I came awake as I felt a hand cover my mouth and another one pushing me down onto the bed!
I had instinctively tried to sit up, but I might as well have had a steel beam soldered across my chest. The hands that held me felt impossibly strong. As I shook off the last holds of sleep I found panic start to swell up within me, only to be cut off as a voice hissed into my ear.
“Quiet! I don’t mean you any harm, but I can’t let those two below know I’m here. Be quiet and I’ll let you go, understand?!”
Three things hit me at once. Firstly, whoever it was that was holding me, had managed to get through the protective spell that had been set up around this area. Secondly, they didn’t want to face Joan and Hadriel, which meant they were likely a threat. However, it was the last thing that gave me pause and made me give the request consideration, her voice was familiar.
“Okay, so you’ll be quiet?”
After a moment of hesistation I nodded and the hands that had held me were slowly pulled back.
I sat up unrestrained, rubbing at my eyes to clear my vision. My room was dark since it was still night. I guessed that I’d only been asleep for a few hours, four or five at most. I was still wearing my trousers, something I was thankful for given this unexpected company, but I didn’t have anything else on. My wings had come out of their folded position and were now half extended over the sides of my bed.
Through the dark I could make out the figure that had one knee on my bed as they bent over me. A distinctly feminine figure, even if she was wearing a baggy jacket with a hood.
“Alright, thanks for trusting me on this. Dealing with those two downstairs would be . . . complicated.”
“Who are you? And how’d you get in here?”
I asked as forcefully as I could while keeping my voice down. I was willing to extend some trust, but I wanted to know who I was talking to and what was going on.
“Look, I can’t tell you my name right now. There’re people looking for me, and there’s magic tied to my name that would let them know if it was invoked, even inside this Sanctuary spell. Just call me Emma for now, okay?”
Reaching to the side I tried to turn on the bedside lamp , forgetting that because of my new wings the simple task was now quite the challenge. In the end I had to sit up and fold them in again, accidently carving a couple of cuts into the mattress as I did so, and was able to reach the lamp. What the light revealed was . . . surprising.
“You?!”
The figure before me cringed slightly, their hooded head turning to look at my room’s door, but otherwise didn’t move. Realizing my mistake I went still, my ears straining to hear any movement from downstairs. For a moment we both just waited, still as statues as we tried to hear anything, then we slowly relaxed as it became clear that no-one was coming.
“Keep it quiet,” She hissed at me, stepping away from the bed. “What part of ‘I don’t want to have to deal with them’ don’t you get?”
Ignoring her sharp words I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up, my wings now more comfortably half extended behind me.
“You’re the girl from the alley, right? The one that saved me when those Legends were fighting over my hometown? What are you doing here?”
Her red lips curved in a smile, and once again I was struck by the beautiful contrast between them and her pale skin. I could make out almost nothing else about her, yet that small part of her was striking in a way that I couldn’t quite put into words.
“Yeah, that mess with Abriel and Bellbarath. Well, I could hardly let you get killed because of those idiots. More than seven thousand years, and those two can’t get rid of the hate boner they have for each other. Really, you’d think that they’d have either killed each other by now, or just decided to screw each other and damn the consequences, but no, they have to keep up their unending grudge match across the planes. It’s not even as though they’re the first to do it either, Nuriel and Garmarath were at it millennia before those two first crossed weapons. You know, half the time I think they’re just doing it out of some twisted desire to emulate their superiors and just earn their attention. Hah, like that would ever work!”
I was taken aback by this sudden outpouring of words. I recognized some of the names she’d mentioned. Abriel and Bellbarath had been the angel and demon whose battle had caused the disturbance that she’d saved me from when we last met. The other names didn’t mean a thing to me, but I filed them away for later. Of more interest to me was her choice of language. Joan spoke in a sort of textbook perfect way, one that was devoid of any sort of jargon or informality, hearing this woman speak was a rather sharp contrast, almost like being back at the coffee shop. Her casual and gossipy tone left me feeling a bit more relaxed.
“Okay, can you just tell me what you’re doing here? And how the hell did you get in?”
If this Emma could get in, then did that mean others could as well? When Hadriel had told me we had time to work with, it had been a weight off my chest since it meant I could adjust to what had happened. But could it be that she’d overestimated how secure the spell she’d so trusted was?
“Don’t worry about the Hallowed Sanctuary,” She assured me. “It’s powerful as ever, and secure. I imagine some of the most powerful gods might be able to break through it, if they could even find it, and you’d see them coming a mile off. The only way I could get in here was because I know some really old secrets.”
That . . . that told me quite a lot and left me with even more questions than before. She knew a way through the magic of angels? Didn’t that mean that she had ties to the High Heavens then? But if that was true then why was she so eager to avoid Joan and Hadriel? And what she’d said before, about her name being watched for, did that mean that it was the angels that were looking for her?
Still, she had saved me back then. I wasn’t sure if her claims that the shockwaves would have killed me were true, but I did know that at the time it had felt as though I was having a heart attack. If she hadn’t saved my life then she had at least saved me from harm.
“So, why are you here?”
At my question she took a step back, the shadows cast by my bedside lamp failing to pierce the inside of her hood. Leaving her mouth and chin as the only parts of her face I could see. Her lips had become a line, her earlier informality seeming to slip away as she grew serious.
“I needed to know how things were going with you, and it’s a good thing I did.” She explained. “The other night the power of your Awakening lit up the globe like a second sun, but look at you now. I’m seeing nothing from you! Any other demigod would be having fun tearing shit up with their new powers, trying their new magic out to they see what they can do. But you? Nothing. So, it’s a good thing I came.”
That made some sense, but . . .
“How did you know I was even here?”
My question made her sigh in clear exasperation.
“Look, did you really think that I just found you by accident when Abriel and Bellbarath were having their grudge match? I wasn’t wandering through town and just happened to be there. I was there because I’ve been watching you for months, ever since the Paths of Eternity opened up again.”
There was something distinctly unsettling about the thought that someone had been stalking me ever since the Black Sun ended, and it sent a chill down my back.
“Yeah,” She said, not waiting for me to voice my thoughts. “You are that important, get used to it. In case the resurrected saint and the angel downstairs haven’t been able to clue you in, you’ve got a destiny with a capital ‘D’ coming at you. That’s the kind of thing that drags in a lot of attention, both the good and the bad kind. Me, I like to think I’m some of the good kind, but there’re those that might disagree.”
She leaned back against the wall, her posture suddenly tired.
“Look, I’m going to level with you, okay? There’s the whole ‘good’ and ‘evil’ thing going on with the supernatural forces. But it’s not nearly as black and white as mortal mythology would have you believe, though yeah, there are sides, extreme ends of the spectrum. You with me so far?” As I nodded she continued. “There’re forces that want to rule, to stand above all other, and there’re those that just want to tear down everyone else until they’re the only ones left standing. There’re even those that just want to burn everything, that’re willing to join the ashes themselves just so long as they get to watch everything burn. They’re the ones that occupy the ‘evil’ end of the spectrum, and they’re the ones that I fell in with, back in the early days of mankind.”
She paused for a moment, probably waiting to see what my reaction would be, but I did my best to give nothing away. For once I must have been successful, because she kept on going rather than say anything else.
“I did the whole ‘bad girl’ thing long enough for civilizations to rise and fall. But in the end stuff happened and I ended up wanting to get back in with the good guys again. Problem was that they weren’t too keen to have me back. Hell, most of those I tried to talk to didn’t even believe me when I told them what I wanted. I’d spent too long with the bad guys, and the stuff I’d done with them had marked me. In the end I had nowhere to go, neither side would trust me, and there were those on both sides that would have loved to end me given half a chance, all I could do was hide away.
“I stayed hidden all the way through the years when the world of mortals was lost to those of divine power, hidden in the cracks, the places where nobody thought to look. I think I spent more time incarnated on the mortal plane than any other legend, since splitting myself up like that made it harder to find me. And all that time I was trying to find some way to prove myself, some way to get the side of the angels to trust me again!
“That’s where you come in, Adam, I’m hoping that you’ll be my ticket into the good books of the good guys!”
Okay, so I was a means to an end for her, at least she was being honest about it. However, something else that she’d said jumped out at me.
“I’ve got a destiny? What does that mean? We’re not talking about a prophecy here, are we?”
Even as I asked the question I couldn’t help but start to go over all the mythical characters I knew that had to deal with prophecies about their future. For most of them it hadn’t turned out well, to say the least. Fratricide, suicide, incest, and doom in general, nothing good ever seemed to come of it.
“No, prophecies are a thing, but not like that.” She assured me. “Destiny and Fate are different. Fate is when you’re locked into a specific outcome, the path to getting there is undecided, it can be anything, but the final destination is locked. That was what happened to Acrisius, the grandfather of Perseus. He found out he was fated to be killed by his grandson, but he didn’t know how it would happen. To avoid it he tried to lock his only daughter away so that she couldn’t have any kids, but all that did was get the attention of Zeus and meant her boy was a demigod.
“Acrisius then tried to kill them both by locking them in a chest and throwing them in the sea, but they survived and Perseus ended up killing him by accident years later. If Acrisius had dismissed the prophecy then his daughter’s son might have grown up to love him, ridden into battle at his side and ended up giving him a mercy killing after he was mortally wounded by an enemy. The outcome would have been the same, the grandson killing him, but everything else would have been different.
“Destiny is different because it’s kind of the opposite. When you’ve got a destiny the end is always in doubt, but it’s the path there that is guaranteed to be important. Nobody knows what you’re going to do, or even what you can do, all they know is that what you do is going to be important, and that it’s going to make waves that effect everyone else. That’s why Destiny is something that riles up all the divinities more than Fate, because it’s turned outwards rather than inwards.
“The reason Fate has had such an impact in the past has been because it applies to those in power, kings, queens, even gods. With Destiny you normally can’t see it until after it’s done something, but when it does it shakes up the world. You, you’re weird in that everyone knows you have a destiny from the start, but that’s it. Don’t think of it as plot armour or anything like that, it can just as easily be your death as your life that ends up sending ripples all over the place.”
She paused there, and for my part I just waited for her to continue. I kind of got what she was talking about, but it wasn’t easy to digest in one go.
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“Look, I don’t know everything, but I can tell you that you’ve got a lot behind you. You’ve got a Destiny, one of those that has a capital letter at the start, but that’s not everything. You do know that you’re a Legacy, right?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m descended from Bath Kol.”
“Yeah, I felt her power in you when your Awakening lit up the sky. I’ve got to say, I never thought she’d reincarnate as a mortal, she was always so pure, so absolute, the thought of her as a mortal just doesn’t fit, y’know? Still, that’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
She paused for a moment, then made a waving gesture that took in me and my new wings.
“Look, you know you’re a Legacy of an angel, that’s pretty obvious just by looking at you. But when your aura went up after your Awakening I felt the power in it, and it wasn’t just from Bath Kol.”
That confirmed something that I’d already suspected. Joan had told me I was meant to be powerful, and Hadriel had made comments that seemed to confirm it. Being that strong would have been unusual if I was just a normal Legacy.
“You’re sure?”
“Adam, when your aura went up it flooded this entire area. I might not be the best at feeling powers, but even I could tell them apart. I don’t know whose blood your carrying, but they were all strong, some of them were even stronger than Bath Kol, and trust me, that’s not something I say lightly!”
Wait, that would imply . . .
“How many powers did you sense in me?”
“Aside from her?” I gave a sharp nod and she leaned forwards. “I felt at least three other signatures in there, d’you understand? Three! I don’t know who they’re from, so don’t ask, but I could clearly feel the difference in them. And for all I know there might have been more in there, hidden behind the others.”
I was stunned. Three more? So that made four, and there might be others hiding behind them?! What . . . ? How . . . ? I had spent a few days getting my head around the idea that I was the descendant of an angel. And it was only been because I’d had that time to adjust to the idead that getting these new wings hadn't thrown me off way more than it had. But now I was being told I was related to three more divinities! Ones that I had no clues as to their identities. Well, I could grasp it intellectually, but emotionally, that was a whole different story.
So, I did the one thing that men and women have always done throughout history when faced with unexpected and uncomfortable revelations. I repressed, and I procrastinated. I just couldn’t deal with it then, so I bundled it up and shelved it at the back of my mind, something to mull over later.
“Right, so you have a lot of bloodlines in you,” She said, dragging my attention back to her. “This should mean that you’ve got a lot of power. Actually, I know you do! No way would you have been able to send up such a massive flare if you didn’t. So, back to my first question, why aren’t you doing anything with your new power? If you don’t exercise it in these early days after getting your blood woken up then you’ll have a harder time building it up later.”
What? Neither Joan nor Hadriel had mentioned anything like it. did they even know? This new information, if true, lent more than a bit of urgency to the need to figure my powers out.
“Something went wrong with my Awakening,” I replied, feeling somewhat embarrassed by the admission, though I wasn’t sure why. “I . . . don’t seem to have the normal stuff about just knowing how to use my powers. I can sense my mana now, but I can’t do anything with it. Joan says that I’ve got to catalyse it somehow, but she doesn’t know how to do it, neither does Hadriel.”
My words seemed to stun her, because her jaw dropped.
“You . . . can’t use your magic?”
“No, I think I can, I just don’t know how!”
I answered defensively, but I felt a spike of fear hit me as she voiced the concern that had been gnawing at the back of my mind. Joan had seemed to be certain that I could use my power. But some part of me had wondered if I simply was unable to, that whatever had happened at my Awakening might have crippled me more than everyone knew. I knew that I had power, my uncontrolled flight was a clear sign of that, but what if that was all I had to me?
“Okay, first tell me everything that you’ve done since you Awakened, I need to know how you’re doing so far.”
“I haven’t done much so far,” I admitted. “After I woke up I found I’d gotten new looks and these wings. I spent some time trying to get used to them, then fell off the balcony. I managed to sort of catch myself in mid-air, but I couldn’t control it. After that Joan explained what was going on and I tried to meditate to reach my power. I was able to sense my mana, but I couldn’t get it to do anything!”
“Was there anything else?”
I searched my recollections for anything else that might be worth mentioning, but all I could come up with were a few minor details.
“Just some small stuff. My wings have got some sharp feathers, so they can cut through stuff. It didn’t hurt when I fell down after losing my flight, and I didn’t feel hungry at the end of the day, even though I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink. Actually, I still don’t feel hungry.”
That last was said with a bit of surprise, because it was true, I would have thought that after more than eighteen or so hours without food or water I’d have felt both starving and parched, but instead I just felt fine. I was about to mention that, but by then Emma was already speaking again, and her words caught anything I was about to say in my throat.”
“Okay, I think I know what your problem is, and it’s a pretty easy fix. You’ve got power in you, and if that bit of flying is anything to go by then it’s at least partly woken up. All you’ve got to do is spark it, give it that initial jolt of power to get it going. Once that’s done then it becomes like a self-sustaining reaction, you get me?”
I nodded, enthused by the image she was producing, by the idea that I wasn’t crippled.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” She leaned forward conspiratorially, her lips curling in a playful manner that shouldn’t have been as alluring as it was. “I’ll tell you how to spark your mana, but you don’t do it now, got it? You wait until tomorrow, then you do some more meditating on your internal energy, then you ignite it.”
Her suggestion was enough to get my mind off how sexy her lips were and back onto what she was actually saying.
“What? Why not now?”
“Yeah, if you were to spark up your mana now, what d’you think is going to happen?”
“I’ll . . . get my powers?”
“Right, you will! And in case you’re forgetting, just waking up your divine blood was able to illuminate half the damned globe, as well as soak the entire area in enough purifying energy to actually benevolently mutate the local plants and animals! If you do ignite your mana then there’s a good chance you’ll blast this whole place to bits just by accident, and I’m right here y’know. I don’t want to get a face full of divine fire or godly thunderbolts, that hurts y’know.
“And even if you don’t blast the place into splinters, there’re also your minders to worry about! As soon as they feel a power surge then they’re going to be charging up here like the forces of hell are trying to invade. They wouldn’t be very good guardians if they didn’t, would they? Have you forgotten that I really don’t want to have to deal with them just yet? If they catch me here it’s going to be a case of ‘stab first, stab second, keep stabbing until there’s no more sign of movement, ask questions never’, do you understand?”
The words were spoken calmly, almost in a deadpan tone of voice, but even so there was a force to them that I couldn’t ignore. She was completely and utterly convinced that both of the agents of Heaven would do their best to kill her as soon as they laid eyes on her. So, what did that say about the kind of person I was currently alone with?
Up until that point I hadn’t really felt concerned for my safety. Emma was strange, surprising, but she’d helped me before, so I was willing to extend her some trust. But as I put the pieces together I started to wonder just what kind of person she really was. She’d said she ended up falling in with the ‘bad side’, so just what side could that have been if the Heavens had a kill on sight policy against her? What was she, a witch? A demon?
I felt my wings flex, and there was a sound of tearing cloth as the sharpened feathers cut into both my mattress and my bedsheets. I saw her head turn slightly, looking to see what made the noise, then turning back to me. I didn’t see any change in her posture though, no defensiveness or aggression. We just looked at each other, then the moment of tension passed as my wings relaxed again. Emma must have noticed it as well, because she inclined her head in a small nod, the movement casting her whole face into shadows again.
“I know this is a lot to just take on faith,” Her voice was softer now, less demanding and a bit meeker, but there was still conviction there. “Look, if I wanted to hurt you I’ve had plenty of chances already. I’ve known where you’ve been for weeks before Jeanne d’Arc found you. I knew you were in that house you shared with your friends, the one with the blue door and the big French windows. If I wanted to hurt you I could have done it there, or left you to the side effects of those two muscle heads. Hell, I could have come in here and slit your throat with a knife if I wanted, I wouldn’t even have had to wake you up. But I haven’t, have I?”
I could practically feel my face pale as she spoke, the realization that yes, she could have killed me if she’d wanted to, suddenly very clear in my mind.
“She . . . she prefers me to call her Joan.”
I said it absent-mindedly, a side comment as I tried to get a handle on what I had just heard. Was she . . . stalking me? In my mind the term ‘stalking’ was linked to the image of men and women with emotional problems following their targets through their lives while hoping to somehow connect with them. I’d always found it to be creepy, though I had joked with my friends that if I had to have a stalker then I’d prefer them to be a sexy young woman.
Now, as the sudden target of a woman who was strangely attractive, despite the fact that all I’d seen of her was her mouth and chin, I most definitely did not feel flattered. Instead I suddenly felt hunted and vulnerable, and I didn’t like the feeling one bit.
It was a visceral reaction, a sudden desire to lash out at the one that made me feel like prey. I think . . . if I had had better control over my new wings, I might have lashed out at her then, just on instinct. Maybe not to kill or hurt, but just to drive her back, just to put some room between us.
Fortunately, I didn’t have that control. My left wing tried to unfold some more, but the feathers caught in the mattress again. I probably could have ripped it free if I pushed hard enough, but I didn’t know how to just yet. The pause gave me a moment to think, to tamp down on the urge to lash out.
Besides, she still hadn’t told me how I could get my powers to work.
“Okay,” I paused for a moment, licking lips that were suddenly dry before continuing. “Okay. I get that you don’t want me to do it now because that’ll bring Joan and Hadriel in here. But . . . look, what if whatever you tell me doesn’t work?! Wouldn’t it be better to do it while you’re here so you can help if anything goes wrong?”
As I spoke, I realized that I was voicing my fears and insecurities. The idea of having power I couldn’t use was more than I could bear.
“What if we go outside now?” I suggested. “I can try whatever you suggest, and if anything goes wrong you can help, but if it goes right then you can get out of here before either of them arrive, and I’ll just say I couldn’t sleep and wanted to try something.”
The hooded head shook in the negative, the now visible lips slightly pursed.
“Sorry Adam, it wouldn’t work. Even a failed attempt might bring them as fast as they can, and do you know how fast Hadriel can move if she really wants to? Not someone I want to try running from when she’s pissed. Joan could probably do the same if she uses her transformation. Me, I’m pretty fast when I want to be, but there’s no way I’d be getting away from them if it came to that. And then it’d be stabby time for me, and not in any sort of fun way, let me tell ya!”
I blinked at her, surprised by the suggestive joke. I’d gotten so used to politeness and grammatical correctness that this came as a bit of a shock. A welcome one.
“Look, I’ll tell you the trick, then you just hold off until tomorrow to try it. If it doesn’t work, if I can’t sense you sparking your power up, then I’ll see about coming back tomorrow night, okay? C’mon, that’s got to be a pretty good consolation prize if you can’t ignite your powers, right? One guaranteed visit from a hot piece of ass in the middle of the night, sounds like a win/win to me.”
A surprised chuckle escaped me at that, and the last remnants of tension dissipated completely. I wasn’t sure whether or not she was doing it deliberately, but her somewhat crass jokes did make her seem less threatening. It also made her a bit easier to trust, and made the situation seem a bit less dire. True, I did want to get my powers up and running as quickly as I could, but I could take a day or two, assuming things didn’t go well the first time.
Besides, did I really have any good options other than extending her some trust? Messing around with powers I didn’t understand that ran through my body was way too risky. I did not want to be the first demigod to kill themselves via incompetent initial use of their power, after all.
“Okay, okay you win. I’ll wait until tomorrow.”
Emma smiled, a triumphant curve of her lips that was . . . dazzling. Damn it, how was she able to be so attractive with just a section of her face? I mean, I didn’t like to think of myself as a shallow guy, but surely it was more normal to be attracted to someone when you could at least see most of them, right?
“Thanks for trusting me, Adam,” She said. “I promise I’ll do right by you to prove that trust isn’t misplaced.”
I nodded back, then cocked my head to the side in a look of exaggerated curiosity.
“So . . . how do I get my powers up and running?”
She smiled, then answered my question.
“You got that?”
I nodded my head, my eyes somewhat distant as I went over what she’d told me. Yes, yes, I could see how that would work. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I was sure I could do it . . .
“Right then, remember, don’t actually do it until tomorrow, got it?”
My thoughts returned to the present as I looked over to Emma. I could wait, I had promised after all, so I nodded my head in agreement.
“Good! Then I think it’s time I got outta here. Give you a chance to catch up on your beauty sleep, not that you need too much of it right now.”
Her lips were a wide grin now, and I felt my face flush again as I realized I’d spent this whole-time half laying on my bed while wearing only trousers and with my wings half spread about me. I must have looked like one of those sinful angels that were appearing on the covers of the most recent trashy romance novels that were being published. The ones that featured various angels, demons and gods as the objects of torrid love for the beautiful heroines of the stories. All I needed was a lascivious smile and I’d have the image down pat.
Emma let out a soft chuckle, which only served to make me blush further. Before I could say a word in my defence she’d taken a step back into the shadows of the room.
I don’t mean that she hid in the dark, I mean that she stepped back, and then disappeared into the shadows as though it had been a pool of vertical water that she’d slipped into! I could still see the shaded wall, the darkened corner of my room, then for a moment it was so dark I couldn’t see anything. In that moment Emma slipped into the darkness as though it were a physical thing, and when the light returned to normal she was gone.
Since getting dragged into this whole situation I had been exposed to a great many different examples of supernatural power. I’d seen Joan turn into an angel, seen her forge constructs out of light, had experienced her mending my wounds, seen a giant made of stone and metal duke it out with my protector while she was in full angel mode. Yet for all of that the sight of the shadows changing like that was probably the most disturbing thing that I’d been exposed to so far.
Turning off the light and closing my eyes I tried to still my thoughts, to find some sort of peace. Beside me my wings instinctually folded up around me, just another reflexive motion that I was going to have to learn about. In truth it was actually quite comfortable, the soft inner wings feeling like cushions or duvets. At any other time I might have been interested by this aspect of my new limbs, but at that moment my mind kept on drifting back to one thought.
Power, I’d be able to have power. I didn’t yet quite know what sort it would be, but it would be enough to make me a player instead of a pawn. At least, I hoped so. There was always the chance that what had happened to me might have left me damaged, right? Honestly, I wasn’t sure if that was a real concern, or if it was simply my nerves getting the better of me. I just had to wait and see.