John and I sat in the Wendy’s parking lot as he passed me my food.. two classic Triples, plain with extra cheese and a Sprite and a large chocolate Frosty. He got a Jr. bacon cheeseburger and some nuggets–no drink. I opened my burger as I watched the cars go by on Biltmore avenue,with a black minivan leaving the Shell station, waiting to cross into traffic.

“You could have volunteered to take me there,” he said, chuckling as he pointed across the street.

“You’re in a patrol car. City pays for your gas.”

“No.. LJS. I love seafood.” He chomped on a nugget.

I shook my head. “If you’ve eaten as much seafood as I have in my lifetime, you’d soon grow tired of it.”

“But I thought you were a dragon that could fly and just catch whatever you wanted to eat.”

I rolled my eyes, unwrapping a straw and shoving it into my Frosty. It’s technically soft-serve ice ream, but being able to drink a Frosty through a straw is quite the attention getter.

I then replied. “Oh, if it was only that simple. Coastal villages were easy to slip into and out of. There were times that I could go out and hunt, but most of the time growing up it was do what you could to hide.”

“Were humans that hard on your kind?” he asked, unwrapping his sandwich as I took a bite of mine.

“Not as bad as you’d think. With the ability to look like anyone you could imagine… Blending in with the humans is easy. Hiding from and defending yourselves from the angels is a different matter.”

“Angels?” He stopped mid-bite. “I thought angels were religious myths… or benevolent beings doing God’s work.”

“For the humans, maybe. Our kind have been systemically hunted down to near extinction many times throughout our history here.” I took out my anger on my Frosty, fighting for that cold, chocolatey goodness. Once I won, I turned to him. “Ever wonder why the dinosaurs are classified by ‘periods’?”

“Not really,” he answered with s shrug. “Hadn’t put a lot of thought into it. But if they were dragons… that proves your case.” He scratched his head for a moment. “Wait… but you can walk around as human now.”

“But even that, in a couple of ways, is due to the angels. An angel showed us how to take a human shell, and even the body itself isn’t completely human.”

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“Huh? You look like a human. Also, the doctors I talked to didn’t find anything non-human when you got shot…”

“First of all, it was because of Jeriel that the doctors didn’t find anything. Secondly, this body was special. It had a human mother, but the father was an angel.”

“Hold on a second. So is that how they explain the creation of Jesus?” His voice held emotion, almost anger.

I sighed, choosing not to react. “I have never met that person. wasn’t even on the same continent when He lived and died. Every dragon I’ve met that told the tale said the same thing. Christ was conceived without sex with anyone… human or angelic. The Creator of this planet is the only one who could have pulled that off. He was not like this body. He was conceived solely at the behest of the Creator.”

My explanation brought a smile to his face. Was not hoping to get into a theological argument today. “So, how do you classify that body then?” he asked.

“Ever heard of the Nephilim?” I asked, as I finished my first burger, reaching for the second.

“Hold on.. Old Testament.. Goliath the giant.. wasn’t he one?”

“I have little doubt. The entire world in those days was being populated, not just the Middle East. Those who were larger than the norm, or were stronger, or had powers, most likely had an angel, most likely a fallen one, as a dad.”

“Well, what about things like Stonehenge? and the wiccans? Salem Mass… etc?”

Stonehenge is a funny thing. You ask the humans, and they can’t answer. You ask the fae, and they swear it was the dragons when the two races started to get along again. You ask the dragons, they swear it was the fae. I wasn’t there,so I can’t answer. The Salem witch trials… well the truth about that is out already. The witch hunts in Europe were more aimed at us. Nephilim bodies are uniquely set up for dragons to use. They’re able to handle mystical or magical power.. they are half angelic after all. They are also resistant to aging and disease, and don’t begin to stink and rot after death. Cremation or ‘last rites’ does remove the divine, so it can return to the earth. The thing is, until the 20th century, removing the head of a Nephilim made it impossible for a dragon to inhabit the body.”

“Burning at the stake and the guillotine make sense now. So the humans joined the angels in the hunting of your kind? I thought Christ taught love and forgiveness?”

“He did. Many things changed during the Annis Domini, including the attitude of many of the angels. They pretty much stopped the brutal hunts for our kind… for a time at least. The angels still set on hunting us turned to the humans, and well, it went from there.”

He finished his last nugget, shaking his head. “I would love to hear you sit down and talk with my mom. She would find all of this fascinating.”

I laughed. “I’d have to ask permission first. The angels do their best to protect their Christian flock, that’s for sure.”

“Hold on. How did you know my mother is a Christian?” he asked.

“Simple. You were taught the stories, and you believe. I may have issues with the angels, but I do believe in the Creator, and He wouldn’t have saved the dragons, or the fae for that matter, from the destruction of their own world if He was not the loving sort.”