Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
“You may end up stronger than me. I think it’s safe to say you’re extremely powerful, and that’s why you have his attention. The timing of those murders, right before your coming of age, tells me he’s using magic that requires their sacrifices. Read the book, and then we’ll talk.” With that, he turns and leaves.
The Sacred Book of Nephilim
Magic is what magic was and will be.
There is no such thing as coincidence. There are no accidents. Know this and find a deep understanding, for this is written and cannot be unwritten. But also know that all is not what it seems. Look beyond, seek the truth. Find revelation.
Chapter sixteen
An hour later, I’ve become a student, with the book as my teacher.
Equipped with a pad and pen that Micah supplied, I’ve meticulously listed out as many of the different types of demons as time has allowed, and, most importantly, how to kill them. I’m presently studying “Wallows,” some sort of monster that possesses a human for no reason other than its insatiable love of human food. The problem is that the possessed human does nothing but eat, at the expense of all other parts of life. The Wallow also considers Seers a tasty delicacy. They are so lesser that gold is a simple death for them, unlike the far more complex killing of many other species, it seems.
I flip the page as a phone on the wall by the fridge rings. I hesitate but walk in that direction and answer the line. “Hello,” I say cautiously. Caution, I vow, is my new motto.
“I sent someone to bring you to the training facility,” Micah says without a greeting. “Don’t give her a hard time. None of this is her fault.” He hangs up, and I grind my teeth. Does he think I am so difficult that I would just give a random person trouble? And why is it okay for me to leave the room without him now, and it wasn’t before?
I hang up the receiver, and already there’s a knock on the door. “Please do not let this be Celine,” I murmur to the empty room, because if she tries to kill me, I’m pretty sure those “assets” of mine will find a way to be useful.
I walk to the door and open it, finding a teenage girl with a pop of wavy red hair and a splatter of freckles across her nose waiting on the other side. She lifts a tentative hand. “Hi,” she greets. “I’m Ariella.”
I guess Ariella to be about fifteen and already, at such a tender age, donned in leather, too young by my standards to require protection from a demon bite. “Ariella,” I repeat, and when she thrusts her small hand at me, I shake it, her grip surprisingly firm, her eyes a hazel brownish color that, thankfully, remain a hazel brownish color.
Our hands part, and she shoves hers inside her back pockets. “You really do have his eyes.” Her voice is filled with awe and amazement, which tells me I’ve forgotten a very important question: How many Crystal Seers are there? At least partially, she’s given me that answer, or rather, confirmed what I’ve surmised from my conversations with Micah. Not many. For my new visitor, there is apparently only one other, and that one is Micah—Crystal Seer and Overseer.
“Everyone is talking about you,” she says softly. “That’s why they sent me.”
I tilt my head. “Why would they send you?”
“I’m a Sensory Seer. I feel good and evil within the ranks of the Seers.”
“I thought Micah said only a Crystal Seer could read a Crystal Seer.”
“We have a limited ability with your kind, but it still works. You feel like Micah.”
Instinctively, I breathe out relief, shocked when Ariella casts me a curious look. “Why did you just feel relief?”
“Because demons are obsessed with me. I want to be like him. I want to kill them. And, for the record, the strangest thing about that admission is everything. Only weeks ago, I thought I was human. I thought demons were fiction. I thought…a lot of wrong things. It’s all so, as I said, strange.”
She smiles a beaming smile. “Strange but true. And you’ll kill your share of demons. I feel that in you, too. Actually, you’ll kill many. You’ll make them hurt.”
She’s still smiling as she delivers news of the killings in my future, and it’s kind of creepy. “Ah, well…Where are we going?”
“To Micah,” she says, opening her leather jacket, the hilt of a blade on display. “And I’m under instruction to kill anyone who comes near you until you’re able to fully appreciate your assets.”
Good Lord, she’s a teenager under orders to kill for me. I don’t like it. A kid is not a killer, should not have to be a killer, and Micah will soon hear from me on this. I join her in the hallway, and the door snaps shut, buzzing at my exit and telling me I’m now locked out.