I pulled out a bottle of wine. With two large glasses in hand, I turned for the kitchen for a bottle opener, but as soon as my foot took one step forward, the house started to shake. At first it was the floors, then the walls, then the roof. Everything was shaking. Furniture started to glide across the floor, moved by the waves of shaking. I dropped the bottle and glasses onto a couch and then I stopped feeling the movements. My eyes caught sight of a chandelier in the foyer, saw that it was still shaking, and then I looked down. I wasn’t shaking because I was floating in the air; much how I had been the night I’d turned Matt into a zombie. Just like then, I started to fall, but I caught myself. My eyes shut, and I concentrated in my mind. Stay! I barked at myself, but I started falling again slowly.

“Stop thinking, and it will happen.”

The voice wasn’t Kellan’s, and my eyes snapped open to see an elderly woman in the corner. Her hair was silver, pulled over her shoulders to rest below her ribcage. She was dressed in a black cloak with white trim. Both of her arms were folded over each other, and the white trim moved when she opened her arms to me. “Child, you radiate the same ferocity of your father.”

I landed on my feet, but jumped to a far corner. “Who are you?”

She smiled again, gently, but with a rueful look in her eyes. “I am your aunt, your mother’s sister.”

“My—what?”

“I know.” She glided forward smoothly and smiled to herself, as if remembering fond memories. “You were told that your mother was a human in love with a demon, but she wasn’t. Your real mother was a Nephilim, such as yourself, a hybrid of human and messenger. However, your mother’s body wasn’t strong enough to hold you. So they put you in that human’s body. Her body had been strengthened from years of loving her demon. He had carved her out and enforced the inside of her with demonic power. None of it touched you. We made sure of it, but you were special. You were supposed to be born so we put you in there, hiding you from your father also.” She sighed. “It made me happy, just getting you away from your father.”

My knees gave out, and I fell to the stairs where I had been hovering over. “Wha—huh?”

She laughed then, and the sound reverberated deep within me. It was a rich sound, strong, and I felt the ancestry go into me. It went deep and took root. In that moment, I felt her in me, that we were a part of each other. Her memories rushed through me at a rapid pace. Flashes of her as a young girl, with blonde hair, came to me. They were quickly followed by images of her with another younger woman, whose green eyes turned and looked at me. I gasped, flailing backward, when I felt the other woman see me. They were memories, but it was as if she really could see me.

“She can see you. That’s your mother, your true mother.” My aunt had moved to sit beside me. She watched me, concerned, and touched my hand with hers. It was a warm touch, but more of her rushed into me. The physical contact seared everything else, sealing the contact, and something woke inside of me. The messenger woke, feeling her family’s blood near. She railed against me, on the inside, wanting to get out.

“No—oh my God—no,” I gasped, lunging forward. She was so strong, trying to break free. I couldn’t hold her back, and I felt my body lurch into the air, arching backward. A light came out of me. It shone from my eyes, my nose, my mouth, even my ears. My fingertips were like flashlights, shining outward.

“Let her come. She needs to see me. She will calm down after this. I promise you,” my aunt whispered, touching my throat tenderly.

I watched her, nearly helpless now, from the corner of my eye. My head had turned to the side, and a tear slid down to the corner of my eyelid. It held onto my eyelash before it slipped and fell to the floor. My aunt caught it in the palm of her hand and moved it to the tip of her finger before she lifted it back to me. As she placed it back on my eye, she murmured with a soft smile, “You shouldn’t cry about this, not this tear anyway. This is a good thing. It will always be a good thing.”

The tear moved back into my eye, and it was the last straw. The messenger doubled her fervor, and I swallowed, closing my eyes, when I felt my insides tear once more.

KELLAN

Kellan watched through a window in the north corner of the house. He was perched on a tree limb, and it moved close so he could better see. The house moved, too, giving him the best view of what was happening in the foyer of his sanctuary.

The connection between him and Shay had started pulsating moments before, and then it rattled with such force, so much power, that he knew what had happened when he’d been gone. The messenger had come, knowing he was away. He wasn’t surprised. He’d expected it, but he hadn’t expected to feel Shay’s fear as if it were his own. It terrified her, consumed her so much, that he was tempted to enter to help calm her. However, his presence, one of a demon, would potentially enrage the messenger, even the one inside of Shay. It was stronger being near another of her own, especially one of her family.

When the messenger broke free once more, he felt Shay snap to him. She came across the invisible connection and rested next to him, as if perched on the tree beside him. Her body was still inside with the messenger in control, but Shay was with him, watching, too. They both held their breaths when the messenger rushed to the elder messenger. Their arms wrapped around the other, holding on tightly. Both had tears streaming down with smiles of relief on their faces.

It was a touching moment, of long lost relatives being reunited. Kellan watched, feeling disconnected from the emotional welcoming back. His connection was beside him, not in that body, so it was as if he watched mere strangers. A part of him felt as if he shouldn’t be so close to his enemy, but he knew Shay would return. Then everything in him would become alarmed again, doubling in its ferocity, because the messenger had broken free once more, threatening Shay’s hold over her. It threatened their own connection too because if he lost Shay, then he lost everything. But, he knew the messenger needed to be consoled by her own blood. And he was hoping that Aumae would remember her end of the bargain. He brought Shay to her, and she in turn would soothe the messenger, tell her that everything would be fine if she would trust her human counterpart. Shay’s aunt was supposed to make the messenger more compliant with them, not against him as much.