Angel's Curse (2 page)

Occasionally I combined a number of dance styles just for something different, and quite often to good effect. I was quite fluid and graceful for a gangly little kid. I think my foster parents liked me that way.

Later, when I needed to, I learned what was loosely termed
erotic dancing,
including striptease, pole dancing and lap dancing. My dancing, combined with gymnastics, had caught the eye of the preacher. That gained me some measure of security in the sordid world I lived in. Our relationship — if you could call it that — had always been rocky. On the night I’d punished him, for sleeping with a girl no more than fourteen years old, the preacher could take no more of my insubordination. Oh, I’d been punished before for being insolent — I‘d lost track of the number of bruises, black eyes and fractured ribs I’d had — but never had I been placed on a hit list. Okay, so recently I’d found out the contract had been changed to torture in the Funhouse. After my last visit to the preacher at The Cage, I was sure the hit was back on — once I’d been suitably tortured, of course.

“I think I can take care of our transportation,” I said. “Just
don’t
do anything reckless!”

The light was fading in the sky. I yawned. The past week had been a rollercoaster of emotions for me — for Danny too I guessed — and with the adrenaline rushes and crashes I hadn’t been sleeping well at all.

Danny kissed the top of my head and stood up. “Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll be on the couch, reading.”

“Can’t you read in here?” I asked.

“I could, but I’ll probably make too much noise. You’re such a light sleeper and you really need a good sleep. I know you didn’t get much during the three days you looked after me.”

“I don’t mind, really.”

“How about I make you a deal. I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep, no reading. I’ll just lay next to you. When you’re asleep, and won’t miss me, I’ll go read.”

“If you leave, I
will
miss you,” I said, “but I accept your deal. Better something than nothing.”

I changed into something more appropriate for bed. Danny, who could dress and undress in the blink of an eye, was already under the covers and held the blankets back for me to climb in next to him.

I lay in the crook of his arm, his hand fitting naturally into the curve of my waist. I rested my head on his shoulder, with a hand on his chest. One of my legs was draped over Danny’s leg, pinning him down.
If I fall asleep like this he can’t leave.
Danny’s free hand sought mine — on his chest — resting lightly on top of it.

I sighed. “I can almost imagine us as normal people, living normal lives.”

I heard him chuckle softly. Slowly I drifted off to sleep, listening to his steady rhythmic breathing, and feeling safe and secure snuggled up next to him.

Danny was with me in my dream. That was not unusual, as he featured in many of my dreams. We were hunting, and being hunted …

We followed the scent of four vampires. They were running from us, and running fast. As we didn’t know exactly where they were heading we couldn’t transport ahead of them. If they suddenly changed direction we’d miss them and have to backtrack. It was a good old-fashioned chase and I was in my element, running faster than any mortal could possibly hope to run.

Danny had told me I ran, at top speed, at a staggering two hundred and thirty-five kilometres an hour. Wow, that was mind boggling! I’d been in fast cars before, flying along the open highway at close to two hundred kilometres an hour — screaming in terror at the speed — thinking I was going to die if the driver didn’t slow down. My top speed, of course, made those cars seem positively slow — a leisurely Sunday drive.

I didn’t
always
run flat out — only when we had to cover a significant amount of territory in the fastest time possible. Most of the time I ran at quarter or half speed, particularly in unfamiliar territory. There was still plenty of that. Besides it was too easy to lose a scent trail if you ran full pelt all the time. The vamps we were chasing had a good head start, yet they were in an area I knew well, not far from the fall — a ledge high up on a rocky outcrop. I had balanced precariously on it, only to plunge backwards to the forest floor below. Hence its nickname — the fall.

I slowed down to allow Danny to catch up, then continued running at his pace. He took it like a man, the fact that a woman — a mere slip of a girl compared to him — albeit an immortal one, could outrun him. As he kept saying, we had different talents. This was one of mine.

I could smell the sickly-sweet scents that always made my mouth want to pucker up — and sometimes it did, depending on the individual scent — getting stronger now. We were catching them. They had changed direction once more. Could they be heading to the fall? Hadn’t they learned how futile an ambush was?

Danny had fallen slightly behind again. I’d picked up the pace without even realising it, their nearness spurring me on. I looked back to smile encouragingly at him. The smile fell away when I saw what was following him, still some distance behind. They were downwind of us, so we had no way of knowing they were there — three werewolves, the minimum number required to take down an angel.

“Run,” I yelled out to him, “or leave! We’ve got company.”

Danny turned his head to look behind him, still running as fast as he could, and spotted the wolves.

“Go,” he urged me, “I can make it.”

“So can the wolves,” I yelled back. “They can climb too you know!”

In truth they weren’t as good at climbing in wolf form. Their paws weren’t designed for ascending or descending vertically. They needed to use their thick, sharp claws to help them — similar to a mountaineer using a pick axe to gain purchase in the frozen ice and snow — to scramble up and down trees, or sheer rock faces.

The scent of the vampires went straight up, to the fall. They
were
that stupid. I didn’t want to start the climb without Danny by my side. There was no way I was going to take the chance he wouldn’t make it. He had enough of a head start on the wolves and within moments was at my side.

“What are you waiting for?” he said. “Climb.”

“No,” I replied, grabbing his hand. I transported us to the fall, a few metres in from the edge. I’d learned my lesson about standing on the edge.

Expecting to see the four vamps, we were both taken off guard when five angels stood at the rear of the fall, four piles of ashes in front of them. I noticed the angels all wore black armbands, in mourning of a fallen brother who was dead to them.
It was Danny! They were after Danny!

I reacted immediately, instinctively taking us back to the cottage. It was still not fast enough, for angel fire had already left the palm of one angel and touched Danny. Through my connection to him, via our hands, I felt the searing pain of the fiery flame lick through my body, as it did Danny’s. There was no way to put the fire out and no way to disengage.

I woke when I felt Danny struggling to break free of the angel fire in my dream, only to find that he
was
struggling.
Is he in the grip of a dream?
His eyes opened as soon as I gently touched his shoulder. He sat up with a suddenness that made it seem he was still in the grip of some nightmare.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Drag me into your dream. It was so vivid, so
real.
”

“You don’t dream,” I reminded him.

“I know. That’s what makes it so amazing.” Danny’s eyes were shining with an appreciation for something he’d experienced that was new and unpredictable. “It was like a wild ride. Once I was on I couldn’t get off.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had no secrets from Danny. He knew all there was to know about me, including things I’d repressed. My dreams were different. I had no control over them at all and wasn’t certain how he’d interpret some of them, especially those that involved my past.

“Were you
really
in my dream? I didn’t just dream you were there?”

“Yes, I was there.”

“I often dream about you,” I admitted sheepishly.

“Is that what it’s like,” he asked, a sombre expression on his face, “for mortals?”

“The wild ride?” He nodded. “Some of the time, yes. Sometimes you have the same dream a few times, but mostly they’re different — some happy, some sad and some so scary when you wake you don’t want to go back to sleep.”

Danny ran his hands through his hair. He looked somewhat distressed.

“I found I had no control over my body, or my actions, in the dream.”

“You don’t. The dream takes you where it will. We’re nothing but puppets and the dream is the puppet master.”

“It was an
interesting
experience. If I had more control of myself I’d be much more comfortable being in one.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Danny. You’ve never had a dream before.”

I took his hand and sucked on one of his fingers, looking up at him with a devious expression on my face. “You should have dropped in on one of the
good
ones.”

He chuckled when he realised what I was referring to and visibly relaxed.

“Remember, you’ll always wake up. There’s nothing to fear. You have to learn to let go sometime, Danny.”

“You’re right, of course, but if I could book you in for one of those
good ones
I’d be only too happy to participate.”

2.
Dance Partner

For the first week we didn’t venture out at all. Danny thought it would be fine to head out — I wanted to err on the side of caution and wait. There was no hurry to get out into the world again. I wasn’t hungry.

Danny spent a lot of time reading. I spent a lot of time dancing, and singing along to my favourite songs. Twice I’d tried to get him to do some disco dancing. He had difficulty rolling his arms and moving his legs at the same time. For someone who was perfect — in my eyes anyway — he sure could be uncoordinated. I had forever to teach him though, unless my patience wore out first. Waltzing, however, was a different matter. I think Danny liked being able to hold me while we danced, and that enabled him to quite easily master the
one two three, one two three
step of the waltzes we tried. I’d even convinced him to attire us in what he thought was appropriate clothing. With the aid of a full length mirror — that I’d also requested — I saw we made a dashing couple who would have fit into society a few hundred years earlier. I was getting the impression Danny would do anything to keep me happy. Not just for the peace it brought to the cottage —
there’s nothing worse than a woman with a bee in her bonnet,
he’d said — but because he enjoyed making me happy and seeing me happy.

I was sure Danny would like the sexy Latino dances, if he could master the steps. He’d like the feeling of being in control, pulling me to him or twirling me away from him, my hands caressing my body, or his.

As we waltzed around the room I thought back, once again, to how I’d learned to dance, dredging up memories that were buried, but not forgotten.

“Do you know how I mastered dances that required a partner?” I asked. “How I learned to follow when someone else led?”

Danny simply replied, “Yes.”

We continued waltzing around the room. How easy it was to forget that he knew all about me …

The last-chance family I’d been fostered with had a son of their own, four years older than me. They couldn’t have any more children due to complications during his birth, so they’d opted to foster children — girls only. David, their son, was very jealous of me. He hated me with an intensity that was only rivalled by my hatred of his parents.

A year after I came to live with them, when I was seven, he had been banished to the self-contained bungalow in their back yard. The sole reason being that when the abuse began — within weeks of his moving out of the main house — they wanted their darling son to be none the wiser of the nightly goings-on in their domain. He was to be sheltered and protected.

David still had meals with us, and we watched TV as a family. Apart from that, most of his time was spent in the bungalow. How I dreaded when he’d leave the house. He hated me all right, and could barely stand to be around me. The
girl
— the
daughter
they’d
always
wanted —
their favourite!

Dancing was my way of escaping to a better place. I’d heard on TV shows often enough that he or she has
gone to a better place
. That’s where I wanted to be — in a better place. I knew my foster parents wouldn’t pay for me to have dance lessons, so for the most part I taught myself in whatever free time I had. Over the years I’d even mastered most of the dances that required partners, although I had no idea how to dance with a partner. Would I follow my partner’s lead correctly? Would I tread on their toes? And of course there were dances where your partner twirled you around or tossed you here and there that I couldn’t practice very well on my own. It’s hard to twirl yourself, or roll yourself towards the floor — I didn’t know exactly what this move was called, but it was like releasing a yo-yo — with an imaginary partner.