Descent (Kissed by Death) - Tara Fuller Page 0,5
from their bonds.
April laughed at something Tyler said and he leaned across her knees to kiss her, trapping her happiness between his lips. A sudden burst of blinding hope spun around him as his mouth moved effortlessly against hers. Watching them was a happy kind of torture. It made me feel…half empty. The innocent touches, the lingering stares, dual heartbeats fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. I shouldn’t have wondered what that would feel like. Should never have wanted it. But sometimes… I sighed, and Sky cleared her throat.
I turned to give her my full attention. Her arms were folded over her white robe, lips pursed with disapproval, clear blue gaze suspicious. She reminded me so much of my father when she did that. Always watching naive little Gwendolyn, waiting for her to fall. I bristled under her stare and looked back at April and Tyler.
“It’s time to go,” she said in her no-nonsense tone. “There are others who need us. Can’t you feel it?”
In a world as full of misery as this one, of course I felt it. The need to extinguish the darkness and light the world with joy was why I existed. Angels had never lived. We simply were. Beings created out of pure love at the hands of the Almighty to serve. We were not built to want, to long for, to ache, to desire. We were built to give. Sometimes I wondered if I’d been built wrong.
“Just a little longer?” I asked.
I could sense Sky watching me, and felt her worry. “Just because you were right doesn’t mean anything has changed. You promised. Remember?”
I sighed. “How could I not with you reminding me every five minutes?”
“If you keep allowing yourself to get this close…you know what could happen.”
“I’m not going to fall, Sky,” I said with a calm certainty she seemed to doubt. “But don’t you ever wonder what it’s like?”
To be longed for. To be desired. To be touched.
Tyler brushed a stray lock of hair back from April’s cheek and a wistful sigh escaped my lips before I could stop it. Sky pinned me with a stern look.
“No.” Sky’s clear blue eyes simmered. “I’m being serious, Gwen. If Balthazar knew how much you invested, how attached you let yourself get, he would—”
“He’s my father,” I said, knowing it was a foreign concept to her. The only parent most angels knew was the Almighty. I’d been given to Balthazar as a gift at my creation. He’d once been a warrior among men. Too fierce for a mere mortal existence, the Almighty had plucked him from life to lead another kind of army. He’d never had the joy of a child in his human life, so I’d been sent to help ease the void he carried inside. To help him keep a scrap of humanity in the face of so much death. He’d been the first soul I’d ever infected with joy. The first smile to grace my eyes. The first laughter to bless my ears. Most may have seen him as the cold iron fist that commanded an army of death, but to me, he was Father. It didn’t matter that we were two different beings, that once he’d been made of flesh, and I’d only ever been made of stars. We were family. I met Sky’s concerned gaze. “He would never cast me out.”
“I love you, Gwen.” She held my hands in hers. “I just want you to be careful.”
I squeezed her fingers and smiled. “You worry too much. I’m not going anywhere. I just like a challenge. You know that.”
Sky looked skeptical. “A challenge. That’s it. You’re not…tempted?”
“What’s here to tempt me, Sky?” I asked, wistfully stealing a glance at Tyler’s handsome, smitten face. “No one has ever looked at me that way. They never will.”
“You shouldn’t—” The earth rumbled, cutting off Sky’s words. The chatter filling the coffee shop quieted. Black tendrils of fear curled through the room like smoke. Sky turned to me, eyes wide, and just like that the world around us lit up in an explosion of glass and flames.
Chapter 3
Easton
“You have got to be kidding me.” I slipped my scythe from its holster and sneered at the messy scene in front of me. A bicycle, twisted beyond recognition, lay in the middle of the once-busy street, now blocked off by first responder vehicles. Broken glass and debris lined the sidewalk in front of a section of blown-out wall. And then there were the bodies. A handful of twisted humans,