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Gemma

“Welcome to the Sanctuary. My name is August Richter and I’m your warden. That means I’ll act as your guardian during your stay here.”

I glanced at the man walking beside me. With his perpetually pink cheeks, white hair and beard, and blue eyes, he looked exactly like an old-fashioned Father Christmas.

“Nice to meet you officially,” I murmured.

“You don’t remember me, but I’ve been your warden since the day you were born.” He smiled at me, his eyes twinkling. “I met your mother when you were eight days old. Even then, you had a downy head of red hair.”

When he’d walked into my hospital room, I’d recognized him, but not for that reason, of course. No, I remembered him from the night that boy had attacked me. Most of the night was a blur except for a few random images, but I could recall August’s face clearly.

Four days ago, I woke up in the worst pain of my life. I’d healed myself until I’d drained every last drop of power, and it had taken me days to recover. This was the first time I was strong enough to leave my bed, so, when August suggested going outside, I agreed, more than ready to leave the white hospital walls behind me.

We walked in a long, slow circle around a giant flower garden. The weather was lovely for the first week of September and the fall blooms filled their beds, lush and cheerful in the afternoon sun.

“Do you know what you are?” he asked.

I nodded, but didn’t speak.

I’d been able to heal for as long as I could remember. Everything from birds’ wings to my own scraped knees. It had been as natural as breathing. It had taken my mom longer to realize what was happening. Once she had, she’d made me promise to keep it to myself. No one could learn of my abilities. It would be a disaster, she’d said, and I’d become a target in a war it was best to know nothing about.

To keep her happy and protect myself if what she said was true, I stored the knowledge of what I was to a rarely visited part of my mind. And, while I always wondered about my father and his world, I learned to keep my thoughts to myself. It upset her when I asked questions, and I’d hated to upset her.

Now, I took a deep breath and, for the first time in my life, prepared to say the words aloud.

“My mom explained a bit. My father was — ” I trailed off, uncomfortable, then let it all out in a rush. “My father was a demon.”

“Your father was one of the Fallen,” August corrected. “A Fallen angel.”

“Isn’t it one and the same?” I was confused.

“An angel is an angel, whether Fallen or Divine. The Fallen retain the same abilities as the Divine and their power stems from the same source. The major difference is that the Fallen no longer enjoy the grace of God nor are they permitted to enter Heaven.”

We reached a small pond, teeming with flashes of gold and orange.

“What do we —” I shook my head. “ Is there a name for us?”

“We call ourselves nephilim, although it is not the most accurate term. The first race of nephilim was sired by God’s angels millennia ago,” August went into lecture mode, and I hid a smile. “They were giants, super-humans, heroes, but they grew vain and cruel and began to influence the course of humanity too much. God declared them an abomination, disposed of them, and forbade his angels further dalliance with human women. Satan was not so strict with his angels, however, and now the Fallen are the only ones who father nephilim.”

“Half-demon or half-Fallen angel,” I grimaced, “we’re still half-evil.”

I’d always hated knowing that and did my best to live as good and clean a life as possible to make up for it.

“Our sires are evil in spirit. That doesn’t mean we are evil or that our spirits are evil. We have our human heritage, too. The free will to make choices, to determine our own path and fate in life. And we are born with as pure a soul as any human’s. We decide if we will meet our ends with it pristine or corrupted or somewhere in the middle.”

“Are we accidents? I mean, the Fallen don’t deliberately seek out women to make babies with, right? Wait. Are all angels, good or bad ones, male?”

“They have no gender as we understand it. Most prefer a male appearance on Earth and obviously favor female partners, however, so I’ll say yes to that.”

My imagination fired up.

“But if an angel preferred a female form, could she have a baby with a human?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Do any of them, the Fallen, I mean, keep in contact with their kids?”

“Not usually, for the Fallen do not intend to sire children, although they once had. They’d hoped to pass their power to us, then wield us in their war. But once they discovered we inherit only a fraction of their power, they lost interest in mass producing offspring. And their fertility rate is poor. One Fallen may produce only two or three children in a decade.”

“The class sizes here must be pretty small, then.”

“There were thousands of Fallen angels, my dear, only a portion of whom were bound in Hell. Also, many nephilim have children of their own, so subsequent generations live here, too.”

“We pass our magic along to our kids?” I lifted my eyes from the koi to stare at him. “Amazing!”

“It is power—Divine power, not magic. It lessens as your bloodline dilutes and is completely gone by the fifth generation, unless you procreate with another nephilim. Fifths may have a talent for medicine or a flair for nursing, but no Divine power, and they will live a normal amount of years.”

“Is there a name for someone like me, whose father was—”

“Firsts. For first generation. It’s not often I’m on a team that saves two on the same night.”

“Two? Who is the other?”

“His name is Kerry Harker, and his is a sad story. It will take him much longer to heal, I’m afraid.”

“Can I help?”

What can I say? It’s my nature. I can’t not help someone in pain or trouble.

“Maybe.” August’s blue eyes warmed up. “You can try.”

“May I see him?”

“Not anytime soon, I’m afraid. His trauma is of an unusual nature. He is currently secured in an isolated area, for the safety of himself and others. If you were to go near him now, he would most likely try to kill you again.”

I inhaled sharply. Surely he wasn’t talking about —

“Yes,” August confirmed, “Kerry is the boy who attacked you.”

“He’s here?” I pressed my fingers against my lips, upset to learn my attacker was somewhere nearby.

“He is one of us. His warden tried for years to bring him here. No child deserves such a fate, and he has suffered for far too long.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“For nearly ten years, he has been possessed by a demon.” August looked grim as he met my eyes. “That’s why he attacked you, Gemma. The demon forced him to.”

“Demons are real?” I gasped.

“My dear, how can you believe in angels and not demons?”

I shook my head, processing everything he’d said about the boy who’d attacked me.

I didn’t know what it was like to be possessed by a demon other than from what I’d read in novels or seen in horror movies, but the real thing was probably worse. Much, much worse. And the boy had seemed about my age, so if it happened ten years ago …

“How in the world did a little boy get possessed?”

“No one knows all the particulars, but I can imagine it was something both gruesome and cruel.”

“Oh, how horrible.” I wrapped my arms around my waist.

“If he were not as strong as he is, he would have perished long ago.”

“Strong as in endurance or strong as in the amount of mag— power he has?”

“Both.” He smiled. “I bet you’ll give him a good run for his money on the level test.”

“Level test?”

Uh-oh. A test? On something I know nothing about?

“The Council of Wardens, which supervises our world, has all nephilim undergo a series of tests to rank their power on a scale from one to ten, one being the weakest. I imagine you’ll score an eight at least.”

“And … Kerry? Right? His name’s Kerry?” “Yes. Kerry Harker. He’s a warrior. He’ll top out at a ten, no doubt.”

That’s hard to believe!

I remembered a bundle of ragged cloth and shaggy brown hair that reeked of everything from cigarette smoke and stale vomit to body odor and urine. A rough boy who’d been little more than a skeleton, his tattooed skin stretched tautly over bones, and his eyes—

Oh, his eyes! The smooth, bright blue of a Siberian husky’s, they were both beautiful and startling in that dirty, scarred face. Even full of pain, they were the kind of eyes you could sink into and lose all sense of time and space and self…

I shook my head, scolding myself for letting my thoughts go there.

The fact that he’s even alive at all shows how strong he is. And not just with power.

Knowing the truth now, I had to admit what happened that night was partly my fault. He’d had the demon caged when I found him and told me to run. Instead, I stayed and stole his control when I tried to heal him. I could still hear his screams, cutting the night like a hunting hawk.

Never in my life had I hurt anyone until him. In my book, that meant I owed him.

“Where is he now? I want to help him recover.”

August raised his eyebrows, then pointed to the west and a small house nestled against the edge of the forest. a path running through an enormous garden straight to its front door.

“He’s in there. He cannot escape nor use any of his power. It is a prison, I suppose, but one of mercy rather than punishment. And he isn’t lacking for anything. The safe house is furnished with everything he could need or want.” He paused and looked down at me. “Although he’s destroyed a good bit of it, I must say. His demon is certainly a violent one.”

“He’s still possessed?” My eyes flew wide open.

“We’re doing what we can.” He held up his hands in a peace gesture. “We’ve been working on exorcizing it since the night you two were brought here, but Kerry’s little more than an animal right now and can’t help at all.”

“Exorcising? That’s what it’s called? Really? I thought that was a term made up for movies and stuff.”

“Yes, you exorcize a demon. Cast it out. Ideally, you capture and contain it, which is what we’ll do with this one. If we can get it out. It is strong and has had a decade to root itself in his soul.”

“Don’t give up on him! He was controlling it when I found him. All these years, and he was still fighting!”

“No one’s giving up on him. I promise.”

“If he needs healing to survive, I’ll do it.” Determination drew my face tight. “I don’t want him to die.”

“Is it pity?” He tilted his head as he eyed me. “This concern for the one who would have killed you, is it pity?”

I couldn’t answer, shyness choking me. I knew my face was red, and we resumed walking in silence.

“No, he wouldn’t have killed me,” I managed to say at last. “The demon would have. Yes, I pity him, but it’s more than that. He kept saying he didn’t want to hurt me. Can you imagine that? Years of torture, and he begged me to run so he wouldn’t hurt me. I want to help him because I want him to become my friend.”

“Why? I must tell you, most nephilim despise one who has been possessed. He will be anathema.”

“That’s dumb,” I said with an indignant snort. “It’s not the lambs secured in the fold who need saving, August.”

My mom had been dedicated to going to church. Uncle Paul said she’d started going shortly before I was born, and that Mom had once told him she had a soul full of guilt to cleanse. He’d been puzzled by that—he didn’t know what my father was or anything about their relationship—but had chalked it up to unwed motherhood at 18.

Anyway, I’d learned a lot of Bible stories in Sunday School. One of my favorites had always been the parable of the lost sheep. In it, a shepherd leaves his ninety-nine sheep to find one that had strayed away. The tale celebrates the redemption of a single lost soul.

“While I agree with you, not many nephilim will.” He inclined his head and his face was grave. “However, if you became his friend? You, whom he nearly killed? Well, it would set a powerful example. With such magnanimity, perhaps you could begin to change the way our kind thinks of the possessed.”

“That’s not why I want to be his friend!” I frowned. “And it’s not mag— Magan— I know that word. It means generous and forgiving. I just can’t pronounce it. Anyway, it’s not that. To be honest, I’m envious of him. I’d like to learn how to gain that kind of strength, that degree of fortitude. That’s all.”

August studied me for a moment, and I kept my face as blank as I could. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but even if I did, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to find it.

“All right,” he murmured after a few moments. “I will see what can be arranged.”

#

Later that evening, I grieved for Uncle Paul.

August explained he’d had to make it look as if I’d been killed. His team had been chasing Kerry Harker that night; it was just coincidence they’d found me, too. They hadn’t planned for the need of a cleaning team or cover-up crew.

So, with my blood everywhere on the sidewalk and the record of the 911 call, added to the fear I wouldn’t survive such severe injuries, he’d had no choice. A few days ago, he’d arranged for the human authorities to find a body that matched my records, and I was officially dead in the human world.

That meant I couldn’t go back to my old neighborhood, or hang out with my friends, or travel to competitions with the school choir.

I guess I can kiss that scholarship goodbye.

All of which paled in comparison to the worst realization of all: Never again could I see my only living relative.

Paul had been a good guardian the last four years. We hadn’t started off well, I acknowledged with a rueful smile. I’d been a grief-stricken teen and he was the quintessential bachelor. Although we’d known each other all my life, it had taken a while for us to adjust to living together after the car crash had claimed Mom. In the end, though, we’d made it work and life had been good.

As I wiped my face on my sleeve, I prayed for Uncle Paul. He’d lost his only sister and now his niece. I knew he’d grieve, but I prayed he’d move on with peace in his heart.

My own heart hurt so badly at the moment, I couldn’t sleep. I knew time would soften the ache, like after Mom died, but it would never disappear completely.

August told me he’d arranged for me to talk with one of the school counselors, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I understood his concern and admitted it would be nice to talk my feelings out with someone, but it took me a long time to warm up to people. The idea of venting everything to a stranger was about as appealing as shoving toothpicks under my fingernails.

I liked August already, though. He was comfortable to be around and grandfatherly in a way, although he didn’t look much over sixty. Then again, he’d explained that nephilim aged very slowly, and Firsts often lived into their five hundreds.

I’d almost passed out when he shared that little nugget of information. I was going to live for centuries .

My new, Sanctuary-issued phone rang, almost like it was calling time to my cryfest, so I blew my nose a final time and sat up.

“Hello, August.”

Rats. I sound so snuffed up, he’ll know I was crying for sure.

“Does your offer to help Kerry Harker still stand?”

Chaos in the background almost drowned out his soft voice.

“What’s going on?” Concerned, I scooted to the edge of the bed. “August, are you in trouble?”

“We’ve exorcized Kerry’s demon, but he’s failing. Were you sincere in your offer to help? Are you truly willing to save this boy’s life?”