The Angel and the Demon
an excerpt

Before the slab of dark wood had fully swung closed, though, a slim pale hand caught it and pulled it open again. Dustin groaned to see another person entering his room when all he really wanted to do was sleep, but stopped short when he looked at his visitor more fully. It was another young woman, maybe a little older than the first, tall, slim, and extremely attractive. Her skin was exceedingly pallid, offset even more so by her straight black hair, cut above her ears except for one longer lock which draped itself across her left eye. Pale violet-colored eyes flashed out from her finely sculpted face. Dustin felt his ears growing red as he looked at her.
The woman looked around, seeming to make sure no one else was in the room, before closing the door softly behind her and moving gracefully to his side. She smiled down at him a bit uncertainly, and he was caught all over again by her beauty, her being this close to him. “Dustin,” she asked, her voice soft, musical, and alluring. “Do you know who I am?”
“No,” he answered, awed by her appearance, almost struck dumb. But I’d like to…
Her smile shrunk just a litte, but she managed to keep it in place. “My name is Annika,” she said.
Dustin started. The name sounded familiar. Suddenly, a barage of disjointed pictures invaded his mind. A dark alley, a dark-haired woman being flung against a wall. The same woman kneeling before a table covered in tiny white candles. And again the same visage standing on a bridge somewhere, a loop of course rope tied around her neck. All of these visions of the woman who now stood before him. Dustin shook his head, and the pictures faded away. What did they mean? He looked at the woman expectantly, as if she could somehow explain the things he had seen.
The woman’s smile softened as if she understood at least some of what he was thinking. “Let me explain,” she said. She reached out one of her hands and brushed the slim white fingers across his forehead. All of his pain instantly faded away as his eyes slipped involuntarily closed. His was still conscious, though, and heard the woman saying, “Just relax. I’ll tell you everything.”
Though his heard was racing, a bit scared by the way his body was doing things without his consent, he forced his breathing to return to normal and listened to Annika’s soothing voice as it washed over him, ebbing and flowing with the feeling of her words.
“You are an angel,” she told him. “You were sent from Heaven to watch over Mary Winters and protect her - from me.” She sighed, and seemed to have difficulty admitting to the next part. “I’m a demon. Lord Satan sent me from Hell to torment Mary as much as I could, and kill her if possibly - all in all, to do anything possible to keep her from becoming a Christian. We met about two weeks ago, and fought. You witnessed one of my check-ins with Lord Satan.
It was I who arranged for Mary’s child, her son Cody, to be kidnapped and saw it through. When I found out that he had been killed, I didn’t know what to think.” Her eyes took on a faraway look and tears started to appear in them. “I was overwhelmed with guilt. You had talked to me earlier and tried to convince me that what I was doing was wrong.” She shook her head regretfully.
“You were right, but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t live with myself after that, so I decided to go away. I was going to kill myself, at least my physical body. Then my soul would go back to Hell where I wouldn’t be able to directly hurt you or Mary anymore. I wrote a note and left it for you in my apartment. I knew you would come for revenge once you were able to leave her side. I went to a bridge at a park downtown and put a rope around my neck.”
Here, her voice stared to shake. “I stepped up onto the railing, ready to jump and remove myself from this world.” She tuned to him then, and her eyes were shining with tears, her lips trembled. “You saved me,” she said softly. “You showed up just in time and pulled me back from the brink. Satan showed up then, in his avian avatar as a raven, and admonished me for spending time with her.” Her voice became deadly quiet. “He tried to hurt you,” she whispered. “I told him not to, and for some reason he stopped.”
She seemed to be slipping away from explaining things to him and closer to reasoning things out for herself. “He threatened me,” she said. “But I didn’t listen. I couldn’t let him hurt you. I couldn’t…” She took a deep breath, then said so softly that he could barely hear, “I love you.”
That seemed to be the key phrase. Suddenly memories came rushing back to Dustin so fast it made his head spin. He saw the images he had seen a few minutes previously again, along with all of the others Annika had told him about. He saw the shining visage of Heaven, the Lord God telling him of his mission. Becoming conscious in the bathroom of the grocery store and rescuing Mary from her poverty. His first meeting with Annika, how badly she had beaten him, and how Mary had nursed him back to health. He remembered the desperate three days between Cody’s disappearence and when the police officer had come to tell them of his death, and the subsequent trip to the morgue. He remembered his anger, the way he had stormed into the demon’s apartment and stopped short when he read her note. The frantic rush to find her, spotting her in the park, pulling her back from the edge. The showdown with Satan, how he had spoken so harshly to her. The threat of sending someone else to do her job. Dustin comforting her afterwards, the kiss…
Dustin started as the last memory slammed into him full force. “You kissed me,” he said, sounding accusatory, though he didn’t really mean to. He was only verifying, and as memories of his feelings for her came back, the shock and surprise was rapidly fading away.
She blushed, a faint pink coloring her otherwise pale cheeks. “I did,” she admitted. “And you seemed all right with it at the time. I’m sorry if-”
“No, that’s not it,” Dustin said quicky. “I’m totally all right with it.” His words echoed in his ears, and he realized how horrible that had sounded. He sighed loudly, disgusted with himself.
“What’s wrong?” Annika asked, instantly alert. Her hand flew out to hover over the call button on the wall nearly. “What hurts?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Dustin said quickly. He wanted anything but for them to be interrupted now that things were starting to come back. He sighed gain, bringing up a hand to cover his forehead. “I just sounded so stupid a minute ago…” He groaned again, searching desperately for something to say to redeem himself. “I’m no good at this!” he finally exclaimed, white-hot frustration finally boiling over.
Annika’s slight, sexy smile spread quickly onto her face as she realized what he meant, that he wasn’t rejecting her. “Oh, is that all?” she said lightly, stepping forward even closer. She leaned over until her breath - smelling of honeysuckle - brushed against his face in a tender caress. “I think you are very good at this.” She gently removed his hand from his brow and held it in hers as she leaned down and brushed her lips against his.
Dustin sighed with pleasure. He felt more content at this moment then he had since awakening. He remembered everything now: his mission, everything that had happened between Annika and himself, their developing relationship, caring for Mary, the reason he had been uptown at the time of his accident.
As that thought hit him, he cried, “I just remembered something!”
Annika feigned a mockingly condescending smile. “Really?” she asked sarcastically. “And I thought you had been doing that ever since I came in.”
Dustin rolled his eyes. “I mean,” he continued, “I just remembered something else - something Dr. Larten asked me about. The reason I was uptown in the first place and where I was going at the time of my accident.”
Annika’s eyes sparkled with curiosity. “Do tell,” she impelled him.
Dustin blushed a little as he gestured to the mangled flower on his left. “I got that for you,” he mumbled.
“You - what?” Annika’s eyes showed confusion. She moved over to the table and picked up the single-stemmed boquet as if it would dissolve when touched. Understanding filled her eyes as she looked back at him and whispered, “For me?”
Dustin was confused by her confusion. Wasn’t she used to the custom of gift-giving that humans had? Perhaps in Hell it was some kind of insult… “Yes,” he answered hesitantly. “Is there something-”
“No, no,” she said, blinking away tears. She mostly succeeded, though one tiny drop of moisute, shining like a minute diamond, managed to run down her cheek.
Disturbed by this image, Dustin reached over as far he could and cupped her chin, gently pulling her back over to him. She followed meekly, and allowed him to whipe away the tear with his thumb.
“It’s just that I’ve never been given anything before,” she told him, still speaking softly in an awed tone of voice. “It’s completely foreight, but-” she smiled “-I like it. Thank you so much.”
Dustin smiled, amused by her reaction to the decidedly second-rate gift. “It’s not much,” he said modestly, “and to be honest it was in a lot better condition before all of this happened.”
She seemed to realize something, and a note of suspision crept into her voice as she spoke her next thought. “I’ve been wondering,” she said slyly. “How did this happen? Normal people don’t just go around walking into doors, you know. What were you doing at the time?”
Dustin blushed deeply crimson, embarrassed but still unable to lie to her. “Um…thinking about you,” he admitted.
There was a bit of an awkward silence, then Annika smiled again. “I’m honored,” she said.
“It was stupid,” Dustin said, turning, if possible, even redder. “Like I said, I’m no good at this.”
The woman mock glared at him. “And like I said,” she insisted firmly, “you are good at this.” Her smile abruptly cracked, and her face broke into a grin. “You just don’t know it yet!” She leaned over and smooched him playfully.