The Broken Angel (13 page)

“I’m broken.” He looked at her with his aquamarine eyes, and she saw the shame and the hurt behind them.

She leaned closer, put both hands on the side of his face, kissed him on the lips, then touched his forehead with hers. “I don’t care. We can find a way to be physically together if that’s what you want. And we don’t have to if it’s not something you’re interested in. I don’t want to lose you over this.”

He gently extricated himself from her hold, taking her hands away from him, and gave her a puzzled look. “I’m not sure—”

She stopped him. “There’s no need to talk about it.”

His lips turned up as he shook his head. “I actually think we should—”

Martina never heard the rest of his sentence because something grabbed her and pulled her away from the bench. Everything happened so fast, she found herself slammed against the wall behind them before she could even blink. Air was pushed out of her lungs at once as pain exploded behind her eyelids.

A wild roar exploded into the night, and streetlamps shut off, their lights going out in sparkles. Martina crumbled at the foot of the wall, and she watched without understanding what she was seeing. Two beings straight from her worst nightmares faced each other. One was tall and lean with claws instead of hands. The other was huge, both big and tall, and had black, clipped wings trailing down his back. They were engaged in a fight that defied reasoning and the laws of physics. They moved too fast and they seemed to hover over the ground at times.

Martina was so scared she was beyond screaming. Part of her brain told her she couldn’t be seeing what she was seeing, which meant she was in shock from her crack against the wall. Another part of her brain wondered how she could be so calm. She closed her eyes, hoping the two monsters would disappear.

When she reopened them, the two were still fighting. She could see blood blossoming on both creatures’ clothes, but neither of them slowed his attack against the other. Amidst the whole hellish experience, the aspect that astonished Martina the most was that not one of the visitors in the park seemed to notice the ongoing battle. She could see couples talking and holding hands in the distance.

The winged creature threw the other to the ground and pummeled him with punches that seemed to pack so much anger in them, Martina was surprised the face of the opponent hadn’t caved in at the first hit. The dark angel—his broken wings were dark as the night—didn’t stop beating the other until he lay still for more than a few counts.

Then, if what had just transpired wasn’t surreal enough, the massive, dark angel, a figure who couldn’t possibly exist and was a fruit of Martina’s overtaxed mind, reached for the rear pocket of his pants and with two fingers picked up a mobile. The muscle in his arms flexed as he brought the phone to his ear with one hand, and brushed the stubble on his jaw with the other. All the while, he kept his enemy firmly pinned to the ground by sitting on him.

Martina kept looking, fascinated by the quality of her hallucination, combining the impossible with the mundane. The dark angel looked at her and she saw his aquamarine eyes. Then he talked on the phone with Samuel’s voice.

Samuel saw Martina faint, but he couldn’t leave the vampire unattended. “Pick up, damn it.” Ludwig Barnes must have a life besides the office after all. Samuel let the cell phone ring until it went to the answering machine. He had called back twice already and would give up if his boss didn’t answer at the next ring.

“What is it?”

By the lack of formality and the brusque way Barnes answered, Samuel surmised his boss indeed had a life. He didn’t care to anger him at the moment. “I’m at the Orange Trees Garden and I have an unconscious vampire for you. Before you ask, I was attacked in a public park, but I raised the shield in time. None of the passersby saw anything. Send someone to pick him up.” He hung up and focused on Martina who was stirring awake.

She opened her eyes, but they were still dazed. Before, while he was fighting, she had looked at him with a distant stare.

“Martina?” He needed her to react and fast. “Can you hear me?”

She slowly straightened her back against the wall and pushed herself up to a sitting position.

“Are you okay? Can you stand?” He couldn’t move. Samuel knew the vampire was taking his time to recuperate from the fight to overthrow him and escape.

Martina frowned.

“You must leave. Someone is coming and I don’t want them to see you here. Do you understand?” The vampire’s arm moved ever so subtly and Samuel punched him in the face and knocked him out once again. “Martina, please, listen to me. You must go back to the car.”

She didn’t react. If anything, she seemed to slump back into a heap. Samuel swore, punched the vampire one last time for good measure, dismounted him, and reached Martina in two steps. He bent to put one arm around her back and the other under her knees, then hauled her to his chest and walked away from the vampire, hoping the man was truly unconscious and not just feigning it. Martina cradled close to his heart, he ambled toward a shadowed corner and gently laid her on the bench. Then he hurried back to the vampire, and from there checked that the hiding spot where he had left Martina was in fact concealing her from sight.

Both eyes on the tree behind which Martina was resting and one booted foot over the vampire, he waited for the paranormal police to arrive and take care of his prisoner. Normally, he would have personally attended to the vampire’s interrogation, but he had different priorities tonight, and was confident the truth serum concocted by the witches working at Castel Sant’ Angelo would work miracles. Not later than tomorrow, he would know why the vampire had been following him through Rome. With his mind occupied by thoughts of Martina’s wellbeing, Samuel strained his already depleted energies to keep the occlusion shield up.

By the time the paranormal police arrived, Samuel had already let the shield down twice, but no permanent harm had been done. At that time of the night, the park’s visitors were mostly teenagers looking for privacy. One couple had walked by close enough to notice something strange going on, but Samuel had reinforced the shield and they had steered away, mildly confused.

After the police—one werewolf and one immortal whose patrol car had been the closest to the scene—had taken Samuel’s statement and checked the still unconscious vampire’s credentials by looking into his wallet, they relieved Samuel from duty. He still had to wait for them to carry the vampire away and disappear behind the park’s gate before he could run back to Martina.

She was where he had left her and hadn’t moved a muscle. She was awake though and looking at him with eyes that didn’t give away her thoughts.

“Martina?” He sat on the bench and pulled her on his lap. He had to touch her, to feel her close.

“Samuel—” Her eyes trailed toward his shoulders and widened.

Samuel didn’t have enough power to raise an occlusion shield and keep his disguised form at the same time. He would have preferred to reveal the truth to her gradually, but he didn’t have that option anymore.

Martina’s right hand reached over and brushed one of his feathers. He shivered at the intimate contact.

She stopped. “Have I hurt you?”

“No. I like it.” He waited for her to resume her caress, but she kept staring at him.

“Is this real?”

“I’m afraid it is.” He wanted to hug her closer and rock her. He had never felt farther from her even though she was sitting on his lap.

She got off of him and sat by his side. “Are you…? What?”

“I’m an angel.” Samuel, who wasn’t affected by atmospheric changes, felt as if he were freezing from the inside out.

“You’re an angel.” She hugged herself. “What is the one you fought?”

He could barely comprehend what was going on in her mind, but was too scared she would bolt any moment now. “A vampire.”

“Of course.” For a moment it looked like she would start laughing. Instead, she closed her eyes and left them closed for several heartbeats. “You’re an angel,” she repeated softer.

“A fallen angel.” He turned his chin toward his right shoulder and let the wing on that side flex, hoping she would reach to him.

She tentatively raised one hand, but only when he nodded did she dare touch it a second time. He tried not to move under her perusal, but the sheer pleasure of showing himself to her was enough to make his feathers glow. He was glad she didn’t know what it meant or he would be too embarrassed.

Martina sat with her knees on the bench and leaned over his back, both hands trailing down his shoulders, caressing his black feathers. He noticed how she carefully avoided ruffling them by only brushing the feathers straight down.

Her fingers reached the truncated end of his right wing. “Your wings are broken.” She sat back on her thighs and faced him, her hands on her lap. “How did that happen?”

“I was in love with a man and left heaven to be with him, forfeiting my powers. My wings broke when I fell to earth.” Again, Samuel didn’t know how much he could tell her before she would snap, and he had heard her intake of breath. “Let’s go somewhere else where we can talk more comfortably.”

Martina’s eyes were hooded, but she nodded. “I want to go to I Girasoli.”

She surprised him with her request. Because of the fight, he was tired, but he wouldn’t have denied her anything and walked her to the car, bracing for the long drive and the series of questions she might have for him. She didn’t comment when he summoned his wings away to fit inside the car. Instead, Martina kept quiet, and only began talking when they were off of the highway and entering Todi.

“Angels. Vampires. What else is out there?” She wasn’t looking at him, her eyes glued to the window. Outside, the night was pitch black, yet she had kept herself busy staring at the nothingness passing by.

“Werewolves. Shifters. Fairies. Witches. Wizards. Warlocks. Demons. You name it. They are all real.” He wanted her snuggled closer to him. This separation he sensed growing between them felt almost like physical pain.

“I’m not hallucinating.” She brought her knees up.

“No, you aren’t.” Samuel drove to the city gate closer to his apartment, then brought the car to a halt by the medieval wall surrounding the center of Todi. “I wish you would look at me.”

Martina, now facing a brick wall, moved on the seat and turned toward him. Her eyes were red and swollen. “I’m not crazy.”

He couldn’t bear her anguished look and closed the gap between them to take her in his arms. “You are not crazy.”

She let him hug her and cradle her. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“You’ve been through a lot. You need to rest and give your mind time to take in a whole new world and… me.” He released her and gave her a small kiss on her head. “Let’s go inside.”

He locked the car, then took her hand and led her up the stairs to the square where the safety of his house awaited them. She leaned on him, giving him hope that not all was lost between them. The moment they were in, he left her on the couch, then went to turn on the radiator and put some water to boil for a tea. While retrieving a blanket, he remembered he had several bottles of liquor stocked in the cellars beneath I Girasoli—courtesy of Alexander, who had been disappointed by the lack of good spirits the first time he had been there.

A light blue comforter folded on his elbow, he walked back to the living room. “Care for a shot?”

She raised her face to look at him. “No, thank you. I think I need to be lucid.”

Samuel laid the comforter on her shoulders and she tucked herself in it, both legs underneath her body.

“This is you.” She pointed a finger at him, encompassing his figure from head to toes. “Really you?”

He sat on the opposite couch. “It’s me.”

“Why would you appear like someone who’s so different from…” Her eyes racked him up and down. “Well,
that
.”

“At first, it was a necessity. Outside of the paranormal world, I didn’t know how to move around people. Forced to shrink my wings to appear human, I could still feel them, like phantom limbs, and I constantly bumped into or jerked away from anyone on my path. The cripple act helped.” His right wing brushed against the floor. Familiar pain shot through his nerves, where the amputated endings touched the abrasive surface of the terracotta tiles. “But then I got used to the anonymity I gained in the process. Nobody notices me in the human world. I like to be invisible.”

“Why? Nobody likes to be invisible.” She moved her legs to the side, and sat up right.

“Not everybody has fallen as low as I have.” His shoulders twitched.

“Misery likes company.” She gave him a half-hearted smile, then her gaze went to his arm. “I always wondered about that tattoo of yours.”

Samuel instinctively touched the abstract wing he had tattooed on his right arm. “The first thing I did when I came back to earth was to mark my body.”

Martina frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“After I fell and my lover rejected me, I was escorted by a demon to the Middle Plane—“

She raised one eyebrow. “The Middle Plane? Demon?”

“You can think of it as the human version of the Purgatory—and regarding the demon, it was his job to cart lost souls like mine there.”

“What did you do in this Middle Plane?”

“Not much. The whole place is structured like a tiered garden, and I was free to roam it at my pleasure.”

“Could you leave?”

He shook his head. “No, and I wouldn’t have though. I wanted to die after Sahadeva left me for his wife.”

A dark cloud seemed to obscure Martina’s face. “Sahadeva, your lover had a wife?”

He raised one hand to placate her ire. “Well, I could say that I came first and she was the
other
, the one who ruined our union, but it doesn’t matter. It hasn’t mattered in a long time.” Samuel realized how liberating was talking about his ordeal.

“What happened then? You just stayed in this place and what? Did you meet other angels like you or—”

He shook his head. “I was alone the whole time.”

She shrunk into the couch and rearranged the comforter to cover her completely. “How long where you there?”

“A century.”

“One hundred years of solitude…” she whispered, then hugged the comforter closer and leaned her head against the back cushion. “How did you make it? I don’t think I could’ve survived that. No one to talk to. No one to hug.”

“I knew that to be stranded in the Middle Plane was my punishment and I accepted it. The demon who had escorted me explained the terms of my staying, then left for his next retrieval.”

“Why solitude as a punishment though?”

“Because I was once
One
with the rest of my brethren. It is difficult to explain, but I was part of this sentient entity—”

“But then it’s even worse. You must have felt so alone. That’s too cruel.” Martina’s eyes misted.

“I knew what I was doing when I renounced my holiness to be with Sahadeva.”

She kept quiet for a moment, then she shifted on the couch. “Wait, if you weren’t a singular being, how could you meet and fall in love with anyone at all? I mean the other angels, your brethren, they would’ve known and stopped you, right?” She scooted toward the edge of the couch. “And if you were part of this entity, why would you need anyone—anything else in your life? Wasn’t your existence complete?”

Samuel was taken aback by the depth of her questions. He had never had to explain himself before and was at loss for words.

“Did I cross a line?” She lowered her chin as she brought her knees up.

“No. Not all. I find this, talking to you, therapeutic, but it’s uncharted territory for me. I’ve never been in a relationship after Sahadeva, and I’m afraid I might make a mess of it.” He saw from the way she clutched the comforter to her chest that he had said the wrong thing. “But I’ll try my best to answer any question you have, starting with how I could feel anything outside of the oneness I was part of.” He needed to prioritize his thoughts, but fear of losing her and exhaustion garbled his mental processes. He stood to loosen up his muscles, then realized he towered over her and she had to arch her neck to look at him, and he sat down again.

Without breaking eye contact, she relaxed her stance. “There’s no wrong answer.”

He felt a flicker of hope warming his heart and it was enough to clarify his thoughts. “As an angel, I had a job. I was the equivalent of a midwife for souls.”

Martina’s lips curved up in a smile and she tilted her head. “That sounds… cute.” Her eyes roamed over his body, a puzzled frown on her face, but she was still smiling. “It’s hard to picture you as anything cute in your present shape though.”

Samuel’s disappointment must have been clear, because she shook her head and her smile widened. “It was a compliment.” Her eyes traveled again from his head to his boots, then came up to his face. There, her expression saddened for a moment.

He thought he heard her sigh, but the sound was too feeble even for his enhanced hearing. “Thanks?”

She nodded, her face composed again. The joyous banter was gone, replaced by a serious expression.

He gathered the strength to keep on talking. “I was an angel of life. I helped souls transitioning from the astral realm to the physical at birth.”