Free Broken Butterflies by Shadow Stephens Page A

black and white rotated above Ilisha’s head. Random black and white feathers drifted to the ground around her, tinged with silver blood, and black blood.
    Bram broke loose and held himself suspended for a brief second. His eyes glanced down at Ilisha, who was stricken with fear. Turning back to Damon, he streaked across the sky slamming into him. Both sets of bodies tumbled to the ground. Ilisha shrieked and her hands went to her mouth. The impact threw a cloud of dirt and debris up into the air. She moved forward, but stopped as the dust cleared. Ilisha could see Bram was on top of Damon hitting him in the face; each punch echoing throughout the area. She could hear the bones breaking as Bram twisted Damon’s arms. With every bone snap, Damon let out a feral growl. Before Ilisha could focus on what happened Damon disappeared. He didn’t break Bram’s grasp, he simply faded away. Bram was left on his knees looking at the ground and out of breath.
    Running to him, Ilisha tripped and scraped her arms on the pavement. Scrambling up, she pushed forward until she fell on top of him. Her arms wrapped around his chest as his wings retracted.
    “Oh my gosh, are you okay?” she asked panicked. Her hands ran over his body checking for injuries.
    Bram took her hands in his saying, “I’ll be fine.”
    With wide eyes Ilisha tried to break free of his grasp. “I saw the blood.”
    Ilisha shoved against his shoulder urging him to turn to his side. His torso was marked with a massive gash.
    “It will heal,” he said, forcing her to look into his eyes. “I promise. See?” He pointed to the area. The six inch gash closed, leaving nothing but some dried metallic blood.
    Ilisha ran her fingers over the slight scar left behind.
    “I told you it would heal.” He smiled reassuringly.
    “I don’t understand what happened. Damon didn’t make one move for me, why?”
    “Because he knows I’m with you. He wants to eliminate the threat.”
    “Now I know what happened in the park,” she said numb.
    Bram froze for a second, looking off in the distance.
    “What is it?” she asked, putting her hand on his bare chest.
    “There’s a car coming. We need to move.”
    He walked to her car as if nothing happened. No limping or moaning.
    He popped the trunk and fished a t-shirt out of his bag. “If this keeps up, I’ll need some more shirts.”
    Ilisha hurried and shut the car door. Bram backed up and drove away from the destruction.
    A minivan passed them coming from the other direction. Ilisha turned around and could see them break for the tree blocking the road. It was covered in black and white dust. Bram stepped on the gas.
    “It’s just a downed tree,” she said, wondering what the urgency was about.
    “Maybe so, but there’s no wind and no storm, I don’t want to take the chance.”
    “What happens if someone knows the truth about you?”
    “Nothing; you know about me, but it’s not good for humans to know what surrounds them.”
    “Why?” she questioned.
    “Wouldn’t want to burst their bubble of a world they think they control. In the past, it led to hunts and killings.”
    “Killing of angels?” she asked shocked.
    “Yes, they looked at us as a threat.”
    “How do you kill an angel?”
    “A human can’t kill an angel. But demons blend into the population and inspire the chaos. The more of us they kill, the more chaos they create, but to answer your question, the methods are the same as humans. The difference is we heal quickly, so inflicting injury needs to be so rapid we don’t have time to heal.”
    “So someone could—” she waved her hands thinking. “Stab you?”
    “A demon, yes. A human would never have the strength to harm me.”
    Ilisha gave him a mischievous smile and said, “So if I decked you in the nose, you wouldn’t feel it?”
    Bram chuckled. “I’d feel it, but it’d do nothing. There’d be no pain and no damage.”
    “Huh, interesting.”
    Ilisha’s eyes were heavy, so she