Night Lullaby by Char Marie Adles (read after TXT) 📖

before caught my ears in the whipping wind. Wondered what they looked like.
A rustling came from behind me and the crow pulled harder on my hair, telling me to run.
I ran alright. I ran till I had to close my eyes as the rain stung them and then I came up short as I hit a metal fence.
I rubbed my forehead, but the things or things that were following me were closer now. I couldn’t really see the tall wall of the fence, but I started to climb anyway.
I panicked grabbing at what ever I could, but my hand slipped.
“No, no,” I begged, but it did no good. My hand slipped and I fell to the mud. I was grabbed by my arms and struggled, screaming.
I was hauled up by two set of hands.
Wait! Hands?
I stopped scream and stood up looking back to see who held my arms.
What!? Are they even human?!
They were over six feet tall and they were wearing black cloaks with hoods that covered all of them, but for half there face.
“Are you Fira Silver?” they asked.
“Huh?” I squeaked.
“Good. Come with us.”
What the!?
They pulled me behind them as they went through the gate I had tried to climb over. The first thing I saw was the huge castle. It took up nearly half the side of the mountain. They pressed me in the back of a fancy long car and started driving up the mountainside.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked as soon as I caught my breath.
“To your Grandfather’s. He’s been waiting.” One of them said.
“Well,” I muttered as I sat back in the seat, “You could have been nicer about it.”
I sighed in relief and nearly passed out from it. I drifted into sleep and woke when they opened the doors.
Am I already there?
I got out of the door and stood in front of the giant castle. It was most then ten stories high and spread out on the cliff side of the mountain, as if it were carved from the stone itself. The towers soared high into the sky as the lightning screamed, and the sky cried. It had the look of gothic architecture; it reminded me of the cathedral in Rome. Just about ten times its size.
I stared in shocked awe, and walked dazed as they led me through the dark huge wooden doors. There were plated with metal and spikes as if they waited for a war. But the outside with nothing like the inside.
It wasn’t what I thought it would be like. It wasn’t dark and shadows didn’t dance across the hallway to escape light. It was open and warm, the carpets and tapestries on the walls making it look like a real home, just a big one. Not the castle of a mad man, or ancient evil ghosted.
“This way,” one of them said. He pulled me along behind him as the other one went ahead to the end of a hall. I stared around with eyes widened in shock. The walls were lined in torches and had strange cravings of wings that took up entire walls. We walked in silence down a narrow passage that led into a large hall and a ceiling more then fifty feet tall. I stared at the paintings that covered the ceiling. There was a group of men and women painted there and each one could have been an angel. But they all had large beautiful black wings. They looked like the wings the young man had in my dream. All their faces looked like beautiful stone carvings.
“Come along. Master Silver is waiting.”
I turned and saw the cloaked guy staring at me, but I still couldn’t see his eyes.
I nodded and followed when he started to walk even faster to the only set of tall metal plated doors. They were as tall as the ceiling.
He stopped before the great doors and knocked. The doors started to open and the cloaked man bowed to me.
The doors slowly creaked open and I walked forward.
The room was huge. The size of a small house at least. And in the middle of the room were a long oak desk and a tall backed chair that faced out large bay windows, watching the storm.
Lighting flashed and the thunder roared. I walked towards the desk and the chair slowly turned around. First I could only see the outline of the face, but I knew it was a man.
When the chair came to fully face me I knew that this man couldn’t be my grandfather.
Maybe he’s my uncle, but I never knew I had any other family. The again I didn’t know I had any family before mom died.
The man sitting in the chair had a face like the people from the painting. He was beautiful, but he would have looked even better if he smiled.
I froze in place as he looked me over. His eyes were an electric green with streaks of gold, and his hair was thick black and is long it looked like it ended in the middle of his back. He reminded me of mom so much I felt tears sting my eyes.
“You must be Fira,” he said getting up from the Desk with the ease of a big CEO. He was tall too, way over six feet tall. He was in a silk suit and it looked as if he really were one.
“Are you my uncle,” I asked.
His eyes widened and then he started to laugh.
It was when he started to wipe away tears I began to be pissed.
I crossed my arms. “Well are you?”
He looked at me with smiling eyes.
“Oh no, I’m not. I’m your grandfather.” He said simply.
I felt my jaw drop.
“Is this some kind of joke?” I asked, looking around for hidden cameras. I picked up the lid of jar on his desk and with a chuckle he put his hand on mine and closed it.
“No, this isn’t.”
I turned to look at him. We was the man in the picture my grandfather had sent me and wasn’t a day over 30.
I narrowed my eyes at him and pursed my lips. I wasn’t buying it. I crossed my arms.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m sure this is all and well for you, but I didn’t come here to be lost in a forest in the dark, to be rained on, to be chased by cloaked people that don’t seem human, And then to be tossed in a chair to meet an old man who is mentally ill think he’s my grandfather.”
He gave me a strange look and raised his eye-brow.
“Mentally ill, old man?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yup.”
He sighed. “You better sit down for this.”
I did as he said just to see what he had to say. I need to see my grandfather.
“Anything you say Pops,” I said sitting in a big fluffy chair.
He sat in the chair across from me leaning back into it.
“It looks as if Miri didn’t tell you anything before she died… You look so much like her, but you have your father’s hair.”
I could help, but notice the softness he spoke my mom’s name with and the edge when he talked about my dad.
But what he said made me raise my eye-brow.
“What?” I asked.
“Have you ever felt out of place? Not normal? Almost like you could fly?”
I shrugged. “What kid hasn’t,” I said.
He leaned forward. “Well you see...I really am your grandfather. You see my family, no our family aren’t humans. We are called Eros or demons. But we are not the evil demons that people believe are real. There are more then just one kind of us, but our family is known to be one of the two most powerful. We are called Crow Demons, because we can grow huge wings from ours back. Some of us have immorality or just live a very long life. You however are only half demon, because your father was a human.”
I just sat there, speechless.
“You though take after our family’s side, the demon side. I don’t know if your wings have come in yet, but I would hope you to like this life.” He looked at me with a hopeful look.
Suddenly I knew what I wanted to say and before I could stop it. “What the HELL?! You’re telling me that I’m some kind of demon? And my mom was to, and you expect me to believe a man who could be my uncle, instead of my grandfather?”
Suddenly he stood up and so quick I almost missed it two huge wings with glossy black feather grew from his back and filled the room. His wings had to be twice the size of himself.
Then I was pissed. Not at him, but my mom.
“So all of my life my mom lied to me? She never found the time to tell me, ‘Well you’re a half-demon?’ What kind of thing is that? And not to mention that I had a grandfather who looks old enough to be my uncle?” I said fuming, pacing the floor.
“UGH!” I said, throwing up my arms and landing in the chair.
“Well on her side she hated being one of us, but she fell in love with a human, your father I might add, and she stayed here because she thought that she needed to be with me. We had a fight a few years after you were born and your mother took you to the human world to live with your father. Her last request was that I never contact her again,” he said sadly.
“Oh,” I said. My steam finally gone and now it stated to sank in as I stared at his huge black wings.
He noticed me staring at them and came back to himself.
“So…my wings will look like your’s?” I asked. I reached out to touch them. As my fingers brushed over them, they flexed. They were soft.
“Yes or very close. Your mother’s wings were a bit darker. But they will be as big or bigger. But the females of the family, there wings tend to be smaller and more delicate looking. But they can fly as well as any other,” he said.
“Fly,” I said weakly. I was scared of heights.