by Amy Vansant
“Gordon reminds me of Rathe,” said Tyannah. “He hates confrontation. He’s a wimp. Puffer just looks at him and he gives him the ball after he did all the work fetching it.”
Anne chuckled, but her heart didn’t feel light. She looked up at Con, who stroked her hair.
“Why,” she mumbled.
“Why what, luv?”
“Why would he sacrifice himself for me? How are the Angeli going to win this battle without his leadership?”
He shrugged. “I hear this Boudica woman is a hellion.”
“I heard that too. But still… Nothing’s happening. As far as we know they’re amassing an army.”
“We’ve only got two Angeli unaccounted for and so far there’s been no reports of a Cherub taking Eris or Michael’s place. The biggest army they could have is three. That’s not much of an army.”
“But how many Sentinels could three Cherubim make?”
“Boudica rounded up all the humans on the Angeli’s potential Sentinel list, so they’re off the market. That means they’ve only got the second string available.”
“I was first string,” said Tyannah without taking her eyes off the ball game.
“Indeed you were,” said Con. “Indeed you are.”
She smiled.
“We need an army,” said Anne with a deep sigh. “We need a general for that army. Boudica will be too busy planning to fight. Who’s going to take Michael’s place?”
The doorbell rang and Jeffrey walked briskly from his room.
“Don’t get up. I got it,” he said.
“What’s gotten into him?” asked Con.
“I think he feels sorry for me. That’s the only upside to losing Michael. Jeffrey is actually doing his job.”
Jeffrey opened the door without peeking through the peephole.
“Damn it,” said Anne, struggling to sit. “I told you to always—”
“Oh my.”
Anne saw her assistant’s jaw fall slack and she scrambled to her feet. Con stood as well.
“Who is it?”
Jeffrey glanced at her, a strange smirk on his face.
“I’m not sure, but is it Christmas?”
He took a step back and a man strode through the doorway. He was enormous. Tall and broad-chested as a mythical lumberjack, his blond hair hung wild and wavy to below his shoulders. He was naked, and an edge of blue fire traced the outline of his body, rising like steam. He looked as if he had just fallen to earth from Asgard.
“Holy—” mumbled Tyannah, the rubber ball falling from her fingertips. She covered her eyes and looked away.
Anne raised her hand to cover her mouth.
“Our general has arrived,” said Con. “Though I wish he’d brought some feckin’ clothes.”
From behind her palm, Anne could only utter one word.
“Leo.”
The Arch Angelus turned to her.
“Hey, Anne,” he said, flashing a brilliant, pearly-toothed grin. “Michael says hi.”
THE END
Thank you for taking time to read CHERUBIM! If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a review on Amazon or GoodReads or wherever you like to roam. Word of mouth helps poor starving authors so much!
Varymor
Angeli Book III
Amy Vansant
©2016 by Amy Vansant. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by any means, without the permission of the author. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN-10: 1537527428
ISBN-13: 978-1537527420
Library of Congress: 2016915022
Vansant Creations, LLC / Amy Vansant
Annapolis, MD
http://www.AmyVansant.com
http://www.TheAngeli.com
Cover art by Steven Novak: http://www.novakillustration.com/
Copy editing by Carolyn Steele: http://carolynsteele.ca/
Proofreading by Effrosyni Moschoudi: http://effrosyniwrites.com/
Chapter One
Kim pulled at her recently blonde hair and gnawed at her lip.
She couldn’t sleep.
Not because she’d dyed her hair blue earlier that evening. The new hair was amazing—even if her forehead was a little less than amazing. A blue blotch marred the skin near her hairline. She hadn’t applied enough Vaseline to keep the dye from creeping, but that wasn’t what kept her awake. She didn’t care about a blotchy blue forehead.
She just felt—agitated. Nervous. Like something wasn’t quite right.
Kim scanned her pitch-black room.
I should get a nightlight.
There was no moon. Often, she’d awake in the middle of the night to find moonlight streaming through her window. It gave her a sense of peace, as if someone was watching out for her.
Not tonight, though. Dark, dark dark.
She glanced where she knew her bureau stood and saw the hint of its outline. Her eyes drifted toward her closet as her lids closed.
Wait.
Skin tingled as the hair on her arms rose.
Something wasn’t right.
She swallowed, knowing she had to investigate but was reluctant to reopen her eyes. She didn’t know what it was—she hadn’t been looking at, or for, anything in particular as she closed her eyes—but the final picture in her mind was off. She could feel it.
I imagined it. Look again and everything will be normal.
She opened her eyes, directing her gaze toward the bureau where she knew everything was as it should be.
The bureau stood like a sentinel. She followed the curve of the brass handle on her sweater drawer.
She closed her eyes again.
Bracing herself, she pointed her gaze toward the closet, flashing her eyes open before squeezing them shut, allowing herself only a snapshot of that part of her room.
Nothing.
See? This is silly.
Her lids opened and she made a visual pass from bureau to closet.
There.
The skin on her scalp crawled. It wasn’t the closet. Something stood between the bureau and the closet. A dark spot. The area just inside the closed door of her room was blacker than it should be.
Kim felt immobilized. Even the subtle movement of her chest rising and falling as she breathed frightened her. She wanted to be perfectly still.
Invisible.
It was too late to close her eyes and pretend she hadn’t seen the blackness. She considered turning on the lamp, but at that moment, reaching over the edge of her bed was as impossible as flying.
Frozen, she searched for the edges of the blackness. There had to be an explanation. Maybe a coat hanging on the back of the door? She found the edge where the blackness turned to the deepest, darkest gray and traced it with her gaze.
The blackness had a shape.
It was shaped like a person.
The panic became too much and Kim opened her mouth to scream. No sound but a wet clicking noise escaped as her throat struggled to unlock.
She managed a squeak.
The blackness moved toward her.
The shadow collapsed on her like an inky octopus, arms wrapping around her head, fingers in her mouth, stifling the scream that never made it past that ragged peep.
There was a flash of light and a word burned into her mind’s eye.
Nyx.
She felt her lungs screaming for air.
And then, nothing.
Chapter Two
The screaming stopped.
Rathe sat up and scanned the empty cabin. He felt disoriented. He felt—sweaty.
Did I fall asleep?
He suspected the screaming had been his own. It happened sometimes. He’d been dreaming about that woman. The Sentinel Anne Bonny. All red hair and glowing knives flashing. She was both magnificent and utterly terrifying.
The Angeli sure knew how to invent a Sentinel.
She may have been created to battle the Angeli’s own corrupted souls, but she’d adapted easily to hunting him. She seemed to relish beating Cherubim. At least it seemed that way—the gleeful way she’d thrust her glowing daggers into his skull.
Granted, he’d orchestrated the death of her Angelus boyfriend, Michael. He could see how that might have irritated her. But in all fairness, she’d poked him in the head with her fire knives before Michael’s death. She hadn’t been fond of him from the moment they met.
That hurt.
Literally.
He chuckled to himself. He’d just discovered the word literally and liked the way it punctuated a pun.
Maybe if he’d made a joke, Anne would have liked him better. He’d be ready next time.
Sometimes when his mind drifted he saw Anne staring at him, her sizzle sticks poised to stab. Again and again. He worried that he’d die at her hand. At the time of their first meeting in New York’s Gramercy Park, he didn’t imagine he’d live long enough to dread the memory of their encounter.
Maybe I should be grateful for dread.
Still—she’d be the one to kill him. He knew it. Especially after his own Sentinel and protégé Mallory had his fun with her. When he thought about how that monster had tortured her it made him sick. Queasy.
He felt like that a lot now.
With his fingertip he stroked the thin cot on which he’d slept.
Why did I fall asleep? I don’t need to sleep.
It had been two weeks. He’d done his job. The Arch Angelus Michael was gone. Banished back to Chaos. Dead for all intents and purposes. He wasn’t sure exactly what happened when Mallory syphoned away the angel’s energy; he only knew Michael and the other Angeli had to be drained if more Cherubim were to join him on Earth.
That was his mission. Replace the Angeli with Cherubim. The Angeli had coddled humans for too long. The Cherubim would make humans pay for their evils.
Why?
He didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure what human evil was, he just knew he could smell it. He gagged thinking about the stench. Sometimes, when he stood too close to an evil human, he’d receive a vision of what made them smell so horrible. Murder, usually. General cruelty to others. Bad attitudes of one sort or another. When he smelled that smell he was supposed to turn the human to ash but he didn’t—most of the time.
The other day, he’d smelled a miserable old man in the bread section all the way from where he stood near the lunchmeat.
He didn’t do a thing about it. He pushed his cart to the self-checkout and left.
Stupid mission.
The whole mission thing wasn’t really working out for him. He’d learned to master the self-checkout at the food store though. He was pretty proud of himself about that. Sometimes he even showed other people how to use it. Even if they glowed a little green and stank.
Rathe looked around the cabin where he’d awoken. It was an insect-infested, dirty hunting cabin in the middle of nowhere.
It would be nice to have Tyannah here to talk to.
He missed Tyannah, his rogue sentinel. He’d been such a terrible boss that she’d gone to work for the Angeli. If she’d stayed with him, she could have shown him how to work the self-checkout a lot sooner.
Instead, he was with his new child Cherub. He’d found her alone on a street, Alida branded on her arm, the way he had Rathe on his, so that’s what he called her.
Why had he been sent a child as a reinforcement? Why had he, himself, arrived as a teenager? It didn’t feel right that baby Cherubim should be popping up, preparing for battle against full grown Angeli and their blood-hungry, redheaded helpers.
Rathe chewed on his nails as a rising tide of panic filled his breast.
No. Stop it, stop it. No time for regrets. Two down. Right? Wasn’t that good? He’d sent the Angeli Eris and Michael to wherever dead angels flew.
Two points!
But his soldier, Mallory, was gone. Tyannah— Another pang of regret gripped his heart. I was good to her, wasn’t I? Why did she leave? Why did she betray me? Of the two Sentinels he’d made, Tyannah was the prize, though Mallory had done all the dirty work. He supposed that’s what Sentinels were for: dirty work. On that account, Tyannah had been pretty useless. Still. She was a good girl. He’d liked her. She made him feel—
He dropped his head into his hands.
She’d made him feel happy.
He suspected his growing concern for humans was her fault.
He scanned the cabin again. Speaking of girls—
Where’s Alida?
Rathe had found the abandoned hunting cabin for Alida. He wanted to provide a safe place for her. And himself, he was ashamed to admit. A safe place to gather themselves. His nerves were shot and he needed time to bring the new Cherub up to speed. No one had been there for him when he arrived, and he didn’t want things to be as hard on her.
But Alida was a puzzle. Cold. Distant. She never seemed to listen to him. It was almost as if she was living a whole other life in her head. One he didn’t want to see.
Alida mentioned the Angelus Eris’ name when he found her. She must have taken the space left by Eris, which meant his first order of business would be to find the third Cherub; the one that took the Arch Angel Michael’s place. Then the three of them could work as a team and he wouldn’t be so alone.
Rathe raised a triumphant fist and tried to generate excitement at the prospect of creating more Sentinels, killing more Angeli and releasing more Cherubim to Earth so they could decimate the population.
His determined grimace faded as his fist fell to his lap.
It all just sounded exhausting.
He’d read somewhere that people often prayed to powers bigger than themselves for help. He decided to give it a try.
“Oh, power greater than me, please let the next Cherub be an adult. A big, strapping monster of an adult. Like Mallory, only nicer to me. Or make the next one a ferocious, stabby, Cherub version of Anne Bonny—only—again—nicer to me. If I remain the biggest, baddest Cherub on the planet, my people are in real trouble. You understand that? Right?”
He stared at the ceiling. All he saw were spider webs. A disturbing number of spider webs.
How could there be that many spider webs in one cabin?
Rathe shivered and looked away. He needed support. He didn’t feel as committed as he once had. He didn’t want to wear the crown. He was tired.
I’m terrible at this. Maybe I should—
A scream echoed from the forest that surrounded the cabin and his stomach soured.
It hadn’t been his own scream that awoke him.
His body rigid, Rathe stopped breathing. He moved only his eyes to peer at the front door. It was closed—but was it locked?
Did it matter? In this world, the things that scared him the most always came through closed doors.
Another scream pealed, no closer than the last, and he jumped to his feet as if propelled by the cot itself.
Alida. I have to protect her.
He took three quick breaths before striding to the door.
One…two…three…
He stepped outside.
“Alida?”
He’d said her name much too quietly. He’d barely heard it himself. His hands felt numb. His throat, dry. He tried to swallow and found he couldn’t. Chewing his tongue to work up some spit, he cleared his throat and tried again.
“Alida?”
Maybe it’s an animal.
There was another noise, this one more of a yelp, followed by what sounded like frantic begging. In English.
Not an animal.
He turned his head to the left and saw firelight dancing on the tree trunks.
Over there.
He shifted to his energy form and moved like a ball of lightning to the outskirts of the area where he thought the noisy thing might be. He heard sobbing. Blubbering.
A small fire flickered in the center of the clearing. Moving closer, he spotted a figure dan
cing. A human male, middle-aged, a little paunchy. He was the one making all the noise. Begging for someone to stop.
Who? Stop what? Why is he dancing in the forest?
“Come see!”
It was Alida’s voice, but he'd skittered behind a tree before recognizing it. Clinging to the trunk like a panda, he told himself to sack up. He’d heard a human man outside a convenience store tell another man to sack up. The second man—the one in need of upping his sack—mentioned he’d be sick if he had another beer and the first man told him to sack up. From that context, Rathe imagined sack up meant to put all your concerns in a sack and throw them away.
That’s what he needed to do.
He needed to be strong for Alida. She had to be terrified, being so small and alone in a new world. And now, here she was with some lumpy freak dancing around in the dark.
“Where are you?” he hissed.
“Come see!” She sounded giddy.
She’s hysterical. The poor thing’s losing her mind with fear.
“Don’t worry, I’m coming. Uncle Rathe is here.”
He emerged from behind the tree and shuffled two steps into the clearing.
His anxiety doubled.
He wanted to keep eyes on the dancer, but a dark blob hovered in the opposite corner of his vision. Advancing without identifying the blob would be madness.
He glanced to the right.
Two trees away, a man lay at the base of a pine tree, unmoving. There were three things that disturbed Rathe about this discovery.
First, the body’s outstretched right arm ended much too abruptly. A pool of liquid, glistening in the firelight, filled the space where the man’s right forearm should have been.
Hello, Lefty, I see it’s been a hard day.
The second issue evolved directly from the first. Lefty was dead, possibly killed by the dancing man who now taunted Alida.
The third and most unsettling fact about the body by the tree was this: Lefty looked a lot like him.
Rathe took a deep breath without smelling the stench of human evil. Lefty hadn’t been a bad man.
