PROLOGUE

"Who are you?" She asked trembling.

He squirmed, her question gnawing at him in an uncontrollable and unfamiliar way. In response he pressed his muscular frame harder against her shoulder and slid a piece of wispy blonde hair away from her face, just barely grazing the side of her cheek with his palm. Her breathing increased, and she pressed back against him, asserting her self assurance.

He slid is hand over hers, lacing their fingers together tightly, and simultaneously trying to fashion a calm silence in the small space between their bodies.

He wondered, if this was what it was like to be, "in love." But then again, he reminded himself, he wasn't capable of loving a human. It was at best, a vulgar impossibility.

"It doesn't matter." he whispered into her ear, "I'm here right now."

"It does matter." She heard her voice jump on top of his, and felt that this was so unlike her.

She flinched sharply, mostly because she had not predicted that he would give a truthful response. She had foolishly expected him to assure her that he was perfectly normal, and all the things she had seen and heard were only within her mentally unstable head.

She could not explain how or why, but her intuition took hold of her, and she could suddenly see what she had been so blind to moments before. It was as if all the pieces of the puzzle were encoded within his voice, and somehow came together to paint a traumatizing picture of the abnormal.

The way he touched her, slid his fingers over her bare skin, was as if he had never touched another human being before. They were gentle and explorative like a young child's. Layered deep beneath the movements, somewhere unconscious and undetectable to him, was an ancient craving. She felt it growing and knew it was a too great a thirst for her to quench.

So instead of putting the effort forward, she decided to pull away. She slid away from his grasp and uncomfortably onto the floor, resting her back against the couch. Draped in the shadows, she hoped the darkness would mask her terror. A million thoughts and emotions ran through her head, none of which she was able to conceptualize.

The fear that she had promised herself she would never show to anyone, was slowly eating away at her nervous system. Her heart was beating so fast, her eyes so wide, blood so thick, she almost felt that she could die from his touch.

"Are you… God?" The words slid from her lips raggedly and, for a moment she could barely breathe, bracing herself for a truth she would inevitably not be able to conceive of.

There was a long pause, a silence that enveloped and attacked everything in it's path, causing a temporary riff in time. They were at a standstill.

"No." he whispered, "I'm not that special."

She fought back the shiver that was running up her spine, "are you… an angel?"

"No. Definitely not." He laughed self-consciously, trying to break the tension and put the girl at ease. He had known his whole life that this moment would come, and he wanted to make it as easy for her as possible.

"Are you, are you… one of them?"

He did not answer at first, instead he swallowed and tried to rationalize the existence he was beginning to doubt. The way she had said, "one of them" was as if he was sickening to her. The truth would change everything .But he knew he would never be able to lie to her again, not now, not ever. So instead he took the leap and answered simply, "Yes."