It was already morning when we arrived in Pittsburgh. I thought he was going to take us to the building where he left me and where I fought the Vetalas, in fact, we just passed that ruined building. Collin kept driving until we passed by the University of Pittsburgh, a few minutes later, we arrived on a street that was barricaded. There were guards in front. I sat up straight when one of them approached the truck, Collin opened the window. When the guard saw him, he motioned for the rest of the security to let us pass through. Impressive, I thought as I faced forward, nice. I got a glimpse of Collin smiling. Proud of what he just did.               
He kept driving until we stopped at a huge house. It has peach painted exterior with white trimmings and brick colored roof. “The house looks like a creamsicle,” I whispered. Collin chuckled as he parked the truck and turned off the engine. We both woke Azriel and Merikh up, they got startled, almost hitting Collin.Collin got out of the truck first, followed by Merikh. I went down and helped Azriel, who’s ribs still hurt. He placed his right hand to where the hurting rib was to protect it. We walked towards Collin, and he led us to the door where an old man in a suit was waiting. “William,” he said and shook his hand, “thank  you so much for this.”               
“It’s my pleasure, sir,” he replied in his thick British accent, “this must be Mia.”
“Yeah, that’s her. And these are Azriel and Merikh.”
“It’s nice to finally meet you. All of you. Now, Haze is going to show you to your rooms,” a younger man in a suit showed up and opened the door for us, “I will just have a few words with Collin here. You go in and get settled, Mia,” he insisted. I looked at Collin and he mouthed “go” before I went inside to join the two brothers. 
***
“Did my dad get suspicious?” Collin asked William, “did any of his minions know about this?”
“No, sir. I was as careful as I always was when your mother asked me to guard her while she gets the files from your father’s laptop and hide it from him,” he smiled. “Alright, uhm, you better get going before my dad finds out you’re not at his house. Are you sure I can trust these people including that Haze guy?”
“Yes, sir. All of them owe me. If they happen to touch any one of you, they will answer to me.”
Collin chuckled, “that’s very Alpha of you.”
“Those puppies needed the training, so I stepped up.”               
After thanking William again, Collin watched as he turn into a gray Great Dane. A few of the guards who left with William changed into Rottweilers, German Shepherds, and Belgian Malinois. They were all Skinwalkers. Some of them are roaming around as dogs, even Haze, who was a white Labrador Retriever. Collin continued to walk inside, looking for his friends, then he heard a crash and a laugh. He went inside the kitchen to see Mia, Merikh, and Azrael standing in the middle of the kitchen, and a bowl spinning by their feet. “He started it!” Azriel pointed at Merikh, then Mia pointed at him, too. Merikh just rolled his eyes and went to the fridge.               
“What are you guys even doing?” he asked. Mia picked the bowl up, “we saw some pancake mix up the cupboard, but Merikh here wanted some chicken. I was going to use this bowl to mix the batter, but he wanted to use it to marinate his chicken!” she raised her voice as she turned her head to Merikh, who was mocking her as she speaks. “You do realize that’s not the only bowl in there, right?” Collin said, then he opened the cabinet beside the fridge where piles and piles of mixing bowls were inside. 
***
We made a ton of food, Collin did almost all the cooking, and the three of us were just making a mess. Before we went to the dining room to eat what we made, we cleaned up the kitchen first. But one of the guys guarding the place told us to leave it, and they have someone to clean it up. We all looked at each other and just thanked them, bringing all the snacks on the table. Collin got glasses from a cupboard and Azriel grabbed some soda in the fridge. The four of us just hung out on the dining room until Merikh decided to break the silence, “you know, for a Nephilim, you get hurt and die…a lot.”                
Collin and Azriel laughed, making them stop drinking. “Well, I’m not ‘dead’ dead. You guys have said it yourself, I can’t die,” I pointed out, “and besides, getting hurt is part of….everything.”
“You were gonna say ‘life’ were you?” he replied like it was a cheesy thing to say, “and it’s not that you can’t die. Like everything else, you can. Given the right weapon or God.”
“God can kill me?”
“Oh yeah. Why? What did you expect? A hug?”
“Maybe. I mean, he’s practically my grandfather or something.”
“Yeah, well….”
“What?”
“Nothing. Nevermind.”               
The two boys proceeded to press Collin on how he got this house or who helped. They were trying to get to know each other. I’m up for all this and seeing them get along right now, not bickering or threatening each other, it feels right. But I do want to know what happened to my mom, the real story. Not the concocted one that Lucifer made. Later on, Collin excused himself and got up. He proceeded to go to the kitchen, when he got back he was holding a couple of beers. “I know that vampires, angels, and demons don’t eat or drink. And here you are, doing all of that. Now, I’m questioning everything I’ve learned,” I grabbed my glass of Coke and drank. They chuckled, “what you’ve learned, all of it, are true and correct. I don’t know, I just love Coke,” Azriel said. “If you say that outside, and in a very sketchy town, people will think you take drugs,” Collin said as he drink his beer. The four of us laughed after realizing that it will, indeed, sound wrong.
“Hey, uhm, did you guys knew?” I asked. “Knew what?” Azriel replied after he took another drink from his glass. “About my mom. Like when she stayed on earth to be with me and my dad,” I was fiddling with the chicken on my plate then I looked up to see Azriel looking at Merikh. “Yeah, we did know.”
“None of them were happy. Especially Michael,” Merikh added.
“Oh yeah. Michael was furious,” Azriel chuckled, like Michael’s anger was funny to him. “But your mom, well, she was a smart woman,” Merikh continued, “she hid herself from every celestial being. You know, to keep you and your dad safe.”
“But?” Merikh looked at me like I knew there’s a continuation to what he said. “But during the accident, she sent out her last message. She was dying and we know it,” Azriel answered.
“When Azriel and I got there, she was laying on the ground, underneath a car. Turns out she saved a little girl from being hit by that same car. So she took my sword and pointed to her chest. I didn’t push it because I wanted her to fight. I wanted her to live,” Merikh sniffled at the memory of my mom.               
“She asked, well, begged for us to end her life. She kept the sword to her chest, and she knew hugging Merikh will kill her, that it will plunge to her heart. And she did just that. That’s why he became a fallen angel.”
“Everyone thought I murdered my own sister.”
“You didn’t try to explain what happened?”
“This is Heaven, Mia, when they see you do something like kill someone. You’re bound to be condemned.”
“So, no. I didn’t try to convince them. It was no use. Everyone already believed I killed her on purpose. I just took the blame and go. I lost my grace the moment I lost my wings. Azriel just brought down my staff for me.”
“That wasn’t fair.”
“Meh. That’s an act of rebellion for them. Betraying, or killing, a brother or sister. It’s, uhm, it’s a one-way ticket out of the Pearly Gates and into the Iron Gates,” he said then Collin slid a bottle of beer to his direction, which he caught, then he raised it towards Collin, who raised his bottle as well and they both drank at the same time. “I was actually forbidden to see him but,” Azriel said.
“But you still went down here to see him,” I continued for him. He nodded and smiled, “I actually thought he became human but when he was waiting for me to get the staff, I didn’t mean to surprise him, he jumped and almost hit me. When he turned to me, his eyes were black. That’s when he I knew he went dark side.”
“Can’t blame me, they have cookies.”
“We have a buffet up there, dummy!”
“When I was there, there wasn’t.”
“Yeah, well, budget cuts.”               
We laughed over their bickering then Merikh turned to Collin, “What about you? What’s your dysfunctional family origin?” Collin drank his beer straight up before answering, “well, let’s see,” he sighed. “My dad became a vampire without us knowing. Then he turned us one by one, starting with me. When he turned my little sister, she was uncontrollable. Like a walking tornado. So, we moved to a new place. Somewhere more remote,” he paused.
“Like, uh, a small countryside?” Azriel asked.
“Yeah, exactly. Anyway, it was a small town. Everybody knew everyone. My sister, Ginny, she was doing well. We taught her to feed on cows instead or any animal for that matter. She was doing great, actually, until one night. There was this small festival in town, and one of the kids she was playing with, tripped, hits his head on a table. He was crying and bleeding. We didn’t get to her on time. All of a sudden we heard people screaming, she was already feeding on the kid and the mother. We didn’t know there were hunters in the area and saw the whole thing. Word got out that a child was turned. They thought my mom changed her. I got separated from them, and my dad, well, he left the scene. My mom and older brother protected my sister from the hunters, but they killed them,” he paused again, opening another bottle of beer. “We, uhm, we have a gravestone for each of them, but the ground is just a ground. No one’s underneath it. We never found their remains.”
After Collin’s story, we were all quiet. I didn’t know that his life was that tragic. I guess, he does know what it was like to lose a family. “Damn,” Merikh suddenly said, “did your dad ever looked for you?”
“Yeah, he did. But I was too angry with him that I ran away. I ended up in another nest of vampires, they adopted me and stayed with them in an abandoned warehouse. That’s where I met Mia,” he glanced at me, and I smiled at him. “When was the last time you saw your dad, then?” Azriel asked.“A few weeks before I arrived at the enchanted house you were all staying.”
“Wait,” I said, “weeks? You’ve been away from your dad for weeks?”
“Yeah, after I left his house, I went around looking for you. I hunted down a few monsters along the way,” he said proudly, and drank another swig of his beer. “But how did you find me?” I was now curious on that part because Rory gave me something that will hide – oh shit! – I think I lost the necklace. I absent-mindedly touched my neck, it was bare. “I pulled some strings. Here and there, even underground,” he said smiling.                
“Hold on. What’s your full name?” Merikh suddenly asked while slowly putting the bottle down. “Me? Collin Roth.”
“Any relations to a guy named Stephen Roth?”
“He’s my dad. Why?”Merikh scoffed, “well, what do you know.”
“Okay, what do you mean by that?”
“He’s the man who wanted to know Mia’s whereabouts in exchange for his grace,” Azriel answered for Merikh. Now, it was Collin’s turn to be confused, “what? But I thought…I mean, Lucifer said Merikh was supposed to, I don’t know, kill Mia or something.”
I almost spilled my drink, my jaw dropped open, “EXCUSE ME?!” I said as I turn to face Merikh. He took his feet down from the table and sat up straight, his index finger up like he was telling me to stop. “Before you get all crazy, let me explain. I was talking to his dad and yes, he wanted Mia for something in exchange for my grace. But before that, when I met up with Roth, I didn’t know Lucifer was in it. I didn’t know he was the one who held my grace hostage. During the Djinn, that was the part where Mia was supposed to be killed, but I had the antidote that they never knew I had.”
“It might be hard to believe it right now but –“
“No, it’s not hard to believe,” Collin interrupted. “I mean, he betrayed us, his own family. What more do you think he can do to others?”               
“At least, now, we know what he’s capable of. We just need to find his weakness,” Merikh suggested. “Well, that sure as Hell ain’t me,” Collin answered as he opened another bottle of beer for him and Merikh.
That night, we got too tired to go to our rooms. We ended up on the living room, each of us on a couch. We even helped Merikh lie down, he got too drunk for trying to keep up with Collin. I was about to drift to sleep when suddenly, I heard a loud crash. I sat up immediately, I looked around and I saw Collin and Azriel already scouting the place. Azriel ran to Merikh, waking him up, “Mer. Mer! Wake up!”
“Wh-what?!” Merikh woke up irritated. “Something’s wrong. We need to get up, now!” Azriel looked at me and nods his head down, asking me to get up too. 
We can hear the Skinwalkers barking outside, while the others were in their human form talking to each other to cover the grounds. Haze ran inside, straight to Collin, “sir, there’s been a breach.”
“What?! Do you know what it is?”
“No, sir. Not yet, but I think it’s safe to say that you better go. Take your things and go. I’ll try my best to keep all of you safe,” Collin then nodded at Haze, and thanked him. Haze ran back outside. We decided to move together when a knock on the door made us stop. Collin moved closer to see who it was, then he opened the door. Standing there was William, and Collin caught him as he was about to fall. “Your father, he…he’s coming,” he said before he took his last breath. Collin looked at us, he slowly put William down, and he stood up, leading us to the rooms to get all our things.               
We needed to leave before his father arrives, trapping all of us in that house. So we gathered everything we can and placed them in the truck. I let Collin take the wheel on this one. He needed the distraction from having his protector die in his arms, especially he knew that his father has something to do with it.