'Tween Heaven and Hell Read Free

and Hell the spirits play and dance
their dance of death.
    ’Tween Heaven and Hell the Devil smiles and inhales
your last breath.
     
    I counted floors as I plunged toward my death. I was
surprisingly calm for somebody who was gonna be a fuzzy splat on the sidewalk
in a few seconds. I suddenly realized I was still holding the cross in my hands
and cursed myself for my stupidity. I pressed it to my forehead and said her
name in my mind just about two seconds before I hit the ground.
    About six inches short of a deadly concrete kiss, my
downward spiral stopped suddenly on a whoosh of fragrant air. The sweet scent
of spring flowers enveloped me. I turned my head and placed a gentle kiss on
Myra’s pink, angelic cheek and said, “What took you so long?”
    She narrowed impossibly large, blue eyes at me and shook her
blonde head. “You’re damned lucky I was in the neighborhood.”
    I grinned at her. “Tsk, tsk, Myra. Angels aren’t supposed to
swear.”
    “Bite me.” Despite this less than angelic discourse, Myra
held me firmly and gently in her soft, heavenly arms and lifted me back toward
my shattered window with loving care.
    As we entered the torn window and hovered over the center of
the room, Emo frowned up at us and began to pace in anger. “What the Hades did
you think you were doing, Astra? You could have been killed. Why did you wait
so long to call Myra? I was screaming at her but she ignored me as usual.” He
followed this statement with a glare toward the aforementioned angel that would
have curled the quills on a porcupine. Myra was unimpressed.
    She dumped me on my butt in the middle of the floor without
ceremony and pointed her finely chiseled, angelic nose into the air, looking
down on Emo with disdain. “I don’t answer to devils. Especially crass,
disgusting ones.” Having thus dismissed my devil, Myra smoothed out her long,
white dress and fluffed the full sleeves of her sheer white and gold over-robe
with a sniff.
    Emo took a menacing step toward my angel and I stood up
quickly to get between them. “Whoa boy. Myra, why must you always goad him?”
    She grinned in a totally non-angelic way and brushed her
hands together like she’d just completed a dirty job. “He asks for it, Astra.
Just look at him.”
    I looked at my naked, fiery-faced partner and shrugged. He
looked okay to me.
    Myra sighed her frustration and started to shimmer as if she
would go. I grabbed at her arm. “No, wait.”
    She stopped shimmering with an impatient look. “What is it
now, I was in the middle of something.”
    I shrugged, suddenly feeling like the small child I’d been
the first time Myra had stepped in to save my life. “I just wanted to thank you
for saving my life. Again.”
    Myra shrugged, flicked a long, slender hand in my direction
and shimmered off.
    Emo stopped his angry pacing to yell at me. “Why the Hades
did you have to get such a cranky angel?”
    I had often wondered that myself. “Did you see the thing that
threw me out the window?”
    Emo’s angry face cleared a little. “What thing? I didn’t see
or hear anything.”
    I looked at him long and hard. He was usually pretty
trustworthy, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to work together. But he was at least half devil. “You wouldn’t lie to me would you?”
    “Of course not! I heard the window break and I ran in here,
but you were already sailing through the air.”
    I shivered, but this time it was just with remembered dread.
The room was warm again. Even overly warm. “This thing, whatever it was, wasn’t
visible. It seemed to be some kind of invisible power force with electrical
components. Just before it hit me I felt a charge along my arms.”
    Emo’s face clouded over and he turned away quickly, moving
over to the shattered window to examine the damage with a little too much
interest.
    I knew my devil too well to be fooled into thinking he was
considering a new career as a handyman. “What? Emo? What do you know