Angel's Kiss

by Melanie Tomlin

  “Actually,” I began, a bit embarrassed. “I gave it to myself and left one vamp alive to spread the word.”

  “You didn’t tell me you’d left one alive.”

  “Oh, it was hard, believe me. When my lips were on his neck all I could think about was the taste of warm honey running down my throat. You know, it’s funny. They’re cold to touch yet their blood is warm going down. Go figure!”

  “And you managed to let him go?” Danny asked, amazed.

  “Yeah. I had to refocus all of my energy, but I did it.”

  Danny was shaking his head. “Amazing, you are truly amazing!”

  Gradually I drifted back to the map, studying it intently, the boundaries still shining brightly. After I’d memorised as much detail as possible about his territory I stood up and stretched.

  “The bath’s ready,” Danny said.

  How did he do that? I wondered. How does he know when I’m ready for a bath?

  “Thanks,” I replied, and headed off to enjoy a soak.

  Afterwards, I lounged around in the robe Danny had provided for me on the first day I’d arrived at the cottage. I’d never thought to ask if the plain white robe was his and he’d never mentioned anything about it. Would he? Perhaps not, too much the gentleman… for an angel.

  “Danny, I’ve been thinking…”

  “Yes, what’s on your mind,” he asked, still reading the book he’d picked up when I’d headed off for a bath.

  “What would happen to me if I let go of your hand in the lights?”

  His head snapped up from the book and he closed it with a thwack. I jumped. I wasn’t expecting him to do that.

  “You must never, ever let go of my hand,” he said harshly. “If you do, you’ll be lost to me forever. I won’t be able to find you, even if you call my name.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know exactly what it would be like for one such as you. It’s bad enough for angels, so I’ve been told. Think of what happens in the lights as floating along a fast-flowing river. It takes you from one place to another and eventually you get off, or the current takes you to the bank. If you try to stay, when the time has come to leave, you drown — psychologically, not physically. Your body is ejected eventually, once your mind is lost. Some take longer than others, but it never fails to happen. The only way to save them is to kill them. I’ve never witnessed this — never had to take another angel’s life because of it — and I never want to.

  “You can marvel in the lights, there’s no harm in that, but never wish to stay there. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Just like fire the lights are pretty, but dangerous.”

  “As long as you remember that you have nothing to fear,” he smiled. “Besides, I wouldn’t let your hand slip from mine.”

  “That’s nice to know,” I replied with a smile of my own.

  Unexpectedly I felt kind of awkward and out of place, sitting here in my robe and nothing else, in the presence of an angel. There was far too much smiling going on. Far too much something else going on that I couldn’t put my finger on — too long being alone with one person, in the company of supernatural beings. I needed some alone time, just me and no one or nothing else.

  “I think I’ll call it a night. There are still a hell of a lot of vampires out there and I’m not at my peak yet. That makes me vulnerable, and I’ve never liked being vulnerable. Some sleep and then some more hunting tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

  Danny’s head was back in his book and he nodded absently.

  “Good night,” I said.

  “Night,” Danny replied, not looking up.

  I walked to what I now considered my room and wondered why sometimes he paid me more attention than I deserved, and other times he almost ignored me. It was downright frustrating, in more ways than one.

  I lay in bed thinking about what could have happened to me if Danny hadn’t come when I’d called his name. What if he’s busy fighting a demon or something else? He wouldn’t be able to extract himself from that situation to rescue me, would he? I needed to be more careful if I wanted to live at least a normal mortal lifespan, never mind time immemorial.

  I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep. I dreamt of drowning in the sweetness of vampire’s blood, of going mad with desire for the honey-flavoured ambrosia to touch my tongue and flow, warm and liquid, down my throat. Somewhere in my dream the shining light of an angel hovered above me, watching and waiting patiently, ready to release the red flame if I touched another with my lips.

  12. Teratology 101

  When I woke I felt refreshed and even stronger, if that were possible, without having had anything further to feast on since the day before. I climbed out of bed, dressed and headed down the small hall — a bounce in my step — to the living area.

  Danny was still reading a book, though judging by the pile on the coffee table he’d read quite a few while I’d been sleeping.

  “Wow! You must be a speed-reader. Is that a good book?” I asked.

  “Hmm?” Danny looked up. “Sorry, I was engrossed in this book.”

  I rolled my eyes. He closed the book and added it to the pile.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I haven’t read a good book in ages.”

  “There are plenty there,” Danny said as he pointed to the bookcase. “Help yourself. Just be careful with the older ones. Unlike angels they don’t age very well.”

  “I’m sorry, but they’re not my kind of books,” I replied dryly.

  “Of course not,” Danny said. “Forgive me.”

  “Danny, will there ever be a situation where you might not be able to come and get me when I need help?” I bit my lip, anticipating his answer.

  “Yes and no,” he said.

  Sometimes it was hard to get a straight answer out of him!

  “Okay, that makes a lot of sense!”

  “If I’m otherwise preoccupied, then yes, I wouldn’t be able to come straight away, but I will not leave you somewhere, in possible danger, if I know I may have other business.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Just checking.”

  “I’ve been remiss in educating you about the monsters you’re fighting,” Danny said. “It’s time you learned what does and doesn’t work.”

  Danny waved a hand for my benefit, so I knew something was going to happen. A vampire, werewolf, zombie and some sort of reptilian creature suddenly appeared before me. I automatically took up a defensive position.

  “It’s okay,” he said, “they’re not real. They’re just here to help with the lessons.”

  I walked up to the vampire and gave it a shove. It didn’t move an inch, eyes unblinking. I did something low, even for me, and kneed it in the crotch. No reaction whatsoever, though I sure as hell felt a twinge of pain in my knee. I may as well have kneed a tree.

  Danny coughed into his hand to attract my attention.

  “If you’re done having fun with the vampire perhaps we can start.”

  I sat in a chair opposite the row of monsters and raised my hand in the air.

  “What are you doing?” Danny asked.

  “When I was in school we had to raise our hand if we had a question for the teacher,” I replied, smiling.

  “You’re not in school now,” Danny laughed.

  “Sure feels like it to me,” I mumbled.

  “What did you want to know?”

  “I don’t understand why those vampires we encountered choose to live underground when they could blend in so well in any city, where food is plentiful. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “They normally do live in cities, or on the fringes. That was a hunting party. They have a base camp, albeit an underground one, in the forest. They were hunting wild werewolves.”

  “Great,” I said. “Now you’re going to tell me there are two types of werewolves — the average garden variety of domesticated werewolf and wild ones.”

  “Not quite. The wild werewolves are those who choose to live far away from cities and
towns, no matter their size. In some ways they’re the most civilised of the werewolves — the most civilised of the monsters, trying to control the beast within. Unfortunately the world is shrinking, and hikers and backpackers make it hard for them. When they come across a mortal they’re more savage than their domestic cousins, as you’d call them, having denied their natural instincts for so long.”

  “Oh.”

  I almost felt sorry for the werewolves. Like me, they didn’t want the monster within to win. They wanted different lives to what fate had dealt them, to live in relative peace. Me, I was just getting used to my new life. I could never go back, could never be mortal, but at least I had nothing to fear from men ever again.

  “These are the monsters you’re most likely to come across in this region of the world. The most common of which are vampires and werewolves. All of these displayed before you are in their true form and only two of them cannot change forms. Can you tell me which ones?”

  Zombie was a no-brainer, but I wasn’t sure about the other one… is it vampires or that other thing? The vampires I’d had dealings with hadn’t changed form, although it could be that I just hadn’t seen it happen.

  “The zombie and the lizard man,” I said.

  “Not quite correct. The zombie and the vampire. Now tell me everything you know about the creatures here that you recognise.”

  “There’s a lot of conflicting information out there really. I guess I’ll start with the one I know least about — of the ones I know, I mean — the zombie.”

  What did I know about zombies? Very little really.

  “They’re reanimated corpses. If they’re brought back by voodoo they can be controlled, although sometimes they’re uncontrollable, so I don’t know how that works. They’re cannibals, feasting off human flesh and they’re dumbshits, but very strong dumbshits. If they’re a zombie as a result of some viral mutation their bite can turn you into a zombie as well. I can’t remember if they fall to pieces after a while, as their corpse rots. I might have read that somewhere. You have to cut off their heads or stab them through the brain in order to send them back to the grave. I don’t really know anything else about zombies.”

  Danny grinned. He thought it was hilarious, finding out what mortals thought about the monsters everyone hoped weren’t real, and only the stuff of fiction, movies and nightmares.

  “Go on,” he said encouragingly, “continue.”

  “Werewolves… let me think.” I tapped my lips with a finger. “Okay, if you survive a werewolf attack you become one, and the curse can only be broken if you kill the one that created you. They only turn into wolves during the full moon and can lead reasonably normal and active lifestyles for most of the month. They can be killed by a silver bullet and when they die they resume their human form. They’re very big, strong and fast, and can run on all fours or walk on their hind legs. They usually have quite long fingernails and toenails in their human form, but I imagine they could trim them if they wanted to. Also they’re meant to have a unibrow,” I rolled my eyes, “but in some European countries everyone has a unibrow, and I doubt they’re all werewolves. Besides, with laser hair removal, or shaving cream and a razor, they could fix that problem easily.

  “I’ve also heard of something called wolfsbane, but I don’t have a clue what it is and what it does.”

  “Is that it for werewolves?” Danny asked.

  “Um, they don’t make good pets?”

  Danny didn’t get my warped sense of humour.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess that’s it.”

  “Tell me about vampires,” he said.

  “Traditionally they can only come out during the night and sleep in coffins during the day, with a small bag of soil from their homeland. They can hypnotise people, are very pale and have two very prominent canines. They’re extremely strong and fast, and some can turn into bats, and others into wolves. I know that the latter isn’t right because you’ve already corrected me on that one.

  “Some have red eyes, but all of them have piercing eyes. They hate crucifixes, holy water, garlic and salt, and can’t walk on hallowed ground — although newly created vampires seem to claw their way out of coffins in cemeteries, so that can’t be right either, unless the ground hasn’t been consecrated.

  “They can’t come into your house unless you invite them in, have no reflection whatsoever, and don’t cast a shadow. A wooden stake through the heart will kill one, as will decapitating them and burning the body, or filling the mouth with garlic. Oh, yeah, sunlight kills them as well — fries them to a crisp, until they’re nothing but dust.”

  “Anything else?” Danny asked.

  “Probably,” I said, “but I can’t think of any more at the moment.”

  “Okay, I want you to forget everything you read, heard, or saw in the movies about these creatures, when you were mortal. Ninety-five percent of it is fiction and the five percent that’s correct was probably sheer luck.”

  “Well, I don’t even know what that thing is,” I pointed to the lizard man on the end.

  Danny beckoned the creature forward with his index finger. The thing walked to his side, turned once and halted, teeth bared. It was a brownish-green colour, had two arms and legs, an almost triangular shaped head with eyes set on the sides, two prominent needle-like teeth extending from the top of its mouth and, covering its bottom, a thick tail that reached to the floor.

  “This is a varakiana, created by a demon that had taken on the form of a snake. They don’t leave witnesses and can transform almost as quickly as werewolves — not bad for a demon-created monster,” Danny said appreciatively.

  “Danny, if demons can create monsters, why don’t angels create their own creatures, to fight on the side of good?”

  “We do not play God!” Oops, that was Danny’s angry voice. He was upset with me for even suggesting such a thing. “That is not our purpose.”

  “It was only a question, no need to get upset.”

  Danny clasped his hands together and rested his forehead on them for a few minutes. When he looked up again his face was once again composed.

  “Mortals aren’t the varakiana’s only prey, but they are large, so they don’t have to feed as often. As they use their fangs to kill, those that aren’t eaten, bones and all, are thought to be victims of snake bite. Their venom is highly potent and kills instantaneously, but it’s never been identified by mortals as something other than that of known poisonous snakes. Why? It’s quite clever really. They can communicate with snakes and know what poisonous species are in the region. They genetically alter their venom, pre-bite, to mutate once their victim is dead, until it matches that of a specific type of snake.”

  Danny clicked his fingers and the thing changed form, clad in the most basic of clothes — underwear.

  “In human form they are extremely difficult to detect, as their fangs retract,” he twirled his finger once in the air and it turned so I could see it from behind, “their skin colour resembles that of mortals, and scales only appear on their lower back. It’s another feat of evolution, to make them appear more like the dominant species on the planet — man. There’s no uniquely identifiable scent to their species, so you can’t detect them that way. They smell like any other mortal.”

  I leaned forward in my chair and studied the varakiana’s back. The scales looked very much like a three-dimensional tattoo. I reached my hand out hesitantly.

  “Can I?”

  “Go ahead, touch it,” Danny encouraged me.

  I stood up, walked closer to the creature and ran my fingers across the scales. From a distance they did look like an exquisitely detailed tattoo, but one touch dispelled that impression. They were cold, harder than skin, and slightly ridged. I pulled hard at one and it came away in my hand. It was very pretty, for a scale. Colours danced along it as I held it this way and that, to inspect it in the light. I instinctively put it in my mouth to bite, and taste with my tongue. My brain registered it as being hard, but thin p
lastic, though I knew that assessment was not correct. As to taste, it was slightly salty. The scale itself did not seem to have a distinctive flavour of its own, just as the body did not have a distinguishable scent.

  “So how do I kill one if I come across it?”

  “When in their humanoid form they can be killed like any other mortal. You just need to be sure it really is a varakiana you’re dealing with. Killing a mortal is not acceptable.”

  “Okay, so I get them to show me their back somehow,” I smiled. “I’m a girl of many talents. I’m sure I could come up with something.”

  Danny smiled wryly. “I’m sure you could.”

  Hmm, what was going on in that angel’s head!

  “And what about when it’s in its true form?” I asked. “How do I kill it?”

  Danny clicked his fingers again and the varakiana changed from humanoid to reptilian. It was interesting to see the transformation take place, watching the head flatten out and the tail grow.

  “Their scales are like armour plating and quite impenetrable to all but angels, demons and other monsters.”

  “How so,” I asked, “and would the same rules apply to me?”

  “Frankly, Helena, you break all the rules, so I’m not sure what will work for you apart from the tactics mortals could employ — if they were quick enough to react and knew what to do!” Danny sighed. “Angels have a number of natural weapons in their arsenal for killing monsters, depending on the type of monster. For example, angel fire always works. For Satan-created monsters we can only kill one at a time, yet with demon-created monsters a few dozen can easily be dispatched. Angel ice is effective on cold-blooded monsters, such as the varakiana — freeze them then smash them to oblivion.

  “Angel blood also acts as a poison to all but werewolves. The larger the creature the more blood that’s required, and for vampires, they must drain us dry — a life for a life.

  “Mortals can decapitate a monster and burn its body, but very rarely are mortals strong enough or fast enough to do this. You, however, are stronger and faster than a mortal. And we already know what your hands can do to vampires. It’s possible that may work on other creatures as well, but I wouldn’t rely on it. We need to work on the basis that you’re more of a mortal than anything else, just to be safe.”