Angel Blood

Chapter 1: Just a Normal Week... Maybe?

"Wake up Santiago!" My mother yelled up to my room, " We have to get started on the pan de muertos!" I start to crawl out of my bed knowing that she was just going to get louder and angrier the longer I wait. Coming out of my room yelling down to the bakery, " I'm coming mamá!" As I race down the stairs I stop to see this girl, about my age it seems, staring at me through the window. I stare back for what feels like ages, but then a car screams past the window and she's gone. My mother comes to the stairs and says, " Santiago Antonio Fernandez what on earth do you think your doing, we have work to do!" I turn to her startled and disoriented. " Whats that mamá, oh yeah, sorry" I said still confused about what just happened. I went down to the bakery my mother owned and operated, to help make the pan de muertos, for Dia de los Muertos. Oh, by the way my name is Santiago Antonio Fernandez, I'm sixteen and a average teenager. My mamá, Gabriela Lopez Fernandez, and myself live in our casa, which happens to be the second floor of mamás' bakery in Mexico City. We work all hours of the day to keep it running and to keep ourselves and my abuela off the streets. " SANTIAGO!" Whoops, I was daydreaming again. " Alright, alright, jeez mamá," I whisper glumly. After baking for a couple hours its finally time to open up shop, and time for me to hang out with my friends, my two best friends in particular, Daniela and Ian.

  I was supposed to meet them at the old run down church off of Francisco Ave., but no one was there. This is where it started to get creepy. I went into the church thinking they were in there trying to scare me, but when I entered, all was silent. I walked down the middle row, half way down the doors closed with a massive, WHOOSH! For some reason I decided, oh it would be a great idea to keep walking around in the creepy church with scary doors, and I will regret that decision for the rest of my life. After turning around from looking at the doors, I look straight at the preachers pedestal for the first time, and there she is, the girl from the road, staring right at me. Maybe a better word would be through me, she was staring through me, with these piercing blue, almost ice like eyes. We stood there staring at each other, for hours it seemed, completely still and quite. I can't explain in depth what happened next, but I can say she was like an angel, but not the way you would want to take as a complement, she or it, I honestly do not know, grew pure black wings like darkness it's self was contained in them, the thing didn't make the room brighter like an angel normally would, it looked as if it darkened the whole world around it. At this point I was petrified with fear, as I'm sure any would have been, and as far as I knew this thing was about to kill me, and that seemed even more likely as she pulled out a deadly looking silver headed, black shafted spear. She pointed the spear right at me, I couldn't move to save my self, it was as if she froze me with her icy blue eyes. Thankfully I was not what the dark angel was aiming for, the holy light that came from that spear was meant for the grande shape that rose up above my right shoulder, the searing light just missed the side of my and hit the thing square in the shoulder. I turned around, startled out of my petrified shock, and saw a wolf one of the largest I have ever see, and definitely the most terrifying, seeing as it was on two legs and ripped with mussel, and a face, mostly wolf but almost human, snarling with huge teeth .  It was squirming on the ground after taking a direct hit from that terrible spear, but it was most definitely not dead, so I did the thing that most people would do after so much strain, and I promptly passed out between the two terrifying beings.

The next thing I knew I'm waking up in my bed with my crazy old abuela peering down at me from above, and as she cracks a toothless smile and I roll off my bed in sudden realization of what happened the last time I was awake. It takes a moment, but I stand up and look at my abuela as she puts in her teeth. "¿Abuela, que haces en mi cuarto?" I ask in Spanish ( my grandma doesn't know English). She stands up and giggles insanely and tiptoes out of my room. I walk out of my room shaking my head, I had seen something last night that I definitely was not supposed to see and I know with more confidence than I have had with anything in my entire life that that was not a dream. The only thing I'm not sure about is how I ended up back in my own bed, the church is several kilometers away from the bakery, and my mom would be up here screaming in my face and hugging me if she had been worried last night. After getting dressed for school, it was November 3, I went down and had a guava roll that my mom had cooked this morning, thinking about last nights duel of death. I left saying goodbye and I love you to my madre and made my way to Ian's house, he drives Daniela and I to school. I almost walked right past him, stuck in my own thoughts, when he yells," San come on we gotta go now!" I turn around and realized I walked past his car. I ran back to his driveway and hopped in his silver BMW, silver like the spear head I thought as I buckled in. " Hey San, you there?" Daniela says to my right, I had spaced out again. " Sorry Danny, I'm just out of sorts today" I say some what detached.  For the length of the ride they glanced at me multiple times, but I didn't notice and frankly I didn't care, I had my own problems to think about, I didn't need them worrying about me.  Through the school day I didn't get much done, too much on my mind. 

After the end of my last class I was walking to the parking lot, but there she was staring through me again and I couldn't move, just like at the church, just as quickly as she appeared she was gone, and Ian came up behind me and slapped the back of my head and scolded," what are you doing standing in the middle of the parking lot, are you looking to get hit by a car?!" I turned around and looked up at him, he's really tall, and explained," sorry Ian, I spaced out again." This doesn't actually surprise him, I have terrible ADHD and lose focus quite a lot. " Ok Fernandez let's get you home." We get in the car and take off, Daniela had gone with her other friends home today. We were almost home when it happened, she appeared full angelic form in front of the car and smashed her spear down into the road, turning off the car and nocking Ian out cold in the process. Now listen to me when I say this, I do not think that angels and, if there are any others, supernatural or magical beings understand subtlety, and also I think they know very little of modern technology because when she came around to my side of the car she just tore the door of of it, as if the metal was actually butter. When you have what you think of as something very safe being ripped apart next you, it will scare the absolute shit out you. The angel pulls me none to gently out of the all but destroyed car and up into the sky, I'm trying to stay completely motionless, hoping she thinks I'm dead, I don't think it worked. My next move was unexpected for both me and the angel of darkness. As she starts to rise and go higher into the sky, there's a sudden searing pain in the small of my back and I see a pair of pure white feathered wings sprout from my back and a golden gladius, one of those you'd see in a gladiatorial arena, appear in my right hand. I do the natural thing and stab at the angels blackened wing, and succeed in scoring a shallow cut, and that's enough for the angel to loosen her death grip and leave me falling. You would normally say, oh he has wings now he'll jus fly gracefully back to earth, well not quite it was more like a slight slower plummet. There was no way I could just fly right off after getting wings, it's like learning how to walk again, so I tried my best to spread my wings to slow my decent. I ended up only breaking one arm, and hey it's better than going splat!

I woke up in the hospital after passing out from pain, jeez I got to stop doing this, and turned my head to see my mothers head on my infirmary bed. I dot best to smile and whisper," hey mamá," she looks up and her face breaks into a grand smile and she leans over and gives me a crushing hug  that probably cracked a few ribs. When she finishes with the rest of her agonizing hugs and boring scoldings, she take me home and offers me something to eat, seeing as I didn't really eat yesterday and turning into a kick ass angel probably wears the body out, I took what she offered and more, almost cleaning out yesterday's leftovers. Its really quite odd what happened yesterday, I wonder....