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Mason’s arms folded tighter, and his glare could have burned holes directly through my soul.
“Okay,” I muttered. “Mostly me. Maybe he wants to hurt me.”
Carver cleared his throat. “As I was saying, Mason here is a nephilim. Half human, and half angel.”
The living room filled with a thick silence for a moment, until Mason cut through it.
“Bullshit.”
“Oh?” Carver’s eyebrow arched dangerously. “And how else would you explain these circumstances? Your curious abilities, the fact that you were led all the way here by the imprint of your father’s divine energies? Of his blood?”
Mason rubbed his hands along his scalp, his eyes squeezed tight as he did his very best to process his predicament. This must have been how I looked when Thea first told me that I was a mage, spilled to me about the arcane underground.
“Someone who called himself an angel appeared to me,” Mason said slowly. “He told me that I should come to Valero, to seek out this Samyaza person. I thought it was all crazy talk, but I had to know for myself. So you’re saying that my mother was – well, was intimate with an angel? And then nine months later I happened?”
“Precisely,” Carver said.
Mason crumpled into the sofa, leaning deep into it and throwing his head back. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Well,” Carver said, chuckling, “not quite. Your father was a very important figure, however. A fallen angel, one of the Grigori, cast out of heaven for loving humanity.”
Sterling whistled. “For loving humanity a little too much, it sounds like.”
“Indeed,” Carver said. “But not just any Grigori, either. Samyaza was the leader of the fallen of heaven. Their king, if you will.”
Mason sat straight up, his eyes huge. “So what, I’m like some fallen angel prince?”
Carver didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Mason gave a forlorn whine as he crumpled back into the couch.
“I didn’t want this,” he said. “I didn’t want any of this.”
I’ll tell you right now. In a different time, a different place? That could have been me saying those exact words on that couch. I never wanted the dark gift that Thea gave me, that she planted in my heart. Yet after all that time, after so many scars and so many deaths, there I was, alive in the Boneyard. Bizarrely, I was happier, more stable than I’d ever been. For the first time, I felt an actual pang of sympathy for Mason.
I closed my eyes, turned inward, and smothered that sympathy with a pillow.
“But why me?” Mason said. “Why did his power come to me, of all people?”
“Oh, there is no doubt that Samyaza fathered many children, as is the wont of the fallen,” Carver said. “I confess, this is indeed very strange. I know precious little of the ways of angels, but I do know that when the strongest among them perish, their essence may find its way back to its home realm, to be reformed. But Samyaza was fallen – barred from heaven. His fullest power was sealed within him when he was thrown out of the gates, only truly unleashed upon what we assumed was his death.”
I blinked, only just managing to put two and two together. “So you’re saying that what was left of Sam’s energies went looking for his kids?”
“That is one way of putting it, yes. Though considering your description of your encounter,” Carver said, placing his chin in his hand, “it appears that a significant portion of Samyaza’s power has been bestowed exclusively to his son. To Mason, that is.”
“Then the only question I have left, I guess, is why him?” Mason cast an accusing finger at me as he spoke. “Why was there a beam of light drawing me to him?”
“Because the other half of that essence was used to heal him. Dustin here was nearly dead if it hadn’t been for Samyaza’s, shall we say, divine intervention. It seems that some of your father’s blood still flows through Dustin’s veins, and that is what drew you to Valero.”
“So what, he’s part angel, too?”
The room burst into laughter.
“Hey,” I said, somewhat hurt. “It’s not that funny.”
“Sincerely doubt there’s any angel in him,” Herald said. “I’d know. The blood brought him back from the brink, but that’s about it.”
“So,” Mason said. “Why would my dad give his life for – well, whoever this runt of a person is?”
“Hey,” I snarled. “I’m taller than you.”
