Eternity

Eternity

A Fallen Angel Novel

Heather Terrell

Dedication

 

For Jim, Jack, and Ben, who make
everything
possible

Epigraph

 

“The Elect One shall arise. . . .”

The Book of Enoch
51:1

Contents

Prologue

Michael and I stood hand in hand, the world around us nearly dark. No moon, no stars, no man-made light illuminated the night sky. It was me and Michael, alone in the blackness.

I knew we stood on the beach, even though I could see only the barest outline of the shore. I heard the crash of the waves before us, and I felt the rough, rocky sand under my bare feet.

I sensed that we were waiting. The air was heavy with our anticipation, and I felt the tension of Michael’s grip. What we were waiting for, I wasn’t sure.

A hint of light appeared on the horizon. The tiniest sliver of gold, yet it was enough to brighten the terrain. White-capped waves appeared before us, and steep cliffs took shape behind us. I could discern Michael’s pale blond hair, green eyes, and beautiful face. I saw now that we stood in a familiar cove. Ransom Beach.

Soon, the sun began its ascent in earnest. As if a lens had been focused, we saw fine details of the landscape, even the heather growing in the tiny niches of the cliffs. The world looked brighter, clearer. More perfect.

I knew then that we had been waiting for this precise moment. I turned to Michael, and we beamed at each other in joy and understanding.

Then somewhere, in the far, far distance, I heard the faint ringing of a bell. I tried to ignore it, but it grew louder and more persistent. Somehow, I knew that it was calling me back. Calling
us
back.

From his expression, I knew that Michael had heard the bell toll and comprehended its meaning as well. The smiles disappeared from both our faces. Neither of us wanted to go. Yet we knew we must. We were being summoned.

We tightened our grip on each other and closed our eyes.

And we ascended.

Chapter One

The end of time does not start off as, well, as apocalyptically as you might think.

The alarm went off at 6:45 like it did every school morning. As usual, I hit the snooze button once, then twice. I needed a little more sleep to banish that haunting dream of me and Michael standing on Ransom Beach. Finally, on the third irritating ring, I switched off the alarm.

I opened my eyes a crack.

Instead of facing Armageddon, I woke up in my bed at home as if it was a normal day. How had I gotten to Tillinghast, Maine, from Boston? My last memories were of Quincy Market and Michael, and, oh God, Ezekiel.

I pushed aside my heavy quilt and sheets, and lowered my feet to the cold wood floor. Shivering in the crisp fall morning, I walked over to my desk to grab my black bag, the one I took with me everywhere. Surely it contained some evidence of my trip to Boston, some explanation of how I got back from there.

I rifled through it but couldn’t locate a single thing proving I’d been to Boston or showing how I got from there to here. Not a train ticket stub, not a random coffee shop receipt, nothing with a Boston address on it. My bag contained only the usual assortment: books, scraps of notes, cell phone, and wallet.

Was the trip to Boston a dream? And if that was a dream, was all the stuff about the Nephilim and the Elect One a dream? Had I only imagined the flying and the blood? Was my relationship with Michael a fantasy too?

Still, I couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that the Boston trip was
not
a dream. Part of me longed to call Michael and ask him. But how could I do that? Would he think that his girlfriend had gone absolutely crazy? And that was assuming I actually
was
his girlfriend and I hadn’t dreamed that part up too. I couldn’t take the chance.

I decided to head downstairs to grab breakfast and talk with my mom. If I’d been in Boston with Michael yesterday, she would
definitely
bring it up. I would use her as my litmus test for what was real and what was not.

As I left the relative safety of my bedroom and stepped out into the hallway, I spotted a photo stuck in the corner of my mirror. I drew closer and realized that it was a picture of me and Michael from the fall dance. I sighed in relief. At least I hadn’t imagined my entire relationship with him.

But still, there was this whole Nephilim and Elect One business to sort out. Yes, I told myself, a brief chat with my mom was just the thing to sift through my confusion. Yet, as I placed my hand on the banister leading downstairs, I was suddenly certain that this wasn’t an ordinary day, that there would be no more ordinary days.

Chapter Two

My mom was acting perfectly normal. Almost too normal. Or maybe I was seeing her through the lens of my own uncertainty.

From across the kitchen counter, she asked in surprise, “Ellie, why are you still in your pajamas? You have to leave for school in five minutes.”

I glanced around the kitchen, which appeared exactly the same as always. My mom looked like she usually did too. There she stood, unflappably cheerful and unnaturally gorgeous. Dark, lustrous hair and perfect creamy skin, with only the very beginnings of wrinkles. Having such a beautiful mother was sometimes maddening.

Since I didn’t answer immediately—as I wasn’t sure what was safe to say—my mom walked over to me and felt my forehead. Once she was satisfied that I wasn’t feverish, she asked, “Dearest, is everything all right?”

My mom sounded normal; my parents always called me “dearest.” Unless they were upset with me, in which case they called me by my full name, the archaic-sounding Ellspeth, which I hated.

“I’m okay, Mom. I just woke up from a strange dream. That’s all.”

Very, very calmly, she asked, “What was the dream, dearest?”

“Nothing. It was only a dream. I better get ready.”

I walked back upstairs to my bedroom, grabbed some clothes, and then headed into the bathroom. I looked at my pale blue eyes in the mirror and brushed out my poker-straight black hair. No matter how weird I felt, no matter how changed I believed myself to be, I still looked like perfectly average Ellie, a regular teenage girl who loved reading and travel; had one really good friend, Ruth; and a new boyfriend, Michael. Yet, as I stared at myself in the mirror, I wondered how I was going to act normal, knowing what I knew. Or what I thought I knew.

Because I woke up remembering that Michael and I were
not
normal. We were anything but normal. Sure, when we met, on that first day of my junior year, it felt special, and not only because I was a junior girl and he was a senior guy. I thought that special feeling meant we were falling in love. Then, within weeks, I learned that we shared extraordinary powers that, even now, seemed incredible. Michael taught me that we could read others’ thoughts by touch, even by blood. And he showed me that we could fly. We didn’t know exactly what we were, only that we were together in our ignorance.

Michael and I had traveled to Boston to find out who, or what, we were. We learned that we were the long-awaited return of the Nephilim, the half humans and half angels described in Genesis. The Nephilim were prophesied to come at the end of time, to do what we didn’t yet know. And I was the Elect One, whatever that meant. To learn the truth, we’d had to kill Michael’s birth father, Ezekiel, who turned out to be not so nice.

Ezekiel. Even thinking about him made certain of his words echo in my head. I heard him tell me that my beautiful parents were two of the original fallen angels mentioned in Genesis. That they were banished to roam the earth forever because they’d dared to mate with humankind and create the new Nephilim race in defiance of God. That they were striving to regain grace and so had sacrificed their immortality and angelic powers to raise me as their daughter—even though I wasn’t their birth child—and to protect me until it was time for the end.

If it wasn’t all a dream . . . and I still wasn’t positive what was real and what was a dream. After all, my mom had made no mention of Boston.

I trudged downstairs, leery of what the school day could bring. “I’m ready to go, Mom.”

“Michael’s picking you up today, Ellie. Don’t you remember?”

“I’m not grounded anymore?”

“No, dearest. Your grounding was over this weekend.” She paused and then asked, “Are you sure that you’re all right?”

“I’m fine, Mom. I’ll just go wait for Michael.”

After I offered her a few more assurances, I stood by the front door for Michael. The sky started to drizzle, driving out all hopes of that crisp fall day I’d hoped for. Before I had the chance to lament the changeable weather too much—or address any of the troubling questions rumbling about in my head—I heard the crunch of car tires on gravel. My heart started racing in excitement and apprehension. Michael was here. What would I say to him?

After yelling out a final good-bye to my mom, I closed the front door behind me and walked toward his waiting car. He opened the car door for me from the inside, and I slid into his Prius. Finally, after buying myself a few seconds to compose myself by brushing the rainwater off my jacket and organizing my bag, I steeled myself and looked his way.

“How was your night?” he asked in his low, gravelly voice. No matter how many times I heard it, I always felt like melting. He leaned over to give me a kiss on the cheek.

“Fine,” I answered cautiously. “Yours?”

We made small talk about homework assignments, and I glanced over at him again. For the millionth time, I was struck by his looks. He wasn’t traditionally handsome. His hair was too blond and his eyes were too light a shade of green for that, although I thought that his tawny skin and tall, leanly muscular body made the combination arresting.

It was his smile that drew me in. I adored the way it brightened his otherwise serious face and the way it made his eyes crinkle. Most of all, I loved how his smile cut right through my attempts at a steely exterior. When he smiled at me, I knew he really saw
me
. Like no one else had done before.

Briefly, I smiled back at him, and in that moment, it didn’t matter whether the memories of Boston and our powers and our role in the end days were true. All that mattered was that we were together.

The tranquil moment didn’t last. Michael started the car, and “Cemeteries of London,” a Coldplay song, came on. He knew it was one of my favorites.

Over the song, he said, “Feels like London out today, doesn’t it?”

I froze. Had he said what I thought he had? We had been heading to London from Boston. Or was Michael’s reference to London a coincidence, simply explained by the song?

“So . . . ?” I dared to ask.

As he watched my expression, his smile softened knowingly. And I knew, with utter certainty, that Boston had not been a dream. All those memories were real. And more.