The Daughter, C.B. Cooper [ink book reader TXT] 📗

said. "The look on your face— that was priceless," she cackled.
Sam turned back to where Gracie had been just moments before. The spot was now empty.
Frantically, he began searching for his clothes, only to discover he was already fully dressed.
"I'm sorry." she chuckled, "That was mean, but I just couldn’t help myself."
Jumping to his feet, Sam spun on her, "You! What do you want." he spit, mad and confused all at the same time. His dream had went from wonderful to wicked in a split second and he was still reeling.
"What I wanted, Reverend

," she smiled, "was to know exactly how it was, that you, were Gracie's father. And now I know."
He didn’t know how, but Angel was obviously controlling his dream. He realized that now, that it was just a dream. His thoughts were flying inside his head, but he quickly caught up speed. Narrowing his eyes, he asked, "If your really in Gracie's body, wouldn’t you already know how I'm her father?"
She was still smiling, her dark eyes flashing in the last rays of sunlight, right before sunset. "And how would I know that, Reverend, when she didn’t know it herself?"
Angel walked toward him, the edges of her black duster fluttering in the gentle breeze.
Sharp was finally starting to feel like himself again— and he mad. If she really was responsible for what had just happened, it was a sick, cruel, joke.
She stopped before him, watching him curiously. "Why didn’t you ever tell her?"
Sharp's face was a mask of stone. There were times, like now, when he himself wasn’t sure if she was still his Gracie, or just some being that looked like her. For the time being, he decided to play along. "Because it wasn’t my place. She had a daddy who raised her, loved her."
"And yet… you loved her also?"
"Yes. Yes I did."
Angel cocked her head. "You wanted to spare her feelings," she said matter-of-factly.
"Yes."
"Interesting," she murmured.
He was fully in the present now, and he had questions of his own. "Why did you kill those people back there at that farm?"
Angel shrugged her shoulders, "You seen the girl. What would you have done?"
"Probably the same thing."
Angel smiled as she studied his eyes, "Yes. Yes you would have."
"But my question is, why did you? If your so hell bent on getting the men that killed Gracie and her father, why would you take the time to help that girl out?"
Her black eyes blazed in the sunset light, "Opportunity. And because they were killing her. Not just physically, but mentally. I could feel her pain from miles away, it was like a beacon of sorrow in the night— that's what drew me to that farm. To her. Every day she dying a little more at the hands of those, monsters." She smiled once again, "But I saved her. And they will never be able to hurt her again."
Now this was something that Sharp could understand. But he still had questions.
"There's something else I've been trying to figure out."
"And what is that, Reverend?"
"What are you?" he asked sincerely. "Are you a demon? Are you an angel? The last time I saw you, you said that you were Death. What does that mean exactly? Who's side are you on?"
She laughed, "Side? I'm not on anyones side. You know, you'd get along in this world a lot better if you'd only realize that everything is not just black and white. The world is full of grey, and even in that grey, there are varying shades. You think of white as God, and black as the devil. Well, I am somewhere in between. I guess you could say that I am grey."
Sharp studied her, taking in what she said. "I see what your saying, but who created you? Who created the grey? Where did you come from?"
"Do you really want to know? "
"Yes. I really want to know."
Mist began swirling around their feet, swirling and spreading until everything was a grayish white.
"A long time ago, God had a favorite child." Angel began, "She was beautiful, modest, kind, and as pure as the driven snow. The devil also had a favorite. A man. The evilest, most vilest man to ever walk the earth. Then, one day, the two met by chance. The man stole the little girl and took her high up to the top of a mountain to his cabin, and began doing what he did best— torturing her. God was angry. As angry as he had ever been, and the devil was delighted..."
Through the mist, Sharp could see the outline of a tall mountain in the distance. As he watched, a dark storm gathered over the top, lightening flashed, searing the sky with purple jagged bolts. He could even hear the faint rumble of thunder.
"God's presence was in that cabin. He held his child's hand while she screamed in pain and called out his name, day in and day out.
But the devil was there also. Whispering dark things in the man's ear, urging him on, giving him new ideas on ways to torture God's favorite child. While outside, God's anger and the devil's delight combined, creating the perfect storm.
As the days stretched on, the storm grew in strength and mass, flooding the lands below, far and wide. Thunder and lightening crashed as the waters rose above their banks filling the valley's for as far as the eye could see and beyond.
For forty days and forty nights it went on, until finally, the girl succumbed to her injuries and she died."
Sharp asked incredibly, "Are you talking about the Big Flood? Noah's Ark and all of that?"
"That’s the one."
"Holy…" he breathed. He tore his eyes away from the picture being played in the mist, "But, where do you come in?"
"I come in right there,"she said, pointing to the swirling black clouds. "I was created in the eye of that storm, and I grew, fed by the storms energy. By the time the girl died, I was there, ready to take her place.
God left, taking her soul with him and turned his back on the man, the devil, and me."
"And you killed the man?"
"Yes."
"So, you were created by God, to seek his revenge?"
"Nooo. The storm was created by both sides, I was created by both sides. A new shade of grey."
As Sharp looked down at her, his eyes softened, "The Grey Angel."
She smiled and rolled her eyes, "I suppose so."
The fog instantly lifted, revealing the tree once again.
Looking past Sharp's shoulder, Angel nodded, "That one right there, was the worst, you know."
Turning, he saw that Loretta was back. She was muddy this time, her clothes ripped to sheds, and she was tied to a post, rooted in the ground.
"Loretta?"
"Yes. She tortured Gracie from the moment she was born."
Something in Angel's voice made Sam's throat go dry and the fine hairs rose on the back of his neck. "What's she doing here?" he whispered.
"Lets just say… Someone owed me a favor."
Loretta's face was a mask of fear. Her eyes wild, tears streamed down her face, soaking into the rag that bound her mouth. She was scared. Scared to death

.
Sharp shivered. His voice barely a whisper, he asked, "What are you going to do to her?"
Angel smiled, her lips curling at the corners, "What I do best, of course. What I was made

to do."
Sam wanted to run away. Everything in his gut, said to turn and run as far away and as fast away as he could. But his feet were planted in place. They felt like they weighed a thousand pounds.
He watched Angel advance towards Loretta. Above them, the clouds churned, turning from a fluffy white, to a pitch black boiling mass.
He couldn’t see Angel's face, but Loretta's reaction told him that her appeance had changed.
Loretta's eyes went from scared dumb, to complete terror as she fought frantically against the ropes that bound her.
Angel stood before her for a minute, then she leaned forward to whisper in her ear.
Loretta's head started shaking, slowly at first, then faster and faster, the longer Angel spoke.
Sharp watched tears of blood, well, then course down her cheeks, staining her delicate skin a violent red, down to her throat where it met the red rivers that poured from her ears.
When Angel was done talking she stood, positioning herself in front of Loretta. Raising a clawed hand, she sliced her fingers down and across Loretta's abdomen.
The tear in her stomach slowly turned black with oozing blood, then spilled down the front of her. With one sickening, squishy tearing sound, her intestines spilled out onto the ground. Then Gracie stepped forward and jammed her arm into Loretta's abdomen, ramming her fist upward. In one lightening fast motion she ripped her arm back out, a beating, quivering heart, filling her bloody hand.
She turned just then, showing Sharp her razor sharp teeth when she smiled at him.
She turned her head again and sunk her teeth into the still beating heart.
Sharp screamed, sitting bolt right up in his blanket.
His heart was hammering in his chest, and his head ached from all of the terrible images trapped inside it.
From above he heard a deep rumble.
The dark sky churned above them and lightening lit the sky, washing the camp in a strange electric purple color. In the light, Sharp caught a glimpse of Angel, standing not to far away beneath a tree. Jumping instinctively, he grabbed for his rifle that lay by his side, but when he trained a bead at where she had been… she was gone.


Sam threw his cards on the table. "I fold."
Zeb smiled as he raked the pile of matchsticks towards him. "Boy, if these were dollars, I'd be rich."
Sam stretched, working the knots out his shoulders, "And I'd be in the damn poorhouse. How is it you win so many hands?"
Zeb chuckled, shuffling the cards for another round. "It aint nothing but the luck of the mountain men."
"Oh really? And here I always heard that the mountain men weren't very lucky."
Zeb shook his head while he passed out the cards, "We aint very lucky when it comes to some things. Love being one of them," he laughed. "They just don’t make women hearty enough to withstand the solitary life of a mountain man."
Sam frowned over his crappy hand, "I thought you said you were married before. To a few different women, I believe."
"Oh, I was. To squaws. Really ugly squaws, as a matter of fact." He scratched his grizzly beard, then grabbed a card off of the pile in the middle of the table. "But I always wanted me a white women. One that dressed all pretty, with frilly bows and ruffles, and a smile as wide as the Mississippi River and cleavage as deep as a mountain gorge. One with creamy, white, soft skin that smelled like lilacs' on a spring morning'. One that a man could make love to with the lights on." He absently rearranged the cards in his hands while he spoke. "But, no sir, there ain't no woman like that, that wants to live her life with a grubby old mountain man, wondering across the hills and valleys with no particular place to call home." He slapped down a full house.
"Oh, your breaking my goddamn heart." Sam growled as he threw his useless hand down on the table. "I give up."
Zeb chuckled sadly, "Yeah, me too."
Sam looked around at the newly constructed saloon.