Misguided Angel: A Parnormal Romance Novella

“She says she needs to talk to you,” he said. “She’s been gravely injured, maybe fatally. The doctors don’t know yet. Whatever attacked her has put her husband in the loony ward. And she seems to think you’re in danger, too.”

“Put her on the phone,” Kelsey said. She thought about the blood in the alley, the poor homeless woman he had said had been slaughtered there. She thought about the men who had attacked her, the ones Asher had…but Asher wasn’t real.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” He was starting to sound angry. “Kelsey, are you in some kind of trouble? Do you want me to send a squad car to pick you up?”

“No,” she said. “I have a car…I’ll be right there.”

The Hospital

The ambulance bay streamed garish green light into the night. Kelsey pulled Jake’s car halfway up on the sidewalk and threw it in park. She drew the collar of Jake’s coat tighter around her throat and plunged out into the falling snow.

An orderly in pale green scrubs and an orange parka was pacing the sidewalk under the awning, bouncing a little girl in a pink coat in his arms as she cried. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” he was crooning. “Everything’s going to be fine.” When his eyes met Kelsey’s, she saw it was a lie.

She ducked around an EMT as he was coming out. “Hey miss!” he called. “Is that your car?”

She hurried to the reception desk. “Sylvia Berman.” She stripped out of her gloves. “Is she here?”

The nurse paused for a moment before answering. “She is.” She knew I was coming, Kelsey thought. She’ll call Black. “If you’ll just have a seat.”

“Thanks very much.” She reached across the desk and punched the big red button that controlled the heavy swinging doors to the exam rooms, squeezing through the crack as soon as they started to open. She checked her watch as she hurried down the hall…seven minutes since she’d spoken to the cop on the phone. Maybe three minutes before he found her here.

She pushed past the weeping family gathered in the hall outside the first exam room, looking away from their faces. The second room was empty, the bed cranked high and bare, the lights turned up bright. The third, across the hall from the nurse’s station, was mostly dark. “Miss, can we help you?” a male nurse said, standing up from behind the counter as she passed.

“No, thank you.” In Exam Room 3, a single light was burning behind the bed. Lying on the bed was a woman swathed in bandages and blankets with her long, curly brown hair spread on the pillow—Sylvia. Moving closer, Kelsey saw her throat was wrapped with bandages, stained red at the edges. More bandages crisscrossed her chest and shoulders under the thin hospital gown and braceleted both arms. A deep, blood-black scratch peeked from underneath the gauze at her wrist. She was hooked up to monitors, and the hesitant chirp of her heartbeat made Kelsey feel sick. How many nights had she listened to that sound, waiting for the moment it would stop?

“Sylvia?” She touched the back of her hand above the IV drip. “Can you hear me?”

Sylvia’s eyes snapped open. “Kelsey?” Her voice was a raspy whisper, and her eyes were wild. “Is that you?”

“It’s me.” Sylvia was trying to grab her hand; she slid her hand under hers and held it lightly, being careful of the IV “What happened?”

“Where’s the angel?” Sylvia said, the words half-garbled in a nasty, gurgling sound in her throat. “Asher…where’s Asher?”

“What did you say?”

“Falling….” She tried to raise her head from the pillow. “Kelsey, run.”

“Excuse me, miss,” a woman’s voice said from behind her. “Are you Kelsey?” The voice was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She turned and saw the nurse in silhouette, the bright light of the hallway behind her. “There’s a policeman here,” she said, moving closer, and Kelsey saw her face. “He says he has to talk to you.”

Kelsey thought she must be dreaming. She recognized this woman—this was the homeless woman she and Jake had walked past barely seeing nearly every day for years. The woman Lucas Black had told her had been murdered. But why would Kelsey dream her beautiful? The thin, white-streaked hair was now thick and glossy black, barely contained in a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Her lips were lush and glistening with scarlet lipstick. Her whole face was plump and seductively painted, and her nails were perfectly groomed scarlet talons. As she moved closer, Kelsey caught a whiff of thick, spicy perfume over something nasty—the stench of rotten meat. The nurse smiled, and Sylvia moaned, her eyes falling closed. “He’s being very persistent.”

“Asher,” Sylvia said again, barely louder than a whisper.

“Okay,” Kelsey said. If you’re real, I need you, she thought, willing the angel to hear. If you’re not real, I probably need you anyway. Either she really had lost it completely and she was imagining all of this, or Asher was real. If Sylvia had seen him, if she knew him…but what was this nurse? Everything was falling into place—a fearful symmetry, Jake would have called it, a favorite phrase of his. She made herself smile back at the nurse that she was afraid couldn’t be human. “Let’s go.”

Asher had been walking the streets all night, desperate and helpless. Unless Kelsey called out to him and ended his banishment, he would never find her. She could have been standing right in front of him, and he would never have seen her. But he couldn’t just stop trying. Lucifer had made it very clear he intended her harm, and somehow Asher would have to find a way to save her.

Suddenly, he heard her voice like a thought inside his own head. If you’re real, I need you. If you’re not real, I probably need you anyway. He reached out to her again, and this time, he could feel her. She was in trouble, terrified and confused.

He started to take flight, and two dark shapes rose through the sidewalk in front of him, uncurling from the concrete like thick, black plumes of smoke made flesh. A third slunk out of the shadows of an alley to join them. “Give me your wallet,” the tallest one said, pulling

a long, silver blade that had been ancient when the whole notion of a wallet was invented. The silver piercing in his lip glittered like pus at the edge of a nasty, disfiguring scar. These were Lucifer’s minions, the same three who had attacked Kelsey before.

Asher drew his sword. With no Kelsey to protect, he could fight more efficiently, dispatch vermin like this almost without thought. He swung the sword in a wide, easy arc, cleaving the leader’s head neatly from his shoulders as one of the others attacked him like an animal, claws extended, shrieking like a cat. He caught this one by the nape of the neck with his free hand and shook him, the claws slashing harmlessly through his coat as he dragged the creature back. He flung him down on the sidewalk and stomped down hard on his chest, pinning him to the ground. The demon writhed and swore terrible curses in the ancient tongue as Asher raised his sword like a scythe, screamed as the sword sliced off his legs. He clutched and clawed at Asher’s leg, and the angel took his arms as well, cleaving each at the shoulder with surgical precision before kicking all four squirming, disembodied limbs down the sidewalk.

“Hey psycho!” The third one, the one from the alley, had drawn a gun. His eyes were wide with fright; white showed all around each iris. But the gun barrel was steady. Asher flipped the sword up and caught it, driving the blade into the creature’s chest as the gun exploded, firing wild.

Hot human blood poured over his hands.