Heather Terrell - Eternity (v5)

So I asked, “The flood?”

“Noah’s flood,” he said irritably, as if CNN had just reported the deluge. Then he launched back into his story.

“Anyway, even though He al owed these wayward angels to live, God had no intention of letting them go unpunished. He cast them out of heaven permanently and ordered them to remain on earth. To torment them in their new earth-bound existence, He left them with their immortality and their ethereal skil s as a reminder of al they’d lost. Except He took away their ability to procreate with humans, of course.

“Many of these angels were furious with God’s command, and decided to retaliate. They embraced their new ‘fal en’ status, and made concerted efforts to turn the remainders of God’s pet creation—humankind—away from His light and toward their own refracted il umination. These fal en angels taught humans to worship earthly glamours that they could control and manipulate. In time, humans began to think that the ideals of these angels—even the angels themselves—were divine. Humankind no longer truly feared and worshipped God. Humans worshipped the idols fashioned by these angels—commerce and technology and consumerism and warfare and themselves, of course. And, in turn, the fal en ones captured—sucked away, if you wil —humankind’s souls.

“But a few of these fal en angels realized their horrible mistake. They decided to try and work their way back into God’s grace by living quietly among humans and redirecting man toward His light. This smal group assessed the damage that had been done to the earth and humankind by the other fal en ones, and fashioned a plan of redemption. Certain angels decided to address the corruption of the financial sector, others dealt with the rise of materialism, and so on—and you can see the fruits of their labors these days in the news. In addition, every angel in this group, the good group, tried to utilize their natural talents to guide humankind to God at the critical moment—the instant of their deaths. So using their gifts—their powerful sense of an individual’s psyche which they derived from touch or blood, their heightened powers of persuasion, and their ability to fly—they reached out to as many dying humans as they could.”

I froze. My dad continued talking about these angels, but his voice receded. I could hear only a constant replay of his description of the angels’

abilities. Their skil s were mine. Was that what I was? A kind of an angel? For some reason, the concept seemed even more foreign than being a vampire. More impudent.

“Gifts?” I interrupted. I needed to better understand who or what I was.

“In the beginning, al of these angels were given certain abilities to assist them in their work of shepherding souls to God’s light. They were endowed with the gift of flight, so they could quickly reach the sides of dying humans to help them before it was too late. The angels were able to see into humans’ minds and hearts, so they could understand how they might assist the humans in shedding their worldly cares and choosing a higher plane. They gained this insight by touching the human or—more powerful y—by tasting their blood, their life force. And the angels bore strong powers of persuasion, to better influence the humans’ final decisions. The angels were supposed to use these gifts for their intended purposes only

—to guide souls to God.”

A thought occurred to me. What if you didn’t use your powers for their intended objectives, for good? What if you started using them only for your own selfish purposes, like I had with Michael lately? Could that explain why I’d felt so dark recently? Why I’d sort of lost that compulsion to help others? Al these questions assumed that I was an angel, of course. I asked my dad, “What if angels used their gifts for their own purposes?”

My dad paused before answering. I could tel my question kind of disturbed him. “That is precisely what these angels did at first, when they were sent to guard mankind. After al , even angels have free wil , the capacity to choose darkness over light. That is why they were cast out. Once these angels were cast out and became fal en, they ful y submitted their powers into the service of their own desires. Then the darkness—the urge to serve self rather than something higher—took hold. And that hold was—is—very, very hard to break, nearly like an addiction.”

Before continuing, he sort of shivered. Then he pul ed himself together and said, “Over the centuries, people in every culture, every society, began to take notice of these angels—especial y the fal en angels trying for redemption. Remember, these angels striving for salvation were trying to bring souls to God at the moment of death. People occasional y saw them in that instant, and attributed to them the deaths they witnessed. People started to fear these angels. Who could blame them? Sometimes, the people watched the beings draw close to the dying and whisper in their ears.

Other times, they saw the creatures touch their loved ones as they took their last breaths. And in rare occasions, they observed an exchange of blood between the dying human and the being. Of course, the people believed that the beings were causing the deaths—rather than facilitating the afterlife journeys of their loved ones. People created entire legends around these beings. The myths differed from culture to culture, from age to age. But the core always remained the same, and it gave birth to the legend. The legend of the vampire.

“And you can see how that legend was not too far off the mark with certain of the fal en angels, the ones who continued to serve themselves and reject the light. For they used their gifts to suck away humans’ souls and create a civilization that worshipped them, instead of God.”

My dad paused, and in the quiet, I couldn’t help but think that this last bit sounded a lot like the musings of Professor McMaster. Since when was my biologist dad a vampire scholar? Or a biblical scholar, for that matter? I looked over at him and noticed that, during the course of his long talk, his handsome face had grown craggy. He suddenly looked so sad and so old that I couldn’t possibly chal enge him.

He reached out to caress my cheek. “So my lovely daugh-ter, you cannot possibly be a vampire, because there are no vampires. Only fal en angels. Good and bad.”

“How do you know al this?” I final y asked, one among the many questions I’d amassed.

Before answering, he looked over at my mom, who’d remained stil and silent during the whole of his monologue. She nodded her head once, and he turned back to me.

“Because humans once cal ed me and your mother vampires.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

No way. My parents were perfectly normal, perfectly terrestrial. No way were they angels, or vampires, or anything else that whiffed of the otherworld. The very notion of my mom and dad as unearthly beings was ridiculous.

In fact, al of this suddenly felt laughable. It was too much, and I could feel the hysteria bubbling up in me. Tears streamed down my face. My stomach ached from the force of my laughter. When I realized that my parents weren’t joining in, the hilarity subsided a little bit. But then I looked over at them, somber and respectable and silent in their flannel nightgown and pajamas and robes, and the whole concept of them flying and divining thoughts seemed so hysterical y ridiculous that the laughter took hold again.

Final y, I calmed down enough to ask, “You two? Angels?”

“Yes,” my dad said quietly. Almost apologetical y.

“So, we’re like a family of angels? Are you two the good kind or the fal en ones?” I said with a giggle.

“We were fal en. But now we are trying to redeem our-selves,” my dad solemnly answered my not-so-serious question.