Wings of Darkness: Book 1 of The Immortal Sorrows Series by Sherri A. Wingler Page B

was absolutely gorgeous and bat-shit crazy.
        Oh, shit, I burned my tongue on the cocoa
and came up coughing.  He was at my side in an instant, rubbing my back, trying
to soothe me.  The cough turned to giggles, then to a full-blown fit of
laughter.  My guest looked horrified.  “Why are you laughing?” 
Clearly he thought I’d gone mental.
         “Cause that’s just funny as
hell.  If you’ve got to have someone wanting to kill you, it should be a
professional.”  I think I even snorted a little bit.  My nose was
running, but I wasn’t sure if it was from laughing so hard, or because I’d
burned the roof of my mouth along with my tongue, and everything else. 
“Sorry, I’m ok, just having a hard time getting my head around this. 
Continue, please.  Any idea why the Grim Reaper wants to kill me?  Of
course, it’s his job to kill everybody I guess, so that actually makes perfect
sense.”  I caught myself rambling.  Ahem.  I drew a steadying
breath, and put the dangerous mug of cocoa down before I hurt myself
again.  “You might want to start from the very beginning.  I’m not up
for mental gymnastics right now, so speak slowly and use small words.” 
         Asher looked like he wanted to back
slowly out the door and run like hell.  So I worried the big, scary dude
with the ginormous dark wings? I promised myself I’d keep my mouth shut,
and let him explain; for as long as I could stand it.
         He pulled a chair out across from
me, and sat.  It groaned under his weight, so chances were pretty good he
wasn’t a hallucination.  “I was there at your wreck.”  I nodded for
him to go on.  I remembered him there, although I’d been thinking this
whole time that he was a figment of my overactive imagination.  “You were
dying, but it was not your time.”  That sent a cold chill down my
spine.  I’d known it was close, but I didn’t know it was that close. 
Hearing him say it out loud like that gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my
stomach.
         Again I nodded, tried to smile for
encouragement. He ran his hand through his hair; a nervous tell, if ever I’d
seen one.  Whatever he was about to say, he didn’t want to tell me. 
“I did something to you, to stop your passing.”  Earnest grey eyes met
mine, and I felt myself forgiving him instantly for whatever it was.  How
bad could it be?  He’d saved my life.
         He drew a deep breath, looked down
at his hands.  “What I did, it changed you.”  He looked up, straight
into my eyes, and pinned me to the spot.  “It is
still
changing
you.”  Well, that didn’t sound too promising.
         Cold fear washed through me.
“Asher, what did you do?”  It came out as a whisper, barely above a
breath.
         “I gave you blood, Isabel.  My
blood.”  I sat back in my chair a little, because I found that I’d been
leaning toward him that whole time. Blood.  That didn’t sound too bad.
 Maybe I was overreacting. People get blood at hospitals all of the
time.  Seemed reasonable enough…
         Then the voice of reason in the back
of my mind started shouting at the top of her lungs.  Did I really believe
any of this?  The Grim Reaper?  Seriously?  I’d never claimed to
be religious. I always thought of myself as unaffiliated. I had a nodding
acquaintance with the Bible, but my dad and I never went to church.  I
sure never thought of Death as being embodied by an actual person, or angel, or
whatever.  I wasn’t even sure I believed in Heaven or Hell.  Now,
here I was, with a really big problem; and he wasn’t going away anytime soon,
from the looks of it.
         Yet, the healing I couldn’t
explain?  The increased speed I’d experienced?  The extra
strength?  “So you’re what?  My guardian angel?”  Oh shit, oh
shit, oh shit.  I was crazier than a bedbug, if I believed this. 
Maybe even crazier than he was.
         He looked relieved, like I’d