Angel's Curse (4 page)

There were no other trails to follow from the miniscule clearing. We decided to head north and see what we could find. After a couple of hours of walking, and talking along the way — we were in no hurry, had nowhere to be at a certain time — and with no sign of any new trails, we decided to call it a day.

Somehow we always seemed to end up in what had become my bedroom. I was determined, today, for something different — Danny’s old room. After leaving the bathroom, wearing only a towel — we’d had a long hot shower together — I walked past my door. Danny grabbed my arm and gently pulled me back.

“No,” he said.

“Why not? Why always
here?
”

He pulled me into the bedroom and sat me on the bed.

“That room,” he sighed, “was shared with another.”

My heart sank. I felt hurt and betrayed, though
exactly
why I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Had he lied to me all those months ago about not having had sex before? But wasn’t it true that angels couldn’t lie?

“I thought you’d
never
had
sex
before,” I blurted out.

“I hadn’t,” Danny replied calmly. I hated it when he was the calm to my maelstrom of emotions, “until you. But I never said I hadn’t been in love before.”

My head started to spin …
been in love before
. I’d never thought that Danny might have been in love before. Never thought that someone might have held a place in his heart. There were far too many questions flying around in my head. I tried to gather my thoughts, calm down and be reasonable about this.

I spoke softly and slowly, trying to remain calm. “Then what did you do? How did you express your love? You’ve already told me angels don’t need to sleep. Why the beds then?”

“We bonded our minds, not our bodies.”

That didn’t sound like much fun to me. Certainly not the way I’d want to express my love, apart from verbalising it. Maybe I’d overreacted. What had gone wrong? Why wasn’t she here, at the cottage?

“What happened to her?”

Danny ran his hands through his hair. I’d noticed he did this when I asked questions he found difficult —
or painful
— to answer. It was his way of ordering things in his mind — of gaining precious seconds to determine what he would say and how he would phrase it.

He sighed and let his hands fall to his legs, lightly drumming the sides, apprehensive and nervy about having to respond. That it was an uncomfortable topic was clear.

“She was cast out of heaven, with Satan,” he whispered.

“It was Amy, wasn’t it?”

Amy was the name Danny had called out often during his fevered state. When I asked him about her, he simply told me that she was a fallen angel whom he’d had to kill. I knew there was more to it than that. Why else would he call out her name again and again?

Danny nodded his head. Perhaps his tastes ran to those who were predominantly evil. Did that mean, after all this time, he really
did
think I was evil?

“I don’t understand.” I shook my head a couple of times. “You’ve only been here, in the cottage, for a few centuries. How could she have been here?”

“The cottage is a recreation of our heaven, before Inigrael fell.”

Great. I was living some other angel’s dream.

“And when she fell?”

“I deliberately sought her out. After an aeon I found her.” Danny looked at his hands. “I begged her to repent. I told her that He would forgive her and she would be welcomed into heaven again.”

I could hear the pain, the bitter emotion, in his voice. This was still a fresh wound to him, no matter how long ago it had taken place. I lightly touched his hand.

“And?”

“She wouldn’t. Instead she tried to convert
me,
of all angels. I killed her. I had to.” Danny sounded like he was trying to convince himself that he’d chosen the correct course of action. “There was no other choice open to me.”

I stroked his cheek lovingly. “And you’ve been punishing yourself ever since.”

“Yes.” He really was beating himself up over it. “I should have
known.
I should have known she’d choose the
wrong side.
I failed
Him.
”

I took his face in my hands and kissed his lips.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” I said.

“Not angels.”

“Even angels,” I replied.

I kissed his lips again, trying to distract him. The idea of bonding fascinated me, though it didn’t sound half as much fun as the way we bonded. I wondered what they shared via the bond.

“How do you bond?”

I kissed his cheek and neck. My distraction was beginning to work.

“It’s very simple,” he sighed, enjoying the feel of my lips on his neck, not in the least concerned I might bite it. “We place one hand on each side of the other’s face, covering the temples, and open our minds to share what’s within.”

I drew him to me and we forgot our worries and concerns. When the time was right I took his hands in mine and placed them over my temples. I knew from experience he was too far gone to resist. I placed my hands over his temples, my fingers in his hair. I opened my mind to him, hoping he was doing the same for me. The emotion, the love, and the joy rushed through me, and washed over my entire body. I felt our bodies rise in the air as if we were ascending to a higher plain. In a way we were.

I could see how I looked to him. How he felt about me. I knew, without a doubt, that he loved me more than his own life and would do whatever was in his power, and then some, to protect me — keep me safe and alive.

He also shared with me some of his past, though I was too caught up in the tumult of emotions and pleasure to look closely at the gift he’d given me — that would be for another day, when I had time to look back and contemplate.

This levitating business associated with sharing a bond could be quite tricky, particularly if one of us removed a hand from the other’s temple or if we wanted to change positions. During that first night we came crashing down from near the ceiling onto the bed many times. That only served to make things more interesting.

Danny had said this
ascending
we did — as he called it — was something new. Perhaps combining the two ways of expressing love — physically and spiritually — was the reason behind it. But then he also thought that maybe it was me — that I brought something
different
to the bond.

We eventually collapsed to the bed, exhausted. That two immortals could wear each other out in such a short period of time surprised me. Danny said sharing a bond was a very draining, though extremely rewarding, experience.

I lay in Danny’s arms and closed my eyes. Sharing a bond was something I wanted to try again, but for now I needed to sleep.

When I woke in the morning, Danny was sitting on a couch in his bedroom, or what had once been his bedroom. He’d converted it to a library, complete with two couches and books of every description — fiction and non-fiction — as well as his obligatory bibles and the like.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

I trailed my fingers over the spines of the books in one of the six bookcases. Fantasy, science fiction, autobiographies, romance — I wouldn’t be reading
any
of those — mystery, true crime, thrillers … the list went on.

I walked over to Danny and, straddling his legs, tucked my calves under my thighs and leaned into him. I took the book he was reading, tossed it to the side, and clasped my hands together behind his neck.

“I do like it. There was no need to make the change for me, though.”

“I didn’t do it for
you,
” he replied smugly. “I did it for
me.
I don’t need what this room used to represent anymore.”

He ran his fingers through my hair and rubbed my cheeks with his thumbs before leaning forward to kiss my lips.

“In fact, if you want a palace, I’ll give you a palace. If you want a
tent,
I’ll
give you
a tent. If you still want a swimming pool, it’s yours. You have only to ask.”

“There is something I wouldn’t mind, if it’s not too much trouble. We are limited for space after all.”

“What?” Danny asked.

“Don’t laugh, but I’d really like a ballroom or dance studio,” I said excitedly. “Somewhere to dance, or train, or a combination of the two … and it needs mirrors, lots of mirrors.”

He did laugh, but I didn’t mind. I knew he’d find my request amusing, yet if it was in his power to give, it was what I wanted,

“Go upstairs and let me know if it’s what you were thinking of,” he said.

“What stairs? This is a single storey cottage, remember.”

Was he going senile? Was being effectively grounded finally sending him around the bend?

He grinned at me and winked. Oh my god, had he really added another storey? I ran into the living area, the only other room where a staircase might be located, and found the kitchen was gone. Only some of the cupboards — for storage — remained. It’s not like we used the kitchen anyway. It didn’t even have a sink.

I ran up the stairs two at a time and there it was, a ballroom exactly as I’d imagined it, covering the entire second storey. Danny came up behind me and hugged me. I stared in wonder at the detail he’d captured and recreated, all from my memories and imagination. The geometric shapes incorporated into the warm wood of the highly-polished parquetry floor. The crystal chandeliers with their delicate tear drops hanging down from a high ceiling. The ornate cornices, medallions, chair rails and detailed rosettes. The niches holding marble busts of women and men whose names I didn’t know, and the marble pedestals on which sat bronze plant holders, maidenhair ferns cascading over the sides. All around me on every wall, if there wasn’t a niche there were mirrors, floor to ceiling, separated a quarter of the way up by the chair rails.

“Come and take a look from outside,” he said.

We wandered outside and when I looked back at the cottage it was as if there was no second storey. The roof was where it had always been. Danny tugged on my hand, beckoning me to follow him back to the ballroom.

“Shall we dance?” he asked.

“How about a slow dance?” I suggested.

Danny clicked his fingers to turn on some music. He chose to play a gorgeous slow song from my memories, and held me close to him as we moved around the dance floor in time to the music.

4.
Another Perspective

Danny had ventured into my dreams again, curiosity getting the better of him —
live together, grow alike
— and he was pleasantly surprised about another dream involving some feathers, and honey, of all things, even though neither of us ate it. I couldn’t eat it because my diet consisted of blood, and Danny didn’t eat it as he required no sustenance to survive. But just because you can’t, or don’t want to have something in the real world, doesn’t mean it can’t give you immense pleasure in your dreams. I knew that it would be a while before either of us could look at a bee and not think of honey, or the deliciously gooey situation we’d been in.

After that he was hooked on dreams, just as I was hooked on how angels shared a special bond. We now spent virtually all our time close together, waking and sleeping. He sharing my dreams, I sharing his bond.

I already had thousands of Danny’s memories to sift through and replay at will, yet I knew Danny was still far off from gifting me all of his memories, thoughts and emotions. There were huge gaps in what I had, but for now I was grateful for what he’d given me. I could easily have drowned in an information overload. Deep down I think he knew that, so he limited the flow of his experiences accordingly. More often than not, what he passed on to me was his feelings for me. His love for me, his elation at having found love once more — a love stronger and wilder than he could ever have imagined.

Danny still promised to tell me more of angelic history and show me important events, as needed. There were also many books on the subject that I could read if I chose, but the style of writing and the English in which they were written — apparently English is a second language to angels — seemed to lose something in the translation from their natural tongue. Far easier to hear the histories and watch them played out. Kind of like an angel documentary channel on angel TV.

I lay on the couch, my head in Danny’s lap as he read, and let his memories sweep me away. I saw thousands of angels in heaven, and one more bold and beautiful than most. Through Danny’s eyes I saw the rise and fall of Satan, and heard his thoughts — his commentary for me — on what he remembered of the event …

“Each and every one of us, mortals and immortals alike, was created with free will and thought. He did not want the blind faith and devotion most think comes naturally to angels. Instead, all were given a choice — to believe or not believe and He accepts that without question, though sometimes sends reminders to let His creations know He is still there, and still watching.