The Angelus Brothers Chronicles - The Golden Hind

CHAPTER FORTY

Cassiel walked into the Oracle's room and froze as her vanilla scent washed over him. His skin tingled and a strange sensation washed over him. She was sitting on the huge bed gazing off into the distance but when he stopped dead in the doorway she turned her pupilless eyes to him and a small frown creased her porcelain-looking brow. 

"I do not know you." Her tone sounded confused. Swallowing hard to keep the demon that had suddenly sprung to life in his mind for the first time in his life at bay he held up the bottle of lotion and hair brush Marie had sent him with. 

"We haven't met yet. Marie asked me to..." 

"No. I mean I do not know you. I know everyone but you are blank. I don't know who you are."

"I'm Cassiel, we haven't met yet." He repeated as she held her hand out to him. 

"Come to me." He found his feet rushing of their own accord to follow out her request and was across the room to her in seconds. The closer he drew to her the more the demon stirred and the more intoxicating her scent became. 

Ever so gently as if expecting something to happen she took his hand in hers. After a split second, she frowned again and squeezed his hand before reaching out with her other hand and taking the lotion and brush from him, dropping them on the bed beside her, and taking his other hand in hers. 

"Are you ok?" He asked, his mouth suddenly dry and his heart racing in his chest. Is this what his brothers had felt? This desperate need? His hands felt on fire where she touched him.

"You're blank." She said as her frown deepened. "How are you blank? Why have I never seen you or this moment before?" Cassiel shook his head, he didn't understand what she was saying. The demon howled in his head making it harder to follow her odd conversation. Come on Cassiel he thought to himself, you're famed for being able to speak to women. What's wrong with you?

"I don't know what you mean." Was all his racing mind could manage. She reached up and pulled his face down to hers and stared into his green eyes with her amethyst ones. As he watched tiny pupils appeared in the centres of her eyes. Slowly the pupils expanded and soon her eyes looked as if they reflected the very heavens. Stars and galaxies seemed to be swimming in the dark pools that were now her eyes. 

"I know everyone alive. I know everyone's names and their whole life story. I know all who have died and all who will ever be born. But you I have never seen. There is nothing when I reach out for your story. Who are you?" 

"Cassiel Angelus. Gabriel's youngest brother." She thought about that for a while. He couldn't decide if she was looking at him, but he was getting lost in the swirling night skies that now filled where her eyes should be. It was like looking at all of time all in one moment, he felt like he should be afraid. But he wasn't. He wanted to be closer to her. To possess her as his own with a maddening desire he'd never known before. The vampire half of him wanted to sink his fangs, which had grown long as he'd approached her. Into that soft delicate neck and claim her. The Nymph half of him wanted to make love to her slowly and joyfully in a celebration of union. The conflicting desires were making all logical thought almost impossible. 

"Amaranth had five children. Four boys and a girl. Why did I never notice you? You are there but I never saw you. You're a faceless blur. I never noticed that before" His skin tingled where she touched him and he fought the desperate urge to kiss her pretty lips. 

"I don't understand." He said swallowing hard.

"Neither do I." She said as she let go of his face but kept her eyes on him. "I can't touch anyone without seeing their whole life before my eyes and them seeing their death. But I get nothing from you. Nothing at all. I can't see your life or your death. It's like you never existed."