Dark Angel

My eyes fluttered open suddenly.
It was still dark outside and it took me a few minutes to work out what had woken me.
Someone was calling me. Not verbally.
Telepathically.
I attempted to climb out of bed but could move no further than a few inches - Leo's muscular arm was still draped heavily over my tiny waist.
I smiled.
He looked so peaceful as he slept. His light brown hair a tad messy through being in contact with the pillow.
Carefully, i moved his arm away and slid silently off the bed.
He didn't wake as I crept across the room to the balcony door. All i could hear was his soft breathing.
I pushed open the doors and stepped into the cool night air.

The sky was something like a masterpiece painted by an excellent artist.
To the west, a dark blue and black canvas played the background for a city of sleeping people and the lights of the buldings whose inhabitants seemingly never slept.
To the east, orange, red and yellow bands of light were painted along the furthest possible viewing point of the horizon.
Sunrise was coming, a new city would dawn and the sleepers would wake to face a new day.

"Melanie."
I flinched as I heard the soft, deep voice.
Out of nowhere, a figure with black wings fell from above and landed on the railing, wings outstretched and many metres wide.
At first, I couldn't see his face. He was looking straight down and his medium length auburn hair was blowing gently in the breeze.
But I knew who he was.
"Gabriel," I acknowledged as he finally lifted his head up to look at me.
His beutiful ice blue eyes latched onto mine with a perfect and ferocious hunter's gaze which, to me, would always seem out of place on the angel's face.
Even though I knew that the angelic glamour was not his real image.
He smiled slightly as he watched me and he beat his wings once to keep his balance on the railing.

"Hello, ma cherie" he said.
He always called me that. It was naural for him, even though he had travelled the world at large, his roots were and always would be in the heart of France.
"I believe you were the one who called me?" I asked him, although I already knew the answer.
"Perceptive, as always" he smiled, but it looked more like the ghost of a smirk, "aye, it was I who called you."
I took a few steps closer to him, for some reason, his presence here did not bode well. That should not have surprised me, him being my gaurdian angel and all. He only ever appeared when I was in danger.
Was I in danger now?
"Melanie, ma cherie, I need to ask something of you," he said, in a tone i'd only ever heard him use once before. The time when someone I'd known had died.
Now I was really beginning to panic.
"Yes, what is it?" I said, barely able to keep the panic out of my voice.
He reahced out a hand to take my own in his soft, silky palms.
He looked quite upset, as if he didn't want to say what was troubling him.
"Please, Gabriel, please tell me what is wrong" i pleaded, torn between wanting to get it out of his system and not wanting to hear the bad news.
"You need to leave him" he said tilting his head towards the doors i'd just come through.
"What!?" I said, stung. I had been with Leo for months, I loved him more than i'd ever loved anybody. Yet here my gaurdian angel was, telling me to leave him!
"I know it sounds insane, ma cherie, but believe me, I would not ask this of you were it not for your safety."
I didn't know what to do.
Why was i not safe with Leo?
"No...i-i can't!" I stammered.
"You must," Gabriel whispered, looking me directly in the eye.
I let go of his hand and stepped backwards away from him.
Some gaurdian angel he was! The only man i'd ever loved and who had made me happy and here the great angel was, trying to take away my only scource of happiness!
It was a bitter moment.
I kept taking steps further and urther back towards the doors.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a sharp object was pressed painfully against my windpipe.
"So! You converse with dark angels eh?" the voice said, gripping my arm exceedingly tight.
It was Leo.
"Let me go! You're hurting me!" I cried.
"Shut up!" he spat.
Angry tears burned in my eyes.
I'd loved him, trusted him beyond understanding. Yet here he was, betraying me. Like all the other people i'd trusted.
Gabriel beat his wings in a heavy rythmn not unlike a heartbeat. He looked furious and I could see the vampire in him as he spoke to Leo.
"Release her, demon, you have no claim on her!" he hissed, baring his fangs, which were the only remaining evidence that he had once been a vampire.
"Make me, slave of angels! You have no vampiric power while under the viel of the white winged ones!"
The look on Gabriel's face was pure outrage.
Yet the demon was right, since Gabriel had been given his wings by the angels and ordered to protect me from birth as penance for his past sins, the vampiric powers he had were useless - the angels had somehow blocked them from use.
"I may not have my powers, low-life, but i assure you - harm my girl and i will watch you die in flames!"
I didn't doubt him either.
I was also quite shocked and pleased to hear him call me his girl.
He had never acknowledged me as anything more than an item to protect so he could get his old life back once the angels had decided he'd paid his dues.
Either that or a nuisance.
"You want her, half-breed?" the demon sneered, he took a few steps sideways towards the railing.
I knew what was coming next.
I tried to struggle but he pressed the knife to my throat a little harder.
A touch more and he'd draw blood.
Gabriel tensed himself, ready to spring.
"If you want her so badly...." the demon teased, "...then go get her!"
The demon lifted me up in a half second, swept me through the air and over the edge of the railing.
I felt a horrible jerk behind my navel as I dropped like a rock through the air.
I screamed as the ground rushed up to meet me, but I couldn't hear because of the air rushing around me.
Closing my eyes, I really thought that this would be the time Gabriel failed. That I would die after all these years of surviving horrible accidents.
At that thought, I surrendered myself to death and made my peace with the world, blocking out the sound of the air as it rushed by.
Suddenly, i heard a sound I couldn't block out - the sound of a huge pair of wings beating against the cool night air.
Then I suddenly stopped falling and I knew I 'd be alright.

Copyrighted by Charlotte Worth.

Full Moon.

My heart beats faster as the moon comes into view.
I feel the inevitable change ripple through my body and I tense my muscles, ready for the pain.
A sharp burst of adrenalin tells me that the curse is awakeing the creature within.
I shriek as my rib cage expands, feeling every crack and fracture as my bones reshape themselves underneath the flesh, my t-shirt tearing away from the chest it can no longer cover.
My fingers lengthen and thick, wiry hair begins to to creep through my flesh, my nails lengthen into sharp, deadly claws and I grit my teeth against the pain of it all.
My legs begin to lengthen and my jeans begin to tear under the strain of a body too large to enclose. My spine lengthens and I fall to my knees in pure, un-contained agony. My mouth and nose reshape themselves into a vicious mouth that I know I will have no control over.
I scream again, only this time my voice is tainted by that of an otherworldly growl.
In an explosion of rage that is not my own, the creature tears off the scraps of unneeded fabric and shakes its huge, hairy body as the last vibrations of the change pulse through its muscles. It pants heavily as the pain subsides in calm and gentle waves.
The creature straightens up onto it's hind legs.
It howls.