Thanks a million guys! I love any kind of feedback and getting your opinions is seriously important to me too.
I'm really concerned about getting the behaviour of the Weeping Angels to be as accurate as possible.
"Why did you try to escape me?"
Cassidy's ears only barely drank in what she had just heard. She looked up at Michael with a quivering gaze.
"You…you can speak," she said aloud, though her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper. Her limbs felt heavy and rigid- bound by an unconscious fear of the unknown
She was used to him being a silent entity and the idea of him actually being able to verbally communicate with her both intimidated and enticed her.
The voice that came forth from the stone beast was, (guiltily), the voice that she had often heard in the darkest, most unspeakable, most sumptuous recesses of her dreams.
However the words that formed in his unmoving mouth and were forged by that very voice were nothing like the mellifluous niceties that the Michael of her dreams would have charmed her with.
"My, my…the human has such extraordinary skills of observation," the angel said, his tone overwrought with glacial sarcasm. "Yet she cannot answer a simple question. Perhaps I must ask for a third time." His voice was suddenly raised to a much louder, sharper bark, accentuated by a deep, guttural growl. "Why did you try to escape me!?"
Fright seemed to defibrillate her vocal chords and Cassidy found herself struggling for an answer. It was absurd in every sense but all of a sudden, she felt as though she should be the one feeling guilty. It was as though she was standing in front of her school headmaster again, struggling to explain why she pushed another little girl in the yard. At the time of the crime, her actions had seem justified but now, a simple harsh tone and scrutinising gaze was enough to make her feel selfish.
She swallowed, trying to force some kind of answer from her dry jowls. "I…I…" Cassidy shook her head, allowing her spine to slowly grow back. "I…was hungry," she finally managed. "I was starving, in fact." She coughed, realising with horror for the first time that her whole body was covered with a spray of stone-ground dust.
Angel Emily's remains.
Cassidy shivered involuntarily, starting to brush her arms clean but keeping her eyes on Michael.
"Hungry?" he repeated, his voice more condescending than questioning.
"Yes, I was hungry," she told him. "I didn't have anything to eat."
Speech became easier with the realisation that if he had just killed "Angel Emily", (who was now lying in mutilated debris all around her), for an attempt to kill her, keeping her alive was obviously still part of his agenda. "I don't…I don't know why you're so shocked that I tried to run. I mean it's not as though I actually like being stuck up in that room. In case you somehow didn't know…"
"Silence."
His voice had become a blade- so unforgivingly cutting in tone that Cassidy could do little else than to comply with his orders, her voice instantly failing in her throat.
"Good girl," the living statue praised mockingly before giving his captive a new command. "Now. Rise."
Cassidy stayed where she was, head pressed against the back of the counter and legs curled up to her chest. She truly had no idea whether it was a sudden rush of adrenaline or the same insanity that had consumed her in the hotel room but reluctant to return to that godforsaken cage- Cassidy decided to test her warden's limits.
"Rise, human. Heed my command."
"…and if I don't?"
Her eyes were streaming again, itchy and sore but practice had given her endurance. She stared at Michael, unblinking.
Consequently, he did not move but a loud snarl erupted from the Angel, accompanied by an angry sneer.
"Do as you please. Remain on the floor here. But the other Angels will soon be here and consider that I may not be as charitable when they arrive as I was when Kyrie assaulted you. I may just let them have you."
"…fine."
Deciding that the risk was not one worth taking, Cassidy slowly pulled herself to her feet. It was only when she put weight on her right leg that she felt the dull ache.
Like a blunted knife, pressing against her tendons.
Her tussle with Kyrie/Angel Emily had managed to leave her with more injury than she had initially anticipated.
And yet somehow, despite her obvious rage, the venomous Angel had not caused half as much as bodily damage to her as Michael had.
For the first time, she allowed herself to blink, soothing her burning eyes.
Michael made sparse movement: only stepping aside to allow her to walk ahead of him and now pointing towards the elevator.
"Good choice. Now, get in and do not look behind you."
Wincing at each step, Cassidy limped towards the elevator. Her eyes skimmed the ground, lingering over Kyrie's remains. She had never seen a dismembered body of any kind before. She never once thought, however, that the first one she'd ever see- if at all- would be that of an alien from another world. Cassidy also would not have thought for a second that the first time she looked upon a pile of dismembered remains, she would feel such a sickening sense of satisfaction.
"Do you mourn the loss of that Angel?" Michael asked from behind her back. "Despite possessing the knowledge that she intended to kill you?"
"I don't "mourn" her at all," Cassidy replied, her voice low and broken. She raised an eyebrow, stepping into the elevator. "She deserved what happened to her."
No sooner had the words left her mouth, the young woman wanted to snatch them out of thin air and swallow them back down again.
Kyrie had been near-psychotic and if Michael hadn't killed her, Cassidy would be dead in her place…but had she really just admitted that a living being deserved to die?
She closed her eyes, silently praying that her captor's sadism was not somehow rubbing off on her.
Whether it had or had not, Michael remained silent as ever and for the first time, it struck Cassidy just how frightening it was that the Angels seemed to move without making a sound.
A sudden sag in the floor of the elevator told her that the Angel had followed her into the elevator but before she could turn to check, two strong hands seized her shoulders and forced her to continue facing the back of the elevator.
"Do not turn around."
Slowly, the elevator began to rise, clicking at each turn of the winding wheels, the cables whining at the stress of their combined weight.
It was almost strangely quiet.
Cassidy wondered if the Weeping Angel who restrained her could feel the weight of the silence too.
Usually, Michael could not speak anyway and Cassidy dared not to so truthfully, things were not all that different.
But the very fact that the Lonely Assassin now possessed the ability to speak was enough to add a vein of awkwardness to the thick silence that had settled between the two of them.
There were so many things that Cassidy wanted to say…to ask her captor but try as she might, she could not make the words form in her mouth.
Thankfully, she did not have to be the one to break the silence.
Michael's cool palms suddenly started to stroke her bare shoulders, her hair slipping over his knuckles. Cassidy instantly became numb to every other feeling aside from his hands on her and an overbearing heat rushed to her face.
His fingers suddenly gripped her skin and she her lips started to tremble, feeling his claws dig into her skin- just enough to create intimidating pressure but not quite enough to puncture the soft flesh.
"I ought to punish you."
Cassidy blinked, feeling her heart-rate pick up. "Punish me?" She pressed her lips together, taking a breath between her teeth. She did not want to feel his claws or teeth again.
She tried to wriggle from his grip but he only chuckled at her efforts, restraining her with no effort on his part whatsoever.
"Precisely, human. You tried to leave me."
"Only because I was starving," Cassidy insisted, a sudden streak of annoyance rushing through her and in its company, the realisation that she could now finally have a two-way conversation with Michael. He hadn't been quick to show her mercy before but perhaps she could at least gauge his thought-process and find some way to talk him out of hurting her. "I thought that I was going to die and being stuck in that room was slowly driving me half-insane. Do you even know how that feels? To be trapped somewhere, slowly starving to death with no chance of being able to save yourself?"
The elevator door opened and Michael roughly shoved her into the hallway. She stumbled, trying to regain her balance and succeeding until the Angel suddenly took her by the shoulders once more and started to force her forward.
"As a matter of fact," he informed her coolly. "I know exactly how it feels. I was chained and bound in irons in depths of that forest for almost two hundred years- unable to move and barely able to feed myself." He squeezed his claws against Cassidy's shoulders again. "You humans are unbearably ignorant."
Cassidy walked down the hallway, back towards her designated room once more, her heart sinking at each step. The accusation of ignorance was enough to make her want to retort but fearing that she would only annoy him further, she kept walking, silent and staring straight ahead.
Like Orpheus walking out of Hell, conditioned to walk without looking back at his beloved Eurydice.
"Only that beast is far from an innocent maiden," she thought. "And if anything, I'm walking back into Hell."
Truth be told, however, she actually hadn't considered the fact that Michael had probably been shackled to the spot in that forest for an unbearable amount of time. She, herself, could not begin to imagine what that must have been like for any living creature and admittedly did not want to attempt to imagine such things.
Her eyes briefly lingered on Stan's door as they passed it.
He was probably asleep at this stage but as always, Cassidy hoped that Michael's antics would not wake him. The Angel had shown him a rare amount of lenience once, in return for her complete obedience; she was unsure as to whether her captor would be willing to spare Stan's life once again.
Or just what she might have to do in order to supplement said willingness.
Upon reaching her door, she entered the room quickly- not because she was eager to return in the slightest but simply because she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of being able to manhandle her again.
She noticed straight away that the environment in her room had changed.
Michael had somehow managed to smuggle many of her tools from the museum into the hotel, just as she had asked him to. Two huge sacks of plaster and resin powder now rested against the bed. Upon the bureau, her leather tool kit pouch along with several hammers, scalpels, brushes and two bottles of polish were laid out.
Cassidy was just about to question how he had managed to correctly choose the specific equipment involved in statue restoration with minimal information from her when she happened upon the obvious answer.
"He's had all these tools used on his body. He recognised them from when I worked on him," she realised silently, a sudden rather disturbing thought jumping to mind. "So was he fully conscious when I was working on him? Did he feel everything? Could he hear and see everything?"
The door slammed shut behind her and automatically, Cassidy turned around only to jump slightly in panic.
Michael's face was bare inches away from hers, his brow rutted in a deep scowl.
"Now that I have returned you to your place of dwelling and reunited your with your require equipment, you may begin your work on me."
Cassidy's sudden shot of fear was quickly replaced by another streak of annoyance. Being silently beaten around by the statue had been bad enough but the fact that he could now verbally berate her, quite literally, added insult to injury.
She lowered her stare to the Angel's chest, her fists slowly clenching.
"…and if I don't?" she questioned him for the second time, posing a timid but deliberate challenge.
"You are an ungrateful little female," the living statue growled. "Why would you find reason not to repair me? After all I have done for you…"
Cassidy's mouth just about fell open in disbelief. "After all you've done for me?!" A sudden repressed anger that had been simmering inside of her but gated by fear suddenly managed to break through, flowing out of her as she shouted. "What exactly do you think you've done for me?! You've destroyed my life. You kidnapped me, you took me away from my family, my friends, my job…all to keep me locked up, starving and slowly going crazy in this awful place…"
"I have generously placed my head on the chopping block for you, you impudent little wretch," Michael sneered in response, only straightening up as she blinked and maintaining his intimidating height and posture. "Do you have any idea what the other Angels would have done to you had I not spent many hours negotiating and debating with them? You may be to ignorant and dull-witted to have observed this but you are treated remarkably better than any other human in this Tribe's feeding ground and I have risked my reputation and my stature to ensure that."
Cassidy was admittedly slightly taken aback at this revelation but in a way, Michael had only underlined what she already knew. Kyrie had made it graphically clear that the other Angels did not like the way that she was treated by her captor. If anything, (and if Kyrie's opinions were to be trusted as a reflection of the whole "Tribe's"), it disgusted them.
So the fact that Michael had stood up to the other Angels in order to ascertain that she would be kept safe was something that she begrudgingly had to admire.
Yet at the same time, his actions sparked off a completely different, but long unanswered, string of questions.
"But why?!" Cassidy pleaded to know. "For what point?! If your kind don't like the way you treat me, why don't you just send me back in time again…or k-kill me? That's what you want, isn't it? For me to suffer? I mean, you've already fed off of all my time energy…that's what you said in your note…so what else could you possibly want?" The young woman raised her gaze slightly to stare at the Angel's lips- half contorted in a growl. "What do you want with me?!" The young archaeologist found herself rather breathing heavily, realising that she hadn't shouted that loudly in quite a long time. "…I think you owe me that much information."
"…you think I owe you something, human?"
"Yes. If you're expecting me to stay here without wanting to escape- I'd at least like to know what I'm doing here. Am I being prepared for something? Are you experimenting on me? What?"
Michael remained stationary, letting a lengthy, tense pause set in before saying smoothly:
"It is simple, really. My reason for keeping you here is that after a period of observing you at work, I have decided that you are suitable for becoming my personal slave. Weaker species have always served those that are superior to them; I find it odd that no Angel has ever considered keeping a human for their needs before me…"
Cassidy's eyes widened. "Your slave?"
"Perhaps the term "slave" in your language is a bit strong for what you are. Maybe I should refer to you as my "pet" from now on. I really do not expect you to see to everything that I need done. I take better care of you than you do of me," the Angel went on, cool and condescending as always. "Which is fortunate because, after all, you can scarcely fend for yourself, little human." A growl rippled from his throat that seamlessly morphed into a cruel snort of laughter. "No, I suppose aside from being able to repair me- you entertain me and you are so very interesting to physically explore."
"Your pet?" she echoed, her eyes wide and staring. "Your pet?! That's what you want me here for? You can't keep me as a pet! You…Y-You just can't! It's not right!"
"Preposterous," Michael retorted, sneering. "For centuries and throughout this galaxy and many others, weaker, less intelligent species have been farmed and domesticated by more capable, stronger beings. Living under me will only and has only improved your life, you ingrate spawned from an inferior species. Now, begin you repair work on me immediately!"
"Or you'll do what!?" Cassidy shouted defiantly, truly tired of being spoken down to. "If you hurt me again, I won't be able to repair you. It's not like you're going to kill me either!"
At her next blink, Michael's eyes were fixated on the back wall of the room- glowering.
"Do not test me, human," he seethed. "Just because it benefits me to keep you alive and healthy does not mean that I cannot thoroughly torture your tiresome, loud-mouthed little male friend."
"Don't you dare threaten Stan again!" she ordered the Angel, suddenly forgetting that she was shouting at a monster with unmatched levels of strength and speed. "Don't you dare hurt him! You speak with such grandeur but you push people around whenever you don't get your own way. You're nothing but a bully and your actions are nothing but cowardly! You- ah! "
In the midst of her angry venting, Cassidy lost conscious control of her eyelids and in the split second that it took her to blink, Michael's hand had lashed out, slapping her hard across the face.
He seized her by the front of her tank top, just narrowly avoiding ripping the flimsy Primark-bought material. He brought his face close to hers and snarled into her ear. "Now you listen here, you filthy, petulant little rat. I do not need to harm your friends to convince you to do anything that I wish. I will resort to torturing you if needs be. You only exist here because it is my will for you to do so. You have no right to command me to do anything, you pose no threat whatsoever to me and if you even think about reprimanding me again…" He paused, dropping his voice to a thin, reedy whisper. "Just remember that I am the one who controls your livelihood here. Even if I were to release you, you are in a strange time, surrounded by strangers, in a city run by monsters…both Angel and human alike. You need me far more than I need you."
He let go of her tank top.
His words resounded in Cassidy's mind, punctuated by the harsh, undeniable knowledge that everything that he had said was true.
She was dependent on him.
She was dependent on him and she hated herself for it.
She sank to the floor, both hands cradling her stinging cheek and her eyes flooded with involuntary tears. His fingers had connected with the gash on her cheek and thus, the pain from the slap had instantly doubled. The adrenaline produced by the anger had worn away quickly, like marks in the sand suddenly taken by a wave from the sea and Cassidy found herself burying her head in her hands in anguish.
She had tried to be so brave and now she was a frightened, trembling mess again. Her shoulders shuddered and she covered her eyes, trying her hardest not to start sobbing.
"Come now," Michael said, his deep voice taking on a much more civil, even softer, tone. "You are weak from hunger and thus unable to think straight, let alone work. Stand and I will feed you."
Cassidy kept her head down in her hands, still shaking like a cobweb moored in the breeze. Her famished stomach cried out for her to comply with his wishes but she knew that if she looked up now, she would start to cry in front of him and she didn't want him to see her weep.
She heard the Weeping Angel sigh and suddenly one of his huge arms wrapped around her, tucking around her abdomen and lifting her to her feet.
"Sit upon the bed," he ordered, pushing her down on to the duvet before she even had a chance to voluntarily complete the request. "Where is the blindfold?"
Cassidy sniffed, slowly lowering her hands and looking up at the stone statue. "I pushed it down the side of the bureau…" She coughed, slowly regaining her composure. "But you don't have to be put it on me." She sighed. "I'll keep my eyes closed."
Showing her willingness, Cassidy automatically shut her eyes.
There was a tense silence for a moment before Michael responded rather moodlessly: "Very well. But open your eyes and look at me even once whilst I feed you and you will be punished tenfold, human."
The human girl nodded, waiting with slightly held breath as the Angel moved around behind her. Suddenly, one of Michael's arms wrapped firmly around her waist- locking her to his side- and a Styrofoam rim was pushed against her lips.
Cassidy coughed and spluttered, whining in protest as Michael forced another cup of hot, black coffee down her throat.
"Ah...ah!" she whimpered, instantly opening her mouth to cool it. All of the blisters on her tongue that had started to heal were suddenly, painfully scalded once more. "If you let me drink it, I can drink it myself! And why do you keep giving me black coffee?" She shook her head. "Black coffee isn't the only thing that I drink. Surely you must…"
Cassidy suddenly blinked, realising something for the first time.
The only times Michael had ever seen her drink anything was in the museum and the main thing that she'd drank in front of him while working were cups of black coffee.
"…I drink other things too," she told him finally, curling her shoulders forward.
"I am aware of that," Michael retorted, grabbing her around the shoulders and pulling her back again so that she was sitting up straight again. "You also drink that strange golden liquid that makes you quite merry. Can you not drink your fill without spitting back like an infant?" He ran a finger along the sides of her face, wiping away the trickling trails of coffee.
"It's hot," Cassidy frowned, remembering that the Angel had seen her drunk on champagne and suddenly feeling a strange kind of embarrassment creep over her.
Her thoughts were interrupted by something else being pushed against her lips. Ignoring the temptation to open her eyes to inspect the strange object, Cassidy opened her mouth a sliver and let the Angel press it into her mouth. After a few seconds of rolling it around her mouth with suspicion, she realised the smooth, bulbous little capsule was an ordinary grape and swallowed it eagerly, opening her mouth to accept another.
He fed her each grape one by one, in complete silence.
As always, she found herself falling limp against him, lying against his massive frame and allowing him to feed her like an infant. After the mental turmoil that she had suffered earlier, it was admittedly relaxing to just switch off her inhibitions and to allow herself to be held.
Chunks of bread and to her surprise, small pieces of chocolate followed the grapes.
He waited for her to swallow each segment before slowly levering her lips apart with the next piece of food.
Then the feeding was over and Michael simply sat there with her, holding her against his chest with one arm and brushing stray tendrils of hair from mouth.
She wasn't sure what was motivating her to speak- perhaps it was just the weight of the silence once more- but Cassidy found herself quietly asking:
"Why do you want to feed me? If you just leave the food behind, I can eat on my own…"
"The act of "eating" as you humans understand it," Michael explained. "Is one that my kind do not need to experience. We absorb our food energy. The phenomenon of ingestion fascinates me…" The crown of Cassidy's head was just beneath Michael's throat and chin. She could feel his vocal chords vibrating and his chin moving above her. The smooth, firm skin beneath her cheek reminded that with her eyes shut- he was no longer a statue; he was a living, breathing man.
A real man.
A real Angel.
Michael suddenly trailed a finger down her throat, over her chest and down to her belly. "The fact that you humans consume your food, masticate it in your mouths, take it into your stomach to absorb all the energy…it's both strange and intriguing."
Cassidy flinched away from his touch, not liking the way he prodded her like a doll but he held her fast and continued to run his hand along her torso.
"Wh-why do you like touching me so much?" she blurted out, instantly worrying about the answer.
But Michael's response was prompt and casual. "Because you are so delightfully soft and vulnerable. I could tear you limb from limb right now with my bare hands and menial effort."
Cassidy squeezed her eyes tight, risking lifting an arm to shield herself from the Angel's repeated petting. "Stop it."
She was prepared for him to be viciously angry with her but he seemed uncaring, simply and effortlessly pushing her arm away with a deep, throaty chuckle. "Why? It is only fair that you allow me to touch you…I allowed you to place your hands on my body for months without complaint."
Her face was instantly doused puce with humiliation. "I only touched you because it was my job to do so!"
Michael suddenly stood up, lifting her to her feet once more. "Then let you perform the tasks that your job entails once again. You may open your eyes to begin repairs, human."
Cassidy exhaled as she opened her eyes once more, seeing that Michael was now standing at the foot of the bed, facing her with both arms by his sides.
She considered rebuking him again but arguing with Michael was fast becoming as trying as arguing with an irritable toddler and an abusive toddler at that.
"Fine. Alright, alright, alright," she said, looking around at the tools that she had before approaching the stone Angel before her. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she walked a familiar and fondly remembered path to the foot of the statue. She inspected the cracks in his chest with a trained eye, carefully running a finger over the jagged crevices. "The stone has been cut crudely," she noted aloud, as if speaking to an imaginary colleague. "But the cracks aren't actually as deep as I initially thought. With constant movement, the abrasive edges and sustained pressure will cause the cracks to expand and if the centre crack falls through…" She looked up at Michael, remembering that she was speaking to a sentient being. "…you could lose a lot of your torso and it will…erm…weaken the rest of your body, I suppose. So…I'm going to have to fill these cracks and polish over the restoration. Is that alright?"
"Whatever you see as necessary," he replied calmly. "Your repairs will be aided by my own metabolism anyway."
Cassidy rounded on the two huge sacks of resin and plaster powder behind her. It was all completely unmixed and after a few moments of consideration, she was dragging the two paper sacks into the bathroom. She mixed the plaster in the bathtub and the resin in the sink and used the discarded Styrofoam coffee cup to transfer a sample of the plaster into the bedroom.
Filling the cracks was simple and applying the resin didn't take as long as Cassidy estimated it would. Though tedious, transferring the resin and plaster also went smoothly. For a while, it almost felt as though she was back in the museum again, in the preparation room and working at her own leisure.
And what further supplemented this illusion was that Michael remained completely silent for the entire procedure.
As if he really was just a statue.
Cassidy began to smooth the plaster out, letting the clotted liquid fill into the cracks. Her brows knitted with the realisation that she had come across a rather awkward problem. She frowned, poking the brush under the puckering fold of Michael's toga in order to further spread the plaster where it hadn't reached.
"Damn it," she murmured. "That's going to be a bitch…"
"Is something the matter?" Michael asked, causing the archaeologist to jump slightly.
"Er…it's your toga. Obviously when you weren't…qua-…" Rather than make an ass of herself trying to remember the word that the doctor had used, Cassidy quickly simplified her statement. "When you weren't turned to stone, your toga kind of fell over one of the cracks on your chest and it's covering it. I can still get to it. It's just a little difficult…and it might take longer to dry."
"I could always remove the toga," Michael stated smoothly. "If you close your eyes for a moment. Would it assist your process if I was bare?"
Cassidy coughed a little, feeling a lot of blood rush to her face. "No," she said quickly. "You really don't have to do that."
Michael was quiet for a moment before suddenly saying with a notable degree of whimsy in his voice. "Why are you so bashful, little human? Have you never seen a naked male before?"
Cassidy remained silent, not saying a word and keeping her eyes on her work.
Certain thoughts flitted through her mind but she did all she could to destroy them as they formed. They were the kinds of thoughts that brought a lightness to her head, a redness to her cheeks and sent soft tremors through her body. They were not the kind of thoughts that she wanted to deal with at that very moment.
"So…," she decided to say, patching up another layer. "You're an alien from another world...?"
"In a manner of speaking. The dimension that I was born in was not this one."
"How did you learn English?"
"English? What skill is this?"
"The language that we're currently using. How did you come about learning it? I know it's not the language that you were born speaking."
"No being is born speaking a language," the Angel informed her pedantically before going on. "My command over the language of humans comes from the fact that I have assimilated the brain-stem of a human male."
Cassidy shuddered at this reminder but she continued speaking, not allowing her thoughts to dwell on that fact. "Yes, but how did you understand the language that I was using in the museum? Even before you…could speak, you seemed to know exactly what I was saying."
"I acquired it from the local humans in the area where my Tribe hunted. They would often speak around us while we were in our quantum-locked state…"
"The local area? You mean Sherwood Forest? Where we found you?"
"Precisely. I have lived there for hundreds of years. Though for a portion of it, I was restrained."
The museum staff had always prompted the Lil'Diggers junior archaeology club to imagine that each artefact could come to life and the stories that the artefact might tell.
Now her statue had finally come to life and she could ask him whatever she wanted.
Swiftly losing her fear of the stone monster beneath her fingertips, Cassidy asked the question that she had wanting to ask him for a long time.
"Why were you chained up in that forest?"
"Cleric. Men of the Church," the Weeping Archangel replied after a few moments. "Ecclesiastical Agents from another time. They were on a kind of vendetta. They heard that there was a Tribe of my kind living in that area. They found me and while I was in this stone state, they managed to chain me to the ground. They knew that they could not destroy me at my level of power so they restrained me instead so that I could not hunt, hoping that I would eventually starve to death."
"But…your Tribe," Cassidy questioned quietly, running a finger over the cracks and starting to go to work with her scalpel. "Couldn't they come to help you? You Angels are pretty damn scary in large groups…"
"They heard my shouts but they would not come and truthfully, I did not expect them to," he told her. "They exiled me for crimes against the group. I was once in the ranking to become Head Angel but then another male challenged me and robbed me of my position. I tried to rebel against him but he turned my fellows against me in return and accused me of treason."
"Couldn't you have fought him? And have won?"
"You do not understand, little human. The challenging male was my sire."
"Your…sire?"
"The male who conceived me and assisted in raising me."
"Oh, he was your father," Cassidy said quietly. "I…I guess I know how that feels." She smoothed the plaster down and added a drop of polish to the Angel's stone skin. "My own dad kind of betrayed my mum and I. He left us both when I was very young."
"Your sire abandoned you both?" Michael questioned. "It was my understanding that humans mated for life."
Cassidy frowned, shaking her head. "Usually we do. This situation was just…complicated…"
"How so?"
Desiring not to dwell on the topic, Cassidy did not answer the question but rather put a question of her own to the Angel. "Do you feel that? When I put the plaster into the cracks? Doesn't that hurt you?"
"I have an incredibly high tolerance for pain," he seemed happy to inform her.
"Evidently," Cassidy sighed, stepping back and waiting for the plaster to dry.
"It is good that you acknowledge that as a weaker being such as you acknowledges my superiority," the Angel responded, still speaking as a living statue. "You ask me many questions, little human. I will now put a question to you. Why do you not happily wear the piece of adornment that I brought you as a gift? Did it not please you?"
Realising that he was talking about the necklace, Cassidy squirmed uncomfortably. "No…I mean, yes it "pleased" me." She looked down into her lap. "It's beautiful….I just can't accept it."
"Why not?"
"It's…far too extravagant as a gift…and I…I don't know what you want in return for it…"
"Are you really so dense and dim-witted, human?" Michael chided. "The collar was intended as a gift of gratitude for allowing me to feast on your years. Was I not clear enough in my written communication?"
Cassidy opened her mouth but speech had left her.
It was as though she was incapable of verbalising her resentment towards him.
As though she was completely unable to simply tell him that she didn't want the gift.
"I wish to propose a covenant with you, human," he orated in her silence. "I will show you my mercy, provided that you wear your adorned collar in my presence. Do you think that you can comply with these terms?"
"By "showing mercy", do you mean that you won't hit me anymore?"
"Only when you follow my orders exactly and thus do not require punishment."
After a minute of consideration and upon deciding that "mercy" sounded like a good offer, Cassidy nodded. "Fine. I'll wear the necklace whenever you're with me." She took a breath and made the further decision to take a quick gamble. "And could I add a term to that …covenant?"
"Speak, human."
"If I agree to repair you when you're damaged…you have to keep bringing me food on a regular basis…No starving me…"
"Starving you was never my intention. I simply got waylaid on my return from your former place of work. Your position there. You were a medic there, were you not? With your skills centred around healing, you are suited for little else."
Cassidy almost laughed. "A medic? No. I'm an archaeologist. We research the past and examine objects from long ago to determine how other humans lived back then."
"But you healed me completely. Does that not display the skills of a medic?"
"I was restoring you for presentation. Not for your well-being," she told him, resting her chin on her hands.
"Presentation? That is what you humans were doing with me? It was my understanding that it was a form of idol worship that those plebians were engaged in," Michael responded with a chuckle. "I suppose I cannot fault you all though for simply wishing to look at me. I am a flawless specimen and males of my kind are extremely rare."
Cassidy gave a dry snort of laughter, standing to check that the plaster had dried before brushing it down with her fan brush.
"How lucky for you. Come to think of it, you're the only male of your kind that I've seen here," she told him, slowly becoming aware of an uncomfortable churning feeling in her stomach. "You must have your pick of mates…that Angel who attacked me seemed to think so…"
What Michael said next, shot through Cassidy like a spear of heat, surging through her body and bringing the bizarre feeling her stomach to a boil.
"Does that make you jealous, little human?"
Cassidy stepped back, slowly raising her eyes to briefly meet his before lowering her gaze once more with an unwittingly weak smile. "No. Why would it? After all, I'm just your pet." She laughed slightly. "I'm an inferior species, aren't I?" She shrugged. "We don't have complex emotions or basic intelligence at all, apparently."
Michael began to reply to what she had said but suddenly stopped, silent for a moment. He growled slightly. "I must leave. I am being summoned away by Angel Ariel."
"Angel Ariel?"
"The Head Angel in this Tribe," Michael explained. "If I am fully repaired, I am going to take my leave now. Close your eyes, human."
Both thankful for the freedom and shockingly a trifle disappointed that he was leaving, Cassidy sighed, following his orders.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, she heard Michael's voice right at her ear, his voice and proximity causing her to shudder.
"A lack of basic intelligence aside, your dry wit was always something that entertained me. Now, stay where you are and I will return to you later…"
When she opened her eyes again, the first sight to greet Cassidy was that of the familiar red rose lying in her lap.
And Michael was gone.
She simply sat there, staring at the flower in a kind of numb disbelief and slowly reflecting on the night that had just passed.
She replayed every event, every word and every touch as precisely as a scene from a film.
Again and again and again.
Through the hoary, opaque window shade, Cassidy could see the pale glow of sunrise but despite the knowledge that she had spent the entire night awake- she was in no mind to sleep.
Slowly, she stood up and walked to the head of the bed, sitting down against the wall with the rose clasped in her hands.
She ran her fingers over the petals, watching as a single tear fell from her eyes and splashed down over the crimson, velvet folds.
For a moment that night, Michael had not seemed like a monster.
In fact, for a moment he had almost seemed human and in that moment, Cassidy found herself hating him a lot less than before.
Was she genuinely seeing a side to her captor that she had yet to discover?
Or was this all some new kind of psychological torture?
More tears soon joined the first lonely bead of silver and it wasn't long before she was sobbing hysterically. It frightened her to realise but she was laughing too: laughing almost wildly as tears poured down her face.
She lifted a fist and pounded it against the wall, unsure whether the ragged, half-choked noises that gurgled in her throat were strangled whimpers or strangled giggles.
"Cass? Cass, is that you?"
She heard Stan's hoarse, bleary whisper from the other room and coughed, desperately trying to silence herself. "S-Sorry Stan…I didn't mean to wake you…"
"That don't matter to me, kid," he whispered in return, his voice heavy with concern. "What's the matter with you? Did that stone son of a bitch come in to your room again? What did he do to you, Cass? Awh, Hell if he's hurt you again. I swear to God, I'll…"
"N-No…No, Stan, it's alright…he….," Cassidy began to choke out, her eyes suddenly sliding down to the rose in her hands when she felt a sharp pain against her palms. Another hysterical chuckle escaped her lips and she shook her head. "He…just left me a rose…"
"He just… left you a rose? Then why are you crying, Cass?"
"I…I just realised," she told him, thumbing the petals. "This rose is so beautiful…it's all that I imagined it would be…it's all that I want…it's perfect…b-but…its thorns keep hurting me…no matter how h-hard I try…they'll always keep hurting me…"
"…so maybe just let go of the rose?"
"I…I really wish I could…but letting go isn't an option for me right now…I think the thorns are in too deep, Stan…I think they're in far too deep…"
Michael entered the half-blackened hotel ballroom, instantly feeling a thousand angry gazes immediately lock on to him.
He approached the centre of the room, walking as casually and as slowly as he desired. Angel Ariel hadn't bothered to send a messenger for him this time; she had simply screeched for him. He knew what the impromptu meeting was regarding and in no way wanted to give any of the other Angels any indication that he might be intimidated.
In the dark he could see Kyrie's shattered remains lying in a ceremonial heap at the base of the podium where Ariel stood, presiding over the chamber of Angels.
"Well," he thought, mentally sighing. "I suppose I never thought that she was sending for me to present me with an award."
Ariel's voice was shaking with fury as she addressed him.
"Wanderer, what is the meaning of this?" she demanded to know, growling and gesturing to the mutilated body at her feet.
"Hello to you too, Angel Ariel." Without a hint of décor or reverence, Michael approached what was left of Kyrie, gave them a quick glance and looked back to the fuming Head Angel. "This is state is known as "death." It is when the living years of a being have expired or been terminated, reducing the once living creature to a pile of ash, dust, bones et cetera…"
"Wanderer!" Ariel shrieked, quickly becoming feral. "You murdered one of my Tribe without appropriate cause! One of my own gene pool! Give me one good reason why I should not lead the rest of my Tribe in tearing you limb from limb!"
Michael smirked. "One of your own gene pool? What was she? A niece? A cousin? A daughter?" He gave a low, sardonic chortle. "And if you really want to play this game, Ariel, I would firstly like to point out that none of your Angels here could successfully take me down. Not individually and certainly not as a group either. My might surpasses all of your combined strength and you know it." He paused, taking a moment to let his message sink in before continuing, speaking just as calmly and mirthfully. "And secondly, Kyrie's death was not "without cause." She attempted to murder my human. I had warned her about approaching the human without my permission and even after my threats, she persisted in tormenting Cassidy."
"Witnessing Angels say that your Cassidy was in breach of our rules. She was attempting to leave the feeding grounds after sun-down," Ariel informed him, snarling and baring her teeth. "The human's death would have been justified."
She approached him in the dark, flexing her wings.
"She was with me at the time. I was taking her out for a night-time walk and I had instructed her to go down to the lobby ahead of me whilst I procured some tools that she required for my repair." Michael could feel Ariel's close proximity to him but did not move from where he stood, only folding his arms. "When I reached the lobby area myself, Kyrie had cornered Cassidy, intent on destroying her. What I did was in protection of my property."
"As always, Wanderer," Ariel hissed. "Your stories are dubious. I don't suppose that there are any witnesses who could verify your tale?"
"None," Michael responded, uncaring. "But only because there were no other Angels on patrol. It would appear that Kyrie had dismissed every other Angel from night-time sentry duty in order to confront Cassidy…" He grinned down at Ariel, making sure that she could hear the grin as he spoke. "Gracious me. She went against your orders and sent at least nineteen Angels from their duties to dishonour my wishes out of spite. It's a wonder that she is not the one being put to trial here…"
Angel Ariel gave a low, seething hiss- the product of an almighty roar of anger that was just barely swallowed back into her throat. "Do not speak ill of our fallen sister." She took a step closer to him in the darkness, so that her wings were lightly gracing his. "You speak with the audacity of an Alpha Male when in actual fact you are nothing more than an exiled straggler who depends on our charity."
Michael frowned when her voice suddenly morphed into a seductive purr. "That said. I am impressed with your tenacity. You do have all the makings of an excellent Alpha Male and fortunately for you…" She slowly lifted a hand to place upon his chest. "Such a position is readily in your reach."
The Weeping Archangel rolled his eyes once more.
Merely hours after the death of one of her own gene pool, Ariel had sunk so far into sexual depravity that she was already flirting with Kyrie's murderer: offering herself to him as a mate once again.
It was a clear testimony to the greed and callousness of his species.
Ariel's rage did not concern Kyrie's death; merely Michael's act of taking their law into his own hands.
Now she was presenting herself to him.
And he was far from interested.
"I know very well what you are offering me, Ariel," he said firmly, grabbing her wrist and pushing her hand away. "However, my answer is the same as it has always been: no, thank you."
Ariel scowled and a sharp grating growl told Michael that her fangs were extended. She whipped around, turning away from him and pacing the floor as an uneasy murmur ran around the circle of Angels.
"You know, Wanderer," she sneered. "I do recall Kyrie and a few of my other seraphs mentioning something about your behaviour around that human. It has become increasingly odd. You spend an awful lot of time attending to its comforts and this was an issue that we have addressed before, has it not?"
Michael raised a slow eyebrow, unfolding his arms and giving a soft warning growl. "That human obeys me. I do not "attend to her comforts.""
"He holds and caresses her as though she was a cherub!" an angel from the group shouted out.
"He has also allowed her to touch his wings!" another joined in.
The murmurings grew in volume, snarls and hisses providing a fitting underscore for the accusations.
"He is growing far too attached to the human!"
"Kyrie was right. The human should be killed instantly for the sake of this Tribe!"
"No other Angel has ever been so attached to a single human."
"He truly desires it as a mate!"
"To protect the honour and purity of our race, we must slaughter the human!"
"We must do it now! Kill the human!"
"SILENCE!" Michael let out an earth-shaking roar, his voice rebounding and echoing throughout the ballroom, shaking the crystals of the chandelier above their heads, rattling the glass of the curtain-draped windows and sending a tremor through the tiled floor. Instantly, every Weeping Angel in the room was silent.
"Now listen to me," he continued, baring his teeth and snarling. He was addressing the entire room but concentrated his speech in the direction that Angel Ariel stood in. "That human is nothing but a toy to me. Her mental and emotional turmoil provides me with ample entertainment. Nothing more than that. I have trained that human to attend to my every wish." He paused for a moment, considering what would need to be done to convince the Angels. "In fact, perhaps a demonstration is in order?"
There was a thick silence, filled with the ache of angry tension but Angel Ariel broke it with a rather intrigued note in her voice.
"We're listening, Wanderer."
"Do you all still intend on having the usual "tournament", tomorrow night?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Well, consider this. I will bring my human along to it as a "guest of honour" of sorts and treat her to a night with her superiors. Then you will see how well trained and obedient she is. I shall show you al exactly how I've taught her to bend over backwards for me and perhaps even make her part of your little show." Michael gave a dark chuckle. "No doubt it's time to show her how any rebellious human in the building is properly treated…"
Angel Ariel was quiet for a moment, seemingly sorely unconvinced but wavering on the point of accepting his offer.
"Additionally," Michael added. "I shall deliver the child that I promised tomorrow night. I will give you the infant immediately following the tournament. It would be fulfilling my term of our contract earlier than I intended but consider it a gift of good will…"
"Very well, Wanderer," Ariel conceded, turning to face him once more. "You will be given this chance to redeem your reputation. You are also dismissed for now…"
Michael gave a short genuflection and turned to leave.
"Oh, Wanderer?"
He stopped in his tracks.
"Yes?"
"Disappoint us tomorrow night and I do not care how many of my seraphs you think you can destroy single-handedly. I will have you eliminated from my Tribe. Is that clear?"
Michael ran his tongue over one of his fangs, continuing to leave the room and growling back at her as he did. "It will not be a problem. You will not be disappointed by what you see tomorrow night."
"So then my parents came into money again and they decided to move the whole family back to the farm in North Carolina. I was thrilled, sure, but going to school in New York gave me this wonderful accent." Stan gave a wheezy chuckle. "Mom wasn't so thrilled but Pops was tickled pink. He said that whenever he talked to me, I made him remember all our crazy nights out in Brooklyn…"
Cassidy smiled faintly, giving a weak sigh of laughter. "I like your accent too. It's really nice to listen to and you remind me of a character from a cartoon that I used to watch."
"Was he a handsome country devil with a Brooklyn edge too?"
She laughed outright, realising for the first time that she hadn't genuinely laughed at something funny in quite a long time. "The latter, perhaps." Her laughter quickly subsided when she looked up from her lap to see Michael standing in the room once more. "He's here, Stan…"
He was standing at the foot of the bed, his huge arms at his sides and his eyes slightly narrowed- watching her every move.
Her fellow prisoner of the Angels swore under his breath and thumped a fist against the wall. "Damn it, Cass. He'd better not hurt you in any way or I swear to the Lord, I'll…"
"Stan." Cassidy rapped her knuckles against the wall, starting to stand up.
Thankfully, her friend said nothing more in response. Earlier, she had begged him not to provoke Michael and to avoid talking while he was in the room.
"I don't want him hurting you again," Cassidy had told him firmly. "And even if you don't care for your own being, he's a lot more violent with me when he's angry too. He uses you as leverage to force my obedience…"
Cassidy hadn't really been thinking about her own well-being as much as Stan's but as she had predicted, after hearing this, the American had agreed to keep quiet while Michael was in the room with her.
The archaeologist stood up fully, fumbling for the necklace in her pocket and quickly fastening it around her neck as she approached the living statue.
"You choose to honour our covenant," Michael observed. "That is good."
Cassidy nodded, coming to stand in front of him. "Yes…how is your chest feeling?"
Her rapid heartbeat still caused her voice to sound breathless and wavering but little by little she was starting to speak to Michael with more confidence.
"It never caused me much pain," the Lonely Assassin responded with little concern. "But your repair-work has proved satisfactory, human."
"Uh, that's good to hear, I guess," Cassidy replied, keeping her eyes focused on the plastered cracks in front of her.
"Why do you still speak to that other human?" Michael asked her. His tone was unruffled but a small note of warning crept into his voice as he continued. "I am aware that you humans require social contact and the art of conversation to preserve your sanity but now I can speak and thus can satiate your need. Yet you persist in talking to the human male." The Weeping Archangel gave a low growl. "Are you keeping secrets with him from me?"
"No!" Cassidy insisted, wishing to slake his inexplicable envy as swiftly as possible. "Nothing that we talk about is secret at all."
"What do you talk about then, little female?" he questioned. At her next blink, he leaned forward, surveying her features closely.
Cassidy lowered her gaze from his staring grey eyes and instead chose to look at his lips. "We…we just tell each other stories."
"Stories? What kind of stories?"
"Stories about our lives. Anecdotes. I sometimes tell Stan myths and legends that I've learned. It's nothing sec-…"
"Myths and legend?" Michael cut across her. "I have not heard a good story of legend since I was a cherub. I wish for you to tell me one of these stories."
Cassidy couldn't help but blink in disbelief and when she did, the Angel had grabbed her by the arm. "Ok…ok!" she stammered. "I know quite a few legends though. What kind of legend would you like to hear?"
At her next nervous blink, Michael had moved to stand behind her, still holding her arm and pinning it to her back. "Which legend have you most recently told the human in the next room?"
Cassidy racked her brain, trying to wriggle her arm from his vice-like grip but failing.
"…uh…the myth of Hades and Persephone…"
"Well then," the Angel decided, free to move as he was now out of her direct line of sight. "I wish to hear that one." He sank down, sitting on to the bed behind himself and quickly pulled Cassidy to sit upon his lap. One hand entangled in her hair, forcing her to continue looking straight ahead and his free arm wrapped around her torso, restraining her and keeping her back tight against his chest.
"Relax," Cassidy told herself, closing her eyes. "He just wants to hear a story and if I don't move and keep in line, he'll leave me alone soon."
"Alright," she said aloud. "This is the story of Hades and Persephone then. It's a Greek myth…meaning it was written by humans who lived in a place called Greece…" Michael said nothing, apparently intent on listening to her and encouraged by this, Cassidy continued. "Long ago, Greece was ruled by many gods and one of these gods was Demeter- the goddess of the harvest. Demeter had a beautiful daughter called Persephone and she loved her so much that she never wanted to let her go. She proclaimed that she would never allow any man to marry Persephone and that she would never allow her daughter to fall in love." She swallowed against her dry throat as Michael's hand slowly came to stroke her hair, rather than wrenching her with it. "But one day while Persephone was out playing in a meadow, she was spotted by Hades- the god of the dead and the Underworld. Hades fell deeply in love with Persephone but knew that Demeter would never agree to give him her hand in marriage. So Hades waited until Persephone was alone and kidnapped her. He took her away from her home and down into his dark, Hellish kingdom of the dead…"
Cassidy went on with the story, telling it as she would to a group of children at the museum and only pausing to take a breath. Michael remained silent for the entire myth, continuing to stroke her hair. Every now and then, one of his fingers would graze the side of Cassidy's temple or delve into the delicate crevices where her jaw met her neck and instantly, pulses of heat would pass through her in rhythmic waves.
Every time his cool skin connected with her own warm flesh, a frightening yet excited tightness formed in her chest- the likes of which she had never felt before.
It wasn't a very long story but by the time Cassidy reached the ending, she felt as though she had been sitting with him for hours.
"…and because she had eaten the six pomegranate seeds, Zeus decreed that Persephone would spend six months of every year with her husband, Hades, in the Underworld and six months of each year with her mother, Demeter, in the surface world. For the six months that she was away, Demeter would always grow upset and allow the world to fall prey to snow and ice but would rejoice when Persephone returned, making things grow again. That was how humans long ago would explain the phenomenon of the seasons."
Cassidy waited with baited breath for Michael to speak, closing her eyes and letting out a long exhale.
There was a short silence and then the Angel laughed.
But it wasn't the harsh, cruel cackle or mocking, sneering laugh that Cassidy was used to. It was a deep, melodic, rumbling ripple of laughter.
"You humans have the strangest of legends. Alas, they are entertaining."
He lifted her from his lap as easily as a doll but when she attempted to stand, he seized her shoulder and pulled her backwards so that they lay upon the bed together. "Close your eyes whilst we speak. I wish to move freely."
Cassidy shocked herself with the speed at which she complied with his request, resting back against the soft sheets of the bed. She winced a little, feeling him move across the mattress beside her so that he was leaning over her. It was when his hand connected with her cheek that something motivated her to suddenly start to speak.
"Lots of Greek myths are strange. What did you find so strange about this one?"
"The role of the fruit, I suppose," the Angel replied, stroking her cheek as he spoke. "Why in all the galaxy should a being's diet dictate how long it should remain in a certain area? And designating specific food to the dead of one's kind? Ridiculous."
Cassidy couldn't help but laugh, hearing her once fierce and frightening Angel speak like such a sceptical teenager. "Yes, I guess it is all pretty stupid. It isn't supposed to be realistic though." She felt one of his feathery wings brush against her arm, giving an involuntary sigh at the feeling.
"And this Persephone character," Michael criticised. "Why would she eat the seeds, knowing that it was supposedly forbidden to eat anything in the Underworld? Why make such a foolish decision?"
Cassidy shrugged, absent-mindedly lifting a hand to brush her fingers against Michael's feathers once more. She felt his wing jerk a little under her touch but upon receiving no verbal complaint, she continued. "She was in love with Hades. People do stupid things when they're in love."
Michael gave a cynical-sounding snort of laughter before pausing in his petting of her and saying in a completely different tone: "Human, do you believe that this myth of yours is, in fact, a romantic story?"
Cassidy thought for a moment and then nodded. "I…I've always thought of it that way. Yes."
"So you would agree that Hades' gesture of abducting Persephone and taking her away with him was one that was romantic?"
She coughed, her stomach clenching when she realised what the Angel was trying to insinuate. She shook her head, turning her face to the side and pressing it into the blankets. "Well, h-his reasoning excuses his actions," she insisted. "Hades w-was in love…in love with Persephone. He…He took her to the Underworld to make her his Queen...and you…you…" Cassidy's voice trailed off as the Angel suddenly took a hold of her face and turned her head to look up at him once more. Though every fibre of her being screamed at her to open her eyes, she resisted the temptation.
Or was she giving into another temptation?
She felt Michael lean in closer to her, the tip of his nose just about brushing against hers.
"You know, human. I never did properly thank you for freeing me from the forest," he murmured, his thumb running down the side of her cheek. "I will find a fitting gift to give you to display my immense gratitude." She could feel his hair, spilling down over his broad shoulders and lightly licking the sides of her face. "The gift could be even more lavish if you would consent to stop talking to that "Stan" of yours and to talk only to me…"
Cassidy felt as though her face was on fire but she somehow managed to speak calmly. "Why don't you like that I'm talking to Stan? I've already told you that we don't keep any secrets from you."
She heard a low growl come from Michael's throat and he squeezed her face a little tighter. "You are far too naïve to realise this, little human but I believe that you talking companion seeks for you to be his mate."
Cassidy tried to shake her head. "No, no, no…Stan and I are just friends. There's nothing like that between us. Why would you care anyway?"
"I have not given you my permission to mate and you will not receive it nor will he receive you. I wish for my human to remain unspoiled."
An uncomfortable feeling was growing inside of Cassidy's stomach.
"Why would you even think that Stan was moving in on me anyway? All we ever do is talk and we never see each other."
"On the first day that you set eyes on him, you saved his life by giving him your life years. You pressed your mouth to his, I saw it."
"…gave him my life years? I performed CPR. Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation? I was breathing into his mouth to send air to his lungs and pressing his chest to stimulate his heartbeat. I was performing first aid. I wasn't showing him any kind of affection…"
Michael was silent for a moment but gradually he released her face, instead stroking her forehead and lowering one of his wings around her once more. "C-P-R…How odd. Humans require an enormous amount of upkeep for such a lowly species. And yet, you are certain that you are not a medic?"
Cassidy smiled at his constant curiosity about her. "Yes. I'm certain that I'm not a medic. I just know a few tricks because my mother…" Her smile dropped a little. "My mother was always very sick when I was growing up. I had to learn to do all of that at a very young age."
"I imagine that your skills made you of great benefit to your Tribe, Cassidy."
Her eyes snapped open when he said her name and instantly, Michael turned to stone beside her. His hand upon her face was now cold and hard and the wings that once graced her arm were of hard rock than of soft feathers.
But it was his face that she was staring into and that drew all of her attention.
She stared up into his sightless stone eyes with a mixture of fear, reverence and wonder.
These were the eyes that she had always wished to see, back when she was working on Michael at the museum and now her wish had come true.
Cassidy was expecting some kind of punishment for opening her eyes but all that her captor said was: "Why do you stare at me in such a manner?"
Daring herself to be brave, Cassidy lifted a shaking hand to touch his face, cradling the cold marble-like rock in her hand. "N-no…no reason…I just…I…you…are so handsome…" She smiled faintly, not taking her eyes off of his. "I can't really take…take back anything that I said on the day that I first found you. You are flawless…Ah!"
She had completely forgotten what the doctor had told her about looking in to the eyes of a Weeping Angel.
"Ah! Ah! Ah!" she whimpered, a searing, hot pain shooting through her temples. She groaned, feeling the most horrific of all headaches start to pound in her skull. She twisted and writhed beneath Michael, turning into the duvet. He was saying something to her now but she could not hear him. She was deaf to all but her own pain.
Cassidy opened her eyes, feeling tears rushing to them but as she began to cry, an awful itching, gritty sensation spread through her eyelids.
"Wh-what the-?"
She lifted a hand to her eyes and then screamed as gravel started to pour forth from both of her eyes.
Thick, sandy, grey gravel- filled with crushed rocks and flinty sand, spilling across the white sheets.
Amidst her panic, Michael reached forward, pressing his hand over her eyes to close them and holding her with his free arm. "Do not move!" he hissed into her ear. "Do not move, keep your eyes closed and cease your struggling. I shall aid you."
Despite the great pain behind her forehead and the burning sensation in her eyes, Cassidy did as she was told.
Michael roughly turned her head back to face him and Cassidy felt something cold and wet run across one of her eyelids.
Again.
And again.
And again.
He was licking her eyelid.
She squealed with discomfort, struggling to resist the urge to push him away and to end the uncomfortable sensation- but then her pain began to ebb away.
Soon her head and eyes no longer hurt her and Cassidy could breathe normally once more. She had no idea what had just happened to her but she did not want to let it happen ever again.
When the pain had cleared completely, she realised that Michael was holding her against his chest, running his hand down the back of her head. It was only when she lay completely still against him that he lifted her away from him and placed her down on the bed.
"Has your pain left you, human?"
"Y-yes…I don't know what you did…but thank y-you…wh-what was that?"
"Another one of the natural defence mechanisms of my kind. You were fortunate to have my charity at your disposal. You almost went the way of your dark haired friend…"
"My dark haired friend? Who do you…?"
Cassidy stopped speaking. She knew exactly who Michael meant.
Her eyes opened once more and she glowered up at the Angel beside her. A new kind of burning had begun behind her eyes and once ignited, it spread throughout her body. She stood up, quivering from the top of her head to the soles of her shoes but this time, it was not with fear.
It was anger.
Pure, undiluted anger.
"It was you," she said through gritted teeth, her voice coated with malice as a new, horrible realisation suddenly dawned upon her. "It was you who killed her. You killed Louisa!"
The Angel was unable to look up at her, quantum locked where he sat on the bed but his response was as infuriatingly cool and calm as ever. "Of course I did. She was a direct threat to my claiming of you."
Vomit rising in her throat and blood pounding in her ears, Cassidy stormed away from him, raking her hands through her hair. "I can't believe I didn't think of this before! How could I have been so stupid?!"
She turned to see that Michael was now standing behind her, his arms folded and his face nonchalant. "Now, now," he said. "It is not your fault that you are overreacting to this. Console yourself with the thought that her life was worthless and meaningless. I simply exterminated her to further my needs- as is my right as a higher being. There are millions of humans just like her on this planet. One of them will fulfil her role at your place of work. No harm done."
"Shut the fuck up!" Cassidy shouted at him. "Just shut up! You bastard! You murderer! You don't understand anything! You're not a "higher being", you're a self-obsessed psychopath!"
"How dare you take that tone when speaking to me, you little ingrate!?" Michael growled.
Rage extinguished any fear that Cassidy once had and it wasn't long before she was shouting at the Angel at the top of her lungs.
"I will speak to you however I please! You have no right to order me around! Especially not after what you did to my best friend! Not after what you've done to me!"
Cassidy blinked and Michael was only a footstep away from her, his teeth fully bared, his claws protruding and his face morphed into a familiarly terrifying beastly form.
But she wasn't prepared to shy away from him this time.
"Close your eyes and sit down this instant, you soft-headed little brat! I have done nothing but enrich your life from the moment that I took involvement in it!"
"How was murdering my best friend, enriching my life exactly?!"
"She was getting in your way! Diverting your attention from me! I had to intervene for both your sake and mine!"
"You are unbelievable!" Cassidy screamed, fire rushing through her veins. "This was never about me! You accuse me of being part of an ignorant race but all you ever think about is yourself, your own needs and your own gain!"
Michael was silent but at her next blink, an eerie smirk was on his fanged lips and a sadistic chuckle came forth from the living statue.
"Perhaps that is true. I cannot deny that I did take some satisfaction from watching your friend die. Killing her was rather fun."
Cassidy stood still, shocked and shaken to her core and still trembling with anger, she hissed between her teeth.
"You unimaginable bastard. I wish I'd never set eyes on you."
At her next blink, Michael was no longer smiling.
"Were you not the one who asked me to take you away from that place? You professed your love for me, you confided in me, you kissed me….!"
"When I was drunk! Do you not understand what "drunk" means? I wasn't in my right mind! Fucking fitting considering that I'd have to be crazy to even consider being in love with you!"
"Ha! Pathetic little human is trying to deny her obvious affections for me!"
"Ha! Ignorant Angel thinks that I'd actually ever have feelings for a statue!"
"Idiotic human forgets her declaration that I was the only man for her."
"Stupid Angel doesn't understand sarcasm!" Cassidy let out a shriek, closing her eyes tight and grabbing her head as a thousand emotions rushed through her. "I could never ever love you! I hate you! I hate what you've done to me! Do whatever you want to me! Beat me! Starve me! Take everything from me! But remember this! You're nothing but a cowardly, selfish monster, you don't own me and I will never belong to you!"
It was then that Michael seized Cassidy by the throat.
He held her with both hands wrapped firmly around her pale, slender neck. The diamonds pressed into the soft flesh, adding further pain to the unrelenting pressure on her windpipe.
Harshly and quickly, he lifted her from the ground by her neck- strangling her in mid-air.
Unable to breathe, her lungs slowly collapsing and her brain being starved of oxygen, Cassidy frantically clawed at the huge hands around her neck. She kicked and flailed, silent screams escaping her mouth as spittle ran down the sides of her reddened face. Her eyes were wide and staring but all she could see were flashing colours.
Blues.
Reds.
Whites.
And finally complete blackness.
Michael dropped her to the floor and she fell limply upon the carpet with a painful thud. Air flooded back into her body, replenishing her burning lungs and encouraging her murmuring heart once more. She coughed weakly, unable to move as her vision slowly cleared.
Michael stood over her, unseen to her and expressionless at first.
Then he smirked.
"The way the light leaves your eyes," he said, his voice as cold and hollow as ever. "It is rather beautiful."
And with that, he left her.
Clumps of Angels loitering in the hallways had heard their confrontation.
They whispered scornfully and mockingly as Michael passed them, their eyes hidden but their gazes just as accusing.
"That human screams at him as though she is his master."
"He has no control over her whatsoever."
"Why did he not kill her?"
"Why would any Angel take such verbal abuse from a mere human?"
"How pathetic he is."
Michael ignored them all, storming past each cluster of gossiping Angels without bothering to cover his eyes.
He could care less about etiquette at that moment in time.
The only thing on his mind was Cassidy Albright.
He had originally only intended to make a mockery of her in front of the other Angels.
Now he was going to make her suffer.
He was going to make her suffer as she had never suffered before.
And whether she wanted to or not, Cassidy would be his.
She would be only his.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter!
As always, I'd love to hear what you thought of it!
My sister has done some amazing fanart of Michael and it's sooo interesting for me to see how someone who's read the fic envisions him! Check it out at this link but be sure to take out the spaces first! (If the link doesn't work, try googling Mephilesthecute09 and the pictures will be in her gallery on deviantArt)
mephilesthecute09. deviantart art / Doctor-Who-Weeping-Angel-OC- 382148949
mephilesthecute09 . deviantart art / Doctor-Who-OC-Angry-Michael- 382207905
She's a really awesome artist so be sure to check out the rest of her gallery if you love cartoon randomness.
Thanks again for reading! :D