Semyaza is our father. The leader of the Fallen. The instigator of the fall and the angel most despised by heaven.
And wherever he is, he’s watching us.
The walls and the windows and the kitchen become a smear of beige. The house is too hot. My t-shirt is too tight against my throat. I stand up. My chair thuds on the carpet behind me and the table sways under my fingertips.
‘Gabe…’ Dani’s voice is far away. Blood rushes in my ears. I need to move. My legs are shaky but they’re still solid, propelling me forward. I pass carpeted stairs, an alcove with a computer, a painting of the sky. I keep walking until I reach the front door. I wrench it open and step onto the porch. Cold air hits me, nips at my bare arms. I suck in a deep breath and the air stings my nose, my throat, my lungs. The world sharpens. I stare out at a street lined with two-storey houses, neat lawns, American flags and oversized letterboxes. Vivid trees hug the road—splashes of reds and yellows—and dried leaves lie in deep piles in the gutters. An ugly orange face carved with jagged teeth and crazy eyes stares at me from the neighbour’s porch. I blink, try to fit it into the storm of thoughts and fears gathering in my head. And then I remember it’s nearly Halloween. I almost laugh at the irony.
Goosebumps crawl over my skin, snap me back into the moment. It’s cold on the porch and there are no answers out here. I go back inside. Jude is still at the table, staring through the window at the cloudless afternoon sky. Jason and Maria are hugged into jackets, standing near the swing, deep in conversation, oblivious to the fact our world just tilted sideways. I pick up my chair and sit back down.
Jude looks stunned, disconnected. ‘What does it mean?’
I don’t have the words to answer him.
‘Who gives you these visions?’ he asks Dani.
‘I don’t know.’
Jude rolls his shoulders and cracks a joint in his neck. Dani flinches at the sound. ‘Sorry,’ he says, and takes a steadying breath. ‘Do you know what Semyaza sees when he’s watching us?’ Jude asks.
I suppress a shudder. That sentence totally creeps me out.
Dani scratches the back of her hand. Her nails leave angry marks on her pale skin. ‘I’m not sure, but every time I see Semyaza, the vision changes to show the three of us.’
‘Doing what?’ I ask.
‘We’re in a forest. You cut yourselves and I keep saying the same thing over and over again.’
‘What do you say? Do you remember?’
She closes her eyes and wets her lips, and then speaks in a language I’ve never heard before. Guttural sounds, sounds that are barely human. But they reverberate in the marrow of my bones and my teeth itch. I clench my fingers into fists to still the trembling.
‘Do you know what it means?’ I ask and she shakes her head. I turn to Jude. ‘Do you?’
He’s staring at Dani, studying her as if she’s the answer to a particularly challenging puzzle. ‘No, but it has to be one of the tongues of angels. Why else would we not know it?’
Dani’s fingers flutter to her lips.
‘Does that mean an angel is sending her those visions?’ I ask.
Dani isn’t listening. She’s still caught up in the idea she can speak an angelic language, her face filled with wonder. I don’t feel wonder, I feel confused. And seriously freaked out. ‘Why would they show you the Fallen?’
Dani finally registers I’m speaking to her. She stops touching her lips. ‘There are things I don’t see but that I sort of know when I come out of the trance. I think maybe Orias is my great-great-great-step grandpa, or whatever.’ She looks from Jude to me. ‘He’s Jason’s father,’ she says, as if we didn’t understand.
‘Does Jason know that?’ Jude asks.
She shakes her head vigorously. ‘No. I don’t think I’m meant to tell him.’
‘But you’re meant to tell us? Why?’
She crosses her legs under her on the chair and lengthens her spine. She looks older all of a sudden. ‘The Fallen are stuck in another dimension. The Archangel Gabriel did it. He found them and put them there after they escaped, rather than sending them back to hell.’
Dani talks about other dimensions, as if she’s talking about countries she hasn’t visited. I grew up knowing about other realms—shifting through at least one of them—and I still can’t get my head around the idea.
‘Why would Gabriel do that?’ Jude asks.
‘I don’t know, but he used Semyaza’s blood to bind the Fallen to wherever he trapped them. Now only Semyaza’s blood—or Gabriel’s—can break the seal and free them.’
‘Why aren’t they free already if Semyaza can do it?’
‘The seal can only be broken from this side.’
Oh.
The full reality of that revelation dawns for Jude a second before I catch on. ‘We’re his blood,’ Jude whispers. ‘We can free them.’
Fuck.
I swallow. ‘That’s what you see us doing…freeing them?’
Dani shrugs. ‘All I know is that I say the words and you bleed in the dirt. I don’t know what happens next, I haven’t seen that part.’
‘Holy shit,’ Jude whispers. He sits back in his chair, dazed. ‘Ho-ly shit.’
We sit in silence. No wonder Dani didn’t want to tell anyone else. This is bigger than Jason’s existence and the secret about our mothers. This is even bigger than Dani and her abilities. If Nathaniel’s right, finding the Fallen is the one thing that can give our existence meaning—give us a future. Even if he’s wrong, finding and freeing them will change everything.
They’ve stayed hidden—no, trapped—for a hundred and forty years. And now, in the space of a short conversation with an eleven-year-old, we’re the closest we’ve ever been to them.
‘What are we supposed to do now?’ I ask.
Jude drags both hands through his hair. ‘Even if what Dani says is true, it means nothing if we don’t know where the Fallen disappeared.’
He’s right. It’s the reason we’ve spent nearly a century and a half roaming the globe: trying to find the exact spot where the Fallen left the world. If we can do that, Nathaniel’s always said he can track them.
Jude picks up a pencil from the table, absently taps it against his forehead.
‘Maybe the exact spot isn’t important,’ Dani says.
Jude stops tapping.
‘Maybe your blood is what’s important, not the place.’ She pushes a long blonde curl out of her eye. ‘You need to not be fighting, I know that much.’
‘That’s why you said we had to spend time together before we met you?’ I ask.
She nods.
‘But we’re definitely in a forest?’ Jude presses.
‘Uh huh.’
‘So maybe we could try it in any forest.’
Frustration flares, scorching and sudden. ‘Can we have a word in private, Jude?’
He catches the edge in my voice. Nods.
I head for the front door and then remember how cold it is outside. I go into the study alcove instead. Jude follows and I close the sliding door behind him.
‘What is it you think we’re going to try?’ I demand. ‘Have you come to a decision you haven’t shared with me?’ There’s not much room in here, especially with the space fizzing with my anger.
‘I was thinking out loud,’ Jude says carefully.
‘That’s what you want, though, isn’t it: to see if we can release them.’
‘I don’t know yet. First I want to understand what Dani saw and then we can work out what to do about it. Together.’
‘After you tell your crew.’
He stares at me, some of his calmness slipping. ‘Are you planning on telling anyone at the Sanctuary?’
Am I? I find a spot on the wall behind him to study, a lighter patch where a picture once hung. I think about how that conversation would go—and its ramifications. Our century-old secret about Jason would be bad enough, but our link to the Fallen…it would complicate everything. Complicate life in ways that would never be unravelled.
‘No,’ I say. ‘But if you tell the Outcasts, I’ll have to tell the Five. If your crew knows, they should too.’
Jude nods. ‘Fair enough. But I have no intention of telling my crew at this point.’
‘Me either.’ I exhale. ‘So what now?’
He’s already thought it through. ‘We lie low here until we know more. Stay away from everyone else so we don’t have to lie to them.’
I imagine facing Daisy or Micah—or worse, Nathaniel or Daniel—knowing what I know now. ‘Agreed.’
Jude and I borrow Jason’s rental car and follow his directions to Wholefoods. We bicker about music all the way there and back, trying to agree on a radio station. Back at Maria’s, we crack a bottle of pinot noir and take over the kitchen.
Maria wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect of us staying—especially when she realised we meant overnight. With Jason already in the spare room, she suggested we try a hotel in town but we insisted we were happy to sleep in the living room. It was Dani who wore Maria down.
Once that was settled, Jude phoned Rafa to tell him he’d be away a bit longer—I didn’t hear Rafa’s half of the conversation but it obviously wasn’t flattering to me. I sent Daisy a similar message, and ignored her follow-up texts fishing for more information.
Before everything turned to shit at the Sanctuary, Jude and I used to pester Brother Pietro to give us a corner of the kitchen to use. It wasn’t that we didn’t appreciate the meals he and his team served up—we did—it was that occasionally we wanted something less commissary, and less Italian, and we didn’t always want to leave home for it.
We haven’t cooked together for a decade, but Jude and I quickly find our rhythm. We’re making rice-paper rolls, pad thai noodles and laksa. I chop herbs and Jude makes the pastes and dipping sauces. The kitchen soon smells of coriander, mint and fresh-roasted peanuts. I teach Dani how to soak the rice paper and roll up the mint, cucumber, carrot, and rice noodles. Her first two look like alien life forms—which she photographs on Maria’s phone, giggling—but her third is near perfect. She lays them out in a neat circle around the sweet chilli sauce.
I bump elbows with Jude reaching for a fresh cutting board. He grins at me, eyes bright. I grin back.
Maria watches us closely, not drinking and not saying much. It must be strange for her to have us here, blood relatives and total strangers. Or, how she must see us after everything she’s heard from Jason and Dani: half-angel bastards with a penchant for violence.
Jason finally starts to relax after half a glass of wine. He looks like I remember from Monterosso, but his fingers aren’t callused anymore from handling salt-encrusted fishing nets. His skin is soft, devoid of the faint scars that crisscross my hands. It’s fair to say he hasn’t been battling demons since we last saw him. God, maybe he’s never even seen a Gatekeeper or hellion. What would that life be like?
Dinner is delicious. Even Maria admits it. As we eat, Jude interrogates Jason about what he’s been doing since Monterosso. Turns out he’s been busy studying—history, psychology, law and theology. And for the last few years he’s been able to keep track of us, thanks to Dani.
After Dani goes to bed and the dishes are done, the conversation drifts to the inevitable subject of the Fallen. It’s enough to coax Maria out of her watchful silence.
‘I’ve never understood why they were in such a hurry to seduce human women a second time around, knowing the consequences. What were they thinking?’
Jude’s laugh is short, facetious. ‘They’d had a dry spell that lasted thousands of years. They weren’t thinking—at least not with their brains.’
‘Thanks for the visual,’ I say. Maria and I experience a brief moment of solidarity.
‘They weren’t stable when they came out of the pit,’ Jason says. ‘How could they be? They’d spent millennia being tortured and then they escaped into a reality that held no good memories for them: the last time they were on earth, their offspring were murdered by the Garrison.’
Jude’s amusement fades. ‘Yeah, at the hands of Gabriel the merciful.’
‘I guess Gabriel’s mercy doesn’t extend to abominations,’ Jason says.
I frown. What has he seen—or learnt—since I last saw him to put that idea in his head? I may not fully understand my purpose in this life, but I’ve never thought of myself as an abomination.
‘The nephilim must have put up a fight, surely,’ Maria says.
Jude uncorks another bottle. ‘There’s no evidence they were warriors.’
‘Or that they were adults,’ Jason says quietly.
Jude pours us each another wine. He swirls his, watches it cling to the side of the glass. Finally his attention returns to Jason. ‘The Fallen could have gone anywhere in the world to find women. Any thoughts on how two of them ended up in Monterosso? Did your mother ever talk about it?’
‘No.’ Jason hesitates, glances at Maria. ‘But my grandfather did.’
We wait while he takes a sip of wine and thinks about what he wants to tell us.
‘Nonno blamed himself,’ he says. ‘Every year on my birthday he’d drink too much grappa, then he’d pull me aside and tell me how Mamma ran wild with the gypsies the summer your mother, Ariela, came to visit.’ Jason’s fingers stray to the back of his neck, to the half-crescent moon marking his skin. ‘To his dying breath, Nonno believed there was a connection between the rituals the girls were doing on the outskirts of our village and the arrival of the “shining ones”.’
I rub my leg above my knee. The wound is aching again. ‘That’s not possible. The Fallen were in hell.’
‘Yeah,’ Jude says, ‘but we know the veil between hell and earth isn’t impenetrable. Demons can interfere here. Are you saying the Fallen found a way through?’
‘Not physically,’ Jason says. ‘Metaphysically. Through dreams.’
‘And then what?’
‘The old texts talk about the Fallen teaching charms and enchantments to the women they slept with the first time around—the mothers of the murdered nephilim. Maybe it was the same with our mothers, except they taught them certain rituals before they got out of hell.’
I frown, not quite grasping what he’s saying. ‘Why?’
Jason dabs at a drop of spilt wine, shapes it into a crescent.
‘I think it’s possible they told our mothers how to bring them through the veil. They might have been the ones who broke them out of hell.’