leather couch in front of the fireplace while Mom sat on another couch next to Rina.
Mom and Rina both smiled warmly at me and Rina began.
“We start with ancient history. As your mother has taught you, in the very beginning, there was rebellion in Heaven. God permanently cast the archangel Lucifer and a third of the angels out of Heaven, sentencing them to Earth and Hell. There has been spiritual warfare waging ever since.
“The outcast angels, now called demons, take many forms and most take no form at all, but are evil spirits. The spirits frighten humans, plant evil thoughts in their minds, tempt them with immorality and sometimes even possess the human body to do their evil deeds. Their goal is to bring human souls to Satan and Hell. God and the angels work through priests, ministers and counselors to cast these demons out and keep them away.” Rina sighed. “Sadly, most humans do not realize there is this ongoing battle for their souls.”
She paused and closed her eyes. I wondered if she prayed for those souls.
After a couple of moments, she continued. “A much smaller number of demons take some kind of human or animal form, such as mages, vampires and shape-shifters. These are the Daemoni. Their purpose is to harm or kill humans, disregarding their souls. They continuously seek more power and, therefore, more members. Growing their army requires human sacrifice—the humans may not actually die, but their lives are forever changed and their souls are at risk.
“Those created demons are the souls the Amadis are responsible for. We cannot do anything about the original demons, the Ancients, but we can still win over the souls of the rest of the Daemoni. We show them how to live responsibly with their abilities and powers and how to control their desires without hurting humans. We bring the goodness out of them and, hopefully, we can lead them to the decision to ultimately save their souls, giving them true immortality. And I believe you know how that is accomplished?”
I nodded. “But how did this become our responsibility? I mean, why us? Who are we?”
“In short, we come from Angels. We are the result of the Daemoni infecting a half-Angel and half-human woman named Cassandra. Although infected, she still only knew love and goodness and she started the Amadis at the direction of the Heavenly Host of Angels.”
“So, we are Angels, but we are also essentially Daemoni?”
Rina shook her head. “Not exactly. There are the Angels, including the original Daemoni, and there are offspring of Angels. We are the offspring. We have Angel blood and we have Daemoni powers. But we are their exact opposites. We are inherently good.”
“And we can bring goodness out of them,” I said, glancing at Tristan.
“Yes, if there is any soul left, we can affect them,” Rina answered.
“And…if there is no soul left?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Rina sighed.
“If they are a threat to humans or ourselves…well, sometimes we have to kill them, honey,” Mom answered.
“So the ones at Tristan’s house in Cape Heron that one day, during the storm, you wanted to kill them. They had no souls left?”
“No. Unfortunately, Edmund had given his soul to the Daemoni and they completely destroyed it,” Mom said, her voice heavy with grief.
“Remember when we discussed the rogues back then?” Tristan asked. I nodded, though I barely remembered. “The rogues usually have destroyed souls, which is why they can’t be controlled.”
“So how do you know if they still have a soul?”
“You will learn to sense it,” Rina answered. “If you can feel any love or compassion toward them, they can be saved.”
“And if they show anything like mercy or love, there is hope,” Mom added. “Like Vanessa. She showed feelings for Tristan.”
“Hmph,” Tristan grunted.
“I think that’s lust,” I muttered.
“I don’t know about that. She has a desire to be with someone else, so she still has a soul,” Mom replied.
“And the vampire that threatened me…since he showed mercy, he still has a soul?”
“Yes,” Mom answered. “That’s also why he left when he sensed me and then Owen. He didn’t want to take the chance of us converting him.”
“He brings me to the subject of my books. What is their purpose?”
“Ah, good question,” Rina said. “We will start with more history. You see, up through the eighteen- hundreds, the Daemoni ran rampantly in the human world and humans were very aware and fearful of them. This fear strengthened their faith and helped protect them from being lured into the evil world. Unfortunately, however, the humans killed many innocent people who were not evil or possessed at all. Even those who were real Daemoni were not usually rogues. They still had hope. You would be most familiar with the Salem witches, no?”
I nodded.
“There were many similar incidents around the world. Heaven lost innocent humans, the Amadis lost the ability to convert the souls and the Daemoni lost many of their soldiers. The Daemoni decided to become more covert then. We have an obligation to keep the existence of our people secret, which means keeping the Daemoni secret, too.”
“So what changed? Why did you decide to break that obligation?” I asked.
Rina shook her head. “We have not broken the obligation. We have not revealed their existence. When the Daemoni went underground, humans felt safer and became complacent. We have just reminded humans there could be a possibility of their existence. You see, over the last century, with advances in science, humans have lost their belief in, and therefore, their fear of the creatures we know as the Daemoni and evil in general. They only see evil in each other, perpetuating wars among themselves. With this loss of fear has also come a loss of faith.”
Rina stopped and looked again as though she worried for humans.
“You’re an excellent writer and your readers want to believe your characters are real,” Mom said, picking up for Rina. “For them to believe the good ones are real, they must also believe the bad ones are, too. You’ve made humans more aware of the possibility of their existence. They can better protect themselves, by increasing their faith.”
“You see,” Rina said, “the Daemoni truly desire to take control of the world and rule over humans. They are growing restless and angry with their limitations and are preparing to fight. The union of you and Tristan has exacerbated their anger. We believe you have changed over so soon—so young—because we will need as many generations of Amadis daughters as possible. The Angels are preparing for major war. Our hope…our plan…has been that your books will help prepare the humans. The humans will need their faith and knowledge of how to protect themselves as spiritual warfare will re-enter their realm in the near future.”
“Why don’t I just write our story—mine and Tristan’s—then,” I muttered. I meant it rhetorically, not at all desiring to tell the whole world about us.
“I hoped you would say that,” Rina said, smiling. “You, of all people, could write it so people think the story is fiction, but it seems like it could be very real.”
I stared at her in disbelief. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tristan shaking his head slowly.
“I wasn’t serious!”
“But it is something to think about,” Rina said, a gleam in her eye.
“I think I’ve done enough damage already. It was risky to write those stories. Now the Daemoni feel justified in killing us.”
“Any risk is worth saving humans,” Rina said pointedly. “But the Daemoni really do not have Provocation because we did not break the obligation. We did not really expose them. And, now that we know Tristan escaped, we believe they used Provocation as an excuse to come after you. If they could get you, they could get Tristan back.”
“They’d already planned it before I escaped,” Tristan said. “That’s why I made the move when I did, because she was in danger.”
“Yes, they have been discussing this for some time. They have been giving me ultimatums to make her stop since she wrote her second book,” Rina said. “But they knew they did not have real Provocation. They were empty
