Overwhelmed and confused, I fel back on the window seat. I must have looked as disoriented and woozy as I felt, because my parents’ hands reached out to steady me. Through the miasma of the moment, I heard my dad say, “It’s al right, dearest. We’l help you.”
“Help?” I asked with a laugh. How could they help me? This wasn’t some high school problem to be solved with a pep talk and a pat on the back.
It wasn’t a dilemma that a few sessions with the local psychiatrist could cure. No, my parents couldn’t help me. No one could help me, not even Michael.
I felt my dad’s arm slide around my shoulder and pul me tight. “Would it help you to know that you’re not a vampire? Would it help you to know that vampires—as you think of them—don’t real y exist?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. The whole setting and conversation was becoming increasingly surreal. Was I actual y sitting here in my bedroom at midnight talking with my parents about why I was not a vampire? Or was I having one of those awful hyper-real nightmares in which you know you are dreaming but you can’t wake yourself up?
My dad fil ed in the deafening silence. “I’m going to tel you a story, El ie. It’s from the Bible—from Genesis, to be exact—so we have to take it with a grain of salt. But this particular story contains a nugget of truth, a very relevant nugget of truth. So I want you to listen careful y, very careful y.”
I’d grown used to my dad’s random quotations—even tolerated them—but I was in no mood. Anyway, a story from Genesis was an odd choice for my dad, who claimed he loved the messages and tales of the Bible, but couldn’t stomach how organized religions used them. “You said you wanted to ‘help’ me, Dad. How is that supposed to help?”
“Just listen, El ie.” It was an order. Since he was typical y more inclined toward polite requests, I nodded.
“In the beginning, for lack of a better term, God sent some of his spiritual intermediaries—we’l cal them angels—to mankind. He wanted these angels to protect his newly formed humans, to teach them about His divinity, and to shepherd them to heaven upon their deaths. Instead, these angels became enchanted by mankind. They became enamored of their purity and innocence and, of course, their physical beauty. They were made in God’s image, after al . But most of al , the angels became entranced with mankind’s thirst for knowledge, about their world and their origin.
Because, you see, the angels knew the answers.
“So, succumbing to their own pride in knowing the world’s secrets, the angels began to teach human beings al they knew about the earth—the constel ations, the signs of the earth, sun, and moon, knowledge of the clouds, the working of metals, the use of coin, and the art of war. In so doing, they fel in love with mankind. They even took human men and women as spouses and produced a unique race of half man and half angel. These beings were cal ed Nephilim.
“From afar, God watched the acts of these angels. And He was mad. These angels had taken His secrets and corrupted His favorite creation, humankind. They had even dared to fal in love with His creation and made a new creation of their own. And what could be more audaciously Godlike and defiant than that? Creation was reserved for His hands alone.
“God decided that there was only one way to undo the damage caused by these angels. He had to wipe out the now corrupt humans and the half-breed creations, leaving only a select few pure humans. So he whipped up the flood.”
My dad said this last word as if it deserved a capital ‘F’ and as if I knew what he meant. Which I didn’t.
So I asked, “The flood?”
“Noah’s flood,” he said irritably, as if CNN had just reported the deluge. Then he launched back into his story.
“Anyway, even though He al owed these wayward angels to live, God had no intention of letting them go unpunished. He cast them out of heaven permanently and ordered them to remain on earth. To torment them in their new earth-bound existence, He left them with their immortality and their ethereal skil s as a reminder of al they’d lost. Except He took away their ability to procreate with humans, of course.
“Many of these angels were furious with God’s command, and decided to retaliate. They embraced their new ‘fal en’ status, and made concerted efforts to turn the remainders of God’s pet creation—humankind—away from His light and toward their own refracted il umination. These fal en angels taught humans to worship earthly glamours that they could control and manipulate. In time, humans began to think that the ideals of these angels—even the angels themselves—were divine. Humankind no longer truly feared and worshipped God. Humans worshipped the idols fashioned by these angels—commerce and technology and consumerism and warfare and themselves, of course. And, in turn, the fal en ones captured—sucked away, if you wil —humankind’s souls.
“But a few of these fal en angels realized their horrible mistake. They decided to try and work their way back into God’s grace by living quietly among humans and redirecting man toward His light. This smal group assessed the damage that had been done to the earth and humankind by the other fal en ones, and fashioned a plan of redemption. Certain angels decided to address the corruption of the financial sector, others dealt with the rise of materialism, and so on—and you can see the fruits of their labors these days in the news. In addition, every angel in this group, the good group, tried to utilize their natural talents to guide humankind to God at the critical moment— the instant of their deaths. So using their gifts—their powerful sense of an individual’s psyche which they derived from touch or blood, their heightened powers of persuasion, and their ability to fly—they reached out to as many dying humans as they could.”
I froze. My dad continued talking about these angels, but his voice receded. I could hear only a constant replay of his description of the angels’
abilities. Their skil s were mine. Was that what I was? A kind of an angel? For some reason, the concept seemed even more foreign than being a vampire. More impudent.
“Gifts?” I interrupted. I needed to better understand who or what I was.
“In the beginning, al of these angels were given certain abilities to assist them in their work of shepherding souls to God’s light. They were endowed with the gift of flight, so they could quickly reach the sides of dying humans to help them before it was too late. The angels were able to see into humans’ minds and hearts, so they could understand how they might assist the humans in shedding their worldly cares and choosing a higher plane. They gained this insight by touching the human or—more powerful y—by tasting their blood, their life force. And the angels bore strong powers of persuasion, to better influence the humans’ final decisions. The angels were supposed to use these gifts for their intended purposes only
