Aidan pulled into the familiar parking lot at the back of the church and looked around before getting out. She motioned for Reagan to follow her. Still thinking she was a little bit crazy, he shook his head and motioned towards the building.
"Your idea of a safe haven is a church? Isn't that a little bit old fashioned?" he questioned.
Before he knew what was happening, Aidan had him pinned against the wall. Her eyes blazed with anger, but the rest of her appeared deceitfully calm.
"Let me remind you that it was less than twenty four hours ago that I snapped a man's neck in order to save your life," she growled. "And I'm not afraid to do the same to you."
Reagan swallowed hard and nodded. "All right, I got it."
Letting out a deep breath, Aidan slowly stepped away from him. "Follow me."
She led Reagan around to the rectory door and knocked three times. He avoided making any comments about secret codes, instead waiting in silence until a middle-aged priest answered the door.
"Aidan, what are you doing here? Are you all right?"
"I don't know. I mean, I don't think so."
Father Jerome nodded and motioned for the two of them to come inside. He offered them a seat, and Reagan took him up on the offer. The priest sat in a chair near the sofa Reagan sat on, but Aidan appeared too worked up to sit.
"I can't piece it together," she said. "Nothing has come to me yet on what conspiracy could possibly be happening regarding Anson and his future prevention."
"Future prevention?" Reagan interjected.
"You haven't told him?" Father Jerome asked.
Aidan shook her head. "No, I haven't told him."
"Ah. Well, perhaps I should get you two a glass of water while you explain things."
Father Jerome hurried away, leaving Aidan to finally face Reagan with the truth. She didn't know where to begin, and she knew he wasn't going to believe her. She just had to make him believe.
"The Division is a well-hidden unit within the government that monitors the planning of terrorist attacks and assassinations and events like that. When one is detected, we do everything we can to prevent it from happening," Aidan explained.
"That doesn't sound so bad," Reagan shrugged. "What's the big deal about that?"
"Those employed within The Division are … different from your average government employee."
"How so?"
Aidan took a deep breath. "Besides the three humans who make up the three levels of supervisors over our unit, the five employees in The Division have unique abilities and backgrounds."
"Like the jumping on roofs and the neck snapping and stuff."
"Well, yeah, but it's more than that." She shook her head. "I'm not explaining this well. Okay, you know when you're a kid and you read stories about monsters and angels and demons and stuff like that? And then you get older and your parents tell you it's not real? That's not entirely true."
Reagan laughed at her. He laughed hard. He must have taken more hits to the head than he realized - or maybe whatever she had drugged him with still hadn't worn off. As his laughter subsided though, some of the things that had happened and things that she had said started to click.
"The Angel of Death," he whispered, his eyes growing wide. "This can't be for real."
"That's not real. I mean, I'm not an angel, that's just a name I was titled with after I became the most successful assassin for The Division," she said, clearly taking no pride in the accomplishment. "The man I killed last night, Nick Mastema, was the only one whose abilities were anywhere near my own. He was a fallen angel."
"A fallen angel, really? So what are you then? A goddess of some kind? Am I lucky you haven't struck me with lightning or something?"
"You know, the attitude really makes me want to drop you back in the middle of the base and let you fend for yourself."
"Don't worry about it, I'll take myself back," he snapped back, heading for the door. His hand hadn't turned the knob yet when Aidan's words stopped him in his tracks.
"It wasn't your fault."
Reagan turned slowly. "What did you say to me?"
"I said, it wasn't your fault. The explosion wasn't your fault. The villagers, your fellow Marines that died, none of that was your fault. It was their time to go; there were no more days for them," Aidan said quietly as she walked to stand in front of him. "When all of this is over, whether you're involved in ending it or not, your nightmares will be over. You'll be discharged by then, but you'll be more relieved than you can imagine."
She didn't fight back when Reagan in turn pinned her against a wall, his forearm pressing against her neck. Although it triggered her anger at first, she knew this was an important moment to curb her reaction. If he had to get it out of his system, she would let him.
"You don't know anything," he told her between clenched teeth. "You weren't there, you didn't see their faces. You didn't hear their screams. You didn't pull the trigger that released the bullet that hit the suicide bomber square in the chest, causing the explosion. That is the nightmare that I have, night after night. And it will never go away."
"If Aidan says it will go away, then she has seen it," Father Jerome spoke up from behind them. It must have been the commotion that brought him out from wherever he had disappeared to so that Aidan could have privacy while she explained as much as she could.
Reagan looked at her again, seeing the same anger in her eyes as when she had threatened him just outside the church. Realizing how much it was taking for her to leave him alive, he released her with an apology and sat down.
Aidan sat next to him. "Do you want me to keep going?"
Reagan nodded. "Yeah. I want to know how you knew about the explosion and the nightmares."
"I'm a psychic," she answered simply. "I can see the past and the future. That was the leg up I had on Nick. I could match him physically without a problem because I could anticipate every move that he would make. In The Division, some were only seers and some prevented at all costs. I was the only employee who was made useful for both."
"But you're not a fallen angel too?"
She paused for several seconds before answering. "No, I'm not an angel. My father - Anson had nothing to do with it."
"Had nothing to do with your father?" Reagan asked.
"No, with the incident last night," Father Jerome answered. "I think she's seeing something."
Aidan's eyes searched around the room and she breathed in deeply. "That smell. It smells like … like blood."
Reagan and Jerome exchanged glances, waiting for her to piece all of this together for her. She stood, putting her hands to her temples and tried to concentrate. She mumbled to herself, but neither of them were able to make it out. Finally, she spun around, her eyes still wide.
"Anson had nothing to do with the attack. It was a ploy to draw Reagan out."
"You weren't supposed to be involved," Reagan said, catching on to what this meant and echoing the words Aidan had told him earlier.
"Mastema hid his true intentions in the attack on Anson in case any of the other seers saw what he was going to do. The attack never would have happened and they would have been discredited, released from The Division. He never counted that I would do anything except report it if I saw. He never expected me to be there."
"What about the blood?" Father Jerome asked. "You said you smelled blood."
"I don't know," Aidan frowned, squeezing her eyes closed and trying to see more. "I've got to calm down."
"Stress and tension makes it harder for her mind to clear enough to receive the visions," Father Jerome explained.
"They're looking for something," she said, taking deep breaths and trying to calm herself. "What are they looking for?"
"Who is 'they'?" Reagan asked.
Aidan shook her head. "I've seen them before, but I don't … I can't figure this out. My mother, they're trailing my mother. Where's the phone?"
Father Jerome handed her a wireless telephone and Aidan quickly dialed her mother's number. Tanya wasn't far from home, and Aidan told her to pull into a parking lot.
"I'll be right there," Aidan promised. "Lock the doors and don't open them for anyone. Don't even roll down the windows."
"Aidan, you've got to tell me what's going on," Tanya pleaded.
"I promise, I will. As soon as I get to you." She disconnected the call and picked up her keys. "I'm going to bring her back here. It shouldn't take long."
"I'm going with you," Reagan said, standing.
She shook her head. "No. Stay here, where it's safe."
Father Jerome raised a brow. "How are you so certain it's safe here?"
"Because when everything else begins to fall, the church is still standing."
Reagan wasn't sure if she was making a statement of faith or if she had seen it happen. Everything this woman and the priest had told him sounded completely absurd, but it was one of those things that he had to see to believe. He had seen Aidan's demeanor as the visions came to her, and now he could believe. There was no other way to explain it.
"Be that as it may," he said, standing to face her. "I'm in this now, and I'm in it till the end. I'm going with you."
Aidan searched his eyes for any trace of hesitation but found none. "Fine. Better hold on to this, then."
Reagan caught the pistol she tossed to him and tucked it in the back of his pants. At some point he'd have to convince her that he needed some things from his room, but not now. They would go and retrieve her mother, and then he would see what her plan was from there.

The intersection where Tanya waited for her daughter was strangely calm and quiet, as though all the traffic had been routed elsewhere. Aidan took a deep breath as she pulled to the curb just a couple of blocks from the parking lot under the shade of several trees. It wasn't necessarily a hiding spot, but it was better than being out in the open.
"You have to stay here. I will get her from the car and we will come right back," Aidan said. "You have a timer on your watch? Good. Set it for one minute. I don't care if you can see me or not; if I am not in the truck with the doors locked and the ignition started in the next sixty seconds, you'd better come out making good use of that weapon."
"Is it wrong of me to hope that it takes you an extra second to lock the doors, just so I can shoot at something?" Reagan asked, successful in his attempt to be charming.
Aidan faltered only momentarily at the playfulness in his eyes. They were just a shade greener than her own, but it was enough to get to her. Although she'd done a good job of ignoring everything pleasant about Reagan Byrne, it took just that one teasing moment to falter her focus. In that moment of falter, however, she gained one second of reprieve from her tension, and what she saw scared her more than any other vision she'd had before.
"What is it?" Reagan frowned. "I wasn't serious."
"I know," Aidan said quietly. "Just start the timer now, okay?"
She shut the door and used the key fob to lock it behind her. Reagan watched as she ran along the tree line, impressed with her speed and trying to decipher if the look that had crossed her eyes before she shut the door was fear or anger.

Don't think about it now, Aidan, she told herself. You'll have to share it all sooner or later, and then you may be on your own.
Reminding herself that getting her mother to safety was the most important thing just then, she made the repeating vision go away and continued her run to the small car sitting ten seconds away. She was going at a steady pace and figured she could make it back to the SUV and Reagan with time to spare, but that was only until she approached the driver's side door and saw the terrified look on her mother's face and the dark creature sitting in the passenger seat. She sized him up in a second and a half; he was tall and lanky with clawed fingers that were slithered around her mother's throat. His eyes were pale grey orbs. The creature's skin appeared to be the texture of snake skin, and was patched with hellish shades of grey, black, and green.
"Aidan Murphy, I presume? My name is Ornias." The voice was a strange concoction of a hiss and a growl along with a familiar voice.
She tried to calculate the number of seconds that were left before Reagan would appear on the scene. "What do you want?"
The creature let loose a devilish scream that made her ears feel as though they would burst. Surely Reagan had to have heard that and would forget her direction to wait sixty seconds. Preparing for him to actually listen to what she had said, she let her right hand hang free at her side so that she could easily reach for the gun holstered at her thigh.
Tanya whimpered and the creature's grip tightened. "Silence!"
"Let her go. This is clearly between you and me."
"No, this is between you and The Division. You ended Mastema's earthly life, and they are none too happy about it."
Everything clicked at once. All the little pieces and her most recent vision combined with where she was at now and it all came together. She drew her gun and quickly fired one shot between the creature's eyes.
Ornias's grip loosed and Tanya scrambled out of the car. The demon's body was slumped over in the seat, his head thrown back from the blast of the bullet.
"Aidan!" Tanya gushed, clinging to her daughter. "What is going on?"
"There is no time. Come on, we've got to get out of here. Can you run?"
Tanya nodded in the affirmative.
"Good. That black SUV there is mine. Take these keys and unlock it when you get close. The man in the front seat is Reagan and he will take care of you."
"What about you?"
"Tell him to reset for another thirty seconds. Go."
Tanya had learned long ago that when her daughter had that tone in her voice, it was best to act first and ask later. She hugged her once more and did as Aidan ordered.
Aiming for the car's engine, Aidan once again raised the gun in her hands, but something caught her notice and made her stop.
Ornias's body was gone from the car.
Aidan immediately took off for the SUV; it was not her psychic power that told her Ornias had once again gone after her mother but simply a gut instinct.
She heard the gunshot before she was even halfway to the vehicle. Ornias sounded with an eerie screech once again, and she saw Reagan battling with the demon for possession of the gun. Tanya was nowhere to be seen; Aidan suddenly found that she couldn't run fast enough. Then she realized the gun was still in her hand.
"Reagan! Down!"
He ducked in the same second that she pulled the trigger. Aidan knew now that the shots she fired one after another were not going to send Ornias back to where he came from, but they would debilitate him long enough for the trio to get far ahead and back to the church.
Reagan got in the passenger seat first, a little shocked when she climbed into the same seat on his lap. She locked the doors from the inside before climbing over the console into the driver's seat.
"Where's my mother?"
"I'm here," Tanya spoke up from the backseat. Her voice was quiet and gave away the tears she was crying.
Aidan started the car and sped in reverse until she got to the street that she could turn back down to begin navigating back to the church.
"Mom, I'm so sorry. I dragged all of us into something so much deeper than I ever could have thought. This is so beyond terrorists and assassins," Aidan said once they were in heavy traffic and less likely to be a target.
"I've asked you this too many times today without an answer. What is going on?" Tanya leaned forward in the seat, her body language begging for answers.
"Let me get us back to the church so I can explain to everyone at once. When we get there, I've got to get something from Father Jerome, and then I promise I will sit and explain everything."
Tanya sat back in the seat, taking slow, deep breaths to try and calm herself. Reagan, however, didn't look at happy at being out of the loop.
"You have to have patience," Aidan said quietly. "You're in this, and it was your choice."
"I said it was my choice, for now," he reminded her. "I can walk away at any point."
"But you won't."
Reagan clenched his jaw. He'd had enough with the appropriate timing. "I need to go back to the base and get some things."
"Absolutely not," Aidan replied with an adamant shake of her head. "You're out of your mind if you think that you can go on that base and get out without being detected."
"So what if I am? I'll just -"
"You'll just what? Explain the situation? Tell them that there's a demon conspiracy to annihilate the majority of the human race and enslave the remaining population?"
His eyes grew wide. "Is that what's happening? Can they even do that?"
Aidan was silent for a few seconds; her anger had pushed her to spill more than she should have. "Yes, that's what's happening. I don't know if they can do it or not."
"We have to warn people," Reagan said. "We have to get them to safety."
Aidan shook her head. "They're demons, Reagan. You can't hide from them. When I got Mom out of the car, I shot Ornias in between the eyes. In the time it took for me to tell her to run back to where you were and turn around to aim my gun at the engine, he had healed himself and appeared where you were. Demon powers are far beyond anything that you have ever fought - anything that even I have come up against."
"But people could die!"
"Reagan," she said, taking a measured breath. "I know that you are a good man, and I know that after what happened in the valley -"
"Yeah, could you stop bringing that up?"
"- that you don't want more people to die and feel like it's your fault. But you're in this and, unfortunately, people will die. It's not your fault."
"No, it will be yours for keeping this to yourself," Reagan snapped back. "I'm done with all this. Maybe it's true, but I'm not going to be part of more deaths."
Aidan shook her head. "Look, we can't exactly going around announcing this. We will do everything we can to prevent as many fatalities as we can, but that, as you should know, is part of war. If we were to try and warn people, they would tell us we were nuts and go on with their day. It wouldn't make any difference."
"Then you're the most evil person I've met, to let so many innocent people die without giving them the chance to save themselves."
Rage welled up in her once again. Reagan didn't know her background, but he had struck a very sensitive nerve in Aidan's body. With the handle end of her gun, she hit him across the face.
"Aidan!" Tanya exclaimed from the backseat. "He clearly doesn't know."
"Oh, surprise! More I don't know!" Reagan exclaimed, holding his cheek in his hand.
Aidan said nothing as she finally pulled them up to the church again. She turned off the ignition and stared straight ahead. Her chest heaved with angry breaths, and no one else moved.
"Mom, go inside. You'll be safe between here and the door. Father Jerome should be inside, waiting," she finally said quietly.
Tanya gave Reagan a sympathetic glance and exited the vehicle. Aidan watched to make sure that she made it safely inside and then turned her gaze back to the front of the car.
"I apologize for that. I should have explained that my anger sometimes is a lot more than I can control. Bad genetics, I suppose."
Reagan didn't know what to say, so he remained silent.
"If you want to go, then go. I wouldn't blame you."
He sighed. "I may have said some things out of anger, too. I don't want out."
Aidan nodded. "Then what do you want to know?"
"I'm guessing that you'll tell all three of us about the conspiracy once we're inside, so maybe you could finish telling me about you," he prompted. He saw panic cross her features briefly and wondered how long it had been since she let someone else in on her secrets.
"Fair enough." Aidan swallowed hard. "My father was a fallen angel - and an extremely angry one at that. Mom was in her mid-twenties and had never been in a serious relationship. The Fallen are very possessive; once they see something they like, it's very difficult for them to see the object or person as anything more than their own territory. He gained her trust and protected her over the course of a year, and then she finally gave in to him. The next day he disappeared."
"You said you weren't an angel."
"I'm not," she confirmed. "From what I learned from Nick before he suddenly was involved in this conspiracy, it is the territorial factor that allows them to have the ability to procreate, as long as it is with a human. The child in those unions rarely inherits any genetic traits from its father. Nick was hundreds of years old, and in his lifetime he had never known of any of those children to inherit the traits that I did."
"The psychic ability and stuff?"
Aidan shook her head. "No, that I seemed to have come by without explanation. Speed, strength, those kinds of things - that's what I inherited from him. And his anger. Mom says she never was the subject of his anger, but she saw it many times. My anger is more than just an emotion; it's like another being inside me. It completely takes over and more often than not, I lose control of it."
"Thank you," Reagan said, placing a hand on her arm. "Thanks for explaining everything. I'll try not to provoke you anymore."
Aidan finally looked at him, a little bit shocked at his words until he saw the smirk on his face again. The look in his eyes matched the one she had seen back on the street before Ornias's chaos ensued. Her thoughts and muscles calmed once again, until another new vision came to her and she broke his gaze.
"We should get inside," she said, not waiting for him as she hurried into the church.
Reagan was again confused at the look in her eyes, although this time he was certain it was fear.