The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

my neighbourhood, then my building.
    A moment later, he rumbled, “I’m Shaddai.”
    The word gave me that sensation again, of things I should be remembering, but the meaning didn’t come to me. I waited, assuming he would explain, but he didn’t.
    “What’s your name?” I asked him as he touched down on my balcony and set me on my feet. “Can I at least know that much?”
    I tested my knee and found I could walk with no pain at all, which only increased my wonder and confusion. I unlocked and opened the balcony doors of my third-floor apartment before I turned back to him. The ever-present glow of the city illuminated his look of contemplation, then decision. “Shant,” he said, still using the deep, rich bass of a very big, very sexy man. “I come from Mount Aragats, and I have been on Earth three hundred and six of your years.”
    That made me freeze in the doorway, trapping him outside in the snowy night. Tiny white flakes brushed against his bare shoulders and wings, then melted to sparkling droplets. He didn’t move or challenge me. He simply stood, wings folded against his muscled shoulders, and gazed at me with those green eyes, waiting.
    For what?
    My approval?
    My belief?
    Shant.
    The name meant, roughly, “thunderbolt” in Armenian.
    Fitting.
    My insides shivered with my outsides. “Three hundred and six. OK.” I managed to move enough to fold my arms. “We’ll leave that alone for now. But Aragats? As in the mountain in Armenia?”
    He nodded, his expression calm but solemn, as if he understood this might have meaning to me. Which, of course, it did. Mount Aragats was the only trip I remembered taking with my mother before she died. There was a special structure on those slopes - ruins of great stone towers joined together.
    “Amberd,” I said aloud, recalling the name of that place even as my mind translated its meaning: “fortress in the clouds”.
    I felt like my brain was creaking - or maybe it was just the hinges of that inner door I had slammed on my childhood.
    My mother, standing beside me, dark hair billowing as she pointed to those rounded towers . . .
    With a pained gulp of air, I shoved that image away from me, but I couldn’t escape the vision taking up most of my little balcony. Shant filled the entire space except for where I was standing, and he moved even closer, so near I imagined the heat of his body forming a shield around me. “You have deeper injuries, older injuries that still need healing,” he murmured. “Let me help you. Let me soothe your heart as I soothed your body.”
    I couldn’t respond directly to that statement, or to him. I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the thready racing of my heart as I stared past Shant at SoHo. At the real world. At my present, not my strange, shrouded past. “Will that . . . fire-thing . . . show up again?”
    “The Raah’s essence returned to its maker.” Shant’s downwards gesture was unmistakable. “But there will be others.”
    My brain really was starting to spin in my skull. I was sure of it. “You’re trying to tell me that I sent whatever that thing was to Hell.”
    “Yes.” Shant put his hands on my shoulders and moved me backwards. Carefully. Measuring out his strength so he didn’t overpower me. In a smooth, balanced motion, he swept my balcony doors shut with his leg, cutting off the steady flow of snow and wind.
    My cheekbones ached in the sudden warmth of my small, dark and sparsely furnished apartment. The main room was lit only by the city itself - and a slight but definite silver glow from Shant’s skin. As for my skin, it seemed to hum where he was touching me. My body began to override my intellect, wanting more contact with him, leaning towards him even as I fought to force myself to step back.
    “So, if that fire-thing - the Raah - if it was from Hell, then am I supposed to believe you’re from Heaven?” I stared into Shant’s eyes, his handsome face barely illuminated in the softer-than-soft light. “Does Shaddai mean some sort of angel?”
    Shant’s wings rustled, then slowly eased from view, as if he might be pulling them into his flesh. When he smiled, the curl of his lips made me want to stand on my toes and kiss him.
    “I’m no angel,” he assured me as he pulled me against him, then lifted one hand to brush my hair from my eyes.
    I wrapped my arms around him, my palms pressing against his taut back, then the ridges of flesh where his wings had been.
    His fingers lingered