“Incredible,” he said.
“What is?”
He flicked two fingers and changed the subject. “Did you attend kindergarten?”
“Yes.”
“What was the name of your kindergarten?”
“Brave Little Ducklings.”
The timer rang, and I tensed.
The angel ignored the deadline ping. “Ducklings?” He appeared horrified. “As in yellow quacking things that can’t fly?”
I nodded, eyes on the timer in his hand.
He slid the watch into his pocket. “ Miss DeLuca, couldn’t it have been Brave Little Lions?”
“It would have been The Lions if you went there.”
“Certainly,” he said with a nod. “And the country?”
“What?”
“Which country do you live in?”
“The United States. Why are you asking these weird questions?”
His golden eyes positively shone, but that was the only warm thing about him. His face, carved as if of marble, hardened as he walked toward me, stopping only an inch away. The kilt around him settled. All but a single piece, which lifted and touched my knee and trailed over my arm, raising goose bumps on its way up to my neck, where it wrapped around tightly.
I gulped, eyes locked with his beautiful ones.
“Because, Miss DeLuca, the world you speak of never existed.”
“I don’t understand,” I choked out.
“The world you speak of has never existed.”
“Repeating it won’t make me understand.”
“You’re delusional, Miss DeLuca.”
I shook my head and tried to pry the cloth off my neck. “Yes, sir.”
I wanted to tell him I knew what I knew. I remembered when his kind came down, the days after it when the world started collapsing before my eyes. We had watched TV and wondered what the hell was happening, and then we stopped watching because what was happening everywhere else was happening right on our street. The power outages, the food shortage, his kind flying over our heads.
And I definitely remembered him, and the sword. My wound still hurt. It hurt because I’d crashed through the window while trying to escape him. And that happened in what he called the Before.
He hissed and tightened the cloth. Heat rushed to my face. He’d strangle me to death. He would. The angels were terrifying, terrible creatures. Through my window, I’d seen them battle each other. Like beasts, they shrieked and growled and snarled, ripping wings from one another, sometimes with their sharp teeth, other times with bare hands.
“Are you going to kill me?” I choked out.
“Maybe. Are you ready to die?”
“No, sir.”
The cloth released me, the material fluttering with invisible unnatural force to join the rest of the cloth that made up his kilt. I gasped for air. Should’ve sat down when those two angels told me to sit.
“If you are not ready to die, then I guess you’re ready to live.”
“Yes, sir.” I touched my throat just to be sure he’d really released it, and allowed myself to breathe. Leaning back, I scrubbed my face. “What happens to me now?”
“You will join a regiment, find a new life, rejoice in it, and live to your full potential.”
“Again, you sound like my dad.”
“I would not compare me to your father. He is a mortal, after all.”
“But you did speak of him in present tense, so he’s alive.”
“Maybe. I suggest you don’t look for him.” The angel moved to sit behind the desk and pursed his plush lips. “I am curious what you would have done with your life waking at the ungodly hour of three in the afternoon.”
“You’re stuck on the three in the afternoon?”
He smiled.
My breath caught. This male was stunning.
“I am also allergic to waiting. When I ask a question, I expect you to provide an answer. Preferably before three in the afternoon today.”
“Are you everyone’s drill sergeant?”
“Much worse, dear. I’m everyone’s last hope.”
I chuckled. “That’s a joke. Right?”
“I don’t joke.”
Afraid to ask, I asked anyway. “The armies outside. You command them?”
“I command the mortal armies. The angel fleet. This is my house, the command center of my Court.” He waved his hand in a general direction, indicating all things.
“A Court?”
“Mm-hm.” He picked up a file and some blank papers, then plucked a feather from his wing. I stared in disbelief as he dipped the feather into a little bottle on the desk. Who wrote with his own feather dipped in ink? This one did.
I sat across from him. “Sir?” I asked. He lifted his head, eyebrow arched in question, so I pressed on. “You mentioned a Court. What Court?”
“The Court of Command. Welcome, Miss DeLuca. If you follow orders, you will have a pleasant stay.”
“And if I don’t?”
He pursed his lips again. He did this while thinking, I supposed.
When he didn’t answer, I leaned back in the chair. “What wouldn’t I give to crawl into your head right now.”
“You may crawl to my chambers. Top floor. You can’t miss it. My head, however, is not a place a mortal would survive.”
Chapter Five
The little mortal, a mere twenty-some years of human age, who tried to kill me the moment I descended upon this realm, remembered the Before. The other mortals reported glimpses of memories here and there, mainly in dreams, and we had dealt with those glimpses if they came too often. The mortals who remembered were eliminated.
In my ideal world, she would not remember anything at all. Unfortunately, other powers were playing games with me. But she wasn’t one of them. Didn’t act like one, didn’t smell like one, and definitely didn’t interest me in a murderous fashion like one of them often did. She interested me in other ways. Spiritual ones, of course, namely why she tugged at my very soul. So I decided to keep her.
If her wide eyes were any indication, my comment about my chambers surprised her. For some reason, mortals of Before believed angels did not reproduce and thus were not accustomed to sex. They carried on with the notion that desire for human flesh distracted an angel from his holy purpose, and many religious precepts deemed desiring another human unholy. Nonsense.
As I wrote up her file, I wondered where best she’d fit in. “Miss DeLuca, I am processing your short life and wondering what it is that you would have accomplished in the Before?”
“I’d have graduated college, found a job. Marriage, kids. The usual.”
“And you would manage all those things waking at three in the afternoon?” Never heard of such a thing.
“Well, no. You asked about a Sunday. On a Monday, for example, I’m up earlier.”
“Lies. I sense them.”
“Fine.” She swatted at me as if I were an annoying fly. “I’m willing to get up earlier now.”
“There is hope for you yet, mortal,” I mumbled.
“Thank you, sir.”
Tired of being called sir, I snapped my head up. “I am not a sir, mister, gentleman, or even a man. I address you as Miss DeLuca, and you will show me the same courtesy by calling me Commander. Correct yourself now.”