Page 5

Kerry

When I was better able to control myself, we moved on to what Hank called soft skills. I heard lectures on manners, managing my anger, and cutting the cussing outta my vocabulary.

Yeah, that was gonna take some time.

One day, he asked about my past, trying to be all pussyfoot about it, but I knew what he was really asking. I didn’t like remembering it, but I shared what I could because I hoped I could still get justice for my mom.

He said he’d make sure the information went to the right people and pointed out that, if the man I remembered was a neph, another warden might recognize the description, assuming he was alive.

“You tell me, Hank.” I met his eyes. “You tell me if you find that son of a whore.”

“You know I wasn’t your original warden, right?” He changed the subject quick. “If I were, I would have brought you straight here after your mother’s death.”

“What happened to my warden?”

“She died. I think it was a couple of months before you were possessed. For some reason, it took a few years for the Council to remember to replace her. As soon as you were assigned to me, I started trying to find you. That was no easy task.”

“So how did you do it? Wasn’t like I had a permanent address.” That bothered me. I’d always been very careful to make myself hard to find.

Then Hank rolled up the cuff of his shirt sleeve to show a tattoo running around his wrist, and I got it.

He was one of them . Explained a lot.

“I started out as a Huskarl at the New York City outpost,” he confirmed. “It was much smaller back then. Everything was smaller in the 1800s, I suppose. Anyway, once a brother, always a brother, so I explained the situation to the current drott and he tipped me off whenever he could.”

“Yeah, I stayed away from them, so he probably didn’t call you too often.”

I didn’t bother to explain I’d made a sort of truce with Drott Josef Krall. I didn’t go into Midtown, and his Huskarls forgot my existence.

“You’re right. I started looking through human records and found your foster home, but you’d run away long before I arrived. Your foster mom, Mrs. Rhodes, gave me a school picture of you, but had no suggestions on where you might have gone. I visited some of the local haunts and followed rumors and every little lead I could find or buy, but you weren’t leaving much of a trail. Still, I almost caught you twice.”

“When?” I wanted to know, but also kinda didn’t. “How?”

“Truth is, I was lucky. About two years ago, I was at a bar by the Lincoln Tunnel and ran into an alukah who’d paid you for two pints of AB negative just minutes before. He told me to try the nearest subway station. Sure enough, I saw you dive into the last car right before the train pulled out. I followed on the next one and got off at the first stop, but you must have gone on down the line.”

“Did you go back to the bar?”

“On and off, but you didn’t follow any routine, apparently, or at least not one I could figure out. Everything was random with you.”

“It kept me alive.” I shrugged. “No one could plan on me being somewhere. What about the second time?”

He shifted in his chair and looked away.

Not gonna be good . Brace yourself.

“About nine months ago, the werewolf king approached the Council about joining forces on a mission.”

“That doesn’t happen often.” I raised my eyebrows.

Usually, if something Divine or Diabolical was involved, King Julian left it in neph hands. If it was shifter-related, the Council returned the favor.

“I know, but this trafficking ring in Queens was trading in both nephs and shifters and everything in between.”

He shrugged, and I got a bad feeling I knew exactly which trafficking ring he was talking about. When he continued, I sighed. I hated being right sometimes.

“I’m friends with Angelo della Morte, the shifters’ team leader. Since I was in the area and at a dead end with my search for you, I volunteered to be the Council’s representative.”

“The Angel of Death is your friend ?” I snorted.

“You know him?”

“Only by reputation. I made it a point to avoid crossing his path. He was not someone I needed as an enemy.”

“Yeah, I guess if you two had a run-in, the whole supernatural community would have heard about it. I wonder which of you would have survived.” Hank grinned, then shook his head. “Anyway, I saw you at Lizzie’s, but couldn’t get to you. Too much chaos.”

I glared at the table, too ashamed to meet his eyes.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said gently, “but I wondered if you were one of her buyers or one of her suppliers.”

“Neither. I took care of the ones who wouldn’t behave.”

“What do you mean?”

“A demon is what it eats.” I swallowed hard. “The more power, the better. It was a win-win situation for Lizzie and the demon. She got rid of troublemakers and the demon feasted.”

As for me, I vomited my guts out afterward.

How can you make up for that? I covered my face with one hand. How can you be forgiven when what you’ve done is unforgivable?

“I’m glad we burned that place to the ground,”

Hank growled.

“Me, too,” I mumbled.

“Back to the night I caught up with you. The Huskarls had taken down a cult of Satanists who called up a slew of demons. After the action was over, one of the brothers saw you and had the presence of mind to put a trace on you before you took off. Then they called me, and it was easy-peasy tracking after that.”

“I remember the cultists. The demon was spying on its competition. Wanted to make sure they were sent back to the Pit. Ha! You’re lucky I was more than half-dead by then, Warden.”

“Why’s that?”

“If I’da been in better shape, I woulda sensed the trace and used it to ambush you.” I half-smiled. “Now that woulda been an epic fight. Even better than if I’d ever taken on the Angel of Death! That prolly would have ended in one of us dying real quick, but you and me? We woulda destroyed a coupla blocks or more before we were done!”

“Probably so,” he chuckled, “but let’s not put it to the test anytime soon, kiddo.”

#

Gemma

School wasn’t awful, just nerve-wracking.

After two days, I had basic survival knowledge: where my classes were, who to avoid, and where to eat lunch.

And I liked all my classes, except for politics and diplomacy. It started out promising—all the students were new enough to the Sanctuary that we felt comfortable enough to ask even the most basic questions—but it went downhill fast.

The teacher, Ms. Fey, gave me the impression of glitter and gloss, and she favored students who were vapid, gossipy, and well-connected. She didn’t like anyone who was too smart, though, probably because they were harder to manipulate.

Obviously, we weren’t destined to get along.

On the first day, one of her new pets asked how nephilim were identified, and Ms. Fey explained that each of us was divinely recorded at birth. Specialists known as Custodians monitored the database and notified the wardens’ station when a nephilim was added. There was an entire protocol that wardens followed to protect their wards, and failure to do so meant banishment from the Sanctuary. In the case of newborn nephilim, a warden—either by rota or inclination—contacted the mother, briefed her on nephilim, and bound her to keep the information secret to herself and the child.

I also found out that a Council of Wardens, made up of nephilim from around the world, acted as a low-key government and maintained other sanctuaries in Finland, Nepal, Madagascar, Australia, and Brazil. Every major city had outposts that worked the same, but on a smaller scale and without the schools. No one was forced to go to one—they were sanctuaries, not prisons—unless a child was orphaned or abandoned or abused.

Speaking of prisons, the Council had one in the Barents Sea. Ms. Fey called it a gulag and said it was for the nephilim who “follow in their father’s footsteps a little too closely.”

I shivered at her words.

Who would want to emulate a demon?

I didn’t ask her that, but I did stay after class to ask another, more important question.

“Ms. Fey, are there any reasons why a warden would not bring an abused or orphaned child to the Sanctuary? Something in the protocol you mentioned, maybe?”

“No. Wardens watch until their charges are in high school. Sometimes from afar, sometimes integrated into the neighborhood. Any sign of abuse, the nephilim in question is brought here or to the nearest outpost.”

“Then what about Kerry Harker? Why didn’t his warden bring him here? He was only a child when—”

“Kerry Harker?” To my shock, her upper lip pulled back and disgust was stamped all over her face. “Not that it’s any of your business, but his first warden was killed in the line of duty shortly before his … mishap.”

Mishap? He didn’t fall off his bike!

“Afterward, he constantly ran away from his foster homes, which made it extremely difficult for his current warden to catch him.”

“It took ten years to catch him?”

“Your morbid interest in the demon-tainted boy is appalling, Ms. Shepherd, although I suppose the tragedy of it calls to the healer in you.”

Demon-tainted? What is demon-tainted?

“Well, yes, there is that, but—”

She interrupted me a second time.

“I will tell you this, and no more: His current warden was assigned to him only three years ago. Now, I highly suggest you forget about that … thing … and focus on acclimating to your new life.”

Thing? He’s a thing ?

“And I wouldn’t bring it up with anyone else. People will get the wrong idea about you.” Her indulgent smile infuriated me. “Fortunately, you’ve only asked me . I’ll do you a favor this once and keep it a secret.”

She lifted an index finger to her red lips, then winked at me.

Since my mother had raised me to be polite and respectful to adults—and because I was too furious to be either at the moment—I thanked her and left.

By the end of my power focus class, I decided I could forgive her. Most likely, no one had ever taught her that her manners were a mirror of her character.

But if her character is that uncharitable, the least she could do is bottle it up so the rest of us don’t have to be disturbed it!

#

On my way back to my dorm that afternoon, I called August and asked him to explain what Ms. Fey meant by calling Kerry Harker demon-tainted.

“Taint is the residue of evil,” he explained. “Think of it like cancer clinging to your rib cage.”

Then he went into detail about the four kinds of taint: Enthrallment, coercion, corruption, and possession.

An object could be spelled to steal your free will without your permission. The second you touched it, you were enthralled to the master of the item. If a demon forced a bit of itself—a claw, a tooth, a scale—inside your body, you were coerced. Since both enthrallment and coercion were done against your will, their taint eventually faded on their own.

Corruption was brought about by your own actions. When someone made the conscious choice to commit evil deeds, they corrupted themselves.

“ That cannot be healed nor does it fade over time.” August took a deep breath. “There is a way to reverse it, but few of the corrupt are able to act altruistically by the time they realize they’re doomed.” “And possession?”

“Like corruption, it is a deliberate choice. You accept a demon.” His voice grew grave. “You invite it into your soul. You can be made to do so through trickery and torture or other unsavory means, but, in the end, you act of your own free will. It does not fade and cannot be healed.”

“What does taint do to you?”

“It hurts, and many in our world can sense it in one way or the other. To those who can detect it, a tainted person will smell like the demon he once hosted. The heaviest weight of taint, though, is emotional and mental. Your thoughts are grimmer, your heart harder, and you lapse into pessimism more easily when you understand evil.”

“Everyone understands evil,” I argued.

“No, we do not. We know what it is. We can define and identify it, quantify and categorize it. We do not understand it. We cannot . No more than we can understand what it is like to die. It is outside our experience, although we have knowledge of it. Does that make sense?”

“Hmm.” While I thought about that, he went on to explain that both corruption and possession taints were one-way tickets to damnation after death. If you died with either on your soul, Hell was your irrevocable destination.

I did not like knowing that.

“You said corruption taint could be reversed. What about possession taint?”

He was silent for a long moment, and I wondered if I had strayed into the taboo ground Ms. Fey had warned me about.

“Yes,” he said finally. “However, none of them are options for Kerry Harker right now.”

“I want to help him, August.” I scowled at the sidewalk and tapped my finger against the back of my phone.

“For now, there is little you can do beyond what you’re currently doing.”

“What am I currently doing?” I was immediately suspicious.

“I know about the singing in the garden.” He sounded like he was smiling, and my face burned. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him knowing that. “When the time comes for him to emerge from isolation, the best help you can give him is what you’ve already suggested: Become his friend. He’ll need one.”

I straightened my shoulders.

“Then he’ll have one.”