Reckoning

CHAPTER ONE

Vilma Santiago pressed the phone to her ear, listening to the sounds of sadness and disappointment. She hated lying to her aunt and uncle—hated how it made her feel like a silly little girl—but the alternative was something that she herself had barely begun to comprehend, never mind her guardians.

No, I didn’t really run away from home to hook up with a boy I barely knew, but was convinced that I’d fallen in love with, she wanted to tell them. Nope, not at all. In fact I was kidnapped by real live angels as bait to lure Aaron—you know, that boy that I’m in love with—into a trap. The bad angels wanted to kill Aaron before some kind of ancient prophecy that he was supposed to represent came true. You see, Aaron is a Nephilim, the child of a human mother and an angel—and guess what, so am I. Isn’t that awesome?

She heard her aunt’s voice suddenly asking if she was still there, and Vilma promptly pushed aside the truth in favor of the lies. At the moment, lies were far less trouble.

“I’m here,” she said, trying to keep the tone in her voice cheerful and upbeat. “Sorry about that, I think we might have a bad connection.”

The woman’s questions droned on and on, the same questions that she had asked during Vilma’s first call a week ago. Was she in trouble? Did she have a place to stay? When was she coming home? Vilma gazed through the glass partition in the back of the phone booth at the traffic whizzing past her on the highway across from the roadside stop. She wanted nothing more than to be in one of those cars, speeding away from her life—running from what she had learned about herself. But she knew that was impossible, because no matter how far she drove or how fast she ran, she could never escape what she truly was.

Nephilim. The word continued to haunt her. She had read about these offspring of angels and humans in the numerous books about heavenly beings she had enjoyed reading over the years, but she had never imagined that the knowledge she had gleaned would in any way, shape, or form pertain to her. It was just all so crazy.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” her aunt asked yet again, and Vilma paused before allowing the lie to flow from her mouth.

The thing that made her a Nephilim—what Aaron described as an angelic essence—had awakened at the strike of midnight on her eighteenth birthday. With each passing day she could feel it growing stronger. And it scared her.

“I’m fine,” she said into the phone. “I told you, I just need a little more time to figure out what I want to do with my life. As soon as I do, I’ll come home. I promise.”

Is that really a lie? she wondered, barely hearing her uncle’s hundredth offer to come and get her wherever she was, any time of the day or night. All she had to do was call, let him know where to find her, and he would be there for her. Will I ever be able to return to Lynn, Massachusetts—especially being the way I am now?

Vilma felt the power stir inside her and offhandedly wondered if it was similar to the feelings women experienced when pregnant. She seriously doubted that having a baby growing inside her could ever scare her as much this. Besides, if she were having a child it would be because it was wanted. Vilma didn’t want this angelic power, and sometimes she suspected that the thing inside her knew it. It was unpredictable, and she never knew when the essence would awaken and cause a fuss. She tried with all her might to keep it under control, but it was like trying to hold back a sneeze—except a sneeze didn’t have the power of Heaven behind it. Every day it seemed just a little bit stronger than the day before, and Vilma worried that there would come a time when the force would be stronger than her.

Suddenly she didn’t want to be on the phone anymore, just in case the power of the Nephilim decided to assert itself. Most of the time it was downright painful, and she didn’t want to give her aunt and uncle any reason to be more concerned for her than they already were.

Vilma told them that she had to go and that she would call them again in a couple of days. She told them that she loved them and her niece and nephew very much, reminded them not to worry, and assured them that she would be back home soon.

And then, as the connection was broken, the power of angels thrummed through her body like the bass from a car stereo cranked to maximum, and Vilma wondered if this would be the time.

The time that she could not hold it back.

Aaron Corbet couldn’t pull his eyes from the entrance to the diner across the parking lot. The elderly, families, and truck drivers—people of all shapes and sizes, heading in for breakfast and coming out satisfied. It was all so boring—so mundane.

What he wouldn’t give for boring and mundane in his own life.

“What do you think that big fat guy with the bald head ate?” his Labrador retriever and best friend, Gabriel, asked from his side. “I think he just burped; I can smell sausage. I love sausage, don’t you, Aaron?”

The young man didn’t answer, still caught up in the flow of normal. For just a brief moment he wanted to remember what it was like to be them—the people coming and going from the diner, oblivious to the beings from Heaven, angels, who walked among them.

“Are you thinking about sausage, Aaron?” Gabriel suddenly asked him, chasing away his brief fantasy. “Or maybe pancakes. What I wouldn’t give for some of those. Are you sure we can’t go in and have something to eat? I’m very hungry.”

“No, we can’t,” Aaron responded, feeling again the weight of the new responsibilities he had to bear. He had come to accept them, but that did not make them any easier to carry.

The fallen angels that had fled to Earth after the war in Heaven believed in an ancient prophecy, a revelation that an offspring of a mortal woman and angel would be born into the world of man. This amalgam of God’s greatest creations, this Nephilim, would be special—different from others of its ilk—and would bring with it a way in which those who had fallen from grace could be forgiven their sins and reunited with their Holy Father in Heaven. Aaron Corbet was this Nephilim—the savior—whether he liked it or not.

A family exited the restaurant—mother, father, and little boy probably about seven years old. The boy held tightly to the string of a Sponge Bob balloon, and at that moment looked to be the happiest kid in the world. Aaron watched them cross the parking lot to their car and couldn’t help but think of the family that had been lost to him, violently torn away as a result of his angelic destiny.

After spending the first years of his life shuffled from one foster family to another, he was finally placed with the Stanleys, a truly loving couple, and their young, autistic son. They had accepted him as one of their own, and became the only family Aaron ever really knew. But they were all gone now, murdered by a host of angels—the Powers—hellbent on making sure that the prophecy of forgiveness would never come to pass. Their leader, a nasty piece of work called Verchiel, wanted him dead in the worst of ways, but Aaron just couldn’t find it in his heart to oblige.

“It’s that no-dogs-allowed thing again, isn’t it?” the Lab interrupted Aaron’s thoughts again, frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t eat. Gabriel loved to eat—and to talk … and talk and talk. “Is it because they think we smell, Aaron?” the dog asked. “I don’t think I smell any worse than most babies do.”

Being able to understand the dog—being able to understand the language of all living things—was but one of the strengths of Aaron’s Nephilim birthright. With the help of his angel mentor, Camael, and an old fallen angel called Belphegor, he had successfully merged with the power of Heaven that flowed through his body. This power provided him with the strength and skill he would need to achieve his destiny, as well as deal with the threat still posed by Verchiel and the Powers.

“I think you smell better than most babies too,” he complimented the dog, “but they still won’t let you eat inside. We’ll have something when we get back to Aerie. Don’t worry; I won’t let you starve.”

Aerie was their home now, a settlement of fallen angels and Nephilim dedicated to the belief in the ancient prophecy that Aaron was supposed to represent. Aerie had also become his responsibility.

The dog grumbled, not completely satisfied with the compromise, but knowing he had little choice. Aaron knew that feeling well enough. He could complain all he wanted, but it wouldn’t change the fact that he had a destiny to fulfill. He tried not to allow his new duties to overwhelm him, but it was a challenge. Not only did he have to protect the citizens of Aerie, knowing that Verchiel was still out there looking for revenge, he also had to look after Vilma and deal with the most recent revelation that Lucifer was the angel who fathered him. Who ever said that being a savior was all fun and games?

Aaron turned away from the restaurant and looked toward the phone booth where Vilma appeared to be wrapping up her call.

“I’m worried about her,” Gabriel said, putting words to Aaron’s sentiments as they both watched her hang up the phone and emerge from the glass-and-metal cubicle.

Vilma had been part of Aaron’s old life, before the power of the angels asserted itself and turned the world as he had known it on its ear. Although he had kept in contact through e-mail, he hadn’t really thought he would ever see her again, yet another piece of his life that he was forced to abandon. But here she was, inexplicably made part of his new existence—a Nephilim too. He always felt he was in love with her, always knew there was some powerful connection, but that just made her involvement in the whirlwind that his life had become all the more scary.

“Is everything okay at home?” he asked as she approached them.

The girl shrugged, combing a nervous hand through her shiny, black shoulder-length hair. “As good as can be expected, I guess,” she said, not looking at him.

She was sweating, even though the temperature wasn’t above sixty degrees, and he also noticed the dark circles under her normally beautiful brown eyes.

Aaron reached out gingerly to touch Vilma’s shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

Vilma raised her face to look at him, eyes filled with emotion. “No,” she answered, shaking her head as the tears began to tumble down the dark skin of her cheeks. “I’ve been taken away from my home and my school, been tortured by …monsters, I’m having dreams that make me afraid to go to sleep, and … and there’s something coming alive inside me that I can’t even begin to understand. No, Aaron, I am so not all right.”

She was angry and scared, and he knew exactly how she felt, for it wasn’t that long ago that he first experienced the awakening of the angelic essence within himself. He tried to think of the right things to say to reassure her, but he couldn’t; he didn’t want to lie. Aaron had no idea how things were going to be in the future—for her, for himself, for the fallen angels. Life was uncertain right now, and that was something that he was learning to live with. It was something Vilma was going to have to learn as well.

As if on cue, Gabriel leaned his large, yellow body against the girl, nudging her hand with his cold, damp nose. “Don’t cry, Vilma,” he said consolingly, his dark eyes looking up into hers. “Everything is going to be fine. Just you wait and see.”

She began to pat his blocky head, and Aaron could see the immediate calming effect that the dog’s presence had upon her. In the week since they had saved her from Verchiel’s grasp, Gabriel had become Vilma’s anchor to sanity.

“I’m very tired,” she said, her voice no louder than a whisper. “I think I’d like to go ho—” Vilma halted, the word catching in her throat before it could leave her mouth. She was going to say “home.” But it wasn’t home for her, although it would have to do until the threat of Verchiel and his Powers was ended once and for all.

“I’ll take you back to Aerie,” Aaron said quietly, putting his arm around her and gently pulling her close.

She nodded and said nothing more as Gabriel, too, stepped closer.

Using another of the gifts from his angelic nature, Aaron willed them all invisible, then allowed the massive, shiny black wings to unfurl from his back. He thought of Aerie, picturing in his mind the abandoned neighborhood built atop a burial ground for toxic waste, enfolded Vilma and Gabriel within his feathered embrace, and took them there.

Deep within the hold of oblivion, Lucifer had sought the escape of torment, and instead found memories of times preferred forgotten.

He saw it all as he always did when he closed his eyes: the crimes he committed against God, the war he waged in Heaven in the name of petty jealousy. But when those recollections were spent, the wounds of his past discretion reopened, the first of the fallen saw that the painful conjurings of his mind were not yet finished with him.

It had been years since he last dreamed of her—thought of her—and he moaned in protest as remembrances long suppressed played out upon his dreamscape. Her name was Taylor, and the memory of her was as painful as anything he’d been forced to endure since his capture by Verchiel and his followers.

He saw her as he had that very first time: a beautiful, human woman who emanated life and vitality, with rich, dark eyes the color of polished mahogany, and jet-black hair that curled seductively around her shoulders. She was wearing a flowing yellow sundress, leather sandals upon her delicate feet, and she was playing with a dog—a golden retriever named Brandy. There was something about her that drew him in, something that made him believe he might not be the monster his own kind had branded him to be.

In the brief time that he had been with her, Lucifer had almost been able to convince himself that he was just a man, not the leader of a rebellion against God. How beautifully mundane his life had become, the urge to wander the planet, as he had done for thousands of years, suddenly stifled by the love of an earthly woman. It was as if she had been touched by the Archons themselves; there was an inherent magick in her that seemed to calm his restless spirit and numb the pain of the curse he would forever carry as the inciter of Heaven’s war.

Lucifer fought toward consciousness, but the current of the past was too strong, and he was drowned in further memories, pulled deeper. It was in fact the dreams that had been harbingers to the end of his happiness with the woman. He had begun to experience dreams of the turmoil for which he was responsible, of the blood and death—the faces of those who had died for his cause haunting his attempts at peace. The dreams were relentless. They reawakened in him the enormity of his sins, and he knew that he must move on. He had not yet earned the right to peace and happiness. How stupid he had been to think that his penance might be at an end. Though it pained him, he left her—the beautiful, magickal Taylor—and began his wanderings anew.

And in his fevered mind he saw her as he had that very last time, asleep in the bed they’d shared as man and woman. How beautiful she was. He had left her during the night, sneaking silently out into the darkness and out of her life. It was for the best, he had told himself, for he could bring her nothing but misery.

But this time the memory was different and he did not leave. Instead Taylor stirred upon the bed, as if feeling his gaze upon her, and she rolled over to look at him, a seductive smile spreading across her features, clad in the shadows of the early hour.

“Hello, Lucifer,” she said in a voice filled with the huskiness of interrupted sleep, and he felt his love for the woman swell within him.

It was as if he had never left her.