The Devil's Mate

Chapter 12

Dressed in a royal blue A-line, floor-length dress that has a leg slit in the side that allows my legs to breathe as I sit in this Garden that has just about every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food on Earth and two trees that are singled out towards my right. Despite my hair tied back in a low ponytail in a bunch of soft curls, I can't help but feel a little bead of sweat roll down the length of my neck thanks to the blue laced butterfly sleeved sweetheart necklined bodice.

I wish I had a good explanation of how I went from being in bed in my pyjamas with Dominic to being dressed in a floor lengthed dress and barefoot in a garden, eating snacks across a table with a blue-eyed angel with wavy black hair and cloud white skin dressed similarly to me in the way that we're both wearing floor-length dresses except that her's is in blush and isn't low backed like mine.

"My husband has no perception of privacy when it comes to his older brother," She says an hour into our silence since we were led to the Garden. "His excuse is that his brother doesn't mind and I am certain it's the same excuse he will give me later when they come to get us."

"Don't worry," I reassure her, taking a sip of my second cup of tea for the day. "When he burst into our room this morning, Dominic threw him out of the room shortly after he got over the shock of him appearing in Hell. Whatever they're doing, your husband must be regretting getting Dominic on board."

"I agree," she laughs, taking a bite of a piece of dark chocolate from the platter of various fruits, biscuits, cheeses and scones with their respective condiments in front of us. "He's probably torturing Joshua right now for ruining his first free weekend in a very long time."

Laughing a little bit uncomfortably at her last statement, I can't seem to recall her name for that one moment as my mind focuses on her words resulting in me saying distractedly, "Sorry, I can't seem to remember your name."

"Theresa," She offers amusedly, popping another piece of dark chocolate into her mouth. "Correct me if I'm not wrong but when Joshua was introducing me to you earlier, you seemed to be in a world of your own."

Nodding in response, I reply, "Yeah, I was being sulky about being in a floor-length dress and barefoot on the soil. It didn't make sense to me but Dominic assured me that he'll be back for me in an hour or so at most."

"It's already past an hour," she smiles, shaking her head. "Shall we go for a walk?"

"Can we?" I ask her enthusiastically, wanting more than anything to get off of this armchair in the middle of this Garden. "My legs have fallen asleep."

Theresa rises from her seat with the regality of a Queen, the skirt of her dress dragging behind her in an effortless way which gives her the effect of floating off the ground. I, on the other hand, wobble on my feet like an unsteady newborn calf and I hold onto the table for support for a few seconds while the blood returns to my legs.

Offering me her arm, I give her a grateful smile as I hold the plate of snack while she guides us out of the Garden telling me that it would be much cooler in the home that she resides in, telling me that the men can find us there if they knew us.

In a short distance away from the Garden, a soft stone grey chateau with slate cone shapes projecting into the light blue sky are the inspiration to every princess storybook I ever read as a little girl. It stands in the soft french sunlight as perfectly lit up. The white mullioned windows, revealed by the open wooden shutters, are spotless.

My mouth is agape when we enter the mansion of which the interior is focused around a large central hallway serving as the main avenue of traffic and entrance area to the adjacent rooms. The hallway flows into a large, wide staircase that provides the main means of egress from the entertainment area of the house to the private rooms on the second floor. On the first floor, the hallway and front parlour where we move into to continue our little 'tea party'.

"This mansion is like night and day to Helmsley mansion," I murmur in awe as I take in my surroundings. 

"I've never been to Helmsley mansion," she informs me with a slight sadness in her tone. "Portal travel has always been difficult for me, nausea from the spinning was horrible and that was just between Earth and Heaven. I can't bear to imagine what Heaven to Hell portal travel would be like considering it's much farther away than Earth."

Not bring able to understand what she means since I haven't taken portal travel as she calls it yet since Dominic choose to use those flames that transported us from the sidewalk on Earth to Hell to take us to Heaven once he made sure his younger brother stepped through the portal to Heaven.

"If it is as bad as you make it be, I hope I never have to travel via a portal," I tell her, making her laugh as I try to think of a way to ask her a question that's been nagging at me since we met. "I hope you don't get offended by this but what are you? If Joshua is Jesus and God's second son in the bible..."

"I'm an Angel," Theresa smiles, taking another piece of chocolate. "I followed him to Earth back then to make sure he didn't do too much which would have scared the humans. In all honesty, I had a crush on his way before he went to Earth and I volunteered to go with mainly because I wanted to get closer to him. Who knew we'd be mates after his coming of age ceremony. Heck, if I had known, I wouldn't have put in so much effort into being with him as much as I could."

As I am about to tell her that her story is very nice, I pause with my mouth open as I hear a low whistling sound coming from the french window behind her. Straining my ears a little to try to identify the sound, I end up seeing a sharp arrow tip whizzing through the air in the direction of the back of Teresa's head.

With the arrow quickly approaching the glass windows, I have less than a second to tackle her to the ground in the hopes that either the arrow impales my arm or it misses us both entirely. The shattering of the glass panes makes us both scream as we cover our eyes with our arms to protect ourselves from the sharp shards of falling glass.

The arrow in question impales itself in the platter of snacks, breaking the glass plate into pieces. Getting off of Theresa once I feel no more glass falling on us, I inspect the tail of the arrow which has a slip of white cloth with some strange symbols written on it.

Reaching out to pull the cloth form the arrow, I nearly scream when a large cold hand wraps itself around my wrist barely stopping me from touching it. Dominic shakes his head at me when I look up at him inquisitively, murmuring some Latin I see a dark shadow surrounding the white cloth.

What's that? I frown, peering at the shadow.

"Dark magic," Dominic tells me as though reading my mind. "It's the magic of ordinary humans."