Addictive Paranormal Reads Halloween Box Set

by Nana Malone

  “It’s forbidden,” Azrael said. “Besides … what am I supposed to say? Hi … I’m the Archangel who follows you around with a tally sheet and kills your loved ones?”

  Emmett's mouth opened as though he wished to say more, then shut it. Azrael glanced out the window, noting all traces of the carnage which had occurred mere hours ago had been erased. Life for the Sri Lanka Prime Minister would go on, untouched except for, perhaps, tighter security around his residence. Only the grieving families of the five human security guards and single Sata’an-human agent killed would remember this incident tomorrow.

  “Very well, Sir,” Emmett said, his tone back to the formal second-in-command of Lucifer’s intelligence wing. “Good day, then, Sir.”

  “Thank you, Special Agent Till.” Azrael forced his wings to stiffen out of the dejected slump they’d been in since the day Nancy had died. He gave Emmett a salute goodbye. He was done here. It was time to pour over his notes and figure out what the hell Moloch was up to.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 24

  Come away, come away, death,

  And in sad cypress let me be laid.

  Fly away, fly away, breath;

  I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

  William Shakespeare

  Earth - AD May, 2000

  Chicago, Illinois

  “Let me take a picture, dear,” Mrs. Schroeder said. “You two make such a beautiful couple.”

  Elisabeth posed, lackluster, in front of the mantle while Mrs. Schroeder adjusted the fancy corsage Tommy had brought like a broody hen picking over a nice, fat bug. She went through the motions for Mrs. Schroeder’s sake, but she just wasn’t feeling the love. Since Nancy’s death, Elisabeth hadn’t felt happy about anything. Not even the fact Tommy Rodriguez followed her around like a love-sick puppy.

  After six refusals, Tommy had circumvented her resistance to the senior prom by showing up at her new foster mother’s house, the elderly neighbor who’d loaned her the shoes the night Nancy had died, with some potted tulips and offered to help the frail widow plant them, weeding out her entire bed of daylilies. By the time he was through, not only had Mrs. Schroeder twisted her arm to go with him, but was already talking about what a fine husband the former gangbanger-turned-college-aspirant would make.

  Not!

  “I wore this the night I met Harold at the CSO dance,” Mrs. Schroeder adjusted the hem of the ancient, circa World War II sheath she’d scrounged out of a trunk in the attic of her Chicago row-house. “It was always his favorite.”

  “Isn’t that you wearing this exact same dress over there?” Tommy pointed to a picture of a young Mrs. Schroeder posed next to a smiling man wearing an air force uniform on the mantle.

  “That’s me,” Mrs. Schroeder's hazel eyes twinkled with happy memories. “I was quite the catch in my younger days. I used to love to go dancing every Saturday night with my girlfriends. My dance card was always full.”

  “I can believe that, Mrs. Schroeder,” Tommy put his arm around her shoulders and did a tap-dance. “If you were a few years younger, it would be you I’d be asking to my senior prom.” He gave her wink.

  Mrs. Schroeder giggled like a teenager. She enjoyed the attention Tommy piled upon her whenever he came around. And Mrs. Schroeder knew how to keep the attractive young man coming around. With cookies. And banana bread. And invitations to supper, lunch, tea, or just about any other excuse she could find to match-make the persistent young man and point out to Elisabeth how lucky she was to have a talented, City College-bound aspiring music major so interested in her.

  Elisabeth, on the other hand, had never forgiven Tommy for abandoning her to stand alone in the crowd while his ‘homies’ opposing gangbangers had shot at her and killed Nancy. If –HE- hadn’t stepped between her and the bullet, she’d have joined her.

  He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen…

  He was the most hideous monster that had ever haunted her nightmares…

  He was an angel…

  He was the devil…

  How could her watcher be both at the same time? Was he what they called a fallen angel? Or something else? Never, in her life had she heard of angels erupting into that … thing … he had turned into when he’d torn into the car to kill everyone inside. Not even fallen angels did things like that. And since that night, she searched through the bible and every other book she could get her hands on to try to figure out what the hell he was!

  She hated him! Hated him! Hated him! Hated him! Hated him for taking Nancy and her entire family away from her! Nancy had been so eager to go. Why hadn’t he taken her with him, too? It would have been a lot kinder.

  She missed his reassuring visits…

  “Elisabeth?” Mrs. Schroeder asked. “You didn’t answer, dear.”

  “Huh?” Elisabeth had no idea what part of the endless chatter between the charming Tommy and the all-too-easy to bullshit Mrs. Schroeder she had missed. “I’m sorry.”

  “You were a million miles away.” Tommy put his arm around her in a gesture of familiarity she did not feel, but she tolerated it because, at one time, she’d dreamed of what it would be like to have the dashing Tommy Rodriguez put his arm around her. She was supposed to be charmed by the attention he lavished upon her. Everyone told her how lucky she was. Honestly … she could have cared less.

  “Only Harold ever caught my eye,” Mrs. Schroeder prattled on, cheerfully reminiscing about the past. “He was a gentleman. A real gentleman. Not like the boys you see on the television shows these days! Harold sure knew how to treat a lady.”

  “That’s 'cause you is a lady, Mrs. Schroeder,” Tommy charmed the support pantyhose off the old woman. “Just like Elisabeth, here.”

  “Oh … Tommy,” Mrs. Schroeder waved him away with a laugh. “You sure know all the right things to say. Elisabeth … say cheese!”

  “Cheese!” Tommy said as Mrs. Schroeder snapped the picture of them standing together in front of the mantle, he in his rented tuxedo that his mother must have traded half her monthly food-stamps allotment to procure, Elisabeth wearing the vintage dress she’d finally relented to wear only because Mrs. Schroeder had been kind enough to take her in after Nancy had died.

  Elisabeth glanced with disinterest at the Polaroid as it developed before her eyes. Tommy was smiling. She looked … grim. Her dress was nothing elaborate. Not even a prom gown. But it was pretty, complete with matching gloves, hand bag, and shoes. It made Mrs. Schroeder very happy to think of Elisabeth going to her prom in the dress she’d met her husband in. Elisabeth forced a fake smile and expressed the proper gratitude.

  As for the other baggage … the elderly widow had gotten the notion into her head that Tommy was future husband material. Husband? Elisabeth had two years of nursing school to start up in the fall and needed to find a job that would accommodate her grueling class schedule. Then she’d have a two-year internship where she’d work for zero wages in order to get her license. The pittance of a foster care check the state gave Mrs. Schroeder for taking her in would cut off in two weeks, the day she graduated high school. Elisabeth didn’t wish to be a burden.

  Besides … she was afraid –HE- would take Mrs. Schroeder from her, as well, if she allowed herself to get attached to her…

  “We’re going to be late,” Tommy tugged at her arm.

  “You don’t want to be late for your big night!” Mrs. Schroeder exclaimed, taking her other arm and shoving her towards the door.

  -HE- used to always show up for nights like this, lurking in her room and watching her fuss over her appearance. She’d almost convinced herself he was a figment of her imagination until she’d seen his true form. But now he no longer came. Or if he did, he stayed far enough away that she couldn’t sense where he stood to claw out his eyes. The bastard!

  Didn’t he care about her anymore? She felt … abandoned. In the end, HE had left her, too. Now she truly was alone.

  The look of anguish in his bottomless black eyes as he had j
umped between her and the bullet with her name on it haunted her. She hadn’t realized how big of a void the black man had filled until, one day, he simply stopped coming. She wiped her eyes, turning her head so Tommy wouldn’t see her cry as they walked to the bus stop together.

  “You okay?” Tommy pulled her closer as they waited for the bus.

  “Yeah … sure.”

  Elisabeth closed her eyes and tried to sense if HE had come to watch her tonight. Once in a while, the hair on the back of her neck would stand up while she was walking down the street or waiting for a bus. She’d try to figure out what direction the sensation was coming from and move towards it, hoping against hope he’d come back, but whenever she got there, the sensation disappeared. Not ‘gone’ as in ‘stepped aside.’ But ‘gone’ as in ‘never there in the first place.’

  “Here’s our bus,” Tommy said. He kept his arm firmly planted around her shoulders as they rode the bus to the fancy banquet hall where the wealthy-wannabe popular kids had insisted they hold the prom. Sixty-five dollars per ticket! Just to eat and dance for two hours? Elisabeth had balked at the price, but Tommy had come up with the money.

  Elisabeth glanced around. No sign of him. Not even the black man who took everyone she loved away from her cared about her anymore.

  She felt … empty.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 25

  The Grieved – are many – I am told –

  There is the various Cause –

  Death–is but one–and comes but once–

  And only nails the eyes–

  There's Grief of Want–and grief of Cold–

  A sort they call "Despair"–

  There's Banishment from native Eyes–

  In sight of Native Air

  Emily Dickenson

  Earth - AD May, 2000

  Chicago, Illinois

  ‘It’s a curious facet of the male human psyche,’ Azrael wrote in his notebook, ‘that the less interested the female is in him, the more he appears to desire her.’

  Azrael glanced up from his perch on the balcony of the fancy banquet hall just in time to see Tommy slide his hand down his favorite research subject’s back as they slow-danced together to the band. Azrael still watched her … now more than ever … but he stayed far enough away to avoid upsetting the fragile equilibrium she’d pasted back together from her twice-shattered life.

  'Elisabeth appears to have come to the same conclusion that –I- did before the incident,’ Azrael continued. ‘The young man is not a suitably reliable protector. He did, after all, abandon her to be shot at while he made his own way to safety. Why she agreed to attend the dance with him perplexes me.’

  Azrael absent-mindedly chewed upon the pencil, causing the containment field that kept it intact to dissolve. Drat! He reached into his void-reinforced satchel to pull out another one.

  ‘It’s difficult ascertaining what motivates the subject now that I dare not enter her living quarters to listen to her conversations with herself in the mirror,’ Azrael wrote. ‘My presence upsets her, even though she cannot see me with her eyes. Allowing her to see my true form was a mistake. I just … I just couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.’

  Lucifer had been highly amused when Azrael had burst -out- the front gate of Gehenna without first walking -in- to deposit the five scumbags he’d mercilessly executed. The Emperor, on the other hand, had been quite upset. Although Azrael had the ability to punch his own way in and out of the hell dimension at will, they feared doing so would destabilize it. He’d earned a stern lecture from the Regent … and also a knowing smile. As though she and the General knew something Azrael hadn’t quite figured out.

  ‘The young man is taking inappropriate liberties with the subject,’ Azrael noted, suppressing the urge to burst into the middle of the dance floor. ‘If he slides his hand down to caress her buttocks one more time, I swear I’m going to tap on his shoulder and ask him if I can have this dance just to see the look on his face when his body drops dead on the floor.’

  Azrael’s wings twitched with agitation. He’d studied countless couples engage in mating rituals over the centuries, but he’d never cared about the outcome before. He wanted Elisabeth to find a suitable mate so she’d be happy, but Tommy had come up short. She deserved better!

  The music picked up. Tommy wanted to dance, but Elisabeth didn’t wish to jump around a dance floor with a leg that gave out whenever she moved too fast. Although her cane was insurance, never once had Azrael seen his favorite subject cut loose. Tommy danced around her, but Elisabeth seemed unmoved. Although he couldn’t hear what they said above the obnoxious rap music, he could read their lips.

  “Let’s go,” Elisabeth said.

  “But I don’t want to leave yet,” Tommy said. “Things are just getting warmed up.”

  “I’m tired,” Elisabeth said. “My leg hurts.”

  Azrael expected Tommy would act selfishly and insist upon staying. He hoped Elisabeth would storm out of there.

  “Okay,” Tommy said. “I … um … expected this much time on your feet might wear you out. I … uh … took the liberty of renting a room upstairs. In the hotel.”

  Azrael drew back, horrified. Tell him to go to hell, Elisabeth! Who does he think he is? Assuming you’re going to…

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Elisabeth gave him a grateful smile. “Maybe I’ll feel up to dancing later.”

  “Come,” Tommy gave her the crook of his elbow as she limped off the dance floor, leaning on his arm as she made her way through the lobby to the elevators.

  What?

  Azrael was so stupefied he almost forgot to watch what floor the elevator stopped at as he didn’t dare step into the crowded elevator with them. Not only would she sense him standing there, but he’d accidentally kill a half-dozen teenage prom-goers who appeared to have the exact same plans. His favorite subject was going into a hotel room with a boy? Didn’t she realize what fast boys like Tommy Rodriguez expected on prom night?

  Floor? What floor had the elevator stopped on? If he had to, he’d search every room in this hotel so he could protect her when she realized what Tommy was up to! Floor 7 … Azrael dissipated his form enough to pass through matter and flew up to the floor in question, staring down the long hallway trying to figure out what room they’d gone into. He invisibly filtered through rooms filled with drunken, fornicating prom couples until at last he found the right one. He lingered as far as he could from his favorite research subject and the boy attempting to seduce her, undecided whether to follow proper scientific procedure and stay far enough back to be an impartial observer, or to make himself visible and put a stop to this?

  He decided upon a middle road, to linger close enough she’d sense his presence and attempt to claw his eyes out, breaking the mood. Yes … that was it. He sank into the shadows against one wall the approximate distance he’d often stood when he’d watched her as a little girl. She’d often turn and speak to him, even though he never answered because it was forbidden. He stood there now, ready to flit out of the room at a moment's notice before Elisabeth could actually touch him and get herself killed. He decided jotting notes down at this point was impractical. He might need to take action and … he wasn’t sure. He felt agitated and was having a hard time keeping a grip on his physical form.

  “You know I love you, Elisabeth?” Tommy led her over to the bed. “Don’t you?” He sat down on the edge with practiced ease, drawing her down to sit beside him.

  “Do you?” Elisabeth asked, her expression skeptical. “Really?”

  Hah! Azrael noted she didn’t say the words in return. Any moment Elisabeth would sense his presence and lob something at his head, ruining the mood when she started ranting about invisible death angels following her around. ‘C’mon … Elisabeth. Show that German temper of yours!’

  “I do.” Tommy tilted up her chin. “You have the most beautiful, silver eyes I’ve ever seen. From the first moment I saw you, all I’ve wanted to do was
see what those eyes would look like filled with passion.”

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…’ Azrael muttered, waiting for the inevitable slap. ‘C’mon c’mon c’mon … I’m standing right here. Slap him so we can blow this joint. I’ve got your back. I’ve always got your back.’

  “Do you love me at all, Elisabeth?” Tommy asked. “Even a little? I know you think I’m beneath you because my family is Hispanic, but I’d be a good provider. My mother adores you. And so does my grandmother.”

  “I don’t know,” Elisabeth said softly. “I don’t care where your family comes from. It’s just … I don’t know what I feel anymore. Ever since Nancy died, I feel empty inside.”

  “I can fill that emptiness for you,” Tommy said. “Let me show you what it feels like to be loved.”

  ‘What a godsdamned player!’ Azrael sneered. ‘Elisabeth isn’t stupid enough to fall for –that- old line.’ Anger he usually reserved for Agents of Moloch made the room shudder, but to someone who didn't understand he was in the room, it could be mistaken for the high-rise swaying in the wind.

  “It hurts,” Elisabeth started to cry. “I feel so empty inside it hurts. Nobody understands the way I feel. And I don’t think anyone can ever make that feeling go away.”

  Oh...

  Elisabeth had just described exactly the way he’d felt for the past 2,300 years. Empty. Only the occasional kind word from someone whose suffering he alleviated as he freed them from their mortal shell prevented him from going insane. And her. She had been filling up the terrible hunger in his heart since the first time he’d laid eyes upon her. Those same beautiful, silver eyes that captivated Tommy had captivated him, as well.

  “I can make the emptiness go away,” Tommy murmured, his mouth descending down upon hers.

  No! Azrael’s heart felt like someone squeezed it in a vice. Instead of slapping him, Elisabeth allowed the kiss, her hands pausing before sliding around the back of his neck.