Abigail

The ritual they needed to perform was far more difficult than the one Elias and Ramiel had done to ward the Fitzpatrick house. Once they found a suitable stretch of flat land away from the road and out of sight of Harold's neighbours, it had taken three hours to paint the sigils required. According to Ramiel, since this wouldn't be a permanent ward, carved sigils that Sariel's warding had required weren't necessary. However, Harold would have to create some excuse for why the mint green paint, initially intended for a repaint of his dining room, was now all over the clearing. Unfortunately, Ramiel insisted that if they simply drew the required patterns in the dirt, the sigils would be too imprecise to be fit for use.

The bitch was, the sigils were the easy part.

"Say it again," Ramiel said.

Harold shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he read the required words from a sheet of notebook paper in his hands. They had done their best to transcribe what Ramiel had spent an hour and a half attempting to teach them. The language of the angels, which Harold insisted was called either the Old Tongue or Enochian, had to be God's attempt at humour. It sounded pleasant enough to the ear, but when Abigail attempted to repeat Ramiel's instructions, the words stuck in her throat as if she were speaking some unholy pidgin of Welsh and Klingon. If this was the language of Heaven, she dreaded to find out what the native language of demons was like.

Ramiel frowned when Harold finished. "Hardly fluent, but acceptable."

"Can we start then?" Elias asked.

Ramiel nodded and found a space for himself at the base of an old pine. Elias and Harold too found their marks. Abigail took a deep breath and walked over to her designated spot. Ramiel had assured them that mispronunciation would result only in failure, not death or Hollywood-level explosions. Still, Abigail's heart pumped as if she had just run twenty kilometres.

Elias, who by the virtue of having been involved with one previous ritual, had been unanimously proclaimed as the most experienced and thus was tasked with leading the ritual. He began chanting the words written on the paper in his hand.

Six lines in, Harold added his voice to the chanting and on cue, Abigail joined in. It helped, she found, if she thought of it as poetry in a foreign language. The words, strange as they may be, had a rhythm to them.

Nevertheless, Abigail stumbled over three words in a row, barely getting them out. Concentrate. She glanced about nervously. Harold and Elias seemed too focused on their part in the ritual to notice her fumbling.

Elias raised his hand. The ground stirred and a nameless energy coiled out towards the middle of the triangle the three nephilim had formed. A few moments later, Abigail felt energy begin to emanate from Harold. It was more hesitant, fragile and somehow more earthy than Elias', but there was no mistaking it.

Abigail raised her hand too and tried to open herself up, to extend her life force into the centre of the triangle. Come on. Come on. Think beyond herself, like Ramiel explained. There was nothing save the manic beat of her heart.

"Sorry," she mumbled. "I can't do it."

Elias dropped his hand and the coils of energy swirling between them snapped out of existence. "Goddamn it, Abby. You weren't even trying."

"I was. I'm sorry."

"Come here," Ramiel called out.

Abigail's cheeks burned as she crossed the narrow clearing.

"Don't fret, Abigail," Ramiel said softly so that only Abigail could hear him. "You feel the energy emanating from Elias and Harold, yes? That is one manifestation of aether, which binds the world together. It resides in all mortals, although nephilim alone are able to manipulate it. I want you to bring this energy within you onto the palm of your hand. It will be as tangible to you as this ground and these trees."

Abigail blinked. "I'll...I'll try I guess. Thanks."

"Are we doing this again?" Elias said. "Let's speed it up then, the light's beginning to fade."

They returned to their designated positions and started from the beginning. Elias began in a sour tone, but within the first three lines his voice smoothed and his irritated grimace faded into a mask of total concentration.

Abigail cracked her knuckles as she began her lines. I can't screw this up for a second time. She studied her hand, imagining tendrils of energy escaping from the tips of her fingers and pooling into the palm of her hand. No one could see, of course, but those tendrils were rooted right at her heart. They coiled and twisted through her entire body, humming under her skin. Abigail needed only to draw out a little. A few tendrils, no more.

And she could feel them. My God. This is unbelievable. Tendrils of aether crackled and twisted onto one other, as hot as a bonfire in the cool air of the Hunter Valley. She gathered them up into a fuzzy ball and rolled her wrist. The ball dipped forward and almost at once, was caught in the swirl of chaos that emanated from Elias.

Abigail struggled through the last few lines of the ritual — the invocation for their message to pass through all walls and locked doors on its path. The energy of the three nephilim was now mixed into a single mass in the centre, then with one last word from Elias, it shot up and disappeared from the realms visible to the human eye.

"Did it work?" asked Abigail, as she stared at her hand.

Her skin still prickled with the memory of the heat, but the tendrils of energy she had conjured were gone and she felt empty. All she wanted to do was to try out her powers again.

"We sent a message all right," Harold replied. "Can we be certain there'll be an answer?"

Ramiel peered up, although Abigail didn't know what he could see in between the gathering storm clouds. After perhaps a minute, he jerked up and motioned for the three nephilim to move to the edge of the clearing.

Wings quivered.

Bloody hell, I did it. Abigail grinned. I actually did it.

An angel landed in the centre of the clearing. He had a three-piece suit in the same cut as Ramiel had worn the night Abigail and Elias had met him, but the resemblance ended there. This angel had only one pair of wings and instead of Ramiel's thick curls, his hair was trimmed and styled as if he were ready for a business lunch.

"Lord Ramiel," he said with a sneer, then folded his wings. "Would you care to explain?"

Harold stepped forward and with some difficulty, went down on his knee. "Thank you for answering our call. We are most honoured to be in the presence of a servant of Heaven."

"Get up, that's not necessary," the angel replied.

While Abigail helped Harold up to his feet, Ramiel took a few hesitant steps towards the newcomer.

The angel offered Ramiel a crooked smile. "My, oh my, you look like you have a few good stories to tell. I had wondered what hole you'd ended up in."

Ramiel did look particularly unwell at that moment. His face was covered with cold sweat and his hands shook. The trip in the car had been an ordeal, then he had to prepare the nephilim for the ritual. Over the course of this day he had moved around more than he had the whole previous week.

"I would not name them good stories," Ramiel replied. "You can see, I take it, why I am in need of assistance."

The angel cocked his head and Abigail had a feeling he was enjoying every second of this conversation. "Do you expect me to carry you back? No way, my lord. You're overweight goods and the trip will damage your injuries further. What good would it do me if you end up a corpse? Neither the Archangel nor Gabriel know my face, I'd rather keep it that way."

"Giorgio —"

"Hey, don't get needy, my lord," the angel snorted. "I'll return with reinforcements."