She lifted herself off the ground and gently hovered at about fifteen feet and headed in the direction of the village. It had been long abandoned and as she came to land in what looked to have been the town square she realised she wasn't alone. Just coming out of a ruined house was a grey skinned woman, completely naked, and she had wings. As she watched she noticed the creature had a long barbed tail and talons in place of hands. Then Abijah remembered a statue of a dark angel she'd seen on Arcadia and she had a name for the beautiful creature that was looking around, apparently unaware of her.
"Run, run now." Her mind was telling her.
She had no idea if she was outmatched, the tales of dark angels were all about mythical creatures and she'd never met anyone who'd seen the real thing. The creature seemed to be looking for something and suddenly seized a plant from the ground and examined it. The dark angel cleaned the soil from the plant, crushed it in her talons and put it in her shoulder bag. Then the creature looked at her and started to make a clucking sound.
"There's more over there." Said Abijah pointing at a wall some distance off.
She started to walk to where she'd noticed more of the plant and the dark angel leapt in her direction. Abijah had never seen anything move so fast, even Herusher couldn't move that quickly. The creature was on top of her and had her pinned to the ground.
"Interesting." Said the dark angel in a deep female voice.
It used its talons to feel Abijah's breasts and then her arms, while it sniffed at her, as it continued with the clucking sound. The creature kissed her cheek and ran its long tongue up her neck.
"I haven't eaten this well in a very long time." It said.
It used a talon to cut open her tunic and prodded at her stomach, saliva from its mouth dripped onto the front of Abijah's uniform.
"Lots of nice things in there, tasty things."
Abijah should have been scared, but instead she was fascinated by the creature and pointed at where she had seen more of the plant.
"There is lots over there, what do you use it for ?"
The dark angel looked up and flew off to where Abijah had been pointing and Abijah walked slowly after her. If this was some strange kind of cat and mouse game, she wasn't going to run and play the role of the mouse. The creature pulled the plants from the ground and carefully removed all soil and stones from the roots.
"Jangar plant," it said, "the roots help invocations, the leaves heal wounds."
Once it had pushed all the plants into its bag the dark angel moved towards Abijah and gently kissed her on the lips. Then it sniffed her again and smiled at her.
"No one dies today." It said.
The creature unfurled its long dark grey, leathery wings and took to the air.
"Go home girl," it screeched at her, "go home !"
