Angel Series Books 1-3 Boxed Set

Lightning Strike-1

Lightning Strike

“I’m beat,” I said. “I really need to get some sleep. Will you come and stay with me? I think a few hours should be enough.”

“I’m sorry, Helena. I need to run a quick patrol. I’ll be back before you wake.” He kissed my forehead and left.

I headed straight to bed, even though I knew I would find it difficult to sleep. I thought about the things that had happened in the past week — how I’d needed Danny to rescue me from a large group of vampires and put him in danger by being in another angel’s territory. He risked much just by concealing my existence — hiding me from angels and vampires alike. Then there was the werewolf attack. I’d slowed him down and he had had to bleed, and bleed badly, to heal me. And what about the elevator incident? Let’s face it, I seemed to need him more than he needed me. I was a liability.

I drifted into a troubled sleep, seeing Danny sacrificing himself to the vampires in my stead — in order to save me. I saw Danny being killed by angel fire, or turned into a wolf.

When I woke for the third time, I couldn’t bear going back to sleep, to see Danny die or be changed again. He was not back yet. He’d probably expected that I would sleep a bit longer than I had.

I decided a bath would make me feel better, and was almost surprised it wasn’t already filled with steaming hot water. Of course if Danny did expect me to sleep longer, it would make sense that the bath wasn’t full. I turned on the taps and filled the bath the old fashioned way.

Where was the hot water coming from?

I bathed and dressed, and, that done, lounged in an armchair, thinking more on the strange turn my life had taken. It was time to stop being selfish and to think about Danny, and whether or not I really was a liability to him, a burden. My heart sank as I weighed up the options — to stay with him and distract him from what he’s meant to be doing, or to leave and try and carve out a new life for myself as a lone hunter. To accept what he was offering or to turn my back on it. The ache in my heart was more excruciating than any bite. It was a decision I couldn’t make on my own. Danny had been honest and upfront with me about everything so far. I would leave the decision to him. After all, what was one more burden in the scope of things?

When Danny returned I was consumed with anxiety. He knew something was wrong as soon as he sat down and looked at me. He held out his arms and encouraged me to come to him.

This is it, I thought, the moment of truth.

Instead of climbing into his lap as I wished to do, I knelt at the foot of the chair and rested my head on his knees. He stroked my hair soothingly. I knew what I had to do. I lifted my head from his knees and took his hands in mine. I kissed each palm in turn. Before he could realise what I was doing, I placed one of his hands on my heart and one on my forehead.

He gasped — the norm for this experience, it seemed — and his body convulsed as my memories and thoughts, hopes and fears, flooded into him like a tidal wave. In less than a heartbeat it was over. How little time it took to pass on everything I had trouble saying.

I sat back on my knees, waiting for him to raise his head and say something, anything. My heart was fluttering wildly and I couldn’t slow it down. I was afraid of what his answer would be, yet I needed to hear it.

He sighed and looked at me, his eyes a maelstrom of emotion. I was unsure of what he was going to say.

“No,” he said. “I cannot decide for you.”

My shoulders slumped forward and my heart sank even further into the pit of my stomach. Danny reached forward and placed his hand under my chin, lifting my face so he could look at me.

“I know your feelings for me and I feel your pain, your confusion, your fear. Now I need you to know of my feelings. I know words won’t convince you. You’ve been let down too often in the past to truly believe — in your heart — my words. One day, perhaps, that will change.”

He gently moved me to the side so he could kneel on the floor as well, right in front of me, our knees touching. He took my hands in his and kissed my palms, as I had done to his, then placed them on his knees.

“Don’t be frightened by what I do. It will not hurt me, but it’s the only way for me to show you — someone who is not an angel — what is in my heart.”

He slowly unbuttoned, then removed, his shirt. With one finger he drew an invisible vertical line along his breastbone, over his heart. An incision appeared along the line, and blood flowed in rivulets down his chest.

I stared in horror at what he was doing — mutilating himself to prove something to me. I looked at his face, not wanting to watch the blood that smelled so sweet running down the gash he had made. He professed no pain, yet his eyes told a different story. I turned to look anywhere but at Danny.

“Watch, please,” he said calmly, his eyes closed now. “It’s important to me for you to know what I do.”

I followed his hands now. They moved to his chest and peeled aside the flesh around the incision, to reveal the bones beneath. He whispered a word I didn’t understand. The ribs on the left of his breastbone detached and retracted to the side. His still beating heart — pulsing with life — was unveiled to me. I had never seen a beating heart before. I could see the blood being pumped through it and heard the rhythm of its beat.

Danny took one of my hands in his and carefully folded it around his heart. His hand remained over mine, to keep it there. I felt the steady beating of his heart — the warmth of it — and the sweet scent of his blood was almost overpowering.

He leaned forward and kissed me. The circuit he needed to accomplish what it was he wanted to do was now complete. I found myself in the part of his mind he’d reserved for me, and me alone. I saw the emotions, new and raw, that scared him, yet excited him at the same time. It was similar to what I’d shown him — almost everything was mirrored — except he didn’t think of me as a burden or liability. He thought of me as an angel sent to help him find his way. He had thought he was on the edge of being lost, and I revitalised him — gave him hope and made him content. I felt love radiate out through every pore of his body. I felt him feel that his heart would surely burst.

He unfurled my hand and pulled it free of his chest. I watched as his ribs reconnected with the breastbone, covering his heart. The flesh of his chest joined together, the incision sealing neatly with no telltale scar. When I looked into Danny’s eyes the pain I had seen there was gone.

The heady smell of his blood on my hand made me giddy. I rushed to the bathroom to clean it off. Danny followed me, thinking I was running from him — from what he had shown me. I turned to him as I dried my hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said apologetically, “the smell of your blood is too much for me. It’s a good thing you don’t taste as good as you smell.”

“Do you understand now?” he asked in a whisper.

I slid my arms around his waist and rested my head on his chest.

“I do understand, although I have difficulty coming to terms with it. You see, I’ve never known anything like this. All my life people have taken from me until I had no more to give. This will take some getting used to.”

Danny wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my hair.

“With His blessing we’ll have forever.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

Danny laughed. “Hallelujah! I get to find out what a lap dance is after all.”

I loosened myself from his grip and smacked his arm playfully.

“All in good time,” I said, laughing at him. He had no idea what he was in for!

We went back to the living area, and I was amused to find that the furniture had changed during the few minutes of our exchange in the bathroom.

“A couch?” I asked.

“Much cosier than separate armchairs, don’t you think?”

I lay in his arms on the couch and watched the fire crackling in the fire place.

“Now my staying has been decided, I need to focus on doing what I think I’m going to do best.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “We’re going to bed again already?”

I elbowed him in the ribs. “No, cheeky, I mean killing vamps.”

“Oh,” he sounded disappointed.

“Maybe later,” I teased. “But seriously, I’d been thinking of what I might do if I was a lone hunter — if the decision had been that I had to leave you.”

“And what were your plans?”

“Now I have my own form of transportation the odds are even more in my favour, particularly since I can get myself out of a bad situation in a heartbeat.”

“Your point being?”

“Have you heard the term blitzkrieg?”

“No.”

“It was a term coined during the Second World War,” I explained. “That’s a mortal war, if you were wondering. Anyway, it means something like lightning war. The concept being an attack that struck through the enemy’s defences hard and fast, via quick surprise strikes. Once a hole had been punched through the defensive lines, the attacking force proceeded onward, with little regard to their own now exposed flank.

“It gave me an idea. I think I could pick off the vampires one or two at a time in lightning fast raids. Transport in, grab them and transport to another location. I was also thinking that I really need to grab a werewolf as well, to see if my hands work on them. Presumably I could still bite them, if I didn’t mind a mouthful of fur, but that’s kind of off-putting.

“Of course, I wouldn’t want to leave my flank exposed, so I’d need to be careful and do a lot of reconnaissance beforehand.”

“Steady on,” Danny said. “Reconnaissance is well and good. If you want to undertake raids of the magnitude I think you do, we need to make a plan of attack and retreat, in order to try and cover as many scenarios as possible.”

“Okay,” I agreed, “plans are good. Can you show me the map again, please?”

Danny produced a large-scale version of the map. We sat on the floor, leaning back against the couch, to look at the map.

“Can you highlight all areas of activity over the past three to four months?”

Little pinpoints of light appeared on the map, some black, some red. The black dots far outnumbered the red.

“The red represents the vampires, the black the werewolves.”

“Wow. That’s a lot of werewolves. If they’re wild werewolves, those numbers probably won’t fluctuate much, but the vamps … How much longer do you think such large numbers of vampires will stay in the area?” I asked.

“Before you came on the scene I would have said they’d be finished their hunt by now and returned to their various cities. Now I suspect they’re after your blood.”

“I think you’re right. I’m a danger to them. Like the werewolves, they’ll want to neutralise the threat before I can decimate their numbers.”

“We need to choose a reasonably safe place for you to transport to once you’ve got your prey, particularly if you’re doing a snatch and grab from a large group. Not the cottage, though. You can’t bring them here, ever.”

“You must have some idea of where I should go.”

Danny scoured the map and enlarged it again, to better see the terrain. He raised his hand above the map and a three-dimensional image rose up. The map almost covered the entire floor and I could pick out the areas I knew much better now.

“What’s that?” I pointed to a dark spot on the map that was not lit, and showed no evidence of monster activity.

“That’s a small abandoned copper mine. Not very successful from what I can remember. Apart from the odd hiker no one’s been there in almost a century.”

“What about our friends in the corner?” I pointed to my practice partners. “Have they been known to visit there?”

“For some reason the vampires don’t like that area. I haven’t had the time to study it closely enough to find out why. Werewolves will venture there occasionally, but don’t stay very long. Zombies don’t venture that far into the forest. If they do the resident werewolves take them out — they’re very territorial.