Scarred Protector(3)

             Someone was next to her. Her heart pounded as a scream left her throat. She wished there was some mace in her bag, as she tried to scramble toward her keys. She just wanted to get to her car and out of here fast. There was the security guard below, and he could come sort it out. Her hand grabbed for her keys, but someone gripped onto her leg and yanked her back.



“Oh, no you don’t. You’re the prize and you’re staying here until we decide who gets you.”

Evie turned around and repeatedly kicked up at his groin. She reckoned one had made contact with the guy’s privates from the way he groaned. To be honest, she wished she’d been wearing stilettos so she could’ve punctured his balls. He was still holding onto her other leg, and threw her across the roof, so her head connected with one of the guardrails. He had thrown her like she was a rag doll. Her 140 pounds seemed to have been nothing to him. The back of her head thumped in agony, and she tried to lift her hand to check whether she was bleeding. She couldn’t move. What the hell, had he paralyzed her? None of her body would work.

Another guy turned up as if from nowhere and lunged at her attacker. All she could do was lay there and watch the fight unfold before her. Maybe she would die this night, just like Dad, then the angels and demons could do whatever the hell they liked.

The two men seemed to have forgotten about her for a moment while they attacked each other. They moved like they were Kung Fu experts. In fact, they moved so fast their limbs blurred. The light wasn’t very good, but she could tell one was tall and blond, and the other was tall and dark. They both wore suits, yet they were fighting like hooligans. Her muddled brain remembered what the blond guy had said before he had thrown her. She was the prize. What the fuck did that mean?



             Her fingers were starting to get pins and needles, and so were her toes. Thank God, she wasn’t paralyzed. She tried to move but just fell over onto her side, so the cold concrete connected with her face. The world seemed strange viewed from this angle, as the two men fought close by. For a moment, it all seemed too hard and she just wanted to close her eyes and sleep, and hope everything would be okay when she woke up. Or maybe she would just never wake up. She shut her eyes, but could still hear the grunts and groans of the two fighters. Her stomach turned, and she thought she might vomit. Could she sink any lower than to be lying in her own chuck while two thugs waited to attack her.

She opened her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to hold down the panic. Her bag was about four feet away, and her keys just beyond. Inch by inch, she started to pull her body across the ground. Raindrops started to plop on her face. As if things weren’t bad enough already, now she was going to be soaked to the skin. Her arms and legs were starting to work, but every movement was exhausting, like she had just had a bout of the flu.

She clutched her bag in her hand and crawled toward her keys. The rain was turning to hail, and her breath caught as she started to shiver. She collapsed for a second to the ground to get her breath back while she clutched her keys in her hand. The car was nearby, so she crawled on her hands and knees to it and used the door handle to pull herself up. Her legs were like jelly and wouldn’t hold her up for long, but she had to get away from these two crazy guys. Her numb fingers pressed the button on the key to open the car, as she took a deep breath to stop the dizziness from overwhelming her.





             Evie never made it inside the car, as one of the men hit her back. She turned to see the blond one leering at her, then his hand came up and slapped her across the face. The force threw her sideways toward the railing of the car-park roof.

With another thump to her head, it all came back to her. His name was Charles, and the other one was called Heath. They had been in her father’s room, and they both had said they wanted her. Evie tried to remember what else they said, as her foot slipped, so she lost her balance and tipped sideways off the roof. Evie reached out, frantically, her arms flailing as she tried to get a hold on the guard rail. Her fingers gripped the metal, but it was slippery from the rain, and she couldn’t hold on for long. Through the gap in the railings, she could see the fight progress. Heath turned and caught Charles in the middle of his back with a kick. Charles collapsed to the ground and wasn’t moving. She hoped he was dead.

Tears streamed down her face, as her fingers slipped and started to lose their grip. Peering down, it was at least six levels to the ground. She could see someone down there, so she called out, but there was a crack of thunder at that very moment, and her voice was swallowed up by the sound. The security guard chatted to the man below and walked back into the building. They just wanted to get away from the rain, but she wanted to live. She had thought about dying so many times to be rid of the horror of the twisted darkness haunting her mind, but now that she was going to die, she wanted to live. To live and know what it was like to be happy. Fuck it, everyone deserved that.

The hail pelted her face as she looked up, and the water blended with her tears. With her last bit of strength she tried to hold on, but her fingers lost their grip. The struggles of the past few years would be all over soon. A scream left her throat to be lost in the air while lightning cracked above. She waited for the thud and oblivion, but she never hit the ground. Arms caught her and scooped her up like she weighed nothing. Heath’s face was close to hers, and a sense of calm washed over her, preventing another scream from leaving her throat. What the fuck was happening, and more importantly, how had he caught her? As another blaze of lightning flashed overhead, she saw the reason for her unexpected rescue. He had wings. Huge, bloody glorious wings, outspread and illuminated for a second by the lightning. Before her brain could register what was happening, a bolt of energy shot through her body.



             She was pretty sure they had just been struck by lightning and should be dead. Instead, everything seemed to stand still, and all that existed anywhere in the universe was the two of them holding onto each other in anguish. In this stranger called Heath’s arms, she felt peace for the first time in years. She tried to look up at his face to see if she could read what was happening to him, but before she could, the heat wafted over her and she passed out.





Chapter 2



Fall to Earth



Heath’s wings erupted from his back instantly. Then he swooped down from the car-park roof and caught Evie in his arms before she hit the ground. A fall from that height would have killed her, and he refused to lose another person. It had been hundreds of years since he had last lost someone, and it wasn’t happening now. Not on his watch, nor in his area.

Lightning cracked through the sky and his whole body tingled as if he was absorbing the power when he grabbed her. For a moment, he wasn’t sure whether the energy was coming from her or from around them as they hovered. It didn’t matter for now. Charles would be out of action and paralyzed from the waist down, but it wouldn’t last for long. He needed to get Evie over to Pergor and find her a guardian before anymore Demonic Midworlders showed up. Fighting one, he could deal with, but fighting a group of them would incapacitate him for too long.

Something else was up, too. For some reason messages were not getting through to his enclave. Help wouldn’t be coming anytime soon. The last thing he said to his people was that he had received a message from an Angelic about to pass over, and that she had found a human in distress. If he had known the distress was because the human didn’t have a guardian he would have brought a whole crew with him to protect her.

There were a lot of questions he needed to ask this woman. That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon since she had just passed out. He wasn’t sure whether it was a result of being caught by a man with wings or the sudden burst of energy. As he peered at her, he reckoned he could see little sparks of energy all around her. It made her glow like a light bulb. His own body still tingled from the burst. He could recover from being hit by lightning, but he wasn’t sure how a human would cope with it.



             Of course, she might have passed out because most humans don’t usually have this sort of thing happen to them. He had picked up from her mind that she had just lost her father. To be coping with such grief and the attack from Charles made him admire this woman’s tenacity. She had brought a smile to his face when he had seen her boot connect with Charles’ groin.

He stopped ascending into the sky and hovered, allowing himself a moment of reflection as he gazed down at her face. What was going on here? She cradled against his chest, and he had to admit he liked the sensation. He didn’t touch people unless he had to, and had forgotten what it felt like to have a human pressed against him. It brought out the protectiveness in him.

He reached up and touched her cheek with his fingertips. The glow was gone from around her body, but the tingle still remained. She felt warm—too warm—as if she was running a fever. He moved his hand away, surprised at himself. He rarely let his emotions show, and yet he felt drawn to this strange woman with the wet and bedraggled fuzzy hair. It must have been the jolt of lightning affecting him. She looked so vulnerable, and yet he had seen her to be tough against Charles. She hadn’t known what she was taking on, but she had fought well. He didn’t know her, but he liked her feistiness. It was irrelevant. He needed to stop these pointless contemplations and concentrate on saving her.