Misguided Angel: A Parnormal Romance Novella
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And no one came to see what I was doing. Not one soul came into the stairwell, not even the superintendent. I pushed the bed outside into the alley and threw all the stuff that had fallen off of it behind it, and the only person who spoke to me at all was a crazy homeless lady. “You throwing that away?” she asked. I nodded—I must have looked as whacked out of my mind as she did. “Can I have it?” I nodded again. I stood there in the cold with no coat or shoes on, watching her go through it all, watching her suck your cherry gelatin straight from the cup.
God, baby, how did we get here? What are we doing in a place so cold? Is it cold where you are now? Is it burning hot? I can’t stop thinking about that, wondering if you’re in Hell. I don’t want to believe Hell is real. After all those years with Mama, I want to think it’s all a fake, the ravings of a bunch of crazy people just like her. But she raised me to believe it’s true, and what if she was right? Or what if she wasn’t? What if you’re nowhere at all?
I have to know. I have to find out. I know you don’t want me to, that you want me to keep living, keep waiting…but I’m not strong enough.
It’s getting colder; the snow is getting deep. If I don’t go soon, I won’t be able to get to the cemetery. I won’t leave you, baby. I will be right there.
Yours forever,
Kelsey
“I’m sorry,” Asher said, handing the letter back. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
“You read what she wrote,” Jake said. “If I don’t tell her I’m okay and that nothing that happened is her fault, she’s going to kill herself.”
“And if she does, that will be unfortunate—”
“Unfortunate?”
“But there are worse things than death,” Asher finished. “You can’t stop her. I can’t stop her. Free will is a real thing, and trying to interfere with that usually makes things worse.” He believed what he said; more than that, he knew from watching other angels who had tried to intervene in human conflicts that it was true. But the girl’s letter had touched him; her pain was raw and brutal as a death wound. “I could go see her,” he said. “I could manifest for her and give her a message. It’s not really my area, but there is precedent for that kind of thing.”
“No,” Jake said, shaking his head. “No manifestations, no angel wings—trust me, that won’t help. That really will make her worse. I’m the one who needs to go. She needs to see me.”
“And I’m telling you that can’t be done,” Asher said. “Dead people don’t go back.”
“Ghosts go back.”
“No,” Asher said. “Trust me, you don’t want anything to do with that. You don’t want a ghost anywhere close to Kelsey.”
“Why not?” Jake said. “If they’re real, why not?”
“Forget about it.”
“Tell me.” He was clutching the bars again, regardless of the pain. “Ghosts come from the other team, don’t they?”
“Most of the time, yes,” Asher said. “The fallen love guys like you. They tell you they want to help you, that they’ll let your spirit possess them so you can go back home and visit your loved ones. But it’s not you possessing them; it’s them possessing you, using your dead flesh to possess a copy of you. Once they have it, they can do whatever they want with it, and trust me, saving your wife from damnation will not be part of the plan. And you’ll still be stuck right here behind this gate with no clue what’s happening until it’s too late.”
“You said the fallen—fallen angels, right?” Jake said. “So, can you do it?”
“That’s not what I do.”
“Yeah, but you could,” Jake said. “You could go to her as me and tell her what she needs to know.”
“I wouldn’t just look like you; we’re not talking about a costume.” This was the possibility he had refused to even think about before. “I would have to use your DNA to build a perfect copy of you, not just your body but your mind, all of your memories, all of your emotions. My spirit would still be there, but it would be inside you.” For the first time, he would know exactly what it meant to be human. “I don’t do that.”
“You mean you won’t,” Jake said. “You could, but you won’t.”
“Okay, yes,” Asher said. “I could, but I won’t.”
The soul glowered at him. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll take my chances with a demon.”
“Jake, no—”
“I’m out of choices,” he said. “I can’t let her die, not like that.”
“She wouldn’t necessarily be damned.”
“Do you even hear yourself? You think I can take that chance?”
“Stop it!” For the first time ever, he longed to punch a mortal. “Just stop.” He couldn’t believe he was considering this. “I don’t know how this is going to go,” he said. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel or if I’ll be able to make her believe me. Seeing her dead husband might just scare her to death. That’s been known to happen.”
“It won’t,” Jake said. “Not Kelsey.” He reached through the bars and caught Asher’s arm. “Just try. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Yeah, that’s all.” He gave the soul’s arm a squeeze then turned back to the grave. “Just remember you asked.”
He crouched over the grave. Spreading his golden wings behind him like a shield, he plunged his hand into the dirt, digging, grasping, calling what he wanted upward through the broken coffin and the frozen earth until his hand closed around it. The pattern of the man was still written in his lifeless flesh, and the angel absorbed it into himself. Howling in agony, he fell on his face on the grave, his wings shuddering, shriveling, fading away.
From the shadows of another tomb, something else was watching. Lucifer’s imp had only come back to steal baubles, the little remembrances the mortal scum left behind for their dead. He watched the angel’s agony with glee, hardly believing his luck. As soon as he was sure what had been done, he scuttled quickly toward the broken portal, biting his own fist to hold back his laughter until he was safely in Hell.
The Visit
Kelsey locked the street door of the apartment building and started up the stairs. The motion sensor light finally shivered to life just as she reached the first landing, but she barely noticed. She hadn’t had the energy to be randomly scared in six months.
The radiator at the end of the hall was wheezing like an old man running fast, but at least it was warm. She unwound Jake’s scarf from around her face and neck and pulled off her hat, shaking snow on the floor. She fumbled in the deep pocket of Jake’s winter coat for her keys, still fumbling when she reached her door. So, she almost stepped in the middle of the plate of brownies someone had left on the floor. She took a stumbling step back and bent over in one clumsy motion to pick them up.
They were covered in clear plastic wrap, labeled with a sticky note. “Nate and I are so terribly sorry,” it read. “Sylvia, 4B.”
She dissolved into tears. She cried hard while she went inside and set the plate on the counter, while she fought her way out of the coat. She braced both hands on the edge of the sink and cried for several minutes, ugly, hiccupping, slobbering sobs that she kept expecting to taper off, but they didn’t. She cried as she was getting undressed and putting on her t-shirt, while she brushed her teeth and washed her face, tears cutting comical paths in the soapy foam. She cried as she turned off the lights and crawled into her ice-cold bed. She dragged the covers half over her head and wrapped her arms around the extra pillow, sobs becoming howls muffled against it. Sometime soon she cried herself to sleep.
She woke to footsteps in the apartment.
She listened as she slid out from under the covers to crouch beside the bed, silently fumbling into her boots. Someone was walking down the hall. She glanced at the clock—12:41. Her first thought had been Jason, but even if he’d had a key she didn’t know about, he wouldn’t have let himself in at this hour, no matter how angry or worried he might be. And Helen and Taylor’s plane would be almost back in Georgia by now.
She straightened up and crept to the door, holding the bat in one hand. The door squeaked as she opened it, and she swung the bat up fast, grabbing it in both hands. But the hallway was empty. All the lights were still out. The door to the studio was open, and she saw no sign of a flashlight. The footsteps had stopped.
I could run, she thought. She had a clear path to the front door; she could run straight out and down the hall—Nate and Sylvia, 4B, would let her in. But whoever was here was in Jake’s studio; whoever it was had Jake’s paintings. Flexing her grip on the bat, she started up the hall.
Asher drew breath into his human lungs. The painting before him was beautiful, but he barely noticed its beauty. He recognized it. He had painted it. He was still himself, still an angel, but he was something else as well, something he had never been before. He wore a newborn version of the body of Kelsey’s husband, living matter reanimated from the matter left behind. It held all the sense memory of the dead man, all the deepest impressions of the mind, reborn with the soul and consciousness of an angel. It was a trick many of his kind had done since the birth of humans, but he had never been tempted before. He had never realized what he was missing.
He touched the canvas. The oil paint still felt cold; it was still fresh. If he dug in his fingertips, he could scrape the image away. The smell was luscious, making him breathe faster. All of the smells of this place were familiar and precious, so much so he felt faint—another new sensation. Others had tried tell him about the violent intensity of mortal senses, the gorgeous ache of it. He had thought them fools, drunk on trifles. But he had been the fool.
The painting was half-obscured. The figure in the background had been rubbed out and restarted. It was little more than an outline, a tall, naked male torso with the bare outline of wings penciled in behind it. But the figure painted in the foreground was complete and shockingly realistic, a sad, beautiful woman with huge green eyes and long red hair.
“Kelsey,” he said softly in his mortal voice, recognizing her not as the woman from the cemetery or the writer of the letters but the wife she had been to this body he had stolen. “My beautiful Kelsey.”
Kelsey had frozen in the doorway, unable to move, certain she was hallucinating, that her mind had finally snapped. Then he spoke, and she dropped the baseball bat. She opened her mouth to say his name, but all she could force out was a strangled sigh. He turned so she could see his face, and she cried out for real, laughing and crying at once. Not real, her brain was warning. Cannot be real. But her body was already running. He moved forward, too, coming to meet her, crashing into her as she threw herself into his arms.
“Don’t cry,” he was saying, crying himself. “Please, Kelsey, please don’t cry.” He sounded strange, distant and precise with barely a hint of the lazy drawl she remembered so clearly. But this was Jake. She could smell him, feel him, feel the way he crushed her close and kissed her hair.
“You’re real.” She drew back and touched his cheek. “You’re really here.” He opened his mouth to answer, and she kissed him, wrapping her arms around his neck. If he were a dream, she didn’t want him to tell her. “I love you,” she whispered, breaking the kiss to nuzzle her cheek against his, feeling his rough beard against her skin. Tears spilled from her eyes, her heart breaking. “I love you so much.”
Asher kissed away her tears, tasting the salt, the smell of her hair and the feel of her body pressed to his driving him mad. Desire, he thought, pushing his hands up through her hair, letting it spill between his fingers. This was desire. She felt so fragile, her mortal flesh like fire in his arms, as hot and changeable as flame.
I can’t wake up, Kelsey was thinking. Please, God, don’t let me wake up. Because surely this moment must be a dream. Could a ghost have felt so solid, so warm? She wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling his throat again, breathing in the scent of him, clean and wild and alive, no trace of sickness, no hint of the grave. This was Jake when they had first met, the hero-jester who had swept her off her feet. He picked her up and carried her down the hall, and for one sweet moment of madness, she thought he would take her to bed. But he carried her on to the living room and sat on the couch, holding her on his lap. She wrapped her arms around him, huddled against his chest.
“Kelsey.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “You have to listen.” His lips barely brushed her cheek. “You can’t blame yourself anymore.” She squeezed her eyes shut tight. “I wanted to hide my being sick. I didn’t want to face it.” She reached for his hand, lacing her fingers with his. “Everything I ever said about you hiding…that was bullshit.” He kissed her wrist. “And you were perfect the last night I was here.” She shuddered, letting out a single, hiccupping sob. “You were just so scared.” He drew her closer to him. “I’m so sorry.”
“The letter.” She huddled against his chest, her arms curled close against her breast, still clinging to his hand. “You saw.”
“Of course I saw.” He held her bruising-tight, his voice rough, almost angry. “I am not in Hell.” He touched her chin and made her look at him. “I swear by Christ, Kelsey,” he promised. “I am not in Hell.”
She looked into his eyes. He was Jake, her husband; she would have known him anywhere. She could see their whole life together in his tears. But he was different, too. He had become something else.
“I love you,” she said.
He smiled. “I love you.” He bent and kissed her softly on the mouth, a goodbye kiss. But he didn’t pull away.
She nestled against his chest, determined to stay awake, to ask a thousand questions, to keep him there forever. In less than a minute, she was sound asleep.
The Morning Star
Asher watched the woman sleep, the rise and fall of her breath endlessly fascinating. His adopted form was growing heavy, weighing him down to Earth, and he knew he was lingering too long. Finally, when the gray dawn lit the windows, he made himself get up. He eased her gently from his lap to the couch and covered her with a blanket. Without letting himself stop to think, he leaned close and kissed her softly on the mouth again, the sensation of it making him feel dizzy. She barely stirred, mumbling the name of her dead husband.
Straightening up, he conjured different clothes, drawing matter from the air onto his mortal body. He didn’t want to be recognized by anyone who had known the dead man. He wasn’t the first angel to take the form of a dead mortal to comfort one left behind. In the days before human science had made every unexplained phenomenon into a terror, it had been an almost common practice. Most of the more credible human ghost stories had started with a sympathetic angel.
He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, drawing it low enough to mask his face as he left the apartment. A window at the end of the hall opened on a rusted fire escape.
The air outside felt brutally cold to his human form, and he let flesh and clothes alike begin to dissolve as he started down the metal stairs. By the time he dropped to the ground, he was naked, the clothes swept away as a vapor on the icy wind. Crouching in the snow, he burst out of the failing mortal body, letting it dissolve as well. His wings opened behind him in a rush of blinding, golden light.
The alley was eerily quiet and seemed deserted. The blizzard had buried the city completely. Rosy light crept over the snow as the sun rose over the dull, gray buildings. He looked down at his hands, and for the first time since his creation, he saw what looked like blood pulsing through the fine blue veins at his wrist. He clenched a fist and felt his nails digging into his palm, a sting of corporeal pain. Without ever knowing what he was, Kelsey had transformed him, just a little, but enough. He would never be able to
completely hold himself apart from mortals again.
“Fucking hell!” A homeless woman was peering at him over a blood-red hospital blanket, huddled under the fire escape on a thin mattress covered in green plastic. The empty bedframe was still standing just outside the door of the building where Kelsey had abandoned it.
The woman stood up, staring wide-eyed as she came toward him, muttering nonsense under her breath. Then slowly her expression twisted into a leer. “Hey, pretty,” she said, her voice dropping to a snarling growl. “Don’t you want to kiss me next?” She let the blanket drop to run a hand up through her own greasy hair, pushing off her knitted hat. She smiled at him, her eyes half-lidded. “You want to fuck me, don’t you?” She was missing a tooth in front, and the smell of her breath was appalling. “I bet an angel does it nice.”
He caught her gently by the wrist. “Begone from this woman, demon,” he said, barely raising his voice. “In the name of Christ, I cast you out.”
“OOOooooooo,” she purred, and he felt a shudder up his spine. The demon inside of her had changed her voice. Now she sounded just like Kelsey. “You don’t really mean it.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard. “I said begone!”
Her body contorted, writhing in his grasp as the demon wriggled free and fell, wet and black into the snow. She was a succubus, and she had obviously been feeding from the mortal for quite some time. Her scaly body was fat and sleek, lush with evil.
“Come on, Asher,” she purred, rising to her knees before him. He let the now-unconscious mortal fall gently to her mattress and put himself between her and the demon. “Play with me.” Her forked tail swished over the snow as she crawled toward him, reaching for his bare leg. Her face as she looked up at him shifted into a fire-blackened mockery of Kelsey’s. “If you’re going to have a girlfriend now, you’re going to need the practice.”