An Angel's Touch (The Mark of Chaos Series Book 2) Read online

I whispered, “Consistere ventus,” and the wind stopped. My black sleeveless shirt, jeans, and leather boots were dry. I touched the little gold crucifix on my neck. Oh, not because I was religious or anything. No, I was thinking of Jen. It had been hers. I wore it to remind me that the emotions I craved came only by sacrificing for my Shen.

  I began my trek back toward the village thinking how bored and listless I had been before I met her. I had done everything a thousand times over and emptiness ate around the edges of my essence. I liked the stuff of hell, but boredom was a hell I had no taste for, even worse than the heavenly things I loathed.

  The three quarter moon shot fat rays through the trees and thinning mist, creating eerie shadows that bespoke my essence. This essence—no human had ever been able to understand. I was a hell master with senses like Superman. I was a super man. However, my super feats did not entail classic heroism. But I was a hero, even though humans never viewed me as such.

  I forced passage through foliage that gave none, enjoying the exercise, craving anything that would make me feel more in any way. Though Jen was the best fix, a little scotch wasn’t bad either. I manifested a bottle of my amber favorite and twisted off the lid. I could manifest and delete objects by teleportation, but not animals or people as free will prohibited such transfer. I guzzled down the burning elixir as I made my way back to my beloved.

  She made me feel in plenitude: beyond carnality and wrath, beyond the sadistic drive that spiced the thrill of the kill, and beyond the eternal melancholy of an emptiness within me that had never been filled. These were the only feelings I’d ever known. Jen gave me new feelings, amongst them: pain (yes, pain—having seldom felt it, it was pretty cool), adoration, wonderment, delight, and well, I cringe to admit it—love. Feelings were fun. Not the sadistic fun I was accustomed to, but a fanciful, curious fun, stranger than anything I’d ever experienced.

  I threw the empty scotch bottle in the air, making it disappear and reappear in the cabinet I stole it from in some old man's abode. He would question his sanity, and that amused the hell out of me. Little pranks such as these, I usually kept a mystery to Jen. I’d had enough of her moral prattling.

  I passed two female Alacalufes, mischievous teenagers swimming nude in a steamy moonlit hot spring. Through white heat, they eyed me with that wanton look I receive in bounty. Women found my brown-skinned face most appealing. I knew my look was ominous. It’s strange how many human females are attracted to the diabolical. Oh, not just street women, but sweet women. I used to plot wild, elaborate seductions. The more willingly they gave themselves to me sexually, emotionally, and spiritually, the more pleasant my own experience. I could possess their spirits for several years, even before I killed them. And after I killed them, I could imprison their essence within me for a decade or more until assimilation was complete. After that, they would slip into their own version of heaven. Of course, freedom from me would be anyone's heaven. Still, they would remain undone, immortally wounded, until they could find their way back into the whole of creation, which is harder to do than one might imagine.

  A plump tan toad hopped into the pond and the girls squealed playfully. I left them behind. They did not ‘call,’ and I was full anyway. And even if I wasn’t, they were the sort I’d promised Jen I’d not harm. Jen would rant if I continued to play with women as once I did. She believed all women were her sisters, lovers should be monogamous, and sex must be an act of love. I was fine with that. After thousands of conquests, the old thrill had died. Besides, Jen was challenge enough. Mostly, because the task was not to take her, but rather in getting her to take me, wholly, as I am. And sex, well, sex with a Shen surpassed common pleasure. Sex with Jen took me beyond pleasure into this strange love I had for her. She was mine, not because I kept her, though I did, though I had. No. She was mine because we belonged together. Life apart from each other, took ‘us’ apart. Sometimes she forgot that. Sometimes, I had to make her remember—the hard way.

  I stepped over a decaying tree trunk swarming with termites. Hungry mosquitoes droned around my ears. Mosquitoes sounded like bees to me. My supernatural hearing turned loud sounds down, and quiet sounds up. Volume had no variety, yet I could feel the vibratory pressure of loud and soft in my ears. I knew what was loud, and I knew what was soft, I just couldn’t hear it.

  I arrived at the sleeping village erected between forest and sea. Memories of my childhood. Really, they meant nothing. I walked between dozens of round, animal hide, pole tents; heading for the tent that housed my Shen. She’d rather have me enter by door than magically appear, as I often did with my ability to fly through space and time dimensions. She preferred me to behave humanly. That way she could pretend I was. Human that is. Well, I was human—partly, but she was human totally—her body anyway. Her abilities transcended ordinary people, but only when she believed they could. And she often didn’t.

  A few camp dogs slunk around me with drooping hind ends and passive yellow eyes. They sensed I despised wagging tails and smiling lips, and that I was not adverse to canine snacks, though lesser forms of life rarely appealed to me.

  Jen would say, No life is lesser. But there was a lot she didn’t understand, mostly about herself. I had taught her much about her powers, but only a fraction of her potential. When she gave me what I wanted, I would help her fully spread her wings, the wings human eyes could not see.

  I reached the tent and threw back the animal hide flap. The tannic scent made my mouth water all over again. Moonbeams slashed across the space that led to my sleeping Shen, curled on her side, face blanketed with straight yellow hair. Strange to think I’d known her less than fourteen months, twelve of which we were apart, and yet our love felt beautifully ancient.

  I walked over to her. She appeared comfortable in the warm air pocket I’d conjured. The shadow of her willowy form showed through her white cotton, Victorian style nightgown, which suited her. She was pristine, but tangled in convention. Sensuous, but subdued with prudish behavior. Able, but not willing to love me as I wished.

  I swallowed my frustration and sank to my knees. At least she was here. At least I had her. At least she was mine. I slid my fingers beneath the yellow mass that covered her face, relocating it behind her ear. Her face looked soft, like in the old black and white movies. She reminded me of Sleeping Beauty, not by her features really. Who she was shined through her features. And that is what made her beautiful to me.

  My fingers slid down her neck touching the ebony chain that held a chalky black metal, full-bodied dragon. The talisman rested on her bunched hand near her heart. The dragon head faced front with red eyes that sometimes glowed. It was from the Dragon World. It connected us in such a way that I was able to defy my destructive nature, and protect her.

  The arm she laid upon was stretched out, palm up. I traced my finger slowly over the creases in her hand to her wrist, swirling my fingertip around the blue veins there. I would like to have felt her life blood heat and the softness of her skin, but I couldn’t. Being tacitly insensate had its drawbacks. Of course, it paid off during a fistfight or a knife fight—my favorite. Who could have guessed a Tazmark would yearn for the delicate touch? But I did, and Tazmarks are not wired for tenderness. My loss.

  I rested my fingerless gloved hand on her hip, thinking of the babies inside her. I felt no sensation, not in my hand anyway.

  She sighed, the kind of sigh that bridges sleep and awake, breathy, feminine, vulnerable—my Angel. She’d never known that she was an Angel until I told her, until I showed her how she could shine Divine Light to heal—and more importantly to destroy the diabolical, supernatural variety. I took a great risk teaching her that, for her Divine Light, though medicinal to others, could burn me to oblivion. Had she not healed me with a dimmer ray of her lesser love, I would not have survived the wounds that she’d more than once mistakenly inflicted.

  I rolled her flat, and slid my arms under her upper back and knees, lifting. As I stood there, looking at her face, her azure eyes
opened drowsily. “johnny? Where are we going?”

  “Shhh,” I whispered, adoring the faint freckles on her nose. I kissed her forehead. “We’ll be there soon enough.”

  She wrapped her arms around my neck and nuzzled her head against my shoulder. Affection—Shens were good at that.

  I carried her out the door through the sleeping village, pleasuring in the gentle pull upon my muscles. I flapped my incorporeal webbed wings and flew us out of the third realm, into the skies of the sixth realm. The sixth realm hardens my body, almost stone-like, defining my muscles. Here, my human features appear more vampirical, almost skeletal. My fangs are revealed when I speak, and my fingertips sport long, black nails.

  My incorporeal wing density and trajectory resulted in me flying mostly upright, enabling me to carry Jen in a comfortable manner. We flew over the Andes Mountain Range above a chain of bubbling stratovolcanoes that steamed my soul. I brought us down into the third realm, landing on top of a crimson mound, not too hot for my Shen. I set her tender, bare feet down upon the soft, red ash. The top of her head came just above my shoulder.

  She gazed up at my face with sad wonder. Her feelings for me were all tangled up, unlike mine for her. Then she stared outward, seemingly awestruck by the row of rumbling mounds exhaling ghostly vapors. Orange-red magma spilled over the sides against a backdrop of dark purple sky that stretched into infinity.

  Steam heat blew against her gown, giving form to her willowy legs. Huffs of warmth blew her straight blonde hair behind her shoulders and parted the bangs on her forehead.

  I gazed down upon her fondly. “These volcanoes are of my essence.”

  She looked up at me with her azure eyes, glossy with the sting of ashen particles that floated invisibly in the air.

  “They are beautiful,” she said. “I’d like to see them when the sky is pitch black.”

  I smiled faintly. Her words pleased me. She found my world beautiful.

  “I love fire, johnny. It frees me somehow.” Then she gasped lightly, and pointed a finger at a volcano discharging white vapor. Her voice hinted fear, “johnny, who is that?”

  I looked, but viewed no one, save an imprint lingering in her mind of a woman with long black hair in a deep purple gown with drop-bell sleeves like something out of ancient Romania. The woman’s arms waved up and down like an accomplished sorceress in a B rated movie. Hmm. Another Tazmark?

  Jen peered up at me innocently. “Oh, she disappeared. Did you see her?”

  I wanted to lick her lips and kiss her eyes. “No,” I said, “but I don’t doubt she was there.”

  “Who do you think she was?”

  “Jen,” I said, a little annoyed that she was pressing an issue that would only upset her, “I don’t even want to speculate.”

  “A Tazmark, johnny?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. She was nearing shaky ground. And I knew she would fall if I confirmed her suspicion. I’d been trying hard not to lie to her, even though being truthful was against my nature.

  “Let’s go,” I said with utter calm. I was not calm, but it would alarm her to discover my uncharacteristic anxiety. My apathetic confidence had been shaken since I met her, and had been declining ever since.

  Her amiable eyes rolled up to me. “Very well then.” She placed her lips on the bare skin of my shoulder and planted a kiss. The kiss seeped into my arm. I melted a little. Her love hurt me. But the hurt was good. Only she—could enliven my dead, dead heart. She—who was my ward for life, my purpose for living, and my hope for something I couldn’t begin to understand. For the first time ever, I needed someone. I needed her—Angel of the dreams I never had.

  Chapter Two

  I swept Jen up in my arms, the way it’s done in romance novels.

  “john—ny!” Her arms encircled my neck, happy to be held, happy to be close to another human bei—. Well, happy to be close.

  She was quite the romantic, so I romanced her when I could. It wasn’t a show. I meant it.

  I bumped her up a bit to get a good hold. The sixth realm is no place to drop a Shen. Fiendish creatures are empowered here, hot for action.

  I flew her into the sixth realm through blinks of light that were the cross meridians of linear time. She nuzzled her face into my shoulder, eyes hidden—her standard pose. She ever avoided viewing my more vampirical state, not so much that it offended her, but it made it harder for her to deny what I was.

  I pondered the woman in purple. Probably Tazmark. Tazmarks had an uncanny mode of operation. And that was this: A clever search, a theatrical capture, and a leisurely kill.

  Yet, how could it be that we confronted another Tazmark so soon? A hundred years often passed before encountering even one. This would make four in two months. Something was awry.

  Even so, Jen mustn’t worry. When she worried, she ran. Six weeks ago, last July, we’d both barely survived a battle with three Tazmarks. She still had nightmares that left her screaming. I knew she’d want to leave me if another battle was brewing. And to my surprise, I sensed it was.

  “Juan.” I heard a woman’s voice in my head.

  Out of thin air, she appeared, the mystery woman seen at the volcanoes, flying backwards, facing me. She was Tazmark. My adrenaline pumped for possible battle. Her dark-skinned features were shaped like mine, Spanish looking, mystical amber eyes, refined cheekbones. Tendrils of lengthy, black hair escaped from the hood of her purple cloak and blew frantically over her face. Her cape billowed and flapped. All these effects she created, for there was no wind in the sixth realm.

  She smiled and spoke telepathically, “You’ve grown into a fine young man. Young for a Tazmark anyway. But you are a little old for a Shen who has a mere twenty-five year old consciousness.” Her eyes glazed ice cold, the way mine often do. “You are foolhardy to coddle one of her kind.”

  “So,” I said aloud, “you are my mother.”

  Her purple, velvet fingerless gloved-hand went over her heart. She said telepathically, “I am called Aruka.”

  Jen whispered sweetly, “I’m not your mother, johnny.”

  “Hmm,” I grumbled. Apparently Aruka had rendered herself undetectable to Jen. Why now, and not at the volcanoes? I can usually read minds. My IQ is 240, and I possess a cerebral marcudiam (a Tazmark thing) that enhances my extra sensory ability. However, other Tazmarks also have these qualities, along with the ability to shield thoughts and essences with a dense black light, known as a Black Light Shield.

  Aruka said telepathically, “Darling little thing, she is.”

  My body tightened.

  Jen’s body tightened. “johnny, what’s wrong?”

  Jen was worried. Worry made her a pain in the ass. I cast a relax spell on her. “Sh,” I told her, “rest easy.” Her muscles loosened. I’d made her feel a bit drunk. I decided to continue flying without really going anywhere, something akin to circling the neighborhood, hoping to shake Aruka before returning to the tent.

  Aruka's telepathic message sank into my brain. “She is like warm butter on a hot day melting all over you, dulling your identity. Drop her Juan. Escape her influence.”

  I had an impulse to drop Jen, proof of my mother’s power. She was around three thousand years old, or so an ancient parchment once told me. That was a lot of time to incubate power. She’d even preceded the Shen who made the crucifix popular. I was only in my young nine hundreds, having been born in 1098 AD. However, age doesn’t necessarily equal power. I’d defeated Tazmarks older than me. I believed I was stronger than her. Yet—I wasn’t sure.

  Our minds exchanged messages.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Is it a challenge you seek?”

  Her eyes narrowed too. “Of course, but it will prove more interesting if I wait a bit.”

  “Meaning?”

  “There are but eleven adult Tazmarks on earth, including us. You, paired with this Shen, have become a great attraction. You can be smelled a country away, and the other eight Tazmarks will arrive soon, returning here to the hotbed
of our creation almost ten thousand years ago. We have waited long for your homecoming. Your essence is locked in now. From this moment on, no matter where else you roam, you and the other Tazmarks will be drawn here compulsively.”

  She was trying to spellbind me to Chile, and I think it was working. I intensified the black light over my mind so that she could not succeed, nor tell how surprised I was to hear such news, though I suppose there was logic in it. However, as Tazmark and Shen, to my knowledge, have never before allied, how could I have predicted such consequences?

  Aruka flared her hands. “We shall engage as never before in earth history. Why, we might even destroy the planet. We’d have no place left to play, but oh . . . to go out with such—magnificence.”

  In her eyes, I saw the earth smothered in fire. She’d let me taste her passion. Behind that vision, I saw flashes of her exploits on earth thus far. She had been busy, but nothing compared to her future ploy.

  If the earth were destroyed, Jen and I would be separated. Her quintessence would go where Shens go, and mine would go to the Dragon World. As for where mother would go . . . well, it made no sense, her wanting earth to perish, for upon death, she would become a servitor to full blooded Dragons in the Dragon World, as do all Tazmarks who die before reaching level ten. She was no ten. That, I would feel. Tens don’t even dally much on earth. They play in the solar system.

  I blurted telepathically, “You would not resent serving Dragons?” I said.

  “Serve? I would serve no one.”

  “How so?”

  She threw back her head and laughed. Tazmarks delighted in mind games. Her sinister lip curled. “I am cleverer than you, Juan. I am wiser, stronger, and my knowledge is unparalleled. And this I tell you, there will be a showdown of Tazmarks, and earth will be destroyed.”

  I camouflaged my concern, unwilling to part with Jen, even in death. “You fantasize. There will be no showdown.”

  She raised a brow. “You think not? In Montana, the Tazmark, Chord found two other Tazmarks to combat you. Tazmarks, Juan . . . they are hard to find. But it was elementary for Chord because they hovered near, waiting for the opportune moment to challenge you. The Golden Tazmarks would have been fools to face you alone, so they enlisted the Black Tazmark, the one you called the Dark One. He preferred to defeat you personally, but the other two silver-tongued him.”