Angel in Training (The Louisiangel Series, Book One) (38 page)

“
But-” I tried again. He
had
to know about
Lucifer.

Michael, however, had other plans and
silenced me by placing a finger over my lips. “What you experienced
was extremely traumatic and I’m sorry you’ve had to go through it,
especially as Lilah’s reasons make it all the more senseless, but
Lucifer will not and cannot rise. You have nothing to worry about,
so stop stressing your vessel.” At my nod he rose to his feet. “The
police will be in shortly. Remember what I said and I shall collect
you when you’ve been discharged later.”

That was it. He was there, and then he
wasn’t. All alone in the room, I lay back in my bed. Joshua was
alive, I had earned my wings, and if Michael didn’t seem concerned
about Lucifer’s rising, then maybe there really was nothing to
worry about. Clutching at these few positive thoughts, I curled up
into a ball on my side and waited for the police.

Book Two

of the

Louisiangel Series

Trigger
Warning

October 20
^th

New Orleans

63,447.

That was how many minutes had passed since I
had killed someone.

Apart from the first eight hundred or so
where I had been unconscious, I had been aware of every single one
of the
sixty-three thousand
,
four hundred
and
forty-seven
minutes.
Painfully
aware.

When I first arrived in the convent, I
couldn’t understand why there wasn’t a single clock in the
building. The angels didn’t even wear watches. After I had earned
my wings when I’d awoken in the hospital, the reason for this was
apparent. I knew what time it was. Not from a rough guess driven
from the height of the sun or the moon. I just knew. It was how I
knew exactly how long it had been since I had killed an innocent
human.

Michael had told me that I would reach a
point where both sleep and sustenance were more of a choice than a
necessity, I hadn’t believed him. In my defense, I had just found
out that he was an archangel, and I had died and had to earn my
wings to become an angel myself. I didn’t believe in Heaven and
Hell, or angels and fallen angels, and yet I was supposed to
believe I was dead, despite the fact I was still walking and
talking. On top of that, I was to become an angel called Angel? You
try telling me you wouldn’t be skeptical.

Had you asked me to describe an angel to you,
my answer would have been beautiful men with large white wings,
lying around on clouds, playing harps. Only the first part of that
was right. Every single angel I had encountered was beautiful.
Michael looked like he had been hand sculptured because there was
no way anyone could be that handsome. Even the other angels in the
convent were beautiful – except for me. I’d been stuck with my own
body: too tall to be considered cute, too curvy to be considered
model-like, and with my exceptionally large eyes, I certainly
wasn’t a beauty.

My body was now, as Michael called it, my
vessel. It was frozen in time – never to grow old or gain weight.
Had I known that was going to happen, I certainly would have made
the effort to lose those last few pounds and tone up. As it was,
that was the least of my worries when it came to my appearance. The
artificial cherry red hair that I thought would be a great idea for
one night out, which had yet to fade despite the amount of shampoo
it had seen, was now a permanent replacement to the blonde it had
once been.

It wasn’t just my appearance that should
have made me one of the least likely candidates to become an angel.
There was also the fact I’m probably the least likely person you
could pick to
be
an angel.
Angelina Connors PD (pre-death) was a college student, majoring in
marketing, whose biggest ambition was to graduate. I was also a
girl who liked to go out with my friends and make the most of the
fake ID I had.

Mardis Gras had fallen on my twentieth
birthday, just over eight months ago. My friends had gone out
dressed as angels, and I had dyed my hair bright red, found a red
dress that my aunt would never have let me out of the house wearing
if she had seen me in it, and played the part of a devil. I’d had
too much to drink and lost my friends. My killer had taken
advantage of that and stabbed me in my abdomen. I’d died in an
alley.

I had been convinced it was the drinking
which had gotten me killed. I’ve since learned that it probably
helped make my killer’s job easier, but I was going to die that
night, regardless of how many hurricane slushies I’d had. I was
just another piece in a puzzle: a puzzle to raise Lucifer.

Michael had told me that was not possible. He
should know. He had, after all, killed Lucifer millennia ago. It
made what I had done even worse, because I had dragged Joshua into
all of this.

Joshua Walsh was my charge. He was a recently
graduated cop in the New Orleans Police Department, on a special
program to fast-track his way to becoming a homicide detective. He
was the one person I was responsible for protecting. Ironically,
had I not been his Guardian Angel, he probably would have stayed
safe. Thinking of Joshua sent another jolt of pain shooting through
my body and I rolled onto my side, wrapping my arms around a pillow
and curling up into a fetal position.

When hurricane Tabitha, a storm
strengthened by the Fallen, had made landfall, I had been in
position to the west of the city. I was part of a circle of angels
trying to protect New Orleans. Joshua had been kidnapped and I had
abandoned my post to save him. Michael has assured me I did the
right thing – that protecting my charge was the single most
important thing that I could do, the
only
thing I had to do – but breaking the protective circle had
left it weakened. The unnatural hurricane that had hit New Orleans
should have passed with little more than minor storm damage.
Instead, there were far too many homes that had been ruined and I
couldn’t help but feel guilty about that too.

Damaged buildings were only a part of the
guilt I was feeling. A larger chunk was directed towards Joshua
himself. He had been targeted because of me. My predecessor, Lilah,
had earned her wings and become an archangel. Then, she’d fallen.
Or at least, according to Michael she’d fallen. She was adamant she
hadn’t. Leaving Michael’s House had been her choice.

Agony flashed through me, and I squeezed my
body as tightly around the pillow as I could. That was the main
source of my guilt: Lilah. She’d had this crazy idea that Lucifer
wasn’t dead – only trapped. She had been convinced that if an angel
were to kill an angel and a human, then the act would release
Lucifer. Lilah had possessed a human girl and attacked Joshua. So I
had attacked her. Only I didn’t know she had possessed someone
until it was too late. I had saved Joshua, but at the end of the
day I had killed an innocent girl to do so.

The pain shot through me again. Every time I
allowed myself to be distracted for even a moment, as soon as I
remembered what I had done, it felt like someone was injecting ice
into every single cell in my body. Carefully, I concentrated on my
breathing. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale.

“She killed an innocent.” Conversation from
outside of my door broke through my thoughts. “She needs time to
come to terms with this.” The voice belonged to Cupid. Cupid was
another archangel and Michael’s second in command. He was not,
contrary to popular belief, a Roman God; just an archangel who had
gone out of his way to set a Caesar up on a date and been
remembered for his matchmaking skills, rather than his insane
archery prowess.

“She’s been in there for weeks,” a second,
more melodic voice, agreed. This one belonged to Michael.

“Far too long,” Veronica, Cupid’s best
friend, and one of the cherubim who lived in the House, agreed.

I sighed and turned over so my back was to
the door. This wasn’t the first time they’d had a conversation like
this. It would last a few minutes, and then they would walk away.
Every once in a while, Cupid or Veronica would come in and try to
tell me everything was going to be alright, but how could it be?
They hadn’t killed anyone.

The sharp stabbing sensation returned, just
as strong as it always was. With all my attention on trying to
focus on my breathing, I didn’t hear the door open. “Angel?”

I could hear Michael, vaguely registering the
mattress dip as he perched on the bed beside me, but I ignored him,
pulling the blankets closer to me. It takes some time, but that
pain eventually becomes a more manageable dull throb. Allowing
myself to become distracted by Michael wasn’t going to let that
happen.

“
Angel
?” he repeated, this time using the psychic
connection I had with him. Being an angel came with a few gifts and
abilities, one of which was a psychic connection with the archangel
of the House you belonged to. Thankfully, it was just the ability
to communicate telepathically with Michael and he didn’t have the
ability to read my mind. No one needed to see what was constantly
being replayed in there.

I chose to ignore him, trying to breathe
through the added discomfort his presence was causing to flare up:
inhale and exhale.

“Angel,” he tried once more, returning to the
verbal method. He got up, the mattress once again shifting, and for
a brief moment, I thought he was going to leave. Instead, he jerked
the covers away from me.

My eyes flew open, then I quickly shut them
again as I discovered he had opened the curtains, allowing what
little light there was outside, to illuminate my room. “Leave me
alone,” I grunted, only just refraining from launching my pillow at
him.

“Enough is enough,” he said firmly. “It is
time you left this bed.”

“It is time you stayed out of my room,” I
snapped at him. “Or I swear to God, I will go to the police, or the
papers, or whoever will darn well listen to me, and tell them
exactly what I am!” I regretted saying the words even before I saw
Michael’s reaction. His rich brown eyes widened, and a muscle at
his jaw twitched in anger. Then as quickly as I could blink, he
vanished. Oaths to God, it turns out, are a very serious thing for
angels. If Michael had stayed, I would have been obliged to follow
through on my actions, regardless of whether or not I ever intended
on doing so.

In what felt like the same speed as Michael’s
disappearing act, the air seemed to be sucked from the room and
suddenly I was struggling to breathe. Without thinking about what I
was doing, I darted over to the window, pushed it open and tried to
take in deep breaths. It should have been easier than it was. It
was night-time and raining. Two things that brought the temperature
and humidity of the Louisianan air down, but I still couldn’t catch
my breath.

I was feeling more claustrophobic than
anything else, feeling suddenly trapped in my room, my self-imposed
cell. I pushed the window open further and jumped, landing clumsily
on my knees. If I was still human, that fall would have, at the
very least, hurt. As an angel, it felt more like I had taken a
larger step down than usual.

The relief at being outside was instant. The
rain and the breeze started to have a calming effect on me, but it
wasn’t enough. Bare foot, and wearing only my night clothes, a long
since faded England football shirt and shorts, I took off at a
run.

Before I had earned my wings, Michael had
spent hours with me in the gym, trying to get me to run at the
supernatural speed I was supposed to, but had never been able to.
All that had seemed to have changed now, and I tore across the
grounds of the convent at a speed that would have made Usain Bolt
look like he was running at a casual jog.

Thankfully the streets surrounding the
convent were deserted as it took me a moment to realize that nobody
should see me moving at these speeds. I slowed to a walk,
pleasantly surprised to discover that finally, running didn’t leave
me feeling like I was going to keel over and die. Though that, of
course, led me back to thinking about the girl I had killed. I
stumbled to the side of one of the buildings, clutching at my
stomach as I waited for the ability to stand straight again.

It took several deep breaths and a lot of
effort, but I managed to push the pain back to the dull throb.
Getting out of the room, and the convent, had helped a little, but
I was at a loss of what to do next. I knew I didn’t want to go
back. Another option was going to my aunt’s – the place which had
once been my home.

No, that wasn’t really an option either.

Even without looking at my reflection I knew
I was a mess. Turning up on Sarah’s doorstep would do nothing more
than make her worry.

I regretted not taking the time to get
dressed, or at least put on some footwear, even if I didn’t really
need any. Despite the fact I was completely drenched, and the wind
and rain continued to swirl around me, I didn’t feel the
temperature. I could tell that the concrete sidewalks below my feet
were cold, but I couldn’t really feel it. The footwear was more for
the benefit of the few people out braving the weather, who were
looking at me like I was homeless.

I dropped my head and wrapped my arms around
myself, hoping I looked appropriately cold for the weather. With no
real destination, I just walked. One foot in front of the other, I
walked for about an hour – twelve minutes short of one.