He just smiled. Guys with one name. Man, I hated that.
“Well, Abraham, there’s gonna be trouble if you don’t tell me what those things were.” I held up a hand. “I know they were vampires. Be specific.”
“Why would you cut off their heads if you didn’t know what they were?”
“Beheading has always worked pretty well in the past.”
“But—” Confusion spread over his face. “Not just anyone can behead a draugar and kill them.”
Now we were getting somewhere.
“What’s a draugar?”
“Norse vampire,” Bram said, though he continued to stare into my face, searching my eyes, for what I wasn’t sure. “They rest in the graves of Vikings and inhabit the bodies of the dead.”
Vikings. Right again. Sometimes I was so damn good at this I scared myself.
Although I’d prefer to hear Ruthie’s voice instead of making psychic-boosted guesses, however spot-on they were. One of these days I was going to guess wrong, and then someone would die.
Not me. But someone.
“They rise as wisps of smoke,” Bram continued, “and prey on the blood of the living. To die they must be beheaded.” I nodded. “By a hero.”
I stopped nodding. “Huh?”
“Only the strength of a true hero will kill them.”
“Oookay. How exactly is a hero defined?”
“If they die when you behead them, hero.”
“And if they don’t, you’re a dead loser.”
He shrugged. “That’s a chance I was willing to take.”
“Why?”
Bram cocked his head, and that earring twinkled. “I’m sorry?”
“Why would you take that chance?”
“Why would you?”
“It’s my job.”
“You get paid for . . .” He motioned at the ashes swirling around our feet.
“Not exactly.”
“What exactly?”
“We need to have a talk.”
I didn’t like wasting time; I had to get to the top of Inyan Kara. But I couldn’t just leave this guy to run around chopping off heads because he thought he was a hero. The federation had several purposes, and this was one of them—bringing like-talented individuals into the fold.
I moved the Impala off the road, then we sat on the dented hood sipping water.
“What do you know?” I began. “About the—” I paused, uncertain what to call them in case Bram was more clueless than I thought.
“Nephilim?” he asked.
I lifted my eyebrows, and his lips curved, though he didn’t quite crack a smile. “The descendants of the fallen angels. Half demons masquerading as humans.”
“How do you know this?”
“I was a priest.”
I blinked. Hadn’t seen that coming.
“You aren’t anymore?”
“Do I look like a priest?”
“Appearances deceive.”
“Touché,” he murmured, and took a sip of water.
“What happened?”
“They didn’t believe me.”
“What, exactly, did you say?”
His lips quirked again. “I went into the priesthood in the first place because my dreams often came true.”
I didn’t comment. That happened to me all the time.
“I thought God was talking to me,” he said.
“Maybe he was.” Probably he was.
“But I also had nightmares of horrible creatures hiding behind the faces of humans.”
“Join the club,” I muttered.
He appeared intrigued, but he continued with his story. “My family was very religious. Psychics, magic, soothsayers—bad idea.”
“Because?”
“Ever hear, Thou shall not suffer a witch to live?”
“Sounds like something you’d get in Salem. Over three hundred years ago.”
“I’ve heard it more recently than that.”
I’d done it more recently, but now wasn’t the time to confess.
“I was given a choice—priesthood or . . .” His voice faded; his gaze drifted into the past.
“Death?” I prompted. I might not suffer his parents to live if they’d threatened that. I had memories of my own “witch hunters” that I’d like to erase. People like us always did.
“No.” Bram straightened, clearing his throat. “Psych ward.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
My eyes narrowed. I’d been an orphan—or at least I’d thought I was—and spent a lot of time in places and with people I did not want to remember. But the older I got, the more I discovered that having parents wasn’t always so great, either.
“You went into the priesthood at fourteen?”
“Seminary high school, then the seminary, then—” He rolled his hand to indicate and so on. “I thought the dreams would stop when I gave my life to the church. Obviously I was being possessed by a demon.”
“But they didn’t stop, because you weren’t possessed by anything. You have a gift.”
“Or a curse.”
I’d often thought the same.
“You dreamed of the Nephilim, and they came.”
“I’d dream about a person, then I’d see the terrible things they’d done, that they would do, and the horrific beast that lived inside them.”