Court of Nightfall (10 page)

"The weapon isn't a device," I said.

The Chancellor nodded, waiting.

"It's the last Nephilim."

"You're as sharp as your mother always reported," the Chancellor said. "You'll do well here, assuming our deal still stands?"

He waited patiently for me to reply. I was still processing what this meant. What had happened to me last night? The man in my dreams, I didn't make him up. I woke up healed, different, with a thirst for blood and unexplained powers.

I woke up as Nephilim. Which meant I was number one enemy to the Orders. To Jax. To my Grandfather. To everything my parents had fought and died for.

I don't know if I made my decision despite that or because of it, but it changed nothing.

"I will join the Academy," I said. "But first, I have to go home. Just for a few days. I have to get my things. Say goodbye." My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat. "Then I'll come back and begin my training. Deal?"

I held out my hand and he chuckled and reached for it. "Deal, granddaughter."

I had nothing to pack, so I was ready to go that moment. I stood. "I'm ready now. Can someone take me to the plane?"

"I'll have one of the soldiers give you a ride to the airstrip. The airplane's been refueled, checked and prepped for you." He looked at me more closely. "But I think you'll still go through the pre-flight yourself, won't you? You strike me as the type who insists on doing things herself to make sure they're done right."

I nodded sharply, remembering the lessons my dad had taught me. How important it was to check your own aircraft before flying. How you couldn't trust it to others when it was your life in that seat.

He chuckled again and walked me out. "You'll do well here, indeed."

True to his word, he called a soldier to take me to the airstrip. It wasn't a long drive, and we made it in silence, my thoughts spinning in all directions at what I was about to do with my life.

I could feel my body still changing, powers growing in me, hunger growing even faster. A part of me had known, but couldn't find words to describe what I knew.

Now that I had confirmation, it scared the crap out of me.

Nephilim.

Demons.

Blood suckers.

Enemies of the Orders.

The Destruction of Humanity.

A weapon my parents died to keep under lock and key.

And now I was one of them.

***

I stood alone in front of my father's plane, and I fought down the tears the sight pulled out of me. He should have been here with me, going over the pre-flight checklist, his calm, deep voice reminding me of safety measures I had known for years.

My hand caressed the smooth panels as I performed my surface inspection—checking the rudder, the ailerons on the wings. I confirmed that the Chancellor had indeed had both gas tanks filled, and oil levels looked good on both engines. I could do this in my sleep, but still I used the clipboard and checked off each item, as if this was just a normal night. As if I wasn't about to fly home to an empty house with the blood of my dead parents staining the grass.

As I climbed into the plane I found a small gift box wrapped in silver paper sitting on the seat. It had a card with my name on it, but didn't say who it was from. Just, "To Scarlett, thought you might need this."

I opened it quickly, curious despite myself, and found the e-Glass 8. This version hadn't even been released to the public yet, though there were rumors the e-Glass 7 would be out soon. This shouldn't even exist except in prototype. I turned the card over, looking for a hint as to who had left it, but I found nothing.

I couldn't help being excited. I'd been living with the e-Glass 2.5 for the last few years, and it had taken all my hacking skills to keep it functional. This beauty in my hand, sleek, stylish, and more powerful than any e-Glass on the market, would be able to do things I hadn't dared dream with my old one.

I pulled out the chip I carried in my pocket and stuck it in, then slipped it onto my ear, flipped the glass over my eye and pressed the button to turn it on.

A familiar voice greeted me. "Hello, Scarlett. How are you today?"

"Evie! It's been a long time since I've talked to you. What's up?"

"Would you like the chemical breakdown of atmospheric pressure or a scan of the space above us for physical objects?"

I laughed. "We're going to have to fix you, Evie. Make you a little laid back. But that can wait."

"Fix me? I just ran a systems check and I assure you, Scarlett, I am not broken."

Yup, she'd need to be fixed. But it wouldn't be hard. Especially not on an 8.0. "Okay, Evie."

As silly as it was, it felt good to have her back in my life. I knew she wasn't real, that she wasn't human, per se, but she'd been a staple in my life for many years. I found solace where I could these days.

"Scarlett, would you like to see the stored video archives you had me record when I was last activated?"

My heart stuttered. My parents were on that video. Their last moments on earth. But I couldn't open that vault of emotion with everything else going on. I'd need time. Space. A place to face whatever feelings that video brought up. "Later, Evie. Right now we have to go home."

After running through the last of the pre-flight checklist, I stuck the key in the ignition and pressed the button, then took the stick in hand—though it was really a steering wheel more than a stick, the old language held—and I taxied, accelerating until I had enough momentum to take her to the sky.

The Chancellor had assured me he'd already had someone call in my flight plan, so barring any unintentional trips over major airstrips or into international airspace, I could count on a smooth, quiet flight home.

The hours flew by, my mind drifting to flights with my father and Jax, moments of greatest happiness for me. My mom had never enjoyed flying much, but I could live in the sky if given a chance, and Jax and my dad felt the same way.

It bound us together, gave us something no one could ever take away from us.

A thought, unbidden, came to me in a moment of stunned awareness. If I was truly becoming Nephilim, that meant I'd be able to fly. With wings. My heart beat against my chest at the thought of my wildest most unattainable dreams coming true. Maybe this curse wasn't all bad.

I daydreamed about that for hours as I flew home.

It was late, the sky black as pitch as I landed in my backyard. The reflective paint on the airstrip was my only guidance to not crashing into my house by mistake. In my rush to come home, I hadn't considered the perils of landing in the dark.

It wasn't my smoothest landing. My hands shook, heart racing, as the Cessna jolted to the ground, but we both survived my clumsiness and within a few moments I found myself standing outside my front door, my hands shaking again, but for entirely different reasons.

I pressed my finger against the lock and the door clicked open, the living room instantly lighting up so bright it blinded me. I squinted until my eyes adjusted, then looked around.

I expected things to feel… abandoned. Tragic. Like something horrible had happened here.

But everything looked so normal that it was almost worse. It was like my parents could come downstairs at any moment, asking where I'd been. With the darkness outside obscuring the signs of fighting, of death, you could almost pretend the last two days had just been a horrible nightmare.

Almost.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and walked through my house. Running my hand over the old blue couch in our living room as memories of movie night with my parents and Jax threatened to undo me. Straightening a family picture on our wall, my parents still very much alive, smiling down at me. Picking up the shoes my dad had left by the stairs—something my mom hated because someone would always trip. I clutched them to my chest now, the black scuffed leather of his soles still stained green by the grass.

Taking a deep breath, I put them back where he'd left them, unwilling to change anything tonight. One step at a time. I'd stay the night, which had seemed like a great idea until I'd gotten here and realized just how lonely it would feel. But I had no choice. I'd stay, pack, say one last goodbye, and lock it up for good.

Or at least for a while.

On the couch, my purse from last night still rested on its side, the contents almost spilling out. I'd almost forgotten about Jax's gift to me, back when he was just Jax, not a Teutonic Knight. I pulled out the silver gift bag and removed the wings, pinning them on my shirt. I ran a thumb over the carved metal feathers and tucked the memory of those moments before the battle into a safe pocket of my mind. Those were the last moments of normalcy, of happiness, I had.

A light flickered from our wall and I walked over to the grey screen, which blinked with a green light. I activated it and watched as the image of Dr. Crayton appeared. He looked bewildered as he spoke his message to us. "I have good news for Miss Night. Against all odds, Miss Night passed the vision test. I will issue her a special exemption to get her pilot's license, should she still wish it. Congratulations."

The image flicked off and I stood still, silent, at a loss for what to think. My dreams had just come true and it didn't even matter anymore. I focused my attention back on my house, on what I'd come here to do.

Near our bookshelves, my dad had set up a little table where the two of us had played chess late into the night. I walked over to it slowly, knowing this would hurt the worst. We had been mid-game, our pieces spread over the board, before he died. I'd have to decide, take the set or leave it as it was? I didn't know. Couldn't imagine leaving my home, leaving everything here as if nothing had happened.

From the corner of my eye something flashed and I looked up, startled out of my melancholy. I'd left the front door open for fresh air, and I could have sworn something moved past the house outside.

I poked my head out the door but didn't see anything unusual. Must have been a trick of the light. I thought about closing it, but I wanted the cool draft to clear out the stagnant feel of the house. We often left our front door open on nice nights as we watched a movie or dined on the porch.

I moved to my mother's desk where she had tools out for making her handcrafted jewelry. I rubbed the ring I wore on my middle finger, one she'd made me for my 16th
th
birthday. A Celtic pattern of links with a Ruby cross. The Templar symbol, I realized. 

Seeing the leather straps and pliers gave me an idea. I pulled out the Token of Strife and used her supplies to make a leather necklace to hang it from, which I tied around my neck. Somehow I felt better with the ring resting against my heart.

Once again, something bright, glowing, shot past the front door, and I turned quickly and ran outside, determined to solve the mystery.

I didn't have to run long. Standing outside was a little girl, pale as moonlight, transparent even, with her back to me. She turned her head, and I recognized her as the girl from my dream. She still held the glowing orb.

"Who are you?" I asked. Was she some kind of new Zenith I'd never heard about?

But she didn't answer. Instead, she ran away from me and toward the woods by my house.

"Wait!" I yelled for her but she didn't turn, didn't stop, and so I followed. Knowing it was stupid to run around in the middle of the night, I still followed. Something compelled me.

We passed into the forest, the trees tall, dark and menacing—so very like my dream I had to look down to make sure I wasn't walking on the body of corpses.

I wasn't. Just plain old dirt and rock.

I kept running, twigs snapping under my feet as I ducked under low branches and followed her over fallen trees.

We soon came to two large boulders. She squeezed past them, a glow in between the space, and I sucked in my breath and did the same, with a lot more effort and less breathing.

A few scratches later I found myself in a grove, the earth under my feet white sand, glittering in the light of the moonbeams.

I'd spent my whole life in this house, on this land. I knew every hiding place, every cave, every trail, every tree.

This grove had never been here before.

I looked for the girl and saw her running up a hill to the center of the grove.

Toward a silver tree. It stood like a beacon of light in darkness with bare branches swaying in the windless night.

And below the tree stood a man in black with dark wings stretched out behind his back.

He turned to me, his face pale, eyes blue, a man ethereally beautiful, and he smiled.

The man from my dreams.

The last Nephilim.

"It's you." I froze in my place, my mind trying to find some cohesiveness between this experience and reality, but it came up empty.

"Yes. But do you know who I am, Scarlett Night?" His voice, deep and rich, had a trace of an old accent—Russian maybe? I couldn't tell. It burrowed into me, that voice, and left me shaking.

"I know you're dangerous." My body vibrated with his nearness, with the chill in the air, with the otherworldly feel to everything around us.

His grey blue eyes were unreadable as he studied me. "And do you fear me, Scarlett?"

"No," I said, honestly. I knew I should, that he could hurt me in so many ways, but instead I was drawn to him like a moth to flame. "What happened to the girl?" I asked, looking around for the ghostly figure that had led me here.

"I can conjure memories, like the girl, like this tree," he said. "And sometimes, they can do my bidding. I used the girl to lure you here, because I needed to make sure we were alone. "

He took a step toward me and my body moved against my will to reach him, to be closer to him. We stood a few feet apart under the silver tree. I had to look up at him. He stood a good foot taller than me, his chest broad, body hard and full of muscle under his black jeans and shirt. Up close I could see the perfection of his face more clearly. There would never be any mistaking this man for mortal. Every inch of him screamed power, magic, danger.

When he held out his hand, I looked down at it in surprise. "My name is Zorin, Andriy Zorin, Count of Nightfall, and Left Hand of the Twilight Queen. I apologize for leaving you, but I had to draw our attackers away last night."

I took his hand and instead of shaking it he drew it to his lips and kissed my knuckles. "It is a pleasure to meet you," he said.

His skin was cold, smooth, his hand strong and large, swallowing my own. When he let go my hand fell to my side, like a cut kite. I was at a loss for words for a moment, lost in his unfathomable gaze.

But then his words registered in my mind. Our attackers. Last night. Was it really just last night that my whole world fell apart? "What happened last night?"

"What do you remember?"

"I…" I closed my eyes and thought back. "I remember falling, crashing into the crystal case, shot, bleeding, the pain exploding inside me. I had shot at the case. At you," I said, realizing that he'd been in the crystal, preserved there like a mummy. "I shot at you, thinking you were a weapon, thinking you could help me. But they… then they shot me and everything went dark."

"You died, your life's blood pooled into the crystal and fed me, awakening me. I brought you back from the land of the dead. I gave you the power of the Nephilim."

I knew that already, of course I did, but still, hearing him say it sent chills up my spine. "Why? Why did you save me?"

"Perhaps because you reminded me of someone I once knew," he said, his eyes far away and sad.

I choked on unshed tears. "Why didn't you save my parents?"

He reached for my hand, stroking it. "They were already gone. They had no spark of life left to reborn them. I'm sorry, Scarlett. I tried."

I wanted to hate him for saving me and not them, but I couldn't. I knew the truth of his words. Had felt that truth last night. "What about the other… Nephilim? The thing that killed them?"

He tilted his head, a dark strand of hair falling into his eyes. "That was no Nephilim, but an Old One. Your people call them Angels. They are our ancestors, and we their children along with humans. They are far more ancient and deadly than us. I killed the pawns of the Angel and then fought him in the sky. We injured each other gravely and I fell from the sky onto a mountain, hurt and dying. It was your blood inside me that saved me. I came to find you as soon as I awoke, healed enough to fly. What happened to me? Do you know? Why was I in that coffin?"

"You don't remember? About the war? Your capture?"

"I remember who I am," he said, "But not how I was captured and put to sleep."

"I don't know how you were captured. I only know that I tried to free you because my parents told me you were a weapon they had to protect."

Moonlight glinted off his pale skin and behind him a dark light spread around his shoulders. I gasped as I watched obsidian wings unfurl around him, seemingly made of the night and moonbeams. "Thank you, Scarlett. For saving me as I saved you. We should leave at once and report all of this to the Twilight Queen."

I pulled my gaze away from his wings, a longing growing inside of me at the sight, and realized what he had just said. "You don't know?"

He cocked his head. "Know what?

"Zorin, you are the last of your kind… though I guess, that's not technically true since I'm now Nephilim," I said, the words still so strange to speak out loud. "There is no Twilight Queen, no court, no Nephilim. They are all dead."

He stepped back, his face frozen in shock. "I don't understand. What do you mean, dead? What happened to her? To them?"

"You must have already been captured when it happened. The Twilight Queen was overthrown by a Nephilim called Nyx and his apprentice, Erebus… Nyx waged a war against mankind, but he lost, and all the Nephilim were wiped out. Except you."

We stood staring at each other a moment and I felt compelled to finish this awful tale. "The Orders wiped out the Nephilim, but they kept you alive. In case they ever wished to make an army of Nephilim… that's why you were considered a weapon."

"So… they are all gone?"

This time I reached for his hand, conscious of how heartbroken I would be if I'd woken from imprisonment to find that all of my kind had been destroyed. It was genocide, or nearly.

He squeezed my hand gently. "We must find safety. We must hide before the Church seeks us out to recapture or kill us."

I eased my hand out of his and straightened my back. "I can't go with you, Zorin." I was surprised part of me wanted to, and surprised equally that part of me wanted to return to Castle V.

"You're in danger, Scarlett. Not only because of what you are, but because of me. Because of what I know and what those in power will assume you know. They will use you to get to me."

"What do you know?"

The forest around lacked the normal sounds of the night, and the quiet was… disquieting. I could only hear our breaths on the cool air as I waited for him to tell me his secrets.

I could see the struggle on his face, whether or not to tell me.

"Zorin, you said yourself they will assume I know whether you tell me or not. You aren't protecting me by keeping me in the dark." A logical flaw that nearly every stupid movie and superhero trope seemed to rely on in situations such as these, which bugged me to no end. How is someone ever safer not knowing what is coming for them or why? Who has that ever saved? Not my parents. Not me last night. And not me now, that's who.

He nodded in consent and pulled me toward a large boulder under the silver tree. We both sat, our bodies pressed against each other, his wings of light and softness brushing against my back as they moved to the wind around us.

"Many years ago," he began, his voice deep and his accent more pronounced, "I uncovered an artifact, a device of great power. I suspect that is the reason I was kept alive, the real reason, and not to make more Nephilim, though undoubtedly some might have wanted me for that, too. They must have been looking for some way to extract the information from me."

"What was the artifact?" I asked, when he didn't continue on his own.

"It was one of the seven seals, designed to bring mankind to its knees."

"The seven seals are real? Not just myth and folklore?"

"They are real. Very real," he said gravely.

"Where are they?"

"I will not speak of that, for they must never be found again."

Did my grandfather know about this? Did he deliberately lie to me about Zorin and my parents? Did my parents know? Every answer seemed to bring about a dozen new questions. "So, is that why the Angel was after you? For the seal?"

"I believe so," he said. "Angels once ruled this earth, many ages ago, and with the seals they could do so again. The Nephilim fought them during the Angel War, but with the Nephilim gone… all might be lost. For both of our kind."

I wondered who my kind was now. Was I still human? Or was I entirely Nephilim? In a war between the two, where would I land?

Zorin's face hardened as he stared into the darkness. "I must find out what happened. The Twilight Queen could not have been easily overthrown." He faced me, shifting on the boulder to touch my hand. "Come with me to Italy so we might uncover these truths together. You are Nephilim now, Scarlett. For better or worse, we are all we have left."

I felt the pull again. To leave with him. To leave behind the bodies and the pain and the lies and secrets and fly—fly!—to Italy to uncover the truth. But… "I can't. I must stay. I have to train to become a Knight Templar so I can destroy the Angel who killed my family. I must avenge them."

I pleaded with my eyes for him to understand.

Revenge. A universal motive amongst any race. Surely he would understand.

"Have you fed yet?" he asked.

I thought back to Ragathon, to the bliss of his blood flowing into me. I nodded.

"That is good. Do not allow yourself to grow week from lack of blood. Have you flown yet?"

My heart hammered in my chest. "No, I haven't."

"You should come with me," he insisted again. "And learn the ways of Nephilim. Help me bring peace between humans and our kind. It's what your parents would have wanted."

I straightened at that, all fantasies of flying fleeing my mind. "How would you know what they would have wanted?"

"I knew them well. You are so like your mother in many ways, but I see your father in your eyes. Not the color, but the intensity."

He knew them? This… didn't make sense. "How? How did you know each other?"

"They helped me discover the seal."

"But… why would my parents work with a Nephilim?"

He reached for my hand. "Let me show you. Close your eyes."

I did as he asked, placing my hand into his, my breath hitching in my throat as the air around us changed, pulsing with a new kind of energy. It was electric, visceral, and when he told me to look, I was scared.

But I opened my eyes.

And saw my parents.

They were flickering lights, like the girl he'd conjured earlier, but they were in color, three dimensional, almost real. I reached out with my free hand to touch them but it passed through air.

"You can't feel them. They are but memories conjured. You can only see and hear."

And so I listened as my heart broke and healed and broke again and I couldn't decide if this glimpse into the past would destroy me or be something precious I carried with me always, like a lock of hair from a loved one or a fading photograph of one departed.

They were in a study, a solid dark room with too much wood paneling and old books lining every available wall. They weren't alone. They stood next to each other and argued with five others… the Council of Orders.

"They are real," my mother said, her eyes alight with the fire of her convictions. "The seals aren't just myths. We believe we've found one. And if we're correct, then it's in a vault created by the Angels."

"This is folly," Ragathon said with that same dreadful scorn. "We cannot support this useless quest."

"You don't get to decide that on your own," my father said. I wanted to cheer him for standing up to that jerk.

"No, he doesn't," my grandfather said, already the Chancellor. "But the Council agrees, though for its own reasons. This is too dangerous and uncertain to risk our best Templars."

The scene changed to one of darkness. They were in an underground warehouse with Zorin. They found him there. "We believe you know where it is," my mother said. "Please help us find it."

Zorin, who looked the same then as he does now, shook his head. "I have seen it, yes. In an ancient city beneath the waves, but I do not wish to return."

My dad, a much younger version of him, grasped Zorin's shoulder in camaraderie. "The vault is full of knowledge, treasures, the truth of whatever came before mankind… before Nephilim. Perhaps what we find there could unite our two races. It could end the strife that exists between us, the tension leading to war. This could save us all, Zorin, but we can't do it without you."

The Nephilim bent his head forward, his body still as my parents waited for his answer.

My mother held a hand out to Zorin. "Will you help us unite our people into one?"

He grasped her hand in his and nodded. "I will."

The vision disappeared and my heart lurched in my chest. They were gone. My parents. Their memories. Gone.

I swallowed a sob and breathed deeply to regain my control.

Zorin waited a moment before speaking. "They had no idea what the vault truly contained. They never made it inside."