Free Dark Avenging Angel by Catherine Cavendish Page B

hurt him.
    As that thought struck me, my angel moved out of the shadows and stood in the center of the room. Her cloak still covered her slim form and the hood shielded much of her face. But, tonight, my angel appeared different. A half smile played around her dark lips and she lifted her arms. The cloak fell away and, for the first time, revealed the bloodless ivory of her skin.
    I gasped as her hood fell back and a mass of pure-white hair tumbled to her shoulders. Now I saw her face as I had never seen it before. Bone-white, unnaturally high, chiseled cheekbones. Her lips, blacker than any lipstick. And her eyes. How could I have missed the clustering darkness that swirled within them in ever-darker shades of black? Power surged from those eyes. Power that penetrated my skin, and smelled of long-dead bodies.
    I recoiled, my hand over my nose. Fear surged through my body. She was revealing herself to me, as she really was, for the first time.
    A memory. Christine and the other girls running away terrified. This must have been what they saw.
    I shrank back in my chair. I didn’t know her anymore. Maybe I had never known her. The thought chilled me.
    “Who are you?” My voice was no more than a nervous whisper.
    She lowered her arms and the cloak fell back over them. But her hair still cascaded over her shoulders, a waterfall of pure, gleaming white.
    I will show you.
    In one deft move, she threw off her cloak and stood before me, almost translucent. Her rail-thin body was draped in a black, diaphanous silk shroud of a gown that stretched below her ankles and concealed her feet. As her gown shimmered it pulsed with a rainbow of light.
    Figures emerged as if etched on her body. Bodies that writhed and squirmed, their faces contorted in fear and pain. Horrified, I realized these had once been human but were no more. I stared as the skin on their entangled arms and legs melted away to leave blanched bones that rattled as their screams grew louder, more intense. Ear splitting.
    I curled myself into a ball, my head between my knees. I clasped them tightly. I tried in vain to block out the awful sound. Surely my neighbors would hear and come banging on the door.
    But no one came.
    The noise stopped. I hesitated, hardly daring to move. I uncurled myself and gazed around the empty room.
    Had I imagined it? I had long since accepted the supernatural being that was my dark angel. But now I had to accept there was far more to her than I could have guessed in my wildest dreams—or nightmares, come to that. And what I learned sent tentacles of fear clutching at my spine.
    I needed a drink, and a bottle of wine stood open, ready for me in the kitchen. I crossed the floor exactly where my angel had stood. Beneath my bare feet the carpet felt damp, as if someone had tipped a glass of water over it. I bent down and touched the floor, then brought my fingers to my nose. They smelled of nothing. The rest of the carpet felt dry. Just that one patch where she had stood.
    God knows how hard I tried to make sense of what happened in that room. I couldn’t get the screaming of those tormented souls out of my mind. The memory of the rattling of their bones set my teeth on edge. I had no name to call this entity that had been part of my life for so long.
    And until tonight, I had never seen a glimpse of her arms. Her hands, yes, when she held the ledger, but, then, with the sleeves of the cloak so long and voluminous, I saw little more than her fingers. To discover the whole unearthly whiteness of her shocked me. But more than that, the images she had shown me…
    So anyone I consigned to her ledger would suffer the fate of those tortured souls. That had to be it. My father was already listed in her book of vengeance. One day he too would suffer the fate of so many before him. Did Stuart Campbell deserve this?
    I knew I would be the one to decide. She had already made that clear. Such knowledge did, of course, give me immense power. Power over