Her Dark Angel Read Free

called him. Could she see through the glamour? Was she different somehow to other mortals?
    “I don’t want to die,” she muttered almost beneath her breath and cast a fearful look his way.
    This wasn’t going as he had expected. She wasn’t supposed to have been able to see that he was an angel. She was supposed to have accepted his kind offer of a handkerchief to dry her tears and told him why she was crying so he could figure out what he was doing here and whether someone was playing a trick on him.
    Tears spilled down her cheeks and she wrapped her arms around herself, making herself small and making him want to reach out to her and somehow ease her suffering. Whatever pain had caused her to cry, it was still strong within her heart, tormenting her. He could feel it. There was some sort of connection to her that gave him insight into her feelings, a sense that she needed him and that they were supposed to have met here today.
    It was ridiculous.
    A mortal could never call him. They didn’t have the voice.
    He had been alone too long and was dreaming all of this, seeing things as he wanted them and not with clear eyes.
    There was only one way of finding out whether she had called him somehow. He had hoped to discover it through casual conversation but that wasn’t an option now. It was time for a more direct approach.
    He stepped towards her and she backed away again, holding both of her hands out as though that gesture alone could stop him if he wanted to get to her.
    “Please,” she whispered and shook her head, sending more tears tumbling down her pale cheeks.
    “Leave her alone.” A burly man started towards him.
    Apollyon lost patience and cast his hand out, waving it across the gathered crowd. “There is nothing interesting to see here.”
    Their expressions went slack and they moved as one, drifting off and back into their own lives, moving past him and the mortal woman as though they weren’t even there.
    “Oh God, you’re going to kill me.”
    He frowned at her. “Why would you say such a thing?”
    “It’s what you do.” There was accusation in her tone and a hint of bravery.
    Courage in the face of death?
    A moment ago, she had been fleeing him and now she looked ready to fight.
    “I have not done such a thing in a very long time.” He sighed. It was never going to leave him. Spend a few centuries as the angel of death and no one forgets. Everyone presumes you’re still in charge of taking life’s final breath from mortals. Still, it was better than the other rumour that he was the Devil. “There is a fleet of angels who do it now.”
    She didn’t look as though she believed him. Her hands trembled in front of her.
    “I didn’t ask for my powers. Please don’t take me there.”
    “Where?” His patience was wearing thin again and he seemed to be unable to get his question out into the open. He tracked back over what she had said.
    Powers?
    “All the fires of Hell are in your wake... I don’t want to go there. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
    Apollyon looked behind him. All he could see was Paris. The edge of the stone bridge and the murky river, and the city beyond.
    “You are gifted.” He looked back at her, deep into her hazel eyes. She nodded. Was this how she had called him? He frowned and looked at the fountains at the other end of the bridge behind him and then at her. “What were you doing there?”
    She looked past him, blinked a few times, and then her eyebrows rose. “Nothing really. Contemplating life, I guess, and how shitty it was.”
    “You did not ask for anything?” He stepped closer to her and this time she didn’t back away. She kept staring at the fountain with wide eyes. Tears lined her dark lashes. All of her fear disappeared and the pain returned. She clutched her hands to her chest, and he felt the hurt well up inside her, overwhelming her.
    “Revenge,” she whispered and her gaze darted to him. “I asked for vengeance against that cheating