Angel's Kiss

by Melanie Tomlin

  “How come I don’t have powers like you,” I pouted, “if I’m an angel?”

  Danny shrugged his shoulders. “Any number of reasons I suppose — you’re not at full maturity, you’re part vampire, or maybe earth-bound angels simply have different powers.”

  Different powers, I thought, like transporting without moving. I wonder what else I’ll be able to do.

  Danny held out a hand. In it were my knife and his feather, the latter being my lucky charm. The leather thong on the feather had been replaced with an elasticised band, as per my request.

  “You’ll be needing these,” he said.

  I strapped one on each arm and took us back to where we’d found the first werewolf’s body, the same place where I came to be captured and taken to meet Drake, prior to being hunted. I couldn’t detect any scents.

  “I don’t smell a thing.”

  “Do you see any tracks at all?”

  I crouched down and studied the wet earth.

  “I’m not sure if these are tracks or not. They’re filled with water.”

  “Okay, the water is a bit of an issue for you. Try smelling the trees and the foliage nearest this area.”

  I walked to the closest tree and sniffed up and down the trunk. There was a very faint scent. It didn’t smell like vampire to me. More like possum.

  I shook my head. “I’m not having much luck here either.”

  “One last thing,” Danny said. “If that doesn’t work I’ll lead the way. Close your eyes.”

  I closed them, as Danny had asked, and could only see the reddish-orange tinge of the veins and vessels under the lids.

  “Try looking through your eyelids. They may act as a filter of light. I’ve heard this works for some of our kind — those who aren’t in the archangels’ armies.”

  I concentrated on seeing through the lids, pretending they were rose coloured glasses. For a split second I thought I saw an eerie green glow, and then it disappeared.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, Danny. I thought I saw something green, at the edges then it was gone. I guess I’m not a wet weather girl.”

  “Perhaps with practise you’ll get better. The fact you saw something is encouraging.”

  Danny closed his eyes and took a deep breath. With his arms stretched out to his sides, he turned around slowly a few times. I was reminded of the scene from The Sound of Music, when Maria sang the opening number. Danny seemed to enjoy using his senses to find a trail for us to follow.

  He opened his eyes, and as if he had read my mind said, “My uncanny ability to locate quarry is quite valued by my superior. He considers me the best amongst all the archangels’ armies, though I have my doubts.”

  “Which way?” I asked.

  He pointed in a south-easterly direction. I was getting better at determining direction, but had not travelled in the direction he pointed, beyond this point, before.

  “You lead, I’ll follow. Don’t go too fast,” I cautioned him. “I don’t know that area at all.”

  He placed a hand on my left cheek and kissed the other. “You’ll be fine.”

  He ran, and I shadowed him closely, ducking and weaving through the trees and leaping gracefully — I can fly — over rocks, boulders and ravines. He glanced over his shoulder occasionally to check my progress, and was pleased to see I was keeping up.

  At one point, when the ground levelled out, and the rain eased off to a light shower, I lengthened my stride and overtook him. My only mistake was turning to run backwards, so that I could poke my tongue out at Danny to gloat about how fast I could run — even backwards! He called out a warning. When I realised what he was referring to it was too late. I smacked into a tree at full speed and came to a sudden halt.

  The breath was knocked out of my lungs with a whoosh and I heard my head and back crack. My vision blurred. Pain wove its way up through my spine and blazed white-hot in my head.

  Stupid, stupid girl, I scolded myself.

  Already I could feel my body repairing itself. The ability to heal was really going to save me a packet on health insurance… if I had any!

  Danny stopped in front of me. He crouched down and peered up into my face. I hadn’t noticed my head had lolled forwards and I was looking at the ground.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, though he didn’t seem too concerned. “That was quite a collision.”

  I lifted my head and my neck made a cracking sound. I cringed. Not from pain, but the noise, which echoed in my head.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “I don’t mind you overtaking me as long as you keep your eyes forward,” he chuckled.

  “I suppose I forgot how fast I can run now.” I stood up, stretching my arms over my head. “That wouldn’t have hurt too much if I ran at my old mortal pace. Now it’s like being hit by a truck travelling at a hundred kilometres an hour… only I’m the truck!”

  “It’s not much further,” Danny said. “There’s a cave about five minutes away.”

  There were three vampires in various stages of undress in the cave. I was glad we hadn’t happened upon them engaging in their perverse idea of sex — all that blood. It was sickening.

  Danny took out the first one with angel fire. While he was busy doing that I pounced on the second one. We tumbled to the floor, knocking the third one to the ground in the process. I quickly wrapped my legs around the neck of the third vampire as she tried to sit up. She wasn’t going anywhere, and though she struggled and scratched, she was no match for the power in my thighs.

  I bit the other vampire savagely on the neck, causing her to cry out in pain. I was anxious for her blood. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was being told to store as much energy as I could. To do so I had to feed.

  Danny crouched to the side and watched intently.

  “Nice technique,” he said of my headlock.

  I couldn’t answer immediately as my mouth was full and my lips weren’t ready to let go. When the vamp’s body was drained I pushed it to the side and half sat up. The last vampire was pushed down to the ground from her attempted sitting position, still trapped between my legs.

  “It came to me as something to try, when I was practising my gymnastics,” I replied. “Pretty cool, hey?”

  “Very,” he agreed.

  “Fuckin’ goddamn whore!” the vampire yelled.

  I shook my head and, leaning over to one side, clamped my hand over her mouth.

  “Why do they always resort to profanities?” I asked.

  “It’s in their nature,” he chuckled, “though their vocabulary has greatly increased over the centuries, as mortals come up with new profanities.”

  I laughed. “We’re — they’re — a pretty inventive bunch, mortals.”

  Being able to use my hands to kill was very handy indeed. It meant I could hold a conversation and not be rude by trying to talk with my mouth full.

  The struggling abated and the vampire went limp.

  “That was fun, working together,” I said, laughing again. “Maybe we can do it on your days off.”

  Danny smiled. “I can always rearrange my schedule to accommodate you, Helena. There’s no issue there.”

  “Cool,” I replied. “Shall we be off again?”

  Danny nodded and we headed to the entrance of the cave. A figure appeared in the dim light. I could tell, from the sickly-sweet smell, it was another vampire.

  I ran forwards, sidestepped and came up behind the vamp, clamping my arm around his neck, but not touching his skin with my hand. There was something else I wanted to try.

  “Wait here, Danny. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “No,” he called out, but I was already gone.

  I concentrated on recreating the lights — not on actually going anywhere — and it worked, though the colours were a dim reflection of what Danny could produce. The vampire struggled and I let him go. His arms flailed wildly for a moment and then he simply disappeared. Panic set in.

  “Shit, where’s he gone, where’s he g
one?”

  What if he returned to our point of origin? Danny would be caught unawares and might fall prey to the vamp. What a fool I’d been to try something so stupid! I quickly returned to the cave, to find Danny standing over a pile of ash.

  He grabbed my arm and shook me. “What did you do?”

  “I let him go,” I said. “I recreated the lights — well, my version of the lights — and I let him go.”

  “What would you do that for?” Danny asked.

  “To see what would happen.”

  “I’ve told you what could happen if you let go.”

  “You only told me what would happen if I let go, before I could transport myself,” I reminded him, “and even then you didn’t know if the same rules applied to me as did to the angels. A vampire is different again. I had to see.”

  “Then you learned nothing. You needed to be on the receiving end to witness it. You should have asked me about what happens to vampires, I could have told you.”

  “Okay, okay,” I put up my hands in surrender, “I’m sorry. So what does happen?”

  “They come back crazed beyond belief, savage and uncontrollable. The only instinct that remains intact is the need to feed, and this drives them to kill everything they can — mortal, monster, angel and animal alike.”

  “That’s nasty!” I said.

  “Very. That’s why we only use the light for transportation.”

  There was a rustling outside the entrance to the cave.

  “This must be party night,” I mumbled and turned to see who or what was coming.

  It was another vamp, a female this time.

  “I found you!” she said excitedly. “I’ve been tracking your scent for hours. It was easier when the rain eased off, your scent didn’t wash away so quickly.”

  Danny was about to raze her to ash when I placed a restraining hand on his arm. He looked at the vampire, sighed, and let his arm drop to his side.

  “Helena, don’t you remember me?” the vampire said.

  I peered into the face. There was something familiar about it, but I couldn’t place it. She couldn’t have been one of the preacher’s girls — she was much older than he preferred. Then where did I know her from?

  “You really don’t recognise me, do you?” her voice was tinged with sadness.

  “I know your face, but I don’t remember where from.”

  I looked to Danny, who had seen all my memories. Perhaps he could shed some light on who she was. His face was a mixture of sorrow, pity and disgust — a strange combination.

  “Danny, what is it? Who is she?”

  “Oh, he knows. I can see it in his face. Tell her, or I will. Your lips or mine, the choice is yours.”

  Danny sighed. “She’s your mother.”

  I looked more closely at her face, the dimples and freckles, all still there. The colour of her eyes, the colour of her hair. She was shorter than I remembered, but to a child all grown-ups are giants. I shook my head in disbelief. This could not be true. My mother had disappeared, presumed dead.

  I turned to Danny. “At least now I know what that vampire meant about Drake having someone he thought I might be interested in… but my mother disappeared the night my father was murdered. She was presumed dead.”

  “Do you remember the night your father put you in the blanket box?” she asked, trying to convince me she was who Danny said she was. “Did we save you only to condemn you?”

  “She’s not like you,” Danny replied. “She’s not corrupted, not evil. She kills your kind, not mortals.”

  “This is not the life of my choosing,” she said sharply. “I never asked for this.”

  “Nor did your daughter,” he said angrily.” She at least does not feed off mortals.”

  “Do you think I want to? I hate myself every minute of every day.” I could hear the loathing in her voice.

  “Then you know what to do about it!” Danny said sharply.

  “Yes,” she mumbled, “but I can’t bring myself to do it. The instinct to survive is too great.”

  “You’re just like the rest of them.”

  “Shut up!” I yelled. “Both of you just shut up, and let me think.”

  I sank to the ground and rested my head in my hands. Danny stood beside me to ensure my mother did not try anything stupid — to ensure this wasn’t a trap. She fell to her knees in front of me. Danny placed a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  “Let her go, Danny. It’s two against one if it comes down to it,” I said.

  “I watched your father die,” she whispered. “He was involved in matters he didn’t understand. Neither of us did. He was blamed for snitching, which was bad enough when we thought we were dealing with the mob. When it turned out to be vampires, that was worse.”

  “You expect me to believe that my father was killed by vampires? That you were taken and changed by them?” I asked, shaking my head doubtfully.

  “How else do you think I came to be like this?”

  “But my father was hit on the head — blunt force trauma. He wasn’t bitten,” I scoffed.

  “Biting people isn’t the only way to kill them, Helena,” She chided me. “Hasn’t he,” she pointed to Danny, “taught you anything?”

  “You leave him out of this,” I warned her, waving my finger in her face.

  If vamps killed my father, why not her as well? I was confused.

  “Why didn’t they kill you?”

  “Female shortage, plain and simple. I became a prostitute of sorts, unpaid, but a prostitute all the same.”

  “Must run in the family,” I mumbled.

  She grabbed my arm. “What did you say?”

  I shook her arm off. “I said it must run in the family.”

  She looked from me to Danny and back to me again.

  “Damn perverted angel,” she hissed.

  I slapped her face. It just happened. Without thinking, my hand struck out of its own volition. The sound of my palm striking her face resounded throughout the cave.

  “He is not perverted!” I yelled. “If anything, I’ve perverted him. He has done nothing wrong. Danny has helped me and protected me ever since I was changed. Don’t you ever say anything bad about him!”

  She rubbed her face and said, quite simply, “You love him.”

  I looked at Danny’s face and my heart fluttered. “Yes, I love him.”

  It was the first time I’d said the words out loud. For a moment the rest of the world disappeared and I saw my love reciprocated in his eyes and smile.

  “Well, if not him, then what do you mean about prostitution running in the family?” she sounded impatient now, like I’d deprived her of eighteen years of my life. I ignored her question for the time being.

  “Didn’t you ever try to find out what happened to me after you’d left?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to trust myself,” her voice quivered with emotion, “and you were the last thing I wanted to hurt.”

  Damn her emotions to hell! I thought.

  “I was stuck in that box for at least thirty hours. When they found me, I was delirious. I was sent from foster home to foster home, a problem child no one wanted. Eventually I was fostered to a last chance couple. Do you know what that means?” She shook her head. “It means that if I’d have set one foot wrong I would’ve been sent to an institution where they’d have locked me up in a room slightly bigger than that box each night. I hate confined spaces. I couldn’t go back to a box.

  “Do you want to know what atrocities happened to me there — with that last chance family — and how by the time I was fourteen I’d had two abortions?”

  “Stop, please,” she pleaded. “How could I know? What could I have done about it, being what I am?”

  “You couldn’t have done a thing,” I sneered at her. “The past can’t be changed. I don’t even know your first name.”

  “Michelle. My name is Michelle.”

  I narrowed my eyes, suspicio
us of her motives. “Why are you here? Did you think to catch me or trick me into going to Drake? Did you think the fact that you’re my mother would sway me?”

  She shook her head. “No. Drake doesn’t know I’ve come here.”

  “Then what? To relive old times, times I had no recollection of until recently?”

  “No,” she replied, crying softly now.

  I rubbed my temples. “So what then?”

  “I came to warn you.”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “Drake has rallied a number of clans and they’re on their way here.”

  So the vampires were having a big get-together, big deal! It meant I’d have less distance to travel to do my job.

  “And that concerns me because?” I asked impatiently.

  “Because the sole purpose of the gathering is to hunt and kill you,” she blurted out, “and the angel who runs with you… if possible.”

  Was this some sort of trap, a plot within a plot?

  I eyed her suspiciously. “Why would you want to warn me?”

  She reached out and stroked my hair. I pulled back reflexively. The intimacy of her action repulsed me. I fought to keep the revulsion off my face.

  “Because I still love you, no matter what you’ve become, and despite what I’ve become.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “What can I do to prove it to you, Helena?” she asked.

  I looked at Danny, but he offered me nothing. I was on my own here.

  “We need more information. When are they to arrive? Where will they meet? What are their numbers? Do they have any particular strengths or weaknesses? What’s their plan of attack?” I stopped to take a breath. “If you don’t want to see me dead you need to provide us with more than just a warning — that’s not good enough.”

  She sighed. “Fine, I’ll tell you what I know.”

  I pulled at Danny’s pants, encouraging him to sit down. He refused to sit, but crouched down, ready to spring into action should the need arise.

  “Five of the eight closest clans are on their way. Drake contacted them four or five days ago. He received word early this morning that they’ve agreed to come. They should arrive in another three days. They’re travelling great distances — all on foot.”