Obumbrate (11 page)

"Of course they were," Serena packed as much sarcasm as she could into the four little words. "If you want everyone in Charon to know who you are. At least while you wear this you'll have a little coverage. Smell less like death, too."

"I did not smell like death."

"Oh, you certainly did." She pulled out a pair of scissors from the small sewing box alongside her. "And at least that scar of yours is covered up, too."

Blowing out the air from my cheeks, I muttered an offensive word under my breath. Serena began to cut into the fabric using a part of household scissors, carefully snipping so the remaining half of the dress brushed the tips of my toes.

"Serena?"

"Hrmm?"

"Why do the buildings get darker the further you leave the main road in Charon?"

The sound of cutting fabric came to a stop, and I looked down to see her free hand comb through the mess of caramel curls on her head. She seemed to consider my question for a minute, mulling over the answer edging on her tongue.

"Centuries upon millennia ago, when Charon was first formed, it was like a crystal paradise," Serena began, her eyes glazing over to a faraway stare. Her fingers inched down to her cheek, absentmindedly tracing the edges of her blue mark. "The first Queen, the True Queen as we call her, made it into a place of love, of endless possibilities. She was one of the first Nephilim to have been created.

"For countless lifetimes, she reigned with a pure heart and angelic soul. She married another Nephilim, and together they created two daughters, Harmony and Ebony. Harmony had tragically passed in an accident, leaving Ebony the sole heir to the throne. When her mother eventually passed, legend has it she made Ebony promise to keep their bloodline true, and marry another Nephilim. It would never happen."

It was as if Serena had painted a picture for us both to step into; I imagined an even more beautiful, crystal version of Charon, suspended in a state of perfection for centuries. Lead by a gentle, but powerful woman who did everything in her power to embrace the sacred blood in her veins.

Serena went on, her words continuing the visual in my head. "What Ebony had never shared with her mother is that she rejected her bloodline, and all the purity that came with it. As her name is dark, she aimed to be slathered in ink, and in her ultimate defiance on her mother's dying wish, married a demon and gave birth to his child. A corruption, a half-breed torn between two worlds at ultimate extremes."

"But would that child not be of three? Human, angel, and demon?"

She nodded. "Indeed, the child was, and for centuries after, the line continued, fathered by demons, all children born male. Until Lucretia. She is the last of the legacy, and unable to have children."

I felt like my head was crunching in on itself. Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I tried to wrap my mind around the problem Serena was trying to spell out in front of me. "So Nephilim can have children, and demon can have children too, but mix them together and they can't?"

"In a sense, yes. A hybrid of Nephilim and demon who is male can have children, but a female cannot."

The light bulb went off in my head. "And Lucretia is a female, and a mix of both."

Serena's faint smile told me I was on the same page. "Exactly. At first, no one knew, and who could have expected it when all the males could produce children?"

Of course no one would know. Never once had there been a question that a Nephilim-demon mix could father a child, and the last female had been Ebony, who had only been Nephilim. I wondered if there was a type of genetic incompatibility between the two when bound together in a female.

My mind circled back to the original question at hand. "But how does the history of the throne have to do with the buildings being grey?"

"I wasn't finished," she flicked my kneecap, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "When Queen Lucretia took her place on the throne, we knew things would be different in Charon. Over time, our kingdom had tarnished and dulled, ruined by the negative energy. Lucretia had decided to instate a new plot for the land, and had all the buildings redone in white marble. However, the residue from the demonic presence and negative energy within Charon has stained the town. Only the center strip had been unaffected, no doubt by some work of magic the True Queen had implemented all those years ago."  

Was that why Nephilim were so heavily disliked in Charon? Because we were the beginning of a long, dark existence in the murky undertow? I couldn't help but feel sad for the people who chose to think such things; being of one species, mixed or not, didn't make you a monster. It's the actions and decisions people make that turn them into monsters, not their blood.

Serena had just finished snipping off the last end of fabric when the sound of the door opening and closing reached our ears. Ari bounded into the room, a small black box tucked under an arm. I noticed he had changed out of the clothes he'd been wearing earlier, having traded in the all-black get up for a casual white t-shirt, worn in jeans, and the dark brown leather jacket I had first seen him in. A small golden chain peeked from the collar of his t-shirt.

He reached up to scratch his head before giving me a small smile and concealed wink. "Sorry, took a little longer than I thought." Leaning at an angle to see around the billowing waves of fabric, he spotted Serena. "Are you done playing with your pretty life-size doll?"

She stood up and pouted, staring at me through half-lidded eyes. "I just wish she had hair to work with. You can't really do anything with what she's got going on."

I reached up to touch the ends of my short cut, frowning. "Hey, I like my hair, thank you very much."

"Obviously, you didn't like it enough," she half-mocked, sticking her tongue out at me.

"Oh hush before I give you a matching crop," I pretended to threaten her. With wide eyes, she instantly rose her hands to grab at the mass of hair framing her petite face. I turned my attention to the black box Ari still held under his arm. "What's in the box?"

Wiggling his eyebrows, he challenged me. "Do you
really
want to know what's in a small, compact, black box?"

I ran through a quick list in my head, then nodded. "Worst case scenario, it's a sex toy or dead shrunken heads." My face scrunched up in disgust. "Or fish. On second thought, let it be dead shrunken heads."

He blinked at me in complete disbelief. "Wow. How often does your mind circle the gutter?"

"Circle the gutter?" I let out a loud laugh. "Hate to shatter your perfect image, but I don't circle the gutter. I do, however, live in the sewer of dirty minds, and the smell never leaves you no matter how far you climb out of it."

Mouth opening to speak, he took a step forward, then backtracked and shook his head. "I can already see you pulling jokes in a desperate situation just to liven the mood. Great."

Serena stepped forward, snatching the box from the crook of Ari's arm. "You two bicker and banter like a married pair, good heavens. And all over a..." She lifted the lid of the box and looked down, trailing off. Her eyes flickered up to Ari's. "How did you manage to get these?"

Taking the box back from her hands, he offered a graceful shrug of the shoulders. "Just a little twisting of the arm, nothing more. I had Lilix call in a few favors." Reaching into the box, he pulled out a matching pair of dark green teardrop earrings, each one individually wire wrapped like my glass heart pendant.

"Assuming I have to wear them," I said, reaching out for the pair. "What do they do?"

"They're a cloaking device, well, sort of." Ari frowned, pulling his eyebrows together as his face looked pinched. "Think part cloaking device, part decoy item. They don't really cover you like an invisibility cloak, but they distract everyone who looks at you into thinking you're either someone else or not really there at all."

Carefully taking one of the earrings, I examined it curiously in my outstretched palm. The same swirl sat at the clasp of the earring, matching perfectly to my pendant. As if in reply, the small heart on my chest began to glow, small waves of heat radiating off of it.

I heard Ari gasp, and looked up. He had a wicked, triumphant smile on his face as he watched me, as if he had just found his own diamond in the rough. Against the glow he looked like a true angel, from the rich and even tone of his unblemished skin to the brilliance glimmering in his eyes.

"Even better," he said when the glowing had finally stopped. "Both objects have been gifted by the same angel. Now I know you'll be alright." Handing me the second earring, I put on both. "Only the best Vens in all of Charon could spot you, and I highly doubt the Queen is out to kill you, otherwise you'd have been dead by now for sure."

My fingers brushed over the pendant around my neck. Gifted by the same angel, the very one that created me. A man I've never met, or at the very least can't even recall. Small waves of sadness brought my shoulders to a slump, and I couldn't help but wish I could meet the person responsible for making me.

"So this is what we're going to do," Ari's voice broke through my melancholy rift, and I instantly straightened up. "We've only got to go to the shop directly alongside the apothecary's- it's easy enough, but we're better off being safe than sorry. That's why you're dressed up."

I did a double take over his current outfit. "You don't look like you're wearing any special trinkets."

"Didn't anyone ever tell you?" Ari had come closer, leaning in until I could feel his breath on the side of my neck. "There's always more than meets the eye."

I pulled back and shook my head, clearing the sneaky thoughts of seeing more than meets my eyes on him out of my head. This wasn't a time to let my hormones play battlefield with my heart. Not when both my life was at stake.

Giving Serena a grateful smile, I started for the door. "Thank you, again. You didn't have to help me."

"Of course not," she said matter-of-factly, striding past me and opening the door. "But I did. Guess you could say I carry a wounded soul for what's good in this world."

Ari went out first, giving Serena a curt nod with both hands tucked in his pockets. Before I stepped out with him, I stopped in the doorway, my toes brushing the bottom of the frame in hesitation.

My eyes locked with hers as I grasped one of her hands. "Be careful, please."

She made no motion to pull her hand away from mine, but the strained look in her face said she wanted to. Still, she did her best to smile and nod. "I should be saying that to you, if there really is someone aiming to pierce your heart."

I laughed darkly. "The more I learn about myself, the more I see someone has always been out for my heart, immortal or not."

She peeked around the frame, her face beginning to pull into an emotionless stare. "You should go," she said. "Before he leaves you behind." Her hand pulled free from mine to push at my back, forcing me out into the sun-blessed field around her home.

Ari had already started through the waist-high grass, moving through without a look over his shoulder. I hurried to catch up but continued to lag behind, unable to stop looking back at the little grey home covered in bright flowers. My stomach twisted at the thought of something happening to the beautiful woman inside that house, captured or tortured or killed, all because she had kept me hidden.

"Get up alongside me," Ari's voice floated back to me. I snapped up to see he had already put twice the distance between us. "Unless you're aiming to become demon fodder once we hit the main road."

Sneering at his back, I grabbed two handfuls of my skirts to hike up and jogged up to his side. Heat pricked at the back of my neck, the sun glaring vengefully from above. With no wind to keep me cool, the combination of heavy fabric and cloudless sky made it feel like we were standing on Mercury.

I dropped my skirt to wipe the sweat off my forehead with my arm. It came back drenched. "You do know I've already walked the streets around here, and I'm not exactly dead, am I?"

He shook his head while pushing up the sleeves of his jacket to his elbows. "Luck, my dear, no more or less. I have a feeling this time we won't be so lucky, not with two Nephilim paired together."

I pinched the bridge of my nose, breathing deep from my mouth. All of this demon-warding crap was going to drive me insane. What happened to school and college and my psychotic mother being the most stressful things in my life? This calling, if I could even call it that, had taken all of my life and tossed it into a landfill, then told me to start from scratch. Not exactly something to be happy about, unless you're an axe murder and trying to avoid capture, I guess.

But this wasn't just about me anymore. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that Ari had a family, too. He probably made just as many sacrifices as I had, if not more. Sneaking a quick look at him, I guessed he had to be around my age, one or two years older, tops.

"I bet your family misses you," I thought aloud, staring forward as the street got closer. "Any brothers or sisters?"

"My family's dead."

The harshness of his words left me off guard. I knew it wasn't right to poke at someone's past, especially when the dead were involved, but the curiosity overwhelmed me. "How did they die?"

A solid minute passed before he answered. Still, the tension in his voice was thick enough to cut steel. "Mom died in a car crash. Dad was murdered. No siblings."

Nothing past that was said until our feet hit pavement. "I'm sorry," I whispered.

He shrugged, the move as fluid as water. "Life happens. People aren't kidding when they say to live it to the fullest."

We walked down the left hand side of the street, inching closer to the heaven-high white tower looming on the horizon. My mind started to run circles around itself, wondering just how much Ari had seen and gone through before he stuck himself with me, something I still couldn't comprehend.

"Ari?" I looked at him from the corner of my eyes. "Why did you come looking for me?"

He met my gaze, his expression softening slightly. "I wish I knew." His shoulders rose and fell again. "My Watcher had told me to find you, and help in any way I can, but she never explained why."