by Raven Taylor
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I could see Cane’s eye shining grimly in its socket, the corner of his mouth was turned up in a sadistic little smile. He was leaning casually on the dresser, a silver headed walking cane in one hand and the other in the pocket of his jacket. The darkness seemed to be pressing in around me like a thousands fingers of countless clammy hands reaching out to smother me. Somewhere an imagined whisper rose among them and reminded me that I had a promise to fulfil and that now was the time.
How many times had I visited this room while she slept and sat unnoticed on the edge of the bed just wishing I could reach out and touch her but knowing that my touch could kill her? On countless occasions I had watched her sleep, savoured the glow in her cheeks that mine could never have, counted each gentle rise of her chest as she breathed so full of life. I imagined being human; being able to lie at her side and feel her heart beat through her warm skin, to trace the curve of her smile with my fingers, to keep her safe and never let corruption or death touch her.
Often I followed her as she walked in Edinburgh’s Old Town and watched her stride happily through the narrow streets and closes with the wind in her hair. Like a dismal ghost I trailed after her, she was my beautiful flower, my Lilly.
But Lilly was not mine and never could be. She could never even know I existed. It was torture but still, like the masochist I am, I perused her endlessly and the heartache was so great it made me feel almost human.
I looked on her form with sadness heavier than any I had ever felt and Cane watched me, enjoying every second of it. The bastard!
“Be strong Winter,” he hissed from his position by the dresser, “What is she but a human child who torments you? You can never have her in life so why not take her in death?”
“I can’t go through with this.” I moaned and I turned my head away from the sleeping figure.
“You have to, it’s the only way. Her expiration date draws near. We have to follow his plan. The are only born with a certain amount of time and we cannot extend this. And I want none of your usual nonsense, do it properly, make it linger a little."
“Why?” I turned to Cane, this had not been part of the deal.
“It’s for your own good,” he chuckled, “As my apprentice you must become an artisan of death; no pupil of mine will produce shoddy inferior work. We are artists and the sooner you start to make art the sooner your existence will start to become rich and fulfilling.”
“No,” I protested, “Not her. She’ll go quickly and painlessly. Heart failure in her sleep, something like that. She’ll simply never wake up.”
With growing distress I appealed for his mercy but the sadistic smile had never left his lips.
“You’ll do it my way,” Cane snarled, “You’ll stop being a coward tonight and you’ll give her a lingering death. If not, then Myron will learn all about what has been going on, I’ll see to that.”
It seemed he was being deliberately cruel. Did he really have my best interests at heart or was he just twisted?
“Remember what I told you, winter is cold, harsh, merciless,” he snapped, “You can’t deny what we are. Embrace it Winter. You’re a bringer of death. They all have to die.”
“Not like this,” I moaned, “Not when they’re young. Not her.”
“You’d better do it.”
“I don’t even think I can!” I cried, “I’m not capable of thinking up horrible ways to kill someone, my mind is not like yours.”
“For pity’s sake!” he cursed, rapping his cane on the laminate floor, “there are a thousand ways a person can die. Give her some kind of terminal disease, that should do.”
“Oh no Cane, please this is too much, I don’t have it in me.”
“Yes you do! It’s what your very soul is made from! Now do it or so help me you know I’ll go to Myron!”
He had crossed the room and was almost upon me, he drew back his hand and hit me full force in the face. I staggered back a few steps, he was grinning manically, enjoying every minute of this. Then he did it again. And again. Cane had never hit me before and I was shocked. He raised the silver headed walking cane and prodded me in the chest, baring his fangs at me menacingly, his black lips stretched across his teeth. He looked hideous and out of place. A menacing black looming thing in this neat little bedroom. He was the very embodiment of human nightmares.
“Get on with it,” he prodded me again.
What choice did I have?
As I approached the bed he drew back into a corner, embracing himself in the leathery folds of his wings, watching me intently. As I had done so too many times to count I sat down on the edge of the bed. She was lying on her side, her head of red hair resting on the purple pillow and a tiny furrow in her brow. I wondered what she was dreaming. Did she see demons behind those closed lids, monsters flying in through her bedroom window to come and whisk her away? I let out a heavy sigh and pulled back her bed clothes wanting to see her for one last time as she was before I changed her forever. She wore a peach vest top and white shorts and she lay with her knees pulled up to her chest. She looked tiny and vulnerable. A sleeping princess. She was such a tranquil sight, a perfect picture.
I was trembling as I reached out towards her hand. I had never touched her before and now I was about to do what my flesh had ached for for months now but it was not how it should have been. This touch was not the touch of a lover that would soothe her as she slept this was the touch of death that would set in motion the events that would steal her from this world. As I took her small hand in mine her delicate fingers instinctively curled around my own, she shifted slightly, a little a ghost of smile played across her lips. A tear fell from the corner of my eye. Such bliss and such pain fused together. I was the worst kind of monster there is, the kind that hides in the shadows and sneaks up on innocents as they sleep to rob them of their life.
I laid my palm on her brow, still holding her hand lightly. Her skin was warm and I relished the feeling of it. I was like the reverse of a faith healer, passing some deadly disease into her body rather than taking it away. I had to focus on what must be done. Maybe Cane was right, maybe my addiction was ridiculous and maybe this was the only way to cure me. I focused all the strength I had on her, waiting for that special moment our kind have when we make the connection with our victims. Then I felt it. Suddenly we merged and for a few moments we were one. And as much as I hated it I had to admit Cane was right. Weaving this kind of death was far more intense than anything else I’d ever done before. This was not having someone knocked down by a bus or stopping their heart suddenly or making them choke on a piece of food. There was a far greater level of intimacy required for this kind of work. Never had I been so deep inside a victim, never had I felt so fully the merging of two spirits. She was in me and I in her. I was in her veins, in her mortal flesh and oh the biggest horror of all: I was in her mind. I could see what she was dreaming and it was terrible, unbearable and I suddenly felt like I was drowning, being pulled down by swift currents that I could not fight. She could see me in her dream. Not what I was doing to her right now but something else. We were dancing under a starry sky. Somewhere on some unconscious level Lilly actually knew I existed.
I screamed and broke the connection, bringing myself back to the room. It was done now and nothing could take it back. The interaction had been so profound and the workings of this death so complex that I was left utterly drained. I collapsed at the side of her bed, a broken mess lying face down on the floor with my wings spread out around me. It hurt. My insides ached and I cried the crystal clear tears of an Angel.
“She was dreaming about me!” I wailed into my hands.
“I know,” Cane pulled me to my feet as though I weighed nothing at all.
I could not stand, my legs refused to support me and I sagged limply as Cane held me up.
“You have spent too much time with her, she was beginning to feel your prescience even if she didn’t know it and you know that cannot be allowed. I am pr
oud of you Winter,” he smiled at me, gone were all the traces of mocking and frustration, “And it was beautiful was it not?”
“Being connected to her, touching her, that was beautiful, killing her wasn’t.”
“But that’s what every death can be like, an intimate union between two sprits, it’s what our kind lust for, it’s the only form of intimacy we can have. And you can have more. You can have all the intimacy you want and with so many different people.”
“I don’t want it with anyone else.”
“You’re tired Winter, you’ll understand better once you’re rested,” he was right, I was exhausted, my heavy head flopped to one side, “And I’m sorry I hit you. I hated doing that but I had no choice.”
He folded his wings around me and smoothed my long hair with a gloved hand. I was feeling dizzy and sick. I glanced back at the bed where she lay. She was dying now and the worst thing was that she didn’t know, she would wake up tomorrow and go to work as normal with no idea of the thing I had planted in her which would grown and feed on her life. How long would pass before she realised something was wrong? Days? Weeks? Months? How long before the headaches started and she got tremors in her hands and blank spots in her memory? And then what? Radio therapy? Chemo therapy? All to no avail because she was destined to die. Then she would grow sick from the pain and her hair would fall out and eventually she wouldn’t even be able to get out of bed. No matter how early they caught it or how good the doctors where nothing would save her because that was not written in their grand design.
“I hate them!” I raged.
“It’s a part of nature, they all have to go sometime.”
“I hate you too cane, you’re pitiless and warped,” there was no strength behind my words.
“So are you,” he reminded me, “It’s the way we’re made. Just accept it. You can’t appreciate light without dark. Good without bad. Beauty without ugliness. We are the flip-side of the coin. You are my merciless Winter.”
“I wish I wasn’t.”
“But you are, you are mine and mine alone.”
I pulled away from him and somehow managed to make it back to her bed. Is that why he was being so cruel? Did he see Lilly as a threat to our relationship? I took her hand again, no harm in that now, I couldn’t hurt her more than I already had.
“I won’t be coming back anymore,” I whispered but that was for his benefit, “So I’ll just say goodbye and sweet dreams princess.”
The breeze from the open window stirred the curtains and for a moment the moonlight filtered through and painted her divine face silver. I wanted to take her away with me some place where we could be together forever. My tears fell lightly on her hand.
“We should be leaving now,” Cane said softly, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“Yes,” I murmured before leaning over her and kissing her soft lips. I noticed then that she was wearing a silver pendant around her slender neck, a small angel, ironically.
“Cane,” I said, “Can you make it so I can keep this?”
I unfastened the chain and slid the necklace away from her neck. Cane sighed and shook his head sadly.
“For you beautiful Winter, anything.” and he took the piece of jewellery from my hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The first time I saw her she was just 19 years old and was coming out of the Black Cat Burlesque Club in Edinburgh’s Cowgate. Cane and myself where the only two Angels assigned to work the quaint Old Town area of the city and when we were not carrying out Myron’s ghastly business of destroying lives we would often spend our time drifting around the city. Cane liked to frequent the many bars the area had to offer and drink his fill of liquor. He took great delight in moving among the swarms of tourists fresh from one of the many ‘Ghost Walks’ in Nicol Edwards, The Last Drop or Bannerman’s knowing that they could not see him. Sometimes he would knock a glass off the end of the bar just to make them jump and occasionally he would follow the walks themselves down into the haunted vaults below the city where he might throw pieces of rock at the walls thus becoming the paranormal activity the tourists had come for. Often he would grow tipsy and having swiped a bottle of his favourite from behind the bar would wind his way up the Royal Mile in search of me, singing and acting like a drunk in a rough imitation of those mortals he saw staggering out of the clubs at closing time.
Usually I would be skulking about the cemeteries so he knew where to find me, my favourite being Grey Friars Kirk Yard on Candlemaker Row. That night, however, I was done with my business early, having just sent a middle aged man into the path of a speeding train. It was too early to go to the cemetery, the tour groups would still be screaming at the back as they convinced themselves the Mackenzie Poltergeist was clawing at their legs in the covenanter’s prison, so I was drifting aimlessly in my usual state of misery and self loathing around the cobbled streets.
That was when I caught sight of her. I had just passed under George IV Bridge where groups of revellers where spilling out of Opium night club when I saw the pretty girl waving goodbye to a friend at the bottom of the steps to the burlesque club. What a vision she was! It was as though she had stepped out of another time, perhaps even another world. I had watched the change of human fashions over my time and though I was still young by the standards of Angels had seen many trends come and go. The modern day look disheartened me greatly. It seemed not many where willing to make the effort of people in days gone by. It was growing so that the world was a sea of blue denim and it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell the men from the women. Everywhere it was blue jeans. Oh how I had come to hate blue jeans! Gone where the days when a lady would don a dress and a hat on a daily basis and not even go to the corner shop for bread without fixing her hair and painting her face.
Now, here I was, stopped in my tracks by this young thing who simply oozed glamour. She was tiny and her shoulders looked so delicate above the fur stole she had wrapped about them. Her hair was a glorious shade of flame red and fell in soft waves that framed her beautiful face and just touched her fragile collar bone. It was pinned behind her left ear with a red silk flower and fell loose across her face on the right. Her skin was white like fresh cream so that her blood red lips and dark rimmed eyes shone and seemed to call to me. She wore a black corset under the fur stole with a knee length pencil skirt with ruffles up the back and her arms where adorned with black elbow length opera gloves. Finally a set of white pearls embraced her throat, whether or not they where real did not matter.
I was enthralled as I drifted closer, watching as she shouldered her bag and waved again at her friend who had crossed the street and then turned her back on me and began to walk. In all my time I had barely even noticed the mortals that constantly surrounded me. I tried not to see them most of the time because I found it too distressing that they would all die eventually but I could not shut her out if I tried. She had captured me in an instant and I knew right away this was to be the beginning of something dangerous.
I should have forced myself to turn away. To go to Grey Friar’s and wait for Cane and his bottle of Jack to find me but I didn’t. Instead I trailed after her as she walked like some kind of misguided ghoul in a fairy tale, listening to the rhythmic click of her red high heels on the cobbles. She continued down along Cowgate, past the various clubs and bars, never slowing, until she took a right up a narrow, dimly lit close. It was dark and shadowy and the space between the tenement buildings was barley wide enough for two people to pass each other. I think I saw him before she did, the man coming the other way, because she almost walked right into him. I heard him apologise and there was an awkward moment as they tried to navigate around each other in the narrow space. They had passed by each other and she was heading away from him when I saw him whip around and grab her. His left arm crushed her chest as he pulled her backwards and in towards himself so he could clamp his right hand over her mouth. He spun her about and proceeded to walk backwards, dragging her further into the darkness, she was
kicking and struggling, no doubt trying to scream against his gloved hand. One of her red heels came off. It looked tragic as it was left abandoned lying on its side on the ground.
I was wild with fear as I hurried up the lane after them, feeling completely powerless shouting, “let her go!” but knowing they could not here me.
He stopped and forced her up against the wall, his hands groping at her skirt, smashing her cheek against the brick work.
“I’ve got a knife, scream and I’ll slit you throat.” He hissed through clenched teeth.
Where was her Guardian Angel? How could someone who had been charged with the care of something so divine not be here when she needed protecting? My mind raced frantically. What could I do? I couldn’t let this happen to her. He might kill her and she was not marked. Dam her Guardian whoever that might be! I could not simply grab the man and haul him off, how would I explain that? It was forbidden to make our presence felt on such an extreme scale. It was one thing to scare tourists by throwing stones or tipping glasses of the end of bars but it was quiet another…tipping glasses…I had it.
They where still struggling as I flexed my wings and propelled myself upwards which was difficult in the narrow space. I reached the window ledge a few feet above their heads and clung to the sill, my feet braced against the wall. There where three terracotta plant pots on the ledge, it was little wonder the plants where dead given the gloomy environment. It was not a sure thing. If I misjudged I could miss or catch them both but I had to do something. Looking down on them I pushed one of the large pots off the ledge. It fell and seemed to be mid air for an eternity before finding its target. It caught the assailant on the back of his head and broke in two. He slumped to the ground with the two clattering halves, releasing her from his grip. She looked startled as she turned to see what had hit him, then, seeing the broken pot, she looked up at the sill from where it had fallen. For a moment it was as though she was looking right at me, her make up was smudged and there where tears on her cheeks but she still looked beautiful. She stepped over him walked unevenly back to where her other shoe lay. She put it back on and began to walk again. She was safe, at least for now.