The Blood Bracelets #2: Demon Born

Chapter Sixteen

'Then get a move on and stop sulking,' said Zed sharply, picking up his kitchen knife once again.

Not waiting to be told twice, especially when Zed had a habit of waving a knife around far too casually, Kael stood and headed upstairs. His tired body struggled on the staircase and when he reached his room, he all but collapsed onto his bed. This would be the only time he had to relax, because when Seth had tried to take them back to the Halls he found that the wardings around the Immortal Halls had been tightened, which meant that not even Seth could open a Doorway without strict permission. Now Seth had to get in contact with Julius or the other Angels another way, but Kael doubted they'd be too happy to hear from him. Kael did technically break out of jail, with Seth's help.

Kael didn't particularly want to go back to the Halls, not when Rafael and Michael were electing to kill Fury which, in turn, would kill Taryn. Yet if they were to find an answer to Belial's riddle then it would be at the Halls, either from scouring the books that the Halls boasted or speaking with Rafael and Michael themselves, in the hope that they knew what "Heaven's mortal guise" meant.

After using every last drop of warm water, Kael changed into fresh clothes and returned downstairs to the recreation lounge where Zed was reading a newspaper, his feet up on the coffee table between the couches. Kael tried not be too bitter about this, considering whenever he had tried to put his feet up on the coffee table Zed almost bit his head off.

He wasn't sure what triggered the sudden thought, but Kael was reminded of the throwaway comment Belial had made back in the church. Given the battle that had ensured and Fury's escape, Kael hadn't thought to contemplate the words until now. We should never have made you in the first place, Belial had sneered. What had he meant by that?

Not for the first time, Kael wondered about his life before he became mortal. Even if he was still a full demon, he doubted he could have remembered his earliest years – or how he was even created. He wasn't an Angel who had fallen to become Infernum, and he wasn't like the legion who had crawled out from Hell. Was he like Zed and Drake then, those whose origins stemmed from centuries ago, when their predecessors had been touched or mutated by demonic energy.

Perching himself on the couch's armrest, Kael turned to Zed and said, 'Do you know much about my kind?'

'That's an odd question,' Zed admitted, his brow quirking.

Kael shrugged in response.

'Well, I know your race was technically called the Animeus,' Zed offered. 'But after they all got wiped out, except you, there wasn't really much of a race left to refer to. You know how the others all died.'

'Because they couldn't control their hunger for demon souls, and often took more energy than their bodies could handle at the one time,' Kael replied. 'They inadvertently killed themselves, in the end.'

'Except you.'

'Except me,' Kael agreed. 'But I'm sure I would have ended up doing the same, if I hadn't become mortal. Do you know where the Animeus came from, though?'

'I tried to find out.'

Kael's brow lifted in surprise. 'You did?'

'After you started working for me, I tried to research the Animeus.'

'And?'

'Aside from what I already knew about them, I couldn't find anything else. There are references, but references only. I wasn't sure if it was because no one genuinely knew, or had the chance to record their experiences considering how brutally the Animeus used to kill those they came across, or...' Zed trailed, as if distracted by his own thoughts. 'Or the history had been erased.'