Dark Avenging Angel (13 page)

John said nothing, but I felt him tense.

The medium came round and let herself be helped to her feet. From my limited sight of her, she seemed tired. Drained.

Some people left. When I caught their eyes, they quickly looked away. I wouldn’t be too welcome on a return visit. After all, I’d ruined their evening, even if I had given them something to gossip about.

I stood on shaky legs and took John’s hand as he led me down the aisle.

A breathless voice sounded behind me, “Just a second, please.”

I turned to see the medium hurrying after us. She looked pale but otherwise unharmed by her experience.

“Your name’s Jane, isn’t it?” she said.

“How did you know that?”

“The spirit told me.” She touched my arm and then drew away as if I’d struck her. She rubbed her hand. “It is as I feared. You have darkness around you. A great darkness. You’re in danger, Jane, and you need help. Now, before it’s too late and your soul is taken.”

John drew me closer to him. “I’d rather you didn’t upset my girlfriend with wild mumbo jumbo like that.”

“I wish it was mumbo jumbo. I’m telling you. She is in great danger and ignoring it won’t make it go away.”

I wanted to hear more. Maybe she could help me. “The voice,” I said, “the words you spoke. I recognized them. Did the spirit tell you his name?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t want me to know. I don’t know why. It happens sometimes. You say he’s said those same words to you before?”

I nodded. “I have these wild dreams. But they’re more than dreams because they leave something behind. If I’ve been running over wet grass, when I wake up, my feet are covered in grass stains and mud.”

“Then they’re not dreams. You’re actually there.”

“Like an out-of-body experience?”

“Sort of. In your case, you physically transport there. I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never come across an actual case.”

John said nothing, but his mouth was set in a firm, thin line. I ignored it.

I had to find out what this woman knew. Maybe it would help. I wanted to tell her about my angel and how she frightened me now.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” I said.

“Elizabeth Grainger. Call me Beth. How long have you been experiencing these…occurrences?”

John tapped my arm. “We need to go.”

Beth couldn’t have failed to detect the annoyance in his voice.

She looked from one to the other of us. “Yes, and I’m afraid I have a train to catch.” She rummaged in her pocket and pulled out a slightly creased business card and a pen.

“Call me anytime if you want to chat about this.” She scribbled down a name and a phone number on the back of the card and handed it to me. “Neville Jenkins. He’s helped a lot of people I know and he lives not far from here. Promise me you’ll give him a call tomorrow and go and see him as soon as you can. I cannot stress the importance.”

John cleared his throat. “I think that’s enough nonsense for one evening. Come on, Jane.”

Embarrassment made my cheeks burn. “I’m sorry, Beth. It’s not nonsense, John. If this was happening to you, you’d understand.”

“I’m affected by what’s happening to you, but whatever’s causing it isn’t some superstitious rubbish, it’s psychological, and for some reason, you’re sleepwalking outside, down the road, in someone’s garden. Who knows? But when you’re in the throes of these dreams, you’re in bed with me. I’ve been there when you’ve woken up from them, remember?”

Beth shook her head. “The dream is long over before then. Our brains play tricks on us when we sleep. How often have you experienced a dream that seemed to have lasted for hours, but when you wake only minutes have elapsed? In fact, your dream probably only lasted seconds.

“It’s the same with Jane. Her body is reacting to something she has already finished experiencing. Something which happened when you were also asleep. I am right, aren’t I? She wakes you up with her cries and disturbances? I’m guessing you haven’t mounted a vigil around her bed all night. If you had, you would, in all probability, have seen her vanish, only to reappear moments later.”

John looked at her as if she had just announced she was an alien. “What utter nonsense,” he said, his lips pursed and angry.

I couldn’t let his skepticism go unchallenged. So much of what Beth had just said made sense to me. I looked John straight in the eye. “What about the time you saw my angel?”

“Angel?” Beth said. “You’ve seen an angel?”

“I call her that,” I said. “I’ve seen her since I was a child. My dark angel.”

Beth winced. “Can you describe her to me?”

“Tall, cloaked, white skin. I mean really white.”

“Her eyes?”

“Black, but sort of translucent as well. They seem to reflect something I can’t quite make out. Shadows. But I know there’s more. Much more.” I paused. Even to myself I sounded crazy, but Beth was listening intently. “She speaks to me, but usually I sort of pick it up in my head. I don’t hear her words the way you and I are talking now. I used to think of her as my guardian angel, but—”

Beth squeezed my hand. This time she didn’t recoil, but the taut expression on her face told me the effort pained her. “You must see Neville. He knows more about this sort of thing than I do. But you must do it soon. This week if you can. I cannot stress that enough. You’re in danger. Great danger.”

“I’m not listening to any more of this!” John said and pulled my arm.

I shrugged him off. “Is there nothing I can do to protect myself?”

Beth hesitated, as if unsure whether to tell me anything else. Then she seemed to arrive at a decision. She let go of my hand. “Pray,” she said. “And don’t believe anything that happens in the world you visit. Nothing is as it appears to be. I’m sure of that. No one can have everything, so don’t be fooled. Everything comes at a price you cannot afford.” She frowned at her watch. “I’m sorry, I must go or I’ll miss my train. I can’t tell you any more, in any case. I’m so sorry. Bless you, my dear.”

She scurried past us, her long, gray hair flowing behind her.

“I can’t believe how rude you were to her,” I said, as John and I made our way to the car.

“She’s a charlatan.”

“Then how did she know my name? How did she know about Carlo and what he always says to me?”

“I don’t know. As I said before, they’re clever, devious people.”

“Well, I’m going to take her advice. I’m going to contact Neville and make an appointment to see him.”

John unlocked the car. “Waste of time.”

“Even if it is, I’ve got nothing to lose. I need answers, John, and if there’s even a chance he may have them, it’s a chance I have to take.”

“Fair enough. Just don’t expect me to come with you.”

I hadn’t expected that. I really thought John would back me up and come along with me for moral support, if nothing else. Now I would have to go alone. Well, so be it.

“I don’t know why you’re so against it, and why you’ve become so skeptical all of a sudden. Have you forgotten that evening when you saw my angel and she frightened you so much you couldn’t stay at the flat?”

John turned out of the car park and joined the main road. “I haven’t forgotten, but I think I had some sort of hallucination.”

“What? Oh come on, John. After what she did to you? How could that be a hallucination?”

“I read up about mass hysteria. How people can become convinced they’re experiencing something because someone else is telling them they are.”

“Even if that’s true, it didn’t happen that way and you bloody well know it. She hurt you. Actually
hurt
you, and I couldn’t stop her.”

John parked outside the flat. He switched off the engine but made no attempt to get out of the car. “Jane, I don’t want to argue with you, so I think we’d better agree to differ. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to drop in at the office. There are some papers I forgot to bring home and I need to read up on them before a big meeting tomorrow.”

I watched him drive away, feeling a sense of dread I couldn’t quantify.

At ten o’clock, he was back. Two hours after he’d gone to the office. Thankfully he’d left his bad humor there.

“I decided to do my work there rather than bring it home. Besides, I thought it would do us both good to cool off a little. I’m sorry I was so insensitive earlier.” He kissed me and sat down on the settee.

I picked up the bottle of claret I had begun to drink to steady my nerves and waved it at him. He nodded and I fetched a glass from the sideboard. “I shouldn’t think it’s the first time Beth’s been faced with hostility,” I said as I filled his glass and topped up my own. “It goes with the territory.” I handed him his glass, then joined him on the settee.

John took a swig and set his glass down on the occasional table. “Are you still going to phone that guy she told you about?”

“I’ve already done so. I’m seeing him on Thursday after work. He’s only ten miles away, easy enough to get to.”

“Okay. Do you want me to come with you?”

I hesitated. “No, I know you’re not comfortable with it and I’ll be fine.”

“If you change your mind, just let me know.”

“Why the change of heart? You were so against it earlier.”

He picked up his glass and took another swig of wine. “No reason. Just decided to be a bit more supportive, that’s all.”

I kissed him. “You’ve always been supportive. You just had a bit of a wobble today.”

“I don’t want anyone taking advantage of you.”

“They won’t.”

Out of sight, I crossed my fingers.

I fell asleep quickly that night.

I entered the dream in the hotel lobby. Carlo was leaning against the concierge’s desk, waiting for me. No milling crowd tonight. The place was deserted. Soft music played in the background.

“What is this all about?” I said. “Why do I keep coming here?”

He smiled. “You have unfinished business.”

“With my angel. Not with you. I don’t understand your role in all this, or even who you are. I know who you look like, but that doesn’t make any sense either.”

He laughed. “Not everything has to make sense.”

“And why do you keep telling me I can have everything I want? I’ve been told not to believe you. Everything has a price.”

“That is true.”

“So what’s the price? If I say what I want, how will it be paid for?”

He shook his finger and tut-tutted. “Too many questions, Jane. Too many questions.” He kissed his finger and touched it to my lips.

To my amazement, a surge of desire rushed through me. My dream self wanted this man every bit as badly as I had ever wanted John. There had always been something between us. I had thought it to be confined to the dream. Unreal. But this was intense.

I had no time to work it out. A massive rumble shook the foundation like a small earthquake. In the distance, screams. Somewhere, out of sight, people were crying for release. Under my feet, I felt the vibration.

“What’s happening? What’s chasing us?”

Carlo grabbed my hand. “No time for questions. We must run.”

I wrenched myself free. “Not this time. I’m not running.”

Carlo’s expression changed from fear to abject terror. His eyes grew rounder. A nervous tic twitched the corner of his lip. “
Andiamo.
We have to go
now
.” He made another grab for me and I stepped back. The thundering shook the walls.

I shouted above the din, “No. I’ll see this through. Whatever it is, I must face it.”

“Then I must go.”

He raced off down the corridor, out of sight.

I closed my eyes and prayed for protection. The thundering sounded almost on top of me now. I took a deep breath and turned around.

My angel stood maybe four feet away. She held her ledger and gold pen.

I took a deep breath. “I’m not ready,” I said. “I don’t need vengeance. No one has hurt me.”

You must choose.

“But why? If no one deserves to die, I don’t have the right to take their life.”

You do not take their life. I take their soul.

“I don’t know what the rest of my life holds, but I suspect you do.”

She said nothing.

“Then you must know whether anyone is going to treat me badly, and if so, you will know when the time is right for my third, and final, act of vengeance.”

It has already happened.

The words burned into my brain. “I don’t understand. How?”

Soon you will see. Then you must choose. A soul is forfeit to me.

She slipped into the shadows.

I prayed I’d wake up, that I’d leave this unnatural place. But, now, people drifted back into the hotel. Strangers who ignored me as if I weren’t there.

A sudden chill made me wish I had a jacket. And then, there I was, wearing one made of soft, black leather. In some ways, at least, this behaved like a dream. Still I couldn’t wake up.

I felt an undeniable urge to explore the upper floors of the hotel. I climbed the sweeping staircase, wandered down corridors and opened any doors that weren’t locked. No one seemed to stay at this hotel. So many empty rooms, this time furnished in an eclectic mix of styles, from cluttered Victorian to minimalist modern.

Then I came to the end of a corridor where a door stood open. I tapped on it. No answer. I entered.

The man seated at the dressing table turned.

I screamed.

Blackened skin hung off Carlo’s face in ribbons. His eyes were bloody pools and what remained of his teeth were sharpened, yellow fangs. Mud, blood and pus smeared his tuxedo. The stench of his decaying body reached my nostrils and I gagged.

He reached out skeletal hands.

“My God, what happened to you?”

His thin voice rasped like sandpaper, “This is what I am. How I have always been…Death.”

A whirlwind started up from nowhere. It flung me out of the room and slammed the door. I crashed to the floor, twisting and banging my right knee. I stayed where I was for a minute, willing the pain to go away. I concentrated on steadying my breathing.

From behind the closed door, the wind whistled, then died down. When it stopped, I struggled to my feet and tried the door handle.