Free Seduced by the Angel (Divine Fornication I--An Erotic Story of Angels, Vampires and Werewolves (Divine Fornication (An Erotic Story of Angels, Vampires and Werewolves)) by Aimélie Aames

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Seduced by the Angel
     
     (Episode 1 of the Divine Fornication Series: An Erotic Story of Angels, Vampires and Werewolves)
     
     
     
     
    Claire eased her apartment door shut then turned about smoothly, her white cane tapping gently down to find the soft carpet running the length of the corridor.
    She appreciated that carpet.  It muffled the sounds of her heels, when she wore them, and above all, it meant that she might slip out unnoticed by Mrs. Muguet. 
    Her neighbor was well meaning, of course, and wanted only to watch over the young woman.  A guardian of sorts.  Except that at twenty years, Claire was independent and proud of it.  People like her most often were not, but Claire had no one in the whole wide world.  No one but herself to fend her way through the weight of the unending darkness that had become her universe.
    She walked briskly forward, her cane trailing lightly before her.  At a count of sixteen steps, she reached out and felt the wall break into a corner.  She smiled.  Small victories were the only thing that brightened her day.  She swung her hand across at the level of most doorknobs and found the faceplate for the elevator's buttons.  Without a break in motion, a gesture rooted in the firm confidence of habit, Claire tapped the lower of the two buttons and was gratified to hear the low hum of electric machinery, then just behind that, the hollow echo of the elevator lurching upward from the ground floor.
    Unfortunately, the next sound that came to Claire's ears was that of Mrs. Muguet's door.  It squealed open with a sound of nails on a chalkboard, followed by a voice that grated just as much in Claire's ears.
    "Oh, Claire, honey! Hold the elevator and I'll go down with you!"
    The smooth mechanics of the door hummed into motion, and Claire practically jumped forward in her wish to escape Mrs. Muguet and her screechy voice for the entire way down.  The old woman would insist that Claire take her arm and, having nothing better to do, sometimes she would walk with Claire for several blocks, all the while chittering away with her whiney, squeaky hinged voice.
    In her hurry, Claire did not tap her cane down to the elevator's linoleum tiled floor.  It was a mistake that happened at times, especially for those who had come to darkness later in life.  A sort of denial, she had been told once.
      Claire had replied saying that it was a curse not to have been born this way.  That knowing what she would never see again was worse than not having seen it at all.
    She swung a foot forward hurriedly, thinking that later she would tell Mrs. Muguet that she had not heard her with the noise of the elevator doors opening.  An uncharacteristic odor of electricity and burnt plastic filled her nose, then a wash of cool air swept across her cheeks.
    As her foot came down, she realized too late her mistake, and Claire's momentum carried her forward into the empty air where the elevator should have been.
    That strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, the one everyone feels in an elevator, flip flopped in her guts as she tipped over into the void.
    A single word passed her lips, "Oh." 
    And she fell down.
    There was a clattering sound that echoed hollowly.  She did not remember letting go her cane, but the sound it made as it fell was unmistakable.
    Claire had time to think that her life had been a cursed one, then in the darkness she heard a solid thud at the same moment that a thousand suns burst inside her mind.  It was the first thing Claire had seen in more than eleven years.  And it was the last thing she would see before she would die for the second time in her relatively short life.
     
    ~~~
     
    Her parents were arguing.  Claire was not sure why, but her father was angry with her mother, and heavy tears rolled down her round cheeks as she watched the cords of her father's neck jump with each of his furious words.
    He jerked the steering wheel in his anger and Claire