Gifts of the Blood (12 page)

There was none. Wherever I was, however he had brought me here, I was wearing exactly what I had on in Blind Springs Park, down to Ethan’s jacket and my messenger bag with the deposit in it, slung sideways across my chest. Not even my hair was messier than usual. I leaned closer into the table and studied the mark again. It was a skilled hit, designed to knock me out. With luck, it wouldn’t spread enough to blacken my eye. Whoever he was, he had tremendous control over his inhuman strength. I remembered Ethan ripping through the Nephilim's chest with his bare hands.

Whoever he was, he really wanted me alive.

I groaned, resisting the urge to flop back down against the table and sleep. Instead, I pulled my knees up against my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Ethan’s jacket clung to me like a second skin, amazingly enough, and I nuzzled into its contradictory scents of black leather and cotton. I tried not to think about my last vision of him, covered in blood and fighting for both our lives.

Icy fingers wrapped themselves around my neck, pinning my cheek against my arms. “You should take that off. You must be uncomfortable.”

I held myself perfectly still, letting only my lips move. Even my teeth stayed locked together. “My discomfort has nothing to do with what I’m wearing.”

“Pity.” His fingers wound their way up through my hair. I registered their disappearance at the same moment a long, wicked looking knife appeared in his other hand, hovering inches over my heart. “Are you sure you don’t want to take it off?” he asked again.

“I think I’ll keep my clothes on, thanks,” I repeated. I couldn’t look away from the knife.

He made no other response before driving the knife down, hard and fast. I watched in helpless horror as the blade bent and shattered against Ethan’s black leather jacket. His pale hands held the handle against my jacket, as if he'd managed to stab me anyway, while he slowly, deliberately picked up the broken bits of blade from my lap. I remembered my drawing. A broken knife had been one of the symbols.

Oh, and the darkly beautiful Nephilim had tried to kill me. I choked. “What…happened?”

“It’s armor. The modern version. We’d look a bit odd, walking around in a breastplate or chain mail. He gave you his armor with his own two hands, and no one can take it from you. Not even him.”

It offers protection, from the cold and… other things.
He’d buttoned me into it as soon as the fighting started. “Why did you tell me? Why not keep it secret?” I asked warily, when my voice finally returned.

He shrugged elaborately, a human gesture probably performed solely for my benefit. It looked like an alien caricature on him. “For reasons of my own. And also so you would know exactly what your protection cost him.”

I struggled for breath. “So… when you fought. He didn’t have armor, and you did?”

“You didn’t see me or my associates without our jackets on, did you?” I closed my eyes and leaned into my hands, sick and dizzy. I remembered Ethan’s howl of pain, the blood and slashes through his jeans and sweater. I remembered how he’d punched instead of clawed when he’d encountered brown leather. He’d fought, unarmored, for me. I groaned.

My cruel pale host stood just inside the warm line of candlelight, watching, several feet from my chair. I hadn’t seen him move. His wings had disappeared. Perhaps they were only for special occasions. I stared at him blankly. He arched one dark slash of an eyebrow towards me. “I feel sick,” I said softly.

Cold fingers ghosted across my hand. I held a plastic tumbler of ice water. “Drink it.” He stood inside the arc of candlelight once again, watching me. The plastic tumbler matched one I had in my kitchen. Logan could be drinking juice from it right now, petting Abigail and calling my friends to find out where the hell I was. This insanely mundane detail shocked me out of paralysis. I pushed back from the table and tried to run. My pathetic escape attempt had barely begun when he already held my forearms in his hands. He pulled me tightly back against him, leather sliding against leather. The pressure of his hold increased gradually until it hurt me. I forced myself to perfect stillness, like a rabbit in a wolf’s embrace. “Ok?” He drew the word out, making it both question and threat. I didn’t even nod.

“Ok.”

“Good girl.” Again we moved. Another room this time, dark and bare except for a low sofa and tall windows completely covered with heavy velvet drapes. I sat. He looked down at me. Apparently he didn’t like to sit. I pulled Ethan’s jacket tighter.

“Who are you and what do you want and what happened to Ethan?” It came out of me in one long monotonous breath. When I was through, I clung to the edge of the cushion and looked anywhere but at his terrible, beautiful face.

He didn’t like that. “Look at me,” he thundered, dangerous and angry and low. I looked. His pale skin and soot black hair were too young, too soft for a creature spun from nightmares. His diamond eyes were sharp and cold in a face so delicate it was almost pretty. He was beautiful and terrifying and would hurt me until I did anything he said. “I am Asheroth. Look at me and tell me what you see. What would you paint, Caspia with the gift of Nephilim blood?”

I inhaled sharply through my teeth, remembering my grandmother’s words. Gifts of my blood, she had told me. My paintings, the sketches, they were gifts of my blood.
Nephilim
blood? And what if he was right, this nightmare creature in front of me? They were still Gran’s words coming out of his beautiful cruel mouth, and he was twisting them, and he had no right.

“I do not know Nephilim, or the ways of angels," I snapped. I shook with the effort of sitting still. A strange cold rage burned through me, and I knew then I did not care if I died for my honesty. “I know that Ethan was kind, and you are cruel. I know that I saw wings, where now I see none, but I have an artist’s memory. Ethan’s were light and warmth and
something
, and yours were ragged black holes of nothingness. Here is what I see: You are blackest ink on plain white canvas, and I will paint your lips and jacket red with real blood, for there is no paint on earth to capture their cruelty.”

Sharp nails raked their way down my jaw line and traced the outline of my lips. I jerked my face away, outraged. “Your eyes are liquid silver now, Caspia.” His voice was mild for someone who was about to kill me. “Like mercury. Did you know?”

I raised my chin. “Ethan told me. So?”

“Did he happen to tell you why this is important, even dangerous, for you and your brother?” He sat next to me on the sofa, my chin in his hand. I couldn’t turn away from his hot white eyes.

“We were quite rudely attacked," I hissed. The angrier I got, the more it pleased him. “I’m sure he would have, had he not been interrupted and assaulted.”

“Ethan’i’el is currently unharmed, unfortunately.”

“Glad to hear it,” I snapped.

“Are you really? You won’t be for long. Your brother is dying, Caspia, and the death of a Nephilim, even one with blood as thinned as yours, is a rare treat. It is enough to gather every being with a trace of angelic blood to the both of you like a flock of vultures waiting for rotting road kill. And when he dies…” Furious, I pushed against Asheroth, my palms white and fingers splayed with the effort, but he only pulled me closer to his beautiful burning face. “
When he dies
, there will be a fight such as you have never dreamed for the dying light of his soul. Ethan’s only purpose here is to watch your brother die and take him from you, Caspia. He will take him for the Light, but he will take him nonetheless. You will be
alone
.”

He echoed the exact word I’d whispered to Ethan, underneath him in the park. My mind skittered sideways as it did sometimes when I didn’t want to think about something truly unpleasant. I filed cruel Asheroth’s words away to take out later, when things were calm and I was safe again. “You lie.” It was a statement, flat and cold. He smiled to hear it and stroked my cheek.

“What will happen to you, sweet Caspia, when your brother is dead?” I tried to jump off the couch. I landed flat on my back on the cold hard floor, his alabaster face and black hair inches above me. His hands manacled my wrists. “
When your brother is dead
and the disappointed vultures see you standing there, with your silver crying eyes and watered down Nephilim blood and no protector? Tell me, Caspia. Do you know how rare women with Nephilim blood are?” I stared at him, expressionless. I dared not show fear. I did not even move. He was a predator, but I was not prey. “How long do you think you’ll last after your brother dies?” he purred.

“Maybe,” I told him, shocked to realize I spoke the truth even as it rolled off my tongue, “I don’t care.”

Chapter Nine:

A Reason It's Called Falling

Asheroth didn't like apathy. He preferred terror or fury.

His beautiful lips twisted bitterly. “Then it is
fortunate
,” he snarled, so close his black hair blinded me and his cold inhuman cheek rested against mine, “that I got to you first.” He pulled me up from the floor. I think he meant to be gentle. I actually watched him stalk from me to one of the windows with a fluid, leonine prowl. “You love him,” he said, as if to himself. “How unexpected. How dangerous.” It was a brief respite, though; he was back in my face, his eyes blazing anger and hate, as if I had done something unforgivable. “It is the most dangerous thing there is!” Perfect lips curled back from sharp white teeth. Icy fingers squeezed the back of my neck.

He’s crazy. How long before he hurts me?
Really hurts me?
I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Ethan said he had Fallen.” I tried to think, to clear my head and plan. “What did he mean?”

Asheroth’s diamond eyes brightened even more. My eyes burned, staring into them, but I would not twist or writhe. I would not make myself into his prey. “When angels Fall, they don’t get choices.” He released me. I stood by the low sofa again, gripping its back as the room spun crazily. I
hated
how fast they could move. Asheroth stood with his back to me, his hand toying with the edge of a drape. “We don’t get second chances, either.”

“That makes no sense at all.”
Keep him talking. Say anything.

“It’s simple. You have free will. We do not. You can choose whom to love. We cannot. When we love a human, it is with total and complete devotion, and utterly beyond our control. It means exile and the
chance
to love one single human soul.”

I remembered Ethan, under the trees, his smile bitter and graceful. “It sounds more like slavery.”

Asheroth turned to me then, and my artist’s mind said
yes, this
. His beautiful face was twisted with grief as well as cruelty and madness. His body bowed backwards as if there was a hollow place somewhere inside and he couldn’t find it, but he would spend all his long cruel eternity trying to fill it anyway. “That’s why it’s called Falling,” he said flatly.

Yes, this.
I would paint him this way, lost and murderous and hurt and stunning, in blood red leather and shadows.

If I lived.

“She left you,” I finally said as the last puzzle piece clicked into place. “Who was she? Your human?”

Dozens of studio-quality track lights blazed into life. Momentarily blinded, I gripped the sofa for balance. “She didn’t leave me,” he said from behind me. I wisely closed my eyes the second I felt cold fingers on my waist, moving me. “She just didn’t love me back. She let another human debase and defile her.” His voice dropped into a low, dangerous growl. “And then she died, as humans always do.”

A life-size painting of a young girl dominated the wall in front of me. She had honey blond hair and gray eyes. She sat on a crumbling stone wall with a book in her lap, tattered around the edges and obviously well loved. Her bare hair lifted slightly in an invisible wind that lifted her skirts enough to show equally bare feet. A discarded hat and ribboned slippers lay tossed aside in a heap. She looked defiant and proud. Her clothes and the book, even worn, spoke of wealth, as did the quality of the oil painting itself. “Nineteenth century. European.” I looked for a signature and found none.

He kept his hands on my waist and turned me slowly around the room. I noticed other paintings, from other times. A piano. A bookshelf lined neatly with leather-bound volumes and small items. A hand-painted deck of tarot cards.

Tarot cards. Hand-painted.

Mine.

“I’ve kept track of her descendants,” he said softly, so softly, that I might have mistaken his tone for gentleness if not for the darkness it stirred in my blood.

“Those are my cards.” I tried to keep my voice light, conversational, because if I did not I might start screaming and never stop.

“Her eyes were silver, too. You can’t really tell in the painting, but the artist didn’t have your skill.”

“Did you buy the rest of them, too? Of my cards? Are you the collector who wanted a private commission from me because if you are you don’t have to do this…” I babbled.

“Shh,” he cut me off, drawing a single finger across my lips in a disturbingly knife-like gesture. “No, I’m not your collector. I try not to get too involved, where her descendents are concerned. I find it hard to maintain objectivity. But when I saw you with
him
… with one of us.” He was going to start hurting me really, really soon. I couldn’t help it; I tried to break free. He crushed me against him so tightly I stopped breathing. “She had Nephilim blood. You have to understand. She chose to let a human have her,
a human
, and you are the result, you and your brother and your mother and grandmother before you, but you have her eyes and I will not let E’than’i’el have what I could not.”

“You never even knew her, not really,” I said, desperately. “If you did, you’d know I am not her.” It was the wrong thing to say.

“She is who made me what I am,” Asheroth raged against my ear. His cold fingers curled around the base of my neck. My heart sped. We faced the painting together again. I could feel the twin voids of darkness unfurling on his back. I thrashed against him and he let me, secure in the knowledge that he had me by the neck. My vision was gray around the edges. I saw nothing but the painting. The proud, defiant girl looked right at me. I saw the book in her lap again. Tattered, worn, obviously read many times. I wondered what it was that this ancestress of mine loved to read. And then I bit the soft inside of my lip to keep from crying out because I recognized it, the book; I had drawn it, it was one of the symbols, they were all coming true. There was only one more.