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"No human being? And you're only telling us this now?" I exclaimed indignantly. "What is it with you, men? Do you feel that you must keep everything important a secret?"
I threw my hands up in frustration. Chris intervened before my anger at the angel could completely take over my thoughts again.
"Not human, so a god, angel, or worse, a demon?" he asked Tanael.
"Believe me, demons are no worse than some gods or even angels," he replied calmly, without responding to my outburst of anger. "After all, you've had a demon in your house for a few months."
"A demon?" Chris almost choked on the word, and I could have jumped down Tanael's throat for mentioning Stephan's true nature.
"Stephan, our butler, is a kind of vampire," I tried to explain to Chris calmly, which was difficult given the tsunami slowly spreading through me. "But we're getting off topic." I stood up to my full height in front of the angel. "What else haven't you told us?"
He looked at me contritely. What did he know about the mysterious John Adam Nash, who had almost strangled me in our garden? "Where's your mother?" I heard the echo of his cold voice. What had he wanted with my mother? It all came back to me now. I had told him she had died years ago. "Your mother can't die!" Mr. Nash had then claimed and called me a liar. But he was wrong because Mom was no longer there. We had had to bury her, and before she was taken away for cremation, I had stroked her cold cheek one last time and said goodbye to her for good.
"Why was he searching for my mother?" My voice was calm again; I was too lost in thought, immersed in memories, to pursue the previous feeling of anger.
"He said she couldn't die." Another memory flashed. Tanael. "You told him I wasn't the one he wanted. Who is he looking for, Tanael?" I turned to the angel, demanding.
He knew he had to answer this question. He stood with his back against the wall, and four pairs of eyes looked at him expectantly, although I suspected that the silver pair already knew the answer.
Tanael ran his fingers through his hair. Sighing, he sat on the office chair at the table's long side. "As far as I know, and this is just conjecture, he's searching for the Holy Grail," he revealed the secret.
"The Holy Grail? The chalice?" Chris's face was filled with confusion. "What would my sister or mother have to do with this?"
"The Holy Grail is not an object, not a chalice, as humans have always believed. The Holy Grail is a woman," Tanael explained, causing several disbelieving faces, including mine.
"A woman?" Edward whispered, dazed. "But the story of the Grail has been circulating for centuries. Is she not human either?"
"Yes, she is human. Born of a goddess. Like every mortal, she lives through the time given to her before she is overtaken by death, only to be reborn afterward. For thousands of years. The crucial difference, however, is she comes from a different bloodline than most human women. This woman is destined to make history with an inner strength that the other female bloodline, the one descended from Eve, lacks."
"If she wrote history, she must be in the history books, right?" I questioned his statement.
"So does she, my dear." Tanael's gaze was sharp. "Just to name a few: Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth the First of England, Sophie Scholl."
"But if she wasn't descended from Eva, then who was she descended from?" Chris wanted to know.
"Of Adam's first wife, Lilith." The angel stood up and returned to his bookshelf while continuing his story.
"Lilith was the Goddess of the Night before she was commissioned by the Great Mother to create new life on earth. She was to father offspring with Adam, a being created from stardust. Lilith's mission was to balance the sexes and raise girls to be powerful, fierce, and kind women, just like Lilith was." Tanael returned with a scroll, which he unrolled and smoothed on the tabletop. A drawing of a beautiful woman with long black hair was surrounded by symbols and signs, by stars and the moon. The Goddess of the Night.
"But Adam was jealous of his powerful wife. He wanted a world where women had to serve men," he continued. "Since he found no supporters of this wish among his sons, he turned to the gods and found willing allies among them. Together with them, he slaughtered his 100 children, all the girls as well as the boys, and had those gods create Eve from his rib. A woman who obeyed him, who was in bondage to him. Lilith was able to escape. She was broken inside.
Nevertheless, she wanted to fulfill the Great Mother's task. Together with another god, she fathered a daughter whom she raised as expected to become a strong and kind warrior. She sent this daughter out into the world to bring forth a parallel bloodline—a bloodline of strong women. She bound the girl to the curse of returning after each human life to fulfill her task for eternity. Lilith herself then sank into her grief for her murdered children and was eventually consumed by an inner darkness until a great war broke out. But that's another story."
"Does that mean that John Adam Nash is looking for the daughter of this secretly created bloodline and, therefore, Lilith's child?" Chris summarized, apparently overwhelmed by the information.
"And he thought it was me?" I asked Tanael incredulously.
"Exactly. But you're not. He's wrong," confirmed the God of the First Light.
"But ... but why was he so convinced of it?" I probed further.
"I can't tell you that." Tanael looked me firmly in the eye. I couldn't see a lie anywhere. He really didn't seem to know. "But that's also the reason for the abductions of all those women. He's looking for her, and those women who could potentially be Lilith's descendants or have had contact with her are being taken away for questioning. As he knows that this is a woman with an iron will and unprecedented inner strength, the prisoners are repeatedly questioned and tortured. In the hope that he will eventually break the right one," he explained calmly, without taking his eyes off me.
"Why didn't you tell me all this before?" I whispered disappointedly. We shared so many moments together, and he kept me in the dark the whole time.
Suddenly, he stood before me, his hands gently clasping mine. "Myrina, how could I tell you?" His voice was despairing. "It was so much information already. And how do you think you would have reacted if I had told you who I really am?" He looked at me penetratingly and pleadingly. "You probably would have pushed me away, and then it would have been even harder to protect you. I couldn't take that risk."
I nodded silently because I knew he was right. "Promise me no more secrets!" I demanded quietly.
