BREAKING SHADOWS (Shadows Book 1)

Chapter 1

In darkness, I waited for the angel to come.

Bile burned the base of my throat at the shallowing of my grandmother's breath, her skin paling to the delicate grey of a new moon. I'd cast myself into the corner of her room hours ago, curled up in an armchair used too infrequently to be comfortable. Every hour or so, I checked that the fragile person layered up in lilac sheets and blankets still drew breath.

With the toes of my socked foot, I pushed the rug aside to make sure the pentagram I'd chalked earlier was still in place. Flexing my fingers, I prayed to the Goddess this would work.

Time crept past midnight boldly reaching out for the Witching Hour. My bones had fused with inactive stiffness, my eyelids weighed down by lead-laced sleep. Then a light broke through the darkened slumber. It started as floating spots of coloured light, and as I opened my eyes, the spots swelled until my grandmother's room was filled with a pale silver glow.

A winged shadow swam in the centre.

I shook off the groggy cloak of sleep and lunged forward. I pressed my fingertips to the floorboards where a jagged line of blue magic rushed around the concealed pentagram.

The hazy shadow stilled.

My magic drew the silver light down and out of the room, sucking it into the pentagram until the shadows of the early morning ruled once more and the winged figure stood before me.

In my mind, the plan had seemed clear. Wait for the angel, trap it in the pentagram, and make it help me. All of that had been the what, not the how. Now, as I sank back onto my knees with an angel before me who without the wings would look so devastatingly human, I had no idea what to do.

"You're the angel?" Tiredness lodged in my throat. I studied the length of him. A tangle of dark hair grazed his shoulders and fell over his face. A brown leather jacket hid what looked like a tight-fitting t-shirt. The angel wore jeans and Doc Martens. He could so easily have been a stranger from the next town rather than a supernatural being.

"You don't look like an angel." I raised a brow.

His lips twisted to one side. "What do angels look like?" Each flicker of his eyes towards the bed made my stomach lurch.

"Not like you."

"And just how many angels have you met?" He flicked a piece of invisible lint off his shoulder.

"You're the first." I gestured towards his feet. "But as you can see, I know a thing or two about them." It was only a half-lie. I knew a little about angels, the things that had been told to me by my coven and what I had researched in the last few weeks as I learned the severity of my grandmother's illness.

The angel's face paled, his gaze following to where my attention landed. He tried to lift a knee. It didn't budge, the sole of his boot glued to the floor. He tried the other. I watched with no small sense of satisfaction as he found it also tethered to the floor by an unseen force. My stomach both fluttered and tightened at my success.

But what now?

"You little- What the hell have you done?"

I gestured to the faded rug. "Bound you to the pentagram. You cannot leave unless I release you."

The angel gritted his teeth. "So, release me, witch, or you will feel the full wrath of the Angel of Death."

I tilted my head, narrowing my eyes. It's possible his words would have struck fear into the heart of someone with less to lose. But as it were...My head turned to the bed and that's when it hit. A winding thud in the chest so violent it could have been a lightning bolt sent from heaven itself.