Angel Series Books 1-3 Boxed Set

Demon's Blood

Demon's Blood

Danny came out of the library to see what all the commotion was about, thinking I’d been on another shopping spree — dumping bags and boxes all over the place — only to find me splayed on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, breathing shallowly. He sat me up and placed an arm under my knees and the other under my neck, careful to keep well away from the small amount of steel that was still sticking out of my back. I moaned as he lifted me and let my head loll forwards, unable to find the strength or energy to hold it up.

He laid me face down on the bed and examined my back, before donning smelter’s gloves to try to remove the throwing stars as swiftly and gently as he could. Only a quarter of each star was visible, so removing them was not such a simple task, particularly wearing thick and heavy gloves. I was too far gone to even question why the gloves were necessary.

I heard a faraway metallic ping, somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, as the stars were dropped one by one into a metal bowl. He washed out the wounds with warm water and sat back to wait for them heal. An hour later, bleeding and unhealed, Danny resorted to the one thing that had worked in the past — his own blood. I screamed as his blood dripped onto the wounds, burning my flesh — it’s all in the mind, Helena — yet leaving no scorch marks. He sat down again and waited for the wounds to heal. They continued to ooze blood and remained open and raw. I thought I heard him say a quick prayer before I felt his hands on me — so cold, I couldn’t understand why — wrapping layers of crepe bandages, over gauze, around my torso to dress the wounds.

I was asleep, I was sure of it, as the pain had gone …

My second abortion had been performed by a friend of the family I’d been fostered to — my last-chance family — and it had been a backyard botch job. I was haemorrhaging badly, though oddly enough wasn’t in any pain. I was mostly cold and wanted to sleep. I remembered seeing bright lights and thinking I was going to die, and glad of it …

“Helena, can you hear me?” someone asked.

The bright light was fading now, getting further away and I blinked.

“She’s still with us,” another voice said.

“Cold,” I murmured.

“Did you catch what she said?” voice number one, a man, asked.

“No,” voice number two, a woman, replied.

I felt hot breath on my neck and the warmth was nice. I shivered.

“What did you say, Helena?” the man asked.

“Cold,” I murmured.

“She said she’s cold,” he said. “Have we got the results of the blood typing yet? She’s going into hypovolemic shock.”

“They’ve just come back,” another voice said. “A-negative — that figures. Why does this s**t always happen on our shift?”

“No time to b***h. We need three units of blood, now!” the man yelled.

I heard some shuffling and mumbling in the distance.

“Helena, you’re going to go to sleep for a while, and when you wake up you’ll feel a lot better. I promise,” the man said.

There was pressure on my face and the air tasted funny. I struggled to keep my eyes open, but the lids were just too heavy and everything went dark …

Voices were whispering inside my head.

“She’s really lucky to be alive. Whoever butchered her should be locked up,” the man said.

“Do you think she’ll talk?” the woman asked.

“Not likely. If she was that desperate to seek out a backyard abortionist she’s not likely to rat on them,” the man said.

“So they get away with what they did and she can never have children of her own, all because of one mistake,” the woman said bitterly.

Did the woman mean I couldn’t have children of my own? Big deal. Why would I want to bring kids into a scummy world like this anyway?

“She should be coming around soon,” the woman said. “Did you want to wait or shall I call you when she’s awake and coherent?”

“If you could call me that’d be great, but maybe you should talk to her first. She’s probably going to be traumatised and I don’t deal with that stuff very well,” the man replied. “Besides, I need to interview her foster family and get started on the paperwork.”

I heard the door open and close and thought I was alone. I opened my eyes and the room spun. Round and round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.

I threw up everywhere, a disgusting smelling liquid, probably bile.

The woman was still in the room. She opened the door and yelled into the corridor, “Can I have a nurse in here please. She’s throwing up!”

My stomach was empty, yet I continued to retch until even the bile wasn’t coming up anymore.

The door opened again and I heard two sets of footsteps, one heavier than the other. I turned my head slightly and saw two nurses.

“This will stop you from being sick,” one of the nurses said.

I felt a sting in my thigh and nurse one rubbed the area before covering it with a small sticky plaster.

“Gees, it’s like that exorcism movie in here,” the second nurse commented, “but without the pea soup. God I hate the smell of this stuff. Give me a bedpan any day!”

The first nurse cleaned my face and hands with a wash cloth and warm water while the second nurse removed the blankets and sheet from my bed, before covering my legs with fresh, clean and cold ones. I shivered.

“Does she need a new gown?” the second nurse asked.

“Yes,” the first nurse replied.

“Here,” the second nurse said, throwing a gown. “I brought one along just in case.”

“Helena, can you lean forward for me please?” the first nurse asked. “I need to untie your gown, slip it off and slip on a clean one.”

She helped me lean forward, my head nodding like that of one of those little dolls with springs for necks. There was a fiery pain in my abdomen and I groaned.

“Sorry, hon, I know it hurts, but you’ll feel better once I’ve changed your gown and given you something for the pain.”

“Can I help at all?” the woman asked.

“Yeah,” the first nurse replied, “can you unhook the IV bag and slip it through her sleeve while I hold her up? I really need three hands for this.”

“Sure,” the woman said.

When they’d managed to change my gown and injected something into the drip for the pain, the nurses left, but the woman remained behind. She pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed. She took my hand in hers. I pulled it away.

“Helena, my name is Madeline, but you can call me Maddy,” the woman said. “I’m a clinical psychologist. Some people call me Mad!”

It was a really pathetic attempt at humour and she gave a high-pitched nervous laugh before clearing her throat and continuing. “How old are you, Helena?”

“Fourteen,” I whispered, “and a half.”

Maddy nodded thoughtfully, knowing that for children half years were very important.

“Do you know what happened to you?” she asked.

My head was still shrouded in fog and I tried to think back to what had happened, why I was here.

I heard a siren and my foster mother knelt next to me, resting my head in her lap. She wanted to put on a good act for the paramedics, the distraught carer.

She leaned down until her mouth was next to my ear. “If you know what’s good for you we had nothing to do with this. We didn’t even know you were pregnant, never mind how you found out about backyarders. Am I making myself clear?”

I gave a small nod and when she lifted her head the paramedics were there and she had tears in her eyes.

“God, please help her,” she cried out, “she’s dying. Please don’t let her die!”

I nodded my head and sobbed. I remembered all right.

“Helena, it’s okay.” Maddy reached out for my hand again and I retreated once more. “Anything you tell me is covered by doctor-patient privilege.”

I’d seen enough television to know there were always loopholes. The only person I could trust, ever, was me.

“It was my own stupid fault,” I whispered. “I had unprotected s*x. It was my very first time.” I was a convincing liar, especially when I was sobbing. “I thought you couldn’t get pregnant if you were still a virgin.”

Maddy shook her head. “Don’t they teach kids anything about s*x education in school anymore?”

“My foster parents wouldn’t let me take the class. They wanted to protect me from that sort of thing.” I made a pathetic attempt at a weak laugh. “I really blew it, didn’t I?”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Maddy said.

She was trying hard not to pass judgement on me and to gain my trust.

“Am I going to be taken away from my family?”

“That’s not up to me to decide,” Maddy said. “That’s for your case worker. I can only put in a recommendation.”

“Please,” I begged. “They’re good people. I don’t want to leave them.”

I fidgeted with the blankets, gripping, releasing, gripping, releasing.

“I’ve been so good all these years. Don’t punish me for not knowing about sex.”

“Helena, how do you feel about what’s happened?” Maddy asked.

The question caught me off guard. I thought she was here to assess whether or not I should be taken from my foster family, not to determine my mental well-being.

“I … I don’t know,” I whispered, and cried again.

“Give it time, Helena.” Maddy patted my arm. “Everything’s too fresh for you at the moment and the drugs are probably making it hard for you to think. You’ll need time to sort through your emotions.”

I laid my head back on the pillows. I didn’t want to talk anymore.

“I’ll be back to talk to you tomorrow, but here’s my card.” Maddy left the card on the bedside table. “Call me any time, day or night, if you need to talk. I only want to help.”

People came and went, asking questions and taking notes. After two weeks I was allowed to go home, back to my foster family. Maddy’s recommendation that I not be removed from the only family I had known, due to my delicate emotional state, had been accepted. The only additional requirement was that I had to report in once a fortnight with Maddy, so she could continue to assess and monitor me.

David knew what had happened to me and he also knew I hadn’t talked. He believed his parents would have been all over him if they thought he was responsible for what happened to me. He still didn’t know about my other secret life, but he was right to think the baby was his. It was. He was the only one I had unprotected s*x with, though his parents thought one of their clients who really disliked condoms was responsible for my pregnancy. Now it didn’t matter, I’d never fall pregnant again.

David’s parents had killed their own grandchild and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He couldn’t tell them what they’d done. He stopped dancing with me after that and we never had s*x again. I think he felt guilty that because of him I’d never have children of my own …

I opened my eyes, in the here and now, and the room spun, as it had once done when I was fourteen and a half. I thought I was going to vomit, but my stomach remained a rock, unyielding. I closed my eyes again and felt something warm brush the hair away from my eyes.

“Helena, can you hear me?”

It wasn’t the emergency room doctor and it wasn’t Maddy. If the fog lifted I might recognise the voice, but it enveloped me again.

There was darkness, nothing but darkness. Was this what it was like when you died? No sights, sounds or smells? Empty, devoid of everything? Lonely?

“Helena, can you hear me?” the voice called out again.

How long have I been swimming in the darkness? I thought to myself.

The darkness covered me like a shroud and I felt safe. Nothing can touch you when you can’t feel.

“Helena,” the voice persisted.

“Go away.” Did I say that in my head or out loud?

I was back in the darkness, floating peacefully.

Blinding light, joy and bliss flooded my body. I drew in a sharp breath. After the nothing of the darkness the sensation overload was a shock. My body convulsed, like I was having a seizure, and I couldn’t control it. I screamed out. This time I knew the noise was not in my head. It came from my throat, raw and primal.

My body flopped down onto the bed, like a rag doll tossed aside, then I was pulled closer again, in a strong grip. I felt arms envelope me, hands rubbing my back and warm breath in my ear, coming in waves, with comforting and reassuring words.

“Helena, you’re okay now. Everything will be okay. I’m here and I won’t leave. I’ll never leave. You can open your eyes now.”

I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want the room to spin.

“Danny?” I whispered, unsure if it was my voice I was hearing. It sounded different, hoarse, liked I’d been doing a lot of screaming.

“I’m here, Helena,” he whispered in my ear.

“Where am I?”

“You’re at the cottage.”

“I’m not dead then?”

He chuckled and lay me down again, kissing my eyes to encourage me to open them. I let a little light in, then opened them a bit wider. The light was still bright, but the room was not spinning.

“No, you’re very much alive. You were in the grip of a raging fever.”

Danny brushed my cheek tenderly with his fingers. They felt warm once again.

“When you didn’t heal yourself and my blood didn’t work, I resorted to prayer. It was the only thing I could do. I thought I was going to lose you.”

“What happened to me?” I couldn’t remember a thing.

“You’ve been reckless. Time and again you’ve been reckless. You’ll never listen.”

Danny wasn’t scolding me, he was stating a simple fact. He was so overjoyed that I’d pulled through he didn’t want to lecture me or tell me off, but he couldn’t resist one little dig.

“I wish you’d lose that pig-headed streak of yours!”

“That’s why you love me,” I laughed weakly.

“That’s one of the reasons I love you,” he chuckled. “Do you remember the dark shapes in the temple?”

“No.”

“For now it doesn’t matter,” Danny said, taking my hand in his and kissing the palm. “It’ll come back to you.”

I closed my eyes again and Danny gently squeezed my hand.

“Did I ever tell you how I got the scar near my hip?” he asked.

“No, though the memory of it might be floating around in my head somewhere.”

“Not that one,” Danny said.

Was Danny deliberately keeping some memories from me, apart from the cited information overload? I was curious as to why he’d want to talk about this one now, and struggled to sit up. I felt so weak. He leaned me forward and slid a couple more pillows behind my back before resting me on them.

“Your colour looks so much better today,” he said.

“How long was I out for?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes,” I asked impatiently. Why would I ask if I didn’t want to know?

“Six weeks, three days, four hours and twenty-eight minutes.”

Wow! That was a long time. No wonder I felt so weak.

“You forgot the seconds,” I laughed weakly, another failed attempt at humour.

“Seven,” he replied.

“I’d probably have been dead by now if I were mortal.”

“You almost did die. More than once I thought I’d lost you. Your heart would stop beating, only for a second or so, then it would start again and the screaming begin.”

“I did a lot of screaming, did I?” That explained the hoarseness of my voice.

“More than I would have thought was humanly possible,” Danny conceded. It must have been a lot then.

I wriggled my hand free of his and tapped his stomach. It was the closest I could get to his hip.

“You were going to tell me about your scar.”

He grabbed my hand and kissed the palm again before clasping it to his cheek.

“The wound was from a fight with a demon. It wasn’t even a fight really. I was caught off guard and the knife was coated in demon’s blood.”

“Was it Amy?” I asked.

He nodded. “We were sitting on the grass, talking, but it got us nowhere. She lashed out as I stood up to leave. I don’t think she was expecting me to stand up. If I’d been seated the blade would have pierced my lungs, if not my heart. Had she held me down and left the blade there I wouldn’t have been able to heal myself. I would’ve died.” He shrugged his shoulders. “As it was she nicked the area below my hip and before I could stop myself she was engulfed in angel fire.”

“I’m sorry, Danny.”

“You, Helena,” he said cheerfully — a little too cheerfully, “have nothing to be sorry about, apart from nearly getting yourself killed.”

I shook my head gently. “I don’t understand.”

“Demon’s blood can be fatal. When it was taking so long for you to recover I thought you’d succumb.”

Demon’s blood — was that what happened to me? I remembered pain in my back, and the throwing stars. Yes, it was beginning to come back to me now. Was that why the throwing stars had hurt so much, because they were coated in demon’s blood?

“But you survived,” I replied.

“Yes, and I too was lucky. It wasn’t a deep wound, not near any vital organs. The only thing I couldn’t heal was the scar. It’s a permanent part of me now. Even so, I was delirious for near on a week.”

“So I’ll be scarred?” I asked.

“Yes, though the wounds were very neat and narrow. They should be pretty, as far as scars go.”

“Can I see?”

“If you can walk I’ll help you to the bathroom and you can see the damage for yourself, before bathing.” He wrinkled his nose and gave me a half smile. “You smell a little unusual.”

“Didn’t you give me sponge baths while I was unconscious?”

“What’s a sponge bath?” Danny asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Never mind. I think I can walk.”

Danny pulled back the covers for me and I swung my legs over the side of the bed. They were obviously still asleep, as the familiar sensation of pins and needles travelled up and down my legs in waves. When my feet touched the ground, the sensation was doubled. I sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, flexing my toes and rubbing my calves.

“What’s wrong?” Danny asked.

“Pins and needles. I must’ve been in the one position for too long.”

Danny looked at my legs and gently felt the entire length of one with his hands.

“I don’t feel anything,” he said, perplexed.

“Don’t angels ever get numbness in their limbs, or a strange tingling if they’ve been in the one spot too long?”

“No.”

“Oh,” I replied. “Well mortals do. I guess that’s another part of my mortality I retained.”

I tapped my feet on the ground. When the sensation had almost passed I pushed down on the bed with my hands, for support when I stood up. So far so good, I thought. I moved one foot then the other. It felt like I was moving someone else’s legs. They were slow and sluggish, not like my legs at all.

Danny pulled my arm around his shoulder and I leaned into him for support. Together we shuffled to the bathroom at an excruciatingly slow pace.

The bath was full of hot, soapy water that was steaming up the room. I pulled the nightgown over my head. Danny drew in a sharp breath. His fingers reached out to touch my back gently.

“Hey, that tickles,” I complained, looking back over my shoulder, the nightgown still on my arms. “It’s not fair of you to take advantage of a girl in her weakened state.”

“No, it’s not that,” Danny said, wonder in his voice. “It’s your back. The scars are gone.”

He turned me around until I faced the mirror over the hand basin and held a small mirror behind me, so that I could see my back reflected in the mirror. He touched the area between my shoulder blades where the throwing stars had lodged.

“There is absolutely no trace of an injury at all. When I removed the bandage last week, it was healed enough that I didn’t need to re-dress you, yet they were still red and raw, like new scars always are.” He leaned forward and kissed my back. “Most remarkable indeed!”

“Cut it out Danny,” I laughed softly. “I don’t have the strength for that.”

He chuckled. “I don’t always have s*x on the brain. Mind you, it has been over six weeks …”

“Cheeky,” I replied. “I’m going to need to eat something soon, to regain my strength.”

“Not today,” Danny said firmly. “Today you rest. Tomorrow we’ll go on a hunt. You need someone to watch your back.”

“But it’s not safe for you,” I protested.

“I can still fight,” Danny said. “That’s one thing that hasn’t changed. Besides, they know we’re still alive now.”

“They know I’m alive,” I corrected him. “They still think you’re dead.”

“What have you been up to, Helena?” he asked suspiciously, narrowing his eyes and giving me a you’ve-been-up-to-no-good look.

I smiled at him, a wicked glint in my eyes. “It seems I’m not limited to having to tell the truth at all times. A few white lies, a few tears, and those dumb vampires will believe anything! Apparently you’re dead, in case you didn’t know.”

“In the bath, now. I want to scrub that smell off you. We’ll talk about hunting tomorrow morning.”

There was no point in arguing. Danny could be just as pig-headed as me when he wanted to, when he thought it was absolutely necessary. Most of the time I won, but there were the occasional things he would not relent on, and this seemed to be one of them.

I didn’t tell Danny about my dreams while I’d been out of it. He would have already known when he brought me around, by placing a hand on my forehead and a hand over my heart. My memories would have flooded into him when he called me back from the darkness.

The hot bath warmed me through and I didn’t feel as weak as I had only an hour before. Danny handed me the soap and I washed myself while he leaned forward against the bath, his arms on the side and his head on his hands. He told me about the different stages of fever and delirium I’d gone through, the things I’d called out, how long I’d screamed, how long I’d cried and how he had tried time and again to bring me back.

Danny helped me out of the bath — I was worried I might slip — and after I’d dried and dressed I walked to the living area unassisted. I could feel Danny’s eyes piercing my back as I walked over to the couch and sat down. He sat next to me and looked into my face as if he was trying to find something hidden there.

“Something’s bothering you,” I said.

“You’re clean, but you still smell unusual,” he said.

“I do? I can’t tell.” I shrugged my shoulders. “My nose still thinks I’m mortal.”

“Is it possible you’ve subconsciously altered your scent?”

“I guess so.”

I looked inwards and my eyes widened as I found not the five genetic sequences I had come to expect, but six!

“What do you see?” Danny asked, knowing from the look on my face I’d found something.

“Just hang on a sec, I need to make some changes.”

The new code had slightly changed my combined code, the code that gave me the scent Danny had come to recognise as me. I altered the code sets until the scent for the new and unfamiliar one was dominant. Danny was up in a flash, standing on the other side of the room.

“Change it back!” he yelled.

I let the combined scent become dominant again, overruling all of the others, then modified it slightly, by making the new code set dormant, to resemble what it used to be.

Danny sighed. He ran his hands through his hair and sat down beside me again, happier now.

“It seems you’ve assimilated the genetic code of demon blood,” he said

“Cool,” I replied. “Another scent I can recreate if I have to.”

“Not cool at all,” Danny said, shaking his head. “You’ll have to keep the demon in check.”

What the hell did that mean?

“I don’t think you understand, Danny.” I poked him in the chest. “I’m not the only one in this room with demon blood in my body.”

Danny’s eyes widened and his head jerked back in shock. It had never occurred to him that the blood of Amy could still be in him.

“Once in the system it’s there for life,” I told him, “and are you telling me you’ve been keeping the demon in check ever since Amy stabbed you? That you didn’t even realise her blood is a part of who you are?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, completely taken aback. “You see things so differently. I wouldn’t have thought it possible that the tainted blood was still in me. I thought healing also purged the body of all impurities. I think all angels believe that.”

“Don’t be silly, there’s nothing to be sorry about. But it’s nice to know,” I smiled smugly, “that even your perception of things has limits.”