Angels, those damned angels. The thought made me smile because it was, in fact, true. The angels, all of them, are no longer accepted in Heaven.

       Ever since the Fall, they have purged humanity. They fight to control, to kill, and to torture. They revel in the glory of the horror they created themselves. They have destroyed cities, massacred millions, and made rivers run red with blood for days after only because… They want to and they can. I suspected it’s to get revenge on God. They’re immortal, impossibly beautiful, and devastatingly glorious. The angels are cruel, inhumane, selfish, have no sense of compassion, or guilt. It makes them the ultimate war machines because they can’t be destroyed.

       There are eight kinds angels and two angels per hierarch. With only sixteen, it seems like it shouldn’t be very hard for billions of humans to conquer only sixteen beings, but the angels can’t die. They are impossibly fast; being able to escape detection from the human eye. They have endless strength; being able to rip a person in two, tearing their spine apart, without any effort at all. They can also teleport, which seems impossible, but really... With the proven existence of angels, who cares? The angels are skilled in everything; especially war. Angels are invincible; a nuclear bomb could be dropped on them and they would walk away without a scratch.

       Believe me, it’s been tried. I’m standing in the ruins of that city right now.

       Angels know how to win this war and the only reason they haven’t already is because they’re enjoying themselves with the humans, like an infinite game of cat and mouse. Humanity has captured two angels, which I found out from my last raid at the United States’ secret base in the middle of a jungle in Puerto Rico. I don’t know which angels; that information wasn’t kept there. I don’t even know where they’re being held. I know what the humans are doing with them though and if I have any sort of conscience, I know I have to stop it. Humans draw out their blood and test it, trying to find out how to destroy them. That’s the truth, but the small fish in the humans’ governments are told that it’s to find cures for diseases like cancer. The high ranking humans also inject the blood themselves because it’s like steroids, but better. It makes them faster, stronger, and smarter for a day or two. I’m just glad the effects don’t last.

       Where do I fit into this? Well, I’m not one of the angels and I’m not a human either. I’m a hybrid of the two, what’s called a Nephilim in mythology, but I know I’m the only one ever born.

       Being related to the damned gives you special attributes; I’m fast, smart and strong. If the angels are better than humans, so am I. I’m stronger than the strongest human by approximately five times even though I’m a woman. I’m faster than a cheetah and my legs blur together when I run. I’m also smarter because I know things my father knows and has learned over his existence by watching over humans. I know things I wish I didn’t, like how to take out a human heart and have it beat in my hand. Along with the regrets, I also know how to battle. I’m an expert on archery, sword fighting, throwing knives, guns, and all the various styles of fighting like judo. I’m skilled in anything you can think of. It’s very useful knowledge in the world today.

       I can also see auras; humans hardly have anything, only a faint glow that I could barely see at all. Angels were different; they shone gold. I had a feeling that angels could see auras better than I could. I usually didn’t even pay attention to auras because I could only see them if I concentrated extremely hard.

I hiked my bag higher up on my shoulders and continued walking through the wreckage of Ann Arbor, Michigan. I might be on the campus of the old university, but it was impossible to tell when all the buildings are crumbled, decaying, and blackened. Burned remnants of the infamous Angel Warning posters could be found everywhere. To me, it had some kind of sick and twisted irony; the government warning people of the angels, but they were the ones who nuked a city full of innocents, not the angels. Occasionally, I’d find remains of bodies killed in the blast that took place eighteen years ago. I saw mothers clutching their babies, fathers protecting their families, and lovers holding each other. I passed an elementary school forty-five minutes ago, where I found whole classrooms where the bodies of children were still huddled under their desks. Some of them were impaled with wood, others’ skulls were smashed by cement blocks, but all of them wouldn’t have made it anyways. Nuclear explosions are devastating. It makes me sick that humans chose to forget this incident and never cared enough to bury the bodies.

The sky overhead was growing lighter as the minutes passed, but it was growing more cloudy and windier too. There would be a massive storm later. I found a house that was mostly intact and stepped inside through a hole in the wall. I held my breath because I didn’t want to smell the mold as I rummaged through cabinets, not really looking for anything in particular. I peaked in decaying rooms with holes in the ceiling and moldy mattresses. A constant, annoying drip, drip, drip could be heard which I tuned out. I found a few pictures of a huge African American family and put them back, not wanting to think of the deceased family whose house I was currently inhabiting. I was startled when I ran into another person dressed in black clothes that matched their eyes, which turned out to just be my reflection in the mirror.

I jumped down into the basement through a hole in the floor, quickly brushing off pieces of decaying carpet from my jeans and sweater. Right under the hole, I built a small fire because it was still chilly out. Using my bag as a pillow, I curled up around the fire and rubbed my arms, wincing when I ran over a new cut. I had stitched it up myself but it was a shitty job; nothing compared to my grandmother’s handiwork. It wasn’t healing well; I moved and tore it too much.

The house was so quiet. I had no one to talk to, so speaking wasn’t necessary. I was quiet and grim and alone, but I didn’t mind. I was a dandelion seed torn harshly away from its stalk, flung into the air, twirling like a dance in the breeze, and blown wherever by the wind, but I didn’t mind. Someday, I would find a place in the earth to plant my roots, but for now, I was free.

       Maybe I’ll visit my grandmother in Chicago tomorrow; the visit has been long overdue. I miss her so much. I fell asleep thinking about memories of her in my childhood.

* * *

       I woke up suddenly, not quite sure what time it was. I jumped up and put the gun I stole from an agent in Puerto Rico in the waistband of my black jeans, although I knew it wouldn’t work. It was basically a precautionary action. I rifled through my bag some more for a special knife.

The knife was something completely unique and very, very special to me. I had done whatever was necessary to get it back when it was stolen from me, including killing multiple people. It wasn’t fancy looking, there was no jewels in the hilt or anything of that nature. I had inserted a design in the blade, but that wasn’t what made it important, nor because I had made it myself. As I was forging the knife, the blade a mere six inches long, I had added my blood to the molten steel. I didn’t know how I knew what to do, I just went on instinct, and had a streak of luck. It was the only thing, other than my bare hands, that could harm any angel. They could die, their bodies could, but they would always revive.

I brushed off my black sweater, slipped on my backpack over my arms, and jumped up to the first story of the building. I needed to leave, now. So, I started running. I don’t know how I knew what was coming. I always have, except for him. The sky abruptly started to roar with thunder and flash with lighting. I glanced at the watch strapped to my wrist. There was still an hour or so of darkness left tonight. I had slept for a long time and the rest was very much appreciated because I hadn’t slept for days prior. I had been in Canada. The Canadians were ruthless.

       I paused to rest against a rough brick chimney, all that was left of a house, and shielded myself from the onslaught of rain. As the lightning flashed again, I caught my reflection in the broken glass and, of course, my eyes were deep black. My pupils melted together with my irises; you didn’t know where the pupils began. I brushed my dripping hair away from my face

       That’s when I knew the angel was here. I always could tell. The sense of something coming was too hard to explain.

       “Damn,” I muttered under my breath.

       “Aimee Chevalier, your father wants to speak to you!” A powerful, enchanting, and terrible female voice rang across the desolate city. It belonged to Zella Angelos, the sadistic Principality angel who loved to torment me. She had been the angel sent to persuade me to join their side because she’s low on the angel totem pole, and I absolutely hated her.

       “Zella, my father never wants to see me.” I chuckled, still leaning against the chimney but poised and ready for action.

       “But he does now.”

       “That line doesn’t work. Zella, just let me be.”

       “Ahh, but you see… I can’t do that.” She laughs hard, without any joy.

       Another lightning strike and another clap of thunder. As the thunder booms, I heard something whistle through the air and crash into the chimney. On instinct, I ducked and rolled. The chimney collapsed onto the spot where I was just kneeling. I rolled through the glass and when I rose, the now bloody glass shards fell off of me. Great, more scars to add to my collection. I darted from house to house, using my enhanced speed. I’ve already covered a mile. Zella is casually chasing after me.

       “Aimee, stop wasting time. I’m faster than even you, you little abomination.”

       “You might be, but I’m part human and that is something you will never understand.” I stopped suddenly and shoot Zella in the shoulder. The force of the impact of the bullets made her stumble back. I kept running at her, shooting her in the leg and the collarbone, merely to distract her. I rushed the angel and slashed at her with my knife. Her dark blonde hair splattered with blood and her pale green eyes with a dark ring around the iris connected with mine in concentrated rage. I lashed my right leg out and mistakenly aimed a bit too high. I forgot that she was shorter than I was. My foot connected with her chest instead of her stomach, pain exploding in my heel upon impact. Her ribs all broke in a tremendous crack. All of them were bent inward and the opposite ends, looking like jagged spears, were sticking through her shirt. Bone was so gloriously white, but it was ruined because of all the blood gushing out and soaking her clothes. She coughed up the blood that was now pouring into her punctured lungs. I reached around while she was still vulnerable, ignoring the agony in my injured leg, and grabbed her hair. I yanked downwards and used the heel of my hand to hit the side of her chin. The force I used broke her jaw and her neck. I let go of her hair and she fell to the ground, teeth falling onto charred lumber and making a clattering sound as they scattered.

       I ran and ran, despite the fact that my foot may have broken, because I don’t have much time before she healed herself. She’ll be pissed. I made a quick decision and decided to run to Chicago.

The world had changed since the angels fell, since my birth. Hardly any humans lived in rural areas anymore; roads empty and overgrown with weeds, houses abandoned and vandalized, and entire towns deserted and left to be inhabited by wild animals. Everyone had crowded into metropolises to be safe from the angels, to be better protected by the government. It was so eerie, but I was used to it. It had been like this ever since I could remember. My mother promised me it was never like this when she was a kid.

I ran through many of the ghost towns, heading west through Michigan. Many of the empty cities had names, but that was meaningless now. Highway signs, at least the ones I could decipher under the graffiti, read names like Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Grand Haven. My footfalls, although light, echoed through the decrepit skyscrapers and scared flocks of birds, along with the thunder I had left behind with Zella’s body. Weeds that had pushed up and out of the concrete sidewalks and roads tried to trip me, thorns cutting my skin through my pants. I ignored it because I knew I had to keep running. I was used to this, having to run, so my endurance was at an all time high. Once I hit the lakeshore, I turned south, knowing it would lead me back home.