Looking for a sneak peek at the next Angela Mystique novel? Well there is a short Angela story in the Ladies of Horror 2009! You can purchase a digital copy of that book on the Short Works page. Here is your sneak peek into the work of the Prologue:
The Astral Angel
The Astral Angel
A clear quartz crystal sat on a self with a red alter cloth folded underneath it. The crystal was seven inches long and three inches wide with one extra little crystal jutting out from the side. A perfect twin to its parent with two faces of Isis, or pentagon shaped windows leading deep into the quartz depths.
On top of the crystal a single flame burns constant and bright, without a wick. The presence of fire on this crystal keeps the images it creates inside moving at a rapid pace. The twin causes the flame to create another figure to dance, entwining and releasing in a constant battle between each other.
To the left of the crystal a single puddle of water, like the drip from a huge pitcher of water, settles on the cloth without soaking in. The water reflects without movement, it’s deadly intent, intoxicating as it is potent.
Hugging the liquid in a horse-shoe shape is white sea sand. Surrounding the crystal, the puddle, and the sea sand is a complete circle of sea salt in its roughest form. It sits in the dark waiting, as a single trail of smoke curls around the whole display, journeys above, and swirls into a perfect circle traveling in a counter- clock-wise motion. Almost imperceptible, the smoke also clings below the crystal, moving in a clock wise position.
A malicious hidden jewel, to ambush, capture, and confuse the innocent, the opposite of what quartz was known to do, it set the perfect trap.
It was working.
Prologue
My name is Angela Mystique. Yes that’s my real name. Odd, isn’t it, with the work I do. I am called an “Astral Angel“ and I’ve just received my title. Never knew the work I did had a title in the first place, but apparently it does and the work is known. Who knows it? Well I’m trying to figure that out myself. They call themselves “The Order“ and they are a spiritual or other-worldly organization that keeps track of my kills. I have also recently met my guide from The Order. Her name is Dee. She helps me, I think, and observes my work, reporting back to The Order. I’m not to sure about The Order just yet, but I’m working on it.
I help innocents who have been victimized and then murdered. Twenty nine year old healthy woman, with long red hair and extreme green eyes, that kills people for a living. Can you say YIKES? If eyes are truly the windows to the soul, and my own eyes change from a deep green to a light grayish blue, what does that say about my soul?
My gift for astral travel, or out of body experience at will, has become my livelihood. It helps that I can interact with and psychically read the dead as well. In order to avenge innocents, I need to know if they are telling the truth when they arrive to see me. Just how they find me, I haven’t figured out yet, but they do on a regular basis. Thanks to my B.F.F’s parents I have no problems financially. Especially since Julie left everything to me too, I am doing all right.
After Julie had earned her PhD, she gave me my very own doctor‘s bag. It was so cute. It looked just like the one Doctor Baker used on the old television program Little House on the Prairie. She knew I would love it because I always made her watch the show with me. She put all the things I use inside in little “ready-to-use” packets. My sea salt, some herbs, the menthol crystals for masking the smell of burning hair. I don’t put my actual weapon inside the bag, as good as the Italian leather is, I keep “The Phoenix” on my altar in my bedroom. I didn’t use to keep it there, but I recently changed the habit due to some, unexpected visitors. Yes, my blade has it’s own name, and I think that is just way too cool.
I have one other tool at my disposal which I am learning about as well. Dee has informed me that I can use compassion, as a weapon. I’ve only killed with it once, and it was extremely tough to go there. As I mentioned, I’m still figuring that one out, because if someone is so bad off that you feel death to be a compassionate action, then the world was really changing.
My best friend forever, Julie, is my partner in vengeance. In life, she had been the bell of anyone’s ball. Short like me, she stood five foot three and had the perfect complexion. Other women walking in packs, visiting about fashion and make up, would walk past her and whisper “we hate her” because she was just that beautiful.
Crystal blue eyes, with curly blond hair she’d just dyed into a deep black. Not the gothic fake looking black, but a lush shiny beautiful almost natural looking black. Julie had just had her incredible hair cut into a bob and she hated it. I‘d held her while she cried and soothed that she wouldn‘t have to live with it forever, it would grow back. Hmm, yeah, let‘s hope she won‘t hate it forever, because that‘s how long she‘ll have that bob as well as the color now.
It‘s a strange life when you are saving little children with a blade one moment, then learning how to kill people with one the next. We’d been best friends for as long as I could remember, before she was brutally dismembered right in her own bed. Why don’t I sound more broken up about it? Because I can interact with the dead, so death isn’t stopping us from hanging out together. Julie is using my old blade, the blade that killed her in fact. (No I didn’t do it.) So she is now an Astral Avenger and apparently I am an Astral Angel. I’m not sure why The Order changed our titles. It might have something to do with the fact that I am to train Julie, but I never had a trainer, so I think Dee has some more explaining to do for me. Add it to the list of questions I have for Dee.
We took care of the man that murdered Julie, and it had not been pretty. He was an Astral Killer, something I just found out existed. Yes, I’m an astral killer, but I kill bad guys, this guy killed whoever he was paid to kill. He won’t be doing that anymore, thanks to Julie and myself. Maybe Astral Mercenary is the better word for what that guy had been.
When we’d gotten home from our job, I withdrew the killer’s hair from my pocket, and burned it with the salts and menthol. Just making sure Julie didn’t head off into the Light, like all my other client’s had, when I’d burned their killer’s hair. The fact that she stayed put, put a smile on my face. I’d get to have a partner after all.
