A light flickered from our wall and I walked over to the grey screen, which blinked with a green light. I activated it and watched as the image of Dr. Crayton appeared. He looked bewildered as he spoke his message to us. "I have good news for Miss Night. Against all odds, Miss Night passed the vision test. I will issue her a special exemption to get her pilot's license, should she still wish it. Congratulations."
The image flicked off and I stood still, silent, at a loss for what to think. My dreams had just come true and it didn't even matter anymore. I focused my attention back on my house, on what I'd come here to do.
Near our bookshelves, my dad had set up a little table where the two of us had played chess late into the night. I walked over to it slowly, knowing this would hurt the worst. We had been mid-game, our pieces spread over the board, before he died. I'd have to decide, take the set or leave it as it was? I didn't know. Couldn't imagine leaving my home, leaving everything here as if nothing had happened.
From the corner of my eye something flashed and I looked up, startled out of my melancholy. I'd left the front door open for fresh air, and I could have sworn something moved past the house outside.
I poked my head out the door but didn't see anything unusual. Must have been a trick of the light. I thought about closing it, but I wanted the cool draft to clear out the stagnant feel of the house. We often left our front door open on nice nights as we watched a movie or dined on the porch.
I moved to my mother's desk where she had tools out for making her handcrafted jewelry. I rubbed the ring I wore on my middle finger, one she'd made me for my 16thth birthday. A Celtic pattern of links with a Ruby cross. The Templar symbol, I realized.
Seeing the leather straps and pliers gave me an idea. I pulled out the Token of Strife and used her supplies to make a leather necklace to hang it from, which I tied around my neck. Somehow I felt better with the ring resting against my heart.
Once again, something bright, glowing, shot past the front door, and I turned quickly and ran outside, determined to solve the mystery.
I didn't have to run long. Standing outside was a little girl, pale as moonlight, transparent even, with her back to me. She turned her head, and I recognized her as the girl from my dream. She still held the glowing orb.
"Who are you?" I asked. Was she some kind of new Zenith I'd never heard about?
But she didn't answer. Instead, she ran away from me and toward the woods by my house.
"Wait!" I yelled for her but she didn't turn, didn't stop, and so I followed. Knowing it was stupid to run around in the middle of the night, I still followed. Something compelled me.
We passed into the forest, the trees tall, dark and menacing—so very like my dream I had to look down to make sure I wasn't walking on the body of corpses.
I wasn't. Just plain old dirt and rock.
I kept running, twigs snapping under my feet as I ducked under low branches and followed her over fallen trees.
We soon came to two large boulders. She squeezed past them, a glow in between the space, and I sucked in my breath and did the same, with a lot more effort and less breathing.
A few scratches later I found myself in a grove, the earth under my feet white sand, glittering in the light of the moonbeams.
I'd spent my whole life in this house, on this land. I knew every hiding place, every cave, every trail, every tree.
This grove had never been here before.
I looked for the girl and saw her running up a hill to the center of the grove.
Toward a silver tree. It stood like a beacon of light in darkness with bare branches swaying in the windless night.
And below the tree stood a man in black with dark wings stretched out behind his back.
He turned to me, his face pale, eyes blue, a man ethereally beautiful, and he smiled.
The man from my dreams.
The last Nephilim.
Chapter 14
The Last Nephilim
"It's you." I froze in my place, my mind trying to find some cohesiveness between this experience and reality, but it came up empty.
"Yes. But do you know who I am, Scarlett Night?" His voice, deep and rich, had a trace of an old accent—Russian maybe? I couldn't tell. It burrowed into me, that voice, and left me shaking.
"I know you're dangerous." My body vibrated with his nearness, with the chill in the air, with the otherworldly feel to everything around us.
His grey blue eyes were unreadable as he studied me. "And do you fear me, Scarlett?"
"No," I said, honestly. I knew I should, that he could hurt me in so many ways, but instead I was drawn to him like a moth to flame. "What happened to the girl?" I asked, looking around for the ghostly figure that had led me here.
"I can conjure memories, like the girl, like this tree," he said. "And sometimes, they can do my bidding. I used the girl to lure you here, because I needed to make sure we were alone. "
He took a step toward me and my body moved against my will to reach him, to be closer to him. We stood a few feet apart under the silver tree. I had to look up at him. He stood a good foot taller than me, his chest broad, body hard and full of muscle under his black jeans and shirt. Up close I could see the perfection of his face more clearly. There would never be any mistaking this man for mortal. Every inch of him screamed power, magic, danger.
When he held out his hand, I looked down at it in surprise. "My name is Zorin, Andriy Zorin, Count of Nightfall, and Left Hand of the Twilight Queen. I apologize for leaving you, but I had to draw our attackers away last night."