Up until a few minutes ago, here’s what I thought I knew about my life.
Eleven days ago I was living in Pandanus Beach with my best friend, Maggie, holding down a job at the library, grieving for my twin brother Jude. I thought I was a backpacker; I thought I’d watched Jude die in a crumpled mess of metal and petrol and dust. I thought I was learning to get on with my life, despite weird and gruesome dreams that featured hell-beasts and mutilations.
Then Rafa came to town. Violence followed—and some mind-bending news. I wasn’t nineteen: I was a hundred and thirty-nine. I wasn’t a high school drop-out estranged from my parents: I was part of the Rephaim—a society of half-angel half humans. My father was one of the Fallen, a band of disgraced archangels banished from heaven and sent to hell thousands of years ago for seducing human women. A hundred and forty years ago, led by Semyaza, they broke out and did the same thing all over again. And then they disappeared without a trace. The only one of the Fallen who abstained was Nathaniel. He’s the one who gathered together the Fallen’s bastard babies and made us into a society. Raised us into an army and created a base for us at the Sanctuary. Called us the Rephaim. He murdered our mothers to do it—not that anyone but Jude and I knew about it until a few moments ago.
Nathaniel claims our destiny is to find our Fallen fathers and turn them in: hand them over to the Angelic Garrison. But we’re not the only ones hunting them. Hell’s Gatekeeper demons are also tracking them, and are itching to destroy the Rephaim along the way.
My role in all this is complicated.
About a decade ago, there was a major split among the Rephaim over what should happen if we actually found our fathers. Jude and twenty-three others including Rafa rebelled. They left the Sanctuary and became Outcasts. I should have walked out with them, but I didn’t.
Then, a year ago, Jude and I made up. Jason—our cousin, who’d been hiding from Nathaniel all these years—reached out to us. He told us about a young girl in his family who had visions. She’d seen something important involving me and Jude, so we went to see her. At that point, as far as anyone knew, we disappeared. Both factions of the Rephaim assumed we’d betrayed them; that we’d found the Fallen—and it got us killed.
But we were both alive. With no memory of being Rephaim or what we’d done, both thinking the other was dead. Me living in Pandanus Beach with my grief. Then Rafa found me and told me who I was. Helped me find Jude. Reunited me with my brother, who seemed to take the truth better than I did. Who fitted back into his Rephaite skin so much quicker than me.
A few days ago, we discovered there’s a family in Iowa that hates us; has done for generations. They claim to receive divine guidance about how to protect the world from us, including building an iron-lined room capable of trapping Rephaim despite our supernatural abilities. A family who lost a woman and teenager, horribly killed when demons overran that farm and took control of the iron room.
And then the demons took Rafa and Taya.
We rescued them. Got them back and destroyed the iron room. Along the way, we found out that Mya—de facto leader of the Outcasts—is actually a member of the family in Iowa. She gave herself away when she saved Rafa and me yesterday, then she went to ground.
And now the Gatekeepers are headed for Pan Beach to draw the Rephaim into a fight that could end us—or jumpstart a prophesied war between heaven and hell.
A few minutes ago, Rafa, Jude and I rallied a crew of Outcasts and Sanctuary Rephaim to head to Pan Beach to try to stop the Gatekeepers tearing apart the town I love.
But on the way here, everything changed.
A few minutes ago, I didn’t know my own story. Why I stayed at the Sanctuary when Jude and the others left to become Outcasts. What secrets Rafa was keeping from me. A few minutes ago, I didn’t know what Jude and I were doing when we had our memories taken from us.
The difference between now and a few minutes ago? Now I remember it all.