Fallen Angel of Mine (31 page)

But something was wrong with the scene
before my eyes. First of all, I felt anchored and lucid. Usually,
this part of the dream was terrifying and hectic as powerful forces
tore at me and tried to drag me one way or the other. Aside from
the wailing of a baby echoing from all directions, there was no
other sound in the house. I reached a tentative foot into the
hallway and tested the floor. Hardwood creaked beneath my padded
pajamas.

My curious gaze wandered the hallway,
going back and forth between the light and the dark as I tried to
recall what had been different the last time I'd dreamed this. No
tornadoes of destruction? Check. No intense vacuum threatening to
suck my body one way or the other? Check. No maniacally evil
laughter? Check. I wasn't complaining about the lack of elements
wishing me bodily harm, but some tiny niggling thing was bugging
the heck out of me and—something in the Jenga pile I call a brain
finally clicked.

The dark end of the hall was an empty
roiling void. The last time I'd been here I could have sworn there
was a silhouette of light and now there was nothing.

"I will be your light in the dark," I
said, remembering Elyssa's words. It took me back to the dream I'd
had recently, about the tiny mote of light. What did that mean? Had
Elyssa's memory loss altered her role in my life? Or was this just
some stupid dream? I ran for the dark, hoping against hope if I
looked hard enough, I'd stumble across her. Just as the pitch
should have swallowed me whole, I met an elastic force. My body
rebounded, sending me skidding across the floor on my bottom until
I came to a halt in front of my bedroom again.

I lashed out with a string
of profanities, which sounded even more obscene in my little boy
voice. My butt felt warm from the friction. Dreams were
not
supposed to feel so
real. Then again, memories my mother had blurred from my mind had
been trying to resurface and it seemed certain I was headed for
serious brain damage and emotional trauma all wrapped up in a nice
little package.

Crossing my legs, I propped my elbows
on my knees, chin on my hands, and pouted. "Wake up," I said. "Boo!
Ahh!" I pinched myself so hard tears formed in my eyes. I slapped
my cheeks until they went numb with pain. Grabbed a flower vase off
the narrow table in the hall and upended it over my head, sending
water streaming down my face.

So much for that little
test.

The ground trembled and the low baying
of a horn split the air.

I pitched face-first toward the
brightly lit end of the hallway just as a petite silhouette
appeared in the door and walked my way. The light around her
shadowy form seemed to disintegrate into particles, and tiny beads
of white danced in the air, as if momentarily caught in a tornado,
before soaking into her. The uncanny sensation of someone else
watching me drew my attention to the dark end of the hall where a
figure swathed in a white glow emerged from the gaping maw of
pitch. The surrounding darkness fragmented and fell into the
glowing outline as though drawn into a black hole except it was
more like a white hole.

I dove for my bedroom and bounced off
an unexpected wall. The door had vanished. I staggered back to my
feet. Gripped the flower vase in my tiny hand for a moment before
dropping it and resigning myself to whatever horrible fate was
about to give me a butt kicking of epic proportions.

The mysterious forms drew closer, two
silent wraiths obliterating the environments around them. As they
closed to within several yards on either side of me, the wooden
floors and wall of the hallway splintered and shredded to dust,
until I stood astride only a narrow three-foot precipice of
creaking hardwood with a blinding white vortex to my right and the
black of oblivion to my left, each with a figure the polar opposite
in color at its core. I realized, with a start, both figures were
females, both by the long hair, the curve of hip, and the graceful
strides as they glided across thin air.

The woman from the brightly lit end of
the hall was fair of skin, wearing a long white dress a Greek
goddess might have favored. A mind-bending weave of golden hair
perched like a crown atop her head. A vortex of shadow surrounded
her like oily wisps of dark smoke, fragmenting the light into
crystalline shards. The other female wore a simple black dress.
Silky raven tresses cascaded over the olive skin of her shoulders.
A nimbus of swirling white surrounded her like a misty shroud,
destroying the endless dark.

The wispy veils whorled around both
figures, making it nearly impossible to discern their facial
features. All the while, they reminded me of my terrifying night in
El Dorado and the shadow creatures pacing around my tiny safe zone.
As these new beings drew to within ten paces on either side, I
braced for whatever horrors were about to come.

Instead, they stopped and regarded each
other, looking right through me. The blonde spoke first in an
all-too-familiar musical language—the same one Kassallandra had
spoken with Nightliss. Unfortunately, I didn't speak a lick of
Cyrinthian. But as the whirling shadows around the brunette cleared
for a second, I caught a glimpse of the face hidden
inside.

"Nightliss!" I shouted.

The dark air stilled and cleared,
revealing her petite form. Her almond-shaped eyes met mine. A sad
smile lingered on her face. The blonde followed suit, revealing a
nearly identical face with a scary crazy smirk. Obviously, I
wouldn't be doubling my pleasure with these two. They were the
Doublemint twins from hell.

"Why have you brought us here?" the
blonde asked in a demanding tone. "Release us!"

"Huh?" I cast a questioning look at
Nightliss but she looked just as confused as I did.

The blonde stepped closer but stopped
abruptly as if she'd just run into an exceptionally clean sliding
glass door. She pressed her fingers against the invisible barrier.
"Vadaemos? Half-damned?" She gave a toothy smile and then screamed
at the top of her lungs, pounding her fists against the solid air
like a spoiled child.

Nightliss jumped back a foot and I
pressed back against the wall as the madwoman raged just a scant
five feet from me. What in the world was going on?

The blonde abruptly stopped her frantic
activity as lucidity crept back into her eyes. "What? I'm still
here?" She spun in a slow circle, taking in her surroundings, and
focused on me again. "This is very rude of you."

"Who are you?" I asked.

She opened her mouth as if to reply
when her eyes grew wide and horrified, focusing on someone else,
namely Nightliss. "The girl spoke the truth. You're here. This
can't be."

Nightliss pursed her lips and narrowed
her eyes in what I gathered was an angry expression. Really,
though, she looked too adorable to be scary. Plus, I couldn't stop
thinking about how she looked as a little black cat, especially
when I scratched her under the chin.

"Weren't you just speaking to her in
Cyrinthian?" I said.

The blonde touched a finger to her
chin. "Yes, now that I think of it." She sighed. "This is so
troublesome."

"What is?"

"Insanity. I simply must accelerate
events if I am to avoid a permanent descent into
madness."

"Events? What events?"

She wound a strand of her golden hair
around a finger and toyed with it. "I suppose it is of no
consequence if I tell you everything since you will soon be dead.
Many centuries ago we…" Her eyes focused on something apparently
only she could see. Her jaw went slack with fascination and she
snatched at the air, each time laughing with the joy of a
child.

"Hey, you!" I shouted. I stepped closer
to her, expecting to collide with the same invisible barrier she
had, but instead, found nothing separating us.

"No! No!" Nightliss shouted. I turned
to see her pounding on her own invisible wall, eyes wide with
horror. "No touch her!"

The blonde woman's hand flashed toward
me. I felt a whiff of air next to my cheek as she tried to grab her
invisible butterfly yet again. Jumping back, I narrowly avoided her
hand yet again and made it back to the sliver of safety.

"Why no touch?" I asked
Nightliss.

"It might be bad," she replied in
heavily accented English.

"Sounds like you're learning our
language."

She beamed at me and
blushed.

"Kassallandra told me you're an angel."
I glanced at the blonde woman and prayed that they weren't all as
insane as her. Turning back to Nightliss, I said, "Is it
true?"

Her smile faltered as she gazed at her
mirror twin. She shook her head. "Not the same."

"Oh." Disappointment smacked me on the
back of the head. A part of me hadn't really believed Kassallandra,
though the other part had secretly hoped Nightliss was my own
personal angel. Since I was technically half demon spawn, it
couldn't hurt to have an angel as a friend.

"Must feed," the blonde said as sanity
cleared the glaze in her eyes.

"Wait, tell me about your plans. You
were about to tell me everything, remember?"

The ground trembled and the flooring
cracked. I tumbled to my knees. Despite the fact the two women were
apparently hovering in midair, they staggered with the effort to
stay upright. The remnants of the house groaned as though every
fiber of it was being strained to the max. The splintered frame to
my left where Nightliss crouched snapped away and fell into a dark
void. She dropped into the pitch, vanishing without a sound. The
other side snapped away and the woman in white screamed as the
blinding light sucked her in.

The small section I stood on rocked
back and forth, threatening to topple me to one side or the other.
The wall behind me splintered. A crack ran down the surface and
into the remaining hardwood beneath my feet. I gripped the crevice
in the wall as the floor disintegrated, falling away into a
swirling gray mist where the light and the dark met, perfectly
aligned beneath my flailing legs.

I got the sudden sense someone wanted
me to choose a side and they were forcing the issue. "I'm not
playing this game," I shouted as the rumbling noise grew louder.
Gripping desperately at the broken wall, I tried to pull myself
into my bedroom, which floated like an island above the gray abyss.
The drywall crumbled in my hands. I clawed desperately at the
hardwood. My fingers slipped. I fell.

Wind rushed against my back as I
plummeted toward oblivion. I twisted and turned facedown just in
time for the gray mist to swallow me.

"Justin?" said a soft voice. A warm
hand caressed my jawline and I touched it with my own, pressing it
against my cheek.

"Elyssa," I whispered.

The hand jerked away. I forced my
groggy eyes open and found Lina looking down, her generous lips
pouting. "No, it is me."

I pushed myself into a sitting
position, expecting a pounding headache and sore muscles. Instead,
I felt pretty darned good. Lina sat on the edge of my cot. "What
happened?"

"Devon saved you."

A sharp pain lodged in my chest as I
asked the next question. "And Elyssa?"

She sighed and stood, brushing lint or
something off her red dress. I couldn't help but noticed how short
the dress was and how it showed the muscular tone of her bronzed
thighs. "The girl is fine. It was very close for both of
you."

I blew out a breath I hadn't realized
I'd been holding and looked around the room. "Where is
she?"

"Drinking tea with Bella."

That definitely didn't sound like
something Elyssa would do. I stood up and gave an experimental
stretch of the old muscles. My body seemed pleased as punch to be
up and moving. Heck, I was pretty darned happy to be out of that
bizarre nightmare with Nightliss and her insane wonder twin. Lina
walked to the door and stood with her back to me. Her dark hair
hung shiny and straight. Flowery perfume tickled my nose and made
me want to sneeze.

"Can you—"

"Yes, yes. Follow me." She took off
without waiting.

I really didn't know what to
say. She obviously liked me—I didn't need incubus super powers to
know that. But Elyssa was all I could think about. Her rosebud lips
were the only ones I wanted to kiss. I wanted to look into her eyes
and see the love I felt looking right back at me. But the sharp
thudding pain in my chest told me I knew otherwise.
My
Elyssa wouldn't have
tried to kill us both. She would have said something. She would
have helped me instead of using me like a human stepladder. And if
she was already up and about, my Elyssa would never have left my
side.

Lina abruptly stopped and spun to me,
anger flashing in her eyes. "You still did not tell me the whole
story of this girl and you. I want to know everything."

"It's really complicated."

"You promised me."

I sighed and gave her a ten-minute tour
of my disastrous love life. How Elyssa's father had reacted to me,
and how he'd threatened to erase her memory because of
me.