Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

eager to see who had caused all the fuss. She gave them each a pious little smile. But most of their gazes dipped lower, to her glistening cleavage.
    Men of God are still men, after all, she thought.
    The crowd dissipated, flooding out into the early evening. Toward the picnics and the celebrations, the boats decked with garlands of flowers and leaves, balloons and paper lanterns. There would be music and dancing, and once the sun went down, fireworks.
    In the emptying church, Luciana lingered. Sauntering toward one of the side chapels, she knelt in mock prayer on the cool marble, even as she cast a furtive gaze over the thinning crowd.
    Who will it be this year?
    Who among them will be the chosen one?
    Tonight she had a craving for a handsome young man. One man, whose life she would transform for one spectacular evening. Whose most secret fantasies and wildest desires she would fulfill in a single night. One man who would play with her the game of seduction. One man whose life would end before the rising of the sun.
    She turned, her gaze catching upon a man who stopped her cold.
    Chi è? She had to stop herself from saying it aloud: Who is that?
    Tall, dark and handsome.
    Yes. But those three words weren’t the first that flooded into her consciousness.
    Dangerous. Wild. Angry. Those were the words rushing through her mind.
    He was sculpted more solidly than a Michelangelo, the muscled bulk of his toned arms etched with tattoos. Close-shaven dark hair, the cut of a military man or the like. Shaved purely for functionality and not aesthetics, she sensed. Light gray eyes, focused and intense. Eyes the color of rain. The aura of a restless ocean. His looks contrasted starkly with the preening mammoni, the mama’s boys who seemed to proliferate in Venice.
    He was beautiful. No pretty boy, this one.
    The set of his broad body, the confidence of his stance marked him as foreign.
    Not Venetian. Not Italian. Not European.
    Not human.
    The thought startled her. Although why it should, she didn’t know.
    Overhead, a single bird circled the church’s dome. A rapid flutter of wings and a tremulous coo, lonely in the empty space. The tourists beneath craned their necks and pointed upward. Luciana glanced ceilingward, too. It was only a pigeon, one of the filthy winged rats that had infested Venice for centuries.
    Still, the noise set a doubt churning in her mind.
    The sound of wings often heralded the arrival of another sort of flying nuisance.
    His face was as beautiful as any immortal she’d seen. She closed her eyes, directing her energy toward him. And waited for the signs. For the deep knowing. For the sensation of power, immortal and extraordinary, which emanated from all divine beings.
    The flare of energy came. No mere internal sense of intuition. But a hit of energy, a palpable shock that blew through her. Rocked her backward and almost pushed her off her feet.
    Angel.
    In that same instant, a flock of pigeons swept through the open doors of the church. They rose to join the one circling overhead beneath the dome, the single bird suddenly multiplied into a wild clamor of cooing and wing beats that filled the rounded space.
    The noise of the pigeons and the voices of the tourists blended into a cacophony, shouts in a tangle of languages: Italian, English, German, Japanese…and a dozen more, all the people pointing and staring at the circling birds overhead. But the thunderous flutter of wings and human voices melded into a flat buzz that quieted before it faded away entirely.
    At least to her ears.
    Luciana was aware of only him. The first man and woman, meeting in a wild garden paradise. Or the last man and woman on earth, standing on an arid plain at the end of time.
    Angel and demon.
    Sworn enemies.
    They stood in the chapel, and his gaze remained steady. Eyes locked on eyes. In that moment, Luciana felt the rush of centuries blow past her. Felt as if she had been made new again simply by the presence of this man.
    Who seemed to peer into the depths of her very soul. Just as she saw into his.
    For an instant, she forgot about the hunt. Forgot about revenge and her desire to obliterate the Company. Her mind went blank, and the only thing she knew was that moment, standing in the now-quiet chapel with the last rays of sunlight on her face.
    With him.
    If he were a human man, she might have been able to leave him to his precious Redeemer. To allow him to walk out of the church, out into the thronging festivities