• Please make sure that if you have not read the segments previous this one that you do so before reading the below entery. Also, check out the newer entires. Make sure you go in order! n.n

    Here are the links to the other sections that came before and after this one:

    Prolog
    Part One <--- You Are Here
    Part Two

    Somewhere, seemingly far off, Vivian heard the sound of drums beating. Not only did she hear them, but also she felt them. It was as though they were throbbing beneath her skin. Her head and body were pounding to the same rhythm as the drums she couldn’t see. Of course she couldn’t see them because, one: her eyes were closed, and two: they weren’t there.

    Unmoving, barely breathing, Vivian lay on the cold hard ground with her eyes closed tightly. She realized that the beating was the pulsating of her own aching muscles. Tentatively she flexed her fingers. Searing pain followed by utter blackness and the sensation of floating accompanied the movement.

    She let the shadows swirl around her. Ebbing and flowing like cool ocean water—only she was unafraid of drowning. Pleasant tendrils of the darkness brushed her skin and danced with her hair. She floated there, in complete content to never leave. Twisting this way and that she waltzed with the cool black mist.

    Turning, Vivian saw another dancing figure in the haze. She smiled as the figure of a man held out his hand to her. Fearlessly, and happily really, she took the hand and was drawn into the man’s chest. He held her in a tender embrace and she smiled. Even though she could not make out the features and details of the man she knew whom he was.

    “I knew you’d come back…” She murmured softly, her voice a combination of many. “I knew they couldn’t take you…Kai…”

    A smile—blinding, white as day—tugged at the lips of the man. His eyes were shadowed, his feature blending into the blackness. It began as a sweet smile but quickly turned twisted and cruel. He gripped Vivian tightly and turned her sharply so that her back was against his chest.

    The shot rang out! The vibration from it crawling under her skin. There was an explosion in Vivian’s back that found its way out through her stomach. Something—a bullet?—ricocheted off of her ribs. It was as if time slowed to a crawl at that moment. Her bones splintered within her and jutted through her muscles. She could feel every puncture that occurred and it happened very slowly. Shock and disbelief contorted her features.

    Looking down, she was able to watch as the shards of bone leisurely pushed out of her skin. They were like needles stitching her up, only they were leaving her flesh. When they exited completely, they kept moving, just as gradually, out and away from her body. Small fountains of the electric blue liquid that was her blood followed the bones. (She was the only angel in existence who bled blue blood, to her knowledge.)

    Where her belly button used to be there was a large gaping crater in its place. Scattered pieces of muscle and flesh and bits of bone hung suspended in the air in front of her stomach. Blood was frozen in what seemed to be a never-ending spray, mixing in with the other odds and ends of her shattered body. And then time was moving again.

    Over the remains of her now no longer stylishly destroyed shirt, a blue flower bloomed slowly. It crept across the material, seeping in, imprinting itself there. Pain couldn’t even be registered at this point. She gazed at the dripping strips of remaining flesh that still clung to her stomach and then dropped like a rag doll onto the ground. The man who had been holding her disappeared.