Father Francis squeezed my hand. “These prophecies are not in the stars, or in the dreams of old men. Our world is a story that has already been written. The human-born angel will disturb the delicate balance of Heaven and Hell. It will be a new angel, not created in the dawn of time as all the others.” He smiled, bit it didn't give me peace the way he had surely meant for it to. “Demons fear the unknown as humans do. Possibly even more so, because of the limited truth they do not know.”

“So we can’t stop it,” I said.

“But that won’t stop Hell from trying,” the priest said, his voice grave.

“I can’t stay here. I have to go,” I said, jumping to my feet. I ran out the front door, stopping when I felt the carcasses of birds under my feet. My hands flew to my eyes, overwhelmed.

“It’s okay,” Jared whispered in my ear, sweeping me into his arms. He carried me across the street, and then carefully set me in the passenger seat of the Beemer. His warm hand brushed the bangs from my face. “Get her home, Bex.”

Bex nodded, turned the ignition, and slammed the shifter into gear. It took us half the drive time to reach Cynthia’s that it took to get to St. Anne’s.

Bex parked in the garage, and helped me up the stairs to my room. His normally playful, innocent eyes offered sympathy and concern well beyond his years.

“We'll figure this out, Nina. We're not going to let anything happen to you. You know that.”

“I don't want anything to happen to you,” I said softly. I patted his shoulder, and then walked into the bathroom, removing my clothes slowly, feeling numb.

The steam floated up from behind the shower curtain and spilled over, filling the room with a thick, hazy warmth in minutes. I stood under the water, as hot as I could stand it, and tried to remember what Eli had said about being strong. I couldn't cry. Frivolous emotion would help nothing. Still, a heavy, portentous feeling settled over my entire body, weighing me down so much that the tile below my feet seemed to dig into my skin.

The more we learned, the worse it was. Preventing the prophecy was useless, because even if we succeeded, Hell wouldn’t allow the possibility.

The shower knobs complained when I turned them off, strangling the pipes. I towel-dried my hair, and then wrapped my robe around me. When I pushed the door open, a ghostly cloud of steam followed me as I walked across my bedroom floor.

I sat at my vanity, raking a comb through my damp, messy hair. The sea of black birds at the church haunted my thoughts, and the crunching sound their bodies made as Jared carried me across the street replayed over and over in my mind.