Destiny: A Hunter's Novel, Book 3 Read Free Page B

was difficult. Azrael’s trick must’ve run out because I could hear Mastema’s rage from the woods I was beating my path through.
    I prayed. I prayed I would make it out before Mastema got me. I prayed I’d make it safely to where I needed to be. I prayed I’d get a tomorrow.
    As I prayed, and waddle-ran, I had a weightless feeling and a tightness around my chest. I looked down at my feet moving, but nothing under them. I found a pair of arms wrapped around my chest. I looked behind me and found Serafine. This was Angel Serafine. She had a white light around her, as well as expansive red wings jutting from her back that matched her hair perfectly. She was magnificent.
    “Only you. Only you would piss him off this badly. We’re going to be picking up the pieces from this for years.” She shook her head in disapproval.
    “You were his Mate! Can you honestly tell me that you never pissed him off that bad?!”
    Serafine mulled that over for a moment. I could see the moment that the memory returned to her.
    “Tangshan, China, July 27, 1976.” Serafine became somber. “632,421 people died because of the earthquake my loving Mate caused.”
    “Was the fight worth it?” I asked, intrigued to find out.
    “Always was…until I couldn’t fight anymore.” I wasn’t really sure what that meant other than the fact she was referring to when she had died and become an Angel, at least I thought that was how you became an Angel. I could tell though, from the look on her face, this part of our conversation was over.
    “So, where are we going?”
    “We’re going to Ireland, Dublin, to be precise.” Serafine had heard my thoughts, obviously, because that is what I’d just been thinking.
    “Please stay out of my head.”
    “I only get your thoughts when you’re screaming them. Everything else in that jacked head of yours is a mystery.”
    “That’s good. No one wants to be in there anyway. Sometimes not even me.”
    “Amen to that.”

~III~
    “If we’re all just cynics come undone, All just waiting for the gun, We are tied to the truth, The tie that binds me to you, I’m acting on my words, With all that I have heard…”
    - Hudson Taylor , Battles
    After hours of being in the air with Serafine, you would think I’d be freezing cold. About half way through the trip, I noticed I hadn’t once gotten cold. I figured it was either an Angel thing or a me thing. As I was pondering all of this, the ground came rushing at us and Serafine dropped me unceremoniously on the ground. I guess I should've at least been thankful that it was on wet grass and not hard cement or a body of water. I stood up and looked down at my feet. Instead of the ski boots I’d had on, I now had a pair of hiking boots covering my feet. Then I looked around me.
    It was breath-takingly beautiful. I was surrounded by green. There were rolling hills all around us and a faint smell of the sea. I vaguely remember thinking when I was younger that there was so much green and wondering how it had gotten so green. Now, instead of questioning it, I relished in it. I loved to see the green; to see life leap from the earth and coil forward without apology. It was so different from what I was used to. Miami had the ocean, but it was a concrete paradise and the ocean had a completely different smell. The sea here was fresher somehow, less tainted.
    "It's magnificent here." I said, still feeling Serafine's energy behind me.
    "Yes, it is. Ireland is home,"She sounded sad, and I found her staring out at the rolling hills, lost in a memory that had nothing to do with the life she led now.
    "Is this where you were born?"
    "Not here. A few miles that way." She pointed to the hills she was looking at.
    "I'm sorry." I was apologizing to her for some unknown event that had brought her such profound sadness.
    "For what?" Serafine shook her mood off and put the edge back in her voice. "It was ages ago. So many I can barely remember any of Ireland." I think it was the