Angel in Training (The Louisiangel Series, Book One)
Read Angel in Training (The Louisiangel Series, Book One) Online
Authors: C. L. Coffey
Tags: #urban fantasy, #angels, #new orleans, #paranormal romance, #young adult, #new adult
Training
Book One
of the
Louisiangel Series
Copyright © 2015 C. L.
Coffey
All rights
reserved.
ISBN: 1502592096
ISBN-13: 13:
978-1502592095
Cover design by Amalia
Chitulescu
Edited by Tina E.
Williams and Patrick Gilhooley
Distributed by
Smashwords
All rights reserved. No
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This ebook is licensed
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This book is a work of
fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real
locations are used fictitiously. Other characters, names, places
and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any
resemblances to actual events, locations, or persons – living or
dead – is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To Chrissi, Kris,
Donna, Victoria, and Jana.
Without each of you,
this wouldn’t be out in the world.
CONTENTS
It is not known
precisely where angels dwell - whether in the air, the void, or the
planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed
of their abode.
~ Voltaire ~
Eternal Life
Mardi Gras
New Orleans
The fake ID was working a treat. I was drunk.
Possibly too drunk. The last time I had gone out with my friends,
the fake ID I had used then had lasted exactly three bars, before
somebody had realized it was fake, and confiscated it. With this in
mind, we had drunk a little quicker in the first few bars,
expecting the same to happen again. It hadn’t; but by that time, I
didn’t care.
It was my twentieth birthday, and I was
celebrating it in the heart of New Orleans; bar-hopping along
Bourbon Street, which is exactly the last place I wanted to be.
I had spent the first thirteen years of my
life living in a small town in the north of the United Kingdom. For
as long as I could remember my birthdays had been spent with my mum
and dad, camped out in the living room in a makeshift fort, eating
ice cream and watching movies. On my thirteenth birthday, I had
kicked up a fuss and told them I was too old to be camping in
forts, ignored the hurt look on my parent’s faces, and gone out
with my friends. Three weeks later they died in a car accident.
Not long after that, arrangements have been
made for me to go live with my aunt Sarah in New Orleans. Seven
years later, I still hadn’t lost my accent, or the feeling that I
didn’t really belong here.
I looked around the busy bar, spotting the
doors to the bathroom, and after yelling in a friend’s ear that I
would be right back, I made my way over. It wasn’t until I was
washing my hands that I realized just how much the world was
spinning. I clutched at the sink and stared at my reflection in the
mirror … I sucked in deep breaths, and decided it was time to
switch to water for a while: the reflection staring back startled
me.
My name is Angelina, but everybody calls me
Angel. Tonight, my friends had decided we were celebrating my
birthday in fancy dress. The four of them were dressed as angels.
I, on the other hand, was dressed up as the devil. I had found a
slinky red dress, which was short enough that I had left the house
wearing a pair of jeans underneath, because I knew my aunt wouldn’t
let me leave wearing it, regardless of how old I was. The jeans had
been quickly discarded and left in the back of Hannah’s car, along
with a more modest pair of heels. Right now, the matching red heels
added an extra 4 inches to my height, making me over six-foot.
It wasn’t my outfit, however, which had
startled me. It was the matching bright red hair. Normally, my hair
hung in loose blonde curls. Earlier in the afternoon I had taken a
bottle of cherry red hair dye to my head and accidentally left the
color on double the recommended time. The result had been an
incredibly vibrant head of hair. I’d also taken the time, along
with three bottles of hair spray, to flick out all of the layers.
Thankfully, I would be able to wash the color out before I could
get used to it.
I finished washing my hands, and quickly
dabbed my face with cold water, avoiding my eyes even though my
normally green eyes were now bloodshot. I didn’t want my make-up to
run.
I stepped out of the bathroom and walked
straight into a wall. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. When
the wall stepped back, and a pair of arms grabbed my shoulders to
steady me, I realized that the wall was in fact, a person.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, looking up. Further
apologies died in my throat. My gaze was met by a pair of
mesmerizing, warm brown eyes.
The eyes narrowed in concern. “Are you
okay?”
I opened my mouth, ready to start apologizing
again, when a hand grabbed mine and spun me around. “Nina is bored
of the music,” Rachel told me. “We’re going to the next bar.”
I scowled at my friend, and glanced back,
seeking out those brown eyes again. Only they had disappeared,
along with the guy they belonged to.
I lasted another two bars, still drinking
hurricanes - lethally strong fruit cocktails made with both dark
rum and white rum. By now, the buzzed feeling had definitely been
replaced by double vision and unsteady legs. I leaned against the
wall seeking out any of my friends. When I established they weren’t
there, I left the bar and stepped outside into the street.
By this point, we had made it quite far down
Bourbon Street, away from Canal Street and towards where the bars
started thinning out, giving way to a more residential area. I
slowly scanned my surroundings, and finally spotted the white dress
of an angel, before it disappeared around the corner of one of the
streets off Bourbon Street.
I stumbled after it, turning the corner. My
friends had disappeared again, but there was only one place down
here they could have gone. Midway down a small crowd had gathered
around one of the buildings, from which music with a heavy
bass-line was escaping.
I had to slow my shaky pace and use the walls
for support. I was wobbling past the entrance to an alleyway when a
noise caught my attention. The moment I took a few steps down the
alleyway, I knew I had made a mistake. From behind, a hand clamped
over my mouth preventing me from screaming, as I was pulled back
against a torso. The next thing I was aware of was several sharp
pains in my abdomen.
At that point, I had stopped trying to pull
the hand away from my mouth, and instead felt my stomach. As my
hand touched something wet, I was released. I fell backwards into
the wall, and couldn’t keep myself from sliding down it, the rough
brick scratching at my back, before I collapsed on the ground. I
was too drunk, and too weak to do much more than stare at my hands
in the dim light.
As soon as it dawned on me that I was staring
at my own blood, the pain set in. I opened my mouth, ready to cry
for help, but all that came out was a wet cough.
At some point I must have passed out because
I woke up to a hand pressing at my hands which had been clutching
at my stab wounds. “You’re going to die,” a melodic voice told me.
He sounded strangely calm, and strangely familiar. “But you have a
choice about what happens next.”
I stared up at him, trying to make two
dancing figures become one. “Help me,” I rasped, my words quickly
turning into a wracking cough.
“I’m trying to,” he sighed, one hand leaving
my stomach to grab my elbow. His hand felt wet. “You need to listen
to me carefully. You can either, slip away and have eternal
happiness, or you can take the other option. You could have the
chance at eternal life.”
His voice was growing fainter and I was
getting colder. I could feel the flow of blood that had been
seeping from the knife wound to my stomach was slowing as it passed
through my fingers.
This wasn’t how I wanted to die. I wanted to
be in my bed, as old as science would allow, surrounded by kids,
and grandkids, and great grandkids. I certainly didn’t want to die
slumped against a dirty alley wall off Bourbon Street, dressed in
an outfit that would have onlookers thinking I deserved this. But I
didn’t have any fight left in me. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open
any more.
“I need you to give me the answer,” the voice
told me, more urgently now. There was a moment of warmth as I felt
his hand pressed against my face. It was enough to make my eyes
flicker open and find his warm brown ones staring at me. “I can’t
make the decision for you,” he added, his voice softening.
“Save me,” I begged. I think maybe only my
lips were moving. All the strength and energy finally escaped me.
The last thing I saw were those two brown eyes as I closed my
own.
* * *
I awoke feeling completely rested. I
stretched, pushing out my arms and legs before allowing my eyes to
open. The room I was in was dark, and I could hardly see anything,
but when I reached for the lamp, and my hand hit wall, I knew
instantly I wasn’t in my room.
I was in my third year at Tulane University,
still trying to work out what I was going to do next, even though I
was ages away from my graduation. I had done the obligatory first
year living in the dorms but had then moved back into my aunt’s
house in Lakeview, an area in the north of the city, as soon as I
had been able to. When I arrived at my aunt’s house seven years
ago, Sarah had given me free reign of how I wanted my bedroom
decorated. And this room definitely wasn’t the large bedroom I was
used to. For one, my bed stood in the middle of the room - it was
impossible to reach out and hit wall, unless I was going behind the
large oak headboard.
I closed my eyes trying to remember where I’d
gone to sleep. I was supposed to be staying at Rachel’s. Her
parents had gone away for an anniversary cruise, leaving her at
home with her older brother. Only this wasn’t Rachel’s room, nor
was it her spare room.
I couldn’t remember much about my evening’s
antics. I sucked in a deep breath and held it. I didn’t feel hung
over, and I certainly didn’t feel drunk still. But there had to be
a reasonable explanation. I sat upright and swung my feet around,
over the edge of the bed. They didn’t hit the ground. I’m on the
taller side of average, measuring in at five feet nine without
shoes on. Most beds are low enough that when I sit on them, my feet
touch the floor. My bed is low anyway - a gorgeous antique four
poster that my aunt had acquired from an auction in Mississippi –
and I’m frequently catching my shins on it. This one was definitely
high and, judging from the fact I could feel both sides, a single –
and an empty one at that. This was promising in the sense that I
hadn’t gone home with a stranger, but it still didn’t explain where
I was.