"Malachi" She murmurs softly in her sleep, her cheeks wet with tears. She lay in bed, her sheets pushed off of her body, leaving her covered in an old white t shirt and faded black sweatpants. Her blonde hair is a tangled mess from her relentless shifting in bed as she struggled against her nightmare. The same nightmare she has had every night for the past three months.

"Malachi" she repeats, this time as a whimper. Her breath becomes more ragged as her crying intensifies, her face crumpling into a pained expression. She hadn't slept for days. She just couldn't let herself. The dream was too much. Her dreams had always been frighteningly real but this was different because it wasn't even a dream really but a recurring memory. An extremely vivid recurring memory of the last final horrifying moments before she lost her son forever. It was like God was punishing her by making her experience it over and over every single night for the rest of her life. She could smell the incense as strongly as the first time, feel the cold floor beneath her feet and the high ceilings above her head. She could feel the bristle of her wool scarf on her neck and the stinging in her eyes as she begins to sob. Every night it's the same; she hears the monotone chanting and sees the knife raised and feels Azazeal's voice overwhelming her. And Malachi's crying. She couldn't stand his crying, her little son calling out to her. She feels herself once again rush forward as the knife comes down, about to take her baby's life, and just like every terrible night, feels the blade slice into her instead of Malachi, feels the blood start to pour from her upper back as she stumbles to the ground. Everything goes dark and she wakes up, like every night before, gasping for breath, her hand unconsciously going to her left side just above her breast and below her shoulder, touching the ugly scar left over. It always hurts after, a dull burn that will last for sometimes minutes, other times for hours.

She hasn't woken up yet tonight. Her dream hasn't run its course. It seems longer as if to compensate for the previous nights she has willed herself to stay awake. In her dream she is only to the part where Malachi has just begun to cry.

----------

He smokes a cigarette out on the lawn outside of her window like he has done so many times before, trying to think of the first thing he'll say to her. It had taken Azazeal forever to find her. For awhile he hadn't even known she was alive. It still shook him that such apparent knowledge of Cassie's existence had managed to escape him. He had always been able to sense her living presence and from it he could always get a vague feeling of where she was. He could always find her if he had to. He even thought that sometimes, when their connection was the strongest, he could sense how she was feeling and what she was thinking. It was that naïve overestimation of his power on her that finally betrayed him in the end. He doesn't even know if he has any real power anymore. It all seems to have been sucked away from him. As if the mourning of his child had taken over all the strength he had.

Azazeal had really thought he had seen Cassie dying as he picked Malachi off of the altar and into his arms. He still remembers his hissing words to Ella and his escape with Malachi from the church. He stills scolds himself for not hesitating, seeing for himself whether or not Cassie had died. But the assumption of her death and the immediate danger presented to his son had made him emotional and single minded. Cassie probably wouldn't have expected it but he did grieve for her as he continued to look after Malachi. His devotion to his son became even more intense as he redirected his love for her unto their child. God, it killed him sometimes to look at Malachi, with Cassie's eyes and his smile. He never expected what happened next.

It had been about a week since the attempted sacrifice of Malachi when he started noticing that something was off. Malachi was growing fast, much too fast. He would age up to 6 months in a day. It was tearing his body apart. The medication for his bones was no longer working and his joints were not growing fast enough to contend with the speed that the rest of his body was developing and his heart could not keep up with him either. With each day that Malachi grew he became paler and weaker. By the time he was the physical age of 15, he could no longer walk and could only lay in bed. He had become a beautiful young man. His hair had deepened in color to match his father's, with a slight curl to it in the end and he still had Cassie's blue eyes. But he was frightfully pale and his skin had attained a slight yellow tint. Azazeal could not stand to watch this, the deterioration of his only son, the son that was supposed to lead the rest of the Nephilim through to the human world. Azazeal had never felt so helpless and useless in his entire existence. All he could do was make Malachi comfortable and hope for a miracle, ironically.

And then Ella showed up. Azazeal had thought that he had found a very secure spot to hide Malachi until the time was right and he was strong enough, but the unexpected weakening of his son had caused Azazeal to let his guard down. And now here she was again, a reminder of all that she had taken from him.

Ella strode into the dilapidated church, always a showman in her black knee high boots and overdramatic floor length black leather coat.

"It is almost disappointing how easy it was to find you. Sniff out the nearby rundown cathedrals and here you are, progeny and all." Azazeal stared her down, the anger rising into his chest. Of all the things he did not need right now, she was at the top of his list. Ella met his glare and continued to walk up to the altar and glance down at Malachi in the bed.

"He doesn't look very well." She said as she brought her hand down to Malachi's face, grazing his cheek. Azazeal grabbed her wrist fiercely. Ella made eye contact with him, jerking her wrist from his grasp.

"So he can't handle the demands of the demon inside of him. How ironic." Ella said mockingly, "After all the time and effort I have put into killing him, it is his own genetic makeup that is going to do him in"

"Don't begin to assume anything" Azazeal retorted roughly, "You know nothing of my son or what he is capable of. He will see through this"

"Maybe… if you start praying. But something tells me your prayers will go unanswered." And with that she turned away from him and walked out of the church. Azazeal hated her for trespassing in his sanctuary. But he knew that she was right.

It only took a few more days before Malachi finally passed. Azazeal held him as his breath became weak and straggled and then finally stopped coming at all. Azazeal held his son's body for hours after, crying and moaning against his son's cold cheek, calling out his name as if it could summon him back into his body.

When he finally regained his sanity, he covered his son with his bed sheets and decided that Malachi needed a proper burial next to his mother. It would comfort him to know that Cassie and their child would be resting side by side. But he didn't know what had become of Cassie's remains. So Azazeal made his way by to Mendenham Hall to find his Cassie.