Evan saw something move out of the corner of his eye.
Since Vic was sitting right in front of him, he knew it wasn't him. Grabbing
the gun off the table, he swung around. A slender, brown-haired man stood
beside the kitchen door. Then, unbelievably, a second man's form took shape
beside him—a man with flaming red hair who grinned at Evan—and at Vic when he
turned to see why Evan had grabbed the gun.
"Sorry to drop in like this," the redhead
said. "I'm Paddy and my friend here—and I use the term loosely—is Dom. We
have some information you might be interested in."
"If you pull the trigger, Evan," Dom added,
"you'll put a hole in the wall, but not in us." He demonstrated by
moving halfway across the room in the blink of an eye.
Evan gulped, looking at Vic. "Am I seeing
things?"
"If so, I am too—and hearing them." Vic
stared at Paddy and Dom, shaking his head in disbelief. "How did you
manage that? And I guess more to the point, who the hell are you?"
Paddy stopped grinning. "I suppose we could try
to convince you it was all smoke and mirrors, Vic, but it's not."
Vic glanced at Evan, asking wryly, "What kind of
pills did you say those were? And are you popping them too? Because what we
just saw is not possible."
Paddy walked over, sitting down beside Vic at the
table. "You look like you've been through the wars. Not too surprising,
considering that you fell out of that car when I opened the door for you. Sorry
I didn't get to you sooner, before they
got their licks in."
"You'd have stepped in to help?" Vic asked
scathingly.
"It's what I'm supposed to do, so yeah."
"We were
in time to keep those men from breaking in here and doing what they'd been
ordered," Dom said. "They were supposed to kill Evan, in case you'd
told him what was going on, then grab you again and take you to their
boss."
Evan snickered, more from fear of what was happening
and what Dom had said than out of any sort of amusement. "What are you?
Guardian angels?"
"That would be us," Paddy replied.
"Ri-ight. Where are your red berets and red
jackets?"
Dom chuckled. "Wrong guardian angels. We're the
real thing."
"Uh-huh. Where are your wings then?"
"They get in the way down here so we don’t use
them. However, if you want to see me in mine…" Dom moved to the middle of
the kitchen to have room and suddenly his wings appeared, blazing white tipped
in brown. "Satisfied?"
Hesitantly, Evan walked over to him, reaching out one
hand. "Can I…?"
"Be my guest."
Evan ran his fingers over the feathers. "They're
real," he said. "I mean… they really are wings."
"Very gorgeous ones, if I do say so
myself." A second later they were gone. "Now you see why we don't
wear them down here. They take up too much room."
Vic rubbed his hand over his eyes. "I… guess we
have to believe you. No magic trick could work that well without a hell of a
lot of setup. Besides which, why go to all the trouble of making us think
you're angels if you aren't?"
"Exactly." Paddy smiled in understanding.
"I know it's hard to take in, or believe, but we really are what we say.
We probably wouldn't have revealed ourselves to you if it wasn't for the fact
we have some information you need."
Dom chuckled. "He thought about emailing it to
you, but we figured you'd think it was a con or a trick to get you out of the
house so you could be grabbed again."
"Were they really
going to kill me?" Evan asked, getting back to the thing that really had
him on edge at the moment. Well, other
than the fact I seem to have two angels in my kitchen.
"Those were their orders."
"From whom?" Vic asked.
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