Angel of Death: Book One of the Chosen Chronicles

Also by Karen Dales

THE CHOSEN CHRONICLES

Changeling

Angel of Death

Shadow of Death

Thanatos (forthcoming)

Book One of the Chosen Chronicles

Dark Dragon Publishing

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Angel Of Death:

Book One of the Chosen

Copyright © 2009 by Karen Dales

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9867633-1-1

eBook ISBN:
978-0-9867633-5-9

Published by Dark Dragon Publishing at Smashwords

 Cover Art, Design and Author Photo

 
© 2010 by Evan Dales

WAV Design Studios

www.wavstudios.ca

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of Dark Dragon Publishing and Karen Dales, except in the case of brief quotations
 
embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Dark Dragon Publishing

313 Mutual Street
Toronto, Ontario
M4Y 1X6

CANADA

www.darkdragonpublishing.com

For more information on the Author,

Karen Dales and The Chosen Chronicles
 

www.karendales.com

www.thechosenchronicles.com

Never in my life have I been so blessed to have so many supportive people in my life. As always, the love and support, as well as the patience to sit and listen as I read my drafts or natter excitedly about my projects – my husband, you are always cherished.

Michael, Stephanie, Derek and Danielle, your support and help, encouragement and love, has always made me work to my highest ideal.

Adam, I’ll always say this…thanks for the French lessons!

Thank you to Michael and Angela, Rick and Jean-Guy who have been so supportive to me to make these dreams come true.

For Evan.

T
he sound of his heels clicked against the cobbles,
reverberating in the cool hours before dawn. He enjoyed the quiet walk back to the flat they rented from Mrs. Heathrope. She was a nice retiring widow of eighty years. Nearly blind, she enjoyed having a polite scholarly man of the cloth and his unusually tall assistant living on the main floor of her home, while she resided in comfort and solitude upstairs. She was off on her six month vacation to the south of France, where she would escape the ravages an English winter played upon her. She left her home in the care of these two young folk never knowing that they had each outlived her by more times than she could count.

Walking through Trafalgar Square, he could make out a few homeless or passed out individuals curled up on benches. The gaslight made the night bright to his preternatural sight, allowing for the dingy grey and brown colours to fall to the background of the occasional punctuation of colour. It also made it easier for him to see the degenerates littering the square with their prostrate forms.

The sooner he made it down to the Embankment the better. There he could gaze at the Thames and the south side of London. It gave the momentary illusion of being out of an over populated city where the smells and sounds assaulted his senses. This was not the first time he and Notus had come to London, and most likely it would not be the last. Oh how he disliked, nay hated, this city. Every time they came it gave him good reason.

Turning west onto the Embankment the reduction of gaslight around him allowed for more starlight to float down, but only a little more. The dark waters, quiet in the still night, reflected not only the old waning moon, but also the many lamps that lined the bridges and walkways. True night never came to this city, and he missed it.

He did not know why Notus decided to come back to London after being away for nearly two centuries. Notus had explained it was because he was offered the once in a lifetime job of restoring ancient manuscripts and illuminations at the National Museum and Library. What the monk did not need to say was that he had had many of these types of experiences, but for the first time he was getting a chance to see how some of his own work had withstood the ravages of time.

To Notus, the illuminations and book copying were his passion and he would spend hours upon hours working on intricate patterns and artwork before even contemplating how the words would be calligraphed. Sometimes he would become so engrossed that he would forget to satiate his hunger. Now with the opportunity of a nearly two thousand year old lifetime, Notus was getting a chance to play in one of the largest playgrounds outside of the Vatican.

Notus’ Chosen shook his head in disbelief, his white hair swaying. It was always the same. If Notus got even the slightest whiff of a manuscript, no matter how far away they were, they would up and leave so that Notus would satisfy his thirst for beauty and knowledge intricately intertwined. It usually left him either choosing to come along or to go off in another direction for a period of time. Always, in the end, he would go with Notus. He just wished that this time it was not London. Nothing ever good came from coming to this place.

He sighed, remembering the last time. They had been here for only short while, arriving mere months before the worst outbreak of the Black Death. That had been in 1665 and they had lived pretty close to where they currently were residing at Mrs. Heathrope’s, off of Fleet Street near Fetters Lane. The neighbourhood had boasted some of the best bakeries and specialty shops in London. Even though the shops closed on Sundays they did a thriving business for the parishioners of St. Paul’s, until the plague came. Doors were marked with crosses one by one until it seemed that no where could one go without seeing the results of disease and death.

Foul smokes competed with the stench of rotting corpses left waiting to be taken for burial. Many of them waited too long because those attending the dead soon fell to the malady crushing the city.

The nights were worse. Cries of pain and despair came on the breezes to fill the sensitive ears of the two Chosen who bravely feasted upon the poor souls craving death and release from pain. Notus had insisted while the other Chosen turned their backs. Notus would walk amongst the barely living giving succour and deliverance to those who asked for it and expected his Chosen to do the same. He did so begrudgingly, never speaking to the diseased people, but giving them some sense of comfort before he transformed their infected blood into life giving energy his own body craved. It took more to feed off of them, than to feed off of a healthy person, but Notus insisted that it would help those who would otherwise die in excruciating pain. They had done this sort of thing in the past, but never in such a situation as that.

As knowledge of their help spread, so too did the name they bestowed upon him. An old name – the Angel, the Priest’s Angel – and he did not need to ask which angel they believed him to be. He had been called the Angel before. He could see it in their eyes. He was the final thing they saw in this life. No matter that they were dying anyway, relief and then fear would illuminate diseased dulled eyes before giving way to the darkness of death. Even those of the New Religion allowed him to come to them, when they refused his Chooser. He had hated it.