“I thought you’d handle this better,” the angel mutters. “I should have just ripped my shirt.”
His wings furl back in and disappear in a brief flash of light.
They were there, and now they’re not. My eyes dart between the feather in my hand and the angel, back and forth. My mental state wasn’t great before this, but now I think my brain is truly broken. I don’t know how to reconcile the shape of a man I thought was about toassault mewith the impossibly perfect features of a holy angel.
One that is still standing before me without a shirt on. He has enough chiseled muscles to make any other straight, red-blooded woman weak in the knees. His face alone could turn him into a celebrity. It has a rare beauty; the hollowness of his cheeks make his bone structure both prominent and angular.
He’s a mythical being come to life, and he’s just standing there, waiting as I try to process the nature of his existence.
“Wow,” is all I manage to say, because everyone knows that shock makes a person eloquent.
One corner of his sharp, full lips pulls upward, just before he slips his shirt back on. “Alright, that’s done. Let’s go now. Your place or mine, Kae?”
“Wait… What? How do you know my name?”
“I’m an angel, darling. We just know these things. Also, it’s on your badge. You should probably take that off before wandering into dark places at night.” He winks with a soft laugh, and even that is beautiful. Like a heavenly wind on a war drum. “You know, this isusuallywhere a person would ask for my name. It’s only polite.”
I run my free hand along my scalp, combing my fingers through my ratty hair in dismay. “You have a name?”
The angel laughs again, a bit more heartily, and it gives me the chills. His smile is too overwhelmingly charming, full of teeth white as pearls. It doesn’t belong in this realm. “Of course I have a name. I’ve been called many, but Malak tends to be the most common. It roughly translates to ‘messenger’ in Hebrew, which is a little bit too on the nose, if you ask me. I don’t love it. How about you call me Dusk, and I’ll call you my Dawn?”
I stare at him, the feather still clutched in my hand, held up like a quill capable of writing all the secrets of the universe. Maybe it’ll writethe words I can’t seem to find, too.
“I understand this is a lot for you to process,” Malak, or Dusk,slows his voice, speaking to me as if I’m a frightened animal that he doesn’t want to scare off. “But I really must talk to you, and I’d prefer to not do that in this parking garage.”
The messenger angel needs to speak to me. The messenger angel has a message. “My place isn’t… I can’t just bring a stranger there.”
“Ah, right. You live with your parents, and American parents don’t like their teenagers bringing random men home at night. Well, let’s just find somewhere to sit, then. There’s a small park nearby, yeah? We can talk there.”
I blink, staring at him for a moment. “I’m twenty-two.”
His strange, supernatural eyes skate down me in a way that feels decidedly unholy. “Minor difference.”
“Yeah. Oneisa minor, one is not.” I take a step back, even if it only puts my back against the wall. My defensive instincts, however useless they are tonight, are rising up again.
“You’re all teenagers to me. Can we please go now?”
“Why do you want me to leave?”Don’t let kidnappers take you to a second location!
“Because you clearly need to sit down for this. And unless you’re willing to let me hang out in your car with you, I was hoping to find a nice bench.”
I scowl, watching him with wary eyes. It doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice here. If angels are real, what else is there? Heaven and Hell? I’ve never believed in the afterlife, but refusing to hear an angel’s message seems like a pretty textbook way to earn myself a sentence of eternal torment, fire, and damnation.
“Okay.” I take a deep, steadying breath. “I’ll listen to whatever it is you need to tell me. The hospital has a courtyard we can go to. It’s closer, just outside the building and around the corner.”
And there’s more likely to be security cameras on the walk there. If I fail his angelic test and he drags me to Hell, some rent-a-cop security guard isn’t going to save me, obviously. The precautions are just in casehe turns out to be a serial killer with some very convincing ‘I’m an angel sent by God’ bait.
“Good.” Malak nods, a smile creeping onto his lips that does nothing to console me. He immediately turns around and starts walking in the right direction, but I struggle to force myself to move.
“I can hear you’re not following me, you know,” he calls after a moment, proving his point by not bothering to look back at me.
Reluctantly, I find the courage to go forward.
I keep a careful distance as I trail behind him, and it doesn’t take us long to get to the courtyard. However, the few minutes of baited silence are almost painful. We don’t pass a single soul. Not even a night shift nurse on a smoke break. If this turns out to be an elaborate trap, I’m sure I’ll look like a complete idiot on the security footage for following him. I can see the headlines now: ‘Girl Believes Her Murderer Was An Angel. More at Ten.’
And yet, when he plops down on a metal park bench and motions for me to join him, my dumb ass still complies.
“Lovely courtyard you have here,” he muses casually, looking around. “Though I’ll never understand why humans cut down forests just to put in their own boring turf grass.”
