A Kiss of Life (Bk2)

Chapter 7

The silence that statement left in its wake was reviberating from our shock. Mine and Fin's that is. If my mouth was not already a gaping yawn it certainly would have been now.

"How? How is that even possible?"

"You know how it could happen," said William softly. "Angels are made of the purest light. A light so pure that only one of their own can safely look upon them. Even if they hide their grace from us as Fin is doing, it is still contained within their very fabric. They burn. Slowly eating us inside out. Your mother simply took that essence and recreated it into something more palatable. Something more inline with her vision. The cloak."

I stared at mother appalled over what he was saying but she only shrugged indifferently.

"Why? Why did you do it at all?" I turned to ask her.

"That was god's idea. He didn't want it known that he gave up one of their own to me as a prize for my willingness to stop making war against the heavens. It was a bribe and he wanted to hide it. So I did," she shrugged again indifferently.

"But once she made the cloak," William continued," she had no inkling what to do with it. The cloak was a living, breathing thing. An angel no less. Despite its new appearance that niw suited your mother better she could not keep it in hell. It would not have survived and everyone knows what happens if an angel died in hell," said William looking at me knowingly. Actually, I didn't know what happened when an angel died in hell. I had been about to find out first hand but well all that got us into this situation.

"Knowing I could tolerate both the heavens and hell, she gifted the cloak to me. That part of the story you already know but what she or I hadn't known at that time was that the cloak would eat into me," he whispered hoarsely as if recalling that horrorfying day. And it would have been extremely horrible to find the cloak eating into your skin that first time not having any expectations that it could happen. No warning like I had.

"You knew the cloak was an angel?" I asked him feeling my blood boil that he would consent to the cloak knowing it for what it was.

"No. Not till centuries later. Your mother avoided me like a plague when she saw what that cloak did to me. It was only when my pain settled into my very bones and my rage calmed to mere simmer that I managed the cunning needed to track her down and demand my answers," he said again with remembered agony.

"And still she would never have told me the whole of it. To date I haven't an inkling over exactly who that cloak is," he said. I turned to face mother but her mutinous expression told me she was not about to reveal that bit of information. And I realised with a burning intensity that was one secret I really had to know.

"I think I can answer that question," whispered Fin staring at me... the cloak with dawning horror.