The shrill alarm reached their ears before the looming shape of the house came into view, the sound cutting obscenely through the hush of daybreak with a screech like the repeated drag of nails on a chalkboard that immediately drowned out the dawn chorus.

'Someone's been in the house,' Jinn muttered needlessly, since anyone within a ten mile radius would know that. He came to an abrupt halt and set Eutopia on her feet. He had carried her for the past fifteen minutes or so with one arm crooked beneath her knees and the other curled around her shoulders as she half-dozed against his chest having been unaware of just how far she had run initially. She had lost her flip-flops in the lake and so her bare feet had posed a bit of problem now that the adrenaline had left her system and she could feel each tender step upon the twigs and leaves that littered the ground, which is why she had consented to being carried.

'What?' she asked, suddenly tense and alert as all traces of sleepiness evaporated in an instant, every muscle and sinew singing with the desire to flee again as she steadied herself against Jinn.

'I set the alarm before I followed you; I always do whenever I leave, no matter how long I'm gone for. Someone's been in the house.'

'Burglars?' Eutopia asked in a hushed tone, fingers tightening on his forearm as Jinn moved protectively, instinctively in front of her. He frowned thoughtfully, one arm reaching out as though to hold her back from bolting into the house despite the fact that she had now turned bodily so that her feet and most of her torso pointed in the opposite direction.

'Burglars wouldn't be so incautious as to set off the alarm,' he said. Eutopia's eyes widened as she imagined a hoard of police officers lurking in the bushes that lay along either side of them, seeing their dark, uniformed shapes sneaking about in the shadows of the big old house, lying in wait for them behind the dusty velvet drapes and her fingers dug harder into the flesh of Jinn's arm.

'The police then, they must have caught up with us from your crazy stint at the service station!'

'Definitely not, do you think they would announce their presence so publically?'

'I guess not,' Eutopia said, feeling quite stupid as she found herself pulled forward, keeping a tight grip on Jinn who began to stalk purposefully towards the piercing noise. 'Wait, you're going inside?!' she squawked fearfully as she half-heartedly tried to pull him back, remembering and meeting the bulge of muscle in his forearm that she had been forced to contend with at the garage when she'd tried to check his anger then.

'I need to go inside to reset the alarm,' Jinn explained patiently, his lips to her ear to avoid having to raise his voice over the din, 'otherwise the whole Surrey police force will come swooping down on us. Don't worry, it's fine, I won't let anything happen to you,' he added, soothingly, as he caught Eutopia's hand and pulled her close to his side. 'I will not lose you for a second time.' He said it with such forceful conviction that Eutopia felt all the fear trickle from her and a warm electrical thrill rushed to take its place as her ear tingled where his lips had touched. They had reached the French doors that led out from the kitchen at the back of the house.

'Locked,' Jinn said, trying the handle. 'The glass hasn't been broken either and all these windows look fine, none of them seem broken or forced open.' A dark frown took over his handsome features as he took a step back to scan the flat face of the building before he produced a key from his pocket and led the way inside. Eutopia, still gripping his hand, followed with hesitant steps. The alarm was so much louder now and she could feel the pressure building up painfully in her ears as the high pitched sound continued its relentless wail, bashing again and again at her fragile eardrums. Jinn didn't pause to turn on the light by the kitchen door but instead swept through the long hallway to the front of the house where Eutopia could make out a little box on the wall beside the front door that had tiny buttons like a keypad, much like the one he had fiddled with outside when they had first arrived. She found it hard to make out the numbers in the gloom, but Jinn obviously had no problem as he punched at a series of buttons with one finger without so much as squinting. Sudden silence flooded her aching ears with relief, leaving her eardrums buzzing gently in the wake of the assault on them and the immediate absence of sound seemed almost alien.

'Thank God for that,' she said, letting her hand drop from the side of her head where it had been trying unsuccessfully to block out the sound. Her other hand was still clutching tightly at Jinn's, who seemed as reluctant as she did to break that hesitant, tenuous contact the past few hours had established between them.

'I've always found that to be an interesting expression,' Jinn almost smirked through the crease of concern on his forehead. 'The front door is still secure. I need to check the other windows though, make sure no one has got in.' Eutopia nodded, feeling reluctant to follow him again as she was unable to shake off the vision of police officers crouched in the shadows, ready to spring out at any moment to arrest them both. She found her eyes darting constantly to all the places that might easily conceal a figure as Jinn led her around the house, switching on lights and checking each and every window for any signs of forced entry, which turned out to be easier said than done given the cavernous size of the house. Each and every window held up to Jinn's vigorous checks and Eutopia could see his frustration growing with each secure pane of glass in each room as he checked them all and found nothing amiss.

'So how would they have gotten in? Could it have been a false alarm?' Eutopia asked, voicing Jinn's own thoughts.

'I don't know,' he said in a distracted tone, pushing open the door to the bedroom Eutopia had slept in before her night-time escapades, the last room they had to check in the house since they had worked their way methodically from bottom to top. 'I think perhaps…' but Eutopia never found out what it was that Jinn thought as his words stuck in his throat. The huge windows that took up the length of one wall threw back the ghost-like reflection of the two figures frozen in the doorway with Jinn's hand hovering above the light switch he had just flipped to chase the darkness away. Eutopia followed his gaze to where something soft and white lay like a forgotten tuft of cotton-wool on top of the duvet that she had shaken out over the bed to make it look less rumpled before she had left. She crossed the room to get a better look.

'What's that?' she asked curiously, reaching out to pick up the little cloud that undulated gentle in the breeze caused by her movement. Jinn's hand was on hers before her fingertips had the chance to brush the odd object, preventing her from exploring any further.

'Feathers,' he said, 'three feathers.' His eyes were black, contemplative as he looked down at her. 'We can't stay here anymore; we'll have to leave sooner than I thought.' Jinn scooped the feathers up with his free hand and Eutopia got a closer look at them. Each one was about six inches in length and curved up away from where they lay on his palm, long downy fronds fluttering ever so slightly like delicate coral rippling with an unseen current. They were a soft, pure white that reminded Eutopia of snow falling starkly against the backdrop of a steely sky, but seemed to glow with some radiance that she vaguely remembered having seen before.

'Where did they come from? How did they get here if all the doors and windows were locked?' she asked, looking more confused than Jinn though less alarmed.

'It doesn't matter how… the more important question is why? But like I said, right now we need to leave.' He clenched his fist around the feathers, crushing them before flinging them away with force that made little difference as they fluttered in an unconcerned and leisurely manner to the floor no more than an inch away from where they both stood. They looked for a moment at the crumpled feathers, discarded and forlorn-looking with all the softness squeezed from them.

'Three feathers,' Jinn muttered again, more to himself than Eutopia, running both hands through his dark hair, smoothing it back before it sprung back to slight unruliness. 'Have you got everything?' He turned his gaze back to Eutopia, tearing his eyes away from little white mound on the floor. Eutopia gasped, shock and then a sick fear registering in her wide eyes.

'My bag… my things, purse, money, clothes… they were all in my bag in the clearing. My phone, oh shit my phone! We've got to go and get it, Jinn,' she urged, making for the door.

'We don't have time, my stuff is all packed in my room and I've got more than enough money for the both of us. I can buy you a new phone, we've got to go.' Jinn followed Eutopia out of the room but instead of turning right behind her towards the end of the long corridor where the stairs were he walked the short distance across the hall to his bedroom. He remerged only moments later with his backpack slung across his broad shoulders and with a pair of dark jogging bottoms in one hand which he tossed to Eutopia as she turned, paused halfway down the sweeping staircase as he caught up with her.

'You might want to put these on,' he said, passing her easily on the broad step, keeping his back to her so as to afford her some privacy as she pulled them on. She noticed that he'd taken the time to pull on a thick red Hollister hoodie and some dark jeans. The jogging bottoms, despite their bagginess, were soft and warm on her bare legs that in all that had passed she had somehow forgotten about. Of course her jeans still lay spread out in on the floor of the clearing where she'd left them with the vain hope that they might have somehow dried out enough to put on at some point, her battered old Nokia that had once been her most prized possession was still tucked in the pocket and rendered utterly useless thanks to Jinn and her brief swim in the lake. She still wore his hoodie that he'd told her to swap her wet clothes for and she was grateful for it as she hurried down the remainder of the stairs and followed him out of the front door because whilst they had traipsed from room to room the steadily brightening dawn had given way to a dull morning sky that was drizzling. Typical British summer, she thought, thinking back to the previous day's sunshine, never the same from one day to the next… much like my life at the moment. She watched with curiosity as Jinn set the alarm on the house again.

'Is there really much point, since someone can clearly get in bypassing all the doors and windows anyway?' she asked, pulling the hood of her jumper up against the rain.

'Force of habit,' he said, shouldering his backpack again which Eutopia eyed with some hesitation.

'Are we going camping?'

'No,' Jinn smiled, leading the way across the crunching gravelled drive, past a neatly topiary-sculpted tree cut into a perfect cone that was set amidst a little roundabout of red brick and the kind of smooth velvety grass that just begs to be sprawled on when the rare British sunshine showed its face.

'Good, I hate camping,' said Eutopia as they approached an outbuilding covered with almost as much glossy ivy that crawled across the front of the house. The one-storey building was probably larger than an average five bedroomed house despite the fact it was not quite as tall.

'Me too,' Jinn replied, pressing a button on a key fob he'd taken from his pocket, 'too many lions.'

'What?' she asked totally mystified, but he just shook his head with a grin. 'You are seriously weird.'

Jinn nodded sagely. 'So I've been told.' A mechanical whirr, a steady gentle hum beneath the bird song reached Eutopia's ears and it wasn't until the front of the one-story building before them began to rise up off the ground and disappear inch by inch into the low ceiling that she realised it was a garage. Jinn led the way inside before the wide door had fully opened, ducking his head to avoid catching it which was a manoeuvre that Eutopia had no need of. There were no windows but the single vast room was illuminated by two strip-lights above that were activated by motion sensors as they entered. The walls were white and unadorned without the usual workbenches or tools that she would have expected to find in a garage, the sterile space free from the usual broken or unforgotten household items, and yet a garage it most definitely was.

Three cars sat quite comfortably side by side with enough room to easily slide three more in. She noticed that one of the cars was the shiny black Merc they had made their journey here in. It seemed to lay silent on the worn flagstone floor like a giant black cat, poised and ready to catapult them off into the abyss should Jinn decide it. Her attention was drawn to the sparkling metallic paint of a low and sleekly curvaceous two-seater convertible. It glittered like a pool of blood between the black of the Mercedes and the unassuming white of a car she easily knew to be a BMW that was clearly brand new by the 2012 plate displayed on the front. It was unlike any BMW she'd ever seen but as she had come to expect by Jinn's other two choices of car, it was just as elegant and fluid in its design.

'BMW X6 M50d, Twin Power Turbo six-cylinder in-line diesel engine with 740Nm maximum torque and 381 horsepower,' he said with the proud tone usually owned by the parent of some genius brainchild, as though the words should mean something to her. 'The red one is a McClaren Spider,' he nodded at the low slung car parked in the middle of the other two, sinisterly still as though it was indeed a spider ready and waiting in its web to entangle something juicy. 'We'll take the Beemer though. It's much less…'

'Ostentatious?' Eutopia asked with a raised eyebrow as she climbed into the white work of art Jinn had blipped open, fastening her seatbelt as he slid into the black leather seat beside her. 'So you have a car for every occasion, huh? I'm disappointed, Mr QuilYa, I half expected a helicopter or two.'

Jinn smirked. 'Sorry to disappoint, Ms Midnight, I've only got a few hundred thousand pounds worth of cars in this garage.' Eutopia rolled her eyes as he revved the engine unnecessarily, the sound bouncing back at them in the confined space to roar beast-like as Jinn grinned boyishly at her, all the strain etched in his face from earlier now evaporated. He released the brake and the car rolled smoothly out of the garage and into the grey morning light as the door lowered behind them as slowly as it had risen.

'Where are we going?' she asked, sinking back into the warm seat as Jinn steered them across the drive and around the carefully manicured tree that pointed up at the rainclouds above, and down a wide wending road. The huge manor house, for Eutopia could see that's what it was now in the light, fell back behind them as an endless expanse of flat green and tall trees stretched out on either side of the wide gravelled road they followed.

'Peckham,' Jinn answered as he reached down to fiddle with the matt-black iPod nestled in the centre console. Eutopia noted the colour of the expensive looking gadget with a little amusement as a strumming bass line of some song she didn't recognise filled the car.

'I need something to believe in, coz I don't believe in myself-' came the soft male tone from the iPod.

'Are all angels' lives so black and white?' Eutopia asked Jinn.

'I'm sick and tired of getting nowhere, guess it'll all work out-'

'Not quite. Mine's red too,' he smiled quietly, pressing a little button on the steering wheel that must operate the immense wrought iron gates that they had paused at, setting them swinging open and releasing the car into the open countryside beyond.

'Why Peckham? I thought the idea was to keep clear of London for the moment.'

'And I need someone to put my trust in, coz I ain't trusting myself. And I'm scared of failure, so scared of success. Guess it'll all work out-' the smooth male voice continued to sing, softly. How very true right now, Eutopia thought as she regarded Jinn.

'We need to find Mike since he won't be able to ring you back now. Do you remember where he lives?'

'I think so. It's been a while, but he did take me to his mum's house a few times, mostly when he'd ran out of money.'

Jinn nodded. 'Then that's where we're going. We'll stop somewhere along the way and pick a few things up for you, as much as I think you look good in my clothes,' he laughed softly as he cast a look at her blushing cheeks.

'Why did we have to leave so quickly? I could have got my own things.' His laughter dried up as swiftly as it had begun and she could see the hard glint in his eye as he turned back to look at the narrow country road, overhung with untamed trees clipped back only by the vehicles that passed through them giving the branches an unnatural square-tunnel look. 'It was the feathers wasn't it? What was so bad about them? Weren't they yours?' she wondered whether angels cast out old feathers from their wings like birds did and looked bemused at the mental image her mind formed of the inhumanly beautiful man spanning out his white wings and carefully plucking out imperfect feathers with his teeth.

'No, the feathers weren't mine. They were… they were… hers.' His mouth twisted as he almost spat the word. 'It means she knows. Three feathers, it means she knows. How could she not with it being plastered all over the news channels 24/7. She's telling me she knows what happened at the Three Feathers Inn… that I've found you. I should have known anyway in that alleyway. Those men,' He banged the steering wheel with one hand in sudden frustration, making Eutopia jump and frown at him. 'They weren't men in the true human sense.'

'What do you mean by that?' Eutopia asked, exasperated by his half-stories. Why couldn't he give her a full explanation without her having to probe?

'Have you ever heard of the Nephilim?'

'No. What's that?'

'Guess you don't read the Bible much, huh? Not that they have it all right though, but it's close enough. Anyway, the Nephilim are a race of beings created by the union of fallen angels and human women. They look exactly like a human male, even take on certain features of their mothers such as hair colour, eye colour and skin tone. They grow at the usual rate, age like a normal man and have a similar life span but they inherit the darker side of their angelic fathers. The fallen angels are embittered, twisted and utterly selfish because of their fate which is a trait they pass on to their offspring, who grow up with an inherent sense of anger and an 'I see, I want' attitude. The Nephilim are predators, they deliberately seek out prey to sate whatever twisted desire they have at that time. Luckily, despite their angelic parentage, they have all the usual weaknesses of a human male.'

'There are no female Nephilim?' Eutopia asked, wide eyed.

'No, because there have never been any female fallen angels.' Eutopia frowned at that, trying to understand the mechanics.

'But as I said, I should have known this wasn't going to be straightforward as soon as I realised the three men that attacked you were all Nephilim. They usually hunt alone and it's very rare to find more than two in one place, with one victim. They are too selfish to share.' Jinn pulled a face, his jaw tight. 'I should have known then it was deeper, that there was someone else involved… Perhaps I shouldn't have been quite so reckless. But then, why change a habit of an eternity?' He gave a small, un-amused hint of a smile and a little sigh, the delicate song playing low, filling the silence that fell.

'…'cause that leads to regret diving in too soon, and I'll owe it all to you, my little bird…'

'Um… who is this she you're talking about?' Eutopia carefully asked, sensing the anger that crackled around him like static.

'My sister. Petra,' The name sounded familiar to her though she couldn't immediately place it however hard she tried, flicking back through the years in her mind to match it to a face she had come across at some point. 'I did expect a bigger reaction from you, you know,' Jinn said eventually, glancing at Eutopia from the corner of his eye as he carefully negotiated a rather tight bend on the single track road they were following.

'From me? About what?' she asked in surprise, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them as her bare toes gripped the soft leather of her seat-edge.

'Back at the house I told you that I am an angel and I barely had a flicker of emotion from you. I was expecting an element of surprise, a little shock perhaps?'

'I don't think much can shock me right now to be honest. I've just found out that I'm a born again slave-girl from ancient Rome and I'm on the run with a murderer who owned me in a previous life… who now just so happens to be some sort of angelic being. I think I've had all my shocks for today, thanks.' Jinn laughed gently, causing Eutopia to smile too.

'Well I guess when you put it like that, I can understand. Does it bother you though? I know its expecting a lot from you to take it all in.' Eutopia rubbed a hand over her eyes with a sigh, feeling as though her brain was just simply too small to store and make sense of all this information it kept being bombarded with.

'I guess my main question is how you can be an angel and yet take life away?' she asked after a moment of thought. 'Aren't you supposed to guard life or something? Isn't that the whole idea of being a 'guardian'?' She twisted in her seat so that her right shoulder and side leant against the black leather of the backrest so that she could face Jinn as he drove and her eyes curious as she studied his lovely features. Jinn frowned and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.

'Your life is the only one I am interested in guarding. But you are right to an extent, yes; angels are often referred to as Guardians since that is more likely than not how they refer to themselves. Many people do have guardian angels in a sense sent to protect and to lead, though the concept of what we actually do has been lost, twisted and romanticised over time.' The light tone had left his words as he spoke, the endless reams of green and brown hues whizzing past behind his head out of the driver's side door as the car continued to propel them smoothly through the twisting maze of single track, high-hedged road that wound around the outlying lands of Farnham. Some of the views from out of the windscreen were truly beautiful, the curving hills and fields layered upon one another, all the shades of green and yellow and brown that the human eye could recognise, bordered by hedgerows tangled and tamed all at once, teeming with birds and bugs and other secret wildlife, the colours made darker and more intense saturated by the steady rain that fell. But Eutopia didn't notice any of it as it sped by outside because her eyes were fixed firmly on the man beside her.

'What do you mean by that? You're saying the traditional view of the guardian angel isn't true? How so?'

'This isn't really what I'd like to be talking about right now. I think we should be thinking of a plan of action.'

'Where are your wings?' Eutopia asked, ignoring him.

'What?'

'Your wings, where are they? Shouldn't they be out and sort of flapping about?' Jinn turned his head momentarily from the road he'd been concentrating on to glance at Eutopia with a hint of something like exasperation.

'If my wings were flapping about, Eutopia, then everyone would know what I am. It would be disastrous! Look at all the wars waged over religion at the moment, could you imagine what would happen if the existence of angels was proved?' He turned back to the road, leaving Eutopia to nibble her lower lip, deep in thought. He fiddled with the iPod, switching the gentle, husky sound to some heavier, deeper beat that she didn't recognise. She could feel each throb of the music pulsing with the bass deep in her bones. She settled back in her seat, closing her eyes. The music, despite its hefty intensity, was soothing since it distracted from the throbbing of all the new information her brain had been forced to absorb over the past few days.

'Okay. So, you can make your wings disappear whenever you want?'

'Yes. It takes a lot of energy though.'

'Can I see them?' She heard, rather than saw Jinn's smile.

'Perhaps.'

'And I guess the one other question I have…'

'Yes?' Jinn was expectant.

'Well-' Eutopia squirmed a little bit, shifting her weight as she opened her eyes. 'If- if you are an angel that must mean there is a God and so if there is a God, why are such bad things allowed to happen in the world, especially in his name?' she asked, thinking back on what he'd said about religious wars.

'The age-old 'God should be good argument'… Think of it this way,' said Jinn, taking a sharp right turn that Eutopia hadn't been prepared for since it was quite overgrown and tucked between two wild hedgerows. Her arm flung out to grip the dashboard to enable her to keep her balance and stop herself from spilling into Jinn's lap. 'Would you know what black was if you didn't know what white was? Would you know what light was if you didn't know the dark? Would either mean anything, if you weren't aware of the other? Everything has an opposite. Does religion interest you much?'

'No, not at all if I'm honest. I can't say I've ever really given much thought to a particular belief but that is the only question I've ever considered at length. Like my mum, she was the kindest, most caring person you could ever meet. She would do anything for anyone, no matter who you were. She would have given her last penny to see someone else less fortunate than her benefit from it. She'd never done anything to hurt anyone in her life and yet she suffered every day for the last year of her life. I watched her waste away, sat back helpless as her cheeks hollowed and her skin grew pale, so pale I could almost see through it. Her hair fell out with the chemo to begin with, huge dark clumps that I would find all over the place, even in my food when she still had the strength to cook… She struggled to breathe in those last few weeks so she couldn't even walk up the stairs to bed. I remember the Macmillan nurse, who came to our house to help out, setting a bed up for her in the lounge instead so she didn't have to climb the stairs. I used to creep down at night, with Will's torch, and sit beside her just to make sure she was still breathing. I was terrified she would die there in the dark, all by herself.' Unexpected tears sprang up in her blue eyes and Eutopia brushed them angrily away before tugging at the sleeve of her jumper, distractedly chewing at it until Jinn reached out a hand from the steering wheel and pulled it from her teeth, taking her hand in his to entwine their fingers and lay their joint hands in her lap.

'She would not have been alone, not for a single step of that journey; she would never have been alone,' he said with confidence.

'But my point is why are things like that allowed to happen? It just doesn't seem fair when men like that Brady are still allowed to pollute the Earth's atmosphere,' Eutopia demanded, referring to the Moors murderer who had been dominating the headlines lately, when her own face wasn't being paraded on air. Jinn shook his head.

'I'm afraid that's not something I have the knowledge to answer.' He lifted her hand to his lips and gently kissed her knuckles. 'I'm sorry for your loss, though, with your mother.' Eutopia wiped at her eyes again with her other sleeve, touched by his gentle warmth.

'Thank you. Do Christians believe in reincarnation?' she asked suddenly, wondering out loud. Jinn raised an eyebrow and glanced at her as the car swooped over a narrow wooden bridge, causing a Jeep on the other side to wait for them to clear the slow moving stream below. The little communal green they had passed through was quaint, the grass triangle in the middle guarded by a white-washed and thatched roofed country pub that sprawled the length of one side, a crumbling Victorian-looking school on the other that lurked behind a wrought iron fence topped with wicked spikes and the wide, clear stream cutting straight across the third side. They cleared the bridge and Jinn gave a wave of thanks to the waiting Jeep.

'Not strictly speaking, but angels aren't just a Christian creation. We've been around since the conception of time, just with different names.'

'That's a long time,' Eutopia said, turning to glance out of the window again as a road sign which most likely advertised the name of the village they were driving through whizzed past in a blur.

'Yes, but it never felt as long as when I was waiting for you.'