Chloe's Guardian (The Nephilim Redemption Series Book 1) (15 page)

She stammered a moment, as though she wanted to say something. He let the silence hang.

“That was nice of you to help my mom,” Chloe finally said.

“
Faciam quodlibet quod necesse est
.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“I’m glad to help.” He wasn’t going to tell her what it really meant, that to win her over, he’d do whatever was necessary.

They walked in silence for another block.

“The house looks terrible. Nana hadn’t been able to take care of it for a long time before we moved in.”

“I could help. Some new paint and fixing those broken rain gutters will make a difference.”

They walked passed several more addresses.

“Mom’s having a hard time since Dad left. She hasn’t been doing very well on her own.”

“It is always a difficult thing when marriages fall apart.”

“We had to move in with Nana. Mom didn’t have the nerve to make
him
leave. So he gets the house, and we’re stuck squeezed into Nana’s broken-down old house.”

“That missing railing shouldn’t be too hard to replace. I can trim the tree tomorrow.”

That made Chloe stop. Three steps later he noticed and went back to where she stood.

“Where do you live? What do you do? Why were you in Scotland? How did you find me? Why
are
you helping me?”

“Not far from here. Over off Thirty-Eighth.”

She waited. “That only answers one of my questions.”

He tried her method and shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t you have something better to do?”

A million other things. Anything else.
But he couldn’t admit that to her. “No.”

She started walking again. “I thought about what you said.”

“Which part?”

“About how Todd treats—treated me. I don’t want to need him so bad, you know. I just can’t help it. I’ve loved him since fifth grade. He made me feel special. He was always the one everyone wanted for a friend. Then he chose me. He promised he’d show me he loved me once we got engaged.”

“He will never do what he promised. He will only hurt you, and keep hurting you. The sooner you can break away and not let him determine your worth, the better. If you want me to, I can—” he was going to say kill, but thought better of it “— beat him up.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “That’s stupid.”

“Not where I come from.”

“Well, it is here.” She laughed to herself. “But thanks for being willing to.”

The shift at the store went by easily. Chloe was surprised when the clock showed several hours had already passed. Somehow, Horace standing guard at the door felt good. She enjoyed looking over at him and smiling every once in a while. He kept tipping that new silly hat at her.

Business was constant. People bought gas. People bought lotto tickets and cigarettes. People bought junk food. Chloe collected their money. Horace greeted customers. Horace thanked customers. Horace even was actually kind of funny. He told one woman her baby was a fine specimen. The woman told him to stay away from her or she’d call the cops.

At midnight, Chloe’s relief came and she headed for home with Horace at her side.

“Better put your shoes back on. You can’t see what you are stepping on in the dark.”

“Yes, Mother,” Chloe said and she slipped her sandals back on. She didn’t think she needed to, but tonight she didn’t mind doing what he suggested. He was starting to seem kind of like a giant puppy dog trailing her everywhere she went. It wasn’t such a bad thing.

Four blocks from the store, a shadow stepped out of the alley. One of the gangbangers who’d held them up at the store. Chloe looked at Horace. He’d know what to do. He was way bigger than the kid in front of them.

But before she could catch his eye, four bullets slammed into his back.

CHAPTER
16

Chloe screamed. With each popping explosion, she screamed louder, ready to feel the bullet rip into her.

Horace collapsed flat on his face onto the sidewalk. Her screaming started again. She couldn’t stop it. It just shot out of her throat.

Hands grabbed her from behind and yanked her back into a throat lock. Her arms were trapped across her chest.

Someone yelled in her ear to shut up. She couldn’t. She had no control over the hysteria. Horace was dead on the ground next to her, and she’d be there soon, too. But not until after the “worse-than-death” stuff Horace had warned her about.

The gangbanger squeezed the breath out of her and pulled her back into the alley. She picked her feet off the ground and kicked and flailed and squirmed as hard as she could. The guy grunted and cursed and smashed her tighter. He called her horrible things and screamed at her to hold still. Then he yelled to the others in another language. One of them wore Horace’s hat, grinning like it was a game. Another emptied Horace’s pockets. He distracted her captor showing him Horace’s ID. She rammed her heel back and clipped him hard in the knee. He ejected her onto the ground, yelling words she didn’t recognize.

The crash to the ground stunned her. She couldn’t catch her breath.

Then a mob of feet shuffled around her in a circle. She lifted her head and saw high tops, baggy shorts, and a barricade of hairy shins.

Oh God. Help me!

Rough hands grabbed at her and lifted her off the ground when Horace twitched. A gun swung around in one of their hands.
Horace, don’t move. They’ll shoot you again.

The gun blasted—a brilliant light flashed and obliterated the darkness. She couldn’t see, blinded by the bright explosion. Was she shot? Did a bomb go off? The gangbangers shrieked.

They dumped her back onto the ground. She blinked and squinted, trying to make sense of what she saw.

The spot where Horace had lain was empty. Above it was a mini sun. The sun hovered above the circle of their attackers. It held a flaming sword in one hand. Its face—it was the
thing
from Dunnottar Castle! And that
thing
was Horace! How could she have missed the resemblance before?

The sheath of flame in his hand slashed down and cut through the waists of all those standing. No burn marks or blood showed, but they screamed like their insides were ripped out. Falling over each other and yelling, they tripped and ran away panicked.

Chloe got herself up off the ground, not taking her eyes from Horace.

“It’s you.” She was afraid yet drawn to him.

“We can’t stay here like this. It’s too dangerous.”

To punctuate what he said, an arrow of flame hit the sidewalk next to them. It burst into pieces of red light and noise. Up in the sky, a bright purple meteorite hurled toward them.

Horace swung around and raised his sword. It crashed with thunder against another flaming arrow, knocking it aside where it exploded in deep red sparks. Immediately after it, another arrow came, then another. He kept whacking them away while the purple ball of energy catapulted closer and closer.

Chloe was suddenly up in the sky. She was in Horace’s arms, flying through the air, zipping away from the mountains, over the lights of the city. The purple meteorite changed its direction and followed after them. He was a creature like Horace, coming at them with a bow of blue hot flame in his hands, pulling back hard with another fiery arrow.

The burning shaft came right at them, but Horace dropped fast and the arrow missed, just barely, evaporating into a spray of ash. She buried her face into his chest and the overwhelming fear diminished. She gained enough courage to look out again. There were more purple meteorites chasing them, gaining on them. All the fear returned, only worse than before. One purple being went high, another low, and the third stayed on their tail. Three flaming arrows came at once, aimed to meet in the middle—right where she and Horace were flying. Chloe screamed and braced for the impact.

***

Horatius had barely made it into the sky. Those bullets could have just as easily gone into Chloe’s back. Not only had he failed to guard her, but he’d shown everyone in the heavens where he was, and that she was important to him. He’d ruined everything.

As soon as Satarel’s henchmen located him and sped toward his position, he snatched up Chloe and flew away like a bat out of hell. Now three of them were closing in on them. They were too close. He couldn’t out-fly them.

In the distance was a church steeple, and just before three arrows converged on him, he dropped in altitude and dove for the sanctuary. He sent word to the sentinels of the church that they were coming in—with Fallen on their heels.

The guards’ swords parted, opening a passageway for a brief moment. Horatius took control of Chloe’s quantum particles and skipped them past the roof into the church, leaving the Fallen outside for the sentinels.

Horatius slowed when they materialized on the other side of dome ceiling and sunk to the floor of the sanctuary, which was lit only by moonlight through stained glass windows. He opened his arms and let Chloe slide down onto her feet.

She whipped around to face him as soon as she got her balance.

“You’re you!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me? What just happened? That was incredible. You saved me! Again! You’re
huge.
Who was that chasing us? Could they have hurt you? How’d we get here?” She looked up at the ceiling. “How’d we
do
that?”

“Slow down. Are you okay?”

“Your voice! It’s amazing. It’s like we’re inside a kettledrum.” She inspected his face, his garment, then fixated on his wings. She lightly fluffed an edge. “Oh! Is it okay to touch them?”

“Are you hurt?” he asked. He turned her around as though to inspect her back to stop her from staring so intently at him.

She wouldn’t stay turned away and whirled back to face him. He ducked. He feigned to look down at the dark spots on her knees. They appeared to be scraped. Specks of different colors spotted her skin from the stained glass. He couldn’t tell in the dim light what was injury and what was shadow.

“No, no. I’m fine. That was incredible! We actually flew!”

“It helps at times.” Horatius swept his arms in an arc and the candelabras sputtered to life and cast a golden glow about the room. Her knees looked fine.

Chloe grinned at the candles then got serious. “Who were they? Why were they chasing us?”

He tried to think of a simple explanation. There wasn’t one. “It’s a long story.”

“Tell me. I want to know.” She contemplated the ceiling some more. “That was amazing. We were on one side, then the other. We didn’t even go
through
it. How did you
do
that? Could those arrows have hurt us? Are we safe here?”

Horatius mentally checked in with the sentinels a moment. “For now. We can stay awhile. They’ve suspended the security alarms for us.”

“What were you just doing? That looked cool. Are you communicating? I heard you before we came in. Who are you talking to?”

“Slow down. Please. Let me think a moment. I need to make sure everything is secure. Just because we’re in Sanctuary, it doesn’t mean I can be off guard. I’ve made some grave errors.”

“Okay. Okay. You do your…your…whatever it is you do, and I’ll just sit here and wait.” She scooted behind the wooden pew front into the first row and sat on the edge of her seat, watching him like he’d perform or something.

She is liking this far too much
.

“You know, you could have died out there. This is very serious.”

She waved him off. “Obviously no big deal for someone like you.” She grinned again. Much too enthusiastically.

“First I need to change back.”

She grinned even bigger.

He felt exposed with her watching him so intently. “Ah…”

Her face turned proper and knowing. “Of course. I’m sorry. You want some privacy.” She twisted away and folded her arms across the back of the pew. “I wish I could watch. I mean,” she threw in quickly, “I just want to see it again. It was so incredible back there when you started glowing.”

“All right. I'm finished. You can turn around.”

Her expression was totally new. Nothing would be the same again. He’d really changed everything.

A bottle of Evian was on the pulpit. He jumped to grab it. “Thank God. I need a drink.” He concentrated on the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The water churned and darkened to a deep, dry burgundy. He unscrewed the lid, took a deep whiff, then gulped. “Oh, that was a good year.” He savored the weight and viscosity of the wine then finished it, oblivious for a brief moment of the girl and everything around him. “
La vie est trop courte pour boire du mauvais vin.
”
When he reopened his eyes, she was staring at him like she had fallen in love.

“Oh. My. God. You just,” her voice went up into a shrill shriek, “turned water into wine!”

Maybe not just such a smart idea.

“How did you
do
that?” she said in her same shrill screech.

“Um, I can, ah, alter matter.”

“Oh. My. God. You are so cool! That was
French, right? Something about life and wine? How many languages do you
speak
?”

He wasn’t sure if he should say. After hesitating, he went ahead and answered. “All of them.”

She actually squealed and her hands shook. “Oh. My. God. You are just the most amazing, most brilliant creature I’ve ever met.” She beamed, not even attempting to rein in her admiration for him.

“We better have a talk,” he said.

She scooted over and patted the red bench pad, still grinning like a monkey.

When he sat down, she said in a whisper, “I cannot
believe
this. You’re like the coolest thing I’ve ever, ever, ever seen.”

What could he say? He’d never shown himself like this to a human. If Chloe knew what he was, she’d give him away. Safeguarding his secrets was the only defense against his father. But Satarel would specifically target her now that he knew she was tangled with Horatius. More than destroying Keiths and their descendants, Satarel wanted to destroy Horatius and anything he valued. What a mess!
How could I have been so careless?
He looked at her, grinning up at him, like it was a game. She was so vulnerable. She would need to know how to protect herself. He’d have to tell her his secrets.

“I need to tell you some things. Some very important, serious things.” He paused to give her a moment to prepare. “I am Nephilim.”

Her intoxicated grin did not change. “Is that somewhere in the Middle East?”

“No, that’s a people. A race of a certain type.” He took a deep breath. “I better start back in the beginning.” He pulled a Bible from the rack in the pew, opened it a few pages in, and tilted it toward the light. “I want you to read something.” He handed her the Bible and pointed in the middle of a page. “Genesis, chapter six. Start at the first verse there.”

“
When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown
.” Chloe’s eyes opened wide. “What does that mean? Your father is an angel?”

“Not anymore. He went with Shemhazi, who followed Lucifer when he led over two hundred Celestials to earth to take the women of their choosing. My mother was one of them, from a place near Egypt.”

“So, um, you’re like a billion years old?” It was hard for him to read Chloe’s face. Was it incredulity, fear, mockery?

“Not a billion.”

“And you’re…a…
demon
?”

“No!” He didn’t mean to yell. “No. I am not like my father.”

“Are you a god? ‘Heroes of old’ sounds like mythology.” She was smiling again, clearly missing the gravity of the situation.

“I am not a god either. But those who spread the stories of mythology based them on many of the Nephilim.”

“Which god are you?”

“I’m
not
a god. The stories grew out of things people didn’t understand.”

“But which one were you? Which stories did you inspire?”

“What does it matter? I am not the same anymore.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then tell me.”

He waited while he decided what he would say. “Horus. The hawk god. I don’t want to talk about it.” He hated to think of the time when he allowed humans to believe he was a god. It was part of what condemned him, what he was trying to undo.

“Were those demons chasing us?”

Horatius didn’t want to scare Chloe, but needed her to understand the danger. “They work with my father.”