CHAPTER 1
“Well, hey there, gorgeous! Care to join me back at my place?”
Elli ignored the jeering and the cat-calls directed at her as she hurried down West Terrace, which was home to half of the bars in the town, with also a few warehouses pushed off to the side. Drunken men came out onto the street to stare at Elli, but she ignored them. As the daughter of Venus (not the Roman goddess) she was used to people staring at her beauty.
Elli was the daughter of a fallen angel named Duma, and a Nephilim named Venus. Venus was the offspring of a fallen angel named Anael and a human woman. Before he fell, Anael was the angel of passion, love and sexuality. Those traits had passed onto Venus, and she was the epitome of beautiful. She’d met Duma through a dream – dream walking was Duma’s power, for he used to be the angel of dreams – and they’d fallen in love straight away.
Elli had only spent the first fourteen years of her life with her parents before she was kidnapped by vampires. They’d somehow found out that she was Menyana – the child of a fallen angel and a Nephilim – and taken her from right under her parent’s noses. Menyana blood was supposedly the best kind there was, and that’s exactly what the bloodsuckers of the night had feasted on.
Nephilim were naturally fast healers, but because Elli was Menyana she was practically invincible – unless she was beheaded, which would basically kill anything – so every time she was nearly drained by the vampires, they would stop for a few minutes to let her heal and it would be like they’d never even started. Her father had eventually found Elli in her sleep and her parents had come to her rescue, but some of the vampires had escaped. Duma and Venus had decided it’d be safer for Elli if no one knew that she had a fallen angel father and a Nephilim mother, so they sent her away to a village where Nephilim banded together to protect themselves from the humans.
In the three years she’d stayed there, no one had even come close to guessing who her parents were. She visited their dreams every night to stay in touch, and they were always warning her to make sure no-one found out what she was. To keep safe, she diluted her sense of power to make others think she was normal, she never absorbed another Nephilim’s powers and she never gave someone else her powers.
Every Nephilim had their own power which most inherited from their angelic parent, but because Elli was Menyana, she was a special case. She’d inherited her beauty from her mother and the dream walking from her father and she guessed all the other powers were just a bonus, so too was her blonde hair that was currently in a braid that went down to the middle of her back that she got from Venus. The only people who knew about the powers were Elli’s parents and her two best friends, Dana and Aiden, but they never guessed that she was Menyana; they just thought she was special.
Dana was the daughter of the fallen angel of death, Azrael. Her power was the ability to walk through solid objects without being harmed. Her shoulder length hair was naturally black, and so were her fingernails, meaning she never had to paint them. She dressed all in black like she was attending a funeral everyday, but no one ever commented or made a snide remark. The daughter of Death was just as frightening as the fallen angel himself.
Aiden was the son of Sorath, the angel of the sun. He was basically the complete opposite of Dana. He liked to dress in bright clothes and chose to wear a different colour shirt everyday – except red; because it was the colour of anger. His hair was streaked with every colour of the rainbow – minus red – but it didn’t clash with his golden eyes that lit up like the sun every time Dana was around. He’d had a huge crush on her since before Elli had come along but Dana had never realised a thing.
Now, walking down the street by herself made Elli’s heart hurt. She really wished she could bring Dana and Aiden along, but knew that, despite being the spawn of Death, Dana didn’t know anything about fighting, and Aiden was too kind-hearted to see anybody harmed. So every night just before dawn – because it was the only time all the Nephilim were asleep – Elli would sneak away from the village to try and kill as many demons as she could before they killed any innocent humans, which she really thought was an oxymoron – nobody was truly innocent.
Tonight, she finally had a lead on the vampire who had organised her kidnapping those few years ago.
She’d been focusing so hard on trying to find the great vampire Requiem before she fell asleep she’d entered the dreams of Zachriel, a vampire and Requiem’s right-hand man – she couldn’t enter the dreams of Requiem himself because he was too powerful. She used a lot of persuasion (aka left hooks and right hooks to his face) to get Zachriel to admit he saw Requiem, and then a few more punches to tell her where.
That’s how, at four o’clock in the morning, Elli was walking down the streets of Jamestown, one hundred miles away from the Nephilim village. She turned down a dark alley just off West Terrace where she’d told Zachriel to meet her, then pulled out a knife from the inside of her jacket. She held it in her left hand, which, like her right, was covered with a fingerless black leather glove – fingerless to make knife-wielding easy and black leather ‘cause let’s face it, black leather is awesome. All Nephilim were born with a tattoo on their right palm called the Eranyé. It was a large symbol that started at the base of the thumb and travelled anti-clockwise all the way around the hand, past the fingers and kept twirling, getting smaller and smaller into the centre of the palm. The easiest way to tell that Elli was Menyana was by the Eranyé tattoo on her left palm, so she kept both hands covered 24/7 as to not raise suspicion. Knowing Elli’s dangerous personality like most people did, nobody ever questioned why she did it.
She leaned with her back against a dirty wall for over half an hour before a shadow appeared at the entry of the alley.
Elli immediately went on alert as the shadow was too thin and short to be Zachriel. She caught a glimpse of long blonde hair swaying in the breeze. The shadow approached the space where Elli was standing, and stopped right in front of her. She felt warm breath on her face, blowing on her fringe and smelt flowers.
Elli strengthened her powers so she could use the night vision all Nephilim had. She looked down and saw a young girl who couldn’t be any older than ten or eleven with strawberry blonde hair that went all the way down to her hips. Her blue eyes startled Elli, as they looked like they held more knowledge than a girl her age should hold.
“Are you lost?” Elli said, trying to use a calm voice so not to startle the girl.
“Pfft. I’m never lost,” the girl said as flippantly as a snarky teenager would. As she spoke, she flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder, revealing a pointed ear.
Elli tried to step back, only to find she was still pressed up against the dirty wall – which had better not stain her jacket.
“What are you?” she asked the girl. To her relief, her voice didn’t waver.
The girl peered up at Elli and stared into her eyes. “I’m Fae.”
“Fae?” asked Elli. “That’s such a pretty name.” Realising that she still held a knife in her right hand, Elli quickly shoved it back into her jacket. This girl didn’t seem to be a threat.
“No, you numbat! I’m a Faerie. Commonly known as Fae. My name is actually Tabitha, but you can call me Tabby, everybody else does.”
Elli was still shocked at being called a numbat. No one had called her that since she was a little girl. She stared at Tabby’s pointed ears. She’d never seen a Faerie before, didn’t even believe they were real.
“What are you doing here?” Elli asked. A girl her age shouldn’t be out without parents.
“I heard there was a Lamia on the loose. I get in good with my brothers if I kill a powerful demon and the children-eating Lamia should certainly do the trick.” Tabby pulled a tiny silver pocket knife from the back pocket of her jeans. “This here is called the Akera. It comes from a set of eight knives that can kill a demon.”
Elli knew this already, as she’d just tucked her own Akera back into her jacket. Her mother and father had given it to her the day she’d been forced to leave them.
“How did you get yours?” Elli wondered aloud.
“Whoa. You sure do ask a lot of questions for someone who looks like they kick demon butt all the time. You didn’t even know I was Fae! I got mine as a present from my older brother Luke for my twelfth birthday. Dad was supposed to give it to me but he died. And what do you mean where did I get mine? Do you have one as well?”
Elli was trying to process how Tabby could talk so much and go from one topic to another when she heard a snarling sound coming from the back of the alley.
Tabby heard it too, and with a flick of her wrist the knife slid out of its silver sheath.
“Can you see anything with your Nephilim sight?”
Elli gasped. “How did you know about that?”
Tabby looked at her like she was an idiot. “Fae senses. Duh!”
Elli was worried. If Tabby could sense that she was Nephilim, could she also tell that she was Menyana? What other powers did Tabby have that could put Elli’s life in danger?
At the end of the alley, Elli saw what had to be the most gruesome looking sight she’d ever seen. Hiding half behind a dumpster was a Lamia demon. Her lime green hair had flecks of red blood in it and went all the way down to the lower half of her body. She didn’t have legs, instead she slithered closer to Elli and Tabby on a scaly green tail like a snakes. It stretched behind her for nearly a metre and was as thick as Elli’s muscled thigh, but it gradually got smaller towards to tip. Her talons were red with fresh blood – probably because she was holding the body of a dead baby boy.
Elli quickly whispered to Tabby what she saw.
“Her talons and the tip of her tail are poisonous,” Tabby said, sounding like she was reciting from a textbook. “One dose of a Lamia demon’s poison and you’re dead in a matter of minutes.”
“Run!” Elli ordered Tabby, but Tabby didn’t move an inch.
In a sudden flash of movement, the Lamia was inches away from Tabby’s face, reaching for her with her talons. Elli quickly shoved her out of reach behind a dumpster, leaving her to face the Lamia demon herself. With a quick lunge, Elli slashed her knife at the demon; making a deep cut in its face and making it bleed its green blood that spurted into Elli’s hair and on her jacket. The demon shrieked in pain, lashing out with its claws, and Elli covered her ears with her hands, but not before a claw swiped her left hand and cut into the leather, leaving a gaping hole.
Tabby rushed out from behind the dumpster with a war-cry, brandishing her knife at the Lamia Demon. Before she could get close enough to cut it, the demon flicked its tail out and caught Tabby in the stomach. She was flung into the wall where she landed with a thud and ‘oomph’.
“Are you alright?” Elli asked, not daring to take her eyes off of the demon to look and see herself.
“I’m fine,” Tabby replied. “But I think I twisted my ankle when I landed.”
This made the Lamia demon’s head whip towards where Tabby was leaning in a sitting position against the wall. It slithered towards her, snarling with its’ claws extended. Elli had taken two steps towards the demon, knife at the ready, when a sword went sailing past her head. The Lamia demon didn’t even have time to scream as its’ neck was cleanly sliced open. Its’ head fell off and went rolling towards the back of the alley. The only sign that it stopped was the ‘thump’ it made as it hit something solid.
Elli rushed over to Tabby who had managed to stand, but was favouring her left leg. There was a hole in the right knee of her jeans but Elli couldn’t make out any wound. They stood in shocked silence staring at the body of the dead demon for a total of four seconds before a male voice sliced through the air, much like the sword had.
“Tabitha! What are you doing out? I told you to stay home! You made me throw my sword! You know how I hate doing that!”
Tabby slowly turned towards the entrance of the alley from where the very angry male voice had come. A red blush crept its way up her neck until it stained her cheeks, making her look much younger. When she’d completed the 180 turn, she held up a hand in greeting and gave a small smile that looked like she was trying to be the same confident Tabby she’d been when she’d seen Elli. “Hey, Luke,” she said.
