Free Messenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels by Heather Killough-Walden Page A

craggy highlands, and realized that she had never been to a land more beautiful than Scotland. It had everything: crumbling castles; fascinating history; ancient stone ruins; black rock shorelines topped with yellow moss and green grass; bright white seagulls; aquamarine inlets; golden sandy beaches; countless tiny islands graced with abandoned monasteries, kirkyards, and keeps; rolling hills made purple with blooming heather; misty mornings; and stars that shone bright at night in an unpolluted sky. . . .
    She could see where the fairy tales originated from now. She could easily spy a quick flash of red in the tall, dense, and dark evergreen forests that dotted the landscape, and she could just as easily imagine a wolf chasing after that bit of red. She could pretend, without trying very hard, that if she gazed long enough at the mushrooms on the grassy hill, a sprite would peek its head out from beneath one of their umbrellas. This was where the lords and ladies were born. This was where they lived still today.
    Juliette had been in a strangely altered state of mind ever since landing in Edinburgh. The appearance of her new “abilities” aside, life felt surreal here. She felt as if she were stuck in one of her many haunting dreams.
    There were places she passed by on the train or in the car that she would have sworn she’d seen in those dreams, in fact. Was such a thing as a genetic memory possible? Had she seen these places before—through her ancestors? Both of her parents were Scottish by heritage. Her blood was steeped in the richness that was this land. It was why she had wanted to visit since she was nine and had decided to do her dissertation on Scottish heritage and culture.
    Scotland was a part of who she was.
    But there was something slightly uncomfortable in the way the ancient green land called to her. It wasn’t a siren song she heard, but the eerie whispers of ghosts and spirits, echoes of voices from the past. It pulled at her like wispy skeletal arms in the shadows or the grayness of the fog at dawn—and at times, she found herself disturbingly close to tears.
    Overhead, an intercom crackled to life and the captain announced that they would be arriving at the dock in ten minutes. Juliette pushed away from the window by which she had been standing since they’d departed from Ullapool, and made her way to the stairs leading to the floor below.
    * * *
    They hadn’t seen him yet, just as they had never noticed him watching them from across the street in Ullapool where they had each boarded the ferry. Daniel was very good at keeping himself hidden. It might have had something to do with his invisibility power. It was in his blood to be able to blend into his environment; most of the time he didn’t need to use his powers at all. He just stood behind a bookshelf or raised the hood of his jacket or covered his face with a newspaper. And he could watch all he wanted, listen to every exchanged word, and learn everything he needed to learn in order to carry out his plan.
    He had been watching Juliette Anderson very carefully when she turned in her car at the rental shop and made her way down the street to the ferry’s dock. Her elflike slender form moved with enough supernatural grace that, to him, it was as if her archess nature were overtly trying to present itself to the world. Everyone noticed her and yet she seemed oblivious to the attention. She was as much a beauty as Eleanore Granger, her skin clear and poreless, her eyes unnaturally bright, her tiny nose upturned like a fairy’s. Her newly purchased clothes—he had to smile at that thought—fit her like a glove, clearly outlining every one of her enticing curves.
    It was dangerous to look like she did. If there was anything Daniel had learned over the thousands of years he had existed among its predators and prey, it was that the men of Earth were capable of insane selfishness and cruelty.
    As for himself—if Daniel hadn’t known that