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Jane loved flying, especially after rainy days. She was gliding through the clouds, invulnerable from the dangers that would kill simple humans, and invisible to other eyes. That was how she was making use of her Nephilim powers in her relatively normal life, justifying it as just trying to get faster to her mother’s place when she was visiting her. Oftentimes she wished she could relish in the powers inherited from her father, but from a young age she was told that she needs to stay hidden from fully fledged angels and she had taken many measures to ensure that.
When she reached her destination, she stopped in front of her mother’s house and became visible again. She rang the doorbell and was welcomed with a hug as usual, but this time it seemed unusually tight. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for Jane to realize that her mother was very tense.
“Mom, is everything okay?” she asked.
The woman put an end to the hug and looked at her worryingly. “I hope so, my baby, but if it’s not… just run and don’t look back.”
“What? I don’t understand…”
“Just promise me that!” her mother suddenly shouted.
“You are being overdramatic, Mary” a different voice interfered and Jane looked at the one who just spoke. She had never seen that man again, but he was walking from the kitchen towards them as if he owned the place. “I promised you I’ll be merciful, isn’t that enough?”
Her mother placed herself between her and the stranger. “I’m not sure what merciful means for those like you, Sarathiel.”
“What?” Jane asked, shocked. “He’s Sarathiel? He’s my… My…” she couldn’t finish the sentence, caught between excitement and fear. She always knew that any angel she’d come across would want to kill her since Nephilims were seen by them as an abomination for whatever reason. On the other hand, this angel was the one her mother met and slept with 22 years ago, then disappeared less than a week later. And after all that time, Jane was finally face to face with her father, Sarathiel.
“What do you want?” Jane asked, trying her best to seem confident.
The angel stepped closer to her. “I’m here to see you… my daughter.”
“What held you up until now?”
“I’m sorry, I was unaware of your existence. I thought that my grace failed to produce a child that night since nothing happened for entire days. But recently I was looking through my brother’s notes and read something surprising. He thinks that the time a Nephilim needs to spend in the womb may vary from hours to enough months to pass for a common human being. Metatron isn’t always right, but I had to check. After finding Mary again and seeing you like this, it seems that I made the smart choice.”
“Okay, now what?” Jane asked, unimpressed by the long explanation. “Are you going to attempt to make up for lost time? Don’t bother, it doesn’t work like that!”
Sarathiel shook his head and spoke sorrowfully. “I don’t know what I was thinking back then. I made a huge mistake.”
The girl felt tears starting to form in her eyes. What did his words mean? Was he going to apologize and be by her side from that moment onwards? Whether she’d be able to forgive him for abandoning her mother or not, having someone who could teach her more about her angelic side sounded like a wonderful opportunity.
“I… I need to erase this mistake before anyone else finds out” he continued, shattering her dreams immediately. “It was idiotic of me to think that a child would bring more meaning to my life anyway.”
“No!” Mary shouted and jumped at him, but he touched her forehead and she immediately fell limp to the ground.
“What did you do to her?” Jane panicked.
“She’s just sleeping. Dealing with her is the pleasant part of this visit” Sarathiel answered somberly.
His eyes flashed with a blue-gray hue, which reminded Jane of her own eyes while she was using her powers. She felt a sad chuckle stuck in her throat because of the thought that this was how she was seeing the source of her cloudlike essence.
Another thing that shined and caught her attention was the weapon that appeared in his hand. Thanks to her quick reflexes and the self-defense classes she had followed for many years, Jane managed to avoid getting stabbed by the unusual blade.
“I’m your daughter!” she shouted as retaliation. “How can you try to kill me? What did I ever do to you?”
“I will face serious repercussions if the others find out that I created a Nephilim” he answered absently.
“But why? What’s so bad about me?”
“Answers will not make your death any less unpleasant. I’m sorry that this is the situation, it’s my fault that you were born.”
He attacked her again and landed a scratch, but Jane managed to do more than that. She hit him in the stomach with her knee, then disarmed him. She grabbed his blade and lifted it in front of him, barely stopping her hands from visibly shaking.
“I shouldn’t have hurried this much to come here,” Sarathiel said with sadness. “I was aware I’m not a skilled warrior, but I still didn’t expect you to be so well trained. In a painful way, it makes me feel proud.”
“Shut up! Just go away and leave us alone!”
He regained his composure and closed most of the distance between them before speaking again. “It’s only a matter of time until someone will notice that I came here and they will discover you. I know you don’t understand, but at least I’ll make sure to kill you in a fairly painless way. That is my penance.”
Distracted by his words, she didn’t react in time to Sarathiel’s fast movements. He grabbed her arms with both hands, but she still refused to let go of the weapon, no matter how much of a struggle it was to still keep it for herself. She was painfully aware that it was only a matter of time until he’d overpower her enough to kill her. The only thing she could do about it was… killing him first. She didn’t want to become a monster, to have the blood of her own father on her hands. But the angel was obviously not having the same reservations and this meeting could only end in death. She still couldn’t understand why, she was doing nothing wrong, she was just quietly living her life.
She thought about her mother, about how much effort her mother has put into raising her. She would be so devastated if her only child died and Jane didn’t want to die either. She wanted to… No, she needed to survive this. She wasn’t the monster, the ones choosing a path of violence were the angels who were dead set on killing her for no reason.
Jane let go of the faint hope that she could ever be accepted by that side of her family or that she’d ever have a relationship with her father. Holding back tears, she tugged the blade with even more force than before. Once she felt enough tension from Sarathiel’s grip in the other direction, she suddenly pushed it instead. The angel had no chance to deviate its trajectory and the weapon ended up firmly implanted in his chest. A shocked expression appeared on his face, but it was immediately consumed by strong light coming out of his eyes and mouth as if he was struck by lightning, then he fell to the ground.
Jane hesitated, but since she needed anything that could hurt angels, she took the weapon from his dead, cold hands. She closed his eyes as her single gesture of respect and affection. She wished things could have been different between them, but she didn’t regret surviving and she vowed that she’d be quicker in defending herself from angels if it came to it again.
She hurried to check on her mother and was relieved to find out that the woman’s pulse was strong. That meant that Sarathiel hadn’t lied about just putting her to sleep. Jane refused to look back at his body and for the moment just sat down next to her only real parent instead.
The angel’s words were haunting her. Even with him dead, the storm had not passed for her yet. She put her head on her knees and started crying, feeling overwhelmed by the 5 minutes that just changed her life. She knew that she now needed to go into hiding even more deeply than before, so she wouldn’t be able to fly anymore for a while. For once, she hated those clouds and their occasional grayness.