Stone Angel

by Christina Dodd

  Christina Dodd’s

  The Chosen Ones

  STONE ANGEL

  A novella of the Chosen Ones

  By Christina Dodd

  & Audrey Shaw

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2012 by Christina Dodd & Audrey Shaw

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this work may be reproduced in any fashion without the express, written consent of the copyright holder.

  Stone Angel is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed herein are fictitious and are not based on any real persons living or dead.

  The Legend of the Chosen Ones

  "Long ago, when the world was young…" a gorgeous and vain woman abandoned her children, a boy and a girl — twins with hideous birthmarks — to the river and the forest to meet their deaths. Instead, they became the first of the Abandoned Ones, gifted with abilities that could save the world … or end it.

  The boy was marked with a sinister tattoo and given the gift of fire, and he gathered others around him with similar gifts to become the Chosen Ones — seven men and women who became a powerful force of light in a dark world.

  The girl had the mark of an eye on the palm of her hand and became a seer. She turned to the devil, gathering six other gifted ones to her. They became the Others, bringing darkness and death to the world.

  The Chosen Ones and the Others have fought for centuries for the hearts and souls of the Abandoned Ones.

  All around the world, that battle goes on today …

  CHAPTER ONE

  SHE COULD hear them singing.

  Ignoring the mythical, musical stones around her wrist, Charisma Fangorn concentrated on the difficult task ahead of her — soundly beating the other Chosen Ones at Trivial Pursuit.

  It was winter in New York. The Chosen Ones were cozy in Irving Shea’s mansion in the Upper East Side. And all was quiet on the streets. Too quiet, Caleb D’Angelo said in an ominous voice, but his wife Jacqueline hushed him, and told him to cherish these moments, because it would get interesting soon enough. Jacqueline was a seer, so everyone listened and obeyed.

  Aaron Eagle was to Charisma’s right, trying to keep a straight face while reading her the question on the next Trivial Pursuit card. He finally managed to ask, "Is Uranus visible to the naked eye?"

  Samuel Faa dissolved into laughter.

  Charisma sighed.

  Boys.

  She exchanged an eye-roll with Isabelle Mason Faa.

  The four of them were gathered around the gaming table in the center of the library, each of them perched in dark mahogany chairs with beautifully patterned, but highly uncomfortable seat cushions.

  Charisma hadn't been able to feel her bottom for twenty minutes now.

  A few days ago, during a game of rummy, they had tried sitting in the plush, midnight blue chairs that normally surrounded the fireplace. Not only did they receive a withering glare from McKenna, butler extraordinaire, for scooting furniture across the solid wood floors, but they were sitting so low, Charisma had to balance on a stack of ancient tomes to see the table.

  Personally, she thought they should buy a card table and some folding metal chairs, but at the suggestion, McKenna had reacted with such horror, she shut up and decided the torturous mahogany chairs worked just fine .

  So here they were, back to the hard-as-rocks seats, trying to earn Trivial Pursuit wedges, their legs tingling from the lack of blood flow.

  The rest of the Chosen Ones, along with their loved ones, were arrayed about the room, enjoying the fire while a blizzard roared through the New York streets.

  Rosamund Hall was sequestered in the window seat, leaning against overstuffed mustard-colored pillows and simultaneously reading and pouting. Her husband, Aaron, had said she couldn't join the game of Trivial Pursuit because she knew all the answers. So instead, she was reading a huge leather-bound volume that looked from where Charisma was sitting like it said something about physics. Since Honors Physics class had made Charisma's senior year of high school a nightmare, she vowed not to ask Rosamund what she was reading about today.

  If she did, Rosamund would tell her.

  And good manners had their limits.

  Charisma turned to glance at Jacqueline and Caleb D ‘Angelo, playing Uno in front of the fireplace. Jacqueline's porcelain skin was flushed, as much from the fire's warmth as from the look that Caleb was giving her. They had been married for over two years, and they were still googly-eyed around each other.

  John and Genny Powell were shooting pool … badly. At least Charisma assumed it wasn’t going well since they hadn’t re-racked the balls for over a half hour. But then again, it’s hard to finish a game when you’re busy making innuendo-laced comments every five seconds.

  The only member of the Chosen Ones absent from their little gathering was Aleksandr Wilder. None of them had seen him since a few days ago when he had jumped out of their cab to get married at the courthouse.

  At least, that’s what he had said he was doing.

  But none of the Chosen Ones but Charisma had met the bride, and Alex had been so secretive of late. And everyone had been stung by the fact that not one of them, presumably his best friends after nearly three years of living and fighting in close quarters, had been invited to his special day.

  More worrisome, none of his family had been there. And Aleksandr was close to his family.

  Nothing about this felt like Aleksandr; it wasn’t like him to be a selfish jerk. But Charisma had decided she needed to stop worrying about the fact he hadn’t returned to the mansion or called. She supposed he was on his honeymoon, and she would ignore how oddly annoyed that made her feel.

  Probably she suffered from the loneliness that comes from being the only uncoupled Chosen One. She really was going to have to do something about her lack of a mate, as much for the sake of Jacqueline’s prophecy (which said each of the Chosen had to find a mate before their true powers would be released) as for her own sanity. Living in the Mansion of True Lu-ove could really wear on a single person’s nerves.

  Charisma sighed and turned toward Irving Shea and his nurse, Amanda Reed.

  Amanda sat in a velvety blue chair, reading to Irving from To Kill a Mockingbird, and the old man and the young woman were a study in contrasts.

  Irving was almost a hundred years old, confined to a wheelchair, one of the first black CEOs of a major corporation in America.

  Amanda was slender, pretty and blond, and her appearance, combined with her profession, made her seem to the casual observer to be soft and gentle. That was, until the casual observer looked into her stern gray eyes and realized this woman could have brought the Roman Empire to its knees. During the time she had been with Irving, she had made no friends among the Chosen Ones, allowed no trouble in her handling of her patient, and even faced off with their cook, Martha — and won.

  Of course, when it came to Irving and his precarious health, she was always right, and tonight she seemed to be lulling him to sleep with her soft voice.

  It was working, too. Irving was nodding off, yet every once in a while, he would stop Amanda and ask her to repeat a passage.

  To Kill a Mockingbird was one of his favorite novels, and when he was feeling up to it, he liked to tell the Chosen Ones about the time that he met Harper Lee at a luncheon. The part Charisma always enjoyed the most was his description of the food: devilled eggs, fried chicken, and butter cake.

  Irving's love of food nearly matched Charisma's own. After he had shown her the section of the library filled with cookbooks, including a signed first edition of Julia Childs's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," she had spent hours poring over the recipes, tips, and step-by-step instructions for how to truss a chicken properly. N
ot that she was ever going to get to try it out, since Martha kept such a strict eye on the mansion's enormous, pristine kitchen.

  As if on cue, Martha with her usual stern look and tightly braided gray hair came through the door with a cart carrying what was referred to as "high tea" by Irving and "an amazingly filling midday meal" by the Chosen Ones. After a week of Martha's meals, if not for the well-equipped gym in Irving's basement, Charisma and the rest of the Chosen would be plump. Maybe even rotund.

  Going to the sideboard, Martha set up cranberry scones with heavy Devonshire cream, tiny smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches, cubes of raw sugar, yellow thistle honey, and heavy red ceramic mugs of steaming Earl Grey tea.

  The fine china had been retired after Rosamund knocked a priceless, hand-painted tea cup onto the floor a few months ago, spraying chamomile tea and shards of china across a corner of the Aubusson carpet. Martha's perfectly contained wrath had brought Rosamund to tears, and Aaron had had to take her upstairs to "comfort" her.

  Charisma turned back to the game, ignoring the insistent humming of her stone bracelet. The trouble with having a magic bracelet was — sometimes it mumbled. Right now, she knew her stones were fussing about something to do with Osgood. But what? And why was this news?

  Osgood was always trouble. Always. She needed more direction.

  Osgood wasn’t the biggest bad guy, strictly speaking. That honor belonged to the devil, and the Chosen were doing their best to keep him from grasping the Earth in his hands. But it was pretty clear to Charisma and the rest of the Chosen Ones that Osgood was the devil’s vessel, possessed and given power for the express purpose of eradicating the Chosen Ones and descending the world and all of its inhabitants into hell.

  After the destruction of the Gypsy Travel Agency, along with most of the former Chosen Ones and almost all of their resources, the current Chosen Ones were the last line of defense in an epic battle. Times like this, when the Chosen could relax and enjoy each others’ company, were getting fewer and much farther between.

  So Charisma gave the ridiculous question about Uranus her best fifty/fifty guess since she wasn’t an astronomy buff.

  "No?" she guessed.

  “Yes!” Aaron said in triumph. “You need dark skies and good star charts, as it is very faint, but it is visible with the naked eye.”

  “Well, excuse me!” Charisma said.

  “We are talking about the planet, right?” Samuel asked.

  Isabelle sighed. “You just can’t let it go, can you? Honestly, Samuel, you act like you’re five years — Charisma, what’s wrong?”

  Charisma clapped her hands over her ears. The stones at her wrist shrieked a warning.

  Uno cards hit the floor.

  Jacqueline screamed.

  Message delivered, the warning from the stones slowly faded.

  For Jacqueline writhed on the floor, immersed in a vision that swept her from the real world and into sepia-toned foreboding.

  Caleb sat, trying to hold himself back from jumping to her rescue. As if he could…

  The Chosen Ones watched, riveted, as Jacqueline rose from the carpet and blindly reached out as though to stop something awful from happening. Her eyes were blank; for long moments, she swayed as if she was moving in the wind. “No,” she whispered. “No!”

  Everyone in the library crept forward, hushed in anticipation of what her vision would reveal.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, Jacqueline blinked, her face cleared … and she was herself once more.

  The vision was over.

  Caleb stood quickly, gathering her into his arms.

  Irving, still pale, but now completely alert, said, "Perhaps, dear, you'd like to share the vision with us while it's still fresh in your mind."

  Jacqueline sagged, leaning on Caleb for strength. "I can tell you what I observed, but I don't know what it means. I just … I don’t know what it means."

  “You never do,” Samuel said.

  Isabelle elbowed him hard enough to make him go, “Oof.”

  “I know, Samuel. I’m sorry, but those seem to be the rules.” Jacqueline trembled from the force of the vision. "Listen and see if you can understand what I saw.”

  “Give it to me. Let me see what I can do.” Samuel might be a jerk, but Charisma would give him one thing — he was a willing jerk who tried his best.

  “I was in a mansion,” Jacqueline said, “filled with statues. Horrible white plastered statues of people with terrified expressions on their faces.”

  “Like the people we saw trapped and dying in the walls of Osgood’s skyscraper?” Isabelle asked.

  “Not exactly. I mean, I knew that at one time these statues were people, but I don’t know if they’re frozen or asleep or cursed. I walked through an entry and then through wide double doors, and I was in some sort of workshop. There were sculpting tools and buckets of plaster. And standing at the work table in the center of the room was a man holding a hammer and speaking to one of the statues.” Jacqueline turned pale, and covered her mouth and breathed slowly as if trying to contain her nausea. “Except this statue was of a young girl, and it wasn't covered in plaster. It wasn’t white, and she had tears running down her cheeks. Her arm was stretched out as if she was trying to reach something, or someone.”

  In her mind, Charisma could see the scene, and it made her want to put her back against the wall. “That is so eerie.”

  Reasonable as always, Rosamund pushed her tortoiseshell glasses up her nose and asked, “What did the man look like? Is he one of the Others? If I have a good enough description, I can do some research and figure out what we’re up against.”

  “He was handsome. Tall, with wavy chestnut brown hair and an elaborate tattoo of a tiger along his right arm. ” Jacqueline looked at the champagne-colored gloves she used to cover up the matching eye-shaped tattoos on her palms. “Since we, and the Others, all have marks of some sort, I would say it’s a good bet he’s one of … them.”

  “Sounds like we have a winner,” Samuel said.

  “Anyway, he said to the statue, Your sister better hurry up because Osgood has given her three days to bring us the old man, or I get to smash you into little bits. He sounded furious, and he waved that hammer around the whole time.” Jacqueline swallowed. “What do you think it means?"

  The Chosen Ones looked at her, equally dumbfounded, and worried. If Osgood had a hand in this, it was trouble.

  Charisma was trying to piece together the puzzle of who the young girl was when she realized that Irving's nurse, Amanda, was softly sobbing behind her.

  As the Chosen turned to look at her in surprise, Irving gently leaned to where she sat crumpled on the floor, To Kill a Mockingbird flung to the side. He pressed his handkerchief into her hand. "My dear, don’t you think it’s time you told us the truth?"

  “The truth?” Charisma muttered. What truth?

  Lifting her tear-stained face to the group, Amanda nodded, and swallowed, and nodded again. "I know what Jacqueline's vision means. It means if I don't deliver Irving to the Others in three days, my sister will be killed."

  CHAPTER TWO

  NOW THEY hated her. The Chosen Ones all hated her.

  Amanda had done everything in her power to avoid getting fond of the Chosen Ones. She had no choice. She faced hell every day and she could never allow herself a moment of joy or kindness or friendship. Now here she was, having a weeping fit on their floor while they stared at her as if she was a tick they’d discovered after a walk in the woods … sucking their blood.

  It was true, too. She was exactly that kind of bloodsucker. She was the worst kind of human … yet what else could she do?

  If she didn’t do as the Others demanded, her sister would die.

  If she did, honor and decency would suffer, and on the day she departed this life, she would face a judgment both terrible and just.

  Amanda could feel her eyes welling up again. Holding Irving's handkerchief to her face, she sobbed unrestrainedly.

>   Isabelle was the first to gather her thoughts enough. "Amanda, could you please clarify for us. Your sister is being held by the Others in the form of a statue?”

  Ashamed and defiant, Amanda nodded.

  “Why?" Isabelle asked.

  Amanda was shaken, not just by Jacqueline's vision and what it foretold, but also by having the attention of every person in the room on her … except for Martha, who in the manner of someone who had seen and heard too much to be surprised anymore, laid out the tea on each individual plate.

  As if sensing the disturbance, Irving's butler, McKenna, came through the door and calmly joined her, making murmured serving suggestions that made her brown eyes flash with irritation.

  “Go on, child,” Irving urged Amanda. “Tell us the whole story.”

  Amanda nodded, but she couldn’t look at him. Of all the people she had betrayed, it was him who would have suffered most from her treachery.

  “Let me … let me start at the beginning.” So long ago. So far away. “First of all, you should know that I am fifteen years older than my sister, Sophia, and I'm her only guardian. Our parents left soon after she was born because … because they were frightened by the strange mark on of her arm."

  "What was the mark?" Rosamund asked.

  "It looks like a tattoo, a perfectly formed lily. It reaches across her back." Amanda sighed shakily. "I remember my parents bringing her home from the hospital. They were in shock. They said it wasn't natural. They stayed for few months. They wanted to abandon Sophia. When I refused to leave her, they abandoned both of us.”

  “Great folks,” Aaron said, sotto voce.

  Amanda couldn’t pretend she didn’t hear him. She was done with pretending. “Yes, they cowered at every portent, believed every televangelist, looked for omens and ran from their responsibilities the first chance they got. They were not admirable people, and my DNA is nothing to brag about. But I loved that baby, and I didn’t tell anybody my parents were gone. I’d been working summers for three years—”