The Kiss of Angels (Divine Vampires Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

so she was looking up—way up—at him.  “You redeemed his soul.”
     
    “I didn’t do anything.” She turned the orb over into his hand, closing his fingers around it.  It seemed impossible that this tiny thing was what had given life to the body lying still in the hospital bed, but there was something alive in it, all the same. 
     
    “You hit your target,” Char reminded her, tucking the orb away again. 
     
    “Why did you tell me to close my eyes?” 
     
    “I don’t know,” he answered honestly.  Then he smiled.  “I just had a feeling.”
     
    “Me too.” She was having that feeling again—she knew, if she closed her eyes right then, she could have drawn her bow and still hit any target she wanted. 
     
    The room was filling up with people.  Eliza sat in a corner, face in her hands, as doctors and nurses crowded around the bed, so they moved out into the bright white of the hallway. 
     
    “I’ve never seen a seraphim before,” she told him, more to make conversation than anything else.  The fact was, now that his job was over, she was afraid he was going to fly away.  And for some reason, she didn’t want him to. 
     
    “We usually keep to ourselves.” He walked beside her through the hall, a few more doctors and nurses rushing by and through them, heading into Norman’s room.  Most humans could pass through them without any awareness at all.  Once in a while, a person would stop, look confused, as if they’d forgotten whatever it was they had gone into the room for, as if passing through an angel had stolen their awareness, just for a moment.  It threw them out of themselves and into something greater, just for a second. 
     
    “You can make yourself invisible?” She knew she sounded jealous—and she was.  She’d often wished she could disappear for an hour or two.  Angels had no privacy.  No need for it, really.  They had no needs at all.  But sometimes she felt like she wanted just a teensy-weensy break from her partner. 
     
    “No, I can’t make myself invisible.” He slowed his stride, glancing down at her.  She had to double her pace to keep up anyway. 
     
    “But—?” She frowned up at him, confused. 
     
    “I can make myself visible .” He winked.  “If I choose.”
     
    “You made yourself visible to me,” she mused. 
     
    “Yes.” He slowed again.  She didn’t have to jog anymore. 
     
    “Why?” she wondered. 
     
    “I don’t know.” He gave her a little smile.  “I had a feeling.”
     
    So do I, she thought, but she didn’t say it.  Whatever the feeling was, she couldn’t identify it.  Angels didn’t feel things the way humans did—with that kind of intensity.  If angels’ feelings were like the tide, slowly ebbing in and out, human feelings were tidal waves. 
     
    “You don’t look like the angel of death,” she remarked, giving him a sidelong glance.
     
    “You were expecting a black robe and a sickle perhaps?” He chuckled. 
     
    “No, of course not.” She wasn’t about to admit her misconceptions, not after her rant to Jari about humans and their visions of Cupid. 
     
    “Death is only sad because humans see it as the end,” he said.  “But we know it isn’t.”
     
    “But imagine being human.” Muriel could imagine.  She was.  She found it easy to put herself in a human’s place, even if she couldn’t quite fully replicate the experience for herself.  “What if you didn’t know? Eliza back there—had to part with a man she loved.  Now she has to live without him.  How painful that must be…”
     
    “The human condition,” Char agreed.  “If humans didn’t feel pain, how would they know they were alive?” 
     
    “Now you sound like Jari.” She sighed, slowing to a stop, drawn to the sight of the babies behind glass in the nursery.  It was compelling.  Their souls were perfect golden orbs above their delicate heads, still attached at what the humans called the “soft spot”