Exiles From Delight

Disclaimer: I own nothing that isn't mine.

Authors Note: Sincerest apologies to all who have followed this story…but I promise, it has not been abandoned. Life has gotten very much in the way of writing over the past few years. However, time is once again on my side, as it were, and I plan to focus far more attention on my fic over the coming months. As it has been so long, I'm giving this story a once over edit and posting updated versions of already available chapters before moving on to new material. As always, reviews are adored. Thanks!

Chapter One

Northwest of Bondurant, Wyoming, in the shadow of Ramshorn Peak, sat Black Pines Ranch. It was small by Wyoming standards, with a mere 500 acres and 400 head of cattle to its name—but the Jacobs family had been raising cattle and new generations of Jacobs ranchers on that small spit of acreage for well over a hundred years. The house at the heart of the ranch was a modest, handcrafted log home with big windows, small rooms and a whole lot of character.

It was a house that had seen a lot of good times and laughter and love. It had also seen more than its fair share of hardship and sadness.

But it had never seen anything like the day before.

It was the day after Christmas and the first rays of sun that crested the tree-lined ridge behind the house shone down upon a gruesome scene of blood-stained snow and the cold, empty shells of the Allisons, the Mathesons and the Fitzgeralds.

Fifteen people whose only crime was that they'd lived near her.

Devlin Jacobs knew that as well as she knew her own name. She would have liked nothing better than to pretend otherwise, but after spending the past forty-eight hours in a haze of crippling pain and gut-wrenching terror, she didn't have the energy to waste on make believe. It wouldn't make her feel any better and it certainly wouldn't make them any less dead.

It had been, all in all, a miserable fucking Christmas.

Of course, considering how her Grandfather had spent his Christmas, she wasn't about to complain anywhere but inside her own head. And even that was pushing it, to be honest.

She knew she wouldn't ever forget the look on Pops' face when she'd told him that it was over. That he could relax. That he could put the gun down. He'd just looked at her, his expression stark and terrified, but still so damned determined.

She'd had to physically pry his finger from the trigger and then wrestle the old Mossberg away from him.

Once she'd managed to calm him down and convince him that it really was over, she'd spent the next several hours trying to talk him into getting a little shut eye. He had finally agreed, but only after extracting a promise from her that she would do the same herself.

Two hours later, she wasn't even close to following through on that deal.

Lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling and counting knots in the old pine, she suspected it was going to be a long time before sleep came easy again. Hell, it was going to be a long time before sleep came, period. And when it did finally come, it certainly wasn't going to be pretty.

Not when all she could see when she closed her eyes were the twisted visages of people she'd known her entire life, warped by powers beyond their ken, for reasons beyond their imagining. Not when she would then see those same faces, slack with death, their eyes vacant...piercing. Accusing.

Yourfaultyourfaultyourfault.

Because. Of. You.

Dev bolted upright, upper body curling over her bent legs and arms locking around her knees. She huddled there for several long seconds before expelling a long, deep sigh. In its wake, she uncurled her right hand from around her left wrist and pinched the bridge of her nose between strong, work-callused fingers.

She needed to turn her brain off.

She needed a distraction.

She needed to get the hell out of the house.

A particularly loud whinny from the stables, trickling in through one of the broken windows in the living room, stirred her, gave her just the excuse she was so desperately looking for. She was up and dressed and picking her way through the still dark living room before she allowed herself time to think of all the reasons why she should stay inside.

It was over. She knew it was over; could feel the truth of it. But that didn't curb the paranoid whisper in her head that said she could be wrong.

A whisper that she was determined to ignore.

She just wanted to go outside. Feel the crunch of the snow beneath her boots—the crisp, clean wind in her face. Maybe take Cass, her sooty buckskin mare, for a ride.

A long ride. Far, far away from...everything.

She was pulling on her heaviest winter coat when she heard the old floorboards give out a warning creak behind her. Frowning but determined, she slotted the zipper and gave it a firm upward tug. "You're supposed to be sleeping, Pops."

"Tried," her grandfather barked out, his graveled baritone turning the word sharp, "can't. And thankfully so," he paused and she heard him move closer. "Just what the hell you think you're doin', Dev?"

She turned then, looking up into the creased and careworn face of the man who had taught her everything she knew about the life she loved. "Someone's gotta see to the animals, Pops. And after what happened," she paused, choked, cleared her throat, tried again. "Well, after what happened...I could do with a bit of fresh air."

"You're not leavin' this house. Not with things as they are."

Dev sighed, hating to hear her own doubts voiced aloud. "We already did this, Pops. I told you it was done and you heard it on the radio same as I did. It's fine now. It's over."

Her grandfather, deep into his sixties and still a bear of a man, drew himself up to his full height and pinned her with a flinty stare. "There's nothing fine about any of this, Devlin. Nothing's gonna be fine for a good long time, I'm guessing. And even if it was, you're not settin' foot out that door 'til I say so. If the animals need tendin', I'll do it."

"Pops..."

"Devlin Anne Jacobs...I emptied nine whole boxes of ammunition over the past forty-eight hours. Most of it," his voice cracked, his expression flickering from anger to grief and back again in the span of an instant, "into people I'd known forever. And as it sure as shit wasn't me they were comin' after, I'll repeat...your ass isn't settin' foot out that goddamned door 'til I know for goddamned sure that it really is over."

Whether the accusation was intended or not, Dev heard it. Felt it down in the deepest, darkest parts of herself. And rightly so, she thought, her heart cold and heavy in her chest, eyes straying to the shuttered windows and picturing the blood-spattered carnage that she knew lay beyond. All that...because of me.

Her shoulders dropped and she wiped viciously at the tear that was crawling down her cheek. "You're right, Pops. I'll stay inside."

She turned away again, removing her coat and hanging it back on its peg. She was nearly past him when her grandfather wrapped his fingers around her arm and pulled her into a hug.

"This isn't your fault, baby girl. None of this's your fault, and I'm sorry I made it sound like it was."

Dev pushed her nose into his shirt, inhaling deeply the mingled scents of tobacco and horse and butterscotch hard candy and allowed herself a small moment of comfort. "It wasn't my fault that it happened," she acknowledged, her voice muffled, "but I was the reason they came here. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have had to..."

"Darlin', I'd do it all over again." He squeezed her tighter. "To keep you safe, I'd do worse. You're my world, baby girl."

It wasn't just a platitude. It was the truth. Eli Jacobs had lost his only daughter to childbirth the night Dev was born twenty-seven years prior and his wife to cancer six summers past. She really was all he had left.

And look what she'd brought upon him.

She pulled away from him, took three steps backwards and dropped down onto the mudroom bench. She dropped her head into her hands, fingers combing backwards into the dark mahogany of her hair and digging into her scalp. "I hate this," she hissed. "I hate that you had to do that because of me. And I really hate that I wasn't even able to help."

"It was what it was, darlin'...and you are what you are. No use hatin' things that can't be changed." The pause that followed was rife with unease. "How's your head feelin' anyway? Still hurtin'?"

Something fierce. But he didn't need to know that.

"I'm fine," she dismissed. "The worst of it stopped when everything else did, just like he said it would."

Pops narrowed his eyes at that admission, like a predator sighting prey, and she knew she should have left off that last part. It was the first time she'd made mention of the phone call she'd received in the earliest hours of Christmas Eve.

They'd been sitting at the small dining table, a fire crackling and popping away in the big river rock fireplace while they shared a game of cribbage and a few fingers of the Stranahan's she'd picked up during her last trip into Jackson. When the phone rang, they'd exchanged mildly concerned looks. At ten-minutes-of-one in the morning in their world, a ringing phone meant only one of two things—it was either a wrong number or something bad had happened. With that thought in mind, she had picked up the phone already frowning and it had all just gone downhill from there. Five minutes later, she'd dropped the phone back onto its base with a ghost-pale face and shaking hands, and told Pops that they had work to do.

A few hours later, all hell had broken loose.

Through it all, Pops hadn't asked a single tough question. He'd accepted the things she chose to tell him and did what needed doing. Now though, she could see by the look on his face that he was about to start asking all those questions she didn't want to answer.

"You know, baby girl, you never did say who it was that called the other day."

Dev stiffened, her spine straightening and her chin coming up. "You're right. I didn't."

"Think you might?"

This was even harder than she'd thought it would be. Because by asking that one question, he'd broken a tradition that went back far longer than just two days.

He never asked.

It was one of the facts of her life. She was…different and Pops didn't ask about it. It was something she had come to count on over the years, especially since Grams—who had asked, because that's what Grandmothers did—had died.

And now, here he was. Asking.

Goddamn it all to hell and back again.

She met his hazel eyes with her own, her expression an equal mixture of reluctance and—to her shame—resentment. She hated him just a little bit in that moment for asking; and herself a whole lot more for feeling that way. "Honestly, Pops, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

That earned her a hard, narrow-eyed look that was half annoyance, half disbelief. "Darlin'," he barked out, "after yesterday…hell…and everything before yesterday…"

He paused and shook his head. His hand rose, fell, dropped hard onto her shoulder; fingers digging into the fabric of her shirt, thumb pressing into the bare skin of her neck.

And with a white-hot jolt, images erupted into Dev's mind…

Years ago…her on her knees in the yard, shivering and caked with mud, face lifted up to the sky and staring up, up, up with wide, blank eyes and whispering words that weren't like any words he'd ever heard in a voice that wasn't hers, or any one person's, but sounded like church on Sunday's when everyone was singing the hymns and no one was quite all together but still together enough that it came out sounding joyous and eerie all at the same time.

Months ago…her standing, swaying, in the farthest reaches of the barn loft, eyes screwed shut tight and scribbling jibberish on the walls with a black felt pen, each new symbol flaring blinding white before turning a shimmering gold and him rolling on eight coats of paint before giving up and simply piling up bales of hay in front of the words that were still there, glowing bright as day.

Yesterday…her laying on her side on the floor beside the couch, curled into a ball with her hands clamped tight around her head, sobbing, gasping, screaming in pain as he loadedaimedfiredloadedaimedfired at the heads of the monsters that wore the faces of neighbors and friends only not really because he sure as hell didn't remember Jim Allison's teeth looking like steak knives or Cathy Matheson's arms stretching out like rubber bands pulled too tight and how the fuck was Danny Fitzgerald still walking with a big damn hole straight through his gut and oh Sweet Jesus were those innards spilling out and…

"Stop!"

Dev screeched the word, jerking backwards and away so that the hand that had been on her shoulder fell into the space between them and her mind cleared and became her own again. She looked up, past the large hand still hovering in mid-air to the lined face above it, and saw confusion slowly morph into a nebulous sort of understanding.

"Yeah," Pops drawled, brow arching knowingly. "I think you might be surprised what I'm willing to believe these days, Dev. So how 'bout you give it a try."

Standing there, watching her expectantly, he made it sound so simple. She wished that the truth could be that easy. After all, he was right. He'd seen so much—especially over the past few days.

But he hadn't seen it all. Not even close.

Because there were things she knew; things she had seen; things that she herself barely believed existed in the scope of her world. Things that, for the sake of her already dubious grasp on normality, had to stay secret. Some of those secrets were so big—so terrifying—that she had had to pretend even to herself that they weren't real.

The voice on the other end of that phone call…well, he might not be one of the scariest secrets she had, but he was definitely one of the hardest to explain.

"I don't talk about this, Pops."

If he was at all put off by the sharpness—the bitter, angry censure—in her voice, he did a remarkable job of hiding it.

"You don't," he agreed. "Doesn't mean you can't."

Dev sighed, leaned backwards until her head rested against the age-smoothed wooden wall. Telling him would change everything. If he knew about this, then there couldn't be any more dancing around the subject. He wouldn't just know she was different, he would once and for all truly understand just how different she really was.

It would make everything so much more real than it had ever been before. But well...everything was irrevocably changed anyway now, wasn't it? Did the rest—such a little bit more, compared to what had already come out—really make that big a difference?

A very large, very vocal part of her was utterly certain that she was making a mistake…

"It was Michael."

…but apparently, that wasn't going to make a damn bit of difference.

"What was who?"

Dev let out another sigh, her shoulders slumping. "On the phone the other day, Pops. The phone call? It was Michael."

His look told her better than words could that he'd expected...more. And oh, if that's what he wanted…

If that was really, truly what he wanted…

"Dunbar's kid? The one with the blue hair and black fingernails?"

Oh, she could certainly oblige. She could give him enough more to last him a lifetime.

"No, not that Michael, Pops. He's..." she paused, floundered, utterly lost for the words that could explain it without having to just come straight out with it because she knew just how crazy it would sound if she did. After a long moment of contemplation, inspiration struck and she knew exactly which tack to take. She looked up at her grandfather, meeting his eyes squarely and deliberately. "And at that time shall Michael stand up," she began, reciting the verse with quiet purpose, "the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book."

Silence followed; complete and total silence that was so loud that it hurt her ears. But she never flinched. She just kept on looking straight at her grandfather's eyes, willing him to understand what she was telling him—hoping he wouldn't think she was as nuts as she usually thought she was.

"So you're tellin' me," Pops said eventually, his voice thinner than she'd ever heard it, "that the Archangel Michael, God's Own General, called you. On the telephone."

"Long distance, collect from Los Angeles," she affirmed, proud of him for getting it and relieved that it was done with such relative ease.

"To what? Warn you the demons were comin'?"

Dev's expression tightened, but she forced herself to nod. "He knew what was coming, yeah. And he knew that it was going to affect me—though he didn't know to what extent. I don't believe he knew it'd knock me on my ass quite as thoroughly as it did."

Michael had told her a whole hell of a lot more than that, but as it was all over and done with, the details of the phone call really weren't all that important. If Pops' wanted to believe it had all been the Devil's work, well, that was fine by her. After everything, she just hadn't the heart to tell him the truth.

"So what you're tellin' me," Pops said after another long bout of silence, "is that you know the Archangel Michael. Personally."

"Yup," she confirmed, popping the p with relish. "Met him for the first time about ten years ago—he appeared to me while I was out riding the fence. It wasn't long after…," she hesitated, giving him a sheepish look. "Remember the first time you and Grams found me wandering around the yard in the middle of the night?"

The look that earned her was truly priceless. "You mean the night we found you traipsin' round the back of the barn barefoot and in your nightclothes, talking to people who weren't there in a voice that wasn't yours in a language that wasn't anything like English? Yeah, darlin', I reckon I do."

His sarcasm was a thing of beauty. In another situation, she might have laughed. Even now, she couldn't help but grin. "Stupid question," she acknowledged. "But anyway, it was just after that. I was riding along and suddenly there he was and to make a very long story short, he sometimes drops in to check up on me and I sometimes request an audience with him and we've become, well…friends. Sort of."

"Friends…?"

"Sort of," she repeated. "But I guess you could more call him a mentor. He explains things…answers as many of my questions as he can. He's helped me a lot, Pops—made me understand a whole hell of a lot more about who and what I am."

She watched as Pops took that in, chewed it up and—ever so gingerly—gulped it down. "Well I," he shook his head, blew out an overwhelmed breath, "I suppose I'm thankful for him then, if he's helped you like you say. It's…mighty kind of the Good Lord to have sent one of His most faithful to shepherd you."

"Two, actually," Dev corrected automatically and then immediately wished she could reel the words back in. She was giving the whole honesty-is-the-best-policy thing a shot, but that didn't mean she had to go overboard with it.

"Two?"

"Sometimes it isn't Michael. Sometimes it's Gabriel."

"Of course," Pops said after a prolonged moment of tense silence, voice oddly neutral. "Of course it would be Gabriel too. Only makes sense that the Lord would send His best to prepare one of His prophets, now doesn't it?"

Prophet.

The word echoed in Devlin's ears, hitting her like a punch to the gut. It was the very first time that word had ever actually been spoken between them. Michael had certainly spouted it at her enough, doing his utmost to impress the importance of her situation on her young mind; Gabriel as well, though with twice the austerity and half the charm. But hearing it from her solid, staid and all too human Grandfather made it real in a way it never had been before.

Luckily, the disbelief in his voice gave her something to focus on besides the title.

"You don't believe me? Really?"

"Oh, I believe you, darlin'," Pops said, his voice a little stronger. "More than believe…I know. Have known for years now, truth be told." His expression changed then, warmed, and the harsh planes of his face softened. "Your Grandmama was so proud of you, of what you are. She would've been giddy as hell to know you're friends with Angels, baby girl."

"Yeah," Dev agreed, her smile a brittle thing. "Grams always said it was a gift. Wonder if she still would've thought that after…everything."

"Don't think anything could've ever changed her mind."

Dev arched a brow and nodded toward the door. "I think a dozen dead neighbors might've changed..." her voice trailed off and her brow furrowed as a familiar feeling came over her, a feeling that was fear and excitement and awe all rolled up into one and that only ever meant one thing...

"His ears must've been on fire," she muttered, eyes on the door, "Pops, go on to your room. Now."

She knew the look that got her. She didn't even need to look at him to see it. "Excuse me?"

"Seriously, Pops," she turned, leaned forward and placed a hand on her Grandfathers arm, "just go to your room and get some sleep. I'm about to receive some of that shepherding we were just talking about and I really don't think now's the right time to make any introductions."

Eli Jacobs gave a snort of laughter and rubbed a weary hand over his eyes. "You might just be right there, darlin'," he agreed. He leaned forward and planted a quick kiss on her forehead. "I think maybe I've handled about as much as I can at present." He turned and started walking away, but stopped at the opposite side of the living room, just at the threshold of the short hallway that led back to the bedrooms. "I expect you'll come on back and get me if you need anything, Devlin Anne…understood? Anything at all."

He sounded so…normal; like none of the crazy she'd just laid on him meant a thing next to the fact that she was his granddaughter. It was very him; and it was so much more than she deserved. His easy acceptance nearly brought tears to her eyes, but she swallowed hard against them and offered him a brilliant smile instead. "I will, Pops. Promise."

"That's alright then."

And he was gone, his bedroom door clicking shut behind him.

Barely a moment later, there was the sound of wings followed by the dull thunderclap of landing. It was a sound that she had come to know well, and she quickly pulled her coat on, zipped up and threw open the door to greet her unexpected—but very welcome—guest.