Fall From Grace(70)

“We did nothing wrong.  Our only crime was in loving each other.  You, the rest of you, you’re the ones that created the Nephilim!  You’re the ones that tore the earth apart and helped bring chaos down.  You taught the humans war!  Shamsiel and I were children; all we did was fall in love.  He never even touched me, but for one kiss!”

“Child,” he cooed.  “He was thrown into the abyss with the rest of us. Do you really believe with a punishment of that magnitude he’d still want the love of a human?” he sneered.  “Besides, do you think he knows you still exist here?”

I stepped back, wiping the blood from my hands on his shirt.  “Why are you trying to kill me?”

The body convulsed.  “You’re the only one,” it seethed.  The body collapsed in on itself and stilled.  I was the only one of what?

Someone in the hallway knocked on the door to come in.  I stood above the dead body, confused and needing a hell of a lot more answers then what I was just given.

I didn’t want to be found in the bathroom with Carl Sumpton’s body, so I hoisted myself up to the open window and jumped into the alleyway below.  Thank God, the bar was on the first floor or I would have broken a few bones.  I ran through the darkness trying to carefully step in places where I’d leave no footprints in the snow.  There seemed to be enough garbage and crap strewn throughout the alley to make that possible.

My mind ran in circles.  Why in the world was Azazel around?  Wasn’t he stuck in some supernatural prison somewhere? I was the only one of what?  And really why was the freaking place on my arm that Shane licked still making me tingle and giddy like kid in a toy store?  I needed to talk to Gabriel.

I ran to the apartment, praying in my mind that Gabriel would be there waiting.

I could hear Conner and Lea murmuring and giggling in the living room when I opened the front door.  I locked the deadbolt behind me, which echoed a loud click throughout the apartment; silencing their sounds.  I quickly walked through the hallway without stopping to speak to them.

“Gray?” Lea called out.

“Yep, just me.  I’m beat.  I’m calling it a night.  Goodnight, guys!”  I called back as I closed my door. My room was empty.

I leaned my forehead on the hard wood of the door.  Tears stung at my eyes, but I blinked them back.  I pressed my hands against the door and spread my fingers across the grain of the wood.  I felt the coarse grooves, ran my fingers over the knotty uneven surface of it.  My head spun.  Shamsiel.  Would I truly never see him again?  Azazel?  What would he get out of killing me, and how would he, when I’d only be thrown into another body?  Gabriel?  Could I trust him?  He was one of the angels who helped to destroy the Nephilim and helped bind the fallen ones to their prisons.  Last one?  Am I the last of the human souls?  I thought it was just me, I hadn’t known any of the others were punished along with me. I thought they were destroyed along with the Nephilim.  Shane?  Why did I keep thinking about him when he had nothing to do with any of this?

Someone started banging at the front door.  Shane.  Voices raised; footsteps thundered down the hallway.

I heard the floor boards creak on the other side of my door.  I could hear his breath, “Grace...”  Then something hard thumped against the door right above my head.  I pictured Shane in the same position as me with our faces almost touching but for the inch of wood between us.

“Grace.  Please let me in.  I’m...sorry.”