'I can't believe I'm doing this,' said Jinn with an uncertainty that was alien to him.
'Just keep hold of my hand, it'll be fine.' Eutopia led Jinn like a child from the shadowy fringe of the Wolds, through the twisted branches of the old orchard that hardly ever produced any apples anymore. The scent of honeysuckle was thick and familiar as they hurried closer to the cottage that shone, glistening with dew in the early morning light. It was a magical sight for Eutopia and she could feel relief wash over her and loosen muscles she hadn't realised, up until then, had been tensed. Her heart pounded hard with her footsteps as her face broke out into a grin. She tugged at Jinn's hand and almost tripped over her own feet in her hurry to reach the front door.
'Phoibe!' Eutopia ran the last few metres as they rounded the crumbling corner with Jinn never having to increase his stride. The huddled old woman, wrapped in a loose crocheted scarf, had been bent double over the load she had been carrying from the front porch to the door. Her back was turned to the two as they approached, but she spun at the sound of the girl's voice faster than she had managed to move since the night she had snatched Eutopia and ran through the streets with her to keep her from the wrath of the Nightwatch.
'For the love of all that's good, save my soul,' the old woman cried as the logs tumbled to her feet, bouncing off her worn leather boots with a clatter that drew Horace to the door.
'Bee?' he called with concern as he pulled the door wide, using the pet name he had once confessed to Eutopia was less out of affection and more because of the sting in her tongue.
'Horace!' Eutopia squalled, bundling herself head first into the two people she had been utterly heartsick for. The firewood Phoibe had dropped rolled dangerously around their feet, threatening to trip them up as Eutopia pulled the two closer to herself and stumbled in a blind muddle, catching their tears of shock and disbelief in her wild hair and their relentless kisses on every inch of skin that could be reached.
Jinn hung back, forgotten despite his huge size, and unwilling to interrupt the reunion. His feline-like eyes were narrowed, glowing indigo in the dawn light as he watched with curiosity and the raw human emotion stirred something deep and forgotten inside him. Perhaps it was because he felt a connection with the stupidly defiant girl, or maybe it was because it was slowly dawning on him that he'd had his eyes closed for so long, blindly following Michael's ideal.
The door opened wider and three, then four cautious people trickled out at the commotion.
'Eutopia?' one young man asked in disbelief, 'We thought you were dead!'
'Jed!' Eutopia squirmed out of Phoibe's fearsome grip and flung her arms around the thin shoulders of a curly haired man. 'Where's Maisy?' She blinked a few times, hastily brushing away the tears that begun to fall the moment she found herself wrapped in the arms of her foster parents.
Another head peered out from around the doorframe and Jinn knew it was time to move things back inside. The Nightwatch had ended now that the sun had fully broken the horizon, but his keen ears picked up the rhythmic beat of wings not too far away. The Watchers would be crawling around the Wolds soon. It wasn't safe for them all to gather outside. His huge hands spread, palms out, as he opened his arms to the group in a passive herding gesture.
'I hate to break this up, but we really ought to move this back inside now,' he said. Horace stiffened at the sound of his voice, his sightless eyes suddenly hard. Phoibe let out a wretched sob as she turned and shoved Eutopia behind her considerable bulk and Jed rushed in front of the two of them wielding a thick piece of firewood that he'd scooped up in one fluid movement.
Jinn laughed.
'What, you're going to hit me with your stick? Horace tried that last time I was here.' He twitched his thick, woollen cloak around his shoulders. 'Watchers are on their way, it's not safe for Eutopia to be outside.'
'It'll be much safer when I cave in your skull!' Jed roared, the angled planes of his face flushing bright red with his rage. 'She's back where she belongs now, so sod off back to your base, Commander.' He raised the lump of wood above his shoulder and adjusted his grip.
'No, no, he brought me back. Jinn brought me home.' Eutopia grabbed Jed's arm and looked earnestly up into his freckled face. 'He saved me from the Nephilim, he's.. he's with us now.' She looked hesitantly over at Jinn, finding those words incredibly difficult to accept herself.
'And she belongs to me,' Jinn smirked. Jed's arm lowered as though the firewood was too heavy to hold aloft anymore, his brown eyes falling to the circlet around Eutopia's neck. Phoibe wailed again at that and covered her withered face with her hands, unable to look at the angel's mark on her child.
'You would enslave us further?' Horace hissed, striding forward only to be held back by Jed who had to let the log drop in order to keep a hold on the old man. 'You would grind mankind further into the dust by claiming a life, by chaining a girl as if she were cattle? How much lower can your kind fall I wonder?'
Jinn was unflinching, watching as Eutopia moved to wrap her arms around the frail man who trembled like an autumnal leaf with his fury.
'She has more protection with my mark on her than without it. There are some of my kind who still adhere to the Old Ways.'
'To Hell with the Old Ways! You have the nerve to rip her away from us, to destroy our lives by telling us she is dead, and then dangle her in front of us on your chain like a life-float to a drowning man?' Horace growled as he advanced slowly on Jinn. Eutopia could feel the resentment bubbling dangerously in him, his old and thin limbs surprisingly strong beneath her desperately soothing hands.
'Hush, Horace,' she begged, trying to steer him back towards the cottage. But Horace was relentless as he walked steadily towards Jinn.
'We will not let you take her again.'
Jinn looked with a wry smile from the advancing old man to the little crowd that had gathered out on the porch now. Jed had reclaimed his stumpy piece of firewood and the eight men and five women that stood behind him seemed to have armed themselves. Eutopia looked too, catching sight of the thin, steel fishing net Phoibe sometimes took in to repair for the lake-fishers, a few pitchforks and the long iron poker Horace kept beside the fireplace. Tally, Jed's older sister, had found a blunt kitchen knife. Eutopia had seen the crackling blue heat of Alastor at Jinn's side and so her first thought was for the lives of these people, people she had grown up with and known all her life. She had seen Jinn fight with Loki, she couldn't bear the thought of him wielding that sword on her friends and family.
Jinn's first thought however was one of amazement at the amount of people that could fit into the ramshackle building.
'So this is your revolution, Horace?' he scoffed. 'If so, I hate to say it but Eutopia would be safer in my bed than in the midst of your 'men'.'
Horace roared and lunged forwards, escaping Jed's grip and snarling like a wild beast as he tore towards the angel with the need to rip him apart with his bare hands driving him blindly on. But it was Phoibe who reached Jinn first, waving a scythe that had been propped up against the edge of the porch. The gleaming metal blade swung noiselessly through the air as the old woman stumbled under its weight, weaving forwards and back before slicing the nothingness just to the left of Jinn's shoulder.
'That's my daughter you're talking about, pig!' she shrieked.
Jinn hadn't been anticipating this move and was forced to take a step back as Phoibe managed to take aim again and swing the curved blade at his face, his eyes falling from Horace for a moment which gave the group behind the old man a very slight advantage. As Jinn reached out to pluck the weapon from Phoibe's hands the group moved forward as one, commanded by mob mentality and armed to the hilt with whatever they could stab, beat and jab at him with. Some of the men had axes, Eutopia could see, that they had tucked into their belts and now freed with excitedly angry cries. One of the younger boys, a thatcher by trade that she recognised from the market, was crazily swinging a baseball bat. Their feet thundered on the hard packed earth as they surrounded Jinn and closed in on him as he whipped the scythe from Phoibe so fast that she had taken another swing at his legs before she realised she no longer held it.
Jinn tossed it far away from the baying circle around him, his raised arm as he threw the tool across the yard meant that his right side was unprotected for a fraction of a second, but that was all the time it took for Jed to swing the blacksmith's hammer he had kept beneath the leather apron he always had tied around his waist. Though he was lean and wiry, his muscles were hard-worked from the years spent working the anvil with his father from the moment he could tell copper from iron. The black head of the hammer struck with a sickeningly human thump against Jinn's side, though the angel didn't even flinch.
'No!' cried Eutopia, as the small crowd pressed closer, penning Jinn in on all sides.
'If the Watchers find you with me they will kill us all and take Eutopia anyway,' Jinn warned, his dark eyes flickering from the furious faces to the light sky above.
'We'll kill you now and save them a job, then,' snarled Jed. 'You've had us under your boot for too long now. This Earth should be ours.'
'This isn't going to help your cause any,' Jinn reasoned, his hand twitching for his sword. 'You'll be rounded up and slaughtered like animals.'
'Better to die now than live a moment longer in this stinking cage,' the thatcher boy cried, swinging his bat again. Eutopia remembered that his name was Marcus. He'd lost his twin brother to a fever last winter, after they'd worked weeks in freezing rain to repair the damage a group of laughing Watchers had caused to a handful of cottage roofs near the Square. The bitterness in his voice resounded loudly in Eutopia's head, causing her to spin towards him. His grief and hostility was reflected in her eyes and had he not looked so murderous at that point she probably would have scooped the boy up.
Jinn blinked, what kind of world was it where a child declared he would be better off dead? How had Their reign come to this? He took a step back, dropping his hand from where it hovered at Alastor's hilt. He saw the pain and confliction on Eutopia's beautiful face as the people raised their weapons.
'Just stop, all of you!' she cried, desperately foreseeing the horrors about to unfold. A muffled creak rent the air as Jinn stretched out his feathered wings to take flight. He was afraid to stay in case his short fuse got the better of him, causing him to strike out and hurt Eutopia, but it was as he began to stretch out his wings that two of the men threw the heavy steel net with lucky aim. The needle-thin mesh tangled immediately around the smooth feathers of Jinn's wings, trapping them in mid spread and stopping him from flying upwards. Jed and another beefy looking man named Tyler whooped and shrieked as the Thatcher boy high-fived the nearest person with a squark of excitement and a wild hopping step that sent his baseball bat scooting across the dewy ground.
'Steady!' called Jed, his muscles straining tight as he pulled down on the net that Jinn was almost effortlessly trying to shake off. 'Don't give him any slack, pull it tight.' Eutopia gaped, open-mouthed with horror as more men rushed to grab the edges of the net and pull it down with their body weight. Jinn roared furiously, straining against the mesh as he fought to spread his wings but the thin wire tangled further into his delicate feathers.
'They're coming!' screeched Tally, pointing uselessly with her blunt knife at the lightening sky. Eutopia looked up and saw four black dots, dark shadows against the white clouds. Watchers, she knew, sweeping down towards the village for their days work of enforcing misery.
'Get him inside,' Jed yelled, already beginning to haul on his side of the fishing net that tangled tighter around Jinn as he tried to shake out his wings. The other men heaved as one, dragging the ungainly frame into the little stone cottage. The others gathered around behind, eager to get out of view as the blurred shapes of the angels above grew larger with each passing moment. Eutopia was the last to follow, her heart torn and her mind racing. How could she make this right?
Jinn sat passively, wings half spread and arms resting on his knees as he watched Jed loop a length of thin steel wire, that Phoibe had been using to patch the net, around the opening at the bottom, effectively trapping him. The hunter had been hunted. Jed smirked, his dark eyes bright and a little bit wild as Eutopia laid a hand on his scarred hand.
'Jed, please, this is madness.'
'No,' he replied, motioning to the captured angel as he stood and straightened his back. 'This is madness.'
'He's come to help,' Eutopia said.
'Help?' Jed snorted amidst the restless motion that buzzed in the cottage now. 'He could help by destroying himself. Maisy's gone. Killed herself when we were forbidden to start our own family. Had an order that every healthy man or woman must join the cause so all further applications for babies were denied. It's all she ever wanted to do, she was born to be a mother Eutopia and that simple human right was taken from her. They're monsters,' he growled, turning his black anger onto Jinn who met his tormented gaze with cool, steady eyes.
'I'm sorry,' Jinn offered, lowly. 'This was never meant to happen.'
'Choke on your sorrow.' Jed said as Tally loomed over his shoulder and shook her knife in Jinn's general direction, though she didn't dare get too close.
'Oh for the love of all that's good,' said Eutopia, snatching the blunt blade from the woman before she could accidently hurt herself. 'Sort yourselves out. Jed. I can't even tell you how sorry I am about Maisy.' She wrapped her arms around the thin man, feeling his tense, wiry muscles trembling with pent up anger. 'But this is what we have to stop. We're going to stop all this right now. Jinn's here to help us. Don't punish him for the wrongs of his kind, let him guide us.'
'The wrongs of his kind? Have you asked him where Mike is? Have you even thought about your friend since he put his mark on you?' Eutopia sensed a hush fall across the hum of conversation that had settled upon the room and every pair of eyes fell on her. Jinn shifted a little uncomfortable beneath the net.
'No,' she murmured, her fist clenching around the handle of the knife. She turned to Jinn who sat helpless at her feet, feeling Phoibe's dry hand warm against her arm. 'Where is he?'
'At the Sharding,' Jinn said, his tongue unwilling to form the words as his eyes caught the flicker of revulsion at the mention of that stinking place.
'You left him there,' she said, softly. Jinn nodded, his eyes never leaving hers, watchful and still.
She lashed out without thinking about the dull knife in her hand, her fist cracking hard across Jinn's beautiful cheek before she cried out at the burst of agony that blossomed across her knuckles. The clatter of steel reached her ears before she realised she had dropped the blade because she no longer had any feeling in her hand. Jed quickly kicked the knife across the stone floor, sending it skittering to the other side of the silent room in case Jinn should have any ideas about picking it up. The steel edge had scratched Jinn's marble-like skin dangerously close to his left eye. Jinn hadn't even blinked.
'What are you going to do with him?' Eutopia asked, looking up at Jed who was examining her limp hand. Jinn could see the hurt and confusion etched on her face.
'Cut his wings off,' Horace answered. 'It's the only way we can make him human, so we can kill him.'