“Berwyn, don’t,” Roshan said. “A human may only see her Luminarch when she is dying.”
“Oh, Roshan, we won’t show her the whole thing…just the part about the woods. God won’t care.” A glint appeared in his eyes—they actually flamed up a little—and he added, “Then she’ll understand what we’ve been wasting our time doing.”
He crouched down lower on his black boot-covered toes so he could look me in the eye. “You want to know, right? What I was doing while Michael pouted in the woods?” He nodded encouragingly toward his hand. His lips turned up slightly in what passed for an inviting grin, and despite the tiny flames in his eyes, I found myself wanting to trust him. He was an Angel after all. I extended my hand…
“Berwyn! Step back!” Roshan warned. Her fingers caressed the hilt of her sword. She’d gone from gentle maiden to warrior princess in the space of a few seconds. “And Michael would never—”
“Go on, kitten. Don’t worry about Michael. He’s—”
“Awake. And very pissed off,” Michael said. I turned my head to see him leaning over the bed, his steely eyes trained on his Angel. “What’re you doing, man? Don’t you think she’s been traumatized enough for one week?”
Berwyn shrugged and the flames in his eyes went out. “She doesn’t think I protected you well enough.” He shot me a sideways glance and then curled in on himself, a shrinking bronze mist, reappearing hunched against the dark, foggy window, brooding as he stared out past his reflection.
Michael looked from me to Berwyn and then back to me, at a loss for words. His eyes were heavy with fatigue, and he looked somehow…older. Filled out, his experience showing in the way he moved, the way he looked at me. He was no longer just a fifteen-year-old kid. I hadn’t noticed at the top of the cliff. He reached out and touched my forehead, nodded quietly to himself, then asked, “How’s the shoulder pain?”
“Fine,” I said. It sucked actually, but I was sick of being the weak one. He picked up my thoughts and rolled his eyes. Then I explained quietly, “Berwyn was about to show me why he never came when you were trapped in the woods.”
Michael glanced over his shoulder at his Angel, and a look passed between them that spoke of a shared past hidden from me. Michael said, “Berwyn’s been with me since before I was born, Catherine. He’s never left my side. I just refused to see him.”
“He was with you the whole time?” I looked over at Berwyn, but I was still confused, and I cried out to him, “But if Michael couldn’t see you, why couldn’t he at least leave the woods? He could have come home with me! I could have—”
Berwyn’s eyes started to flame up again.
“Catherine, shh,” Michael hushed. He rubbed his hand up the back of his neck. “Baby, it was so long ago for me, I forgot you’d see it that way. I know it looked to you like I was trapped in the woods, but sometimes traps aren’t what they seem. Sometimes they’re built up around us for our protection. I was safe in the woods. The Angels had them completely surrounded, a whole battalion of them. Not to keep me in, but to keep the demons out. After I died, God thought I needed a safe, quiet place to think.”
“So…Berwyn’s the one who kept turning you to dust and sucking you back into the woods?”
“It was painless,” Berwyn growled from the window.
“For my protection, Catherine.”
“I’m sorry…” I murmured to his Angel. “But Michael, it makes no sense to me! Why did God leave you here on Earth to think after you died? Why didn’t He just bring you home? Take you up to heaven?”
Michael looked down at his fingernails, then crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes twinkling with slightly less than angelic charm. “Well, it may have had something to do with the fact that I told Archangel Michael to take God’s eternal afterlife and shove it up someone else’s ass when I died. I still wanted things my own way. I didn’t trust Him. I wasn’t ready…” His voice trailed off, and he glanced down at the wide leather strap that crossed over his chest. He pulled the strap forward, jostling the roots on his back. I wanted to ask what they were for, but his last remark made me uneasy. A tiny claw teased my conscience, and then I realized what he was saying.
“Ready for what? Heaven or watching over me?”
“Oh, he was ready for Heaven all right, not pretty, but ready,” Berwyn put in from the window.
“Be quiet, Berwyn,” Michael said, but his shoulders and arms flexed subtly, just like they’d done when Jason approached me in the woods. My eyes flew open wide.
“You…you…fight those things? Those demons? For me?” I cried.
Michael set his chin, but his eyes pleaded with me. “Look, Catherine…you almost died like four times in the last twenty-four hours. The doctors had a tough time stabilizing you. We’re not doing this tonight.”
He was right. I was exhausted, bruised from head to toe, and the pain in my shoulder was beginning to radiate down my arm. But I needed answers. I’d spent the last four months fighting against something I couldn’t see, I had Angels fussing over me, demons taunting me, and now I’d learned Michael had put himself in harm’s way to protect me. I needed to know why. I looked to Roshan for help.
“He’s right. You need your rest,” she said quietly.
I glanced back at Berwyn, who sighed and then vanished, reappearing next to the bed. “You need to tell her, Michael. She’s going to find out anyway. She’s starting to see them now. Nasty little hell-dwellers…”
“Not tonight, Berwyn.”
“At least show her the sword.”
“He has a sword?” I asked.
“It’s a good sword,” said Berwyn.
“Will you shut up?” Michael shouted back.
“She’ll never sleep until you tell her, and then you’ll never sleep,” Berwyn said.
Seeing the logic in that, Roshan was nodding now, too.
Michael looked at them both, weary and beaten. “It’s hard enough just dealing with being human. Why does she have to worry about the rest of it?”
“Because we’re at war, kid. And she’s in the middle of it. So are you.”
“What war?” I demanded to know. “And what does it have to do with Michael and me?”
“The war over souls,” Roshan said quietly, and Michael groaned. Roshan gave him a warning look and then went on to explain. “God sent Michael back in time to be your Guardian in this war.”
“You mean like a Guardian Angel?”
Berwyn coughed. “He wishes…”
Michael gave him a look of extreme impatience.
Roshan’s eyes flashed at both of them. “I am your Angel,” she said. “But God saw fit to give you a human Guardian as well.”
“Why?” I asked her.
She pressed her lips together, considering her words. “There is a prophecy about you, Catherine. Satan and his army of demons know its content. We do not. Somehow they have discovered it, and they are guarding it closely. On Heaven’s side, we have no way to find out what it says because the Angel who revealed it is bound to secrecy. We don’t even know who that Angel is. But we know the prophecy concerns you, and that Satan is desperate to make sure it is never fulfilled.”
“How do you know it’s about me if you don’t even know what it says?” I asked, bewildered. She lowered her beautiful eyes.
Berwyn answered for her. “Because Satan’s been plotting your destruction since before you were born, kitten.”
That sunk like a bomb down my throat. I started to shake. It was an involuntary, gut deep reaction. Nausea churned in my stomach.
So I’ve been targeted by the Devil himself? I looked at Michael.
His jaw flexed and then he nodded. “But Roshan and I have sworn to protect you. We even have some back-up now thanks to your call for help on the bridge.” Michael sat down close to me. “Baby, you’re okay now. We’ll keep you safe.”
But that wasn’t the pledge I wanted to hear. If Angels surrounded the woods to protect him from demons, then the demons were after hi
m, too. He was in just as much danger as I was. I wanted him to be safe, too. That’s all I’d ever wanted for him. “What about you?” I asked him. My voice was thin, my airways tighter. My shoulder started to throb.
“You should put your oxygen back on,” he urged.
“Michael,” I said softly. “Please…”
He grinned wryly. “Well. They can’t kill me. I’m already dead.” I had a feeling he’d faced threats worse than death. When I didn’t laugh, he lifted his chin and said confidently, “I have Berwyn to protect me.”
Berwyn towered over him. “He watches you. I watch him,” Berwyn said, flicking his thumb toward Michael and then tucking his lightly-flaming staff under his folded arms. Berwyn was larger than the demon I’d seen in my room, heavier, and scarier in his own way. I had no doubt he could handle himself in a fight. In fact, he looked like he craved it.
But I was still unconvinced.
“The sword,” Berwyn prompted.
Michael studied me, then reached decisively up over his shoulder and pulled the tangle of roots from the leather sheath on his back. The moment he touched them, the roots formed the hilt of a weathered steel sword, twisting tightly into a shape that perfectly fit his hand. The wide blade glowed with silvery, slow-burning flames that licked hungrily at the dry, hospital air. It was marred by years of use, battle-worn, battle-ready.
He stretched out his arm, balancing his weapon expertly in his hand. Then he flipped the blade up flat onto his palms and brought it down before me. “This is Foresight,” he said, regarding the blade with equal parts reverence and affection. He glanced up at me to see if I was satisfied yet. The look in his eyes was so earnest, so eager to dispel my fears, how could I not be? How could I show him anything less than my complete faith in him?
“My Guardian, huh?” I said, giving him a slight grin.
He shrugged, then grinned back, and my heart felt a little lighter knowing I had him on my side. I wondered again why God had given me these gifts—an Angel and a Guardian, and the ability to see them, and trust in them, and feel safe—when Michael had suffered alone for so long. It seemed so unfair.
Michael’s eyes softened as he followed my thoughts. “Oh, baby…don’t you see? When Berwyn couldn’t reach me because I was too stupid, too pissed off, too stubborn, God sent me just what I needed.” When I screwed my forehead up in confusion, he leaned in closer, saturating the air I breathed with Higher, and whispered the answer in my ear:
“He sent me you.”
He grazed my cheek with the tip of his forefinger, which had begun to glow softly silver, and I felt a shadow of the love I’d felt when he’d gathered my soul up into his arms.
“I love you, too,” I whispered.
“I know,” he said, grinning.
“Michael…” Roshan called to him, and he slowly withdrew his hand. There was a knock at the door. It swung open with a faint creak, letting a shaft of light from the hall into the room. A nurse bustled in carrying a small syringe, which she set on the bedside table.
Berwyn and Roshan disappeared, and Michael sheathed his sword and backed away from the bed. He was quiet while he watched the nurse cycle through her tasks.
Michael? Do you think anyone will believe that I didn’t try to kill myself? That Jason attacked me?
“Your family will, your friends, too, eventually anyway. They love you more than you know.”
Then where are they? Why aren’t they here?
I’d almost died, and I was alone. Where were my mom and dad? Where were Cici and Claire? Michael didn’t answer right away, and then he said, “It’s late. They were here off and on all day. They’ll be back.”
The nurse took my vitals, replaced the oxygen tubes under my nose, picked up the syringe and injected its pain-relieving solution into the I.V. port. “You’ll feel better soon, honey,” she said, patting my arm before leaving. I winced as I lay back down on the bed and shifted position. Then a gentle wave of drowsiness washed over me. I let my thoughts drift toward Michael on a lazy tide.
They’re not finished with us, are they Michael? The demons?
He moved away from the wall and sat down on the end of the bed. “We’ll face them together, Catherine. You, me, Roshan, Berwyn…you know that now, right?”
Yeah…
“And we have one huge advantage the demons don’t.”
What’s that?
“God,” he said, his eyes flaring a little. Then he pulled an acoustic guitar out of thin air. The beat-up instrument was almost as battle-worn as his sword. My mellowing thoughts blended the two in my head.
What are you going to do with that?
He adjusted the guitar under his arm and pulled it in comfortably against his chest. “You haven’t gone to bed without a lullaby since you were…maybe ten months old?” His eyes crinkled up at some memory, and he added, “You were an adorable toddler, but those preteen years…” he pretended to shiver, and then he grinned. I wished for something to throw through his head, and his smile grew wider, touching his whole face.
Then my music lover, my “or something,” my Guardian picked out a few notes on his guitar and began to sing…just for me.
THANK YOU for being a part of Michael and Catherine’s journey! I invite you to read THE DEVIL’S PLAYLIST, Book Two in The Guardian’s Playlist Trilogy.
Set against a Fentanyl-fueled, overdose epidemic savaging the west side of Cleveland, the Devil and his demons push Cate, Michael and Jason to the wall. They’ll each have to decide what they stand for before they can protect the ones they love.
Strap in for a fast-paced, dark and twisty, ya paranormal fantasy with a shocking, CHRISTMAS EVE CLIMAX that will haunt you long after the holidays are over.
Love can’t save everyone.
DOWNLOAD and start reading now! CLICK HERE:
THE DEVIL’S PLAYLIST on Amazon
A SPECIAL GIFT for Fans of Michael:
FREE Companion Novella Download!
Also, as my gift to you, I am offering a FREE DOWNLOAD of The Guardian’s Playlist seven chapter companion novella, SEVEN CIGARETTES. Let Michael tell you how the last four days of his life and death went down. He’s ready to come clean…sort of.
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THE DEVIL’S PLAYLIST
Book 2 of The Guardian’s Playlist Trilogy:
By J. Powell Ogden
Sneak Peek
PROLOGUE
THE NEWBORN ANGEL took his time getting to his feet. He had knowledge of this place called Earth, Heaven’s most distant outpost, but he was experiencing it for the first time. He flexed his power signature—the energy field that housed his spirit. It was fast. How fast he wasn’t sure, but it responded to his thoughts almost before he completed them. He grinned. There was strength, too. Not as much as he would have hoped for, but enough to take on almost any Angel or demon here on Earth.
And which would he take on?
He had a will, too. One that teetered on the edge.
He wrinkled his nose, acutely sensing the room in which he stood. It was a small room with a drafty, paint-peeling window that let in the only light—a neon tavern sign across the street: The Shrunken Head. He smelled the fumes of cheap beer and saliva clinging to the sides of crumpled plastic cups. Discarded, the cups scraped across the concrete as another couple stumbled through them on their way out of the bar.
Inside the room the smell of two sweat-drenched bodies lingered. He shuddered. Humans. There were two of them, tangled up in sheets on the bed. Male and Female He made them. One incomplete without the other. Surely, that was the kiss of death for their inferior, organically enslaved species.
The Angel’s nearly translucent blue eyes darkened as he watched them. Janine, curled up on her side, her auburn curls dark against the pillow, and Aidan, tucked in close behind her, young and built tough, his arm flung over her in an unconscious, useless bid to protect her. They slept soundly, vulnerable. An
other kiss of death, this biological need for sleep. The list of their failings went on and on.
The Angel knew God loved him. He already felt that love brewing in his heart. He knew what God was offering him, but he wanted more. It was his right, his freedom to choose to walk away from these humans, to live and love as he pleased, to exist on his own, answering to no one. If he left now, he could avoid the messy meeting with the Archangel in which he was required to state his intention to serve God or himself. His eyes grew darker. He could let his absence speak for itself.
But as the thought to leave took shape in his mind, an incredible pressure engulfed him. The fingers of a powerful hand twisted themselves from behind into his dark hair and an oiled blade, cocked at a deadly forty-five degree angle, materialized above his right shoulder.
“Don’t say it,” Archangel Michael hissed. “If you say it, I’ll slash you from shoulder to hip, scattering you across the mouth of every black hole in the universe. You will never see light again.”
“What is this?” the young Angel demanded. Coercion wasn’t part of the script. It was against every promise God had ever made. “Why should I pledge loyalty to a God who shatters his own rules? Just because I’m the first who’s dared to—”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Yearling. You are not the first.”
The young Angel searched his inborn knowledge of the world more carefully. Yes, another had rejected his charge, and not long ago, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t follow suit. Incensed, his nearly black eyes flamed up. Bronze sparks rippled across his power signature, which he knew was no match for the Archangel. “Who gave you the right to override my free will?”
Archangel Michael whipped the angry Angel around, his blade still poised to deal the Blow of Oblivion, and said quietly, “You did.”
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