The Kiss of Angels (Divine Vampires Book 2) (11 page)

At that, Lucy began to sob.  She took her son’s small hand, kissing it again and again, tears falling on his pale skin, wetting the sheet.  Jack stared at the angel of death, no disbelief there, no anger either.  Just a question, burning in his eyes, and Muriel knew she’d been right to ask Char to do this, to give the only thing they could to provide them a bit of comfort. 

“Are you taking him to heaven?” Jack asked, his hand stroking his wife’s dark hair. 

“I’m taking him to a beautiful place where all souls go,” Char replied. 

“He’ll be ok?” Lucy lifted her head at this, frowning.  Char nodded his agreement.  “Please, tell us… can you tell us… will we see him again? Some day?”

“Yes,” Char hesitated only a moment before giving Lucy the reassurance she was looking for, the comfort Muriel had hoped to bestow through him.  “You will go on, just like he will.  You’ll always be connected.”

“Thank you,” Lucy whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks.  Muriel touched her own, feeling tears there too. 

“How long do we have?” Jack asked, looking from his son to the angel.  “Do you know? Are you taking him now? Will he—?”

But Jack was talking to thin air.  Char was no longer by the boy’s bed.  Instead, he was pulling Muriel into his lap again as she hugged him close, whispering her thanks. 

“You gave them such a gift,” Muriel murmured against his neck.  She couldn’t help the tears that fell. 

“You’re my gift.” He stroked her wet cheek. 

“They’ll never forget this,” she choked, seeing the couple sitting across from each other in stunned silence, as if speaking might break the spell.  Hope hung in the air, almost palpable.  They didn’t know when their son was going to die—she knew they likely still held out hope that it wouldn’t be today, although Muriel knew that was false—but they had both experienced something that would reassure them.  Someday they would all be together again. 

That had to be some comfort, she thought.  It was the best she could do for them, and she prayed that it was enough. 

The room was quiet.  Even the bustle of the nurses up and down the hall had ebbed, dinner having been served to those patients in ICU who weren’t getting their nutrition through a tube.  The couple sat by their son’s side, whispering words, to him and to each other.  Muriel couldn’t hear them but it didn’t matter.  She knew they were whispering love. 

“Muriel.” Char’s lips brushed her forehead and she startled in his lap.

“No.” She lifted her head, knowing, but hating it.  She wanted to deny it, still. 

He just sat her quietly in the chair beside him, moving toward the boy on the bed.  They’d been sitting quietly for so long, both Jack and Lucy had slipped into sleep while their son’s breathing grew more labored.  His fever had risen to dangerous levels, in spite of the medication coursing through the new blood in his veins.  His lips were dry, cracked, raw, the skin around his eyes dark as bruises. 

Lucy sensed Char’s presence and stirred.  She couldn’t see him, not anymore.  The sight of her son’s still face, jaw slack, drew her attention. 

“Henry?” Lucy whispered, touching his cheek.  Muriel knew it was still warm.  Char had just collected the boy’s essence.  He held it in his hand as he came back to stand beside Muriel. 

“Jack!” Lucy’s voice rose when she put her hand on the boy’s chest.  It no longer rose and fell with his breath.  “Jack! Wake up! It’s Henry! He’s not breathing!”

Jack’s head shot up, his eyes wild, panicked. 

“I’ll get the doctor!” He ran, but it was too late. 

“Noooooo!” Lucy wailed as Char pressed the boy’s soul into Muriel’s hands, as if his mother could feel death’s touch, death’s hand reaching in to squeeze the life from her own soul.  “Henry! Henry! Wake up! Henry!”

The boy’s head wobbled on his neck like a newborn as his mother gathered him into her arms.  Muriel looked down at the soul in her hands.  She could feel him with her, even if his mother couldn’t.  This was the essence of him, the thing that had made him Henry.  It was gone from his body, plucked too soon.  Lucy wailed, rocking him in her arms. 

“Keep him safe.” Muriel handed the little boy’s essence back to Char, who tucked it, as he did every soul he collected, under his wing.  “We promised her.”

Lucy sobbed, refusing to let his lifeless body go when Jack returned with both the doctor and a nurse.  It was Clara, the one who had been on duty that first day, Muriel remembered. 

“Mrs.  Thomas, please,” Clara cried, trying to hold Lucy back as the doctor pressed a stethoscope to the boy’s chest.  “Let the doctor do his job.”

“Lucy, sweetheart, easy, easy…” Jack soothed, trying to hold her, but the woman thrashed, howling her grief.  It was something raw, animal, a kind of soul-wrenching despair that Muriel had never seen before. 

“Do you want to go?” Char asked, a wing around her shoulder. 

“No,” she whispered.  She was trembling, afraid, but she couldn’t leave them.  She just couldn’t. 

“I’m sorry,” the doctor apologized, taking the stethoscope out of his ears and draping it around his neck, verifying what they already knew.  “Mr. and Mrs.  Thomas, I’m so sorry…”

“Nooooooo!” Lucy pounded her husband’s chest with her fists.  He tried to contain her, but it was impossible.  She was like a dervish, lashing out against anything and everything standing in her way. 

“Nurse, get help!” the doctor ordered as he and Jack tried to restrain the woman.  “And a sedative!”

Muriel watched in horror as Lucy thrashed, screaming over and over, “Bring him back! Bring him back!” until her voice was hoarse. 

It took two more big orderlies, along with the doctor and Lucy’s husband, to finally subdue her, and by then, the I.V.  pole had gone crashing to the floor, the hanging glass shattered, the remnants of Henry’s blood transfusion spattering like red paint, everywhere. 

The doctor gave Lucy a shot, and even then, through her haze, she didn’t want to let them take Henry’s lifeless body.  She fought them for it, although not quite as vehemently as she had before the sedative.  She was in and out of consciousness, curled in a ball in one of the chairs, her face and dress still streaked with blood. 

“I thought, if you told her, if you comforted her…” Muriel whispered, shaking her head at the devastation. 

“Losing a child is one of the worst losses there is,” Char said softly.  “There are human words for losing a parent, a spouse, but the pain of losing a child goes so deep, there are no words.”

Muriel let that realization sink in, seeing the truth of it in Lucy’s vacant stare.  Her son was gone, his body growing cold. 

“I want to do something for them,” she said.  “Can’t we do something?”

“You did,” he reassured her. 

It didn’t seem like nearly enough.

It was Jack who signed all the paperwork, apologized for the bloody mess—literally—and walked Lucy to the car.  She was barely conscious but she did manage to walk, with his help.

Char and Muriel watched him put her into the passenger seat before getting in on the driver’s side to start the vehicle.  He’d put her coat on but she was shivering anyway.  The sun was just starting to set, turning the horizon a bruised shade of purple and orange. 

That’s when Muriel saw Jari.

It came back to her in an instant and if she hadn’t had wings, her knees would have gone out from under her. 

The competition.

It had been hours.  Almost a whole day.  She’d already missed it.  She knew it, from the look on Jari’s face. 

“I thought I’d find you here.” Jari glanced at the car as Jack pulled away. 

Muriel didn’t know what to say, how to even begin. 

“Jari,” she managed.  “Oh Jari, I’m so sorry…”

“Stop.” Jari held her hand up, shaking her head.  “I came to tell you—I got a summons.”

“A… what?” Muriel glanced up at Char, panicked. 

“The Fey Advisory Board summoned me,” Jari went on.  “In the middle of the competition you didn’t show up for.  Said it was urgent.  I had to go.”

“Why?” But she knew.  Already, she knew.

“It was about you.  And him.” Jari didn’t even look at the seraphim.  “They said they summoned you both.”

“Yes,” Char nodded.  “A few hours ago.”

It was coming through loud and clear now, although Muriel would have sworn it hadn’t been there just moments before.  Something had been nagging at her, but she’d been so lost in what was happening with Henry, she’d ignored it. 

“We were…” Muriel hesitated, realizing it was no excuse.  “The little boy… he died today…”

“I’m sorry.” Jari flapped her wings, readying herself to go, but Muriel grabbed her arm. 

“What did you tell them, Jari?”

“What I had to,” she replied.  “I told them the truth.”

The truth.  Muriel wondered what that even was anymore. 

“Oh, and Barbie and Ami won the competition.” Jari hovered.  “In case you were wondering.”

“I’m sorry,” Muriel said again, wishing there was more she could say. 

“So am I.” She shook herself loose. 

“Jari, wait!” Muriel cried, but she was gone. 

A summons before the Fey Advisory Board.  It could only be one thing.  She didn’t want to think about it, but she had to.  She saw the reality of it when she looked into Char’s dark eyes.  He knew it too. 

“What are we going to do?” she whispered.  “They’re going to separate us.  They’ll never let me see you again.”

“What if I told you…” he hesitated, closing his eyes for a moment.  “There was a way.”

“For us to be together?” There was that feeling again, hope, caged in her chest, beating to get out.  “How?”

“You asked me once what I thought it would be like, to be human…” He reached out to take her hands in his.  “To be flesh and blood.  Do you really want to know?”

Did she? Muriel stared at him, contemplating the question.  It had been a hypothetical, of course.  Only
The Maker
had that power. 

“What are you saying?”

“We can be human.  Together.” He stopped, then gave her the caveat.  “Just for one day.”

“One day,” she repeated.  Twenty-four hours.  Was it enough? Would any amount of time ever be enough? Then she remembered something Char had said to her, his words coming back to her. 
Love knows no time. 
“How?”

“Do you want this?” he asked, his voice hoarse.  “Us?”

“Yes.” She nodded, looking down at their hands, linked together.  What would it be like, to experience him in the flesh? To bring this celestial love down to earth?

“No matter the consequences?”

“Do you?” she asked, seeing his answer in his eyes. 

“With everything I am.”

She let him take her in his arms and together, they flew. 

“This is the only way?” Muriel couldn’t bear it, not another loss.  How did humans survive? She was finally beginning to understand the weight people carried, how it darkened their essence.  Her sympathy for the man whose soul turned pitch black over time had increased a thousand fold in just the last few hours.  “Are you sure we can’t stop it?”

“They have free will, Muriel,” he said softly, standing at the foot of the bed and looking down at the couple.  Lucy and Jack lay together, fully clothed, belly to belly, forehead to forehead.  “We can’t intervene.”

“Why?” Muriel stood beside him, watching too.  “I don’t understand.” 

“I would have saved Henry for you, if I could.” He squeezed her hand in his.  “I would save the world for you, Muriel.”

But he couldn’t.  No one could.  She wondered, now, even if
The Maker
could.  For the first time, ever, she was doubting.  It frightened her, but in some ways, it freed her too.  She felt more free than she ever had before, standing here with Char, knowing that in less than an hour, the two people in front of them would be dead. 

“We can’t have any more children—and even if we could, it wouldn’t be Henry.” Lucy hadn’t stopped crying.  Tears rolled down her cheeks, a continuous flood of emotion.  “I can’t live without him, Jack.”

“And I can’t live without
you
, Lucy.” He wiped at her tears with his thumbs, but it was no use.  He was crying too. 

“I didn’t dream it,” she whispered.  “He was here, that angel.  You saw him too?”

“Yes.” Jack nodded. 

“I’m not crazy.  He said we could be with him.” The hope floated on Lucy’s voice and Muriel understood, then, how dangerous it had been, what she’d asked Char to do.  He’d done it for her, but she wondered, now, if it had done more harm than good.  “He said we’d be united again. 
Death isn’t the end, Jack. 
He said so! You heard it too?”

“Yes.” Jack nodded his agreement again, his voice hoarse. 

“We’ll just go to sleep,” Lucy said.  She didn’t sound sad—she sounded elated.  “I just want to sleep, and wake up, and have Henry back again.”

“Yes,” Jack whispered, putting his arms around his wife. 

“Char, this is my fault,” Muriel lamented, knowing it was true, even though he shook his head in denial.  “If I hadn’t insisted… if you’d never appeared to them…”

“You couldn’t have known…”

“Did you know?” She glanced up at him, frowning.  “Did you know they planned to do this together?”

“Not until after Henry had passed.”

Muriel wondered if they had planned it all along, or if it really had been Char’s appearance that had pushed Lucy over the edge of desperation.  Maybe she would have considered it, thought about it, even spoken the words aloud to Jack, but somehow Muriel doubted that he would have gone along with it, if it hadn’t been for the reassurance that had been delivered to them from another world. 

All because she’d asked him.  This was her fault. 

And their loss, their sacrifice, was going to give her the one thing she wanted the most. 

They watched Jack and Lucy take the pills together, one at a time.  The doctor had prescribed more than enough, after Lucy’s reaction at the hospital.  One whole bottle, split between them.  They fed them to each other, like lovers, washing them down with vodka.  It was the sweetest, saddest thing Muriel had ever seen. 

“I love you, Jack.” Lucy slipped into sleep with a smile still on her face. 

“I love you, Lucy,” he whispered.  He stayed awake longer, watching her breaths coming fewer and further between.  He watched as long as he could.  Muriel saw him fighting sleep, but eventually, his eyelids drooped and finally closed. 

By then, Lucy was gone.  And Jack wasn’t far behind. 

“How?” Muriel asked as Char sat on the edge of the mattress, pulling her down beside him. 

“Come here, my love.” He folded her into his arms, his wings.  She loved how it made her feel.  More than she ever had in her whole existence.  His dark eyes were full of emotion.  “I’m mad for you.  Muriel.  I’ve done things… you have made me crazy.  If this isn’t love, it can only be insanity.”

“Maybe it’s both.” It felt like it.  Whatever this was between them, it couldn’t be denied.  She was ready to do anything she could, just to hang onto him a little longer. 

“We’ll only have a day,” he reminded her.  “Will it be enough?”

“An eternity wouldn’t be long enough,” she admitted, turning her face up to him “But love knows no time, remember?”

“We’re going to pay a price for this.” He cupped her face in his hands.  “But I can’t say no to you.  I can’t stop.  I want this.  I want you.  I can’t help it.”

“I want you too,” she confessed.  “I don’t care what it costs.  Please.”

He gathered her to him and kissed her. 

In an instant, everything changed.  The press of his mouth against hers, the tender touch of his lips, transported her to another world.  A sweet taste flooded her mouth, pure nectar, something so delicious it shocked her.  She felt everything, Char’s hands on her shoulders, drawing her closer, his torso against hers, an ache so deep at her core, it shook her whole being. 

She’d witnessed hundreds, thousands, millions of kisses throughout the ages, but she never thought it would be like this. 

His kiss was the last thing she remembered. 

Until she woke in Jack’s arms. 

“How…?” Her voice wasn’t her own.  She touched her throat.  It was raw and painful, her voice hoarse. 

“It’s me.” It was Jack’s voice, but she saw the amber circle around his dark eyes and knew it wasn’t.  Not really.  “Muriel, it’s me.”

“Char…”

And then she remembered. 

“Am I?” She sat up, staring at her hands, at the dress she’d last seen Lucy wearing.  Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the bureau.  It was Lucy’s tear-streaked face staring back at her.  “Who am I?”

He sat up too, looking down at his limbs in wonder, then turning to look at her.  The wonder on his face matched her own.  They were human, both of them.  Flesh and blood, at last. 

“Where is she?” Muriel touched her face, her arms.  Just her own fingertips brushing her skin made her feel more alive, aware, than she had ever been before.  “Is she still here?”

“Yes,” he said, looking at himself in the mirror, shifting his gaze to meet her eyes.  “He’s here too, but… they’re…”

“Sleeping?” She frowned at Lucy, trying to sense her, but she couldn’t.  Whatever the woman had been feeling, she had taken with her.  The pain of losing Henry, the grief that had driven her to take her own life, was gone. 

“Something like that.” Char nodded.  “They’re here, but they’re… dormant.  Henry too.  He’s with me.”

“You’ll take them home.” Muriel turned to him, so familiar to her, and yet, not.  “Tomorrow.”

Just one day.  That’s all they would have.  After that, she didn’t know what would happen. 

“Tomorrow,” he repeated. 

“Did you kiss me?” she asked, touching her lips at the memory, a feeling shooting through her middle like a bolt of lightning.  “Is that how this happened? I don’t understand.”

“Do you want to waste time with explanations?” He smiled, flashing a row of very white, very human teeth.  “Or do you want me to kiss you again?”

“

Oh kiss me again,” she breathed, wrapping her arms around his neck, bridging the gap between them in an instant. 

Char laughed, catching her, taking the weight of her and rolling her under him on the bed.  Oh how delightful it felt! Muriel didn’t know which was better, the demand of his lips against hers, the long, hard planes of his body pressing her to the bed, or the mattress itself, like floating on a cloud.  She couldn’t take it all in at once.  The feelings overwhelmed her. 

“How do you feel?” He stopped kissing her to ask, brushing hair away from her temple.  It was Jack’s face, sharply handsome, but it was the seraphim’s eyes. 
Her
seraphim.  The worry lines that had seemed etched in Jack’s face had softened. 

“I… don’t know,” she said, reaching out to touch his cheek.  It was stubbly.  He needed to shave.  Almost as much as he needed a haircut.  His hair was soft under her fingertips.  “I feel… oh, I feel everything.”

“Me too.” He grinned and kissed her again, his mouth slanting across hers.  She moaned and clung to him, the sensation like a low hum, starting in her middle and spreading through her limbs, making her feel weak. 

“I like kissing,” she whispered, his lips trailing wetly across her cheek to her throat.  His mouth was doing things to her, turning her inside out.  Her body moved all on its own, the center of gravity in the soft roll of her hips up against his. 

“Your skin,” he groaned, his tongue snaking along her collarbone, his fingers working the strange buttons on the front of her dress.  “You taste… so… delicious…”

Flesh behaved nothing like the body she had inhabited for eternity.  It was soft, but fixed, solid but malleable.  Her hands roamed over the terrain of his back and shoulders.  Their luminescent bodies had morphed into something that was pure sensation.  She gasped at the cold air on her skin as he parted the front of her dress so he could explore her further with his mouth and tongue. 

She had never paid much attention to clothing before, but she found it too confining now.  She tore at his shirt, popping buttons off the front, desperate to feel him against her.  The first time his bare chest touched hers—he’d managed to get her brassiere off, although how she didn’t know, the contraption was strange and impossible—she shuddered. 

“So beautiful,” he whispered, tonguing her navel.  “Oh Muriel, I could eat you alive.”

She knew how he felt.  She’d never known hunger before, neither of them had, but she knew it now.  She knew it all in an instant—hunger, lust, desire, avarice.  The body she now inhabited gave her this information, even if the part of her that was Muriel had never experienced it before.  Still, she knew what these feelings were, somehow.  Maybe it was the part of her that had been Lucy not so long ago.  Or maybe the human animal simply knew.