by Anna Katmore
He pulled me to a halt in the middle of the meadow. Apart from the woods behind us and an occasional tree every few hundred feet, nothing but grass and flowers spread as far as the eye could see.
With my hand still in his, I gaped into the face of this devilishly good-looking man. His eyes a bright blue, he seemed to smile, even when his lips remained straight. And suddenly it dawned on me. His defined features, the way he performed magic, his boss my mother made a deal with, it all pointed to—
“Oh. My. God,” I breathed. “You’re working for the devil.” It definitely was the most absurd thing that ever came out of my mouth. But it seemed to be the only logical explanation.
Julian’s mouth dropped open then closed. He continued to study me with a new interest. “Would you be scared if the answer was yes?”
I’d never before crossed myself, but at this moment I came terribly close. Only I thought that might offend him. So I stood rigid, staring at him with eyes so wide it hurt.
However, the answer to his counter question was a definite, “No.”
I’d seen him do too much good to think he could be a bad entity, no matter who he was working for. Nothing could take away my feelings for this man, not even the depths of hell.
The left corner of Julian’s mouth lifted. “In fact, I’m working for the other side.”
“The other side of what?” Of hell? I frowned. “That would be Heaven… But, no.” I laughed at myself for going the wrong way again. “You’re certainly not an angel.”
A spark in his eyes came with his grin.
My fingers slid from his. “Shit. You’re serious.”
AND THEN HE STOPPED TIME
A WARM WIND ruffled the leaves of the nearest lilac and sent their rich, exotic smell down to us. A platoon of fluffy clouds marched like sheep across the sky. They created a lulling interplay of sun and shadow on my face. Sprawled out on the long grass, I enjoyed Julian playfully teasing my jaw with the petals of a daisy. His head was supported by his hand as he lay next to me.
“You’re taking it quite well.”
If he was referring to me being silent since he told me he was an angel, he was right. I knew I should be totally freaked out, but I wasn’t. “Are you keeping me calm with your angelic powers?”
“Would you mind if I did?”
I sniffed when he tickled my nose with the flower. “As long as you don’t tamper with my mind so I can’t make my own decisions, I think I’m fine.”
“No tampering,” he said solemnly. “It happens on an emotional base only. All I do is expand my aura a little and include you in my circle of—” He broke off, narrowing his eyes. A second later, he smirked. “Of heavenly coolness.”
It made me laugh. But I could definitely live with that.
I sat up, crossed my legs, and braced myself on my hands behind my back, gazing at the sky. The drifting clouds were beginning to clear, leaving nothing but blue above. Hard to imagine how an institution like Heaven fit there.
My eyes leveled with his. “What does it look like? Heaven. Is it a city in the clouds? A palace where more angels like you hang out?”
Julian rolled onto his back and propped on his elbows. “The human mind can’t grasp the true image of Heaven. No offence, but you simply lack the imagination and language to describe it.”
His words didn’t offend me, yet I yearned for a visual. Disappointed, I lowered my gaze.
He sat up and cupped my chin with his gentle fingers. “Heaven is not one particular place, or town, or house. It would be best described as—” His lips pursed. “It’s a feeling. Deep inside you, as well as all around you. Something absolutely peaceful. And harmonious. Like the love of an innocent child.”
“Those are mighty words,” I whispered, awed.
“You asked for them.”
And yet they were hard to comprehend. A place inside me where only love existed, without doubts or anger? Heaven definitely didn’t reside within me. And what about fear? Could an angel be afraid of something?
“You look like you have a lot of questions,” Julian said.
“Only a million. Or two.”
Laughing, he tucked a wisp of hair behind my ear. “Why don’t we try to get some of them answered?”
“Is that possible?” It seemed completely unacceptable for an angel to spill secrets to a meagerly developed human. But Julian’s nod assured me.
If only I knew where to start. Everything that came to me seemed equally interesting and important.
“How many angels are there? Do they all look like you? Do you know God—personally?” The smile on his face grew wider with each question I shot at him. “How old are you? Is Julian your real name?”
“Easy there.” He raised his palms and cut me short. “We do have more than two minutes to talk about it all.”
I sucked in a breath, calming my spinning mind, waiting for him to get started.
“Okay, so how many of us are there?” he repeated my first question deliberately slow. “There’d be twelve for each human soul. Then there are the Supporters, who aren’t assigned to a particular soul yet. They are about as many as the assigned ones. The healers, the guardians—”
My jaw dropped as he counted them on his fingers.
“The escorts, the muses, the keepers, and the counsels. I’m sure I left someone out, but in total there would be…let’s just say countless. And I’m grateful they all do not look like me.”
My mouth hung open. Ignoring it, he went on. “I do know God. We all do. And Julian is my name. Well, at least it is when I travel down to Earth. My angel name is a bit of a tongue-twister in human language.”
I frowned. “How so?”
Julian rubbed his neck. Then his lips curled and his eyes lit up. “Come closer.” But he didn’t give me time to scoot forward as he leaned toward me, placing both hands to my temples.
A confused laugh escaped me. “What are you going to—” I fell silent. A choir sang out in my mind. Only they didn’t sing particular words, but rather hummed various chords as beautiful as the sound of winter bells.
“Now, that’s a mouthful,” I murmured.
“You see why it’s hard to say my name out loud. And to answer your last question, I would like you to take a guess at my age first.” He grinned.
“But the other day you said you were twenty-one.”
“No. You said it. I didn’t say yes or no. Remember?”
I actually did. When he’d called it a good guess, I’d automatically assumed he was confirming it. Tricky devil. Or angel…
“Okay, do you go by human years?”
“Actually, we don’t, but I can convert it for you. So, what’s your guess?”
I scratched my head, uncertain of what to say. “You look twenty-ish to me.”
He dragged his mouth awkwardly to one side and made a snorting sound. “You’re not even close, honey.”
“All right then thirty?” But even I knew that would be stretching it.
Julian cut a bored glance skyward. “In fact, I’m sixty-five.”
“Bloody hell, what’s your secret? Sixty-five years old and not a single gray hair on you.” I clapped my hands together, feigning dramatic surprise, when I actually almost tipped backward in honest amazement.
With a rascally spark in his eyes, he leaned forward to whisper into my ear. “It’s sixty-five millennia.”
That left me breathless. “You’re shitting me.”
“No shit.” Julian raised his right hand as if to swear and kept his face straight. But in the next second, he ruffled my hair. “Don’t make a face. Compared to as long as I will exist, the last sixty millennia were only the blink of an eye. And you mustn’t forget, I only spent a bit of that time on Earth in human form.”
Trying to comprehend would only make my head spin. But honestly, sixty-five thousand years? He must have met quite a few people in that time.
Quite a few women. I could do nothing about the stab of jealousy that came with that thought.<
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“In all that time, how many girlfriends did you have?”
He studied me. After half a minute, I started to feel really uncomfortable. But finally he said, “As an angel, you feel love for everyone and everything. Different to the way you feel it. We enjoy the company of others. We watch people be born, grow up, live their lives. And during all this time, we love each of them. Yet, no angel ever feels the need to be with someone. With anyone. I never felt it. Until I met you.”
He let go of a sigh, brushing his thumb over my cheekbone. “It seems like with every move and every word you say you pull me in, and I can’t turn away. Every bit of your mind intrigues me like nothing else ever has. You come close to me, and I can’t resist touching you. Your hair. Your skin.” He laughed softly. “Your rebellious heart.”
“Why is that?” I whispered.
“I don’t know. It just is.”
This was so hard to believe. After all, I was nothing but a bedraggled teenager, who’d spent more time hiding from the police in public toilets than in school.
We both fell silent for what seemed like minutes. I wished I could find the right words to tell him, in as beautiful a way, what he was to me. My life might not have been as long as Julian’s, but it seemed I’d always saved this exclusive little spot in my heart for him. However, my mouth stood sealed, and I could only hope he understood what I failed to speak out loud.
I let another couple of minutes pass, in which he tenderly stroked my arm, or skimmed his fingers through my hair. When the opportunity for me to open up to him had completely disappeared, I came up with something else that had been burning on my mind for the last few days. “Can you fly? And if you’re a real angel, why don’t you have wings?”
“I am a real angel. And I certainly can fly.”
“So you do have wings? But where do you keep them? You sure can’t take them off and hide them in your pockets, right?”
The rolling of his eyes and the soft tsk made him look sweet. “Just where do you get your imagination from? I can’t take them off. But I can let them vanish.”
“How?”
Julian rubbed his chin, pursing his lips. “How can I explain? It’s like, I can manipulate their molecules. Slow them down or speed them up. They’re always there, but you wouldn’t see them.”
I had always been a slouch in physics, so his elaboration made little sense to me. “It sounds like you’re able to control matter and time. Somehow. Right? Can you also travel through time?”
One corner of his mouth tugged up. “Let’s put it this way: I can bend time to my advantage. No one can jump back to an earlier moment, but through immense control, I can reduce the speed at which the molecules move. Thus I can sort of…hover.”
“Hover?”
“Between moments.” He held out his right hand with his index finger stretched. From a bush nearby, a sparrow took off, gliding toward us. About a foot away from Julian’s hand, the bird’s flight suddenly slowed. Each flap of its wings was carried out with incredible slowness. What would normally happen in the fraction of a millisecond, now took longer than half a minute.
Its thin claws stretched wide before they curled around Julian’s finger, slowly, like a flower withdrawing its blossom after dark.
Settled on my haunches, I inspected the bird from all sides. “Epic.”
The sparrow blinked once in some fifteen seconds. Then it spread its wings again and left Julian’s finger, no faster than it had landed.
My curiosity got the best of me. “How slow can you go?”
Julian grinned and flicked his eyes at the bird that now hovered in midair, not moving at all. It was like the world had stopped around us, and Julian and I were the only beings in motion.
“And you can hold this for how long?”
He shrugged. “Like, forever.”
“One moment stretching to eternity? That must be an awfully long time.” My glance switched between the bird frozen in mid-air and Julian’s face. Then a realization struck me. “You do this when we kiss.”
Julian slid his knuckles along my jaw. “I like to savor the moment.”
The bird broke free and fluttered excitedly away. Watching the sparrow land in another tree, I leaned into Julian’s palm. “So, can I get stuck between moments, like you?”
He nodded. “If you’re with me.”
“So you can show me your wings, too?”
Without a word, Julian began unbuttoning his shirt. He shrugged it off and dropped it to the grass. The sight of his firm, smooth chest made my mouth water. His abs twitched, his pecs bulged as he flexed his neck, closing his eyes for a second. A vertical beam of white light appeared behind him and reached about two feet above his head.
After what he’d shown me with the bird a minute ago, this shouldn’t have surprised me at all. And yet, I held my breath, palming my cheeks.
The column of light parted when Julian opened his eyes again. A set of marble white wings unfolded as wide as his height, layered with a thousand downy feathers.
Sunlight reflected off the wings, dipping his shape in a mist of halo, which made it hard to look away. But at the same time, the light blinded me. I swallowed hard against my bafflement. “Can I touch them?”
For the first time since we came out here, Julian seemed the tiniest bit uncertain. “No one has ever touched them before.”
“I promise to be extra gentle,” I teased, already crawling toward him. Kneeling, I reached out. Julian’s sudden tension didn’t escape me, but it also couldn’t make me stop. As soon as I traced the curve of his left wing, the limb twitched away. A visible shiver raked over his naked torso.
“Sensitive, are we?”
“You have no idea,” he drawled on a deep rumble.
I gasped when he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me into his lap. Dipping his head, he purred into my ear. “But I can show you a spot or two on your body, which are just as sensitive.” He took my earlobe into his mouth, nibbling gently.
The whisk of his tongue coaxed a surprisingly loud moan from me. He continued to nibble a path along my jaw, and I surrendered to his embrace.
His wings flapped to the front. They closed around me, enveloping me in total protection. His tongue trailed down my chin and neck in the most enticing way, aiming at the hollow in the base of my throat. I angled my head to give him access to that sensitive part of my skin. Above, a swarm of swallows hovered motionless in the sky.
“You froze time again?” I breathed, running my fingers through his silky golden hair.
Julian skimmed the tip of his nose across my cheek. When his eyes were level with mine, he gave me a determined stare. “I told you, I like to savor.”
He cupped my face, brushed my lips with his thumb, and took my mouth with a ferociously slow kiss. Pleasant tickles raked down my front to center in my belly. I shivered in his arms. But he only held me tighter, supporting part of my weight.
His hands trailed down my sides then moved up again. With them came my shirt. I lifted my arms to let him strip it off and toss it aside.
“You’re so beautiful, I could eat you up.”
“So says the shiny angel,” I replied.
Feeling his soft hair and warm skin, I skimmed my fingers down his neck and over his shoulder blades. My hands found the roots of his wings. I traced the edge winding around me. Warm and soft, his wings trembled under my touch. But he didn’t pull away this time. Instead, he dipped his head to the crook of my neck. His breath as he moaned was hot and moist on my skin.
His feathers brushed down my spine. The sensation more than I could bear, an aching need grew fast inside me.
Without thinking, I shifted in his lap, straddled him, and cupped his face. He welcomed my burning kisses and pulled me down with him. At his sides, his wings spread and lowered, flattening the high grass.
A wonderful shiver stole through me as his hands stroked down my back, skimming over the curves of my bottom and trailing further along my kneeling legs. But the int
ensity of his kissing abated, filling me with unease.
The fire had vanished from his eyes, his hands came to rest on my thighs. He’d left me to dwindle in my own passion.
“Don’t you want me?”
“I’d like nothing better than to make love to you,” my angel said softly. “But it’s wrong.”
My heart sank. “How can it be wrong?” It felt perfect.
Julian held my piercing gaze. “It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“What do you mean, not fair?” Bracing my hands on his chest, I straightened my back.
His long silence filled me with foreboding. “I can’t be with you, Jona.”
“But you are with me.” A testing glance upward confirmed the flock of birds still hovered above us. “You dragged me into this moment. I’m here, and the world stopped turning.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” His fingers caressed my burning skin down my arms to wrap around my hands. “It would only be for a moment.”
My glance moved to our joined hands. One moment, where the world stood still. I knew he was right, had known it all along. Ever since last night when I heard my mother accusing him of having to leave in the end. Leave with her. Leave me behind.
Alone.
“How could I forget about that?” I whispered to myself. Then my gaze switched back to his eyes. “You have to go, don’t you? Back to Heaven.” The hesitant nod he gave me cut deep into my heart. “How long do I get to keep you?” But even as I croaked the question, I knew he wouldn’t answer.
And it wasn’t necessary, because I already got the answer last night. Her deal with God was about forgiveness. My forgiveness.
Today I turned my back on the past and let my mother into my heart again. She got what she wanted. The deal was fulfilled.
“You said she won’t die today. But she will soon. She’s getting worse as we speak, isn’t she?” A small part of me still hoped he’d shake his head. But Julian only kept staring at me with sadness in his eyes. “I found back to her just today, and now I’m going to lose you both?”
