Prologue

Layla Comet. She was an ordinary person for fourteen years of her life. She had never had a detention, and she always had good grades. She was a dark brown haired girl which barely passed her shoulders with small straight bangs across her forehead and hazel eyes. One eye was warmer than the other, and one had a much cooler tone. She had slight freckles, and thick eyebrows. She stayed in her normal friend group, and never really ventured out of her safe zone.

The brown haired girl’s safe zone was an ordinary town. Nothing strange had happened since the tornado that ripped through it in the 1960’s. This town had beautiful green trees, and the majority of them were pines. This town had a few buildings, including a few fire stations, schools, police stations, a courthouse and few more. This town was almost the definition of calm.

Of course, the students were much alike. They each knew of each other, at least, and from Layla’s knowledge no one was bullied. There would be a few fights, like basically every school ever, but none that was too scary. Layla hated these fights. She only saw one, but it was enough to scare the ever living soul out of her. The main reason for this was she had done something she never had before. She had teleported.

Every kid had their own characteristic. It was gifted when they were children, and each student knew of these characteristics. Some chose not to believe, some chose to try and awaken them, and few did. Layla would commonly see students practicing their fighting. Each student was trained, and this made everything so much easier to control in the city. The students were like attack dogs.

Layla’s powers were different, though. After she had teleported, she stared at her hands. She looked at her watch. Layla remembered exactly what that watch had said. The watch read, POWER ACTIVATED. PARENT AND TEACHERS ALERTED. Those few words and scared her more than any fight or monster she had seen. If her powers were activated, that meant the teachers would make her fight. She didn’t want to fight.

She looked back to her watch and thought for a moment. If I go back, I will rarely see my family again. If I don’t go back, I won’t ever see them again, but I will be safe. Layla blinks at her thoughts. She quickly asked her watch where she was. The watch alerted, and a town name in Kansas blinked across the screen. LEBANON, KANSAS. Layla nods to herself, and takes the watch off. She drops it on the ground and immediately steps on it.

Now that the watch is crushed, the teachers no longer can track Layla. Layla sighs, and looks at the path she was on. She starts walking down the path in some random direction, and about ten minutes later, she found something. It looked like a big huge bunker, and there was a black car next to it. The car looked a little old, probably from the late sixties. She looked around her surroundings and saw that the surrounding area was densely forested. She hadn’t noticed when she teleported, the only thing she remembered was breaking the watch and walking away.

She sighed, deciding this was the worst idea ever, yet she decided to do it anyway. As she knocked, she noticed this weird symbol on the door. It looked like a star almost, just really weird. She heard a creak and the door opened. She flinched, as a gun was in her face, but it didn’t really scare her. It intimidated her, yes, but if anything she felt more comfortable around the person who opened the door.

She noticed the man was very tall, and had short dirty blonde hair. He had green eyes, and was very muscular. This man looked to be about thirty-five give or take, but Layla noticed the age in his eyes. She decided he was about forty. This man furrowed his eyebrows at Layla, and Layla wanted to curl up in a ball in embarrassment. There she was, standing in front of a guy who was like 25 years older than her, holding a gun to her face, and she isn’t even fazed. “Hello, my name is Layla.” She decides to break the silence.

“Who is it Dean?” Another, deeper voice appears. This voice sounds odd, yet calming and it seems like it has many years behind it. A man appears, he has dark brown hair and blue eyes. His eyebrows are furrowed in a confused way. Layla waves a bit. This “Dean” character grabs a knife that looks to be silver. He puts it on her arm, cuts her, then looks at it as if it is some weird test. Layla doesn’t react. The other person stares basically into her soul. “Dean, she’s clean.” The other man says. Dean backs away from Layla a bit.

“Who are you?” Dean asks. Layla rubs her throat a bit, before clearing it. She doesn’t say anything. She just holds out her arm. Written across it in a tattoo-like manner, is her name. The name is red, as if freshly put there, and there are weird symbols around it. The other man, who Layla realizes is shorter than Dean, grabs her arm. He looks up at Dean who asks, “Is it Enochian?”

The other man nods, and Dean sighs. Layla doesn’t know what happened or how, but she just didn’t want to talk. She slightly turned her head. “Dean, this is--” She could barely hear anything of the whispered conversation. “Angel--” Layla furrowed her eyebrows. Much like she had been all day. “Dangerous--” That got her attention. She yanked her head to face the two males. They look at her and she furiously shakes her head. She points to her wrist, trying to get them to understand. The male seemed to read her thoughts. “You took the watch off?” She nods. The male turns to Dean. “The angels used this system where when they created powerful creatures, they would brand them with a name, then they would be given a certain tracking device. There was only one school left from what I thought. It was in Ohio, right?” Layla nods, and rubs her bruised side. She looks at where Dean had cut her, and the cut was gone. Her eyebrows furrowed.

“Did you notice any sounds when you left the school?” Layla shakes her head. “Really? Not even the sound of something like wings flapping?” Layla slowly nods a bit. She hugs herself slightly, looking at the dense forest. The other man looks behind her as she calms down a bit. Dean doesn’t seem to notice.

“Woah.” The man says. Layla doesn’t notice. She catches a glimpse of the beautiful light-tan wings with the occasional black feather extruding from her back. She noticed her back had gotten extremely heavier and she slightly turned her head and that's when she saw them. That was just a few seconds ago. She moves the wing slightly, seeming almost compelled to feel the glimmering feathers. She lightly brushes her hand through them. Dean seems to be talking to the other man but she doesn’t notice. She feels really calm.

Layla turns to the men. The blue-eyed one is still staring at her wings, and she feels them shrink up in embarrassment. Dean still doesn’t seem to notice. The two continued talking and Layla stared at the wings protruding from the shorter man’s back. They look broken, burned, as if they had been tortured. She looked into the man’s eyes. All she saw were thousands of thousands of years. She saw the horrors and delights of the world. She blinked and the memories were gone. Her eyebrows furrowed.

How did she do that? She didn’t do that ever before. She saw Dean turn and look at her. He must’ve noticed the look she gave Castiel. She looked into Dean's eyes and saw something. Something horrible. It seemed like it was Dean’s father, and he was yelling. It was about some guy they called, “yellow eyes”. She decided to break the contact, seeing as she didn’t want to intrude. She turned back to Castiel. “You--” She pauses, yet she points to his back. Castiel’s broken wings, almost as an instinct, close up in embarrassment.

Dean turns and looks at Castiel, and blinks. “What’s she pointing at?” He asks. Castiel’s eyes seem to scan hers, before turning to Dean. They start whispering amongst each other, but before Layla can try to listen to their conversation, there is this loud screaming it sounds like. It’s like talking, but in a different language. It was extremely loud. Way too loud. It was annoying. Layla covers her ears, and the last thing she hears is someone yelling out her name.

Layla wakes up in a strange room. She could sense hands waving around her body, and her wings felt uncomfortable. She feels herself wiggle a bit, trying to get comfortable. She hears a younger voice ask somebody, “Is she okay?” The voice sounded innocent. As if there were only a few years behind it. That could not be possible, seeing as the voice sounded as if it were a man. Her eyes blinked open, and she saw a red-headed woman next to her bed, her hands waving around her body, and an odd smelling concoction. It smelled like waking up to burnt cookies, and then having to eat them, or even it smelled like what Layla thought would be drowning in oil. She blinks at the woman, furrowing her eyebrows. “What’re you doing?” She asks in a groggy voice. She didn’t notice the other men looking at her and quietly talking to the boy who she assumed had talked. She saw the back of Dean, Castiel was staring confusedly at her, and she saw another, taller man with long, brown hair. She saw the younger boy, who was a bit taller than her, and he was staring at her comfortably.

She saw the woman jump at her voice, before the woman had looked at her. She looked quite old, not herself exactly, but something inside her. It was a dull blue-gray color, and Layla furrowed her eyebrows. The lady says, “Boys!” She saw the men at the door turn to the red-headed woman. “She’s awake.”

“Whoa.” Says the younger of the four, before he walks towards her. Layla blinks at the boy, before tilting her head. Layla could see him scan her facial features, her eyes more so than her other features. “You’re,” he pauses, “different.” The boy turns to the other men in the room. “She’s a-” the boy paused, looking at Castiel. Castiel nodded, before the boy turned to Layla with an odd expression in his eye. “Who are you?” He asks, almost sounding afraid.

Layla blinked, before looking at Dean and Castiel for a moment. Castiel nodded, but Dean did nothing. Dean looked at her, with an angry expression on his face. Layla cowered slightly. “My name is Layla.” She says, looking back at the boy. Layla sees him scan her, as if he were trying to tell if she were lying or not.

The boy then smiles, which caused Layla to think, this guy is odd, before he turned to the men and the redheaded woman in the room. “She’s not lying.” Layla calmly blinks, and the very tall man, who Layla can now see is wearing a very layered choice of clothing, like Dean. The tallest man was wearing a flannel over what she thought was a black tee, and jeans. There wasn’t much to it, besides the fact that she didn’t have a blanket on, and she was quite warm. How were they not having a heatstroke?

Castiel beckoned the young boy to him, and the young boy obeyed. They were like a father/son dynamic, Layla realized. The young boy stares at her in confusion from afar, as the red headed lady continues to wave her hands around her body. “Your hair is really curly. I like it.” Layla comments, and the redhead smiles. “Also, may I ask what you’re doing?” The redhead stops, and looks at the girl who continuously comments. She then realizes she should probably stop talking.

The redhead responds, with a slight smile. “Well, dearie, I am scanning your body for injuries. And just scanning your body to figure out what you are.” Layla notices the Scottish accent the lady has, who has finally stopped “scanning” the younger girl. The lady continued over to the men across the room. She started speaking indistinctly to them, and Layla looked around the room. She looked to be in a medical area, which made sense.

Layla was just looking around, when the loud noises started up again. She felt her eyes change to lilac, her hands went to cover her ears, and she curled up into a ball. She heard the man, Castiel, she believed, yell out something along the lines of: “It’s angel radio!” Whatever that meant. This time, Layla felt herself move, but she noticed it was her wings, in which she flew around the place they were in. It was the entire place, which reminded her a lot of a bunker she would see in her dreams. She made it to a room that looked like it was used recently(which was very bland, she noted), and got under the covers of the bed and hid. She knew this would not help whatsoever, but it was worth a shot. She heard yelling coming from down the hall. But then, she noticed the scent.

The scent that calmed her. It smelt innocent, pure and with a hint of fear, she inhaled slowly. She got so many more scents along with it, as if it were used by many people, but they were very faint, as if not having to have been there at all. Back to the scent she loved so much, as she inhaled and exhaled, she noticed something. Her wings had calmed, her eyes were no longer glowing their beautiful purple, but most of all, she was calm. She sat up, and looked around the room again. The freckled girl noticed a laptop across the room, and a phone on the bedside table. She also noticed the small amount of clothes being piled up in the corner of the room, which she hadn’t noticed before. The room was starting to finally look like an actual bedroom. At least in her eyes. Ever since she had gotten into that school, she never once had an ounce of anything personal allowed in her room, besides a laundry basket, a laptop, and occasionally a phone. But all phones were taken at bedtime.

Just as she was finally calming down, a man, who she kind of recognized as Dean, came into the room, with a gun pointed at her face. She blinked, as fear suddenly took over her senses once more. She let out a small shriek, and hid underneath the blankets once more. This time, however, she was sure to not breathe the amazing scent in as intensely as she did. Dean yells for her to get out from under the blanket, but she refuses. She hears someone enter the room, before she hears whispering and shoes scraping against the floor. She smells the same scent around her, but stronger. Much like how when Dean walked into the room, she could smell him, he had a very pungent smell, but this person's smell was much more comforting. The person, who Layla could recognize thanks to his voice asks, “Are you alright?” The shortest male, was the least frightening. Layla didn’t understand why, but he had a very different demeanor than the other three men. This man was calmer, and less in touch with his feelings. She could tell he was easily manipulated, and easily angered. This scared her slightly, but his scent calmed her once more. She slowly sits up, the blanket wrapped tightly around her. She looked to him for answers. “What am I?”