AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I want to fuck you,” I answered honestly because I didn’t know what else to say. Initially, it was physical attraction to the foolish girl who started working for Urban and couldn’t keep her eyes off me and keep her head down like a good girl should. The one who couldn’t stop looking up at the balcony and wondering about me. Her curiosity got the better of her. But now,nowit was different. NowIwas curious abouther,and I’m not the sort of man whose attention you wanted to gain. All I wanted was to peel back her layers and find out what she was hiding from me.
She scoffed, and looked away.
“Go.” When I stepped away from her, she threw a tentative glance at me before looking at the door. I nodded. “Go.” She looked back at me, and I growled. “Because I know you’ll be back.”
She squeaked, and I barked out a laugh before turning to sit and watch the club again, listening to the click of the door as she left and shuffled past the guard to move down the stairs.
She’d be back.
It had been so long since I had heard the rain that heavy. It pounded so hard against the street and buildings it was an impenetrable blanket, almost impossible to see through. But I knew where to find her, where she always was at this time of the morning. I’d push the door open, the door she left unlocked for me, and the little bell above it would chime. She’d come trotting into the foyer, covered in flour, sugar, and fuck knows what else, and her face would simplylight upwhen she saw me. I’d never seen anything more beautiful than her smile, and for whatever reason, she felt I was worthy to receive it. She was beautiful—her short brown hair framed her face in a neat bob and lips she always kept ruby red framing teeth slightly too large for her face. How did I ever get so lucky as to gain the affection of a woman like her? When she’d skip across the linoleum—leaving a cloud of flour in her wake, she hugged me, giggling at the way the flour stuck to my clothes and hair—I couldn’t help but stare at her. It pained me to know she didn’t yet know the truth about me and my nature, but it didn’t matter because when she looked at me, she saw someone worth loving.
Love.
Something I had witnessed in humans, something IthoughtI knew. Love for my brothers and sisters, love for the human race. But that was nothing compared to the love I felt for her.
Emily.
The days started early for a baker, but she never complained. She loved it, loved her work. She’d invested everything she had into that little bakery. Although the positioning was terrible, being right next door to a nightclub, her windows were often vandalized. Or she’d come to work at four in the morning to find someone pissing on the outside of her door, too drunk to realize what he was doing.
She threw herself into her business, and the community loved her.
Iloved her.
When I first saw Emily, she was standing behind the counter, her smile lighting up the room more than the sunlight streaming through the large windows, the cursive gold writing casting small shadows on the floor. It was her first day owning the bakery, and I knew this because she told me. She was telling everyone who walked through that door, the little bell announcing their arrival.
The woman took my breath away. I’d been in this city too long, helping where I could, and seeing her was finally finding the light. I needed a reminder that sort of light existed in this world. I went back every day, and as we talked, she opened up to me. One day she made me a picnic—red and white checkered picnic blanket included, the cliché topped off by the large tree we sat under and Emily’s blue dress cascaded over her legs as we sat. She tried new recipes and let me taste them first, the pastries melting with flavor in my mouth. They tasted almost as sweet as she did when her lips met mine.
As I approached the bakery through the rain, the skin on my back began to tingle, and my fingers twitched. My wings wanted to come out—they were pushing against me from the inside, desperate to be freed and to protect me from dangers yet unknown.
Something was wrong.
Emily!
A crack of thunder exploded, followed shortly by lightning that webbed its way across the clouds and lit up the night sky as I bolted toward the bakery, my boots splashing heavily in the puddles on the uneven road. My breathing was loud in my ear drums, and my heart pounded against the inside of my ribs. Every beat was painful, and the sense of dread which filled me only expanded as I neared until I felt I was going to explode.
The door was unlocked.
She always left it unlockedfor me.
But not for them.
The little bell’s chime sounded broken with the force I slammed the door open with, and when the door hit the stop, it was joined by another clap of thunder as I fell to my knees beside her lifeless body. Emily’s blood was bright and red against the black and white floor, her hair messy with blood and brain matter from where the bullet had exploded out the back of her skull.
Howling, I threw myself over her beautiful body as the cavern opened up in my chest, my ribs pulled open and out as every ounce of love escaped and was replaced with a crushing grief saturating my soul. Through the hole that was now in my heart I’m certain my soul escaped, and my body sucked up all the darkness in this world, filling me with it until there was no more room left for anything else.
For what was there to live for if not her?
Through the decades, I had seen some terrible things.
But until now, I had never cried.
Pushing my hair out of my face with a sweep of my hand and over my forehead, I sobbed as the water dripped from my hair, mingling with the tears streaming down my cheeks.
I didn’t know who they were, but they would pay for this.
“Emily?” I whispered.
I knew she was dead. A human soul could be sensed, felt. It radiated from them and shaped their nature and warmth. A soul would create a blanket of hazy color around a person angels could see if we focused, usually enhanced when they slept, when they were diving into their own subconscious and at one with the spirit world which existed only a veil away from their own.
