CHAPTER 2
Luke stormed into the alley towards his young and irresponsible sister. She had left their house as soon as the sun set and Luke had spent a frustrating eleven hours scouring the small town with his Fae senses looking for any sign of her. However, Tabby was a smart girl. Whenever she left and they played this little game of hide and seek, she would mask her powers and her scent, making her nearly impossible for her to find. Luke never worried about her, though. At the age of thirteen, she was more powerful than anyone else her age.
He’d worried about her tonight.
He’d been across the other side of town searching for her when he sensed the Lamia demon. Knowing Tabby, he realised that wherever there was danger she was sure to be. He just hadn’t expected to find a knife wielding beauty defending her. He picked up his Akera, which he had converted into a sword, his weapon of choice, and slid it into the sword holster strapped to his back.
“Tabitha, hurry up,” he ordered his sister as he stared at the girl supporting his younger sister as she limped towards him.
“Who is this girl?” He pushed the question into Tabby’s mind.
“She’s Elli,” Tabby replied out loud. “She saved my life.”
“It wouldn’t have needed saving if you’d run when I told you to,” Elli said at the same time Luke said “She shouldn’t have had to if you’d stayed at home.”
“What were you doing in the alley anyway?” Tabby asked Elli, completely ignoring both of the statements.
A quick glance at Elli when she didn’t reply showed Luke that she had gone as white as a ghost, and was staring over his shoulder at the entry of the alley.
He looked behind him, but all he saw was the sun beginning to rise on the horizon. Elli kept walking forwards, half dragging Tabby in her haste, and practically dumped her onto Luke.
“I have to go,” she said, and rushed out of the alley in a blur of speed.
* * *
Even with the speed all Nephilim were born with, Elli didn’t make it back to the Nephilim village in time. She wasn’t even halfway there when the sun started to burn her face, neck and fingertips.
Because Nephilim were the children of fallen angels, they couldn’t go out in the sunlight. They couldn’t even try to. If they tried to leave a home or building during the day, they were zapped into unconsciousness by an invisible force around the building. Nephilim were taught at a young age that this was the stupidest thing to do, as it left you helpless and defenceless until the sun went down. If a Nephilim was already outside when the sun rose, they were flashed to the nearest building for the rest of the day. Even if they were stuck in the middle of the desert, poof! As soon as the sun rose they were suddenly in a building. No one actually knew what happened to a Nephilim in the sunlight because, well, they couldn’t even try to test it.
But Elli was Menyana, so instead of being flashed to safety by an unseen force, she was left out in the sun where she would burn to a crisp.
Hey, nobody said life was fair, did they?
Her blistering skin was irritating, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time she’d been caught out in the sun as a child. Her parents had found her the next morning huddling under a tree in their backyard, scorched and writhing in unimaginable pain.
So the pain she was suffering now was nothing more than a pin-prick. She knew it was going to get worse very quickly if she didn’t find shelter soon – which wasn’t easy, since the only land around Jamestown for miles was dirt and asphalt road with virtually no trees. As the sun rose higher, her powers waned, until she could barely hold herself up, let alone run as fast as she could with her Nephilim speed. She fell to her knees and winced at the friction it caused against her black jeans and her knees that had been burnt through the denim. By now there wasn’t a spot on her that hadn’t been burned. She blinked painfully – for her eyelids were scorched and her eyelashes had fallen off – as she collapsed onto her stomach. Elli didn’t move for the next few minutes, as helpless as a newborn baby, even when a large pair of black boots made its way closer to her and stopped right in front of her. She managed to shift her head a little to the side, pulling out some of her hair in the process, and saw a guy towering over her.
“Not looking too good there, are ya’?” the guy said with a smile on his face.
Elli wanted to swear at him and tell him to get lost, however all she could manage was a groan.
“I’ll take that as a no.” The guy crouched down right next to Elli and whispered in her ear, “Sorry, but this is going to hurt a bit,” right before he swiftly rolled her over onto her back and lifted her into his arms.
She didn’t know if she screamed into his ear or if she just imagined it in her weakened state, but she went limp in his arms before she knew the answer, thinking that nothing he could do to her could hurt more than the pain she was in from the sun.
* * *
Adam winced as the girl screamed into his sensitive ear. His brother Luke had called him half an hour ago to search for a girl he’d met while looking for Tabby. He’d mentioned something about sensing that she was a Nephilim, so Adam had set off towards the closest Nephilim village to Jamestown in search of the mysterious girl. When Adam had asked Luke why he wanted the girl found, he mentioned having a bad feeling about her, and wanted to learn more about her. Luke had sent a mental picture into Adams’ head so he knew what she looked like, which also made Adam suspect that Luke wanted the girl found for reasons other than a ‘bad feeling’. She was beautiful.
Adam hadn’t expected to find her in the middle of nowhere fried like an egg. Pieces of her hair fell out as he shifted her more comfortably in his arms. He nearly dropped her immediately; she was so hot she nearly burned through his clothes. He figured it was exposure to the sun that was making her burn so badly – almost like a vampire, which could be a possibility since Adam sensed something other than Nephilim within her – so he raced back into town as fast as he could, which was pretty fast considering he was carrying an unconscious female in his arms. But the run was made easier by the fact that he was Fae.
The moment Adam reached the shadows of the nearest house, the girl’s skin began rapidly healing right before his eyes. For the second time, he nearly dropped her; he’d never seen anybody heal that fast. Within minutes, her skin was as healthy looking as the image Luke had sent across to him, despite the fact that she stayed unconscious. Even her hair and eyelashes had grown back. There was absolutely no trace that she’d ever been on the brink of death due to the severe burns besides the scorch marks all over her clothes. He knew Nephilim were quick healers but burns like those should have taken hours to heal. Adam had the urge to shake the girl awake and demand that she tell him what she was, but knew that after the trauma she’d been through she wouldn’t be in any state of mind to answer his questions. So he took the girl to the only place he knew; the House of Fae or – as he liked to call it – Home.
