Gene winced at the strident sound. “Again, Beth, I must say your friends are interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever met a siren who lived so far from the sea.”
Lana blanched and I hastened to shut him up. “Ixnay on the biggay water thingy,” I said in very poor pig Latin. I think the finger drawn across my throat with the accompanying gurgle sound got the point across better as Gene clamped his lips shut. Simon said not a word, but I could read the mirth in his eyes.
“Where would you like me to start?” Gene asked. “You heard the prophecy. The demon thinks you might be the one mentioned in it and wants to kill you. What I don’t understand is how you don’t know about the message?”
“Humor me,” I said not willing to get into why I missed my membership to the supernatural club. “Why is there such a hoopla about some stupid message? Did it never occur to them that maybe someone was playing a joke-a really mean one?”
Gene appeared shocked at what I thought was a reasonable question. “You’re a creature of both light and dark, even if raised by only one side, you would know the message carved using the words of creation themselves; a power beyond even the Lord of Light and Dark means serious business.”
I squirmed. Their assumption that my state of being came from natural means made me uncomfortable, but exactly how should I explain my creation at the hands of mad scientists? I hedged. “So what if some unknown super dude posted a message? I still don’t understand why that demon and his friends want to kill me. And what’s this about cleansing others like me?”
“About two thousand years ago, when the words appeared on the walls around Heaven and Hell, there was panic. The forces for good and evil, fearing the end was nigh, set out to destroy those they believed the prophecy spoke of.”
“The cleansing?” Lana interjected.
“Exactly, “said Gene with a sage nod. “All Nephalim, whose blood by birth contained the seeds of both good and evil, were destroyed, hunted down like the vilest of vermin and eliminated. Once the world and the various realms were cleansed of their presence, a ban on matings between angels and demons was put in effect with the verdict of immediate death if anyone chose to ignore it.”
“So I’m a Neflim?” I replied scrunching up my nose at the awkward name.
“How can you be so ignorant of your own history?” Simon asked in a wondering tone, but I could read Gene’s confusion. The moment of my outing fast approached.
“Well, I was raised by humans,” I said releasing a bit of the truth.
“Ah, that would explain a lot. Your mother must have been an angel forcefully seduced by a dark one. Giving you up would have been her only option to let you live. I guess your upbringing explains why you seem so human.”
I fidgeted at his mistaken assumption. “Isn’t there any other way for me to have gotten my powers?”
Gene frowned at me. “Anything other than birth would be unnatural.”
I almost snorted.
“What do you mean, created?” Simon looked at me in confusion, but I could see dawning understanding-and horror-on Gene’s. Those looks were quickly followed by pity.
So much for thinking I’d be accepted and find answers to who I was. Even among the freaks, I was an outcast. Angry at the pill Fate force fed me, I decided to wipe the pity off their face. “You want to know who I am? What made me into a monster?” I smiled at Simon, and in a nonchalant tone that bordered on sarcastic to hide my anger and bitterness, I told them my tale.
“I was born human, and by the age of seven, I was sick, really sick with leukemia. The doctors, as soon as they diagnosed me, didn’t give me long to live. They hadn’t counted on my mom and dad though. My mom ended up being a close marrow donor match, and she donated to the point she jeopardized her health. Not that she cared. She just wanted me to survive.” I blinked back the tears that always brimmed when I thought of the woman who’d birthed and loved me. I missed her so freaking much even though she’d died years ago-killed because of her love for me. “My parents also turned to religion and prayed almost constantly. They stayed abreast of all the latest research, but leukemia is a killer and by the time I hit sixteen, bald as the day I was born, I’d just about given up the fight to live. And that was when my parents got the offer.”
Oh, how I remembered their excitement. “A chance,” they’d crowed gleefully even if that chance was experimental. And free of cost, a golden egg to loving parents who’d given everything they had to pay for my survival.
Gene and Simon watched me with rapt expressions, not interrupting me. Lana, at my side, gripped my hand tight, already knowing my story. I gave them what they wanted to hear even as I knew my story would make them turn from me in disgust-/the demon was right. I am an abomination/.
“They flew us and other families in the same situation like we were celebrities-first class. Everyone was still so happy at that point. We were taken to a top secret facility, government owned and operated.” I jumped up and stood, pacing in front of the couch as I waved my arms. “Welcome one, welcome all, to building nine where children are mutated as you wait. Hey mom and dad, have some coffee and cookies while you talk with the other parents. Be blinded by our facade while we inject your precious darlings with a toxic cocktail.” I mocked the start of my torture, my mechanism for fighting the tears that threatened to choke me. “But as it turns out, while we were receiving our first doses of the vaccine that would change our life, our parents went through their own life changing episode. The institution laced their food with cyanide and killed them all. Not that many of us had time to notice or care, we were too busy dying.” I spoke stonily, fighting the screaming despair that remembering brought.
Simon’s face registered shock and I stopped him before he could voice his query. “How could they, you say?” I laughed bitterly. “They thought they were doing something for the greater good. After all, we were sick children and our parents, unfortunate victims in their narrow sighted struggle for greatness. They told the public they died in a plane crash to avoid scrutiny and as far as the world knew, we died with them.”
Simon bounded off the couch, his body tense and he let out a roar that no human throat could have uttered. I gaped at him, once again wondering just what he was. The demon had called him something, but English was my one and only language.
“What did they inject you with?” Gene asked in a soft voice drawing my attention away from the pacing Simon and setting me back on track.
“Ooh, all kinds of good stuff.” At Gene’s stern look, I sobered up. “The government managed to capture a demon and an angel.”
I heard a thump and a crack and turned to see Simon pulling his fist out of the wall-a solid brick wall which now had a hole of crumbled dust. If they were still talking to me after discovering my dirty secret-and I was beginning to think they would by their reaction-I’d have to find out once and for all just what Simon was. “According to the doctors, who liked to brag, they performed all kinds of tests on their captured prizes. They were fascinated by their ability to heal and regenerate damage. They tried to inseminate human women with their sperm, but it didn’t work.”
Gene shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t have. Special conditions need to be met for their seed to take in a human receptacle, and even then, the pregnancies rarely come to fruition.”
I made a mental note to ask him more about angels and demons later. It was sure to be an interesting conversation. But first, I needed to finish my tale. “They decided to up the ante and inject humans directly with the genes. They couldn’t just start picking people up willy-nilly, so they came up with a fabulous plan to use sick children, to have their own parents volunteer them. Thus did the drug trials start with us as the guinea pigs. There were three groups. Those injected with demonic blood. Those with angelic. And then the ones who got both. Most of their test subjects went into seizures and died. They were the lucky ones.”
