Chapter Two

Nathaniel was reeling. There wasn’t a way to describe how disconnected he was from himself, but descriptions weren’t necessary when the glazed over look in his eyes said it all. After his unexpected, not-so-chance meeting with an angel in Highgate Cemetery who called herself “Aria,” it was all Nathaniel could do to force one foot in front of the other and walk forward. Following the paved Oxford road that would lead him to his uncle’s flat, he told himself in his mind to breathe.

This is normal, he said. You shouldn’t be panicked by this. After all, you are half-angel yourself.

Nathaniel’s thoughts did not reassure him. Nothing could take away from the sobering awe he had felt in Aria’s presence. Nothing could deter him from the realization he had just made about how much farther the boundary lines of this battle extended than he had let himself believe.

She’s on your side, Nathaniel told himself as his memory of Aria’s eyes burned into him. Somehow he had a hard time believing that. Not because he suspected the angel to be someone other than she claimed, something other than good, but because he still didn’t know where he fell on that spectrum. Nathaniel didn’t know where any of them did.

Nathaniel shook his head as if to shake away his fear. He had to stop thinking like this. He had to stop thinking period, because none of it was doing him any good. The only thing he needed to do right now was find Caleb. Everything else could sort itself out later.

Caleb Holcomb was not Nathaniel’s brother by blood. He was his brother by something stronger, something deeper, something more sustainable through any trial or test of fire. Caleb Holcomb was his brother by covenant. And that was a thing that neither life nor death could stand against. Maybe to some, such a covenant could be abused, but to Nathaniel and Caleb it was marked on them. It wasn’t just a promise they had made; it was an identity they wore.

Brothers live and die together.
Brothers fight side by side.
Brothers never leave their own behind.
Brothers lay down their lives.

That was the code of the Resitore, the brotherhood that Nathaniel and Caleb had both sworn themselves to. The brotherhood Nathaniel could no longer trust.

With all that had just happened in Woodland Park, Nathaniel wasn’t sure what he could trust anymore. He wasn’t even sure if he could trust himself. But there was one thing he knew: He could trust Caleb.

After their leader, Seth, had threatened him and Ethan had burned him and the newest recruit to the London faction of the Resitore, Justin…well, Nathaniel knew nothing about Justin yet. But that didn’t make him any less suspicious of the lanky, dark-haired boy with the wire-rimmed glasses and the 185 IQ.

Malachi, the ancient of the ancients in the world of the Nephilim, had sent Nathaniel to Woodland Park. He was the one who had instigated this madness and now was the one who was furious over it. The hypocrisy angered Nathaniel. A great many things angered Nathaniel right now. That was why he had to find Caleb, so he wouldn’t do something in his anger that he would later regret. Everything around him could crumble and fall, but Nathaniel knew one thing for sure: Caleb would never fail him. As rash and impetuous as the boy could be sometimes, Nathaniel trusted him with his life. And that was not an easy claim for this Naphil to make.

As Nathaniel made his way toward the flat that his uncle owned (which he and Caleb lived in while they studied at Oxford) he found his brother already making his way toward him with intent.

Caleb had discerned his presence. Nathaniel didn’t doubt that the boy had felt it the moment he returned to London. Caleb had always had an abnormal ability to discern his location that way. It was one of the particular abilities he carried more powerfully than the others did. Most of the Nephilim had an extraordinarily heightened discernment, which would channel in each of them into different things. But none of them could operate like their own personal SONAR quite like Caleb could.

Nathaniel didn’t have time to speak a word. Embracing him on sight, Caleb exclaimed, “Nathaniel!” then he pulled back a little and asked him, “What are you doing here?” The way he said it, it was like he hadn’t expected Nathaniel to show up.

Nathaniel was confused. Caleb looked around them to see if they were noticed, which was a ridiculous action in itself. These two were always noticed. No human could carry the grace and the beauty that the Nephilim did, but the meandering tourists and Londoners around them didn’t understand that. That was why they gaped when the Nephilim came into their presence. That was why Nathaniel and Caleb had to be more careful than this.

Clearly, they were not safe in speaking at this location. Caleb motioned with his head for Nathaniel to follow him and the two of them made their way onto the almost-deserted Oxford campus.

Once they were out of earshot of any passersby, Nathaniel told him, “I was ordered back here by Seth.”

Caleb had a worried look on his face. “This is bad, Nate.”

“What are you talking about?” Nathaniel asked him.

The look on Caleb’s face did nothing to reassure Nathaniel. “Justin convinced Seth that you’ve gone rogue,” he told him.

“What?!” Nathaniel exclaimed.

Caleb winced and told him, “It gets worse.”

Nathaniel tried to brace himself.

“Seth lost it, Nate. I mean, he lost it! He completely snapped when you didn’t come back, and he let Justin convince him that you were defying his orders. I don’t know where he went, but my bet is he went after Malachi.”

Nathaniel stared at Caleb in shock “That’s insane,” he said.

Caleb shook his head, “No joke. Honestly, Nate, I’ve never seen him like this. I’m legitimately worried about what he might do.”

Nathaniel tried to grasp in his mind what all of this meant, and as he reached for an answer or some sort of understand, all he could think of were Aria’s words to him: Do not wait for Seth to lead you in this. His interests are not your own.

What did she mean by that? Did she know this was going to happen? So far she had all but claimed to be the driving force behind every chance encounter he’d had, everything that had happened in Woodland Park, everything that was happening to all of them right now. But could an angel really have that much power? Could anything?

Nathaniel wanted to tell Caleb about seeing Aria, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Something inside of him said not to. She didn’t outright say that he couldn’t tell anyone about their meeting; it was more an understanding that had come over him as he stood in her presence. Somehow he just knew it wasn’t safe to mention it yet. But even given that, something still felt off about all of it. Nathaniel didn’t know what to trust aside from the terrified boy in front of him.

“We have to find Ethan and Justin,” Caleb insisted. “They have to know they were wrong about you. It’s the only way we can get Seth back. If we’re not together on this, we’re all as good as dead.

Nathaniel nodded in agreement, not because he wanted to agree with a thing like that, but because it was the truth. In spite of this, though, he was thankful that Caleb was so preoccupied in his concern about Seth that he didn’t see through what Nathaniel was keeping from him about his encounter with Aria, or even that he was keeping anything from him at all; which was strange for the boy. Normally Caleb could see anything he was withholding, which showed Nathaniel how much stress he was under right now.

“Was it really that bad when you saw him last?” Nathaniel asked him of Seth.

Caleb winced and shook his head, “So much worse,” he said.

Nathaniel frowned.

Turning a corner behind an unfrequented building on the campus at Oxford, he and Caleb were brought to an unexpected halt when they came face to face with Justin, the newest recruit to their faction of the Resitore. The sight of him startled Nathaniel and Caleb both, but neither showed their reaction.

Justin stood waiting for them with his arms folded. “Tell me, Nathaniel,” he said as they approached him, “are you completely out of your mind or do have a purpose to this madness?”

Though he was surprised by Justin’s blatant rudeness, Nathaniel wasn’t intimidated. Quite the opposite, actually. “My purpose does not concern you,” he told him simply.

Justin didn’t like that.

Getting right up in Nathaniel’s face, he glared into him with about as little intimidation as he’d ever shown. Apparently this was what Caleb was talking about when he told him what Justin was really like. Funny that he should wait until now to show his true colors.

“Hey,” Caleb said, stepping in and putting a hand on Justin’s chest in an attempt to keep things from getting physical. “Watch it.”

Nathaniel didn’t break from Justin’s eyes. “Give me a reason,” he dared him. “That’s all I need.”

Caleb gave his brother a look. “Come on, Nate,” he said. “I’d like to hit him too, but that’s not the way this is gonna go down.”

Suddenly, there was another that dropped from the roof of the building, landing firmly on his feet as he crouched to the ground; then he slowly righted himself and looked at them. It was Ethan…the one who had turned Nathaniel in.

Nathaniel was fuming as he stared down him down, and Ethan wasn’t shy in meeting his glare. The four of them stood off in silence, their tension strong and their anger well-evident, but before any could make a move they all knew would end badly, they simultaneously looked up to the figure that approached them.

Enter their fearless leader.

Caleb, Justin and Ethan immediately stepped back when they saw him, but Nathaniel stood unmoving, ready to match Seth at whatever he pulled. He knew he couldn’t show any weakness right now, that he couldn’t let himself be moved…but he also couldn’t have braced himself for what happened next.

Seth didn’t say a word to him. Instead, he hauled off and backhanded him across the face, hard enough that he sent him to his knees.

Nathaniel caught himself, his palms pressed into the cold hard ground; then he looked up at him, shocked.

The others were speechless as well, gaping at this that had never happened before. Seth had never hit any of them.

Grabbing Nathaniel by the collar of his shirt, Seth screamed into his face, “Do you have any idea what you have done?!”

He threw Nathaniel again to the ground, but Nathaniel didn’t fight it, despite that he easily could have. He was too stunned to respond or to even resist gravity at the moment. All he could do was stare at Seth in awe, not believing the intensity of the fear behind his eyes.

Caleb was the first one brave enough to step up. “Seth, what happened?” he asked.

Their leader flashed his eyes toward him fiercely and Caleb was afraid. He stepped back instinctively in a more submissive way than Nathaniel had ever seen of his youngest brother.

Seth ignored Caleb and turned back to Nathaniel, who was still kneeling on the ground. “Do you even dare to explain yourself?” he challenged.

Nathaniel was quiet for a long time, and he could tell that Caleb and the others were holding their breath.

Finally he told him, “No.”

Seth was so enraged he was shaking. “Why did you come back here?”

Nathaniel thought better of telling him that he’d returned only to demand that Seth let him go back to Colorado. “You ordered me back here,” he reminded him.

Seth scoffed at him in disgust. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that? That you’re suddenly acting in obedience?”

Nathaniel was worried now. He eyed Seth curiously and glanced up toward Caleb as if to ask what was wrong with him. “I’m here, Seth,” Nathaniel told him carefully, trying whatever he could to calm him. “And I am at your charge. Tell me what you want me to do.”

Caleb was still holding his breath, and neither he nor Ethan had moved a muscle. Justin had, though not much; just enough to grin in approval as he watched the fight unfold.

Seth took a long time in answering him. His eyes bore into Nathaniel’s intently, and Nathaniel could see it in him that he didn’t know what to do. Seth was masking his uncertainty with anger, when the truth was that he had never been so shaken.

It didn’t add up. Nathaniel knew Seth had every right to be upset with him for defying his orders and breaking the rules he had vowed not to break, but the measure to which he was going off the deep end did not make sense.

“We are not safe in speaking here,” Seth told him. “We reconvene tonight.”

Without another word, he turned and walked away from them, leaving Nathaniel and Caleb looking at each other, both of them disturbed.

Justin and Ethan left after him, but not before giving Nathaniel glares of intense disapproval.

And then Caleb and Nathaniel were alone.

“You okay?” Caleb asked him once the others were gone.

Nathaniel shook his head. “You weren’t kidding,” he said. “He really has lost it.”

“What should we do?” Caleb asked.

Nathaniel dropped his head and furrowed his brow. “I don’t know.”

. . . . .

To say that Seth was upset would be a drastic understatement. What he was moved beyond upset, beyond furious, beyond anything there were human or inhuman words to describe. He could feel his blood burning in his face and his whole body quavered as he moved mechanically forward. But as soon as he was out of eyeshot of the others, he stopped beside a stone archway on the campus, resting his hand on the side of it.

Hanging his head, he envisioned the look on Nathaniel’s face when he’d hit him, feeling the pain of the blow even more deeply than he had. And then another face came to his mind:

Rachel’s.

Seth’s hand trembled as he held his eyes closed, as the image of the memory lingered in his mind.

“I promise you Rachel,” he remembered himself telling her. “I promise you on my life, I will always protect your son.”

With a bitter taste in his mouth, Seth looked up from the stone wall his hand was still pressed into. “I don’t know what to do, Rachel,” he spoke aloud in a voice strained with guilt. “I don’t know what to do…”

. . . . .

Nathaniel had to separate himself from all the chaos around him. Everything was moving too fast, too uncontrollably and with no seeming pattern of predictability. Everything was going insane. And as much as Nathaniel may have been able to cope with these sorts of situations in the past, he wasn’t like he was before. That was why he went to the Carfax Tower that night, to separate himself from all the madness and try and sort through everything that had happened. He had to determine what he was going to do, and he couldn’t do that when he was surrounded by a pack of rabid Nephilim who all had very strong opinions on what course of action he should take; Nephilim who wanted to protect him and wanted to protect the brotherhood, whose intentions were good, but who didn’t know the entire story.

That was a dangerous place to be. Nathaniel understood that, but they didn’t; because they hadn’t seen what he had seen. And at this point, they didn’t trust him enough to take his word for it. Not when what they “knew” and were so sure of was so solidly set in their minds. Unmovable, really…which put them all in danger in one way or another.

In some circumstances, that kind of assurance and stubbornness could be a good thing. In this one, it was deadly.

Looking out over the fog-laced city lights, Nathaniel thought on everything that Aria had told him. He was fondling the key she had given him as her words rang through his mind, the words that explicitly told him he had to go back to the very place he had been ordered away from. To do a thing like that would go against everything Nathaniel was; he was fully aware of that. Thus the inner turmoil he found himself in on the Watchtower.

Yes, he had disobeyed Seth more in the past month than he had since the moment he was first taken under his leader’s wing, but there were limits to it, and this was one of them. If Nathaniel were to defy Seth to the measure of breaking a direct order, there would be no going back. So what could he trust? An angel or his brothers? A dark Nephilim lord or the one he considered his father…who, if Donovan was right, could be keeping from Nathaniel the very truth of who he was?

Donovan had told him they were all keeping the truth from him…Malachi, Samuel, Seth. But then Donovan said a lot of things.

Nathaniel looked down at the small piece of metal he held in his hand. What did this key unlock? Certainly nothing here in London, he thought. Aria wouldn’t have told him to go back to the root of everything if that were the case. But what did she mean by “the root” anyway?

Nathaniel frowned. He hated all of this cryptology. It was useless to him, because there was always a loophole or a possibility of misinterpretation in every way he looked at it. Almost a guarantee for error…an assurance of failure.

Thinking on the word, an unwelcome image flashed into his mind. He was struck by the sight of Kyla as he had abandoned her in the trees, the look in her eyes when he told her he was leaving her…when he knowingly broke his promise to protect her with his life. The moment that he had failed her. And at the same time, Nathaniel had seen the same look in Seth’s eyes.

Either way he went, he was hurting one of them, which left him at an impasse, struggling to make an impossible decision that he knew would result in pain. It wasn’t right.

This couldn’t be right…

Suddenly Nathaniel felt a shift in the fog-laden air. He didn’t move or acknowledge the one that he felt approach him; at least not with any physical gesture. But as Caleb came up from behind him, Nathaniel asked without turning around, “What are you doing here?”

“Thought you might be able to use some company,” Caleb told him.

Nathaniel pocketed Aria’s key and looked away from his brother. Caleb was trying to read him, and because of this, Nathaniel kept his eyes very intentionally set over the city. The last thing he wanted was to be read right now.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Caleb said. “Don’t try and make this decision alone.”

“Why do you think I have a decision to make?” Nathaniel asked him.

Caleb smirked in response. “Don’t give me that,” he said. “I can see that in your eyes even when you look away from me. I know everything about you, Nate.”

Not everything, Nathaniel thought. But then, that wasn’t Caleb’s fault.

“So are you gonna tell me what’s really going on here or are you going to make me guess?”

Nathaniel wrinkled his brow. “What did Seth tell you?”

With a look of disbelief in his own leader’s account, Caleb told him, “He said you fought Donovan…again.”

Nathaniel cringed and Caleb gaped. “So it’s true?” he said.

“Caleb, he was going to kill her!” Nathaniel told him helplessly. “If I hadn’t done what I did, Kyla would be dead right now.”

A look of complete awe fell over the boy’s face. Something about it unnerved Nathaniel. Part of him wanted to know what Caleb was thinking, but the other part didn’t.

“You were really willing to risk death for this girl?” Caleb asked him.

Nathaniel felt sick when he remembered how much more he had been willing to risk than that. But the fact that he had bowed his knee to Donovan and forfeited his oaths to the brotherhood to keep Kyla alive was something he could never tell Caleb. He didn’t know how his brother could cope with that kind of treachery. He didn’t know how he could cope with it, himself.

At the core, Nathaniel knew that Seth’s witnessing this was what caused him to snap and go after Malachi. Suddenly it wasn’t so difficult for him to see how Seth could believe Justin when he suggested that Nathaniel had gone rogue.

Nathaniel was grateful that Seth hadn’t told the others that part of the story, but it wounded him, seeing that betrayal in his leader’s eyes, knowing what that must have done to him. Nathaniel didn’t know how Seth would ever be able to trust him again, and he didn’t blame him for that. If he chose to go back to Woodland Park, to go back to Kyla, he would be forfeiting that trust forever. He would be forfeiting all of them.

“It has to stop, Caleb,” Nathaniel told his brother. “I don’t have any control over the things she makes me do.”

Nathaniel’s mind flashed back to his bedroom at his uncle’s house, to the fire that had come over him when he had Kyla beneath him. There was an animalistic passion that had taken him over, both when he was with her and when he was fighting for her, that danced on a very fine line between righteousness and evil. And Nathaniel had felt it all too powerfully how easily that force could be pushed away from righteousness.

No, Aria had to be wrong. Either that or he’d misinterpreted her instruction.

That has to be it, Nathaniel told himself. You just didn’t understand what she was saying. But nothing inside of him honestly believed that.

He knew the real choice being made here was all his own; Kyla or the brotherhood. There was no middle ground. And Nathaniel couldn’t listen to what his heart wanted him to do, because as far as he knew he didn’t actually have one, which meant that his motivations were rooted in something that was most likely dark and selfish and destructive. He had to shut himself off to what he wanted, to what he felt, and make the responsible decision to keep his vows and protect his brothers. It didn’t matter if it felt like the ultimate betrayal to him; right and wrong were never about feeling. They were about straight-forward fact, detached from any emotion that might possibly twist the truth.

“Are you sure?” Caleb asked him uncertainly. “I mean, are you really sure that what you feel for her is a bad thing?”

Nathaniel answered him mechanically, slipping back into the identity that for years had kept him alive. “Yes,” he answered emotionlessly.

Caleb didn’t look convinced.

“I have to stay here, Caleb. I have to show Seth that I can be trusted. I have to make this right.”

Caleb was about to say something else to him when he got a text on his phone. Closing his mouth (which he’d opened to speak) he looked down at the face of it and then back up at Nathaniel.

It was Samantha Ross.