The Saving Angels Series: Books 1-3 (39 page)

"I like 'yum food,' that way if you want extra, you can say I want 'yum, yum food,'" Mark said laughing.

"Oh yeah, and if you're on an eating binge, it would be "yum, yum, yum, yum food," I said, trying to get the mouthful out without giggling as my tongue tripped over the words.

We laughed through the rest of our meal as we tried to outdo each other with how many 'yum's' we could say without getting tongue tied or laughing.

Once we were done, we gathered our trash and left our own little private oasis. Dropping the garbage in the receptacle, we headed down one of the paths we had yet to take. By the time we reached the end of the row, we both had our hands full with more purchases and were both dusty from the dirt that had been stirred up by all the people that now crowded the market.

"Sheesh, this place is packed now," I said as we juggled our stuff.

"I can take the stuff back to the Navigator if you still want to keep shopping," Mark said, shifting the two plants I had bought for my mom into one arm so he had a free hand for my bags.

"Nah, that's okay. I'm beat and the heat is starting to make me feel a little sick," I said. "But I had a lot of fun," I added, so he knew how much I appreciated our excursion.

We rounded the next corner and headed up the long, dusty row. Our pace was faster now as we ignored the stands that lined each side of us. We were just about to the end of the row when a girl about my age, dressed similarly to how Lynn dressed reached out to hand me a flyer.

Though she had a firm smile planted across her face, I could feel her despair three feet away from her. My first instinct was to shy away from her emotions like I had been doing for years, but as our hands made contact, I decided to try the training we had been working hard at with Haniel. I allowed her emotions to flood into me. I was instantly blinded by the pictures that flashed behind my eyelids. I could see her cringing away from groping hands and trying to clutch a blanket up to her chin. I shuffled away from her, blinded by the images, trying desperately to keep my lunch down.

"Krista, are you okay?" I could hear Mark's voice asking from far off.

Shaking my head weakly, I felt Mark propelling me away from the center of the row. He dragged a white resin chair from one of the eateries near us and I dropped into it like a ton of bricks. I shut my eyes and willed the nausea back by trying to breathe only through my mouth. The smells of the market that had seemed so appetizing just minutes ago, now worked against me as my lunch swirled wildly in my stomach.

"Krista, what's the matter? Is it the heat?" Mark asked, kneeling on the ground to look at me.

"No, it's this," I said, showing him the flyer I still had clutched in my hand.

He reached over and gently pried it out of my sweaty fingers. "It's some kind of revival thing," he said, sounding puzzled, holding it up for me to see.

"Not the actual paper," I said, concentrating on breathing through my mouth as I answered him. "It was the girl who handed it to me," I said, swallowing back another wave of nausea.

Mark turned around looking for the girl that had handed the flyer off to me, but she was gone, already swallowed up by the crowd.

"What about her?" Mark asked, still confused.

"I allowed her emotions in. I saw her past," I said miserably. My insides were a twisted mess from the images I had seen. I wanted to hunt down the sick person that had taken something so important from her.

"Krista, maybe you misunderstood what you felt. We've been training wicked long hours and you said the heat was making you feel ill. Maybe those two things combined made you a little more sensitive."

"No, I didn't miss understand," I said stubbornly. "Her pictures were exactly like the
forgotten soul
images Haniel has been assaulting us with all week. Something happened to her awhile ago and someone is definitely using it to their advantage now. Haniel said that
forgotten souls
are consumed by their past hurts and that’s what the Abbadons feed on. They use their pain against them allowing them to only focus on the awful images instead of any good ones. Trust me, she's being used for something," I said as I stood up on shaky legs. I was disappointed in myself for not holding on longer and filtering her emotions like I was created for.

"Well, we still have this," Mark said, picking the thoughts from my head as he held up the orange flyer.

He handed it over to me and I read the headline. "Feel like you've been wronged? Come by and hear what you can do to change that around." Beneath the words was a silhouette picture of a group of people standing side by side. Below the picture was the date and time of the event. At the bottom of the page was an address.

"We can go take a drive over and see if we see anything. It's probably deserted today since the next meeting looks to be tomorrow," he said, grabbing onto my hand.

I felt a wave of relief flow over me that he believed me.

Our mission made us walk back to the car faster than our previous pace and within a few minutes we had reached the SUV and were throwing our stuff into the cargo area at the rear of the Navigator. I climbed into my seat and was relieved as the last of the nausea finally left me.

"You okay?" Mark asked as he cranked the air up to high and adjusted the middle vents so they would blow directly on me.

"Yeah, I feel much better. I wish I could have helped her more, but maybe it's not too late. Haniel neglected to tell us that leaving a
forgotten soul
unfiltered would leave us feeling so lost. I felt like I had climbed to the top of a mountain only to be pushed back down before I could reach the top," I said to Mark, trying to explain why I felt so mixed up.

"Well, let's go see what we can dig up," Mark said, plugging the address into his navigation unit.

The directions appeared on the screen in front of us in a few seconds, pointing to a destination less than a couple of miles away from where we currently were. Mark pulled out of the dirt lot and turned in the opposite direction that we had taken to get here. After a mile, the soft voice from the navigation unit told us to take the next right. Mark turned down the dirt road and after a hundred yards the voice prompted us to turn left. Mark obliged, and after one last turn we pulled into a wide open space with signs that indicated that it was used for carnivals and circuses that passed through town.

Instead of brightly colored circus tents or rides and concession stands, one lone, massive white tent sat in the middle of the empty space. A trailer was parked off to the side near the brush, but other than that, the space was a ghost town.

Mark shut off the engine and we both cautiously climbed out of the vehicle. Mark grabbed my hand pulling me slightly behind him. I was grateful for his protection, as I suddenly became assaulted by several mixed emotions from the tent in front of us. The emotions ran the spectrum from animosity all the way down to the deepest of despair. I took in a shaky breath as I studied the makeshift structure. I couldn't place what was going on here, but something was definitely off.

"Do you want to wait in the car?" Mark asked me, with concern laced through his words.

"No, I'm fine. Let's get a little closer and see if I can pick up anything useful."

"Okay, but stay behind me."

Nodding my head, I trailed behind him as he approached the tent cautiously. Peering into the dim interior, we saw that several rows of benches made from wooden planks and cinder blocks lined the center of the tent, while a makeshift pulpit of sorts stood near the far wall. We spotted a handful of people working at a table on the far side of the tent, but obviously unaware of our presence, they never looked our direction.

Mark took a cautious step inside, but pulled back quickly when we heard an engine behind us.

Tuning around, we took a step away from the tent. I gripped Mark's hand tightly in my own as we faced the oncoming vehicle in front of us.

"Can I help you with something?" A man that looked to be a couple years older than us, covered in tattoos, asked, getting out of the passenger side of the vehicle.

Mark took a casual step in front of me blocking me partially from view.

"Yeah, we got this flyer over at the farmer's market," Mark said, holding up the orange flyer.

I let out a relieved breath that he had remembered to grab it out of the Navigator.

"I see we mixed up the days when we looked at it," Mark added.

"I'd say the times too," The man said with sarcasm lacing his voice.

"Yeah, that too," Mark said laughing to ease the mood, but I could feel the tension flowing off of him.

"Why don't you come back tomorrow," the driver said in a friendlier tone. "Alan's a real visionary," he added, lowering the tailgate of the pickup truck to unload the supplies piled up in the back.

"Sounds good," Mark said mimicking the driver's laid-back manner as he scooted me toward the Navigator. Opening the door for me, he used his hands to propel me into the seat and closed the door behind me in one swift movement, taking me away from any possible threat.

I watched through the window as Mark shook their hands and came around to his side.

"You okay?" He asked, still smiling for their benefit as he put the SUV into drive and pulled out of the dusty lot.

"Yeah," I said, glancing out the rear window. I was relieved to see both men hard at work unloading the truck. It's not like I had expected them to be following us, but seeing them disregarding our visit made me feel much better.

"Did you get anything from them?" he asked.

"Well, I was scared to let their feelings in, but they both had a similar vibe to the girl from the market," I said. "What are we going to do?" I asked after a few minutes.

"First thing we're going to do is sit down with Haniel and the others. This is a prime example of what we were created for."

I nodded my head in agreement, glad that we were both on the same page.

We arrived back home a half an hour later to an empty house. I had to swallow back my disappointment when I realized all my friends were gone. I was anxious to hash out what we had seen and what I had felt with our group.

"Why don't we go for a swim," Mark suggested, picking up on my disappointment. "Our day isn't quite over and we can still make it fun."

"That sounds good," I said, agreeing with him.

I headed to my room to change and put away my treasures. I left the surprises we had purchased for Lynn and Sam on the coffee table on my way to my room with Feline following behind me. I opened one of the bags and tossed the catnip mouse I bought him on the bed and watched as he happily rolled around with it. I laughed as he dragged it under the bed looking loopy. "Great, I'm like your dealer," I said, watching him disappear.

Mark was already in the pool when I joined him on the patio. I stood in the doorway for a moment watching him swim laps across the pool. The muscles in his biceps and shoulders rippled as he pulled his long lean body through the water. My mouth dried watching the water glistening on him. Seeing
him
in the water half-dressed was enough to make my palms sweat and send my racing heart into overdrive. Sure, over the last few weeks we had done a ton of swimming, but that was with all our friends around. The pool was always crowded and noisy with plenty of splashing.

"You going to join me or are you going to just stand there gawking?" Mark asked, breaking into my reverie.

"Um, I choose stand here and gawk," I said, making him laugh.

I dropped some towels on the chair and headed toward the deep end of the pool so I could dive in. I was a huge baby about cold water and took the "all or nothing" approach. I felt creeping into cold water slowly only prolonged the inevitable.

Taking my normal stance, I stood at the edge of the pool on tiptoes and placed my arms above my head, well aware of the fact that Mark was checking me out, much as I had done to him. Smiling briefly, I bent my knees and pushed off the side off the pool, cutting through the cold water in one movement. I swam the length of the pool and kicked off the side, propelling me back toward the other end of the pool. My lungs threatened mutiny as they burned for oxygen, but I pushed forward, finally reaching the point I had started from. I broke through the surface, gasping for breath, no longer feeling the cold water as I completed my ritual. I had learned long ago that by escalating my heart rate, the chill of the water would dissipate quicker and I could enjoy myself.

Mark swam to my side. "You look like a porpoise swimming under the water like that," he said huskily, wiping a drop of water off my forehead with the pad of his thumb.

I wanted to make a joke out of his comment, but his hand slid down my cheek, circling around underneath my hair until it rested against my neck. I sighed against his lips as he placed them on mine. Releasing the side of the pool, I wrapped my arms around his neck, anchoring myself to him. Our legs tangled together under the water as Mark deepened the kiss. We began to sink beneath the surface when he took his own hand off the side of the pool. Kissing him with the water surrounding us was a sensation like no other. My lungs craved air while my heart craved even more contact.