Page 36 of Eclipse Born

Cassiel watched our exchange with that same unsettling patience, making no move to attack or flee. Just waiting, as if he had all the time in the world. Like a mountain watching ants scurry around its base.

“We need to regroup,” Cade muttered, low enough that only I could hear. “Find Sterling, see if he's got any lore on this.”

“And leave this... whatever he is... to do what, exactly?” I shot back, not taking my eyes off Cassiel. “Finish what he started with Hayes?”

“Hayes is already gone,” Cassiel interjected, his hearing apparently far better than a human's should be. “His body serves my purpose now.”

That cold statement sent a fresh wave of anger through me. Hayes might have been a religious nutjob walking straight into the jaws of death, but he'd been a person. And this thing had just... taken him. Used him up like a battery.

“You're not going anywhere,” I growled, even though a voice in the back of my head was screaming that we were outmatched.

I moved closer to Cade, keeping my eyes fixed on Cassiel. Whatever he was, he made no move to attack us, which was either a good sign or a really, really bad one. My experience suggested the latter.

The floorboards creaked beneath my boots as I shifted position, trying to get a better angle. The abandoned house felt colder now, the air heavy with a presence that seemed to fill every corner, pressing against my skin like an electrical field. Dust motes danced in the weak light filtering through the grimy windows, creating a surreal, dreamlike quality to the standoff.

“Okay, what the hell are you?” I demanded, trying to keep my voice steady. Fear was a luxury we couldn't afford, not when we were cornered with an unkillable whatever-the-hell standing between us. We needed information, and we needed it fast.

Cassiel straightened, his posture unnaturally perfect, like a soldier standing at attention. His expression remained unreadable as a blank wall, eyes fixed on some middle distance between us. “I am not here to harm you.”

“Yeah, sure.” Cade scoffed, wiping the clean blade on his jeans before slipping it back into its sheath. His fingers lingered near the hilt, ready to draw again at a moment's notice. “That's exactly what demons say right before they rip out your spine.”

A humorless smile tugged at my lips despite the tension. Classic Cade, sarcastic in the face of death. It was one of thethings I'd missed most during those six months he was gone. His ability to stare into the abyss and flip it the bird.

The shadows in the room seemed to deepen, pooling in the corners and under the eaves, the weak light from the street lamps outside doing little to illuminate the space. Cassiel stood immobile at the center of it all, a fixed point in the gathering darkness, his presence somehow both subtle and overwhelming at once.

Cassiel exhaled, a strangely human gesture that seemed out of place on his otherworldly countenance. His expression suggested this conversation was beneath him, like trying to explain quantum physics to a toddler. Or a man attempting to communicate with insects crawling across his boot.

“I am not a demon,” he said, his gaze settling on me with uncomfortable intensity. Those eyes seemed to see through me, past flesh and bone to something deeper. Something hidden. “I am an angel.”

The declaration was absurd and impossible. I let out a sharp laugh that sounded harsh even to my own ears, echoing off the bare walls of the decaying house. The very idea was ridiculous. Angels belonged in Sunday school stories and cheesy Christmas movies, not standing in abandoned houses in blood-soaked clothes.

“Right. Angels don't exist,” I said, the words automatic. We'd seen a lot of weird shit in our years of hunting—monsters, spirits, demons, gods. But angels? That was a bridge too far.

“Don't they?” Cassiel asked, his voice soft but carrying a weight that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “You've seen demons. You've spoken with the dead. You've witnessed powers beyond mortal understanding. Why is this where you draw the line of possibility?”

His words hit uncomfortably close to home. It was true, we'd faced creatures and forces that defied explanation. So why was the idea of angels so hard to swallow?

I glanced at Cade, who looked as skeptical as I felt.

“Let's say you are an angel,” I said, not bothering to hide my disbelief. “Shouldn't you have wings? A halo? Be a little less...” I gestured vaguely at his blood-spattered appearance, “...murder-y?”

Cassiel's expression didn't change, but something shifted in his eyes—a flash of something ancient and cold. “You confuse the reality with the image. The messenger with the myth.”

The room shuddered slightly, like ripples spreading across water, and for just a split second, I saw... something. A suggestion of vast, shadowy wings stretching from Cassiel's back, filling the room, reaching beyond the walls themselves. A glimpse of light too bright to look at directly, of a form too vast and strange to comprehend. Then it was gone, leaving spots dancing in my vision and a pounding in my head.

“Jaysus,” I breathed, blinking rapidly to clear my sight. “What the hell was that?”

“A glimpse,” Cassiel replied simply. “Nothing more. Your mind cannot comprehend my true form, just as an ant cannot comprehend a mountain.”

“Modest, aren't you?” Cade muttered, but I could tell from the way he'd paled that he'd seen it too. And that it had shaken him more than he wanted to admit.

The silence stretched between us, taut and uncomfortable. Cassiel seemed content to wait, as if he had all the time in the world. Maybe he did. The concept of an angel—an actual, biblical angel—standing in front of us was too much to process all at once. My mind kept rejecting it, searching for other explanations, other frameworks that might make sense of what we were seeing.

Growing up, my adoptive parents—Declan and Moira Byrne—had drilled into me the taxonomy of the supernatural world. Ghosts were remnants of human consciousness anchored to our world by trauma or unfinished business. Vampires, werewolves, and their kin were biological aberrations, twisted reflections of humanity. Demons were corrupt spirits from another plane of existence. But angels? They were myths, stories told to children to help them sleep at night. The good guys who never showed up when you needed them.

“If you're an angel,” Cade said finally, breaking the silence, “then where've you been? Why haven't we seen your kind before?”

It was a good question, one that had been rattling around my own head. If angels were real, where the hell had they been all this time? Where were they when people were dying, when demons were possessing innocent victims, when monsters were tearing families apart?

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