Angel Breath

Prolouge

Isabelle could feel the darkness closing in as she rushed through the streets of Camden trying, desperately to get home. She knew that her father would be waiting there, waiting for her and she urged her feet on faster. The crack of lightning and the rumble of the upcoming storm also had her trying to run faster than she had ever run before. She could see him – her father – in the not-to-far distance, waiting outside of their front door. Isabelle hardly noticed the houses – with their same layout, style and colour – flying past her as her feet slapped against the ground. She could see the tension in his body a mile away, could see how his body was prepared for a fight; He knew. She could tell that he knew by the way that he watched the area around them, his eyes focused on nothing in the far distance rather than his icy blue eyes being fixed on hers, as she found them to be whenever they were in close proximity.  Some would have though it strange that she was running to her father for comfort but she didn’t, he had always been her strong hold, the one she could turn to when she couldn’t understand something or when things turned bad, he was the only one that was there for her as her mother had abandon them both when she was only five. A girl at that age needed their mother but alas she had had only her father and strangely it was okay with her.

“Isabelle, get inside. Quickly now,” Jonathan White said as Isabelle reached his side. Isabelle looked up to her father and nodded her head quickly but before she could get inside she felt a cold shiver run down her spine and she turned back to the street, feeling the tension in her father intensify.

“Xavier, or should I say Grim?” Isabelle heard her father sneer. Isabelle was surprised at the tone that her father’s voice had taken towards Adam’s father; Xavier, but what did he mean by Grim?

“Hush now Jonathan, Son of the Ophanium. Your daughter here is the one that I want. She made a promise to my son and she has broken it and you know as well as I that word is law where we are from.” Xavier sneered, his lips turning up into a wicked smirk. Isabelle had no idea what he was talking about, what promise had she made to Adam that she had not kept? There was none that she could think of and yet she backed away from the man standing in the shadows of the street as her father walked out of the security of their home.

“Over my dead body you will,” Jonathan yelled. Isabelle watched as Xavier’s attention turned from her to her father and she watched as his smirk grew on his face until it turned into a full fledge grin.

“With pleasure,” Xavier sneered. Isabelle watched as Jonathan stepped out onto the street she watched as much as she could until her vision blurred. Isabelle could have sworn that the two grown men had sprouted wings; she could have sworn that her father had pulled out a blazing sword of white fire, and that Xavier had pulled out a black sword that she could have sworn was pulling on the darkness growing around them, as if hungry for the dark energy. She could have sworn that the two men engaged in battle, the sound of their swords as they collided hidden underneath the rumble and cracking of the storm. She could have sworn that she witnessed all these things with her own eyes but her mind kept on telling her that it was impossible, that this type of thing just didn’t happen.

“As long as I’m around Grim you will never have my daughter,” Jonathan said, the glory and judgement of heaven shining through his voice and eyes as he looked down onto the man below him. Isabelle watched as her father pointed the blazing sword of fire at Xavier’s throat but she couldn’t make out the words being said between them even though she could obviously see their lips moving.

“I don’t need to have her; eventually the man that takes my place will have her, or should I say my son will eventually have her.” Xavier sneered. The sounds of the storm roared again and a white blinding light exploded from the tip of Jonathan’s sword as it pierced Xavier’s throat.

In the distance Isabelle could see Adam Black – Xavier’s son and her best friend – watching as her father killed his. Jonathan walked away from Xavier and towards his daughter pulling her into the house, shutting out the world around them. Isabelle turned to see Adam one last time and before her father could close the door their eyes met and even with all the distance separating between them and she knew that this wasn’t the end; that this battle between their parents may be over but the battle between them – two ex-best friends - was only beginning.