The Fallen 4 (36 page)

The way the trolls were mounted on the fence, it looked as though they were just hanging out in the yard. It was enough to convince any lesser beastie that this house belonged to the trolls, and to stay away.

Vilma walked the perimeter to make sure that the house was still secure. Most of the windows had been boarded up, and things still looked pretty sturdy. She arrived back at the
screen door and tried to turn the knob, but it was locked.

“Good girl,” she muttered to herself before knocking.

She had drilled this—and many other precautions—into the minds of her cousins.

The door opened quickly.

“Hurry up inside,” Aunt Edna commanded. “It’s nearly dark enough for trouble to come around.”

Vilma did as she was told, and the older woman closed the door behind her, making sure that all the locks were in place.

Edna turned, and the two women said nothing as they looked at one another, but Vilma could see a discomfort in her aunt’s eyes. Edna was like a mother to her, and Vilma’s heart ached at the thought that the woman might now be afraid of her.

“Everything all right outside?” Edna asked.

“Yeah,” Vilma said. “Everything’s fine.”

After killing the trolls when she’d first arrived, Vilma had then gathered Aaron in her arms, only to find her aunt standing in the doorway.

Vilma had still been wearing her Nephilim appearance, wings and sword of fire in hand. She had actually considered sending the wings and weapon away, to try to convince the woman that it had all been a trick of the darkness.

But she just hadn’t had the strength of mind to do it. Instead Vilma had hoped that she had been right to come to this place, and that her family would keep her safe.

She had been right.

Edna had set up the guest room for the injured Aaron and had helped to clean and bandage his horrible wound. It wasn’t till things had settled—as much as that was even possible these days—that Aunt Edna had asked for some kind of explanation.

Considering what she’d had to say, Aunt Edna and Uncle Frank had taken the news quite well. But they were very religious, and saw what was happening in the world as God’s way of demonstrating that He wasn’t the least bit happy by human behavior.

The concept of the Nephilim didn’t seem all that far-fetched to them, especially given that trolls now prowled their backyard.

Vilma hadn’t gone into detail but had explained that she and Aaron and their friends were trying to protect humanity from the darkness. Her aunt and uncle had seemed to accept all this, but then Edna had asked Vilma to show Frank her angelic guise.

That had been the first time Vilma had seen this look of apprehension in her aunt’s eyes.

“Are you…” Vilma hesitated now. “Are you afraid of me?”

Aunt Edna didn’t answer, going to the sink and washing her hands. She turned off the water, took a hand towel from the front of the stove, and started to dry her hands. It was if she hadn’t heard the question.

“Aunt Edna?” Vilma asked again.

The woman went to the freezer and removed a bag of coffee.

“I’m going to make a pot,” she said. “Want some?”

Vilma felt her heart begin to crumble. Was the question so hard to answer? The longer it took for her aunt to reply, the more obvious the answer was.

Edna placed the bag of coffee on the counter and turned to face her niece.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked. “That you terrify us? You don’t. But the idea of what you represent, of what that means in regard to God, and what’s happening in the world—that scares us quite a bit,” she admitted.

Aunt Edna silently cried as she began to make the coffee.

Vilma didn’t know how to respond.

“I’m trying to make the world right again,” Vilma started to explain. “This is why I’m here—why God put us here. Aaron and I—”

“Aaron is very sick,” her aunt interrupted, scooping coffee from the bag. “I’m not even sure if he’s going to—”

“He’ll be all right,” Vilma said, mustering her confidence. “He just needs to rest and heal.”

“I changed his bandage not too long ago,” Edna said, filling the carafe with water and then carefully pouring it into the machine. “The wound is infected.”

“We’ll just keep it clean and hope for the best,” Vilma said.

“And what if things don’t work out?” Edna asked as she flipped the switch on the coffeemaker. “What if he dies?”

Vilma had never let her mind go there. When it started
to, she quickly pushed the bad thoughts away and focused on some other responsibility.

“He won’t.”

“But what if he does? What about your plans then?” Edna asked.

Vilma did not want to think about a world without Aaron, but she had to consider it.

“We’ll go on without him,” Vilma said, realizing that there was no choice. “We were put here to save the world, and with or without Aaron, the Nephilim will get the job done.”

The coffee machine hissed and gurgled as it brewed.

Aunt Edna looked across the kitchen to the boarded-up window over the sink. “I keep thinking that maybe this is just a horrible nightmare, and that I’ll be waking up soon.” She looked to Vilma. “Do you ever think like that?”

“I used to,” Vilma said. “But then I came to terms with the fact that I had changed, and that the whole world had changed too.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it,” Aunt Edna said, going to the drying rack by the sink and taking a mug from it. “Or if I want to, really.”

She paused, pouring herself a steaming cup of coffee and blowing on the scalding fluid before taking a sip.

“Do you think you can change the world?” Aunt Edna asked as she sat down at the kitchen table. “Do you and your
angel friends, your Nephilim, really think you’re strong enough to do that?”

Vilma came to the table and sat next to her aunt. “We may be down,” she said, taking her aunt’s hand in hers, “but we’re far from out.”

Her aunt squeezed back lovingly. “I could never be afraid of someone who I love so much,” Edna said.

Later that night the family spent some time together, playing a game of Clue by lantern light. The electricity had gone out again. It seemed to be happening more frequently, and lasting longer each time. Vilma knew that there was going to be a time in the very near future when the power, like the sun, would be out for good.

Even as they played their game, enjoying each other’s company, Vilma listened to the night outside for any signs of danger. But it seemed the scarecrows were doing their job.

After Uncle Frank solved the crime, Vilma’s cousins wanted a second game, but Edna proclaimed that it was time for sleep. Vilma helped Nicole and Michael get ready for bed, tucked them in, and went over the plans in case something should get into the house during the night.

They knew to go down to the cellar and hide until it was safe.

With the house quiet Vilma went to sit with Aaron. She had set up an air mattress in the guest room, on the floor beside where Aaron lay.

Sitting by his side, she watched him breathe. His skin
was still deathly pale, and her aunt had been right about the wound. It looked an angry red and was seeping a thick green-tinged fluid. Vilma again considered bringing him to a hospital, but she didn’t want to risk exposure.

And besides, what doctors would know how to care for an injured Nephilim?

No, she decided. For now Aaron was fine here, with her and her family. They would take care of him, and if there came a time when they couldn’t anymore…

She would cross that bridge when she came to it.

Vilma wrapped her fingers around his hand and gave it a loving squeeze.

“Hey,” she said to him. “How are you doing?”

She waited a moment for a response. Every night she talked to him, hoping for some sort of reaction, but she had yet to get one.

“Things here are as good as can be expected,” she said, running her thumb along the knuckles of his limp hand. “It’s still pretty bad out there, and it seems to be getting worse. No pressure, but I sure hope that you’re planning on waking up soon. I’d hate to be facing off against this business without you.”

Those last words hit her hard, and she felt a lump form in her throat and her eyes fill with tears.
What if he doesn’t get better? What if—Heaven forbid—Aaron were to die?
What would that mean for her, the Nephilim… the world?

Not only did it scare her to think that she might be forced
to lead what remained of the Nephilim against the rising tide of evil, but just the idea of being without Aaron shattered her heart into a million jagged pieces.

Vilma leaned forward and brought her lips down to his.
Maybe it will be like Sleeping Beauty
, she thought, kissing him tenderly, but there was no magick, other than the love that she felt for him.

That had to count for something.

She sat back on the bed beside him, watching him sleep and wondering where he might be. Vilma started to dose off, and was considering calling it a night, when she heard something.

The noise came from somewhere outside the room. She listened, craning her head, waiting to hear it again. It was a strange whirring sound, like moving parts of a machine.

Leaving the edge of Aaron’s bed, she wondered if one of her cousins was up, playing with one of their toys. It wouldn’t be the first time. She peered out into the hall, eyes adjusting to the dark.

She almost screamed as a tall figure darted into Michael’s room.

Vilma physically reacted, her Nephilim nature roused by the potential for danger. She sprinted down the hallway, a weapon emerging in her hand.

She flung open the door, the light of her sword illuminating the darkness. Instead of one figure in Michael’s room, there were three. And they surrounded the boy, who remained blissfully asleep.

The intruders turned their stares to Vilma as she entered. She was startled by their strange appearance. They wore long trench coats, and their short hair was slicked back. Covering their eyes were odd circular goggles.

Vilma cried out Michael’s name to try to wake him, but he remained fast asleep as she rushed with her sword of fire.

One of the three drew a weapon from inside his coat, and Vilma aimed her blade for the weapon holder’s wrist, but the mysterious figure seemed to disappear. Her blade passed through the air and bit into the wooden floor.

Her target was suddenly on her other side. Before she could follow through with her weapon, Vilma was struck in the chest by what appeared to be a blue bolt of lightning. It pushed her violently back into her cousin’s dresser.

Vilma slumped to the floor, head bobbing as she slipped in and out of consciousness. She painfully fought to lift her head. One of the figures loomed over Michael’s bed, shining a strange, pulsing light into his face.

Michael remained fast asleep through it all.

“This is not the one,” the invader said flatly, turning his goggled eyes to his associates. “There is no sign of angelic dormancy.”

Vilma pulled herself together and surged up from the ground with a roar, her powerful wings propelling her across the room before the intruders had the chance to harm the boy.

Her previous attacker attempted to take her out again, but
Vilma was ready and dipped beneath the surge of crackling blue lightning. Vilma summoned another blade of heavenly fire and this time cut her foe’s hand from his wrist.

As the hand thumped to the floor, the other two intruders approached from either side of her. Her eye scanned for weapons, but they didn’t appear to have any.

Looks could be deceiving.

There was a rapid rush of air as huge wings erupted from their backs. But these weren’t wings of bone, flesh, and feathers. These were wings of metal. Vilma heard the click and whir of internal mechanisms as the wings flexed.

It was the sound that had originally brought her out into the hall.

“What are you?” she asked.

Neither answered her question. Instead one of the invaders extended his metal wings with a loud snap, and metal feathers flew toward her like throwing knives.

Vilma reacted quickly, knocking many of the feathers from their targeted path, but she wasn’t fast enough to catch all of them.

The projectiles whizzed toward her, and their razor-sharp edges sliced through her clothes and flesh. One buried itself in the meat of her thigh.

Vilma hissed in pain and ripped the metal feather from her leg. The injured intruder had risen from where he’d knelt, clutching his wrist, and the three invaders now encircled her, their wings of metal forming a kind of cage.

“Stand down,” one commanded in a voice as mechanical as his wings, but Vilma would hear none of it. She had a household to protect. Twin swords appeared in her grasp and she roared as loudly as she could, taking to the air in the confined space to try to escape the invaders.

One of Vilma’s swords sliced across a metallic wing. Sparks flew as she dove above their heads. She landed just before the doorway, but suddenly her eyesight blurred and she could hardly stand. Even flapping her wings had become difficult, and she leaned heavily upon the door frame, and then stumbled backward with a pathetic moan.

Were the feathers coated in poison?

Vilma could hear the mechanized whir as her attackers drew closer. She had to do something, anything, but it was getting harder and harder to remain on her feet.

On all fours she crawled across the hall, horrified as more of the mechanical angels emerged from the kitchen and Nicole’s room.

“No,” Vilma tried to scream. A sword… she needed a sword, but the thought wouldn’t come. The fire just fizzled in her grasp.

The sounds of mechanics and heavy footsteps on the wooden floor grew louder behind her, and she was hauled up from the floor by her arms. Vilma struggled, trying to use her wings to bat away her captors, but the beings did not respond, as if the connection between their bodies and their brains had been cut.

The mechanical angels spun her around and dragged her
toward the guest room, where Aaron lay unconscious. Her heart beat rapidly as they dropped her numb body to the floor before his bed.