Archangel Rafe (A Novel of The Seven Book 1) (3 page)

From the moment Grammy Angel named her, she had guided Angelina. Until now. Angelina came to visit once a week, and wished every time that Grammy could live with her. Angelina slowed her steps. She really, really hated coming here. Grammy would be appalled at her physical appearance.

She signed in at the front desk and then made her way through the halls. Her Nikes squeaked on the shiny, clean linoleum. The nurse, Gail, waved and smiled, her face lighting up with genuine happiness. “She’s having a good day, Angelina. She’ll be happy to see you.”

“Thanks, Gail.” She handed the nurse a small bouquet of daffodils.

“You look great.” Gail lifted the flowers to her nose. “New hair color?”

“Uh, yeah, I added some highlights.” To prep for the support hearing. Gary was being a jerk about paying the career consultant for the testing. Which she wasn’t going to think about right now. Angelina headed down the hallway to Grammy’s room, the other bunch of daffodils clutched in her suddenly sweaty hand. She dreaded these visits.

She wanted her Grammy back. The Grammy who told stories, fixed bread and tomato sandwiches, and let her lie around and read on sweltering summer afternoons. Grammy with the candy drawer, supposedly for the kids, but everyone knew she was the one with the sweet tooth. Grammy always looked perfectly put together, whether she was hanging out in the kitchen all day or going shopping and to lunch. Grammy who tended her flower garden with the care and precision of a general.

Angelina knocked softly, in case she was sleeping.

“Come on in, Angelina,” she called out in a warbled, shaky voice.

“Hi Grammy.” She put the flowers in a fake Waterford vase on her night table and poured in a little of the water from the pitcher. She’d been moved to a private room last month. A plastic bin on the wall held her chart and all the accouterments of a hospital room.

“Come. Sit, sit.”

She eased into the chair next to the bed.

Grammy peered at her, her once vibrant brown pupils lost in a rheumy, watery sea. “Somethin’s different.”

Shouldn’t have worn jeans. Grammy hated them. “I was running late. I didn’t have time to change.”

“I saw the dungarees. But that isn’t it. Somethin’ else.” She reached out her hand, thin with ropy veins and trembling as if she was an alcoholic who had gone without for a few days. Grammy clasped her hand, her skin a papery, frail husk, insubstantial against Angelina’s younger, more resilient skin. Grammy’s fingers curled slightly just like her body curved in to protect her fragile insides from attack.

Her Grammy was an old-fashioned woman. She used to get her hair done once a week, washed, curled and teased into a poufy, yet feminine, cap of curls. To protect those teased curls while she slept, she wrapped her hair in a swath of toilet paper then pinned it closed with metal clips. And in the morning she’d carefully unwrap her ‘do, then fuss with the curls until she was ready for public.

She always wore panty hose. She always wore full make-up: base, blush, eye shadow, mascara, eyebrow pencil and a bold shade of lipstick. Always. In this place, dressing up and cosmetics were long gone, discarded for more pressing concerns like food and medicine. And it broke Angelina’s heart.

“How are you?” Grammy turned her hand over and leaned closer, so close Angelina feared she’d fall out of bed.

“Careful.”

There was a calm satisfaction in Grammy’s movement as she stroked her finger along the strangely shaped sunspot. “How does it feel?”

That damned spot. Just one more reminder that life changed constantly. Her body included. Despair rolled over her in a wave. That spot represented all the things in her life that she couldn’t control. But now was not the time to wallow in self-pity. “How does what feel, Grammy?”

She squeezed Angelina’s wrist right over the spot, then put her hands on her granddaughter’s face, along her cheekbones, and stared into her eyes. “You’ve replaced me.”

“Grammy. No one could replace you.” Angelina smiled uneasily and tried to ease Grammy’s hands away, but her grip was like iron. The intensity of her regard and her unwillingness to let go sent a shiver of premonition scuttling down Angelina’s spine.

“It was meant,” Grammy said firmly. “Meant.”

Angelina was losing her. It happened this way. Sometimes Grammy would be lucid and aware and familiar. Other times, she was lost in the past, lost in some world that only she knew. And sometimes it was a combination of both.

“It’s your turn.”

Angelina’s turn for what? Only Grammy knew. Maybe she thought they were playing a game. “Okay, Grammy. I’ll take my turn.”

“It’s your destiny, Angelina.” Her lips dry, she kissed Angelina on the forehead and Angelina was reminded of when she’d first moved into Grammy’s house as a child after her daddy left. Grammy had always tucked her in with the words,
Sleep tight, sugar. I’ll look out for you.

And she had. Grammy had always been there for her. Always looked out for her.

Now it was Angelina’s turn to look out for Grammy. “So much change,” she murmured. How would she ever cope with it? She could have used Grammy’s wisdom, her advice. She was so weary. So weary of holding everything together. Weary of keeping her kids from spiraling down into a self-esteem nightmare. Weary of holding on to her house, her finances and her sanity while Gary frolicked with his new playmate. All she wanted was to be left alone.

Angelina sighed and rested her head on Grammy’s nubby blanket.

“It’s not the change. It’s how you respond to it.” Grammy’s voice was suddenly stronger, more authoritative, as she stroked her head like she’d done when Angelina was ten. “Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not,” She whispered as tears stung her eyes. Her throat jammed with a hot ball of sadness. “I love you, Grammy.”

“I love you too, Angel.” Grammy’s eyelids drifted closed, her face going slack and somehow peaceful. “I can rest now.”

Angelina leaned against the covers. Antiseptic and over-cooked broccoli warred for dominance in the air. The smell assaulted her stomach even as Grammy’s hand rested on her head and gently soothed.

And Angelina wept for all the things she couldn’t change.

***

Raphael observed Angelina doze next to her grandmother from the foot of the bed. He had a secret. A dangerous secret. In hundreds of years, he’d never once broken the rules. Technically, he still hadn’t.

But he was hanging on to the rules by his fingertips.

While the lessons of the Grigori, the fallen angels, had faded with time, one rule remained constant and absolute. Archangels and humans were not supposed to mate. No sex. It was forbidden. Neither could Archangels and Angels.

It. Was. Not. Done. Because according to history, the consequences would be disastrous.

He understood, now, the incredible lure of the human. Before, he’d assumed the angels who’d mated with humans had been weak. But now he had carnal knowledge. He’d connected with Angelina’s mind, opened his thoughts, his senses to hers, channeled her desires.

The feelings were incredible.

The very first time he’d gone to her in her dreams, her longing, her loneliness had been so acute that he’d been compelled to touch her in comfort. His only thought had been to heal her sadness. But somehow that first touch held none of the healing energy he’d expected. Instead the contact, his hand on her shoulder, a most innocuous and innocent spot, zapped him with a sexual jolt he hadn’t expected.

They sizzled.

Attraction, pure sexual, animal lust had raced through him. The logical and prudent action would have been to back away, but instead of abandoning the incredible emotion and sensations that streamed through him, he’d eased nearer. He’d explored her body. His skin flushed hot as his body responded to the memory of her hands and her mouth skimming over his flesh, renewing him in ways he hadn’t even realized he’d needed.

In her dream, sensations slithered through him, arousal insidious, rolling, roiling in a big ball of heat, streaming through his arms, pouring into his fingertips, as he trailed his fingers along the softest skin, and sensations flared back through his body and down to his erection.

He hadn’t felt anything in so long.

He’d been empty. A vessel without function, destined only to hold all the ills of the human world around him. Eternally lonely and wanting succor, comfort...some intangible.

Until Angelina. She was a gift he’d been bequeathed solely in the dream realm.

However, now she summoned him to her dreams more and more frequently. She drew him in, like a whirlpool he could drown in. Desire swirled through him. He would explore her bounty with his tongue and hands, licking and stroking her flesh.

The taste of her skin was an aphrodisiac of brimstone and gardenia and filled his mouth and flooded his body with the intoxicating elixir of woman. Drunk on her taste, drunk on her essence, he cupped the bounty of her breasts in his palms, exploring, rubbing, and massaging the symbol of her femininity. The balance of the Universe was bound up between their two bodies, the yin and yang of copulation, the symmetry of her channel and his rod, the perfect way they fit together.

Exaltation poured through him. His body throbbed, and his mind filled with her thoughts, her arousal, her longing for love. And he hadn’t had the heart, an emotion he’d thought vanished forever, to deny her surcease from her sadness.

Instead he’d worshiped her. Showered her with reverence. And now, even as he berated himself to resist temptation, the same thing happened every time she summoned him. And the feelings that originally had only been hers were now his as well. He needed to leave these emotions behind and begin her training, before he did something they’d both regret.

FOUR

Brandt trudged into the house. Poor guy was sicker than a dog. Nothing reduced an ‘almost man’ back to toddlerhood faster than the stomach flu.

“Get your track bag and I’ll wash your clothes.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mom,” he croaked.

Angelina wished he’d let her give him a hug, but they’d moved to the point where hugs, even in private, embarrassed him. Too bad ‘cause she could have really used a hug today. Lately it seemed as if the only place she had any kind of physical contact was in her dreams.

She brushed the buzzed, fuzzy brown hair on his scalp, feeling a little queasy herself, then handed him a plastic serving bowl. “Sorry you don’t feel good. Go ahead and get in bed.” The need to pick him up early from school disrupted everything she had to get done today. She had her final divorce hearing, the car needed an oil change, Lina needed poster board for a project due tomorrow. She supposed she should be happy Lina texted her during the day instead of waiting until eight o’clock tonight but gee, the errand threw a wrench into her already packed schedule.

Then she thought about how awful Brandt looked and knew everything else could go out the window. Her baby needed her. No matter that he topped six foot two and outweighed her by at least sixty pounds. He was still her baby.

Going back to the car, Angelina grabbed Brandt’s track bag and lugged it back into the laundry room. She unzipped the bag gingerly and tried to hold her breath through the awful smell. The stench of unwashed socks and damp, sweaty shorts assaulted her senses.

Gah, he stunk.
Teenage boys, gotta love ‘em, because you can’t kill them.

She loaded Brandt’s track clothes in the washing machine, dumped in the detergent, pressed the button and waited for the little ‘dink’ sound to indicate the load had started.

Might as well clean out the whole bag and spray some Windex, her absolute cure all for any cleaning need, inside. She pulled out empty G2 bottles, oops a sock she’d missed, and his sprinting spikes. Tucked into the shoe was a plastic baggy.

Innocuous on its own but, it was plastic. She used wax paper bags for the kids’ lunches. Angelina pressed a hand over her forehead. She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to know. But she had to, right? There was no one else here to take that responsibility for her.

Oh shit. Did she have to deal with this now?

Angelina sank onto the cold linoleum floor of the laundry room. She reached out her hand, hoping there was evidence of food. Maybe someone gave him their peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and he’d stuffed the baggy in his track bag. But of course, that would be too simple.

The contents didn’t look like a sandwich. It looked like marijuana. But just in case, Brandt had taken some extra herbs to school to throw on a meatball sandwich that she hadn’t packed, she lifted the baggy to her nose and sniffed.

Ding, ding. Give her a gold star. She was correct.

Marijuana. Brandt had pot, weed, whatever you wanted to call it. Drugs. In his bag. She leaned back against the laundry room cabinets, knees bent, arms looped across her knees, and dropped her head down into the cradle of her arms.

She should go confront him right now. But she needed to talk to Gary and see how they should handle it, assuming he would even help.

She was so tired. So tired of being the one to keep everything together.

The kids whose world had changed almost overnight. Her sister who was having a surprisingly hard time with Grammy’s decline in health. The house. The bills. The paperwork. Was the universe so unkind that it decided to give her one big cosmic dump?

Really, what else could go wrong? And how much freaking more could she take without breaking?

Angelina thought about her dream man. She had started to notice little things, the satin strength of his muscles under skin almost sizzling hot, the way his wings seemed less and less substantial as if they were disappearing. How he was careful never to touch certain places on her body. How the dream was changing. He had his eyes open longer, and the disgust was starting to change into desire.

It was unhealthy, this dream. Angelina had so many things she should be focusing on, not sleeping in so she could have a few more minutes with her dream guy. She was crazy. Absolutely crazy.

Her head dipped and startled her awake.

Angelina listened but the washer hadn’t started. No dink. No drum filling with water. Dammit, not now. She couldn’t afford the time or the repair. The stupid washer was only a year old.