, or rather, the adamantine dagger sheathed in it, bumped reassuringly against my hip with each step I took. The icy coldness of the blade seeped into my skin, even through the layers of leather that separated it from me.

            “Adrian!”

            Gabriel said my name with the air of a person who had been trying unsuccessfully to get another’s attention for a while. “Huh? Sorry, were you speaking to me?”

            “I said that you’re walking right past the turning.”

            With a hint of surprise, I realised that he was right. “Oh. Guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

            “You think?”

            I shot him a glare. “No need to be sarcastic. That’s my thing.”

            “You don’t have the monopoly on sarcasm,” Gabriel replied serenely.

            I raised one hand to rub at the stubble lining my jaw, and the light refracted off the ruby inset into the heavy silver ring on my middle finger at the motion. My eyes traced the darker path along the river’s edge. “I still think that there’s a chance we could catch up to the thing. Lesser Damned beings aren’t exactly strategists. I bet it hasn’t gone that far…”

            “Far enough,” Gabriel blew out a breath. “It knew we were coming.”

            “You don’t know that for sure,” I argued.

            “The girl was a message.”

            “The girl was a meal.”

            Gabriel’s moon-bright eyes flashed towards mine. “She was both, Ade, and you know it.”

            I ground my teeth together irritably. I hated it when Gabriel was right. Not that he would ever gloat about that fact – he left that kind of supercilious behaviour to me. Still, I could feel his words curdling in the pit of my stomach like I’d drank a pint of sour milk.

            I was just about to admit defeat, when something white flashed on the edge of my peripheral vision. I seized Gabriel’s arm convulsively.

            “Ow!” he protested mildly.

            “Gabe.” My voice was sharp with sudden alertness. He stiffened at my tone, and I could tell he was following my gaze. Another restless, darting motion snagged at the very edge of my field of vision, and this time I heard Gabriel inhale.

            “Did you…?” I began.

            “I saw. I guess you were right, after all.”

            Mentally filing away the reminder to gloat about it later, I took off at a run, Gabriel hot on my heels. The world around me seemed to blur into a hazy vision of shadows and light as my feet pounded away noiselessly at the pavement underfoot. I veered left, straight into the mouth of a pitch-dark alleyway untouched by the amber glow of the streetlamps.

            Like I’d said; the Damned were vicious, but most of them weren’t that bright. This one had succeeded in boxing itself into a dead end. It lurked in the corner, trying to blend with the shadows cast by the brick wall. Grotesque, hunched, and vaguely humanoid in shape, it pulled back its lipless mouth and hissed, eyes glowing the crimson colour of dead blood in the darkness.

            “A Strigoi demon,” Gabriel said, fetching up at my side. Neither of us was out of breath from our run – an advantage of our angelic ancestry. “We should’ve guessed.”

            “Ugly bastards, aren’t they?”

            Gabe’s lips twitched at my words. Together, we advanced on the creature, both of us unsheathing our daggers from our belts in a synchronized motion. The Strigoi snarled, and then lunged with lightning speed.

            We twisted in unison, spiralling off in opposite directions at the creature sailed past us. It slashed out at my chest with fingers like sharpened bone, but I ducked the blow easily, bringing my knee up to collide with its ribs. A sickening snapping sound ensued, and the creature howled, swiping ineffectually at the air an inch from my face as I twisted out of reach again.

            I brought my fist up, and my knuckles cracked satisfyingly across the Strigoi’s jaw. It flew three feet into the air, smashing against the brick wall of the alley.

            Righting itself with a feral hiss, it bounded back towards Gabriel, this time. He ducked a series of vicious swipes, eyes alight with adrenaline, and leapt into the air, seizing the bottommost rung of the ladder poking down from the nearest fire escape. He swung himself backwards, before his boots made a resounding impact with the creature’s chest. It went down, hard, and I dug my heel into its sternum, preventing it from getting back to its feet.

            “Now, we just want to talk,” I said pleasantly, as it hissed and thrashed beneath the weight of my foot on its chest.

            Gabriel swung back and forth on the ladder like a metronome for a moment, before dropping soundlessly back to the ground. He landed with precision, brushing the rust off his hands on the sides of his thighs. “We do?”

            “For now,” I amended, grinning at him.

            Gabriel took his place by my right shoulder, effectively blocking the only exit from the creature. It glared balefully up at us, alternating focus between my face and Gabe’s.

            “Nephilim,” the Strigoi hissed, in a voice that sounded like nails scraping corrugated iron. “I do not fear you.”

            I raised one eyebrow coolly. “More fool you, then.”

            “Were you responsible for the body of the girl we found by the river?” Gabriel was terse, undisguised venom in his usually placid tone.

            “Yesss…” There was a strange sibilance to its speech, typical of Strigoi demons. Well, of lesser Damned creatures in general, actually.

            “No need to sound so cheerful about it,” I put in.

            “I hunt… I kill… the girl… human blood…”

            “Yeah, yeah,” I cut across it. “You’re evil and gross, we get it already.”

            “Why?” Gabriel’s expression was hard; blazing with righteous anger. “Why do it?”

            I rounded on him incredulously. “Are you actually expecting a decent answer to that question? It’s a demon, Gabe, not a misunderstood kid.”

            Gabriel fixed me with a mildly disparaging look of his own. “I know that. But why would it leave the body for us to find? It’s a Strigoi, they usually eat everything.”

            “Ugh.” I shuddered. “I guess you’re right.”

            The demon watched our exchange with its dark red eyes, but it didn’t offer any further explanation. I pressed down on his chest a little more insistently.

            “Answer the nice man, then.”

            Saliva frothed from the corners of its mouth as it snarled. “I will tell you… nothing… Gabriel Ambrose, son of Michael.”

            Gabe’s eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead. “It knows my name.”

            “Maybe your reputation precedes you,” I shrugged.

            The demon’s eyes flickered to me, and a nasty, grimacing smile twisted its hideous face. “Your eyes… they burn… bright… like the flames of Perdition…”

            I frowned at my friend, who looked just as surprised by the bizarre turn the Strigoi had taken. “Is it hitting on me, or something?”

            “Where is your… father…Adrian Blake?”

            I glowered down at its misshapen face, not really in the mood for a tangential chat. “I have no idea, nor any inclination to find out. And we’re not really here to talk about my Daddy issues, so if you don’t mind…” I trailed off pointedly.

            “You will have to kill me… I will not betray my master…”

            Sighing, I dropped to my knees, extending my dagger so that the tip of the blade was less than a millimetre from the creature’s glowing eye. To my immense satisfaction, I saw the first flicker of true fear in its expression.

            “Do you know how much adamantine blades burn when they cut into the skin of the Damned? You should hear the sizzle. The smell, too… it’s awful. Truly.”

Chalky white already, the demon seemed to pale further.

“It’s your choice. Tell us why you’re leaving a trail of corpses for the Brotherhood to find, and I’ll make it a quick death. Resist us, and I’ll drag it out for as long as possible. I swear on my Oath, I will.”

            “Ade…” Gabriel cautioned. I ignored him.

            “You have five seconds before I’m skewering your eye. Five. Four. Three. Two…”

            “It is… a test…” the Strigoi choked out. “To… lead you away… from our… true goal.”

            Gabe cut in. “And what’s that?”

            The demon’s eyes snapped up to Gabriel now. “To take your sister.”

            Suddenly, in a movement so fast that I couldn’t do anything to stop it, the demon jerked upwards, screaming in agony as my blade sliced right through its eyeball, lodging in its brain. With a gurgle, and the hiss of burning flesh, it died. Wispy tendrils of smoke billowed from the socket where its ruined red eye had once been.

            I jerked backwards, pulling the knife with me. “What the hell was that?”

            “Demonic version of hara-kiri?” Gabriel suggested, sounding faintly nauseated. “I want to know what the hell it meant about my sister.”

            I bit my lip, staring down at the lumpy corpse instead of my friend. “I don’t know.”

            “Faith left the Brotherhood, Adrian. She shouldn’t be in any danger. They shouldn’t even know or care about her.”

            Dimly, a memory surfaced in my head. A quick flash of stubborn silver eyes, and a set jaw as she looked up at me, determined.

            Watch Gabe’s back for me, Adrian. Keep him safe. Please.

            And who’ll keep you safe, kid?

            I’ll take care of myself.

            The anguish in Gabriel’s eyes when they met mine tore at my heart, the way a stranger’s corpse never could. “Adrian, we need to find her. To warn her. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

            Those silvery eyes swam in my mind again, almost an exact copy of the ones whose gaze I was trying desperately to avoid.

            It’s for the best, Adrian. Please, please, don’t tell him where I’ve gone. Don’t tell anyone. Swear to me.

            “Yeah,” I murmured. “I think I know where to start looking.”

           

     Faith

            “Goddamn it!”

            The expostulation left my lips without conscious thought as I noticed the boy sitting with his back to me on the steps of my run-down apartment block. With a sigh, I plastered on my best game face as he turned to look at me, all kind brown eyes and a friendly smile.

            “Hi, Faith.”

            Go away, I thought miserably. Instead, I said, “Hi, Reuben.”

            “I brought you your homework again. Seeing as you missed Chemistry.”

            The problem with trying to be mean to Reuben was that he was so damn nice. I felt guilty throwing acerbic comments his way, but I knew it was ultimately for his own good. Cruelty for kindness’s sake. A guy as nice as Reuben didn’t want to get mixed up with me.

            He ran a hand through short brown hair and stood as I moved past him down the steps.

            “Where’re you going?”

            “Out.”

            “Can I tag along?”

            “I’d rather you didn’t.”

            That last part wasn’t true at all. It was a lonely life that I’d chosen to lead, much lonelier than I’d anticipated fourteen months ago, when I snuck out of the Academy in the dead of night, never to be seen or heard from again. I wanted a friend, someone to have some sort of connection with, more than anything else in the world.

            But nobody would want a friend like me. Not if they knew the truth.

            Reuben’s long, lanky limbs meant that he caught up to me quickly as I took off along the street. “Going anywhere fun?”

            “Church,” I lied, hoping that would dissuade him.

            “Didn’t take you for a churchgoer,” he responded affably.

            “Well, you don’t know anything about me.” And it needed to stay that way, for his own safety.

            “I know that you stood up to Kyle Lawson and his friends at school yesterday.”

            I cut him a sidelong look from under my dark blonde lashes. “And?”

            “I wish I could do that.” The wistful, vulnerable honesty in his tone brought me up short. I stopped walking abruptly, peering up in the darkness at his face. Reuben was cute, handsome, really, if a little gangly and awkward. His countenance radiated total sincerity.

            “Have they been bothering you?”

            He shrugged, and I could tell that the casualness of the gesture was forced. “A little.”

            “How come?”

            His eyebrows winged upwards. “Seriously? Well… because I’m… y’know…”

            I crossed my arms over my chest. “No, I don’t know. Hence why I asked.”

            “Gay,” he mumbled, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. His eyes were downcast, shadowed by corkscrew lashes any girl would kill for. I felt a little jolt of surprise run through me. I hadn’t known that Reuben was gay. He wasn’t flamboyantly camp or anything.

            Although, he did dress pretty well.

            “If you’re gay, why are you always trying to talk to me?” I asked, somewhat rudely. He flinched at the hardness in my tone, and I immediately felt like crap. I didn’t let it show, though. Better he thought I was a bitch than discover the truth.

            “Because you’re… I don’t know… tough, I guess. And cool. I’d like to be a bit more like that.” He sucked in a breath. “And also because… well, sometimes I think you might be as lonely as I am.”

            A sharp intake of breath was my only response. Wow. How was it that this mortal, teenage boy, utterly ordinary, had seen right through the mask I held up to the rest of the world?

            “I’m not lonely,” I lied. “I don’t have time for friends. And I don’t have time for lapdogs, either.”

            His eyes snapped up to meet mine at that, and there was a hardness there that hadn’t been present a second ago. It was just a glimmer, but it let me know that Reuben wasn’t quite as pathetic as he believed himself to be. The thought made me strangely pleased.

            “Everyone has time for friends, Faith. Everyone needs someone. Do you think I’m a moron? I know you don’t live with your parents, and I know you haven’t told the school about that. You don’t talk to anyone in class unless they speak to you first. You eat lunch by yourself. Either you’re lonely, or you’re a robot.”

            I blinked, stunned. “Listen, Reuben, it’s not that you don’t seem like a great guy. You do. I just…” But I had no idea how to finish that sentence, so I gave up.

            “Don’t want to be friends with me?” he surmised, a laconic smile quirking the corners of his lips upwards. “Okay, fine.”

            He swung his bag off his shoulder and fished around in there for a moment. After a few seconds’ worth of digging, he produced a slightly crumpled up wad of paper, stapled at the corner, and handed it to me.

            “Your Chemistry homework,” he explained. “You might as well have it. And, sorry. I won’t bother you again.”

            With a defeated slump to his shoulders, he brushed past me, walking off in the opposite direction along the deserted street. I twisted on the balls of my feet, watching him go. Each crestfallen step he took tugged painfully at my heartstrings.

            “Reuben, wait!”

            He paused, but didn’t turn around. I jogged forwards to catch up with him.

            “Yeah?”

            I opened my mouth, searching for words. What could I say that would ease his rejection and hurt? I had never been particularly good at that. It was always Gabriel who had lent comfort to everyone. Those nurturing genes must’ve all been used up on my big brother.

            A sudden, darting movement out of the corner of my eye saved me from having to respond. My hand reached out, grabbing Reuben’s wrist, and I jerked him sharply to the side.

            “Get behind me!”

            “What is it?” He was bewildered, tripping clumsily over his feet as I positioned him at my back. My whole body coiled with sudden tension.

            The deserted street looked deceptively calm. Nothing seemed out of place at all, not even a rustle of the leaves with a sudden breeze. Reuben’s shallow breathing was the only sound that reached my ears – well, that and the sound of my own speeding heartbeat.

            “Something’s here.” In my panicked state, I forgot to edit myself. I cringed when he sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, and I realized that I’d said ‘something’ rather than ‘someone’.

            “Faith, what…?”

            He broke off abruptly, making a strangled choking sound in the back of his throat, and I immediately saw why. The shadow cast by the nearest tree seemed to quiver, and then something sprung forth from it – a misshapen, humanoid form, whiter than bone and clad only in dark rags, its slanted eyes glowing like arterial blood.

            “Shit!” I swore, groping blindly in my back pocket for the adamantine blade that I usually carried with me – only to remember that I’d left it on my dresser in my flat.

            “What the hell is that?” Reuben cried, his voice shooting through three octaves.

            I didn’t answer him, because by then, the demon – it was a Strigoi, I noted – had lunged for me, and I was too busy ducking its razor-sharp claws to respond to the question.

            Ignoring Reuben, I allowed myself to truly embrace the angelic heritage I’d been denying for the past ten months. My muscles were taut with the latent strength I’d been trying to hide in the human world, and I aimed a well-placed blow at the demon’s head. It staggered backwards, growling insensibly, and swung again. I launched myself skywards in a jump much higher than any human could’ve managed, turning a somersault and landing behind the demon.

            Frantically, I cast my gaze around for something I could use as a weapon. My eyes were drawn to a folding sign indicating roadworks up ahead. Snatching it up, I spun, swinging the metal body of the sign so that it cracked across the back of the demon’s skull. It connected with a crunch, and the demon howled.

            “Run!” I yelled at Reuben, who still stood, wide-eyed and frozen in shock. He blinked spastically at me, but didn’t obey my directive. A very unladylike word slipped from between my clenched teeth, and when the demon’s talons arced towards me again, I ducked under its arm, driving the metal leg of the sign I still held deep into its chest, piercing it through the heart.

            Its eyes went wide, the red glow sputtering and dying as the life left its body. It sagged, and I wrenched my makeshift weapon back. The body slumped to the pavement, marbled black-and-red blood oozing from the chest wound.

            Panting, and a little disgusted, I tossed the sign to one side, where it landed a few feet away with a clatter.

            “Are you okay?” I asked Reuben in a low voice. His eyes snapped to mine – they were twice their usual size, and shining with pure incredulity.

            “That… I… what are you?” he demanded.

            I deliberated for a second, vacillating between telling him the truth or feeding him a line. Abruptly, I came to a decision.

            “I’m Faith Ambrose. Retired Nephilim warrior. And I’m your friend, if you still want me to be.”

            Reuben considered me seriously for a moment, a thousand emotions flickering across his expressive dark eyes. He opened his mouth, no doubt to tell me I was clearly certifiable, but what came out instead surprised me.

            “That… was really fucking cool.”

3: Chapter One

PART ONE

The Homecoming

 

“Home is the place where you are most thoroughly yourself, with no pretences.” – Victoria Moran

 

Faith

Chapter 1

 

            “Did you hear?”

            The glum words came from my best friend as I dropped into the vacant seat beside him in the lunch hall. I glanced at him in surprise, more at his tone than anything else.

            “Hear what?” I asked, unpeeling the lid off my yoghurt and licking it clean.

            “About what happened in PE?”

            “No…” I twisted in my chair to study him. Eyes a few shades darker than his honey-brown hair blinked back at me. “What happened?”

            “Liam Cross happened.”

            My fists immediately clenched at the sound of that bullying bastard’s name. “What did he do this time, Reuben?”

            He shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Called me a faggot. Made a scene.”

            “Did he hit you?” My eyes immediately scanned his face, checking for marks. Sure enough, I saw the beginnings of an angry bruise forming on his left cheekbone. The sharp edges of my nails bit into my palms as I clenched my fists tighter. “I’ll kill him.”

            “Don’t bother,” Reuben shrugged again. “He’s not worth it.”

            Although his assessment was probably true, it didn’t help my rage any. A temper like mine had a hair-trigger anyway, and I’d been holding back with Liam for too long. A huge part of me wanted to lay into him, to give him the proper beating he deserved. To hell with all the eyebrows it would raise when word spread that a five-three girl had kicked the arse of a guy who was about a foot taller and at least five stone heavier.

            “I don’t care if he’s worth it,” I hissed. “You’re worth defending.”

            “Faith,” Reuben said quietly. “You can’t. You know you shouldn’t draw attention to yourself.”

            Ever the voice of reason, his words brought me back to reality. As much as I would’ve gotten some serious satisfaction out of seeing Liam cower in the face of my wrath, it wasn’t worth the risk of my unnatural strength being cast into the spotlight. I needed to protect my own identity.

            “You’re right.” I set my yoghurt back down on my tray, my appetite vanishing. “But still, I wish I could just…”

            “Well, you can’t. They’ll find out where you are.”

            The thought sent a chill through me. I’d been hidden for eighteen months without being caught out, but one slip-up could change that. “I know. I just hate feeling so…”

            “Human?” Reuben supplied, the ghost of a grin turning the corners of his mouth upwards.

            “I was going to say ‘ineffectual’.”

            “Same difference, isn’t it?”

            I smiled. Reuben’s teasing was comfortable ground for me. Leaning close, I whispered, “You’re pretty down on your own race.”

            “Just stating a fact.” Those watchful brown eyes measured me for a moment. “Do you ever miss it?”

            I knew what he was referring to without clarifying. Eighteen months ago, I’d turned my back on my life as I knew it, trading in my higher calling for a school uniform and a chance to be around ‘normal’ people. Reuben was the only one who knew my secret.

            I might’ve looked like a human and talked like a human, but human I was not.

            At least, not entirely.

            “There’s not really a lot to miss.” It was a lie, but it was one I’d perfected by now. Truthfully, I did miss my old life. I missed being able to outrun a moving vehicle. I missed being able to toss people across the room with a well-executed uppercut. I missed the constant excitement, the thrill of the hunt. I missed the people who shared those feelings.

            Most of all, I missed being able to be myself.

            Reuben was looking at me like he knew what I was thinking, but he didn’t comment on it. Instead, he picked up the apple from my lunch tray and took a huge bite.

            “Hey, that’s mine!” I protested.

            He grinned around a mouthful of fruit. “Like you were going to actually eat something that healthy.”

            I pouted, but didn’t contradict him. Like I’d said, Reuben was the only one around here who really knew me.

            “Did you get started on the algebra homework that Mr Tanner set?”

            “Nope.” He popped his lips on the ‘p’. “I figured I’d just copy off you.”

            “Like you’ve been doing all year. You’ll never pass your exams if I keep doing your work for you.”

            “C’est la vie, F.”

            I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious.”

            We continued to bicker back and forth about the merits of doing algebra homework for the rest of the half-hour lunch period, and for a short while, I forgot all about the feelings of homesickness that our conversation had stirred up. It was only when a shadow fell across our table that I glanced up.

            Straight into the narrowed green eyes of Liam Cross.

            My earlier ire came back in full force, and I had to will my hands to remain unclenched as I regarded him. Liam was the kind of guy that most girls would describe as hot, with an athletic physique and a dangerous smile. Except, I knew what true danger looked like, and Liam wasn’t anything close.

            Mostly, he was just an arsehole.

            “Hey, Summers,” he greeted me, gaze flickering further south than my face as he appraised me. “Looking good, as always.”

            I scowled. With my long, tawny hair and compact-but-curvy build, I was used to attracting attention from guys. It was unwelcome, for the most part, but especially so from a creep like Liam.

            Employing my usual lack of a verbal filter, I told him as much. “Go to hell, Cross.”

            He smiled, apparently taking my comment as playful banter rather than in the spirit it was meant. “I like a girl with attitude.”

            “Funny, because I like a guy with common decency. Looks like I’m the one who ends up disappointed, as usual.”

            Liam’s smile faltered a little at that, and he immediately transferred his gaze to Reuben, who had been watching our exchange with amusement. “Something funny, queer?”

            “Plenty.”

            His eyes found the darkening bruise on Reuben’s cheek, and a nasty smirk appeared on his face. “Someone got you pretty good there, didn’t they?”

            My jaw shut with an audible snap, and Reuben’s fingers closed over my wrist under the table, silently restraining me. We both knew I could break his grip if I wanted to, but the gesture was only meant to serve as a reminder for me to behave. I relaxed my clenched teeth, but not my rigid stance.

            “And yet,” Reuben addressed him coolly. “I’m still prettier than you.”

            It wasn’t untrue – Liam might’ve been good-looking, but Reuben was downright adorable, in a geek-chic way. If he’d batted for my team, I’d probably have snapped him up long ago. Liam eyed him critically, and scoffed.

            “Whatever you say. You’re the one who goes around checking out guys.”

            “Careful,” Reuben warned. “If you stand this close to me, you might actually catch it. I hear ‘homo’ is an airborne virus, these days.”

            Glaring, Liam braced his hands on either side of the table, leaning down into Reuben’s personal space. “You think you’re funny when Summers is around, but just wait until you’re by yourself. You won’t be laughing then.” With one last dirty look, he stalked away from the table. Reuben stared impassively after his retreating back.

            It was only his hand still clasped around my wrist that tipped me off to the fact that he was shaking.

            “Don’t let him get to you,” I soothed, twisting my arm in his grip so that I could thread my fingers through his. I gave his palm a gentle squeeze.

            “Too late,” he mumbled. A rush of hatred for Liam swelled in my chest, and it took every ounce of my willpower not to push away from the table and go after him, consequences be damned.

            “Reuben, I…” The bell rang loudly, eclipsing my next words. He sighed and released my hand, reaching down to gather up his bag.

            “It doesn’t matter, Faith. Don’t worry about me.”

            Slipping his bag onto his shoulder, he stood. After shooting me one last smile, he turned and headed off to his afternoon classes. My eyes tracked his departure in concerned silence, but I didn’t make a move.

            Yeah, I thought darkly. Ineffectual.

            I had Psychology after lunch, and I followed the well-worn path to the social sciences block along with the other students. They were all babbling excitedly about some upcoming party at some Upper Sixth Former’s house, but I tuned them out, lost in my own morose thoughts.

            It was only when I felt someone’s eyes on me that I snapped out of my funk.

            Glancing to my left, I saw nothing but the trees that served as a buffer to the noise of the outside world, and beyond that, the peeling green paint of the school’s fence. A sense of unease crept up on me, but I swallowed it down. I was probably just being paranoid. Still, I couldn’t help but increase my pace as the Psychology classroom came into view.

            Better to be safe than sorry.

            Miss Mortimer was one of the better teachers that I had this year. Her lesson plans were always imaginative, and she expected nothing less than full class participation. Today’s lesson on antipsychotic drugs was no exception. She’d pushed back all the tables and roped half of the class into becoming a physical demonstration of a synapse, while the other half had to direct their movements in response to how the drug would affect the transmission of dopamine.

            My contribution was uncharacteristically half-hearted, and it didn’t escape her notice. As the bell rang to signal the end of the double-period, she called me back when the others began filing out.

            “Faith?”

            I dithered in the doorway for a moment, before making my way back over to her desk. “Yeah?”

            Miss Mortimer perched on the edge of the table, twisting her shiny dark hair into a bun and securing it with – of all things – a pencil. “Are you okay? You seemed a little distracted today.”

            “Oh, no. I’m… um… fine.”

            She narrowed her pretty hazel eyes at me. “Once more, with feeling.”

            “Really, I’m okay.” It wasn’t as though I could launch into the myriad of issues playing on my mind with my Psych teacher anyway. She’d listen for about five minutes, and then have me committed. “It’s just been a tiring day.”

            “I hear that,” she agreed. “Would you believe that the class before you actually suggested that they illustrate schizophrenic symptoms in the form of interpretive dance?”

            I laughed. Reuben was in that class. In all likelihood, it had probably been his idea. “I actually can believe that.”

            She smiled wearily, but the soft, concerned look in her eyes didn’t abate as she continued to study me. “If you need to talk at all… I’m here, okay?”

            I was grateful for the sentiment, even if I could never take her up on it. “Thanks, Miss Mortimer. I’ll keep that in mind.”

            “Make sure that you do. And take care of yourself, hon.”

            Free to go, I made a beeline for the door, but paused when I got there.

            “Miss Mortimer?”

            She glanced up from the papers she’d been starting to collect. “Yes, Faith?”

            “How do you know if you’re paranoid?”

            A frown darkened her pretty features. “Um, in what way?”

            “Like… let’s say, hypothetically, you felt like someone was watching you.”

            A smile tugged at her mouth again. “You’re a pretty girl, Faith. I’m sure lots of the boys around here are watching you when you’re not looking. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

            “But what if it felt… I don’t know… bad?”

            “Lots of teenage girls get a little paranoid that people are looking at them, or thinking something unpleasant about them. It’s only a natural part of growing up. There’s probably nothing sinister about it, but you know how the mind sometimes gets carried away with itself.”

            “Yeah…” I muttered. “I guess so.”

            Her words didn’t do much to loosen the knot that had formed in my stomach, but I didn’t want to elaborate any further, lest she think I was actually cracking up. With a tight smile, I left her to her tidying, and tried to ignore the burning feeling of someone else’s gaze on me as I exited the building.

            It was just my mind getting carried away with itself. Nothing sinister.

            Right.

*

            My flat – if you could call it that – had been rented under a false name, with a fake I.D. It was a poky bedsit in the rougher end of Brixton, with furnishings that walked a narrow line between well-used and shabby. I couldn’t afford anything better, though, not on my meagre coffee-shop wages.

            Once I’d let myself in the front door, I navigated the small square-footage with practiced care, wedging myself in behind the door so that I could shut it without hitting the rickety table I used for meals. I deposited my bag, and headed into the cramped kitchenette in search of a can of coke. Retrieving one from the fridge, I crossed the seven steps over to my bed and cracked the top as I sat down.

            When I’d quenched my thirst, I tried to rationalise my weird being-stalked feeling I’d had earlier on. A few attempts later, none of which seemed particularly reassuring, I gave up altogether and flipped on the TV in an effort to distract myself.

            The face of a BBC newscaster filled the screen, along with the caption: hunt for Melanie Whittaker’s killer ongoing. The images onscreen shifted to a panoramic view of Canary Wharf, and I turned up the sound.

            “… Since her body was recovered three weeks ago. A forensic team has been combing the area thoroughly, but are not as yet yielding any evidence. Again, this vicious and unprovoked attack is one that has shocked the members of the community, who…”

            I muted the sound again, feeling sickened. A picture of Melanie’s face was being shown, now – a bright, smiling blonde in her late teens. I turned the TV off altogether, unable to stomach the report any longer. Sometimes, the human world could be just as sick and twisted as the one I’d left behind. The one I’d made an active decision not to fight against. 

            My conscience ached dully in my chest as the image of Melanie Whittaker’s face flashed in my mind. I had the ability to do some good in the world, and I’d chosen to run away.

            For the second time today, I found myself wondering if I’d made the right choice. I pushed the thought aside as quickly as it had come. There was no use in second-guessing myself now; what’s done is done. Right or not, I’d made my decision, and there wasn’t going to be any turning back.

            A knock at my door startled me out of my thoughts. I tensed, instincts kicking in, before I heard the familiar voice through the wood.

            “Faith, are you in there?”

            Sagging in relief, I uncrossed my legs and clambered to my feet. Reuben stood on the threshold when I pulled back the door; hands braced either side of the frame. He still wore the skinny jeans and navy Jack Wills t-shirt he’d had on earlier.

            “Hey,” I greeted, stepping back to let him pass.

            He shimmied into the tiny space with difficulty, manoeuvring so that I could close the door behind him. His dark eyes scanned the room with undisguised upset. I didn’t know how many times he’d begged me just to go and live with him and his parents in their townhouse. I’d refused the offer every time. It was easier and safer that way.

            “I thought I’d come hang out for a while,” he told me. “See if you maybe wanted to get dinner?”

            I brushed back a strand of blonde hair from my eyes and peered up at him curiously. “Why aren’t you having dinner with your folks?”

            “Mum has some sort of business thing she’s got to go to, and Dad’s going as her plus one. It was either take-away by myself, or I thought I’d treat you to Nando’s.” 

            It was an offer I couldn’t resist, and he knew it. “I’ll grab my jacket.”

            The walk to the restaurant was fairly quiet, by Reuben and my standards. I think both of us were too wrapped up in our own thoughts to make decent conversation. Eventually, though, a nagging question caused me to break our pensive silence.

            “I have to ask, Reubs… were you the one who tried to get Miss Mortimer to do interpretive dance in Psychology today?”

            His smile was wry. “She told you about that, huh?”

            “Yeah, and I figured you’d have something to do with it.”

            We stopped at a crossing as we waited for the light to turn green. “Well, she’s always going on about new and interesting ways to express ourselves. I thought she’d be on board.”

            “And you never thought that it would be a little insensitive, considering the subject matter?”

            He raised an eyebrow. “Are you really about to deliver me a lecture on tact?”

            I laughed, conceding the point. “No, I suppose not.”

            The light changed, and Reuben started to walk. I made to follow him, but as soon as my foot left the kerb, I froze.

            “Honestly, Faith, sometimes I…” Noticing that I wasn’t following him, Reuben stopped midway. “Faith?”

            Goosebumps had broken out all over my skin as that same sense of being shadowed stole over me. My head whipped from side to side, but all I could see were the usual late-evening commuters making their way back from work. Nothing insidious. Nothing remotely out of the ordinary.

            So why was my flesh still crawling?

            Someone in their car honked the horn impatiently, making both Reuben and I jump. Just like that, the weird, creepy feeling vanished again. I lurched into motion, darting across the road to catch up to my friend. He waited until we were safely on the opposite pavement before grilling me.

            “What’s going on?”

            “I don’t know…” I hedged. My eyes flickered back the way we’d come, but, again, there was nothing strange there. “Maybe nothing.”

            Reuben frowned. “I know you, Faith. It’s not nothing. Tell me.”

            I blew out a breath. “All day, I’ve been getting this feeling, kind of like I’m being followed.”

            His eyes widened in alarm. “By who?”

            “I don’t have a clue.”

            “Are we in danger?”

            In my head, I was instantly transported back to the day I’d first met him. The day I’d saved his life from the things that went bump in the night, things he hadn’t even believed in until he’d seen the corpse on the ground. I’d had no choice but to tell him everything, and to my surprise, the revelation had instantly bonded us, rather than him running away screaming. That was rare for a human, and had created a priceless friendship for me.

            I desperately didn’t want him to feel threatened or unsafe when he was around me now. It might’ve made him regret his decision to be my friend.

Squaring my shoulders, I put on my best brave face. “Like I said, it’s probably nothing. I’m just being paranoid.”

            “Okay…” Reuben said slowly, but he didn’t look particularly convinced. Neither was I, for that matter.

            Nandos was crowded when we entered. Of course, that was only to be expected for a Friday evening. A booth full of rowdy university students were hollering obscenities back and forth at each other, and from the bottles of beer that had piled up on their table, they were well on their way to drunk. A nearby family were shooting them all dirty looks. I spotted a free booth just by the window, and tugged Reuben over to it. We slid in opposite each other, grinning at our good fortune. Window seats were notoriously difficult to get in this place.

            A greeter bustled over, pulling a notepad from her cropped black apron and surveying us with a pinched, slightly irritated look. “You’ve just gone ahead and seated yourselves,” she pointed out tersely, in lieu of an actual greeting.

            “Yeah,” Reuben agreed. I could tell from the sly look he gave me that Miss-Customer-Service wasn’t going to like whatever was coming next. “We dressed ourselves this morning, too. I can hardly get over how capable we are.”

            I sniggered, and the waitress’s scowl deepened. “Fine. Do you want drinks?”

            “I’ll have a coke,” he said serenely.

            “Make that two.”

            She disappeared, leaving us to peruse our menus. I already knew what I was going to order, so I didn’t know why I was reading the thing so carefully. Belatedly, I realised that I was just looking for something to distract me.

            Reuben nudged me under the table with his foot. I glanced up to see dry amusement in his eyes. “Do you think she’s going to spit in our drinks?”

            I answered his grin with one of my own. “Probably.”

            If she did, it wasn’t obvious. She left again with our meal orders, and when they came back, they didn’t seem to have been tampered with either. Reuben did a thorough examination of his just to be sure, but, finding no fault with it, proceeded to engulf the whole lot in under ten minutes. For the rest of the time, he chatted amicably with me while I ate, and I finally felt myself starting to properly relax for the first time all day.

            True to his word, Reuben paid the bill. He overdid it slightly with the gallant waving away of my purse – “Keep your hard-earned money, woman!” – But it was a nice gesture nonetheless. We took our time collecting our belongings, pointedly blanking the waitress’s obvious hints to hurry up so that she could finish her shift.

Now that it was nearing ten, all the warmth of the day had been sucked from the air by a soft breeze that was surprisingly chilly. Goosebumps stood out on my arms as I hastily stuffed them back into my jacket. The denim material was too thin to provide any extra warmth.

Reuben glanced at his watch and whistled. “Wow, look at the time! My mother is going to freak if she comes home and I’m not there. She likes to think she can ‘protect’ me if I’m home.”

I snorted. “I can protect you a damn sight better than she can.”

And I was shirking my cosmic duties in order to sit and munch on chicken wings. A small trickle of guilt leaked into my brain, but I wiped it away immediately. It wasn’t fair; I hadn’t asked for the life I was ‘meant’ for.

His words rang in my ears, distant and faded, like an old song with half-remembered lyrics. So, what? You’re just going to turn your back on your destiny? On us? Like none of it matters?

“Faith, are you even listening to me?” The sound of my name brought me out of my reverie with a start. I flushed guiltily.

“No, sorry, I was miles away.”

“I asked if I could borrow your phone to call Mum.”

Obeying the request without even thinking about it, I reached my hand into the pocket of my jacket… and came up empty.

Reuben frowned when he saw my eyes go wide. “What is it?”

“Ah, no! I don’t believe it – I must’ve left my phone back at the restaurant!”

“You’re kidding,” he said exasperatedly. “Alright, let’s…”

“No, it’s okay, I’ll just run back and grab it; we’re only two streets away. You wait here.”

Reuben looked as though he was about to argue, but after a moment’s hesitation, he shrugged. “Okay, be quick.”

“As a flash,” I promised, and spun on my heel to jog back the way we’d just come.

Thankfully, my phone was waiting for me at the greeter’s desk – the snotty waitress who had been ushering us along with her eyes handed it back to me with a simpering smile that clearly said ‘I don’t get paid enough to be convincing at pretending I like you’. I muttered my half-hearted thanks, and hurried from the place so that they could lock up.

The first thing I noticed when I stepped back onto the street was that it was quiet. Too quiet. It was the sort of eerie stillness that, in horror movies, always seemed to descend right before the heroine nearly gets beheaded by a serial killer. The street light across the road from me was flickering in a sinister sort of way, casting long, monstrous shadows down the mouth of the alley beside it.

A normal girl might’ve pulled her jacket tighter around her and hurried away with her head down, but not me. My blood was suddenly spiked with a rush of adrenaline, and with that, the inevitable curiosity that was hardwired into my DNA.

Knowing I would probably regret it, I crossed the street in several short bounds and peered around the nearest shop into the alley beyond. Everything seemed to be perfectly still, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. In my experience, absolute innocuousness only came before all hell broke loose.

Tentatively, I took a few steps into the darkness, beyond the reach of the street light’s amber glow. I really hoped that I wouldn’t accidentally disturb a sleeping tramp or something like that.

There was nothing. I huffed, mentally chiding myself for jumping to conclusions. Sometimes a broken streetlamp on a quiet night was just exactly that.

It was when I turned to make my way back to the impatiently waiting Reuben that the Shax demon appeared.

It looked just like they all did; human, only not, with a warped, deformed skeleton and greenish, translucent skin. It faced me, snarling. Viscous saliva ran steadily down its chin and landed in fat, repulsive drips at its claw-like feet. Eyes the colour of arterial blood narrowed in my direction, and its ragged lips pulled back over its teeth as it spoke.

“You… I hassss found you. Masssssster will be ssssso pleasssssed.”

I should have been afraid. Intellectually, I understood that. I was alone and unarmed in an alleyway, facing a monster right out of a Bram Stoker novel. Yet all I could manage was thinly veiled revulsion.

“Why do you want me?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.

“Masssssster told ussss… we musssst take the Nephil girl.” It advanced forwards a step, eyes glowing hungrily, and I retreated accordingly. I wanted at least three feet of distance between me and the thing’s dribble.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied, backing up some more. “I’m not a Nephil.”

“Liessssss…”

“Okay, fine. You got me. Maybe I am, but why do you want me, specifically? Out of all the Nephilim out there…”

It blinked at me as though it hadn’t understood my sentence. It may not have done – Shax demons were about as intelligent as nail brushes – but it answered me anyway. “Daughter of Michael… we musssst take… we musssst bring you…”

Well, whoever it was commanding the monster that was still leering hungrily at me, he definitely knew who I was. I didn’t like the sound of that one little bit.

“This has been nice, and all,” I said, summoning up a faux-cheery voice and trying not to look like a mouse cornered by a cat, “but I’ve left a friend waiting, so I’ll be off now…”

The creature lurched forwards. “No. Friend will wait. Girl will come.”

Crap. I didn’t even have a weapon on me. You see the sort of situations you get yourself in, Faith? My common sense chastised me.

It darted towards me, talons raking the air by my cheek as I spun out of the way. Thank the good Lord for my speedy reflexes. I ducked another blow, and lashed out with one foot. The kick didn’t land as I aimed it to – I only clipped its kneecap with my toes. It barely staggered.

It surprised me how rusty I’d gotten in only eighteen months. One of its hands caught me across the face, and I felt my body lift from the ground, remaining airborne for a few anticipatory seconds before I hit the concrete, hip-first. The shock of the impact resonated all the way through me, but I didn’t cry out. Instead, I pushed myself up a few inches by my palms and launched into the air, flipping a hundred and eighty degrees to land on my feet. I felt distinctly pleased with myself, but there would be plenty of time for self-congratulatory pats on the back later. Or not, if I didn’t turn my attention back to the Shax demon still coming at me.

I raised my arms to parry whatever blow it decided to try for, when a dark shape literally dropped from the sky, landing feet-first on top of the Shax’s misshapen back. It hurtled to the concrete like a felled tree. There was a silvery flash, a spurt of blood, and a long, drawn-out scream.

I gaped down at the now-dead creature, its eyes no longer glowing, but blank and unseeing. Red and black marbled blood leaked from its mouth.

My timely saviour hopped lightly from the dead monster’s back, taking a step towards me as he – for it was definitely a he – slid a long, slim silver dagger back into place in his belt. He was dressed like a Nephilim hunter; all in black, with a hooded jacket obscuring his face from view. As I stared incredulously at him, he raised both of his large hands and lowered his hood.

My breath hitched as I got my first proper look at his face. Jaw-length hair a shade blonder than mine, and eyes the same bright silvery grey. His smooth, unblemished skin was splattered with the same marble-effect blood that was oozing in a puddle from the dead creature, but I barely noticed.

Pure, undiluted joy rushed to my brain so fast I felt dizzy. When I whispered his name, it was with an awed reverence. “Gabriel…”

He grinned beatifically.

“Hey, little sister. I thought it was about time I dropped in on you.”

4: Chapter Two

Chapter 2

For a long moment, I could only stare at my brother. My mouth opened and closed wordlessly as a thousand questions rattled around in my brain. Where had he been? Why was he here? Did he know I was being hunted? How long had he been following me? Did he miss me as much as I missed him?

When I still didn’t speak, he simply held out his arms in silent invitation. Even though he was covered in blood and sweat and probably a myriad of other unsavoury things he’d encountered on his hunt, I stepped into his embrace without hesitation. His arms circled around my back, tight enough that he could probably touch his own triceps.

“I’ve missed you, Fay.”

My cheeks were wet with tears, but I didn’t remember starting to cry. Gabe pulled back from the hug and brushed a stray tear from the corner of my eye with the pad of his thumb, smiling.

“You’re here,” I whispered, like I didn’t believe it.

“Don’t cry, silly.”

I pressed the flat of my palm against his chest, feeling cool leather and hard muscle and a steady pulse against my skin. “You got tall.”

It sounded like such a stupid thing to say. Gabriel didn’t laugh at me, as I expected him to, but shook his head affectionately.

“A lot can change in eighteen months.” His face fell a little.

“I still think I’m the pretty one, though,” I told him earnestly.

At this, he actually did laugh. It was a rehashing of an old debate between us. “I love you, you know that?”

“I love you, too.”

I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t see Gabriel again, when I emancipated myself from the Brotherhood of Enoch and my Nephilim life. It was just easier that way. A clean break. He had agreed only because he didn’t want me to be angry with him for showing up.

Right now, though, looking into his eyes – a shade more silver than my own - I realised I had never been happier to see my big brother.

“I hate to break up the tearful family reunion…” another familiar voice drawled from the alleyway entrance, “but we really need to get off the streets.”

I twisted in my brother’s arms, leaning around his bulk (which there definitely hadn’t been as much of when I’d last seen him) to see the speaker. He was propped against the corner of the newsagents that bordered the alley, muscled arms crossed loosely over his chest. Clad head-to-toe in his dark hunting clothes and backlit by the streetlamp, he looked almost mystical.

“Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel responded, his shining eyes still focused on me. I wasn’t really focusing on Gabe – I was squinting down the alley at the outline of what I vaguely recognised as his best friend and partner in monster-slaying.

“Adrian?”

He chuckled slightly. “Still sharp as a tack, Little Ambrose.”

His nickname caused me to plunge headlong into memories; memories of a girl with long, blonde pigtails trailing pitifully after two boys as they raced around the Academy grounds. Memories of headlocks and light teasing and elbows to the ribs. And, lastly, the most recent memory – a raven-haired boy standing by the Academy gates in the dead of night, ushering me through and smiling sadly as he slammed the iron bolt home between us. In my mind, I could still hear his voice as he bid me farewell; watch out for yourself, Little Ambrose.

I narrowed my gaze and broke free of Gabriel’s grasp, marching quickly to where Adrian stood. I had already opened my mouth to tell him, on no uncertain terms, that that nickname was a thing of the past, but when I got close enough to get an unimpeded view of his face the words died on my lips.

I could only gape at him in unflattering disbelief. The Adrian I remembered, sixteen, haughty, clean-shaven… he wasn’t there. The man staring back at me with eyes the exact bright gold of the sun at full height… he was a familiar stranger.

Noticeably taller and broader than my memory-version, this Adrian straightened from his nonchalant pose and tilted his head to one side, like I was a mildly interesting exhibit in an art gallery. His cheeks had hollowed, and his hair was unruly, but that all worked in his favour. As did the short stubble covering the line of his angular jaw. In fact, he was far more gorgeous than he had any right to be.  

Very few things had ever rendered me speechless, but this transformation was one of them.

            His eyes scanned me from head to toe, and his lips curved upwards into that trademark crooked smirk of his. That, at least, hadn’t changed. “Well, look at you, all grown up.” He took a step closer, so that I actually had to crane my neck back to see his face. The smirk grew more pronounced. “I say that in the loosest definition of the word ‘grown’, half-pint.”

            I narrowed my eyes at the height joke. “I’m not that small.”

            “Adorable, really. Like a tiny little doll.” The sarcasm in his tone confirmed that, even if his looks had matured, his attitude certainly hadn’t.

            “You haven’t changed a bit,” I grumbled, feeling a little disgruntled by that fact.

            “Aw, come on. I can grow facial hair now; you have to at least give me that.”

            “You’re right. Congratulations on being no longer follicly challenged.”

            I expected to hear a snappy retort, but was surprised when his only response was a bark of genuinely amused laughter. “It’s good to see you, kid.”

            Bristling at being addressed as such, I turned back to Gabriel. He was watching our exchange with the kind of expression an indulgent parent would wear. “How did you find me?”

            “We’ve been tracking you for a fortnight,” my brother admitted.

            “Without telling me?” I was horrified. I alternated glares between the two of them. Gabriel had the decency to look embarrassed, at least. Adrian, on the other hand, merely shrugged.

            “No, we didn’t tell you. What’s your point?”

            “My point? You’ve been stalking me for two weeks, and you’re asking me why I’ve got a problem with that?”

            Adrian grimaced. “‘Stalking’ is such a harsh word…”

            I propped my hands on my hips in challenge. “Oh, yeah? Well, what would you call it, then?”

            His answer came immediately. “Actively monitoring your whereabouts without your knowledge or consent.”

            “Also known as stalking,” I dismissed.

            “The difference is in the intent,” Gabriel pointed out. “We weren’t being creepy. We were trying to protect you.”

            “Cute uniform, by the way,” Adrian interjected unhelpfully. “Where is it you work, Starbucks? I like the little apron.”

            “Ade,” Gabriel groaned. “You’re not helping.”

            The amusement dancing in his irises spoke volumes, as did his next words. “I’m not really trying to.”

            Ignoring him, I refocused again on my brother. “Why were you worried that I was in danger?”

            “Aside from the dead Shax demon stinking out the alleyway, you mean?” asked Adrian.

            Again, I ignored him. “Gabe?”

            “We… well, I don’t want to freak you out,” he hedged.

            “That ship has sailed,” I vowed, and Adrian snorted.

            Gabriel ran one hand through his hair distractedly. “Look, can we just go back to your flat before we start explaining everything? I really don’t feel comfortable having this conversation on the street.”

            “Might want to take care of that first,” I replied, nodding towards the corpse. It was still oozing blood onto the concrete.

            “Allow me,” Adrian said airily, brushing past us both. As he moved, he produced a Zippo lighter from the pocket of his trousers. He sparked it up against his thigh, and tossed it. The flame blazed a trail of orange through the darkness until it hit the Shax squarely in the chest. The creature went up like dry kindling.

            Within seconds, it was nothing more than ash.

            “Gotta love how flammable they are,” Adrian noted, bending down to retrieve his lighter from the charcoal powder. He blew on it to remove the dust and slid it back into his pocket.

            “Yeah, they’re really convenient.” Sarcasm dripped from my tone. “I’m sure that…” I trailed off as my jacket began to vibrate. Digging in the pocket, I produced my recently recovered phone. A quick look at the caller ID showed that it was Reuben.

            He was already yelling before I even got the thing to my ear. “Why the hell have you not been answering your phone?”

            “I’m sorry, Reubs, listen…”

            But he proceeded to shout over my apologies. “You said you’d be a minute! One minute! It’s been twenty, and you didn’t pick up, and I thought you were lying dead in an alley somewhere!”

            I chanced a glance at the heap of ash that used to be a very real, very alive demonic creature. If it hadn’t been for Gabriel, he wouldn’t have been that far off the mark. “I know, I know, I’m sorry, but things just got kind of crazy. I was attacked, and then my brother showed up and…”

            “Your brother?” Reuben’s voice dropped. “But I thought you said…?”

            “Yeah, I know. But I… look; this is going to take a while. Meet me at my place in ten minutes?”

            “I’m already there.” He paused, and I could sense some chagrin leaking through the speaker as he replayed what I’d told him in his head. “Faith, are you alright?”

            My eyes landed on Gabriel, who was watching me with a perplexed expression, and then Adrian, who was examining his fingernails, apparently bored with my conversation. I sighed. “That remains to be seen, but I’m not in any real danger right now. See you in a few.”

            I disconnected the call, and Gabriel instantly pounced on me with questions.

            “Who was that? A friend? We didn’t know that you had any supernatural friends in this area. How long have you known him?”

            “Whoa,” I held up my hands. “Slow down. That was Reuben. He’s a friend, but he’s… uh… not supernatural. It’s a long story.”

            “I have a feeling that’s something you’re going to be saying a lot tonight,” Adrian remarked, still checking his fingernails for dirt. I frowned at him.

            “I’m not the only one with some explaining to do.”

            “Then by all means, let’s go.” Adrian waved one hand, indicating that I should lead the way. I knew that was only a formality – if they’d been spying on me, then they knew where I lived – but I appreciated the gesture all the same.

            We walked the short distance back to mine in relative silence. I had a thousand questions burning on my tongue, but I held back. Part of my initial relief at Gabriel’s rescue had worn off, and I was left feeling inexplicably annoyed at the intervention. Why did they decide to swoop in and save me now? I’d fended off half a dozen nefarious creatures in the past eighteen months without a shred of help, but they decide to show their faces right when I’m starting to feel conflicted about my double-life? It seemed awfully convenient.

            As we reached my building, I saw a familiar outline perched on the steps. He looked up at the sound of our approach, and raced towards us. I barely had a chance to draw breath before Reuben collided with me in a bear hug.

            “Oh my God, I was so freaking worried!” he gibbered, squeezing me so tightly that it almost hurt.

            “Reubs… can’t… breathe…” I gasped, and he immediately released me, stepping back with an apologetic half-smile. His eyes flickered from me to Adrian, and widened. Then they settled on Gabriel, and his jaw actually dropped.

            His astonishment would’ve been funny under any other circumstances.

            “Who the hell are you?” Adrian asked. His tone was pleasant, a direct contradiction with the aggressiveness of the actual words he used.

            “Reuben Myers,” he answered. “Faith’s best friend. And you are?”

            “Adrian Blake.”

            Reuben frowned, glancing back at me. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

            Adrian clasped one hand over his heart dramatically, giving me a look of mock-horror. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve not mentioned me once, in over a year? You wound me, Little Ambrose!”

            “Shut up,” I muttered. This elicited a grin in response. Reuben watched our exchange with a bewildered expression.

            “Adrian is my brother’s best friend,” I explained. I gestured to where Gabriel stood. “And this is the aforementioned brother, Gabriel Ambrose.”

            Unswervingly polite, as always, Gabriel extended his hand. Reuben took it, his eyes practically popping out of his head. “Nice to meet you,” they chorused, and then both gave an awkward laugh.

            I could almost feel Adrian rolling his eyes behind me.

            A breeze gusted along the street then, lifting my hair and causing a fresh lot of goosebumps to break out across my skin. In my peripheral vision, I saw the other three shudder.

            True to form, Adrian said what we were all thinking, only with considerably more snark than was necessary. “It’s bloody freezing. Can we continue this group hug inside?”

            Reuben almost smiled at the comment, but caught himself just in time when he saw my pained expression. I extracted my keys from my pocket, jamming them into the lock with clumsy, cold fingers. A quick twist and we were in.

            I flipped on the light and navigated my way over to the bed. To my dismay, Adrian immediately followed, flipping onto the mattress on his back with a quick, agile movement. He crossed his arms behind his head and surveyed the scene.

            “Nice digs, Faith. Very Spartan of you.”

            I shot him the kind of glare that would’ve quelled a lesser man. He merely grinned angelically.

            Gabriel was a little more diplomatic in his assessment. “It’s… uh… cosy.”

            Reaching down to stuff a stray bra I’d spotted under my bed, I grumbled, “It’s a complete dump, but it’s the only thing I could afford to rent on six hundred a month.”

            “Kudos to you for being able to fend for yourself,” Adrian noted, with a semi-impressed nod in my direction. His expression grew introspective, and he hesitated for a moment. I sensed what was coming next before he actually got the words out. “But, you know, you don’t have to. You could always come home.”

            I was already halfway forming a refusal with my lips when Gabriel cut across me, his tone uncharacteristically sharp. “There’s no ‘could’ about it. You’re coming home.”

            “No, I’m not.” Our identical eyes met; a clash of grey on grey. Adrian sat up straight on the bed next to me, glancing between each of our faces. I wondered if he was gearing himself up to intervene in what could rapidly descend into a sibling screaming match.

            “It’s not up for discussion.” Gabriel was unshakeable. “You should never have left in the first place. You wouldn’t have gotten very far as it was, if you hadn’t had help.” With this, he cut Adrian a look so frosty that even Reuben flinched. Adrian had the good grace to look appropriately ashamed of himself, which only angered me more. Who was Gabe to decide my life for me?

            “You can’t tell me what to do, Gabriel. I’m not going back there. I’m happy here.”

            “Happy?” He spread his arms, indicating our drab surroundings. “This is happiness, is it? Sitting through school, working as a barista, hanging out with your friends, but all the while looking over your shoulder and wondering when the things that go bump in the night are going to catch up with you? Spending your entire life holding back half of yourself from the people around you, that’s fun for you? Always being careful not to run too fast or jump too high or burn too bright in case people figure out that you’re more than what you say you are? Sure, Faith. Sounds like happiness to me.”

            I blinked. It was the most impassioned speech I’d ever heard my sanguine brother give, and each word cut me deeply. Tossing my hair back from my face, I tried to pretend that I wasn’t affected by the bleak picture he’d painted.

            “As opposed to what? Spending all my time fighting for my life in the shadows? Killing monsters? Dying young and most likely bloody?”

            “At least that way you’re doing something!” he exclaimed. Anger saturated his expression, eyes darkening like storm clouds. “Saving people. Hunting things. You’re making a difference. You’re doing good. What the hell good are you here? How exactly are your skills best being utilized by serving cappuccino? You could be saving the world, and instead you’re practicing trigonometry with a bunch of human teenagers!”

            “I’m doing something for me!” I yelled back. I was on my feet now, fists clenched at my sides as I advanced on my brother. Adrian and Reuben watched us in stunned silence – the former remained perched on the end of my mattress, the latter was trying unsuccessfully to blend in with the wallpaper. “I’m doing what I want, for a change. I’m not going to be told what to do, Gabriel – not by the Brotherhood, and certainly not by you!”

            My last exclamation echoed off the walls, and was met with only the sounds of traffic outside while Gabriel and I regarded each other ferociously. He looked like he’d love nothing more than to shove my head through the plasterboard, but he refrained, contenting himself by radiating unspoken contempt.

            “Merde!” Adrian groaned, shattering the silence. Although he spoke English with no trace of an accent, he’d been born and raised in Paris, and moments of frustration had always brought out his mother tongue. “You two need to calm yourselves down, before the neighbours call the police, d’accord?”

            Gabriel huffed, blowing air out through his nostrils like an enraged bull. He repeated the process a few times, and the tense set of his shoulders seemed to sag slightly. “I just…” he sighed. “I just don’t get how you can be so selfish.”

            “Selfish?” I hissed.

            Adrian groaned again, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and muttering something unintelligible in French. We both ignored him.

            “Yes, selfish!”

            “And what if I am?” I challenged. “What’s wrong with that? Where is it written than I have to do what everyone else wants, at the expense of my own wishes?”

            “Oh, I don’t know, try the oath you took!” Gabriel crossed his arms emphatically over his chest. “I swear, by the power and the light, to solemnly and diligently undertake in my sacred duty to hunt down the forces of darkness, to stop the spread of their evil influence, and to protect and serve the greater good, ensuring humanity’s ultimate safety. I pledge my life, my heart, my soul to the Cause of the Brotherhood of Enoch, and to the calling of Nephilim everywhere.”

            “You’re the soldier, Gabe, not me. You believe in that oath.”

            “You don’t?” He couldn’t have looked more offended if I’d walked right up to him and slapped him across the face. “You think that the oath is wrong?”

            “I think it’s wrong to be drafted into a fight you don’t want to be a part of, yeah!” I protested hotly. “And I bet I’m not the only one.”

            Incensed, my brother turned his back on me, but not before I caught the plain disgust warping his handsome features into a grimace. I hated to know that the ugly look was a reaction to something I’d said, but I hated his next words more. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

            “I’m the same girl I always was,” I defended coldly. “Only now, I’m actually standing up for myself.”

            “Forget the whole destiny and duty part of it, then,” Gabriel spat. “If self-interest is what you’re all about, then you should come home for protection. The Shax that was sent after you tonight won’t be the last. You’ll be impossible to get at once you’re in the safety of the wards at the Academy. Hallowed ground plus a spelled perimeter means that none of them would be able to touch you.”

            Logically, he was right, but my stubbornness showed no signs of abating. “What happened tonight was a fluke. Nobody will come after me again.”

            I could taste the bitterness of the lie on my tongue, but I hoped that I’d acted convincingly enough for Gabriel to buy my assurance. Apparently, I didn’t need to lie at all, because he was already shaking his head before I’d finished my sentence.

            “They will. They’re hunting you. Why do you think Ade and I have been watching you? Because we wanted to see how good you are at playing human?” I flinched at the venom he projected. “We’ve been keeping an eye out for an attack. You’re a target.”

            “But,” Adrian spoke up. His golden gaze was trained intently on me. I jumped – I’d almost forgotten he was there. “You already knew that, didn’t you?”

            “No.” This time, the lie wasn’t nearly as convincing. “I didn’t know that someone was after me.”

            “Yes, you did,” he argued. The words weren’t combative, but there was something final in his tone that indicated he wasn’t going to bother engaging in an all-out debate on the subject. “The Shax in the alley said something to you, didn’t it?”

            I shifted my weight guiltily. “It was just mouthing off.”

            “Except it wasn’t.”

            I’d forgotten how aggravating Adrian could be when the mood struck him. Grinding my teeth, I sank back down onto the bed. “Okay, well, no. Maybe it wasn’t. So what? I can take care of myself.”

            “I don’t doubt that,” he murmured, ignoring the look of censure Gabriel threw his way. “But this is different. This isn’t random, Faith. There’s something big going on, and until we figure it out, you’re safer at home with us. It’s irresponsible to stay.”

            “It’s not my home. Not anymore.” I turned my face away, focusing on the dried-in damp marks on the opposite wall. “Maybe you guys should just leave.”

            It broke my heart to say the words, and I didn’t dare look at my brother as I spoke. The truth was, I’d felt a hollow ache in my chest every day that we’d been apart, made harder by the radio silence we’d held. Seeing him again after all this time wasn’t something that I wanted to give up, even if we were fighting with each other.

            “The demon called me ‘son of Michael’,” Gabriel said softly. “And told me that it wanted to take you. Not kill you, Faith. Take you. Whoever is commanding those things, they want you for some reason, and I’m betting it’s not just so you can have tea with them.”

            I gulped. The Shax in the alley had insinuated something similar. “I can fight them. I’m trained.”

            “You’re rusty,” Gabriel countered. “And you’re alone. You’re too vulnerable here.” He met my gaze, and I felt my heart clench at the worry in his eyes. “Do you think I could bear it if something happened to you? Something I could’ve prevented? You’re my sister.”

            I stood up again, and the room seemed to lurch slightly at the motion. I was dizzy from the information overload, and feeling guiltier than ever under the weight of my brother’s stare. “I… I need a minute.”

            Without another word, I strode across the room and pulled open the door, disappearing out into the night air.

            The breeze whipped my hair around my face, and I crossed my arms to shelter myself from the cold as I settled onto the top step, looking out at the quiet street. My mind was spinning even worse than it had been a moment ago. On the one hand, I could acknowledge that my brother had a point. But on the other… I’d fought so hard for a life of my own.

      The hum of muted conversation drifted out to me through the single-glazed window just above my head, but I couldn’t discern any individual words. After a few minutes, the door opened behind me, and someone else stepped out. I refused to look to see who my companion was. He lowered himself to the steps beside me with an easy grace that told me it wasn’t Reuben.

Curiosity getting the better of me, I turned.

Adrian was studying me, expression serious and absent of his earlier animosity. The moonlight reflecting across the clean lines of his profile gave his already handsome face a haunting sort of beauty.

“What do you want?” I mumbled. “Come to give me another lecture?”

“No.” His lips twitched. “I’m not the lecturing type. I think back there was the closest I’ve ever gotten to a lecture. How’d I do?”

“A for effort.”

“I’ve been thinking about becoming a motivational speaker in my free time, you know.”

Unable to help myself, I chuckled. Annoying as he was, it was impossible to stay mad at Adrian for very long. “Sure, I can totally see that. ‘Tough Love 101’ with Adrian Blake.”

He grinned, but it faded just as quickly as it had come as he regarded me. “Faith…”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

He raised one eyebrow, a skill of his that I’d envied for as long as I’d known him. “You do, huh?”

“Yeah.” I stared at my hands, twisting my fingers around each other. “You’re going to tell me that Gabriel was right in there, and that I have an obligation to destiny or the world or whatever to go home and be a good little soldier.”

“Actually, I wasn’t going to say that.”

My head snapped up again at this. “Oh?”

“What I was going to say was… I get it. You’ve changed. You’ve become this self-sufficient person who knows her own mind, and I can respect that. Listen, I might not know you as well as I once did, but I don’t think you’ve changed fundamentally. Nobody does. And fundamentally, you’ve always been a person who does the right thing. So, I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’m going to ask you, instead.” His eyes were wide and earnest as he leaned forwards, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Please, Faith. Come home. Forget the fact that we could use you in the fold. Forget the fact that being out here in the open leaves you and your friend back there in danger. Think about Gabriel. He needs you safe. You should’ve seen him this past year or so…” He broke off with a sad shake of his head. “I don’t think you’ve realised what you put him through when you left. He loves you so much, and if you got hurt, it would kill him. So, I’m asking for his sake… please, do the right thing.”

            That, more than anything else he could have beseeched me with, was the most powerful argument yet. Regret and guilt were a burning ache in my heart as I thought of my brother. But still, the idea of going back when I worked so hard to free myself of those ties filled me with a different sort of ache.

“And if I say no?” I asked in a small voice.

            Adrian held my gaze for a long time, and I found myself holding my breath as I waited for his answer. “Then you say no. We’ll leave. But… you won’t say no.”

            The absolute confidence of his statement surprised me. “What makes you so sure?”

            “Like I said, you always do the right thing in the end.” I didn’t know whether to be dismayed or flattered by his assessment of my character, so I settled for some weird combination of the two. I opened my mouth to reply, but before I had the chance, a loud smashing sound ripped through the night air like a gunshot.

            A fearful yelp followed, and then there was nothing but silence.

            Adrian and I barely paused to exchange a panicked glance. We launched ourselves upright, and I nearly ripped the door from its hinges as we all but flew back into the tiny bedsit.

            Our reaction time had been less than a minute, but it was long enough.

            The entire room was completely trashed. The table was overturned, the bedside lamp smashed to smithereens. Shards of glass littered the floor from the shattered kitchen window. For a second, I could only look on in bewilderment. How could something have damaged this place so entirely in that short amount of time?

            “What the…?” I caught a flash of gold in my peripheral vision, and turned.

            Gabriel lay sprawled across the floor, just below a deep dent in the plasterboard wall that indicated he’d apparently been thrown across the room with some force. Blood leaked from a nasty cut across his forehead, staining his pale hair crimson.

            “Gabe!” Adrian raced to his side, gripping him by the shoulder and shaking him. My brother’s eyelids fluttered as he stirred. He threw himself into a sitting position with a gasp.

            “Reuben!” he exclaimed, clutching at Adrian’s arm for support. “Where is he?”

            My head whipped back and forth, scanning everything in sight. My whole flat was visible to me from where I stood, but I couldn’t see Reuben anywhere amid the chaos.

            “He’s not here,” I choked. “Gabe, he’s not here!”

            “They took him! They were looking for you, but you weren’t…” He winced and broke off. Adrian must’ve jarred one of his injuries as he was helping him to his feet. He staggered and swayed, but I didn’t spare time to worry about his possible concussion. My thoughts were focused on one thing only.

            “Who took him? What happened?”

            Gabriel’s silvery eyes burned into mine, and I imagined we were both wearing identical expressions of panic and dread. He swallowed thickly.

            “Strigoi.”

 

5: Chapter Three

Chapter 3

 

            “How did this happen?” I demanded, for about the tenth time. Gabriel was propped up in a chair, a dishtowel pressed to his still-bleeding forehead. Adrian and I had scoured the surrounding area for any sign of the Strigoi, and come up empty. Not that either of us had expected anything else.

            “It all happened so quickly…” My brother looked utterly crestfallen, but my flash of sympathy didn’t quite eclipse my panic. “They broke through the back window, and one of them caught me across the chest before I even had a chance to raise my fists. I went flying into the wall, and then I lost consciousness.”

            “And you’re sure it was Strigoi?” Adrian checked, again for the umpteenth time. Gabe sighed – the only indication that he was beginning to lose his patience with the cyclical nature of the conversation.

            “Yes, I’m sure. You think I don’t know a demon when I see one?”

            Neither of us dignified that question with an answer. Of course he did.

            “What are we going to do?” I moaned, fisting my hair in my hands. It had long since been tugged free of the hasty braid I’d put it in. “How the hell are we supposed to track them?”

            “Our best bet would be waiting until sunrise,” Adrian replied. He was propping up the kitchen doorway with one shoulder, eyes fixed intently on the massive dent in my wall. I followed his gaze as though I expected to see a magical solution written there. Instead, all I saw was proof that I could kiss my security deposit goodbye. “That way, they won’t be on the move.”

            His suggestion made sense, but I was too antsy to just sit around and wait. “There has to be a faster way.”

            “I don’t know that heading out now would be any faster,” Gabriel reasoned. “We might end up going off in the completely wrong direction.”

            “We can’t just sit on our hands and do nothing!” I protested. I rounded on my brother. “If it was him,” I pointed to Adrian, “would you just wait until sunrise?”

            Gabriel bit his lip. I could almost see the cogs turning in his brain as he weighed his options. Eventually, he seemed to come to the right conclusion. “We have to go after him.”

            “Yes,” Adrian agreed, a note of exasperation leaking into his voice. “But where do we start?”

            “Well…” Gabe hesitated. He and Adrian appeared to be having some sort of wordless conversation – I could see each face darkening the longer they looked at each other.

            “What?” I demanded, glancing between the two of them.

            “Gabriel has an idea,” Adrian said slowly. “But he doesn’t want to say anything.”

            “You won’t like it,” Gabe’s words were meant for Adrian.

            “I don’t care,” I dismissed. “Get over it. Gabe, spill.”

            “We could always ask Emile for help. He could do a locator spell or something.”

            “No!” Adrian’s response was immediate. “No way.”

            “Wait, who’s Emile?” I narrowed my eyes at both of them, hands held aloft to prevent any further protests. Adrian’s glower deepened. Whoever this Emile character was, it was clear from his expression that Adrian wasn’t exactly clamouring to be Facebook friends with him.

            The boys continued their own conversation, ignoring my question.

            “It’s the fastest way, Ade, and you know…”

            “We don’t need the stupid witch-doctor, Gabriel. We can do this without his help. And, besides, the last time…”

            “Don’t piss him off,” Gabriel suggested reasonably. “If you keep your snide comments to yourself, then there’s no need for a repeat of last time.”

            I highly doubted Adrian’s ability to keep his snide comments to himself in any capacity, but I didn’t interrupt their debate to voice my opinion.

            “I wasn’t being snide – well, no snider than usual at least – so it’s really not my fault if he doesn’t appreciate…”

            “Who is this guy?” I interrupted, when it looked as though the pair were in danger of descending into a tangential argument.

            “He’s a shaman we met a few months back,” Gabriel was the one to answer. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was fighting a smile. “He helped us out when we were hunting a Barbas demon. And, well, he and Ade don’t exactly get on.”

            “We would’ve got along just fine,” Adrian interjected, crossing his arms emphatically over his lean muscled chest. “If he hadn’t of tried to kill me with a pitchfork.”

            “It was a trident,” Gabe corrected. Yep, that was definitely the beginnings of a smile on his face. “And he didn’t try to kill you; he did it to get rid of the mark.”

            This piece of information diverted me momentarily. “You got marked by a Barbas demon? How did that happen?”

            A ‘mark’ was the Nephilim term for sustaining a demonic injury full of some underworld toxin. Most toxins served as a method for demons to track the infected, at least until the injured party died of the poison.

            “He got cocky.” This time, Gabriel couldn’t hide the smirk. Adrian’s glare did nothing to silence him. “He was teasing the thing. Then it transformed and bit him.”

            “And you were properly infected?”

            “His whole shoulder was green. The hallucinations had already started by the time Emile stabbed him with the weird silver trident thingy.”

            “I don’t get the whole stabbing part,” I admitted, turning to Adrian. “Not that I blame him. There have been plenty of times I’ve wanted to stab you.”

            Adrian flipped me off in response.

            “Apparently, the trident was spelled with some really old magicks,” Gabriel explained, finally removing the dishtowel from his head. He studied it for a moment, grimaced, and set the bloody rag down gingerly on the table. “It sort of sucked the poison out. I’m not sure exactly how it worked. But it was pretty cool.”

            “Says you,” Adrian grumbled.

            “Ade’s never really learned to let it go.” My brother shook his head despairingly.

            “Well, neither would you if some long-haired witch doctor ran you through with the pointy end of a fork,” he hissed.

            “He saved your life.”

            “He fucking stabbed me!”

            My lips twitched as I wrestled with the desire to burst out laughing. “Okay, I think we should go and see this Emile guy.”

            Adrian arched an eyebrow, looking at me like I was mentally deficient. “Have you not just listened to a word I’ve said?”

            “Shockingly, I did. And I’m just going to point out that the guy managed to cure you of a Barbas mark. He’s our best bet of finding Reuben.”

            Floored by my sound logic, he merely exhaled in frustration and leant back against the wall, closing his eyes like I was the most insufferable nuisance on the planet.

            “Fine. But if he comes at me with the pitchfork again, he’s going to be feeling the business end of this.” To demonstrate, he pulled the dagger out of his belt, and the blade glinted wickedly in the diffused light. Razor-sharp and deadly, just like Adrian himself.

            Gabriel’s lips twitched, in spite of the gravity of our situation. “Please don’t stab any of my friends, Ade.”

            “I’ll keep the pointy end out of the witch doctor as long as he doesn’t skewer me first. Scout’s honour.”

            I didn’t know what was more ridiculous; the notion of Adrian as a boy scout, or Adrian himself. It was a toss-up.

            “Okay,” I sighed. “Let’s go.”

 

            I don’t know what I had expected when I’d envisioned a shaman’s house, but a loft in Vauxhall was definitely not what I had in mind.

The building was nice, in that edgy, new age sort of way. Gabriel took the three steps leading up to the door in one bound, and punched his thumb onto the top buzzer. On closer inspection, I saw that it bore the name ‘Blackfeather’ in neat block capitals.

There was a scuffling sound from the speaker, and then a pleasant, surprisingly young voice wafted from it. He had the slightest trace of an American accent.

“Yeeees? Who are you, what’s your name and what are you doing darkening my doorway at this ungodly hour?”

“Emile, it’s Gabriel Ambrose, from the Brotherhood. I need your help.”

“Hey, bro!” He sounded warm and enthusiastic, which again, was not something I’d expected from someone Adrian had described as a witch-doctor. “Who’s the mouth breather standing beside you?”

I promptly shut my mouth as paranoia kicked in, trying desperately to take shallow breaths through my nostrils.

“My sister,” Gabriel supplied with a grin.

“The elusive Faith? Ooh, how exciting.”

“Hi,” I replied nervously.

“Come on up, guys.”

There was a loud buzz, and the door clicked off the latch. Gabriel caught it, and stood back to let me go first. Adrian brought up the rear, looking like he’d rather have nine hours of surgery sans anaesthesia than be where he was.

The inside of the hallway was plastered with posters of upcoming gigs in the area. We climbed the four flights of stairs in single file, none of us speaking. No sooner had we reached the top landing when the door to the loft was flung open, a beaming figure standing on the threshold.

I blinked, stunned. Finally seeing Emile, I was forced to let go of all my preconceived notions about shamans in headdresses bedecked with painted feathers because Emile was – there was no other word for it – cool.

He wore black skinny jeans with a rip over one knee and a frayed T-Shirt bearing the legend THE CLASH. He was slight but wiry, with broad shoulders and russet brown skin.

One look at his face told me that he was Native American or at least a direct descendant – there was no mistaking the high cheekbones and the handsome, fine features. His eyes, brown-black and crackling with life, swept over us, and as he raised a hand to toss back his long, silky crow-black hair I saw that he had multiple piercings in his left ear.

“Gabe, buddy!” Reaching out one hand to him, the pair engaged in a complicated handshake. After clapping my brother on the shoulder, he turned to me, twinkling. “And you…” He wolf-whistled. “I can see the family resemblance, but I think you’re much more my type.”

I felt myself blush slightly as he shot me a wink.

Adrian, who had been blending quite effectively into the shadows up until this point, stepped forward, clearing his throat loudly. Emile’s eyes flashed to him, and his expression turned instantly sour.

“Oh, great,” he grumbled. “And here I thought this was going to be a fun evening.”

“Save it, Merlin. We need a favour.”

Emile regarded him coolly, crossing his arms over his chest. “And what makes you think I’m feeling generous towards you today, Blake? Last time I saw you, you bludgeoned me with my own kettle.”

“You stabbed me with a pitchfork!”

“Trident,” Gabriel, Emile and I amended in unison.

“It was for your own good,” Emile replied, shaking his head. “And what sort of thanks do I get for saving you from a slow and agonizing death? I come to face down on my kitchen floor covered in blood. And you broke my kettle.”

“Maybe next time, you’ll rethink your impale first; explain later approach to healing.”

“You know, Ade, it’s hard to believe you aren’t more popular,” I remarked. “You’re clearly such a people person.”

Adrian looked mutinous.

Emile snickered, raising his brows at Gabriel. “Oh, I like her.”

When he let us into the loft, I liked it immediately. It was minimalist, with a denim sofa and a large union jack stapled to the exposed red brick of the wall. A colossal flat-screen TV stood in one corner beside an abandoned game controller, the screen paused on what looked like Call of Duty.

“Do you play?” Emile’s eyes followed my trajectory.

“Yeah, actually.”

Adrian threw himself down on the sofa, glaring at everything in the room as though it had personally insulted him. I sighed, and went to perch on the couch arm furthest away from him. Gabriel rolled his eyes and sat in between as a buffer, while Emile sank into the gaming chair, swivelling it to face us.

“So?” he prompted. “What’s the story?”

“A friend of ours has been kidnapped. We need you to locate him for us,” Gabriel began without preamble. Emile’s smooth brown brow wrinkled.

“Kidnapped by whom?”

“A nest of Strigoi demons,” Adrian drawled. “Well, only two of them did the taking.”

Emile’s eyebrows shot up. “A Nephil was overpowered by two Strigoi?”

“No,” Adrian qualified, a nasty smirk playing about his lips. “He’s human.”

“You have human friends?” Emile paused, and I could tell from his sly grin that Adrian wouldn’t like whatever was coming next. “That’s surprising on two levels. One, you don’t seem like the kind of guy who hangs out with humans. And two, you don’t seem like the kind of guy who has friends. Gabriel’s a fluke.”

“He’s Faith’s friend,” Gabriel explained, when Adrian only narrowed his golden eyes into a bone-melting glare. “She’s living as a human. And, well, he’s a good guy. We can’t let anything happen to him.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Reuben Myers,” I responded instantly. “He’s my best friend.”

“Have you got anything of his for me to hold while I do the spell?” Emile asked, directing his questions to me now. “Something he’s worn recently, maybe, or anything with sentimental value?”

My hand flew immediately to the braided bracelet on my wrist. Reuben and I had made friendship bracelets for Christmas when I was fifteen, and neither of us had ever taken them off until this Christmas Eve, when we decided to trade over; I took the blue one I had made him, he took the green one he had made me.

“This,” I told him, quickly unknotting it and handing it over. He took it from my outstretched hand with long, thin fingers, holding it up to eye level in order to examine it properly.

“Okay,” he muttered. “This could work.” He pushed himself to his feet and crossed the room to a large cabinet that I hadn’t noticed before. Ducking into a squat, he began rummaging through its contents, pulling out various occult artefacts before returning to the centre of the room with a map, a fat green candle, an amethyst stone, and what looked like a jar of red dirt.

“A rock and a jar of dirt? That’s the master plan? What’s the point of all this?” Adrian asked flippantly from his sprawled-out position to my left.

“The soil is to anchor my connection to the earth. Try to pinpoint a geographical location on the map. The amethyst represents Reuben Myers’s soul energy. The candle is for illumination. All my things serve a purpose. What’s the point of your sarcasm?”

“Shits and giggles,” he replied without hesitation.

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” Emile told him seriously.

“Only people who aren’t funny say that.”

“Must you?” Gabriel sighed, shaking his head at Adrian wearily.

“Don’t bother, Gabe. He’s like a kid throwing his toys out of the pram. It’s only for attention. If you don’t rise to the bait, he’ll give up and be quiet,” I advised, as though Adrian wasn’t in the room.

“Sage advice, love. Let me know if that ever works out for you,” was Adrian’s lofty response. I resisted the urge to throw something heavy at him. The clock on the coffee table looked as though it would pack a decent punch, and my aim was pretty good.

Adrian grinned widely at me, as though he knew exactly what I was thinking, and it amused him to no end.

“I’m going to need a hand,” Emile told Gabriel, who got to his feet with a look of fascination. “You need to start by pouring the soil in a clockwise circle around me.”

Gabriel accepted the jar of dirt and unscrewed the lid. I laughed slightly at the expression of bemusement on his face as he peered uncertainly at the contents. Emile had sat himself cross-legged in the centre of the floor, hands resting on his knees. He was twisting my friendship bracelet in between his thumb and forefinger, muttering to himself.

Walking in a perfect circle, Gabe deposited the soil around him. The pale wood floor made the earth look scarlet. He set the jar down on the side and waited for his next instruction, but nothing came. Emile clicked his fingers, and the candle in front of him flickered to life, the lit flame swaying gently in a non-existent breeze.

“Now what?” Adrian said dryly. “Do we all join hands and chant kum-bay-ya?”

“No,” Emile didn’t even open his eyes to respond. “You shut the hell up and let me work.”

I snorted.

For a few minutes, we all sat in complete silence, staring at Emile like we expected him to grow an extra head. It would have been off-putting for him I imagined, if his eyes had actually been open.

Then, with no warning, something happened.

The amethyst began to move independently across the map, like the pointer on an Ouija board. It span like a compass, almost as if it were searching for something.

“Oh!” I gasped, seizing Adrian’s wrist convulsively. His eyes flickered to my hand around his arm, and back to my face, a smirk on his lips. I relinquished my grip, feeling a bit ridiculous.

“Got him,” Emile said softly. His eyes snapped open again, and they were very dark, gleaming with a triumphant excitement. “He’s by the river.” He extended one hand and snapped his fingers imperiously at Adrian. “Paper and pen, on the table beside you. Give them here so I can write down the address.”

Adrian threw the required objects with rather more force than was strictly necessary. Emile caught them, scowling, but didn’t pass a comment.

Immediately, he started writing something down in an untidy scrawl.

“And Reuben is definitely there?” said Gabriel anxiously.

“Have I ever let you down before?” Emile replied, grinning. He got to his feet, tore off the piece of paper and handed it to my brother. “That’s your nest. Happy hunting.”

Gabriel motioned with his head for both of us to follow him to the door. Adrian launched himself into the air, landing like a cat a few feet away; while I took Emile’s proffered hand and helped myself up a little more daintily.

“Thank you,” I told the shaman sincerely. He smiled broadly.

“Don’t mention it, gorgeous. Feel free to drop in anytime. I’ll play you on the Xbox?”

“Count on it,” I promised. I had every intention of following through. There was something about Emile that was instantly likeable. Adrian muttered something out of the corner of his mouth in French, too low for me to decipher. I could only guess it wasn’t complimentary.

As Gabriel pulled the door closed behind us, he fixed me with a rueful, tense smile. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged half-heartedly. “I’ve been better.”

“We’ll get him back. If they’d wanted to kill him, they’d have done it already.”

“What makes you so sure they haven’t?” Adrian grumbled acerbically.

            I didn’t even want to consider that as an option. Thankfully, I didn’t have to, because Gabriel shook his head.

            “No. Emile’s locator spell doesn’t work on the dead.”

            I raised my eyebrows at my brother. “Are you sure?”

            “Yeah.” The smile he gave me was full of sympathy and concern, and it reminded me of the Gabriel of old. There was no resentment left over from our earlier argument in his expression. “Don’t worry so much, baby sister. We’ll get him back.”

            “Or die trying,” Adrian tacked on, sounding unreasonably cheerful at the prospect. I glanced at him in surprise.

            “Why do you say that like it’s a good thing?” I demanded.

            He cracked his neck, quirking one ebony eyebrow at me. There was a fierce, excited gleam in his eyes, making the golden colour look like living flames. “Because,” he said, “I haven’t had a good to-the-death fight in ages.”

6: Chapter Four

It was a short tube ride to the address Emile had gotten us, but when we arrived, the building was in utter darkness. It looked exactly as you’d imagine a demonic nest would look – old, mildewed and slightly neglected, with heavy drapes hanging in the windows, blocking out every last ray from the sun.

Daylight had just broken over the horizon, casting a watery orange glow over the near deserted streets.

“How do you want to do this?” Gabriel asked Adrian, who was busy retying his bootlaces on a low garden wall. He didn’t seem jittery or ruffled, like I felt. He just seemed full of his usual nonchalance bordering on ennui.

“Well, we either attempt to be stealthy, and likely get caught; meaning we’ll probably be slowly devoured to death, or we go for the dramatic entrance, and definitely get caught, but at least that way if we’re outnumbered they’ll probably just snap our necks for intruding and have done with it.”

It didn’t sound like much of a choice from where I was standing.

“How many weapons do we have?” I checked. Gabriel yanked his adamantine dagger from his belt, spinning it in the flat of his palm.

“I’ve got this. Plus these,” he tugged on the silver chain around his neck, exposing the pendants hanging on the end – a Star of David, a crucifix, and various other religious symbols delicately carved out of silver. All Nephilim wore holy symbols around their necks, as well as the sigil of the angel who created them. I felt for my own chain, feeling a swell of relief that I had remembered to put it on yesterday when I got out of the shower.

“It’s not much,” Adrian sighed; he was twirling his own blade with nimble fingers like a cheerleader with a baton. “But hopefully it’ll do. Here.” He pulled a second, needle-like knife that I hadn’t noticed from his belt and handed it to me. “Take my spare.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. There was no real hilt to the blade, but I could feel the hum of the adamantine within it, calling out to the angelic blood in my veins. The silvery metal felt powerful in my hand, cool, hard and unyielding. I gripped it expertly, exerting just the right amount of pressure, even after over a year of being out of the hunting game. It was strange, I thought, the things that stayed with you from your education. I couldn’t remember a single symbol from the periodic table, but I still knew how to wield a big metal splinter.

I suppose my remembered skills, sadly, had more real-world application for me than the things I learned in Chemistry.

“Earth to Faith?” Gabriel waved a hand in front of my eyes, snapping me out of my reverie. “Don’t lose focus, sis, not now.”

“Not when we’re about to kick down the front door of a demon nest, you mean?” I mumbled. “Yeah, I see your point.”

Adrian smirked at me and leapt up the four front steps in one graceful bound. He raised his knee, bracing his foot against the front door as if he was actually intending to boot it in. I paled.

“Uh, Adrian? I didn’t mean that literally. I was thinking maybe we climb through a window or something…”

“Why not make an entrance?” he replied with a rare note of excitement in his voice. “It’s as good a plan as any.”

“Ade…” Gabriel was on his heels a second later. “Maybe we should…”

But whatever cautionary words my brother had been about to offer died on his lips as, with a deafening crack of splintered wood, Adrian drew back his heel and smashed his booted foot into the door so hard that the whole thing shot off its hinges and landed on the hallway floor in fragments.

“Do you think they heard that?” I asked sarcastically, a mix of fear and annoyance colouring my tone.

“Only one way to find out.” Adrian sounded positively cheerful as he ducked over the empty threshold, picking his way through the bits of shattered wood.

After exchanging a glance, Gabriel and I followed him. The whole place smelled of damp, and the air had that slightly musty taste that reminded me of disuse. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean that the place was deserted. Lesser demons tended to reek of that unkempt, unlived-in scent. Mainly because they weren’t living in the strictest sense of the word. 

“Why hasn’t anyone come to tear our heads off yet?” Gabriel whispered. I fought the urge to tell him that lowering his tone was probably a bit redundant, considering the monumental noise we’d made on entering. Whatever made him feel better, right?

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” I told him instead, suppressing a shiver.

Adrian paused at the foot of the dilapidated staircase, raising his head. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears!” he bellowed.

We all waited, tense and unmoving, but there wasn’t even a rustle of answering sound. He turned back to us with an expression of mock-regret. “I don’t think they’re home. Either that or we’ve lucked out and managed to happen upon the world’s first nest of deaf Strigoi.”

Somehow, I thought that was unlikely. “There’s something not right about this…”

“Well, we could always look at this as a plus.”

I shot Adrian an incredulous look. “In what way is the fact that there’s nobody around a plus? What if Reuben’s not here anymore? Worse – what if they killed him and took off?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Little Ambrose,” Adrian replied coolly. “I’m just saying that…”

Whatever he was ‘just saying’ I never found out, because at that moment something large and black swooped down onto Adrian’s shoulders, knocking him flat on his face. He twisted around, cursing loudly, as two more black shapes dropped from thin air to land either side of Gabriel and I.

They weren’t amorphous blobs, I realised with a jolt of panic. They were cloaked figures. The one nearest me drew back his hood, exposing a face that would have been human and fairly handsome, effeminate even, were it not for the large fangs descending halfway down his chin, the pupil-less red eyes, and the feral snarl he wore for an expression.

Shit. Not Strigoi. Paimon demons. The difference between the two was like the difference between a house cat and a lion. The situation was much, much worse than we’d anticipated.

I took a hasty step towards my brother just as Adrian was unceremoniously jerked to his feet by the demon who had pinned him. It closed one long, bony hand around his throat in a vice-grip.

“Nephilim!” The Paimon nearest me spat, running a hand over his close-cropped, bleach blond hair. “You dare cross into our home without invitation?”

“It’s only you that needs to be invited in,” Gabriel responded, with no fear in his voice. I admired the bravado. “We can break and enter all we like.”

“And why, angel-spawn, would you want to enter our domain? Perhaps you sensed that we were thirsty, and wanted to offer yourselves as snacks?” the Paimon leered.

I wrinkled my nose involuntarily. “Ew. No thanks.”

A yelp from where Adrian stood made me whip around. The demon holding him had relinquished his grip as if it had been electrocuted, and was rubbing its hand in a way that seemed almost reproachful. Adrian straightened fully and spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. It wasn’t until I saw the blood staining the demon’s sleeve darker that I realised Adrian had bitten him.

“Not so much fun when someone does it to you is it?” he said belligerently, giving the creature a gruesome, blood-tinted smile. I shuddered.

“Did you just bite a Paimon?” Gabriel asked, in the disbelieving, revolted tone a person might use if they’d just seen you lick a cockroach.

“Oh, so when they do it it’s acceptable,” Adrian grumbled petulantly. “But if I do it, I get judged as the weirdo. I see how it is.”

“Gross, Ade.” Gabe pulled a face.

“Shut up!” I hissed at the pair of them. Raising my chin, I turned to look bleach-blond right in the eye. His were empty crimson chasms. “Where’s Reuben?”

He blinked lazily. “I do not know who that is, Nephil.”

“The human your pet Strigoi brought here.”

“We have no human here. You are mistaken.”

“No,” Gabriel said flatly. “We’re not. You’re lying.”

“Give us the human,” said Adrian, with a thin layer of threat behind his words, “and nobody needs to get hurt.”

“Where is the fun in that?” Bleach-blond replied with a grin. They regarded each other for a moment, hunter and demon, before Adrian’s lips quirked upwards.

“I’m so glad you agree.” In less than a flash, he had rammed his dagger through the chest of the Paimon he had just bitten. The creature gagged, keeled over, and exploded in a shower of dust and sparks.

The blond demon gave a cry like a wounded bear and launched himself at Adrian, teeth snapping inches from his throat. They both hit the deck, rolling across the floor and out of sight. Gabriel flew at the other one before it had a chance to lunge for me, sending them both careening into the wall with a thud. He seized it by its collar, restraining its gnashing teeth, and yelled at me over his shoulder.

“Faith, go! Go upstairs, find Reuben, I’ll…” His sentence was cut short when the demon’s elbow connected with his jaw, but he didn’t need to tell me twice. I knew he could handle himself without me, so I leapt over the wrestling figures and landed lightly on the third step, rotting wood creaking under my feet.

I all but flew up the stairs, rounding the corner and pausing at the first room. It was empty. I stuck my head around the second door. Nothing. With an increased feeling of panic, I made my way to the last door on the landing and shouldered it open.

My heart leaped into my mouth as I recognised Reuben; slumped in a heap by the window. He was very white, his eyes tightly closed, and a small trickle of blood ran down his forehead.

“Reuben!” I cried, tearing towards him and dropping to my knees hard enough to bruise. “Reubs, wake up! It’s me!”

My hands clamped down on each side of his face as his head lolled towards me sickeningly. I slapped him gently on both cheeks, willing him to open his eyes. After a second, he did, although his brown-eyed gaze was decidedly unfocused.

“Wuzzgoinon?” he mumbled. The relief was so powerful that I gave a manic half-laugh.

“Reubs, it’s Faith. Can you hear me?”

“Fay…Faith?” He blinked, and suddenly seemed a bit more himself. With awareness, though, came blind fear. “You’ve gotta leave. There’re vampires, Faith! Real ones!”

“I know, I know,” I replied, not bothering to correct him on the demons’ species. The Paimon did feast primarily on human blood, but they weren’t all that fussy. Pretty much any life fluid would do.

I tried unsuccessfully to tug Reuben to his feet. I could’ve carried him, but it would be faster if he could stand unaided. After a couple of attempts where his legs buckled, he eventually managed to stand upright, even if he did sway a little.

“We’ve got to go…” he breathed, lurching sideways. My hands caught him before he could smash his head off the wall. “Bastards bit me… sorry…”

My eyes found his neck, and I realised with a stab of horror that he was right – he had been bitten. Not severely enough to die from the blood loss, thank God. Still…

“How much blood did they take, Reuben?” I asked urgently, bracing my hands on his shoulders and shaking him a little. “Did you lose consciousness at all?”

“No… no… why are you…?” It seemed to occur to him why I might be asking, because his face drained of colour. “I’m not going to turn into one of them, am I?”

“No, you can’t turn a human into one of them,” I assured him.

“Are you sure? How did you find me? Where’s your brother and his friend?”

“Listen, Reuben, I can explain all that later, but right now, we need to get you out of here. Can you walk?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh. I’m still kinda woozy, though.”

“Lean on me,” I offered. “But we have to hurry, before…”

“Before we show up?”

I whipped around, my heart racing, to find two more Paimon demons lurking in the doorway, identical creepy smiles etched across their translucent faces. Both had sandy brown hair and the same red, demonic eyes that the blond one had.

“She’s Nephilim,” the slightly shorter of the two said.

“Ooh, I bet she tastes delicious,” the other crooned. “Way better than the human child.”

“I really wish they wouldn’t talk about eating me…” Reuben mumbled, looking queasy.

“Don’t worry about that now,” I hissed at him out of the corner of my mouth, reaching to my belt for the blade I’d borrowed from Adrian… and then realising that I wasn’t wearing a weapons belt, and the dagger was lying two feet away on the floor where I’d thrown it when I was pulling Reuben up.

Well, Faith, I thought acerbically, you got your wish. You dress like a human, you act like a human, and you end up caught with your pants down in situations like these.

“She’s not much of a venator diabolorum, Loxas,” the shorter demon continued. “She can’t even hang onto her weapon.”

“You’re right, Gerard. She even had her back turned when we came in. Poor show, angel-cake.” Loxas smiled in a grotesque contortion of fangs and thin lips.

“Faith?” Reuben’s question held a note of accusation in it, which I ignored for the time being. Instead, I focused on delivering a sneer worthy of Adrian at the two demons.

“Come on, then. Show me what you’ve got, and I’ll prove how much of a hunter I am.” The words came to my lips without my volition, but I felt my blood sing in response to them, as though my body was approving of my reckless goading. Reuben gave a small whimper behind me, and the Paimon demons laughed.

They didn’t even have time to grab me as I spun to the side and snatched my borrowed weapon from the ground, whirling back to face them. Gerard’s eyebrows rose a few inches, and he started forwards with a cruel smile.

I flicked my leg out, my trainer colliding with his sternum. He reeled back from the blow, and came at me again, swinging his fist in a high arc. I dodged the punch, dancing away from his reach, and jerked my elbow up to smash into his windpipe. He gagged and stumbled.

Then Loxas sprang into action. He flitted to his friend’s aid, grabbing me roughly by the shoulders before I had a chance to shake him off. I kicked out, thrashing my arms, and managed to surprise him enough to drop me, but I landed awkwardly. I’d barely gotten my balance when a fist slammed into my cheek. Pain exploded behind my right eye, and I staggered back, feeling an icy grip on my arm again as one of them swung me round.

The grip on my arm was gone an instant later, and I heard a snarl of pain coming from whichever demon had just been flung across the room. Gabriel’s voice suddenly filled my ears, shouting directives to Reuben in a tone of unquestionable authority.

“Reuben, come with me! No, leave Faith, they’ve got this, trust me. Trust me! We need to get you out of here!”

I ducked another blow from Gerard and straightened in time to see my brother ushering Reuben from the room. My head swung around again, and I found myself face-to-face with Adrian, his face bloody and scratched, but his gold eyes alight with a feverish excitement.

“I may have forgotten my shining armour, but will you still be the grateful damsel if I ask nicely?” he said with a grin, before dropping into a graceful shoulder roll and straightening just in time to body-slam Gerard into the wall. The plaster cracked with the impact. I shook my head in disbelief at his attitude, and snatched my dagger from the ground where it had fallen for a second time, rounding on Loxas a second before he pounced on top of me.

I felt the blade slide home between his ribs, and he spluttered in wordless agony as the adamantine pierced his heart. Wrenching my hand back sharply, I leapt aside just in time to avoid choking on the cloud of dust and embers.

“No!” Gerard growled, flying towards me, but Adrian seized him around the neck before he could get more than two steps across the room and shoved his knife through him from behind. The point of the blade punched straight through his chest, the blood-soaked tip winking at me in the dim glow of the only lamp in the room. Gerard exploded into dust motes and fiery sparks in the same way Loxas had, and Adrian stumbled back, coughing bodily.

I waited patiently until he was done hacking up a lung before speaking. “Adrian…?”

When he straightened up to look at me, his expression was a little less frosty than usual. “Thanks for saving my life.”

“Anytime, love,” he replied hoarsely, shooting me a wink. I noticed his eyes were rimmed red from the dust. “Although, next time, can you not be so careless and lose your pet human? I think I’m well on my way to developing asthma.”

Touching moment over, then.

“Did you get the others?”

“Yeah, they’re dust. Nice reflexes, by the way. You’d make a good hunter, you know.”

“Ha, ha.”

“I wasn’t kidding.”

“Well,” I sighed. “I am a hunter. I’m Nephilim.”

“But you’ve taken early retirement, right?” he checked, cocking one eyebrow at me.

“You can’t really retire from your own species,” I pointed out.

“I’ve tried telling you that.”

Torn between the desire to roll my eyes and the urge to laugh, I compromised by giving him a half-hearted grimace. He grinned.

On the landing, Adrian seemed to decide not to bother with the stairs. Instead, he simply vaulted over the balustrade, landing lightly on the bottom stair and glancing up at me expectantly.

“Show-off,” I muttered.

He extended his arms to me. “I’ll catch you, if you jump.”

I would’ve walked away, maybe even used the stairs like a normal person, but the challenge in his eyes was impossible to resist. Before I even knew I was doing it, I had flipped over the wooden railing. He snatched me out of the air as though I weighed less than a feather, and set me down beside him, eyes sparkling.

“I didn’t think you’d do it,” he said.

“I didn’t think you’d catch me,” I admitted. I had been bracing myself in mid-air to absorb the impact.

The look in his eyes was hard to read, but my heart thudded heavily in response to the unnamed emotion there. One blink and it was gone, leaving me wondering whether I had imagined it.

            “You know,” he said. “We didn’t find any Strigoi in there.”

            “Maybe Gabriel was wrong,” I replied quietly. “He was under pressure.”

            “Maybe,” Adrian sounded doubtful. “Or maybe the Paimon demons were working for whoever is after you, too.”

            I hadn’t wanted to jump to that conclusion, but it seemed inevitable. We shared an uneasy glance.

            “Why me, though?” I whispered. “What’s so special about me?”

            Adrian studied me for a moment, his expression unreadable. It was only when I started to feel a little tense under the weight of his gaze that he eventually answered my question.

            “Plenty, Little Ambrose. But nothing I’d want to hurt you for.”

            I didn’t know how to respond to that.

7: Chapter Five

Chapter 5

 

            Getting Reuben back to my flat proved difficult, considering how unsteady he still was on his feet. I had to half-carry him, supporting his weight as well as my own. Gabriel traded off with me every so often, for which I was grateful. Somewhere in the chaos of the rescue, I’d twisted my ankle pretty badly, and even though I healed quickly, it was still uncomfortable enough to put even my weight on it, let alone someone else’s.

            Eventually, though, we were all safely shut up in my tiny bedsit, Reuben was stretched across my bed and propped into a sitting position with every pillow I owned at his back. I was perched on the bed beside him, fretting over his weakened condition until he told me to shut up. Gabriel and Adrian had righted the table, and were sitting in the two chairs either side of it, facing us.

            “So, if the Paimon demons are involved, too…” Gabriel was continuing a conversation with Adrian that I had only been half-listening to. “What does that mean?”

            “It can’t be anything good,” Adrian responded slowly. “I mean, Paimon, Shax and Strigoi? Those races hate each other.”

            “Kind of like how the Nephilim hate humans?” Reuben piped up. His voice was still weak and croaky from the trauma to his throat, but everyone else heard. Gabe’s grey eyes went wide.

            “We don’t hate humans!” he protested quickly. “We’ve got nothing against you guys at all. Our lives’ mission is to protect you.”

            Reuben’s eyes flashed to him directly, and I saw the shrewdness reflected in their dark depths. “Uh-huh. But you don’t exactly hold us in high regard. We’re lesser beings to you. Weak. Don’t try and tell me you don’t think that.”

            “I don’t think that,” Gabriel exclaimed.

            “I do,” Adrian conceded my friend’s point with a shrug. “And it’s nothing personal. But you are weak. If it wasn’t for us, your race would have been obliterated by demons long ago.”

            Bizarrely, Adrian’s honest response seemed to have earned him a glimmer of respect from Reuben. “Well, you’re entitled to think that, but it’s bollocks.”

            “It is?” Adrian looked amused.

            “Yeah. I may not be able to throw people through walls like you can, but I’m smart. Smarter than either of you seem to be.”

            “Why would you say that?” I asked, intrigued. It wasn’t that I disagreed with Reuben’s argument – he was incredibly clever – but it sounded as though he was trying to make a point.

            And make it he did. “Because there are only two things that could unite three evil races that all allegedly hate each other. One is a powerful leader. The other is a common enemy.”

            “And?” Adrian prompted.

            “And… they’ve never been organized, right? From what you’re saying, the demons have been content sticking to their own races and having one-on-one fights with the occasional Nephil for years. But if someone is unifying demons… well, it sounds to me like they must have an endgame in mind. And seeing as we already know of at least one Nephil who’s a target…” Here, Reuben nodded in my direction. “We can probably figure that their endgame is an all-out war with your race.”

            Gabriel paled, glancing nervously at me, as though he was preparing himself to leap in front of a bullet or something. Adrian, on the other hand, was staring at Reuben. He looked as impressed as I felt.

            “You think the demons are preparing for war?” he asked.

            “If I had to guess.” Reuben seemed suddenly uncomfortable under the weight of all our incredulous stares.

            “But what does Faith have to do with anything?” Gabriel interjected. “The demons seem to want her, specifically, but she’s been out of the Brotherhood for well over a year, now. She isn’t even actively hunting them.”

            Reuben frowned, clearly trying to come up with a plausible explanation for me being put at the top of the ‘most wanted’ list. “Two minutes,” he muttered.

            “Sorry?” I spoke up.

            “It took two minutes to start World War I,” he clarified. “All it took was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He was a catalyst.”

            “Taking me and doing whatever they were going to do with me… it was supposed to send a message to the Nephilim?” I guessed, catching on to his wavelength.

            “That’s my theory. You once told me that it’s practically unheard of for Nephilim to leave the Brotherhood. The fact that you did, and were out in the world unprotected… it makes you an easier target than the rest. Maybe they only need one Nephil to make their point. Maybe you were meant to be a catalyst, too.”

            “While this all makes a bit of sense…” Adrian began. “I don’t think we should be jumping to conclusions just yet.”

            “Yeah, because you never do that,” I said in an undertone. He shot me a sharp look.

            “Faith…” Gabriel’s voice was quiet, and his eyes were like steel as they met mine. There was something fierce burning behind them, though, some emotion that made me inexplicably want to tear up. “Please. I’m begging you, please, please come home.”

            I sucked in a deep breath. “Okay.”

            “But…” Gabriel protested instinctively, and then he seemed to register what I’d actually said. “Wait, what?”

            “I said okay. I’ll come back to the Academy. I’ll come home.”

            My gaze flickered across the room to land on Adrian. The golden flames of his irises seemed to dance with satisfaction – he’d predicted that I’d come to that conclusion on my own.

            You won’t say no. Like I said, you always do the right thing in the end. His earlier words echoed around in my head. From the slight smile he gave me, I could tell that he was remembering them, too.

            “Wait a minute…” Reuben hedged, snapping my gaze away from Adrian again. His brow was wrinkled into a pretty major frown, which was uncharacteristic. “You’re going to run off back to the place you were so desperate to escape from?”

            I bit my lip. “Reubs, I…”

            “What about school?”

            Adrian scoffed, but we both ignored him. “I can finish up at the Academy.”

            “But what about… your life?” His brown eyes looked suddenly glassy, and although his voice held steady, I had the feeling that he was holding back tears. I also heard what he really meant by the question. He meant – what about me?

            “I won’t be far away,” I murmured, answering the unspoken question instead of the one he’d actually said aloud. “The Academy is hidden, but it’s only in the west end of London.”

            “But I’m guessing I can’t visit?” he surmised.

            “It’s against the rules,” Gabriel offered, sounding a little sad for the both of us.

            Reuben looked deflated, but perked up when I shot him a wink. “Rules are meant to be broken, Reubs. You taught me that.”

            It worked; his lips twitched upwards into a smile. “When will you leave?”

            I opened my mouth, but was beaten to the punch by Adrian. “Now. She’s heading back with us as soon as she’s packed.”

            Reuben nodded, and from his resigned look, I could tell that he’d expected nothing less. “Okay.”

            “Come on,” Gabriel prompted, pushing himself out of his chair and resting one hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get you packed.”

 

Adrian paced impatiently in the corner while Gabriel, Reuben and I rifled through the drawers in my small bedsit, packing anything and everything we could lay our hands on. I had already filled up one suitcase with clothes, and was busy deliberating between which books to shove into my hold-all and which to leave behind. Reuben was watching my dilemma with bright amusement.

“You do remember that we have a library at the Academy?” Gabriel pointed out mildly. “Why do you even need to take books with you?”

I lowered my copy of Last of the Mohicans so that I could glare at him. “These things are a part of me. You wouldn’t understand – you’ve never been much of a reader.”

Reuben grinned. “I told you – get a kindle. Every book you need at the touch of a button, and it wouldn’t take up any space. Win-win.”

I threw Last of the Mohicans into my hold-all and picked up a dog-eared copy of The Shining. “And I’ve told you,” I began imperiously, “that e-readers and the like kill the soul of books. If we keep continuing like this, then public libraries will become obsolete, and that old, dusty book smell will just be a faint memory.”

Rolling his eyes at my rehashed argument, Reuben reclined across my duvet. I realised belatedly that he hadn’t actually helped to pack a single thing, but had just laid there delivering a running commentary on my worldly possessions.

“What’s a kindle?” Gabriel turned to my friend with interest. Reuben cocked one eyebrow at him, waiting for the punch line.

When Gabriel continued to look confused, his eyebrow rose even higher. “Wait, seriously?”

I stifled a laugh as I crammed two more books into my bag and then slotted my own sapphire-hilted adamantine dagger into the front pocket. I’d found it buried in my underwear drawer. “Gabriel lives a very sheltered life, Reubs.”

“Oh. Wow, okay.” He immediately set about explaining the concept of an electronic book to Gabriel, who seemed fascinated. I only half-listened to his explanation – the greater part of my brain was focused on taking in my surroundings.

My tiny flat was no longer just trashed – it was bare. The posters had been stripped from the walls, the wardrobe emptied, the shelves wiped clean. It was a little how I imagined my room would look when I’d envisioned leaving for university, except there wasn’t any excitement in the thought.

I was suddenly struck by a need to get out of there before I started to cry. Wrenching the zip up on my bag, I slung it over my shoulder – it felt like a ton of bricks – and motioned to the boys with one hand.

“I’m done. Let’s go.”

Knowing their services had been dismissed, they both joined me at the door. Gabriel hoisted up my suitcase as though it weighed nothing. In a fit of unexpected chivalry, Adrian stopped his pacing to relieve me of the hold-all I had over my shoulder. Reuben hung back, reaching out one hand for me to stay for a moment. Both Nephilim boys exchanged a glance.

“We’ll wait outside,” Gabriel suggested diplomatically.

They both disappeared promptly through the front door, pulling it closed behind them.

Reuben cast his eyes about the empty room. “It looks so…”

“I know.” I gulped around the sudden lump in my throat. “It’s going to be hard to leave this place.”

Reuben caught my gaze, and his expression was more serious than I’d ever seen it as he took my hands in his. “I know you wax on about wanting a normal life all the time, F, but… well, the way you came charging in to rescue me back there… those weren’t the actions of a girl who wanted to be normal. Those were the actions of a girl who wanted to be right there, in the thick of it, wrestling with demons.”

“I don’t want it,” I murmured. When he opened his mouth to contradict me, I corrected myself. “Or, maybe it’s more that I don’t want to want it. But… I don’t know. It’s in my blood. It’s who I am.”

“I think… I think you should go back. You’re right, it’s who you are. I mean would I rather you stayed with me? Sure. Of course I would. But you’re special, Faith, and not using your gifts for what they were intended is… well, it’s just wrong.”

I closed my eyes. For some reason, hearing Reuben say those words carried more weight than hearing my brother say them. Maybe it was because I didn’t constantly dismiss everything he said, like you did with siblings. Maybe it was because I valued his human opinion.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to face it all again,” I admitted in a small voice. “I don’t feel strong enough to make the sort of life and death decisions that I’m expected to make.”

“Don’t be stupid, Faith,” came Reuben’s immediate reply. “You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met – superpowers or no. You can handle anything.”

When I looked at him then, there was transparent sincerity in his brown eyes. Seeing his expression, I almost believed him.

“I’m going to miss not seeing you every day,” I whispered, and my voice cracked and broke on the last word. Tears stung my eyes, and without my brother or Adrian around, I let them fall. Reuben raised one hand to wipe away the few tears that had already spilled, hot and wet, down my cheeks.

“I will, too. You’re my best friend.”

“You’re my only friend,” I countered, and this got a genuine grin from him.

“I love you, Faith Summers-also-known-as-Ambrose.” I liked the way he used my human alias first, and I smiled as he drew me into a hug. Burying my nose in his t-shirt, I could smell the combined scents of blood, sweat and Reuben’s aftershave. A mix of the scents of the life I was leaving behind, and the one I would be returning to shortly.

“I love you, too, Reuben Myers,” I mumbled, squeezing him tightly. I stepped back, using the opportunity to wipe away a few more stray tears. I squared my shoulders.

Ushering my best friend over the threshold for the last time, I cast one last look at the faded, damp-stained walls and shut the door on my human life.

 

 Taking the tube with two suitcases and companions covered in scrapes and scratches had drawn quite a few stares, but Gabe had kept up a constant stream of conversation in order to distract me from the bewildered eyes of the surrounding commuters. I smiled stiffly at the things he said, not really listening.

“Our stop,” Adrian said suddenly as the train came screeching to a halt. It was the first words he’d uttered since we’d left my house, I realised.

It was a struggle getting off the underground with my bags; Adrian swore loudly as the suitcase he was carrying wedged at the base of the escalator. He tugged it free violently, tearing a huge rip in the side of the material. I shook my head, caught between annoyance and a strong desire to laugh.

The street outside was already extremely busy. We weaved our way along the teeming pavement, ducking between groups of people that milled around at shop windows. I knew, even though I hadn’t set foot in this part of London for over a year, that it was only three minutes’ walk back to my childhood home.

We turned sharply at the end of the long, tree-lined street. There; looming up ahead of us on the opposite side of the road and half-covered by the foliage from the gnarled trees that dotted the huge lawn; was a gargantuan building made of weathered sandstone. I could just make out the sweeping semicircle of the gravel driveway through the gaps in the wrought iron fence. The gate was emblazoned with angelic symbols, and I could read their meaning as clearly as if they had been written in human language.

The Brotherhood of Enoch; Academia Angelorum.

We crossed the street at a jog, bags bumping along in our wake. Gabriel pulled open the heavy gate and directed us through it.

I paused, staring through the trees. I could just make out the outline of a set of handsome double doors. Being here after all this time seemed… strange. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the passers-by as they meandered along the road, paying absolutely no attention to the impressive structure. Not that I expected them to. The whole place had been spelled so that all the humans who were ignorant to our existence would never know the place was here.

It was a shame, I thought. The building was so beautiful. Although it wasn’t as though Westminster was short on beautiful old buildings to admire.

Adrian had already disappeared through a gap between two tree trunks, and was busy hammering on the door with one fist by the time Gabe and I joined him. 

I’d just made it to the top step when the doors were flung open unceremoniously. A figure stood on the threshold; tall, thin and imposing, glaring down at us all with eyes a breathtaking shade of cerulean blue. He had an ageless beauty about him so intense that it almost hurt to look – instead of meeting his gaze, I let my eyes focus on something else; the ridge of downy white feathers visible over his shoulder that marked the rounded edge of a pair of wings protruding from his back.

“Blake? Ambrose? What are you…?” he trailed off, his mouth popping open. “Faith? Is that you?”

“Cassiel,” Gabriel stepped forward, skirting around Adrian, and extended one hand to me. I took it without thinking, watching as a blinding grin lit up my brother’s face. For a moment, he looked more angel than human. “Faith has returned to the Brotherhood.”

Cassiel’s eyebrows – like burnt copper – rose fractionally. He peered over at me, his gaze searching. “Oh? And to what do we owe the honour? I’d rather thought that you fancied yourself too good for us these days.”

I blanched at the accusation in his tone, but forced myself to meet his eyes. “I never thought that, Cassiel. I just wanted to be human.”

He exhaled softly; it sounded like the wind sighing. “But you are not.”

“No,” I replied. “No, I’m not.”

“She’s more human than you are,” Adrian pointed out. While his words were true – Cassiel was not Nephilim, but a full-blooded angel – I flinched at his nerve. Nobody spoke to the head of the Academy with so little respect. Cassiel opened his mouth, no doubt to deliver a reprimand for his tone, but Adrian was spared his wrath by a second voice joining our party.

“Cass, why are you hovering in front of the door?”

I relaxed instantly as I recognised the second figure that stepped into view. He was as muscled as Cassiel was thin, and his skin was a smooth, shimmering mocha brown. Eyes the same blue-green as a tropical sea flitted to each of us in turn and his mouth dropped open in surprise.

“Faith Ambrose? Is that you?” His wings – a clear, bright silvery-white – began to furl and unfurl slightly, buffeting Cassiel back a step.

“Ezekiel,” Cassiel spoke quietly. “It seems that Miss Ambrose has decided to return to the fold.”

If I’d expected the same frosty reception that Cassiel had delivered, I was disappointed. Zeke’s face broke into a grin so beatific that it made my eyes water.

“About time, too!”

Cassiel pursed his lips at his second-in-command, clearly disapproving of his easy acquiescence to this plan. Zeke rolled his eyes at him as soon as he turned his head, and then shot me a wink.

I could’ve kissed him.

Ezekiel waved his hands at Adrian and Gabe in a shoo-ing gesture, and both immediately sidestepped to allow him room to come forwards. He stepped out onto the concrete, extending his huge arms to me.

“How about a hug for your long-lost weapons tutor?” he suggested. Suddenly struck by an overwhelming, childish joy, I leapt at him, and he caught me deftly, folding me into his arms and drawing his wings close around me like a feathery cocoon.

When I was younger, I remember that I always thought of Cassiel and Zeke – the only two angels that I knew personally – as enormous. Living in the human world, I had come to attribute that to my being tiny. As I glanced down at the ground two feet below me, I realised that maybe it wasn’t quite as relative as I’d thought. Zeke had to be at least seven feet tall. I fought a wave of vertigo and pressed my forehead to his warm skin.

“It’s good to see you, Zeke,” I murmured into his neck.

He set me down gently, eyes shining with unbridled joy. “I told your brother you’d be back.”

“Can’t fight biology,” I agreed meekly.

He ruffled my hair with one dinner-plate sized hand. “I’d say more that you can’t fight destiny.”

“How very fatalist of you,” Adrian commented dryly. “Can we go inside, or are we planning on milling around out here all day?”

Zeke surveyed him with amused affection that was rarely seen on someone when they looked at Adrian. “Patience, Ade, is a virtue. You should consider cultivating some.”

“I have some,” he responded without skipping a beat. “You’re just testing it. Sir.”

Zeke laughed; a noise like pealing bells. “I’ll give you testing, my boy!” He clapped a mammoth hand to Adrian’s shoulder and steered him inside, apparently oblivious to the tight-lipped displeasure still emanating from Cassiel.

Gabriel and I sashayed past the angel after the two retreating figures. Tsk-ing, Cassiel shut the door, and the sound of traffic died instantly.

The foyer was unchanged in the year and a half I had been gone; the whole Academy was a bizarre, ultra-modern mix of chrome, glass and polished wood. A ‘floating’ spiral staircase was the main feature of the room – well, if you didn’t count the honest-to-god Dali painting that spanned the back wall. The overall effect was anachronistic when paired with the outside architecture.

“You can’t hide your expression,” Gabriel muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “You still hate the decor in here.”

I smiled. “It’s too modern.” In fact, ripping out the building’s original features was borderline sacrilegious in my book.

“Yeah, and you’ve never been a fan.”

Cassiel clucked his tongue behind us, but made no other comment about our interaction. With a rueful grin, Gabriel steered me in the direction of the open door that Zeke and Adrian had just disappeared into.

I emerged into the past, or that’s what it felt like. The day room hadn’t changed a bit since the last time I had been in there – same cream walls, same spotlights set into the ceiling, and the same asymmetric-patterned crimson and white hearth rug. The stained-glass windows were lit up in a myriad of colours as the mid-morning light filtered through, creating odd patches of blues and greens on the hardwood floors.

The room wasn’t empty – a couple of Nephilim were milling beside the glass bookcases with their backs to me, and another, who I recognised as an old acquaintance, Jacob Tully, was asleep on one of the black leather sofas, a book half-covering his face.

Adrian and Zeke were already taking seats by the empty fireplace, conversing in low voices. From the snippet of speech I had paid attention to, it sounded as though Adrian was filling our commander in on the morning’s events. Zeke listened with rapt attention.

Cassiel slid into the room behind us, and everyone in the room snapped to attention.

“Can we have the room, please? Conners, can you and Walker please remove Tully from the sofa on your way out?”

The two Nephilim who had been standing by the bookcase – neither of whom I recognised – paused in their trajectory to prod Jacob into action. He got to his feet with a sleepy grumble and was ushered past me by the other two. He was too tired to notice who I was, evidently, because he didn’t spare me a second look.

The sound of the door closing was very final.

“Ambrose?”

I startled when I realised that Cassiel was speaking to me. It had been a long time since I had been referred to by my real last name. I wondered how much training I’d missed in my absence. The thought of playing catch-up made me feel bizarrely disappointed.

“Yes, sir?” I stood to attention, like the good little angel soldier he thought I wasn’t. His eyes narrowed as I fisted one hand over my heart and bowed in the way that was customary for a member of the Enochian Guard to salute their superior.

“Good,” he said without inflection. “At least you still remember your manners. Stand easy, soldier.”

I relaxed, crossing my arms loosely behind my back. The Brotherhood was not uptight and rigid, the way a human army was, but Cassiel liked to do things by the book. My defection hadn’t been looked on kindly by him, so I figured that obeying protocol like I’d swallowed a copy of The Virtuitas Code could only help my cause.

“I will need to have a meeting with Command, Ambrose, in order to determine exactly what we should do with you,” Cassiel said stiffly.

“Yes, sir,” I nodded. “I understand, sir.”

“Let me be clear on this, Ambrose. I’m not impressed with your past behaviour, or your lack of commitment to the Brotherhood of Enoch and our mission.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“All the same, I do believe in second chances. I think that you are owed the right to prove yourself. I will fight for you to be allowed that chance, should anyone in Command protest.”

“Thank you, sir.” I tried not to wilt under the severity of his gaze, and focused on keeping my back straight.

He turned his eyes away from me, and instead, looked at my brother. “Gabriel?”

“Sir?” Gabriel glanced up. “Is there anything you need?”

“Show your sister to her old room, won’t you? Blake, go with them. I wish to speak to Ezekiel.”

Adrian, looking slightly disgruntled at being cut off in mid-sentence, rose from his chair. After a nod in Zeke’s direction, he marched over to the door and threw it open wide.

With one last glance at Cassiel’s stony expression, I followed after him.

We made it up the spiral staircase without exchanging a word, emerging onto one of seven identical corridors. They were all painted the same shade of cream, with glossy mahogany cornicing and chrome sconces placed strategically along the walls. My room had been on a corridor just like this one, only three floors up.

“Someone really needs to pull out the stick shoved up Cassiel’s arse,” Adrian grumbled, apparently still seething about the way he’d been dismissed a few minutes ago. It didn’t surprise me – his authority problem was one of the more volatile tenets of his irreverent personality.

            “I invite you to try,” Gabriel responded with a grin. My brother was more than used to talking Adrian down. I didn’t know where he found the patience to do it.

            Adrian chuckled, and his mood suddenly lifted. Mercurial as ever, then. It seemed like I was the only person who had changed at all in the year and a half I’d been gone.

            “Cassiel certainly seemed less than pleased with you, Little Ambrose.”

            “Well, that’s nothing new.” It really wasn’t. I spent most of my childhood getting admonished by Cassiel for one thing or another. It usually wasn’t even my fault. I had a tendency to try and join in with Gabriel’s exploits as a child, but the older boys wanted nothing to do with me. I was only convenient as a scapegoat. Invariably, I’d end up getting the blame for something my brother or Adrian had done.

            “You bore it better than I remember,” Gabriel offered, with the barest hint of a smirk.

            “I’ve grown up.”

            “That makes one of us,” Adrian sighed theatrically. He reached over to muss my hair up, pulling it out of its ponytail into complete disarray. Wavy blonde tendrils fell into my eyes, and I scowled at him as I shoved them back away from my face.

            “Must you?”

            “I must.”

            “I’m so over the little sister routine, Adrian. I’m seventeen, not seven.”

            The gold in his irises seemed to burn a little brighter as he dragged his gaze down my body and back up to my face, appraising me silently. “Yeah, it’s kind of hard to miss the change.”

            Something about that statement made the blood rush to my face. “Don’t look at me like that.”

            “I’m not looking at you like anything,” he protested as innocently as he could manage.

            Gabriel rolled his eyes at the pair of us. “Don’t start fighting, you two.”

            “Me?” I rounded on my brother. “He started it!”

            “Very mature,” Adrian muttered. I shot him a withering look.

            Sighing like a stressed parent, Gabriel made his way over to the next flight of stairs. “Come on; let’s get Faith settled in again.”

            “Where will I stay?” I wondered, as I began to climb the stairs after him.

            Gabriel swung around to give me an incredulous look. “In your room, obviously.”

            I was surprised. “You mean… my room is still my room?”

            He rolled his eyes again. “Well, duh. Who else would have taken it?”

            “I don’t know. A transfer Nephil from another city?”

            “We don’t exactly get a lot of them,” Adrian said, as if that should’ve been obvious. I neglected to point out that he’d been one himself seven years ago. Some things just weren’t worth getting drawn into another inevitable squabble over.

            We climbed the rest of the stairs to the fourth floor in silence. Emerging onto the corridor, I felt the first little thrill of nervousness in my stomach. By the time we arrived at my old bedroom door, the nervousness had blossomed into full blown anxiety. I didn’t know what to expect when I turned the handle.

            “I’m guessing you can unpack your own shit,” Adrian said, sounding totally bored. He was still carrying my hold-all; he shrugged it off his shoulder and deposited it in the doorway.

            “You aren’t staying?” Gabriel looked surprised. Adrian shook his head, a few strands of black hair falling into his eyes.

            “Nah,” he shrugged. “I have other places to be.”

            “What places?” I asked.

            “That’s for me to know, and you to agonizingly wonder over, Little Ambrose.”

            He leaned over and chucked me lightly under the chin. I cringed away from the gesture, annoyed. “Get off.”

            With a roguish wink, he turned on his heel and strode back the way we’d come. His mocking laughter echoed in the corridor until he disappeared out of sight.

            Gabriel seemed to be at a loss as to what to say after that. He blinked a few times, and then shrugged wordlessly, turning to the door and opening it with a sharp tug.

I followed him inside, hovering on the threshold as he flicked the bedside light on.

“Voila!” he said with a flourish. “One bedroom, unchanged in the last two years.”

He wasn’t kidding. My room was exactly as I had left it – the lemon-yellow and purple duvet set on the single bed, the stack of half-finished notebooks in the corner, the posters tacked up on the walls. There were photographs in frames on the desk, but I didn’t pause to look at them as I set my bag down on my desk chair and tentatively opened my wardrobe.

All of my old hunting clothes were in there. I doubted most of them would even fit, apart from my boots. There was also a chiffon dress I had once worn to a Christmas party, and my old flannel pyjamas. I shut the door, and immediately spotted the weapons chest that Gabriel had painstakingly carved for me for my birthday one year. A quick glance inside confirmed that everything was still in its place.

I straightened up and caught sight of myself in the gilded floor-length mirror. The girl who stared back at me wasn’t the same one who had once stood here, looking at her reflection. This version was older, more worldly. She had seen more things, and visited more places, and experienced life as a mortal. Yet she still had that utterly lost look that I recognised from the past, like she didn’t truly belong.

“What’s wrong?” Gabe asked softly. He had seated himself on my bed, and was watching me watch my reflection with a look of increasing concern.

I plastered a smile onto my face and turned back to look at him. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Are you going to unpack? I could help,” he offered.

“Not tonight,” I responded quickly. “I’m too tired.”

Gabriel’s silver eyes looked doubtful. “Okay.”

My brother was so transparent – I could read him like a book. “I won’t run away again, Gabe. I promise.”

He seemed slightly reassured. “I just worry. It was… really hard. Waking up that day and finding you gone.”

I swallowed thickly, my eyes stinging all of a sudden. Gabriel’s head was bowed, his hair the colour of brass in the lamplight. My heart ached for him.

“I left you a note.”

His eyes flashed up to meet mine again, and they were full of hurt. “Do you have any idea how that felt, Fay? It wasn’t like a note was going to make me feel any better. You’re my sister. My family. And you just… left. No explanation. No proper goodbye. What’s more – you left me instructions never to follow you.”

“I thought it would be easier that way,” I whispered, feeling the first tear spill over my eyelid and roll down my cheek. “I thought…”

“Easier for who, Fay? For me or for you?”

“Gabriel…”

He sucked in a deep breath, trying to force his voice to remain steady. “I’m not angry. Not anymore. I just don’t want to finally get you back and have to lose you all over again.”

A fissure was forming in my heart, deepening the longer I looked at him. “I won’t do that. Not again. Not ever.”

I’d never seen him look so obviously wistful. “You went and started this whole other life that I wasn’t a part of. I’m not naive enough to think that you won’t want it back at some point. You said it yourself, Fay, you don’t like this life of violence and darkness.”

I dropped to my knees in front of him, bracing my hands on either side of his face and forcing him to meet my eyes. “Gabriel Michael Ambrose, I promise you, I swear on my soul, that I won’t ever abandon you again. Not for anything or anyone.”

He smiled faintly. “Good, because I don’t work right without you, Fay.”

“I know,” I said, pushing his hair back the way our mother used to when we were little. “I don’t work right without you, either.”

He patted the bed next to him, and I hopped up to join him, leaning my head against his shoulder as he wrapped one arm around me, squeezing me tight. “It’s good to have you home.”

I wasn’t quite sure that I felt the same, but there was one thing I could tell him in complete honesty. “I’m glad we’re together again.”

And it was there; leaning on my big brother while he held me in a room filled with my childhood memories; that I finally fell into a peaceful and dreamless sleep.