I sniffed. “Two or three days.”
Gladas chuckled. “We have very little time to do a lot of work. You might have been lucky in defeating Medea. Maybe you’ll even kill Circe. But you’ll never kill Hecate, not without more experience.”
“I can’t use it on command,” I said. “How do I practice something I can’t access unless I’m in a tight spot? I’m not going to just step in front of a train to use my power.”
“Nephil use their power from instinct. It’s like taking a breath for them. Like ducking when something is thrown at their head. Magic isn’t foreign to them. It’s not something they have to access or find. It’s something that is a part of them. That is them. For you to stand on your own, you have to stop reacting with your body. You have to stop thinking so much to access your power. Let it flow through you. Let it become a part of you.”
“You’re saying I need find an escape from the icy lake? That instead of… trying to find a breathing hole, I need to crawl out of those dark depths and breathe?”
Gladas narrowed his eyes, taking them from the road to look at me. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Forget about it,” I said. “I’m working on explaining my power through a metaphor. It’s not quite there… but I think I’m close.”
“Fear and pain are the two most common ways to activate the survival instinct,” Gladas said. “Some humans are disposed to magic in some manner. The Nephil are only vessels to help unlock that potential. But, as I’m sure you know, there are stories of incredible accomplishments being made in the face of fear and pain. It’s because power is a part of people, too. It lives within them—though technology has driven away most of its utilization.”
“Like the tailbone?” I asked.
“What?”
“Well, it’s something we’ve evolved from and is now completely useless. See, we used to have tails to help us balance, but we no longer need that—”
“I understand,” Gladas said, frowning. “But yes, like a tailbone. We need to reawaken your… tailbone.”
I opened my mouth wide and grinned, making a humming noise and pointing at Gladas. “You dirty pervert. I didn’t know you could throw a joke out there. No wonder Annie loves you so much. It’s not just for your two-foot long ball sack. That’s an old man joke, in case you didn’t get it.”
“Close your eyes,” Gladas instructed.
I chortled. “No way, dude. I’m not as naive as Annie. There’s no telling what you’ll do to me.”
“You want your magic to awaken on command? Close your eyes.”
I exhaled and closed my eyes. “Now,” Gladas instructed, “relive the other night—imagine Medea standing behind Melanie, holding a dagger to her throat.”
I bit my lip, allowing him to play out this scenario if it meant reaching my power.
“Recall the blade sliding across Melanie’s neck. The blood spraying forward and spilling onto her body, splashing onto the cold ground. Hear her gurgled calls for help as you stand helpless to do anything but watch your daughter die.”
“Listen,” I whispered, unable to hold my tongue any longer. “I would hate to scar your gorgeous face, but don’t think for a second that I won’t. I’ll peel your skin off you and wear it as a mask the next time I try for a modeling career if you ever say my daughter’s name again.”
“This anger you feel, it’s drawing the shadows toward you. That’s the feeling, the instinct, that you want to remember. That’s what triggers your power.”
I breathed, trying to calm my rage toward Gladas while using it to reach my power. He only wanted that stagnant, unused part of me to return to action—and I’m not talking about Joey Jr., you freak. But nothing significant happened, other than I became suddenly sleepy.
“I assume you know the Nephilim language?” Gladas asked, shocking me from the reverie. I glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes had evaporated.
“You know what they say about assume, right? It makes an ass out of you and me.”
“Do you?”
“You assumed correctly,” I said, glancing at him and grinning.
“Well, the demonic language isn’t too far off. The Nephil, unable to fully access their fallen angel ancestry, incorporated more earthly influences into their language—diluting the Fallen vernacular and distorting it to their own. The runes work like shapes. A rectangle is a square, yet a square is not a rectangle.”
I shook my head in utter confusion. “Please elaborate.”
“You can still use the Nephilim runes to channel your power—though it will be extremely diluted and lacking its full potential. Until you learn the language of the fallen angels, you won’t be able to fully focus your power.”
I shivered at his truth bomb. If what he said was true, my babies weren’t dead. “But Hephaestus imbued me with fire magic, so all my runes reflect fire,” I said. “Fire and umbrella kinetics—“
Umbrakinesis,” he corrected.
“Sure… doesn’t matter. They’re not the same thing. How can my knowledge of language, which revolves around fire, translate to shadow, even if diluted?”
“Does a flame cast a shadow?”
“No,” I said.
“If there are enough impurities in the fuel being used, than it is possible. Since you can’t access your power naturally, you have to resort to impure means—anger, fear, pain. Do you understand? Through you unnatural usage of the ability, your umbrakinesis might be able to pair with pyrokinesis.”
“Like a fucking shadow fireball?”
Gladas shrugged, keeping his attention on the road. “If you wish.”
“Where would I even learn the angelic language to
