“Michael tel s me that you have resisted the label of vampire, though al the characteristics seem to fit. How right you were to resist this moniker.
The name ‘vampire’ is given by humans to beings such as ourselves—out of ignorance. You can see, of course, from whence the vampire legend sprung. The flying, the blood, the sheer incomprehensibility of our powers, would give rise to the fairy tale of the vampire.
“But you and Michael are not vampires. Nor am I. El speth, we are select beings, born to lead mankind. And I wil show you and Michael the way.”
Ezekiel paused dramatical y. I guessed that he wanted me to swoon or gush excitedly over his speech. Maybe those were the reactions he usual y received. But, in truth, it sounded like the story my parents had told me the night before. Minus the bit about leading mankind. Yet that bit was beginning to give me a good sense of who Ezekiel was. He was sounding more and more like an unrepentant fal en angel, and I was getting more and more frightened.
As Ezekiel waited for my response, he stared into my eyes. “Your parents have told you a different tale about your origin,” he final y said. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“It is certainly not as if they told me. It has been years since I’ve had contact with your parents, and they have no idea that I’ve been in Til inghast. I know that they’ve told you a different tale about your origins because I have had centuries—no, mil ennia—of experience reading faces. I can see that you are not surprised by what I am sharing with you. Your parents are the only ones who could have told you part of this tale.”
“Her parents?” Michael asked, as if jolting awake from his trance.
Ezekiel turned to him. “El speth hasn’t told you?”
“No,” Michael said slowly.
“I had planned on tel ing you, Michael. Before you sprung al this on me,” I said defensively. I didn’t know why I felt the need to justify myself to him, after the stunt he pul ed.
“Be wary of what Hananel and Daniel tel you, El speth,” Ezekiel said. “After al , they are not your real parents.”
Hananel. That was what Michael’s mother had cal ed my mom. “Of course they’re my real parents.”
“To be sure, they have raised you since your birth. From the looks of you, my dear, they have performed that role wonderful y. But Hananel and Daniel played no hand in conceiving you, carrying you, or birthing you.”
“You’re lying.”
He sighed, as if it pained him to bring me such distressing news. “I wish I were lying, my dear El speth. But you see, I was there on the day of your birth. And neither Hananel nor Daniel are your parents.”
I needed to know for certain if he was tel ing the truth. Even though I shivered at the thought of getting close to Ezekiel, I needed to touch him. I needed to see inside his mind.
I wondered if he would al ow it. Then I remembered my dad’s description of the fal en angels’ powers of persuasion and realized that Ezekiel was probably trying to gain control over my mind. Just as he’d seemingly done to Michael. Ezekiel was continuing to use that sing-song voice, certain that he was influencing me.
I saw my opportunity. Acting as if he swayed me, I approached him.
“There have always been inconsistencies in their stories of my birth, discrepancies that never made sense,” I said.
“I am not surprised.”
“They are not my parents? Real y?” As if convinced by his words, I al owed my eyes to wel up with very real tears. Tears I’d been holding back from Michael’s betrayal.
“Real y, dear.”
“So I can’t trust what they’ve told me about myself?”
“No, El speth. I am sorry to tel you that you cannot trust the representations of Hananel and Daniel.”
“But you wil become a parent to us? Michael and I wil not be alone? You wil show us the way?”
He smiled; this was the reaction he sought. “I wil indeed, El speth.”
I smiled back at him and drew even closer to his blond hair and blue eyes and his unusual, incense-like scent. “I’m so pleased,” I whispered.
“As am I, my dear,” he whispered back. Then I touched him.
Chapter Thirty-two
The hatred I witnessed in the hearts and minds of my classmates after the Facebook incident was kindergarten stuff in comparison to the darkness of Ezekiel’s spirit. Even the malice I’d seen in Missy could not compare. Through his eyes, I watched scene after scene of dominance and degradation, where he’d concocted ingenious and sickening ways to ensnare the attention—and then the souls—of mankind. He was relentless in reaching his nefarious tentacles into human beings’ lives—births, marriages, il nesses, deaths, educations, businesses, governments, technology, warfare, money, you name it. Ezekiel would not rest until mankind’s thoughts and desires were his own.
He delighted at each conquest, no matter how smal or large. For each victory turned another soul away from any hint of goodness. Ezekiel was a fal en angel, and if you bought into the biblical tale, he was punishing God for casting him out. And he would never, ever stop.
His was the darkness that had crept into my soul and mind after the Fal Dance. I wondered if it had crept in through my tasting of Missy’s blood.
Had she sampled Ezekiel’s, and did she carry his blood in her veins?
