Angel Slayer. Michele Hauf

finished. It’s not like I see what the symbol looks like, but more that I touch my fingers before the screen and just follow my heart. I know it sounds weird. Delusional. But heck, maybe I am a little crazy. I mean, how many girls actually have an angel chasing after them to get them pregnant? You ask me, a person would have to be insane to accept something like that.”

      He didn’t know what to say. Six had somehow created this image by drawing from a greater collective consciousness. Yet she was unaware how close her depiction was, or that the sigils were dead-on.

      Was it possible an angel had visited her previously?

      “You going to recommend a nice quiet place with straitjackets now?” she wondered.

      “No, I want to know more.”

       Chapter 6

      Eden liked to study the reaction on people’s faces when they viewed her work. She especially liked the extremes of joy or disgust. Ashur had looked at the painting and hissed.

      Had she actually created an angel he recognized? It was self-indulgent to think she could depict an angel accurately. But she had painted exactly what she’d seen in her dreams. The angels she painted were like her friends; she felt comforted by them.

      Angels who didn’t want to have sex with her, that is.

      Ashur’s gaze soared out the window and across Central Park. She’d touched some part of him, and that surprised him more than it did her, she sus pected.

      “Just dreams?” he asked.

      “As I said, they started after my mother’s death.” She joined his side and said, “At first, I thought they were a message from her. But there were so many. I’d see a new one every night, it seemed. If I painted a different angel every day, I don’t think I’d ever put them all to canvas. They are innate to me, and yet, I can’t tell others about it if I want them to think I’m sane.”

      “Mortals have a difficult time with the supernatural.”

      “Yep. I started sketching in my teens, but I really became passionate about recreating my dreams after I found my first halo.”

      Ashur’s eyes flashed. They were so colorful, fathomtess, with pinpoints of light centered in each. It was as if a piece of a Maxfield Parrish painting abided on his face.

      “You found a halo?”

      “Yes, an angel’s halo. You must be familiar with them.”

      “I am,” he said cautiously, “but mortals are not. The only time the halo is separated from an angel is when they fall to earth. It falls away and is lost to the angel ever after. If they should ever find their original halo, it can be wielded as a weapon no man or demon can defeat.”

      “Cool. I was never sure how the halo ended up here on earth.”

      “It also holds their earthbound soul,” he said. “If an angel reunites with its halo it can take the soul and become human, but I can’t imagine a Fallen choosing to do so, to become merely human.”

      “What about you? Would you take a soul?”

      “You know nothing about me, mortal. Do not pretend you do.”

      Duly chastised, Eden strode across the room to the freestanding coatrack that held three circular disks on its curved hooks. “I found the first one at a flea market my father took me to when I was twelve—that was two years after my mother’s death. Dug it out of a box full of scrap tin. I knew immediately what it was. It didn’t bother me the seller thought it was nothing. I knew.”

      “More dreams?”

      “No, just an innate knowing,” she offered casually.

      She removed the first find from one of the coat hooks. It was dented and yes, it did look like tin, but she couldn’t bend it, nor had her father been able to. She displayed it to Ashur. “See?”

      He took the circle. It was exactly a foot in diameter and the metal was two inches wide all around. It was thin as a CD and the center was an eight-inch void. Ashur inspected it briefly. “It is what you say it is.”

      Given confirmation, Eden clutched her hands to her chest. She’d always known, but somehow it was more real when someone in the know confirmed it. All the years she had lived inside her head, fighting to keep her secrets. She was not crazy.

      And who else would know such a thing but an—She wouldn’t say it out loud after he’d chastised her. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to reveal his origins to humans.

      “And the others?” he asked.

      “I have four,” she said proudly. “But I should be getting another in the mail any day now. I found one on a trip to Egypt with my father, and another in Spain. The one on its way, I won on eBay. Some sellers actually know what they are selling. The most I’ve ever paid is a couple hundred thousand for one.”