Angels Breath

Prologue

        The sound of waves crashing on the shore had almost lured Anu into complacency, almost. He didn't think that he had ever really been complacent in his entire existence an existence that had spanned eons. His lineage was long almost limitless but as with any creature even a God could die and his time was coming to an end. It didn't really matter to him any more, not the way he saw it anyways. This new world wasn't good to the Gods. No one believed anymore.

           Once people had believed him the creator of humankind. He hadn't created the humans, actually he had had no part in it. They came just as he had and the other gods of his pantheon from a greater source, from what was only remembered by the Gods as old as he was. Everyone and everything came from Origin. It didn't really matter what they believed anymore because they couldn't even see what was already among them. They turned their blind eyes and walked right past demigods and goddesses on the street. They might appear as mortals but surely the humans should realize no mortal should be as beautiful as the demigods they walked right past.

         An exasperated sigh escaped Anu's lips as he thought of the demigods. Some of them out there were his children, his children with the mortals. May be he wouldn't be in the position he was now if he had listened to his wife. The Goddess Aruru. Yes like mortals Gods fell in love and married but sometimes like with mortals thinking with your heart got you no where. His wife had been cold all the way to her icy heart but may be she had been right. Gods and mortals should never mix..

        He had suffered at her cruelty for untold centuries before he strayed. He couldn't help it that it was a mortal woman that had offered him the warmth he so desired. Aruru has despised him for his actions but that didn't stop him from taking the mortal woman to his bed. He could no longer picture the mortals face because she had been one among countless numbers. Once he had tasted the sweetness of mortal flesh he became insatiable with it. He had become a manwhore. The word he had heard used by countless mortal women seemed to fit him perfectly.

        He looked back out on the water thinking. The waves that only a moment ago had seemed to soothe now crashed a little harder. Their peaceful lull now turning into a storm. Once the sudden change would have been attributed to the Gods. Those times were long over, science was mankind's new gods. How fitting, Anu thought because it was their science that would cause countless revolutions that would wipe them out. His prognostications were never wrong and Anu had seen the worlds end as if he were standing there in the thick of it. He wouldn't be though, by the time that happened he would already be dead just like the girl.

          He tried to see her face again, full of warmth and joy but it was shrouded in mist as if hidden from his all seeing eye.. She was a tiny little thing. Just a child really. A child with such innocence radiating around her it was hard for even a god to look upon her.. Anu strained his mind looking for that image that had once came so swiftly. After a few moments she began to come into focus. The face he saw now wasn't the one he had been trying to find but the one that would find her in the end.

            Her face was bloated lying next to the small stream. He body so small and frail was bloated as well and waterlogged. The golden blond hair that curled at the ends was wet as well but the water hadn't managed to wash the blood from it. It was matted in the strands and dried to an almost black crust. It seemed an oddity on the wet hair. Her lips were blue from the cold or may be it was from death, either way it seemed a crime. There were purple bruises along her jaw line and around her neck. The white dress was ripped and stained with blood, the top of which was held together by small frightened hands. Hands that were covered in blood with broken nails. She had fought with everything she had. Her death had been brutal and those who had done it would do it again as they had before.