Angelic (Book 2)

Twenty

"Nothing that can't wait for tomorrow."

"Stop. Your confidence turns me on."

The bed creaked as Rex pushed his thick body to a sitting position. Angel righted her hair in the mirror, applying a fresh coat of red lipstick. She always looked her best, even for a round of bedroom gymnastics.

"Mal said he saw her, in the house," Rex stated, as Angel returned to the bed and draped across the pillows.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes. She was quite ill, apparently. Something happened during the Prophet invasion of the motel and she left with an infection. Nearly killed her."

"You tease."

He grinned. "I do not tease, Miss Angel."

"Then that's just more good news, huh?" she handed him a champagne glass, and refilled hers, and they clinked them together on a toast.

"To us," he said.

"To us," she repeated, and they drank.

It was like drinking liquid power.

~*~

The sky was white.

Everything was white, actually. Or different shades of grey. Really just all a part of the same bleak color palette.

There was plenty of time to make this observation, and similar ones, as I lay face-up, feeling the wetness from all the snow seep through my gown and freeze my body. Or maybe I was passed the point of being cold, because everything was strangely warm. I might have even been sweating.

Everything felt light and airy, like I was floating. My skin itched, but my limbs refused to move to appease the itch. My mind was a scrambled mess, and I couldn't organize anything into coherent though. Everything jumbled together, and then my brain started to form sentences that didn't make even a little bit of sense. But it didn't matter. What mattered anymore?

Nothing.

A giggle escaped my lips. Completely nonsensical, and nothing was even funny, but I couldn't help it.

I drifted in and out of consciousness. At least, I thought. Or maybe I was always awake. Maybe I slept the entire time. Maybe I was already dead and this was the weird in between state.

It could be anything, I supposed.

Although, that everything was a dream became the plausible option when a blotchy face that looked like Blake appeared in my vision, gently sliding his hands beneath me. I tried saying his name, but it sounded like absolute gibberish, I was sure. With one fluid movement I was airborne, and my heart sped up to a dangerous pace.

Not good, I thought.

Not good.

Everything seemed to happen in fleeting snippets, like clicking rapidly through a slideshow. Some things I was aware of, others I completely missed. My body transitioned through different environments, and I think at one point somebody removed the wet clothes from my body and replaced them with another silk slip; one that was drier. That was the extent of my linear thought. The rest was wallpaper.

Weird dreams assaulted my head. In one of them I was running through a field with a bunch of ponies, and oddly, we could talk. They knew perfect English. We were just running, and then I tripped and fell, and they started laughing at me and insulting me. Before my very eyes the ponies all morphed into people: Angel, Tia, Muffy, Lana. All of them, just pointing at me and jeering.

Then I was stuck in this box, banging on invisible walls, suffocating in the all-consuming blackness. There was no escape. Absolutely none. My throat closed up and my head buzzed, and my eyes felt as if they were bugging out of my skull.