Something Wicked

been unconscious for more than five hours. She had to get out of here. Even if their goal was to help her, they’d drugged and kidnapped her, and that wasn’t right. She was at a distinct disadvantage. They had all the power, and she was feeling like a victim who didn’t have any say in what was going to happen next.

She shivered.

“Tell me about the pain, Eden,” Oliver said.

She looked at him with surprise. “What?”

“Ben told me what happened earlier today. Was it a tearing sensation? Did it feel as though you were being pulled in two different directions?”

She threw another fierce look at Ben, who’d obviously told his new boss everything he knew about her.

He didn’t flinch. “You were in a bad way this morning. I thought you were dying.”

Eden exhaled shakily. She never wanted to feel pain like that again if she could do anything to prevent it. “Yeah. It was a tearing pain. Really bad. How do you know how it felt?”

Oliver crossed his arms. “Tell me about your father, Eden.”

That question seemed to come out of left field. She inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “I never knew him. He was just some random guy my mother hooked up with.”

“Your mother, Caroline Riley. She’s recently deceased?”

Eden hesitated a moment before she answered. “She died two months ago. She fell down a flight of stairs at a casino in Las Vegas and broke her neck.” Her throat thickened without warning. The grief at losing her mother came in patches, always unexpected and never appreciated.

“And she never told you about your father?”

“Nothing other than the fact that she met him when he was hitchhiking, they had a wild affair over one weekend, and that was that.”

“Did she see him again?”

“No. But once when I was about five years old, he came by for a quick visit when I was playing in the backyard. That was the only time I ever saw him.”

Why was she answering his questions so willingly? A glance at Sandy showed the witch’s thin eyebrows were drawn together to show the strain of her fierce concentration.

Then it dawned on her. Eden was being forced magically to tell the truth. The thought only made her angrier, which helped to push away some of the fear that filled her.

“So you don’t know who he really was,” Oliver continued.

“No.”

“Just tell her,” Ben said tightly. “Eden needs to know the truth about her father.”

“What about my father?” she demanded.

Oliver crossed his arms and leaned closer, looking into her eyes. “Your mother never knew who she met that night on the road. Daniel was finishing his stay here in the human world as a Cerberus. Do you know what a Cerberus is?”

“I’m not sure.” The word sounded familiar. Maybe she’d heard it in one of her paranormal tutorials from Darrak.

“It’s a guardian sent here from Heaven to watch over the gateways to the Netherworld,” Oliver explained.

“Cerberus,” she said. Like the three-headed dog of Greek mythology who guarded the entrance to Hades. “And my father was one of these guardians?”

“Yes.” Oliver smiled. “Your father is an angel.”

TEN

That was funny. Eden could have sworn that he’d just said her father was an angel.

Obviously she’d misheard him.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a long moment of silence. “But could you repeat that?”

“Your father is an angel.”

Maybe she hadn’t misheard him.

She laughed nervously. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s true,” Ben said very seriously. “You’re part angel. The proper term is nephilim. . and it’s very rare.”

Eden gaped at him. She felt cold and pale as if all the blood had drained from her face. “How do you know all this?”

He shifted his feet, his hands clasped in front of him. “I’ve been studying up.”

“I’m part angel,” she repeated. It sounded completely and totally ludicrous.

“You’re mostly human,” Ben told her. “But there is a part of you that is. . Other.”

Her head was spinning out of control and she had the urge to throw up, but instead she pressed back farther into the hard leather and just tried to breathe.

Oliver reached for her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “There is a ribbon of celestial energy inside of you. We think this is what the demon has been drawing energy from. And this, Eden, this is what is causing your complications.”

She needed a time-out. A chance to get her head together. It was one thing to accept that Darrak had been dampened and Ben had drugged and kidnapped her. But it was another thing to be told her mother had a fling with a being from Heaven.

Her mother had been touched by an angel? Like, literally?

She finally had her answer. This was why she could hear Darrak when none of his other hosts could. This was why he could take form during the day. It was because she was human enough to be his host, just not completely human. She had a hidden bonus.

She finally heard what Oliver had said. “What do you mean by my complications?”

“The pain you’ve begun to feel — it’s a war within your body, Eden. The darkness from the demon is fighting against the light from your nephilim side. Each is trying to claim dominion.”

It was quiet then, enough for her to hear her rapid breathing. Her upper arm still ached from where Ben had stuck the needle earlier, and she tenderly rubbed the spot. She felt cold and stunned and confused and very afraid by all of this. “So you’re saying that good and evil are playing tug-of-war, using my body as the rope?”

Oliver’s gaze was serious. “Yes.”

She already knew she was in deep trouble just by being possessed by Darrak. This definitely upped the ante. While everything she’d been told had come as a shock, it was as if these were pieces to the puzzle she’d been trying to put together for a very long time.

Ben stood a few feet away with his hands clasped behind his back like a guard. Sandy remained seated in a chair across from the sofa, watching Eden and Oliver’s conversation carefully. Eden suddenly felt incredibly tired, and her head ached.

“I can help you,” Oliver said. “But you need to let me. Will you do that?”

She looked at his kind face. Her first reaction had been mistrust, but now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe the Malleus could help her. Maybe Oliver could help her right now.

“I. .guess so,” she agreed, tentatively.

“Very good. Now, I must concentrate.” He closed his eyes, and a moment later Eden felt a strange sensation, as if something was searching her with cool, invisible fingers. She tried to sit very still.

Oliver’s brow furrowed. “There’s a shield over you.” He looked over at Sandy. “Come here, please.”

Sandy did as he asked. “Yes?”

“I’m having trouble sensing the demon. All you did was dampen him, right? You didn’t exorcise him completely, did you?”

Panic shot through Eden at the thought. No, Darrak couldn’t have been exorcised. She would have felt it. She would have known.

“No, it was just a dampening,” Sandy confirmed.

Oliver peered at Eden’s face. He stood up and pressed his hand against her forehead. “There’s a strange energy coming from her. Please figure out what it is before I continue.”