Eternity (10 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

When Rafe said “begin,” he meant begin
right now
.

Without a word of explanation, Rafe reached for our hands and lifted me and Michael into the air. It felt weird to fly again, almost like a kid who just took the training wheels off her bike. I welcomed—no, needed—the security of Rafe’s hand at first. Even though I felt shaky, I was elated that the waiting was over. We were finally taking action.

Once we cleared the treetops and steadied ourselves, Rafe let go of our hands. The crisp nighttime air made me feel alive again. Like I’d reclaimed the latent part of myself and become whole. My shoulder blades lifted and expanded for the flight, and I relished the sensation of the wind and sky on my limbs and face. For a brief, wonderful minute, I forgot about the end days.

Then I noticed that Rafe had left me and Michael in his wake. I streamlined my body in an effort to keep up with Rafe’s incredibly swift pace. His motions were so precise and so efficient that I could not possibly catch up. He practically had to backpedal to fly alongside me and Michael.

Where were we going? I tried to track the landmarks on the ground. I ticked off my parents’ house, our high school, even the old town church that used to creep me out with its circular window that stared out like some all-seeing eye. Still, I couldn’t figure out our destination.

Within a few minutes, I spotted a familiar ring of fir trees. The circle of evergreens enclosed a private field.
Our
field. Why was Rafe bringing us here? Did he know it was our special place?

We lowered ourselves carefully to the ground. No one spoke a word until we stood together on the field’s central mound.

“You’re familiar with this place?” Rafe broke the silence.

“Yes,” I answered. “Michael and I used to come here when I was learning to fly. He discovered it.”

Rafe glanced over at Michael and nodded in approval. “Intuitively, you chose well. Although you couldn’t possibly have known, this field is embedded with protections that shielded you somewhat from the fallen. The protections didn’t entirely mask your fledging efforts with your powers—as you saw with Ezekiel—but they bought you considerable time. I’m hoping that it will offer us similar protection while we train.”

“How is it possible that Michael stumbled across a field containing these ‘protections?’ That’s too incredible to be a coincidence.”

“Ellspeth, your parents lived in Tillinghast in the sixteen hundreds, right after they decided to try for redemption. At that time, the Dark Fallen were trying to persuade them and the other Light Fallen to return, through some rather unpleasant means. Your parents needed a place where they could be safe. They created this haven.”

I recalled my conversation with my parents when they revealed their true natures, and their smiles reminiscing on their “happy times” in Tillinghast. They made their disclosure before I went to Boston, of course. Before they tried to make me forget all over again.

I choked up a bit as I thought about all the sacrifices my parents had made for humankind and me. I felt guilty about being so mad at them lately. “My parents created this place as a sanctuary nearly four hundred years ago?”

“Yes. When Michael found it, he probably sensed it was a refuge.” Rafe nodded again in Michael’s direction. I think he was trying to reassure him, offer another olive branch. Michael had been very quiet during this whole exchange. I could tell that a part of him was still watching and weighing.

As I stared from one to the other, they seemed so different. Rafe was dark where Michael was light, in the hair and eyes. Rafe’s strength was obvious and burly, while Michael’s force was lean and compact. Rafe retained his lightness and humor, as Michael had become extra serious. Yet, despite all their disparities, they had one powerful quality in common—the desire to protect me.

I returned to the conversation. Rafe had mentioned my parents. The question begged to be asked.

“Rafe, is it time to tell our parents that we know who we are?”

He paused, considering the question. “Not yet, Ellspeth.”

“Why not? Hiding our powers and pretending hasn’t stopped the end days from proceeding. What is there to gain by keeping them in the dark?”

“Feigning ignorance might not stop the opening of the seven seals, but it will protect your parents for a little while. Once you tell your parents what you know, they will summon the other Light Fallen. The Dark Fallen will perceive it as a call to battle. The end will hasten, and we’ll lose this opportunity to prepare you. Also”—Rafe hesitated a second—“your parents won’t survive. Don’t forget that they are mortal.”

At the mention of my parents’ mortality, the tears threatened to reappear, but I willed them away and said, “Surely our parents could restrain themselves from summoning the Light Fallen? So that Michael and I could have time to prepare? That way, we could loop them in but still get what we need.” I suddenly had an urge to have my parents at my side.

“It isn’t so simple, Ellspeth. Centuries ago, the Light Fallen vowed to align for the end-days battle as soon as it surfaced. The agreement leaves no room for waiting.”

“So we have to go on with this charade,” I said. I hated lying to them, but if it bought our parents more time, I would put on an Academy Award–level performance.

“For now, you must.” Rafe gestured around the field and changed the subject. “This is where we’ll train. Every night, until it’s time.”

Michael finally perked up. “This is where you’ll teach us how to crush them, right?”

Rafe ignored Michael’s show of bravado, and stated the blunt facts. “Neither you nor Ellspeth will ever overpower them. Remember, their nature is pure angel, while yours is only half. So, they have double the power you have. If you can fly fast, they can fly twice as fast, for example. Still, you bear tremendous strength and gifts within your bodies, and used wisely, you’ll be able to destroy the fallen before the final seal is broken. Plus, your humanity has its own unique gifts.”

“If we can’t overpower them, how will we kill them?” Michael persisted impatiently. It seemed that he wanted to bypass the training and get right to the murder part.

“Do you know how you were able to kill Ezekiel? Your father?”

I watched Michael’s bullishness ratchet down a notch at Rafe’s reminder that Ezekiel was actually his father. Michael said quietly, “I pushed him into a steel pole.”

Rafe responded even more quietly. He understood that the destruction of Ezekiel had taken a private toll on Michael, and empathy imbued Rafe’s voice. “That alone wouldn’t have killed him, Michael. The fallen are immortal, except for one flaw.”

Suddenly the words spoken by Tamiel—the angel sent to Boston by my parents to help us—came back to me. “Only one with Ezekiel’s blood in his veins can destroy him,” I blurted out.

Rafe faced me. “Yes, Ellspeth. Only the
Nephilim
who has the fallen’s blood in his or her veins can destroy him.”

So we needed to have our target fallen angel’s blood coursing through our veins to slay him. How would we go about that? “Ezekiel was Michael’s father. That’s how Michael had Ezekiel’s blood in his veins. We cannot possibly be the children of
all
the five remaining fallen angels responsible for the signs. How can we get their blood in our veins?”

As the question left my mouth, a memory returned to me. In Boston, Michael told me that Ezekiel was able to track him because Ezekiel’s blood ran in Michael’s veins, and that Ezekiel could track me for the same reason. The reason that Ezekiel’s blood ran in my veins was that I had tasted Michael’s blood. Suddenly, I understood what we needed to do in order to kill the fallen, and Rafe watched my face as it all became clear.

I answered my own question. “We have to spill their blood and drink it.”

Michael looked over at me, horrified and disgusted. “That can’t be right.”

Very calmly and very plainly, Rafe said, “Ellspeth is right. You must draw blood from the fallen and make it your own, before delivering the final blow. You need only taste the fallen’s blood to make it one with yours. I will teach you how to do it. That way, you can destroy the fallen responsible for the end days before it’s too late.”

Chapter Twenty-three

I thought we’d get a breather after that first night. That maybe we’d spend the next few evenings learning more about Nephilim history and the prophecy. That we’d launch into training after some rest and reflection.

After all, I had a million questions, even more than I’d already deluged Rafe with. I yearned for an understanding of how we came into being; who our birth parents were; the scope of our powers; the details of the prophecy; the nature and endgame of these fallen; how we’d find them; what they wanted from us; and, maybe most of all, what would happen if we failed. The list was endless, and the deeper I dug, the more questions I had. I longed for a tutorial at the feet of an angel, and I prayed I’d get one.

I didn’t. There were no academic lectures on Rafe’s agenda on Saturday and Sunday nights. There were no elaborate speeches scheduled for the late night hours. There was only grueling physical instruction—torture, actually. Apparently, Michael and I needed to hone our bodily skills more than we needed to sharpen our angelic knowledge. Me especially.

“Up,” Rafe barked at us on Sunday night, after watching Michael and me race around the field and perform all sorts of exercises for nearly an hour.

Michael and I glanced at each other in confusion, and then back at Rafe. “We’re already up.”

“Not in the air, you’re not.”

Up Rafe flew, and up we went. As we penetrated the lower cloud cover, Rafe yelled out the names of the specific cloud types. He pointed out how the different layers felt on our skin and hair and arms, and showed us how to use that knowledge to gauge the weather and alter our speed accordingly. He also demonstrated how we could use those same clouds as camouflage in the sky. His instruction reminded me of a passage from the Book of Enoch where the humans first learned His mysteries at the behest of an angel.

As we rushed through the last cloud layer straight into the upper atmosphere, Rafe shouted back at us, “The fallen are stronger than you, so you’ll have to use all the nuances of your natures to outmaneuver them. No offense, Ellspeth, but you’ll never outrun them on the ground. You’re too slow and too”—I could almost hear Rafe suppress a laugh—“too intellectual.”

Knowing full well that Rafe actually meant clumsy, I retorted, “Are you sure you’d like me to be the Elect One?”

“
He
chose you, Ellspeth. Not me,” he answered with that old, impish grin.

That shut me up. I hadn’t given much thought to being handpicked by
Him.
Why He picked me immediately became the number one question on my growing list.

I heard Rafe’s voice through the wind whipping by my ears. “We’ll have to practice in the skies, where we might get you an advantage. Michael, since I need you by Ellspeth’s side, you’ll have to be airborne as well.”

Rafe instructed us to stay in the air above the ring of fir trees, to hide the use of our powers. The space was relatively small, but it became amazingly large when you used it vertically. We followed his orders to race to the heavens and then plummet downward, to make one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turns, to stop on a dime, and to pivot and swoop in directions I didn’t even know existed. All the while Rafe watched and assessed.

Michael was a natural at whatever feat Rafe asked him to perform. In awe, I watched Michael plunge to the earth with such force I nearly screamed in fear for his life, only to have him back at my side before I blinked. As nimble and athletic as he was on the football field, it was nothing compared to his grace and agility in the sky.

My skills were a different matter.

After one particularly harrowing nosedive, Rafe flew to my side and placed his hands on my shoulders. “Let’s try that again. I’ll fly along with you.”

I got in position, thousands of feet from the ground, and faced downward. Rafe aligned his body with mine, shoulder to shoulder, chest to chest. Despite the locale and despite the proximity of Michael, it felt surprisingly intimate.

He whispered in my ear, “Dive.”

Stretching out my arms as if I were about to leap off a board into a swimming pool, I dove headlong. As I gained momentum, Rafe corrected my position, broadening my shoulders, lengthening my arms, and narrowing the gap between my ankles. I felt myself flying faster than ever before, and enjoying it more than ever before.

Almost too much. I forgot to stop.

Fortunately, in the split second before impact, Rafe swung my legs down under me, and ordered, “Hover!”

Amazingly, I floated down the remaining five feet. I didn’t need to grind to a halt or allow myself a hundred feet to put on the brakes. Rafe taught me that the exercise of my powers could be simple.

Time and again, Rafe flew to my side and adjusted my posture or uttered some small tip. By the time I started to see the glimmer of sun in the horizon, I’d mastered most of the skills Rafe set out for us. I’d never match Michael’s stellar performance, but at least I felt like I could hold my own. I was utterly exhausted by my efforts.

We descended to earth, and joined Rafe on the central mound. He issued some instructions about our daytime behavior and our plans to meet the following evening. Before dawn broke, we were about to go our separate ways when Michael piped up. He had been so quiet all night—seemingly focused on impressing Rafe with his aerial tactics—that I was shocked when he asked one of the questions ringing in my head all night.

“Why are you teaching us all this stuff? So we can be strong enough to collect their blood and drink it”—Michael shuddered at the very thought—“before killing them?”

“That is certainly one reason,” Rafe responded, ever careful and enigmatic in his answers.

“What is another reason?” Michael pushed back. I saw that he didn’t like Rafe’s evasiveness one bit, angel or not.

“To avoid Ellspeth’s capture. As I said before, the fallen won’t kill her. They need her.”

For some reason, that idea scared me more than if he’d said they desperately wanted to murder me. Hesitantly, I asked, “What is it that they want from me?”

“The fallen want you to stand by their side at the end. They want to convince you of their views—that they were right to disobey Him in the beginning and that they’ve been justified in defying Him ever since. They will use all methods at their disposal to do so.” He grew uncommonly quiet. “And they have many powerful methods of persuasion.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“They will prey upon your main weakness. Your humanity.”

“Like Kael tried to do to me? By telling me that together we could lessen disease and hunger for humankind?”

“Yes. And the means by which they’ll prey on your humanity will usually tie to the seal that they’re supposed to unlock.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” I wanted to know what Kael would’ve tried next.

“They might try something more overt, like threatening people around you,” Rafe answered. I remembered that Tamiel had said something like this about Ezekiel.

“What if they can’t persuade her?” Michael asked.

“And they won’t,” I said. I thought that nothing could convince me.

“Then they’ll trigger their sign anyway. But they’ll let Ellspeth live. If they can’t sway her, they’ll want one of their kind to succeed in persuading her to the side of the fallen. Whoever is responsible for the next sign will try next. The fallen won’t want Ellie to side against them at the very end.”

“Why? Why do they care if I believe them or not?” It didn’t make sense to me.

“Because the prophecy says that, when the seventh seal is broken and the end days are upon us, the Elect One will judge all earthly beings. With you at their side, they believe that you will judge their decisions and their reign here on earth to be fair.”

“Me? Who would ever believe me to be capable of judging everyone?”

“He does, Ellspeth.”

There was that
He
again. “So basically, the fallen want me at their side, so I can rig the jury for them?”

“Ellspeth, the fallen no longer want to fall.”