Addictive Paranormal Reads Halloween Box Set

by Nana Malone

  “If you can’t find it in your heart to return even a small part of what he feels for you,” the Regent said, “his consciousness will dissipate.”

  The only thing that can kill an Archangel is a broken heart… Azrael’s words came back to haunt her. He twitched like some poor creature that had been electrocuted. The General kneeled behind his weeping wife and pulled her into his arms.

  “If you have any feeling for him at all," the General pleaded, "you must help him heal. He's been through enough already.”

  Elisabeth stared at the Archangel and the Dark Mother clinging to one another, blowing to smithereens her last few notions of heaven or hell. She had no concept of bonds or the other things the two heavenly creatures spoke of, but even if it hadn’t been running through her mind lately that she was in love with him, she knew she’d do whatever she could to help him because he was her friend. It would have to be enough…

  “Tell me what to do,” Elisabeth said.

  “There is great risk,” the Regent said, "if he’s wrong. But I don’t think so. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I can see the threads which stretch between you.”

  “At some point in the past you two chose to bond,” the General said. "Enough for you to begin to heal him."

  “What are you two talking about?” Elisabeth asked. “Please … speak in … some … Earth language? Neither one of you is making any sense.”

  “Ever since the day you touched him,” the Regent said. “He can feel his hand as though it were real. If you touch him a second time, we think it will give him greater access to the Song so he can finish healing.”

  “The Song?” Elisabeth asked.

  “The Song of Creation,” the General said. “The source of power I used to heal the leg of the young woman you were operating on. Only a mated pair can hear the Song of Ki.”

  The quivering blob distracted her. She didn’t need to be a psychic to see Azrael was in enormous pain.

  “Az,” Elisabeth dropped to her knees beside the Regent. “I’m here. Tell me what to do. They didn’t teach me this stuff in nursing school.”

  Tendrils slithered on the ground, shuddering from the effort of moving. It took nearly a minute for Elisabeth to realize what he struggled to do. He’d landed on top of one particular tentacle that he was trying to free. Elisabeth pointed.

  “That one,” Elisabeth said to the Regent. “I think he needs help freeing that … uh … limb?”

  The Regent crooned to Azrael in a language that sounded as though it were the root of all Earth languages. After a moment, she helped Azrael free the errant limb.

  “Now what?” Elisabeth asked as the tentacle shakily rose and paused a foot or so from her forehead.

  The Regent caressed a separate tentacle and nodded, as though she could hear him speaking.

  “He’s having trouble communicating,” the Regent said. “But I think that’s the tendril of consciousness that was connected to the hand you touched the day of your accident. He thinks it will be safest for you to touch him there.”

  Elisabeth gulped. As much as she’d tempted him to touch her, telling him she wasn’t afraid, the truth was she -was- afraid. As a child, she hadn’t known what the stakes were. Now…

  “You don’t have to do this,” the General said. “If you hadn’t survived once before, we wouldn’t even ask. But… “

  Elisabeth noted the way the General rubbed between the leathery wings of his ebony-skinned, terrifying visage, void-mattered wife to calm her. Talk about subduing darkness!

  Azrael's tentacle began to weaken. What was it Az had said happened to souls who got lost? They just … dissipated? Disappeared and became nothing. Undone. The worst thing that would happen to her was she’d get an all-expenses paid trip through the lint-filter they called heaven and a second, or third chance at life. Preferably not in a body with a gimpy leg and a big ugly scar across her face. Azrael was …

  Azrael was the angel she’d spoken to each week in the lobby of First Saint Paul's church. The yellowed, broken-winged angel at the top of the Christmas tree she’d fed cookies. The silent, invisible angel who’d watched over her, protecting her, after her parents had died. His distraught eyes had haunted her dreams and stood between her and any other man who’d ever tried to woo her even before he’d jumped in front of a bullet to save her. If the roles were reversed, Azrael wouldn’t hesitate to put himself in danger for her.

  “If I pass into the dreamtime, Az,” Elisabeth grimaced as she prepared to be jolted out of her body. "Promise me you'll come looking for me again?"

  The black tentacle touched her forehead. Coolness sank into her flesh, but the sensation was not unpleasant. She could feel the power which vibrated through his consciousness, the compulsion for matter to release the bonds that held it together and return to the simpler form of primordial chaos, but the compulsion did not appear to extend to her.

  ‘Elisabeth…’ Azrael whispered into her mind. ‘Mo ghra … ta tu an gra i mo shaol.’

  Pure light radiated through her brain as, for a moment, she could see him as he had been before his tangle with Moloch had turned him into a creature of the void. Emotion sobbed from her lips as she saw a beautiful, guileless boy: friendship, agape, terror, pain, loss. She felt as though she were wringing her hands, helpless as some other physician had worked to save him, and then sent him off for a lengthy rehabilitation that to her had been merely minutes, but for him had been more than 2,300 years.

  The memory faded.

  Elisabeth touched the appendage which pressed against her 'third eye' like a priest sprinkling water upon an infant's forehead during baptism. As her fingers brushed his tentacle, it felt as though a star went supernova inside of her heart. A new emotion took up residence with the old ones, love, hope, joy that at last he had healed enough for them to be together. Tears sprang to her eyes as, not only did images of what he wanted to tell her poured into her mind, but also the emotion behind those images.

  'Mo ghra.' My love. He called her ‘my love’ in the language of the angels. Beautiful angel, or dark wraith, she did not wish to ever again be parted from this sensitive creature who loved her.

  “Me too,” Elisabeth whispered, feeling awkward about professing something so … personal … in front of an audience.

  She wrapped her fingers around the tentacle, noticing the way his entire form trembled at her touch. His flesh felt as though a cool fog wafted off the ocean and touched her skin. The first three inches felt more solid than the rest. The spot where she’d touched him once before? Even as she touched him, she felt the appendage grow firmer, more corporeal in her hand. She pulled the trembling limb to her lips and kissed it.

  "Awake, Lazarus," Elisabeth whispered. "For you are reborn."

  The Regent burst into tears, but they were happy tears this time. Clear. Not the black tears of destruction.

  “It appears my wife is right,” the General said, the tremor of dark feathers betraying the emotion he kept from his stoic face. “You are what he needs to heal.”

  Elisabeth looked down, expecting to see her body had dropped to the floor. She shifted her weight to make sure she was still alive.

  “We need to get him out of here,” the Regent said. “I destroyed the Agent responsible for leading him into a trap, but Chemosh is still loose. They were nearly successful in using his life-energy as a power source to punch a hole into Gehenna.”

  “How will we move him?” the General asked. “None of us can touch him and you are with child. You’ve exposed our daughter to enough void-matter for today.”

  “Goat dung!” the Regent said. She glanced around the room as if sizing it up, and then waved her four arms as though she were a conductor leading an orchestra. The room shimmered and Elisabeth felt a sudden dislocation.

  “Azrael is at risk until he recovers. Let Moloch dare touch him here!”

  The General flapped his wings as though catching his balance, but nothing in the room changed except the fact it was no lon
ger dawn shining through the melted ceiling of the nuclear power plant, but brightest noon. Instead of the sweltering heat of the Iraqi desert or the strange, tropical humidity of wherever it was the General had transported her to, the air was cool and crisp like autumn air. Strange scents assailed Elisabeth’s nostrils, the scent of a land the likes of which she’d never visited before.

  “How will we cover that up,” the General crossed his arms and gave his wife a stern look. “That reactor wasn’t even in Iraq. Now it’s just a big hole in the ground in North Korea.”

  “Not my problem,” the Regent gave her husband a haughty look. The two continued to quietly ‘disagree’ in the language of the angels, but from the way the General's expression softened, Elisabeth could tell who had won.

  Azrael’s tentacle curled tenderly around her wrist, sending a pleasant thrill down her arm straight into her heart. An image leaped into her mind. Or more precisely. A song. The song which had stayed with her the last time she’d touched him, but had faded the longer he’d remained hidden from her. It sounded distant and far away. But it was beautiful. So beautiful it filled her heart with joy.

  “I hear it too,” Elisabeth stroked his tentacle and noted the way her touch resonated within her own heart. Touch. What Azrael craved more than anything in the world. The more she touched him, the more she could feel the song strengthen the connection which had always existed between them and the more solid he felt beneath her fingers.

  “He’s like you once were,” the Regent laced her fingers through her husband's hand. “He just needs to feel connected to the one he loves.”

  Elisabeth realized the stern, emotionless General was crying. He pulled his petite wife into his arms and cupped his hand protectively over her abdomen. Not only was the Regent barely five feet tall and slender as a reed, but she was also around five months pregnant.

  “You put our unborn daughter at risk moving the entire facility here,” the General scolded his wife, nuzzling her neck. “You had other options.”

  The Regent physically shifted shape. Four arms melded into a single pair of human arms, flesh turned porcelain white against ebony wings and hair, wing-spikes, tail and horns…

  Well … even on a good day the Regent was still deadly as hell…

  Petite and beautiful … but deadly as hell.

  “Talk to him,” the General said. “About … little things. Things you’ve seen together or discussed, or things you would like to see with him in the future. It was how my wife kept me in this realm when –I- was that badly injured.”

  Through the tatters of the General's uniform, Elisabeth noted the scar over his heart, the one Azrael had told her about. She touched the scar that ran from her own temple to her lip. The General nodded. For the first time since the day she’d woken up a cripple and looked in the mirror, she understood the General really did mean it to be a badge of honor.

  “Archangels will be stationed just outside the door,” the Regent said. “But I think he’ll do better if you spend this time with him alone. He needs to feel you.”

  The Regent focused and then flicked her wrist. Elisabeth could feel energy swirl around her as though solid matter had become as malleable as water and caught up in a powerful current. The molecules in the room shifted, still molecules, but as she watched they reassembled themselves into whichever shape the Regent had formed within her mind. No longer were they in the spent core of a melted nuclear reactor, but a tiny, primitive mud-brick house with a cozy fire lit in a beehive hearth. Azrael's form lay propped upon a crude sleeping platform that appeared immune to his tendency to dissolve matter. The Regent pointed to her scythe. It turned into a puddle of black goo, then reassembled itself into a primitive wooden chair next to the cot. For her. To sit at Azrael's side.

  For the first time the General smiled, an image Elisabeth had never seen captured in any of the numerous Earth-depictions of the angel who had crushed Evil beneath his boot. He pulled his wife into the circle of his wings, leaving only her tail and a stray wing-spike peeking out of her husband’s much larger wingspan. The pair disappeared in a flash of white light.

  “Let's see how much I can safely touch?” Elisabeth said gently to Azrael. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  She slid her hand down his tentacle, registering the subtle changes in the coolness and solidity of his form and how energized the compulsion she could feel radiating out of him was. She could get all the way down to where the limb joined his torso before the sensation became uncomfortable. He struggled to pull the other tentacles away from her, fearful he might hurt her. Better to wait. Give him time to adjust to her.

  The 'safe' tentacle shakily moved up in front of her forehead once more. Elisabeth paused, allowing him to touch her mind. A flood of emotions poured in, bringing tears to her eyes. Loneliness. Fear of rejection. Love. Joy. And of course the song. As banged-up as he was, Azrael drank the feel of her touch like a man too long deprived of water in the desert.

  She pulled up the chair the Regent had formed for her and sat down next to him, understanding this would be a lengthy recovery.

  "Sleep, my sweet, crispy marshmallow angel," Elisabeth soothed him. "I will stay at your side however long it takes for you to recover."

  She supposed she should be repulsed by the tangled black jumble of tentacles which draped off the platform like a rag-mop, but as a nurse, she'd long ago learned to ignore a man's injuries and focus on keeping him alive. She stroked until she fell asleep in the chair, clutching the lone tentacle to her chest. When she awoke, three tentacles possessively circled around her as though she were a favorite teddy bear. Whatever she had that he needed, it had spread. She could tell by the soft rise and fall of his body that Azrael had drifted off to sleep.

  The song reminded her of an old hymn Oma used to sing. Stroking the parts of him that were safe to touch, Elisabeth sang the words, imagining, as she often did with her other patients, that she loaned him her will to live.

  “We shall walk through the valley and the shadow of death,” Elisabeth sang in her earthy alto. “We shall walk through the valley in peace.”

  Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter, in this place amongst the angels, that she had not been blessed with the heavenly voice of one. All that mattered was the gentle spirit drinking in her touch loved her. And she … if she let down the walls she’d built around her heart because every time she let somebody in, they died, she knew she loved him in return.

  The underlying Song grew louder.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 52

  How poor are they that have not patience!

  What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

  Thou know'st we work by wit,

  And not by witchcraft;

  And wit depends on dilatory time.

  Othello - William Shakespeare

  Galactic Standard Date – 157,324.07

  Haven-2 – Cherubim Monastery

  Hideous. He was hideous. And yet she had tended him, first when he couldn’t hold any shape other than a tentacled blob, then later as he'd relearned every single step of how to reshape his hideous black nothingness, which now had some mass, back into the tall, thin form he'd kept hidden beneath a cloak for the past 2,300 years. A spark of hope settled into his chest that perhaps she might not reject him after all? But with that spark came fear, for who would love Death?

  “The General can take you home now that I can get around by myself,” Azrael said. He hid his mangled features deep within the hood of his cloak so she would not see his fear.

  Elisabeth stiffened. "Is that what you want?"

  'No,' he thought to himself.

  "It's been two months," Azrael spoke aloud. "The Regent thinks I'm out of danger. It would be unfair of me to ask you to stay any longer."

  "You still haven't relearned your original shape," Elisabeth said. Her lips turned briefly downwards before she retreated behind that no-nonsense expression she usually assumed for her patients. "The Regent said you'll heal faster if I
am here."

  Yes. But every day she stays increases the chance it will break my heart when she -does- reject me and leaves…

  "There are lives back on Earth you could be saving," Azrael said softly. He stepped closer, wishing he dared gather her into his arms.

  “Nonsense,” Elisabeth jutted out her chin. “If you think I’d bail on one of my patients before they’re healed, you can just forget it.”

  She looked exhausted, his beautiful Elisabeth. For two months she had refused to leave his side … and it showed. She was stubborn. He feared she would allow his injuries to drain the life out of her the same way Hayyel's mate had refused to let him go, or as she would have done for Nancy if he hadn't intervened and put a stop to it. Usually she hated using her cane, but her weariness settled around her shoulders like the hated lead cloak he wore to dampen his destructive tendencies. He was being selfish, asking far more of her than any creature of darkness had a right to beg.

  Did she have any idea how lovely she looked with the Haven sun reflecting off her pale, blonde hair as though she were a ray of sunlight?

  “You don’t have to … I mean … stay … if you don’t want to …”

  Azrael's hand tingled like a hungry dog, aching for the sensation of her touch. What was he doing? Inviting her to leave when what he wanted more than anything in the universe was for her to stay?

  Elisabeth wore a vulnerable expression as she laced her fingers through his, the first part of him that had regained form. A shiver of pure pleasure radiated through his entire body. Touch! Oh! How long he’d yearned to feel the simple sensation of touch again! That spark of hope expanded, grew larger until it cast out the hunger which had gnawed at him for thousands of years and replaced it with a new hunger. To bond with her and make her his mate. Something about his eager wiggle must have reassured her, for her eyebrows shot up with skepticism.

  “For ten years you follow me around like some stalker-dude,” Elisabeth chided. “And now that I can touch you, you’re trying to send me away?”