But where was the shifter, and where was my dagger?
Gone.
* * *
Sparkling clear water spouted joyously from the fountain. It rose into the air with great enthusiasm and then gently turned and cascaded back into the round pool, creating a melody all its own. You would think that the rest of the water in the pool would be full of ripples from the gentle splashing, but it wasn’t. It was still and calm, so clear it looked like glass, and I would often sit on the edge to peer down at my reflection. I’d always thought I was a little too dark looking to be an angel. My hair was shiny like the sun, but it was dark like the earth. My eyes were clear as crystal, but the color of a storm cloud. I was thin, but my frame wasn’t willowy like a flower blowing in the breeze, but strong like a tree that had put down roots.
Sometimes I wondered how I fit in with the other angels, who all seemed lighter, brighter, and more graceful than myself. I once asked my Father about this and where I fit in, and he merely smiled. A feeling of complete and utter belonging flowed into me before he even spoke. “My child, all my creations are beautiful in their own way. Each one of you has something specific and special to offer. Do not doubt my love for all my children or your place among them. If you doubt your place, be utterly certain that in time you will know where it is.”
From that day forward I never worried about the way I looked, but lately… actually, since the day I saw the shifter, I’d been worrying about not how I looked, but how I felt. Why was I drawn to Earth? Why did I find its unexpectedness so appealing? In many ways, I felt guilty, like I was betraying heaven, like I was betraying my Father.
I told myself it wasn’t true, that my love for my Father was singular and all encompassing. But still, sometimes in the two weeks since I’d left Earth, I found myself thinking of that shifter… and of the man I met by the stream.
I didn’t know which one unsettled me more. Surely it should’ve been the shifter. I mean, a man shifting into a great, hulking beast? That should be no contest to a mere human with a fishing pole. Yet it was his eyes that I sometimes pictured when I closed mine. It was his rough skin that I still felt against the smoothness of mine.
My thoughts were interrupted (thankfully) by someone approaching me from behind. I saw the white blond of his hair reflected in the fountain and then the rest of him slowly revealed the closer he got. He wasn’t a huge man, but he wasn’t small, either. His muscles were corded and stretched into a long and lean frame. He looked nothing like the wider, bulkier man by the stream. His hair was nearly white, glittering in the perfect sunshine, and there wasn’t a strand out of place. It was nothing like the dark mess of waves that absorbed the sunlight and probably had never even seen a comb. The angel smiled at me, his wings were three times the size of him and so brilliant and white that I might’ve been breathless had I not seen them a hundred times before. You’d think that a man dark as night and wide as a house, who has the misfortune of having no brilliant wings, would never compare. You certainly wouldn’t think that his looks would surpass the perfection standing in front of me.
But they did.
“Why so serious?” he asked, grinning, his perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth flashed (no chip in sight).
“Sinead!” I declared and jumped up to give my favorite angel a hug.
“I saw you sitting over here by yourself and wondered what that was all about. Usually, you’re off somewhere causing trouble.”
“Am not,” I said, sticking out my tongue.
He chuckled. “Well, you’re certainly never sitting around the reflecting pool… reflecting.”
I shrugged and sat down next to him at the edge of the water.
“Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“My last mission to Earth… I saw something.”
“Earth is a primitive place,” he said like he had something distasteful in his mouth.
“I think it was a shifter.” The words rushed from me before I could stop them.
His eyes grew round and he grabbed my wrist. “A shifter!” he demanded, his eyes narrowing.
I nodded. “I was… I was dallying by a stream after I completed my mission, and I saw a man, so I followed him, thinking there was something off, but he was gone and I was attacked by a giant black beast.”
“You were attacked?” he echoed, his skin losing just a bit of its luster.
“I stabbed it with the dagger that you told me to carry, and afterwards it turned into a man…”
“How big was it?”
“Huge.”
“Did it speak to you?”
I shook my head. “I thought it was dead.”
“You thought?”
I told him about how I went to wash away the blood and realized I’d left my dagger behind. “When I went back, the man and my dagger were gone.”
He leapt to his feet. “Shifters are very resilient. Some possess self-healing powers like us. You probably didn’t kill it, just wounded it, and then it got up and ran away.”
“It’s still out there… killing people?” I asked, horrified.
Sinead leaned down and peered into my face. “Gemma, what color were its eyes?”
“Red. They were red.”
He shot straight up. “A hound,” he murmured.
“A what?”
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I am?”
He glanced back at me, a little sheepish, and smoothed out his already smooth features. “I don’t mean to frighten you.”
“You’re not.” After rolling around the forest with this supposed hound and then stabbing it with a dagger, I hardly think sitting beside a fountain, talking about it would scare me.
“Of course not. This is heaven. There’s no room for fear here.”
I smiled.
“Can you show me where you saw it?” he asked, catching me by surprise.
“Show you?”
“What you are describing is a hellhound. A creature, evil and twisted, that is so depraved that Lucifer himself cast him out of hell. If it is indeed roaming around on Earth, then it’s likely leaving behind a trail of blood and destruction. I must find it and kill it.”
Sinead was a Guardian, one of the angels who were dispatched to cut down the evil that roamed Earth. If anyone could find and kill the beast, it was him.
“I can show you. I remember exactly where it was.”
“We will leave at once,” he said, pulling me along with him toward the pass-through to the InBetween.