Broken Faith: Spiritual Discord, 1

by Brandy Nacole

  I grab the angel’s arm as my fangs extend. I cautiously prick his finger to elicit the drop of blood. I squeeze his finger, making sure only one drop of blood wells out of the cut. I’m astonished at what I see. His blood is a pure, heavenly gold. It gleams in the dark of night against his skin.

  I know better than to stick his whole finger in my mouth. It would be too great of a risk if more blood trickled out. I just lick the tiny drop off his finger. Once his blood touches my tongue, my body explodes with delight. For the first time in a long time, I feel fully alive. I know this is a false feeling because my heart still doesn’t beat but it doesn’t diminish the feeling of energy coursing through my veins.

  My vision is brighter and sharper than it has been in decades. My hearing is so exceptional; I can hear the cars down below traveling along the highway. That is one of the gifts I lost decades ago when I started hiding. I test my reflexes to see if they are as agile as they use to be. I jump high into the treetops, then leap down once again, performing a flip through the air. As I descend, I catch a mosquito passing by, then land on my feet.

  “Wow! I feel great.” I look down at the angel. I can sense his injuries more clearly and know that we have little time. Bending over, I grab him under the shoulders to help him stand. Once he’s standing on his one good leg, I drape his arm around me to support his bad leg.

  “Thank you−” The angel looks at me quizzically.

  “Sabrina.”

  “Thank you Sabrina.”

  We start walking down the mountainside toward the small town below. My body is humming for me to run, jump, flip, heck even fly. But I don’t. Instead, we take it slow and easy. The angel’s leg gives him fits as he tries to maneuver its painful dead weight. I just hope we can get out of here before the hounds come.

  Chapter Two

  Sabrina

  The angel starts whimpering as I lean him up against the town’s welcome sign. It’s a big wooden sign, edged with stones and concrete. The lettering is worn from the weather but you can still make out the town’s name.

  “What does it say?” I ask the angel.

  He glances up at the sign and narrows his eyes. “Welcome to Sterling Hollow.”

  I smile at him, “Well your brain’s still functioning. That’s a good thing.” I wasn’t sure if he was correct, considering I can’t read. Being properly schooled was a privilege in my time, a privilege I wasn’t allotted. I do know my alphabet at least, the first letter of the town’s name started with an S, so I could only guess he was right.

  The angel was mostly unconscious during our descent down the mountainside, leaving me to half carry/half drag him through the fallen leaves and brush of the forest. Although I am still high from his blood, I do feel a little winded and shaky by the time we get close to the bottom. My body is not used to working in this way. My muscles shake from the sudden use. In the last hundred years, the most real work my muscles have had to endure has been chasing a rabbit or an occasional deer.

  “We need to keep going.” The angel’s voice is a low raspy whisper. His breathing sounds more and more haggard the longer we keep moving.

  I look down the road at the small town, wondering where I can find shelter within its limited space. The best option for me is to leave the angel here to scout for something, but I worry about him being discovered.

  “Just leave me under those cedar bushes. No one should see me under there.” Apparently the angel is thinking the same thing I am. And more worried about slowing me down, versus his thinking about his own safety.

  “What’s your name?”

  The angel looks up at me with surprise. His eyes start to gleam as they fill with tears. “Kayson. My name is Kayson.” The angel gives me a half-sad smile. “You know, no one has asked me that in more than a decade.”

  I understand the loss he feels from not being recognized as a person. I haven’t spoken with anyone since I started running. The only creatures that ever heard my voice were the poor animals I gave my apologies to before consuming their lives.

  “Well Kayson it’s nice to meet you, although nicer circumstances would have been preferable.” I look over at the cedar bushes Kayson had suggested. No one would be able to see him through the dense branches, but I’m not worried about someone seeing him, I’m worried about someone sniffing him out, like I did. “I’m not sure I can leave you here. I would rather you come with me.”

  “You know that would make things harder.” Kayson grabs at his side. The blood has slowed down but I’m sure the pain hasn’t eased. “If I go with you, we may not find shelter fast enough.”

  I nod my head. The faster I find shelter, the faster we can get out of the open and allow Kayson to rest. I walk over, lifting him like a groom lifts his bride the night of their wedding. I lose my footing for a moment while walking across the ditch. Kayson tenses. He probably thinks he’s going to collide with the ground, jolting his injured body. But my muscles react quickly, and I recover. Neither one of us will be colliding with anything.

  I set Kayson down on the ground, as close to the cedar bushes as I can. Before he pulls himself under the cover of their branches, he looks back up at me with a smile. “That was probably the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  I scrunch up my eyebrows, “What? Almost falling in a ditch?”

  “No, being carried by a girl.” Kayson starts scooting into the bushes as I shake my head.

  Guys and their egos. It doesn’t matter if they’re angels, fallen angels, demons, or humans, their egos are too fragile, especially when it comes to a girl helping them.

  I don’t give him any speeches about being safe or staying quiet. I’m pretty sure he already knows that. I turn back to the town. With the angel’s energy infusion, I run at full vampire speed to close the distance between the welcoming sign and the first street lamp in the town, covering two miles in a minute.

  I stick to the shadows as I look around for somewhere suitable for Kayson to stay. I want to stick close to the outer edges of town, just in case he needs to make a quick escape. But looking around, I see nothing but houses whose windows are lit brightly with the glow of lamps.

  I tread lightly down the sidewalk looking for any old structure that may be abandoned. But the town is kept fairly clean. The residents seem very proud of their quaint little community. Even though it’s fall, hardly any leaves litter the lawns. I make my way through the neighborhood and come into the town square where the courthouse, sheriff’s station, fire department, and all the little local businesses are.

  As I’m walking past the police station, an officer steps out in front of me. I try sinking back into the shadows before he sees me but I’m too late. My clothes are covered in the angel’s golden blood that’s mixed with animal blood from my earlier kills. My shirt is torn where branches caught the fabric as I ran from the hell hound’s body. I know I look worn down and exhausted.

  “Can I help you miss?” The police officer narrows his eyes, trying to make me out better in the dark.

  I panic for a moment not knowing what to say. My vampire instinct is to take out the threat but my fear of the hounds keeps me in check. If a sudden killing happened close to where a hell hound had been slain, they would surely start searching the streets looking for their next victim.

  The only thing my mind comes up with is being lost in the woods and then attacked by an animal. But instead of lying to him, which would result in more questions, and possibly a search party for the ravenous animal, I turn and run. At first I run at the pace of a normal human. I can hear the police officer shouting for me to stop as he talks into a device on his shoulder. The device makes a loud racket before a voice responds through a screeching noise.

  Once I turn the corner, I pick up my pace and tear out of the town square, losing the officer in pursuit. I’m soon back to the suburb that had welcomed me into town. I jump over several fences, wanting to get off the main road. As I land in one yard, I scrunch down behind the white picket fence to
conceal myself. I close my eyes and listen as I hear sirens blare from the center of town.

  I take a moment to think about what to do, and notice that the yard I’m sitting in is oddly darker than the others. The house has no lights coming from it; the driveway is also empty. I stand and walk over to the windows to peer inside. Everything in the house is dark; the curtains pulled so tight that I can’t see in.

  I search the outside of the house for any sign that someone might be home, but see nothing. Out in the backyard is a little shed. There are no windows and the door is solid wood. There’s a padlock on a sliding bolt to keep the door tightly secure from unwanted trespassers−like me.

  I break the lock and slide the bolt to get in. When I reach down to turn the nob on the door handle it too is locked. I curse silently not wanting to break that lock. If we stay here, we are going to need the door handle to keep the door shut.

  I never learned how to pick a lock like most vampires. I never cared for the life of sneaking into people’s homes and seducing them in their sleep. Instead, I stuck to the shadows and only killed those who were the lowest of the lows. I knew Lucifer would be happy with my kills, considering I was delivering the souls of the biggest sinners of them all. But that didn’t stop him from turning on us.

  I examine the lock again and decide to try to twist the handle just enough to break the lock. As I’m turning the knob, I feel the snap. Not exactly how I had planned. The knob falls off in my hand and the door creaks open.

  Before I try to figure out how to fix this, I first look in the shed to see if I can bring Kayson here. It’s dark, but with my eyesight I can see fairly well.

  I had been expecting this to be a utility shed of some sort, filled with yard tools and junk that humans so often keep. But that’s not how this small space is filled. Instead, there is a cot pushed into the corner that’s made up with pillows and blankets. A cold box sits beside the bed, doubling as a night table. In the left corner by the door, a few yard tools sit inside a metal bin with a water hose hanging on the wall beside it. In the right corner sits an overstuffed leather chair. Its leather binding is torn in places from many years of wear.

  I walk over to the cold box, clicking on a lamp that sits on top. Once filled with light, the whole room comes to life. The walls are painted a bright yellow color, with blue and green swirls and loops as accents. Art portraits hang all over the wall, some colorful, some dark and morbid. The quilt lying on the bed appears to be old and hand-sewn.

  I walk over and pick up the quilt, enjoying the familiar, comforting feeling. My own mother had made me a quilt similar to this when I was a young girl. I remember watching her sew for months. She could only work on it when time would allow, which was usually at night, once all the chores had been done. I would sit at her feet, playing with my dolls, while she sewed, and rocked back and forth, singing heavenly songs. She poured every ounce of her love into making that quilt for me, yet I had lost it. Or should I say, it was taken from me.

  I turn off the memories. They do me no good now. Deciding this is the best spot I can find for now, I leave to get Kayson. Before leaving, I make a few adjustments to the door. Since there is no way I can fix the broken doorknob, I prop a rock on the outside of the door to keep it shut until we get back.

  Satisfied I have found the best place to hide for the night, I leave. I arrive at the bushes where Kayson is hiding in under a minute. It’s so strange to have my speed back once again. Being able to think of where you want to be and then traveling there within a few moments instead of a few hours was amazing.

  “Sabrina?” Kayson’s voice calls out as he hears me walking through the leaves.

  “I found somewhere to stay for the night.” I squat down to bring the branches back so I can get a look at him. Though I’ve only been gone for less than an hour, Kayson looks worse than when I had left him. His face is pale, and though the autumn air is chilly, he’s dripping with perspiration.

  I scoot into the brush; the prickly spikes of the cedar branches scratch and irritate my skin. I ignore them and pick Kayson up the way I had before, and sprint with him in my arms into town. When we reach the shed, I kick the rock away, and the door swings open as I rush him inside.

  I use some tools lying around the shed to attach a sliding bolt to the inside of the door. Once the bolt slams home, I make my way back to the cold box, finally comfortable about turning on the light. Kayson is lying on the bed with his hand on his chest. He’s breathing with a wheeze as he opens his eyes to look at the room around him.

  “This is…nice.” He says as he looks at the artwork on the wall.

  “Is this somewhere you wouldn’t mind staying until you are healed?” I don’t want to rush his decision or put him in any more pain, but I need to know. If he doesn’t want to stay here during the duration of his healing, I will need to continue my search through the night for another place. I need to get this done, because once the sun sets tomorrow night, I plan on leaving this town and heading north.

  “Are we safe from human exposure? I don’t want the owners to find a busted-up angel and a buzzed vampire lurking in their shed and freak out.” Kayson is still looking at the artwork on the wall. He seems intrigued by the one hanging on the opposite wall, next to the leather chair.

  The canvas is done in a deep, dark red. A figure of a person is painted in black so no features can be seen, only an outline. A single blue tear streams down the unseen person’s face. Yellow splashes of paint are scattered around the edges.

  “I’m not sure. There’s no one home right now but I’m not sure when they’ll be coming back.” I peer out a little whole in the wall to see if anyone has come home yet. The house is still blanketed in darkness and the driveway is still empty.

  “Do you feel safe here?” Kayson looks at me then shifts his body and winces in pain. He grabs at the quilt, balling his fist up around the fabric.

  I walk over to his side, sitting down beside him. I look over his gashes in his side, but know the ones on his back are worse. I go to raise his shirt gently when he gasps in pain.

  “My leg−” Kayson tries grinding out some words but is unable to do so while he deals with the pain.

  I turn to his leg. His pants are torn from where the hound grabbed it. I place my hand on his knee, feeling the heat roll off where it’s swollen at the break.

  “I can fix this, the question is do you want me to?” I know the pain is excruciating, but snapping his leg back in place will hurt even more.

  Kayson doesn’t say anything; he just nods his head and grips the bed cover even harder. I look around for something to put in his mouth so he can bit down on it but I don’t see anything.

  “Just do it.” Kayson’s voice tells me he’s desperate to get it over with.

  I stand up over the foot of the bed, placing one hand on his knee and the other one on his fibula. The bone is broken in two places. One spot is at his knee, the other one is in the middle of his fibula. Without counting or giving any warning, I push and twist with a quick jerk and hear the snap of his bones coming together, realigning.

  Kayson doesn’t scream out in pain. He just closes his eyes as his chest heaves up when the bones snap back in place. His pulse jumps as his leg pulses with the pain. The heat radiating from his leg is even more intense as it tries to deal with the fresh aggravation to the injury.

  The lesions on his sides have stopped bleeding but now fresh golden blood runs down his shirt, heading for the quilt. I grab a towel that was folded on the chair and put it underneath him. I know it’s foolish, but I have to save the quilt from being ruined by his blood.

  “I have to go get some bandages and first aid materials or these wounds are never going to heal.” I feel uncomfortable about leaving Kayson here alone again but I really don’t have a choice. I feel better about leaving him here rather than out in the woods at least.

  “How are you going to get some bandages? Nothing will be open at this hour and we don’t have any money.”

>   “There’s a pharmacy in the town square. I’ll sneak in and take only what we need. I’ve done it before.”

  Although it’s not something I’m proud of but when you’re running for your life, chances to make money are limited. There have been times over the last century that I’ve had to steal items to survive. And maybe not all of them were for survival. A pack of t-shirts, or a fresher pair of jeans I took weren’t really necessary, but it was nice having new clothing to wear.

  “Absolutely not, you are not going to steal anything.”

  I look at Kayson in disbelief. Out of everything he should be worrying about, stealing a few bandages and some ointment are on his mind? “Would you rather lay here and bleed to death over a couple of dollars?” I cross my arms over my chest.

  “I’m not going to bleed to death. These wounds may be bleeding, but they’re not bleeding that badly.” Kayson takes his hand and runs it down his side. When it comes away wet, he doesn’t look so confident any more.

  “The bleeding may stop as the wound heals over but it might be infected by then.” That was always a big worry in the late 1800’s. People went out of their way to avoid any type of injury, whether it was a little scrape or a more serious laceration. Infections were too commonly caught once your skin was laid open. When doctors invented healing ointments to protect the wound, people were amazed for years.

  Kayson lays there looking up at me. This argument turns into a staring contest, neither one of us willing to back down. Finally Kayson rolls his head to look at the painting on the wall once more. “Fine. But only take what we need, nothing more.”

  I nod, and think wryly how glad I am that we came to an agreement on his health. Or not. I think I would have went and got the bandages with or without his permission. What’s he going to do, limp after me?

  As I’m walking out the door, I have a twinge of guilt, and reassure him I won’t take anything except what we need. I know it bothers him to do such a sinful deed, but we are doing it for the better not for the worse. But I can’t help joking anyway. After I reassure him, I shrug my shoulders. “Besides what all can I get from a pharmacy?” With smiles on both our lips, I walk out, prop the rock back against the door, and listen to the sirens that still fill the night air.