Angel's Kiss (25 page)

I sat back on my knees, waiting for him to raise his head and say something, anything. My heart was fluttering wildly and I couldn’t slow it down. I was afraid of what his answer would be, yet I needed to hear it.

He sighed and looked at me, his eyes a maelstrom of emotion. I was unsure of what he was going to say.

“No,” he said. “I cannot decide for you.”

My shoulders slumped forward and my heart sank even further into the pit of my stomach. Danny reached forward and placed his hand under my chin, lifting my face so he could look at me.

“I know your feelings for me and I
feel
your pain, your confusion, your fear. Now I need you to know of my feelings. I know words won’t convince you. You’ve been let down too often in the past to truly believe — in your heart — my words. One day, perhaps, that will change.”

He gently moved me to the side so he could kneel on the floor as well, right in front of me, our knees touching. He took my hands in his and kissed my palms, as I had done to his, then placed them on his knees.

“Don’t be frightened by what I do. It will not hurt me, but it’s the only way for me to show you — someone who is not an angel — what is in my heart.”

He slowly unbuttoned, then removed, his shirt. With one finger he drew an invisible vertical line along his breastbone, over his heart. An incision appeared along the line, and blood flowed in rivulets down his chest.

I stared in horror at what he was doing — mutilating himself to prove something to me. I looked at his face, not wanting to watch the blood that smelled so sweet running down the gash he had made. He professed no pain, yet his eyes told a different story. I turned to look anywhere but at Danny.

“Watch,
please,
” he said calmly, his eyes closed now. “It’s important to me for you to know what I do.”

I followed his hands now. They moved to his chest and peeled aside the flesh around the incision, to reveal the bones beneath. He whispered a word I didn’t understand. The ribs on the left of his breastbone detached and retracted to the side. His still beating heart — pulsing with life — was unveiled to me. I had never seen a beating heart before. I could see the blood being pumped through it and heard the rhythm of its beat.

Danny took one of my hands in his and carefully folded it around his heart. His hand remained over mine, to keep it there. I felt the steady beating of his heart — the warmth of it — and the sweet scent of his blood was almost overpowering.

He leaned forward and kissed me. The circuit he needed to accomplish what it was he wanted to do was now complete. I found myself in the part of his mind he’d reserved for me, and me alone. I saw the emotions, new and raw, that scared him, yet excited him at the same time. It was similar to what I’d shown him — almost everything was mirrored — except he didn’t think of me as a burden or liability. He thought of
me
as an angel sent to help him find his way. He had thought he was on the edge of being lost, and I revitalised him — gave him hope and made him content. I felt love radiate out through every pore of his body. I felt him feel that his heart would surely burst.

He unfurled my hand and pulled it free of his chest. I watched as his ribs reconnected with the breastbone, covering his heart. The flesh of his chest joined together, the incision sealing neatly with no telltale scar. When I looked into Danny’s eyes the pain I had seen there was gone.

The heady smell of his blood on my hand made me giddy. I rushed to the bathroom to clean it off. Danny followed me, thinking I was running from him — from what he had shown me. I turned to him as I dried my hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said apologetically, “the smell of your blood is too much for me. It’s a good thing you don’t taste as good as you smell.”

“Do you understand now?” he asked in a whisper.

I slid my arms around his waist and rested my head on his chest.

“I do understand, although I have difficulty coming to terms with it. You see, I’ve never known anything like this. All my life people have taken from me until I had no more to give.
This
will take some getting used to.”

Danny wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my hair.

“With His blessing we’ll have forever.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

Danny laughed. “Hallelujah! I get to find out what a lap dance is after all.”

I loosened myself from his grip and smacked his arm playfully.

“All in good time,” I said, laughing at him. He had no idea what he was in for!

We went back to the living area, and I was amused to find that the furniture had changed during the few minutes of our exchange in the bathroom.

“A couch?” I asked.

“Much cosier than separate armchairs, don’t you think?”

I lay in his arms on the couch and watched the fire crackling in the fire place.

“Now my staying has been decided, I need to focus on doing what I think I’m going to do best.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “We’re going to bed again
already?
”

I elbowed him in the ribs. “No, cheeky, I mean killing vamps.”

“Oh,” he sounded disappointed.

“Maybe later,” I teased. “But seriously, I’d been thinking of what I might do if I was a lone hunter — if the decision had been that I had to leave you.”

“And what were your plans?”

“Now I have my own form of transportation the odds are even more in my favour, particularly since I can get myself out of a bad situation in a heartbeat.”

“Your point being?”

“Have you heard the term
blitzkrieg?
”

“No.”

“It was a term coined during the Second World War,” I explained. “That’s a mortal war, if you were wondering. Anyway, it means something like
lightning war
. The concept being an attack that struck through the enemy’s defences hard and fast, via quick surprise strikes. Once a hole had been punched through the defensive lines, the attacking force proceeded onward, with little regard to their own now exposed flank.

“It gave me an idea. I think I could pick off the vampires one or two at a time in lightning fast raids. Transport in, grab them and transport to another location. I was also thinking that I really need to grab a werewolf as well, to see if my hands work on them. Presumably I could still bite them, if I didn’t mind a mouthful of fur, but that’s kind of off-putting.

“Of course, I wouldn’t want to leave my flank exposed, so I’d need to be careful and do a lot of reconnaissance beforehand.”

“Steady on,” Danny said. “Reconnaissance is well and good. If you want to undertake raids of the magnitude I think you do, we need to make a plan of attack and retreat, in order to try and cover as many scenarios as possible.”

“Okay,” I agreed, “plans are good. Can you show me the map again, please?”

Danny produced a large-scale version of the map. We sat on the floor, leaning back against the couch, to look at the map.

“Can you highlight all areas of activity over the past three to four months?”

Little pinpoints of light appeared on the map, some black, some red. The black dots far outnumbered the red.

“The red represents the vampires, the black the werewolves.”

“Wow. That’s a lot of werewolves. If they’re wild werewolves, those numbers probably won’t fluctuate much, but the vamps … How much longer do you think such large numbers of vampires will stay in the area?” I asked.

“Before you came on the scene I would have said they’d be finished their hunt by now and returned to their various cities. Now I suspect they’re after your blood.”

“I think you’re right. I’m a danger to them. Like the werewolves, they’ll want to neutralise the threat before I can decimate their numbers.”

“We need to choose a reasonably safe place for you to transport to once you’ve got your prey, particularly if you’re doing a snatch and grab from a large group. Not the cottage, though. You can’t bring them here, ever.”

“You must have some idea of where I should go.”

Danny scoured the map and enlarged it again, to better see the terrain. He raised his hand above the map and a three-dimensional image rose up. The map almost covered the entire floor and I could pick out the areas I knew much better now.

“What’s that?” I pointed to a dark spot on the map that was not lit, and showed no evidence of monster activity.

“That’s a small abandoned copper mine. Not very successful from what I can remember. Apart from the odd hiker no one’s been there in almost a century.”

“What about our friends in the corner?” I pointed to my practice partners. “Have they been known to visit there?”

“For some reason the vampires don’t like that area. I haven’t had the time to study it closely enough to find out why. Werewolves will venture there occasionally, but don’t stay very long. Zombies don’t venture that far into the forest. If they do the resident werewolves take them out — they’re very territorial.

“The conditions in the mine provide the ideal nesting place for varakiana, but I’ve never seen any. That doesn’t mean they’re not there. As you remember, they have no discernible scent. They may be much cleverer than we give them credit for.”

I stood up and stretched. “I think we should pay this area a visit to see if it’s suitable for my purposes.”

Danny stood and held out his hands, recovered fully from the ordeal of
showing
me his true feelings.

I grinned at him. “I’ll give you a five second head start.”

He laughed. “Are you sure you know where to go?”

I pointed to the ground. “Map, remember. I can see perfectly well where I need to go.”

Without warning Danny started to move.

“No fair,” I called out. “I’m supposed to start counting
before
you leave.”

He laughed and was gone.

“Damn,” I said. “Angels play by their own rules, some of them dirty.” I grinned. “Well, two can play at that game.”

I closed my eyes and focused on the dark spot on the map. When I opened them Danny was already there, leaning against a tree at the edge of the forest, well out of the way of where I might possibly arrive.

“What kept you?” he asked.

“Cheater,” I laughed.

Danny walked over, all smiles, and kissed my cheek. “Let’s take a look around.”

“There’s a really disgusting smell here,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

“I don’t smell anything. Can you pinpoint where the smell is coming from?”

I pinched my nostrils closed with my fingers, but somehow the smell
still
got through.

“
Everywhere!
” I complained bitterly. “It is
so
gross. Worse than zombies and vamps put together. I don’t think I can stay here for very long.”

“No, wait.” Danny grabbed my arm and turned me around. He touched the tip of my nose with one finger. “Is that better?”

I let go of my nose and gingerly sniffed the air.

“Marginally.” It was actually much better — only rotten eggs now — but I wasn’t going to let him know that. “What did you do?”

“I put a mask of sorts over your nose to filter out the smell.”

I sighed, “I still wouldn’t want to spend too much time here.”

“Think about it,” Danny said excitedly. “You’re smelling something I can’t. You were bitten by a vampire, you’ve fed off them. Your senses are probably quite similar to that of a vampire.”

So what?
I thought.
I think it stinks here and the vampires probably do to. That’s why
…

“That’s why the vampires don’t come here!” I cried out, just as excited as Danny by the revelation. “Because it stinks way too much!”

“It’s a theory,” Danny replied. “The only way to test it out would be to bring one here. Are you up for it?”

“Ugh! Anything to get away from the
smell!
”

“I happen to know there are a few vampires camped out on the ledge. Do you think you can get there?”

“Sure, piece of cake.”

Danny left ahead of me, so that we’d arrive at the same time. Not that it mattered. He could take care of himself.

I knew where I needed to go. I was going to try getting there without closing my eyes. I wanted to see if there was any sort of transition, and there it was — a brief flash of white light. No rainbow of colours like the lights, no tunnel, just a flash.

I’d obviously misjudged my landing, as the balls of my feet were barely on the edge of the ledge. I flailed my arms wildly and, unable to regain my balance, tumbled backwards. Danny reached out to grab me, a second too late, and I was gone.

It all happened in slow motion. I saw the vampires looking back as I screamed and fell, and then they charged. Danny stepped off the ledge. I could see him following me, falling gracefully feet first, when I thumped to the ground with a crack.