Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,20

of her cheek, dusted randomly with copper colored freckles, her small slightly upturned nose, the pink curve of her full lips, parted now as she grit her teeth in concentration.

He looked at those teeth, just a little bit crooked at the canines, giving her a youthful air, and wondered what it would feel like if she were to clamp them down on him in defense. In frustration, in anger… in pleasure. Suddenly, he wanted her to make him bleed with them.

But it was a passing thought, one of those that enters a man’s mind and is gone in the next instant, as if it were never there.

And then he saw her arms. Beneath the jacket she must have given to the child’s mother, who shivered and muttered frantically despite the layers she now wore over her, the woman with rose-gold highlights in her hair had only been wearing a short-sleeved suit top, one meant to be covered by a suit jacket. It was cold out here; her breath frosted before her lips. But she’d given away her protection anyway, revealing what had once been hidden beneath those now missing sleeves.

Randall’s eyes trailed over the sculpted shape of her arms. There were so many of them – so many scars. They were almost like pencil marks, the charcoal sketch strokes of some cosmic master of the arts. They were all nearly exactly the same size, the same width, the same length and color. They stood out in stark contrast against the tanned skin of her otherwise unmarred flesh.

Dozens. Dozens of scars marked the angel with the freckles and crooked teeth. He wondered if there were more under what clothing remained.

Randall stood transfixed as something new washed over him. He could do nothing but stare open-mouthed as the angel lowered her hands to the boy’s chest, palms-down. She muttered something under her breath, something he could not hear, but he saw her lips move.

Beside her, the mother gasped and stopped muttering. Randall saw a light begin to form beneath the red-head’s touch. It was bluish, or maybe yellow, perhaps shifting back and forth through the spectrum. It looked warm.

He imagined it was warm.

The light spread across the boy’s chest, climbing ever further outward until it had enveloped his torso completely. It then spread down his arms and legs, until the entire small body was encased in a warm, steady glow.

It remained like this for several impossible, mind-boggling beats.

And then the woman’s head dropped as if she were exhausted. The light died out like a dimmer switch being slowly turned to the off position. In the next tense moment in that debris-filled scene with dust and the sound of sirens floating around them, the boy’s chest heaved upward with an enormous intake of air.

The mother cried out in rapturous shock and what Randall imagined was the kind of wonder he, himself, was experiencing in that moment.

But his rapture and shock was not only due to the miracle the red-haired angel had performed on the little boy. It was because at the very same time that the boy took his life-saving breath, a line of red appeared across the side of the woman’s forearm. She winced slightly as it split open, blood welling to the same dimensions as the other lines marking the woman’s skin. But she did nothing to stop it, and didn’t even take the time to look at it. She simply remained where she was, head down, eyes closed, teeth bared silently against the pain.

A few moments later, as the emergency vehicles began arriving and parking on the outskirts of the disaster and the mother hugged her now coughing child to her chest and bawled openly with relief, the single slash on the woman’s forearm began to close. Within seconds, it had sealed completely, and even the blood disappeared.

Leaving only a scar in its wake.

Another scar. Like all the others.

“Oh my God,” Randall whispered as he realized what he was witnessing. The angel really was an angel. Those scars on her body… they were what was left when she saved someone. And not just saved them, but brought them back to life.

That boy had been dead. He hadn’t been breathing. Whatever had happened to him had stopped his heart.

She had started it back up again.

That strange feeling that washed over him earlier was back, but stronger. He was transforming there in that field of death and rebirth. He was doing the same thing the boy had done, but on another level.