Shadowhunter (Nephilim Quest Book 1) (62 page)

I did not have to wait for long. The door opened, and the olive-skinned lady came in dragging Diana with her. Diana's eyes were dilated, and she was groggy. I guessed they must have drugged her. She blinked her eyes slowly, and tried to focus them, but you could see she wasn't really present.

Then the two others walked in as well. I could see a corridor with fluorescent lamps behind them. For a while I considered attacking them, because the music had to have an effect on them too. But in all likelihood I was not a match to the muscle power of three grown Nephilim, and so I did not move, but remained in my place with my arms folded over my chest. I discovered that I was afraid, which surprised me; then I realised I was not afraid for myself, but for Diana and what they might do to her.
 

I said nothing, just stared intently at the red haired woman. I had used this technique at school whenever the Blonde Crew had tried to bully me. Not one of them liked me looking them straight in the eye and they stopped soon enough. So I kept right on staring at the Nephilim woman without blinking an eye. She broke first and lost the battle of wills.

"Stop that!" she yelled.

I did not. I kept on staring at her, and she took a threatening step towards me. The man grabbed her by the hand and shook his head.

"No. We are not here to harm you."

I still did not say anything, but nodded towards Diana.

"Yes, sorry about that..." the man said, but he did not sound very embarrassed. "Desperate measures. You see - we need your help."

"You have an odd way of asking," I said curtly.

"We know... Daniel would never have agreed to this, so we had to keep an eye on him and come for you when he was away."

So the good Nephilim knew where the Centre was.
 

I waited. The door opened and three more Nephilim came in. It was beginning to get crowded.

"I know you," I said to the woman on the left, "you were at the convention."

"Yes," she nodded. Her expression was odd - it was desperate, and very tired.

She and a dark-haired Nephilim with a scar on his cheek were carrying yet another Nephilim. He was heavily drugged, and could not stay on his feet without them holding him up. He had a scarf tied over the lower part of his face, covering his mouth. He did open his eyes, for a while, but when they rolled towards the ceiling, I saw they were bright yellow. He was dark.

"You will heal him," the woman from the Council commanded and nodded towards Diana, "or she will die."

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

78. "You Will Heal Him"

I stared at the yellow-eyed Nephilim.
 

"You cannot be serious!" I could not believe what I had heard.

"We heard how you healed Elijah, right? And he was no longer infected at the Council of Nephilim. You were not infected either, though you healed him..."

The woman moved closer to me and looked into my eyes. She nodded.

"You are immune, and you are a healer. You will do this."

"Do you have your Council's approval for this?" I asked.

I hit a nerve there. The Nephilim exchanged nervous glances.

"No, you haven't," I concluded, "and how do you think the Council would react if they heard you had kidnapped me?"

"They need never know."

"Oh but they will know, one way or the other." I tried to keep my voice from shaking with anger. "I'll talk. Or someone here will let the secret slip out."

"Whatever you say, we're not letting you go! So they will never hear what happened," the red-haired woman snapped.

"Oh, is that so? And why, then, should I help you?" I asked her.

Her answer was to start strangling Diana. She tried to fight, feebly, but was too weak because of whatever drug she'd been given.

"Stop that!" the man who was carrying the yellow-eyed Nephilim said sharply.

"If this is what it takes..." the red-haired one replied.

"Stop playing the brass bowls," the man said and someone at the other end of the surveillance camera did as he asked.

My anger was such that my wings snapped open in an instant. Their force field current was so strong the others were thrown back towards the doorway.

They opened their wings too, in defense, but they were not as big as mine. I felt anger turn to rage. The emotion rose up my spine, and my wings reacted by bending towards them all, threatening. I did not look at my wings, but from the corners of my eyes I could see the silver lightning flashes shooting upwards in them. The air was cracking with electricity. I could see the others were afraid now.

Then I sensed an odd presence in my mind. When I opened my wings, it was as if they were connected to... something beyond me, yet something that was strangely familiar. Thoughts and ideas flooded into my mind with such speed that my thoughts could not keep up with them.

"Explain yourselves!" I said in a strange voice. It had a strength and a musical ring to it I did not recognize.

The red-haired woman squeezed Diana's limp body against her, and she looked at me defiantly, but her lips were trembling.

"He is my husband," she whispered, "and he was infected. We...we said he committed suicide, but we have kept him drugged in a room with the brass bowls playing without ceasing, hoping something could be done to heal him. And then... you appeared," she nodded at me.

I got the eerie feeling she was having a conversation with someone other than me, even though she was talking directly to me.

I looked at her in the eyes again, or something looked at her through me. She took a breath and stepped backwards.

"Your eyes..." she breathed.

"What about my eyes?" I asked, and my normal self felt a pang of panic. Were they yellow?

"Silver..." she whispered.

Silver eyes? Surely she was seeing wrong. My eyes were bluish grey - or had been, when I was a child. I knew they had turned bluer after my change, not grey.

My wings began to hum.
 

"You will let her go," the voice said through me.

To my surprise she obeyed. Diana slumped against the wall. I wondered what would I do next, how we could escape, but this is when the dark Nephilim began to wake up.

His head turned faster, and his eyes began to focus. The others tightened their grip on him. He began to struggle, and then... fade.

"Quick! The bowls! Play the bowls!" the red-haired woman yelled.

"No!"
 

I did not even understand at first it was me speaking. The word thundered in the room with such force that the yellow-eyed Nephilim stopped trashing and froze. He did not fade any more than he had already done and slowly began to be more solid again, sliding back to physical reality from the edge of the buffer zone. Now he looked at me directly in the eye.

And I looked into his eyes. They were just like Angel's - a strange yellow. It was like there was oil floating on top of them, constantly moving ever so slightly from inside out. Have you ever looked at a mud fountain blobbing out an air bubble on its surface? That's how it was - only the mud was golden yellow.

Something was different, though. The look in his eyes. Angel's had been pure cold evil. You could see she enjoyed her mental state, but in these eyes I saw... desperation underneath them. The eyes told me that the Nephilim within was drowning and calling for help.

I looked into the eyes of the red-haired woman. The pulse in her orange wings was nervous, fast.

"How long has he been infected?"

"Four months now. He turned dark... two months ago. He fought it longer than usual."

I looked at her again, and saw the same desperation there I had seen in the yellow-eyed man. She looked like someone who was trying to keep a grip on sanity, but underneath madness lurked.

There was something much bigger at issue here than I understood.

"Silver one..." the man said, "you are new, so you may not know..."

"Tell me," I said.

"These two made promises to each other, and thus became one."

"Marriage vows?"

"Yes, the Nephilim way. Not rituals only. They melted into each other in body and soul, and became one."

A huge swirl of desire overtook my whole body at these words, and I knew exactly what the meant.
 
Twin souls. Like me and Daniel.
 

In response to my desire for Daniel my wings let out an electric hum, much like the high voltage power lines did in wet weather. The hum beat in the rhythm of my heart.

"You understand," I heard hope rising in the red-haired woman's voice as she stepped towards me, reaching out her hands, "you have the same emotions for someone!"

Her wings let out a similar hum to mine, only with a different tone. The yellow-eyed man's wings were not visible, but I could hear a subdued hum coming from him. Its vibration matched that of hers, but it was broken, and came out in tiny bits, as though a sick person was trying to do physical exercise that their body could no longer manage.
 

That broken note of a matching hum between the two trying to connect made all the difference. The hum of my wings changed in tone, and strengthened.

"If he remains the way he is, the connection is severed between these two, and she will no longer live," the man looked me in the eye, pleading. "He will, though, in a nightmarish existence, forever transformed into something he isn't. He will remember his previous happiness, but he will become dead to it. He will no longer understand the finer emotions of love, and of caring. And she will waste away or kill herself. Those who have melted into each other, and been forcefully separated, will be broken for the rest of their lives, beyond repair, however long or short it may be."

He held the yellow-eyed man, who began to squirm, still looking me intently in the eye.

"Please, help them. Help my daughter. Help my son-in-law. Help if you can, please," the woman holding the dark Nephilim said, her voice choked and broken.

I barely heard her voice anymore. Like once before, my wings began to sing. It was an eerie, howling voice.
 
It was like someone opening their voice, searching for the right tune.
 

When the vibration of my wings found the vibration of the yellow-eyed man, my hands rose on their own. They turned white, and then silver threads started to slowly weave through the air from my fingers as though gravity no longer mattered.

The yellow-eyed man started squirming. He tried to escape physically, but his eyes never turned away from mine. Whatever was left of his old self was clinging to hope, however small.
 

"Put him on his back on the floor," my voice said.

They forced him down, holding all his limbs. He began to scream - a high-pitched scream. The silver tentacles of my left arm found him, and I stepped closer. I felt them caress his arms, searching for veins, and then punch through his skin, sharp, hard, to allow my body to drink in his blood.

His screaming subdued slowly and he began to pant as big drops of sweat appeared on his forehead. I watched as if from a great distance, how his dark blood rose into me. My wings turned forward.

"Let him go," the voice in me said.

They did, and my wings wrapped tightly around his body. I stood in a bent position and felt how the searing pain that was his blood, pumped through my body, into my wings. This pain was many times more severe than it had been with Elijah, and the throbbing agony almost made me fall down. It tore into my brain, darkening my vision. Its strength made me fall on my knees to the floor.

His blood came into me through the threads of my left arm, and returned back to him through my right arm. The man was sweating profusely now.

I lost track of time, the threads pumping his blood into me, and then returning it to him. It did not happen as fast as with Elijah, and I was paralyzed with the pain it caused me. But after what felt like an eternity, the blood began to become brighter, and more beautiful.
 

He kept on looking at me, and I saw the yellow in his eyes began to get murky. Then a faint blue began to grow on the edges of his irises, and seep towards the pupils. The swirling in his eyes stopped, like someone had stopped upsetting a muddy pond. And the blue kept on seeping inwards, until finally his eyes were of a greyish color again. Only a few specks of yellow remained.

All the while I felt a hum in my mind, and despite the pain it was as though my understanding had extended far beyond my normal mind. I did not see, but I sensed intelligence beyond myself, and great compassion. The compassion touched me as well, understanding the pain I had to endure, the damage the infected blood did to my system.

And then it was over. The hum stopped, and I fell unconscious to the floor.

"Jonathan!" someone screamed.
 

Then more screams. Sounds of struggle, angry yelling. I felt my wings bang uncontrollably against the floor and the walls, and people, and... what was this?

A blue energy I knew from somewhere. My wings greeted it with a soft, contented hum. And it answered - a deeper hum than mine, but it matched my wings so beautifully. It was a joy to listen to, to melt into, though I did not know what it was. What I was. My mind had been forced through something my physiology could not handle.

The blue energy wrapped around me gently, softly, lovingly. Someone hummed into my ear, and I was safely held by strong arms that rocked me like a little baby, and I could give in to the utmost tiredness that washed over me.
 

I began to cry with exhaustion, with happiness, with the strong compassion that loved everything around me. Underneath all this I could feel I had a body, a damaged, and hurting body. It was entangled in some kind of cobweb of darkness, and was gasping for air, trying to rise from the abyss it had fallen into. My wings were out of control, cramping uncontrollably, but held still by the blue enveloping energy.

I cried for my body too, for it seemed to be beyond repair. It had been a beautiful body, but maybe now I would need to let it go. My true self was ready to leave, and to rise into light. It was already hovering above the damage done, attached to it with a single silver string only. Oh, how wonderful the light waiting for me felt. I could see it all around me, and it was coming closer and stronger all the time.