“The Irin are our enemy, and one of the main jobs of the Fallen is to convert or kill the Iri. Azazel, a high-ranking Irin, wants your powers. He’ll do anything to get them, even if that means killing you so you can’t use them.” He doodled on the table with his finger. “Until you are eighteen, you are susceptible to his influence. But after your eighteenth birthday, your powers will strengthen and you’ll become immune to him. He won’t be able to touch you.”
My hands began to shake and were slick with sweat. I wiped them up and down my pant legs.
You said kill. That’s more than touching! That’s ending, like ending a life. Over, done, finished, caput. I don’t like this demi-angel thing. At. All.
“Why not?” I asked, hoping my voice wouldn’t give out. “What makes me so special when I turn eighteen?”
“Your ranking as a demi-angel will supersede Azazel’s ranking as an Irin. Essentially, when my Iri rank and power transfers to you, it will make you the strongest demi-angel on earth. You will hold more power than Hell’s Angel. And when Ben reaches eighteen, well, the two of you together? You will have control of the angelic army, which will be so strong that the demons of Hell won’t have any footing on earth. The thousands-year-long fight to reign over the earth with evil will be stopped.”
“Wait—” Questions were rolling around in my brain so fast it was hard to concentrate enough to ask one. “If I’m so vulnerable, why hasn’t he tried to get to me before now? And, I mean, if I’m so vulnerable, how come you’re just telling me this now? He could have grabbed me!” I smelled the coffee my mom was making and inhaled deeply, the smell oddly comforting. “And why didn’t you prepare me before now? I mean, isn’t there some kind of class for this? A special school like Harry Potter had? I mean, come on, really? I find out a few weeks before my birthday, just sitting in my kitchen.”
A chill ran through my body as I thought about Azazel and him actually wanting to kill me. If this wild fantasy were true, then I’d been walking around for days with a huge target on my back and didn’t know it. Nothing said “kill me” like a person who didn’t know to protect herself! My lungs hurt when I took a breath. I rubbed my chest with the palm of my hand and gripped the edge of the table with the other.
“You were safe. The other demi-angels were following you. Keeping watch—”
I slapped both hands on the table and stood. “You had me followed!”
“It was for your own protection. Once the visions started, we knew you were vulnerable, but we hadn’t prepared you yet. Plus, you weren’t in the best mood for us to tell you all this.” My dad rubbed the back of his neck. “You were having enough trouble just finding out you were a demi-angel. I was afraid if I dumped this on you too, you’d really lose it.”
The tension leaked from my shoulders, and I slipped back in my seat and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s fair. I wasn’t listening to you.”
My mom set a cup of coffee in front of my dad, and he took a sip before answering. “Before your visions, you were in a safety period. Azazel only has two opportunities to get to a demi-angel: before you reach the age of accountability and then again in the months leading up to your eighteenth birthday.”
“Age of accountability?”
“Yes, the age a person is able to understand the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. Once they understand the difference, they choose which to embrace. Azazel can try to influence their choice, but when they reach the age of accountability—regardless of the choice they’ve made—they enter a safety period. This is the time during their childhood when they are too young to protect themselves from Azazel’s evil. But when their demi-angel powers emerge in the months or weeks leading up to their eighteenth birthday, they lose that safety. Azazel has one more opportunity to convert or take the demi-angel’s powers before they fully mature.”
I stared at my hands and twisted my fingers one after the other, thinking about everything my dad had told me. So far, he’d made the visions seem like fun in comparison to this Azazel. Azazel. Even his name sent shivers through me. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I couldn’t get my mind to stop spinning. I could die. Muriel could die. Geez, this was way too much. My body felt brittle. Put the least bit of pressure on me, and I’d snap.
As I glanced to my right, the pink sticky notes counting down the days to my birthday caught my eye. I tilted my head, stared at them, and had the oddest sensation. It was funny. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe laughing about it was a way to release the stress building inside me like steam in a teakettle.
I laughed and pointed at the refrigerator. “That’s why you made the little countdown calendar on the refrigerator, right? I thought it was because you were excited about my big birthday: turning eighteen, becoming an adult, and all that. But you’re really counting down the days I have to either fight off Azazel or die.” I laughed harder.
I’m losing it. This is so not funny. Why am I laughing? It’s not funny, but it totally is funny, too