A Shining Light
1965 Words
A Shining Light
Danny appeared by my side, amazed at the numbers gathered on the ledge.
“You need to learn to pick your fights better,” he mumbled.
“Ah, Danizriel,” Drake said. They knew each other? “Always a pleasure to have you drop by.”
Danny held out his hand and I took it.
Drake raised his eyebrows. “Strange times indeed. Another anathema, Danizriel?” He chuckled. “Really you’re quite the bad boy, for an angel.”
“Get ready to run,” Danny whispered.
Where the hell were we going to run? There wasn’t enough room between us and them. I squeezed his hand to let him know I’d heard and he took one step forward, shielding me protectively. I had to lean to the side slightly to see what was happening in front of us.
“Sorry, Drake, hate to shoot and run,” he sounded apologetic, “but you know what it’s like, pressing angel business and all that.”
Danny held out his free hand — fingers splayed and pointing to the sky — with the palm facing the vampires. Some of them screamed in terror and they scattered in all directions, all except Drake, who stood his ground.
A brilliant red flame — a shining light — erupted from Danny’s palm and blazed forth, missing Drake by centimetres. It hit one of the retreating vampires in the back. He stopped mid-flight, his body enveloped in a fiery red cocoon. The vamp struggled against his prison, which was ablaze on the inside. In response to his actions the cocoon began to shrink, until he couldn’t move anymore, the fire continuing to consume him. His cremated remains fell to the ground and the cocoon faded until it finally disappeared. The wind picked up and the ashes began to scatter.
As he lowered his arm, Danny urged me forwards. We ran towards the precipice. Before we reached the edge the lights appeared briefly and we skidded to a halt, back at the cottage. I thought I’d heard Drake yell out See you soon, no doubt and laugh as we left, and a feeling of dread crept over me.
“How do you know Drake, and what was that about anathema?” I asked.
“Drake and I go back a long way …”
“Anathema,” I said, tapping my foot on the floor, “anathema.”
“Don’t you know what it means?” Danny asked.
I snorted. “Of course I do. What did Drake mean about another anathema?”
“It refers to something from a long time ago, after Satan fell. It’s not important. Drake was trying to stir up trouble.”
“Is he that old?” I asked, suddenly filled with a weird kind of awe, bordering on respect, for a vampire that could have survived that long.
Danny laughed. “Not quite, though he is old, and clever. You have to be to survive for so long.”
I shook my head. How little I knew of this world. The world ordinary mortals didn’t even know existed, yet was so closely entangled in theirs.
“How did you manage to get yourself cornered?” Danny asked.
He may have had life eternal to perfect his hunting skills — I was very new to it. I had a lot to learn and I knew it. Danny would need to come good on giving me some sort of education on what to expect out there. I’d forgotten the word he’d used. It sounded vaguely like terror.
I thought back to the vampire I’d let go — how cocksure he was and the bravado he’d displayed. I was just as bad, way too overconfident. Never again would I forget that things didn’t always go according to plan — err on the side of caution. Expect the unexpected!
I sighed. “Just plain bad luck.”
“You travelled a good distance. Did you run all the way?”
“Yes. I ran all day. How far was I from my starting point?”
I’d lost count of the number of times I went back and forth, hunting and killing.
“Four hundred kilometres, give or take. You had entered another angel’s territory. It’s a good thing you didn’t attract his attention.”
How was I to know that I’d crossed the border? It wasn’t like there was someone standing there asking to check my papers.
“Where exactly are your territorial boundaries?”
Danny produced a map and we sat on the floor to study it. The boundaries of his territory flared and I looked at the scale of the map to get an idea of the size of the region. I figured it was roughly five hundred thousand square kilometres. That was a pretty impressive area for one angel to patrol!
A third of his territory was covered in forests and national parks, and I noticed my old home town was one of the many cities he would’ve patrolled. That explained how he would have happened across me — across Chris — if he was patrolling his territory at the time.
“That’s a huge area to cover,” I said.
“It’s not that bad. I have eyes and ears that report to me, which helps.”
I tapped the map with my finger. “So where’s the cottage and where was I today?”
Danny pointed to the two locations. They were much further apart than I’d anticipated. Even at the speeds I’d been able to run it would take me a good three or four days of solid running to get back to the cottage from where I’d been.
“Does that mean the night you left me in the forest — the night I upset you — I was on the edge of your border?”
“Yes.” He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “I did not want to be responsible for having to destroy you, if it came to that, so I chose the easy way out — to let you become someone else’s problem. It would have been so easy to leave you there, and not look back.”
“Oh,” I replied. I could understand his reasoning, but it didn’t explain why he came back. “So what made you change your mind?”
“I realised that I’m better than that. I take care of my own problems.”
I gaped at him and he held his hand up to stop me from speaking.
“I’m not saying you’re a problem anymore, provided you can leave mortals alone and only focus on vampires and the like.”
“Nice to know you have such faith in me,” I mumbled, continuing to study the map.
We talked about what had happened during my day, the things I’d seen and found out about the vampires, about how both my hands were weapons that didn’t need the catalyst of a bite, how my fingers were assimilated into the vampires’ skin, and how I’d taken on three at once.
Danny was amazed at my resilience and cunning, and the tactics I’d employed to draw them in. Of course my faux fear wouldn’t work anymore, not now they knew about me. It had been my intention to gain full strength in one day, yet that was not to be. I’d need to employ different tactics to get what I needed — what I wanted.
I asked about the high their blood gave me. Danny had no answer for it. Blood should not do that, but being unique as I was, as far as Danny was aware, who knew? There would be lots of unanswered questions about me. I was new territory, to be studied and charted. At least that’s how it felt sometimes, when I caught Danny looking at me in a decidedly odd way. Sooner or later I’d be written into the angelic histories — I had no doubt about that — but what they’d say about me, and how accurate and unbiased they’d be, was an unknown.
“Did you happen to hear my new nickname at all?” I asked.
“What’s a nickname?”
“It’s kind of a name you give someone to describe them, when you don’t want to use their real name,” I explained.
“No, I didn’t hear anything while I was patrolling. Why, what is it?”
“She who kills. Pretty cool, hey?”
“They gave you that name?” he asked, surprised.
“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 would not 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.
- Writer
