Crescendo

In a moment muddled with confusion, I realized it was Hank Mill ar.

“Run!” Hank shouted at my dad. “Leave me behind! Run and save yourself!”

My dad didn’t run. He held the gun level, shooting over and over, sending bullets flying at the open door, where the young man in a blue ball cap seemed impervious to them. And then, very slowly, he turned to face my dad.

CHAPTER 24

RIXON GRABBED MY WRIST, GIVING IT A FIRM squeeze. “Careful whose business you go sticking your nose in.” His jaw was set in anger, his nostrils flaring slightly. “Maybe that’s the way it is with Patch, but nobody touches my scars.” He arched his eyebrows meaningfully.

My stomach was cinched with a knot so tight I almost doubled over. “I saw my dad die,” I blurted, stricken with horror.

“Did you see the killer?” Rixon asked, shaking my wrist to pull me all the way back to the present.

“I saw Patch from behind,” I gasped. “He was wearing his ball cap.”

He nodded, as if accepting that what I’d seen couldn’t be undone. “He didn’t want to keep the truth from you, but he knew that if he told you, he’d lose you. It happened before he knew you.”

“I don’t care when it happened,” I said, my voice shril and shaking. “He needs to be brought to justice.”

“You can’t bring him to justice. He’s Patch. If you report him, do you really think he’s going to let the cops haul him off?” No, I didn’t. The police meant nothing to Patch. Only the archangels could stop him. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. There were only three people in the memory. My dad, Patch, and Hank Mill ar. The three of them saw what happened. Then how am I seeing this in your memory?” Rixon didn’t say anything, but the lines around his mouth tightened.

A horrible new thought settled over me. All certainty in regard to my dad’s killer evaporated. I’d seen the killer from the back and assumed it was Patch because of the ball cap. But the longer I dwelled on the memory, the more I was sure the killer was too lanky to be Patch, the cut of his shoulders too angular.

In fact, the killer looked a lot like …

“You killed him,” I whispered. “It was you. You were wearing Patch’s hat.” The shock of the moment was quickly being eaten up by abhorrence and ice-cold fear. “You killed my dad.” Any trace of kindness or sympathy vanished from Rixon’s eyes. “Well, this is awkward.”

“You were wearing Patch’s hat that night. You borrowed it, didn’t you? You couldn’t kill my dad without assuming another identity. You couldn’t do it unless you removed yourself from the situation,” I said, drawing on everything I remembered from the psychology unit in my freshman health class. “No. Wait. That’s not it. You pretended to be Patch because you wish you were him. You’re jealous of him. That’s it, isn’t it? You’d rather be him—”

Rixon gripped my cheekbones, forcing me to stop. “Shut up.”

I recoiled, my jaw aching where he’d squeezed me. I wanted to fling myself at him, hitting him with everything I had, but knew I needed to stay calm. I needed to find out what I could. I was beginning to think Rixon hadn’t brought me into the tunnels to help me escape. Worse, I was beginning to think he had no intention of ever taking me back up.

“Jealous of him?” he said cruelly. “Sure I’m jealous. He isn’t the one on the fast track to hell. We were in this together, and now he’s gone and gotten himself his wings back.” His eyes raked over me in disgust. “Because of you.” I shook my head, not buying it. “You killed my dad before you even knew who I was.”

He laughed, but it lacked humor. “I knew you were out there somewhere, and I was looking for you.”

“Why?”

Rixon slipped the gun out from under his shirt and used it to motion deeper into the fun house. “Keep walking.”

“Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer.

“The police are on their way.”

“Hang the police,” Rixon said. “I’ll be finished before they get here.”

Finished?

Stay calm, I told myself. Stall. “You’re going to kill me now that I know the truth? Now that I know you killed my dad?”

“Harrison Grey wasn’t your dad.”

I opened my mouth, but the argument I expected to come flying out didn’t. The one image splayed across the forefront of my mind was of Marcie standing in her front yard, telling me Hank Mill ar could be my father. I felt my stomach heave. Did this mean Marcie was telling the truth? For sixteen years I’d been kept in the dark about the truth behind my family? I wondered if my dad had known—my real dad. Harrison Grey. The man who’d raised and loved me. Not my biological father, who’d abandoned me. Not Hank Mill ar, who could go to hell for all I cared.

“Your dad is a Nephil named Barnabas,” Rixon said. “More recently, he goes by Hank Mill ar.”

No.

I stepped sideways, dizzy with the truth. The dream. Patch’s dream. It was a real memory. He hadn’t been lying. Barnabas—

Hank Mill ar—was Nephilim.

And he was my father.

My world threatened to crash down around me, but I forced myself to stay in the moment a little longer. In the far back of my mind, I shook my memory, frantically trying to remember where I’d heard the name Barnabas before. I couldn’t place it, but I knew this wasn’t the first time I’d heard it. It was too unusual to forget. Barnabas, Barnabas, Barnabas …

I grappled to fit two loose ends together. Why was Rixon telling me this? Why did he know about my biological father?

Why did he care? And then it hit me. Once, when I’d touched Patch’s scars and gone into his memory, I’d heard him talk about his Nephil vassal, Chauncey Langeais. He’d also talked about Rixon’s vassal, Barnabas….

“No,” I whispered, the word slipping out.

“Aye.”

I desperately wanted to run, but my legs were wooden, stiff as posts.

“When Hank got your mum pregnant, he’d heard enough rumors about the Book of Enoch to worry that I’d come looking for the baby, especially if it was a girl. So he did the only thing he could. He hid her. You. When Hank told his mate Harrison Grey that your mum was in trouble, he agreed to marry her and pretend you were his.”

No, no, no. “But I’m descended from Chauncey. On my father’s side. On Harrison Grey’s side. I have a mark on my wrist that proves it.”

“Aye, you do. Many centuries ago, Chauncey entertained a naive farm girl. She had a son. Nobody thought anything particular about the boy, or his sons, or their sons, and so on through the ages, until one of the sons slept with a woman outside of wedlock. He injected the noble Nephilim blood of his ancestor, the duke of Langeais, into another line. The line that eventually produced Barnabas, or Hank, as he seems to prefer recently.” Rixon gestured impatiently for me to put two and two together. I already had.

“You’re saying both Harrison and Hank have Chauncey’s Nephilim blood,” I said. And Hank, a purebred first-generation Nephil, was immortal, while my own dad’s Nephilim blood, diluted over centuries just like mine, was not. Hank, a man I hardly knew and respected even less, could live forever.

“I am, love.”

“Don’t call me love.”

“You’d prefer Angel?”

He was making fun of me. Toying with me, because he had me right where he wanted. I’d been through this once before, with Patch, and I knew what was coming. Hank Mill ar was my biological father and Rixon’s Nephil vassal. Rixon was going to sacrifice me to kill Hank Mill ar and get a human body.

“Do I get any last-minute answers?” I asked, my tone edging toward challenging, in spite of my fear.

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“I thought only first-generation purebred Nephilim could swear fealty. In order for Hank to be first-generation, he’d have to have a human and a fall en angel parent. But his father wasn’t a fall en angel. He was one of Chauncey’s male descendants.”

“You’re overlooking the fact that men can have affairs with female fall en angels.”

I shook my head. “Fall en angels don’t have human bodies.

Females can’t give birth. Patch told me.”

“But a female fall en angel, possessing a female human body during Cheshvan, can produce a baby. The human may give birth to the baby long after Cheshvan, but the baby is tainted. It was conceived by a fall en angel.”

“That’s revolting.”

He smiled faintly. “I agree.”

“Out of morbid curiosity, when you sacrifice me, does your body just become human, or do you possess another human body just become human, or do you possess another human body for good?”

“I become human.” His mouth curved slightly. “So if you come back to haunt me from the grave, just know you’ll be looking for my same handsome mug.”

“Patch could show up any minute now and stop you,” I said, trying to be strong, but unable to stop the unbearable shaking in every limb of my body.

His eyes laughed at me. “I had my work cut out, but I’m confident I drove the wedge between the two of you about as deep as it could go. You got the ball rolling by breaking up with him—I couldn’t have planned it better myself. Then there was the constant fighting, your jealousy over Marcie, and Patch’s card—which I drugged to toss in just one more seed of distrust.

When I stole the ring from Barnabas and had it delivered to you at the bakery, I had no doubt Patch was the last person you’d run to. swallow your pride and ask for his help? When you thought he was hooked up with Marcie? Not a chance. You played right into my hands when you asked me if he was the Black Hand. I made the evidence against him overwhelming when I answered that yes, he was. Then I took advantage of the turn in our conversation to mention the address of one of Barnabas’s Nephilim safe houses as Patch’s, knowing full well you’d go snooping around and probably find memorabilia from the Black Hand. I canceled the movie plans last night, not Patch. I didn’t want to be stuck inside a movie theater while you were all alone in the apartment. I needed to follow you. I planted the dyn**ite once you were inside, hoping to sacrifice you, but you got away.”

“I’m touched, Rixon. A bomb. How elaborate. Why didn’t you keep things simple and just march inside my bedroom one night and put a bullet between my eyes?”

He spread his hands in front of him. “This is a big moment for me, Nora. Can you blame me for wanting a little flourish? I tried posing as Harrison’s ghost to lure you close, thinking how fantastic it would be to send you to the grave thinking your own father had killed you, but you didn’t trust me. You kept running away.” He frowned a little.

“You’re a psychopath.”

“I prefer creative.”

“What else was a lie? At the beach, did you tell me Patch was still my guardian angel—”