All the Queen's Angels

Chapter 3: Head Underwater

We stare in silence at the pitch black depths of the stairwell, neither of us wanting to go closer. Something drips far below. Illuminated by the murky light emanating from some invisible source, Angel Face begins to make his way down when his wing brushes against me and he flinches.

"Let's take care of those wounds before we do anything else," I say as I begin to tear my skirts into strips. "And you are going to tell me your name before this damn tower collapses on us too."

The damp air kisses my bare skin and I notice he already wrapped the cuts on my thighs. I examine the gunshot and silently cheer when I discover that the bullet went cleanly through his wing. The other wounds were only grazes. Curiously, the injury I gave him when I struck his neck has disappeared. Angels heal quickly, I suppose. Must be nice.

Stripped down to my underclothes, I try to clean his injuries, but I run out of any clean cloth to bandage them with. With a grimace, he pulls off his shirt to use instead.

Even in the dim light I can't help but admire the lean cut of his body, the toned planes of his arms and torso. His blood may run red, but he holds the power of the heavens in his palms. Pushing those thoughts aside, I eventually manage to wrap his wounds. He didn't complain much about the pain the whole time, his eyes focused instead on the steps curling downwards in a seemingly endless spiral.

"Well?", I ask, crossing my arms. "Your name, sir?".

"Ambrose", he says, the name echoing softly. I could almost feel the stones of the tower solidify and nearly laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it. His name is somewhat familiar. In the dim light he once again he starts down the steps. I hesitate, not particularly eager to find out what awaits at the bottom.

"What, are you afraid of the dark?", he teases. I swallow, not wanting to admit that my visions feed on darkness. I probably won't be able to sleep without nightmares for a month. It's a weakness I'd rather not reveal. Though my stomach turns at the lack of a railing, I take a deep breath and follow him down, down, down.

My legs burn as we descend step after step, the bottom feeling impossibly far away. The air is worse down here, moist and stinking of mold. As I pause to catch my breath, my foot suddenly slips and I loose balance. I flail my arms wildly in an attempt to grasp the wall but air whooshes through my fingers instead. Ambrose turns too late and barely manages to catch my hand as I dangle on the edge of the stairs above the pool of darkness. Like bait.

"Why...do you...keep falling?" he grunts as he tries to pull me up on his knees. I kick my legs but only succeed in slipping further from his arms. After about a minute, my weight begins to drag him forward as well. In the murky light his face is contorted in both pain and concentration, sweat sliding down his jaw. Like before, an unknown source drips far below...and splashes. Steeling myself, I take a deep breath—and let go.

And once again I fall.

His panicked shouts echo as I descend, soaring on the wings of the butterflies filling my stomach. Over and over I silently pray that the water below was not a few inches or a foot deep, because otherwise I am as good as dead. Ambrose's footsteps thunder in my ears as he races to help me, his wings too injured and too big to do any good in this narrow tower. It is during my fall that I spot a shadow in the wall, like a doorway. My lungs robbed of air, all I could do was silently go down, down, down until I finally hit the water.

Not a few inches or a foot deep, but several meters—at least. And I can't swim.

I begin to sink fast.

As I watch the frenzied bubbles float to the surface, I realize that eerie light was the reflection of the water. My lungs ache as I fight back the urge to laugh and simply sink to the bottom, but when I look down, all that awaits is impenetrable, absolute darkness. Panic sets my body into action and I frantically kick and paddle, itching to get away from the dark oblivion whose jaws threatened to swallow me whole.