Chapter 10

Augustine's pov

I don't stalk humans, especially women. I may be a death reaper but I'm not a hunter. I don't follow humans unless they are my target and I have orders to haul their soul back for judgement.

But I had no choice with her. I followed her, watched her, stalked her. I found out her name was Jade and she seemed to suffer from a lot of anxiety and childhood traumas.

Her mind was a constant tornado of chaos that I tried not to listen to it at all. Although I could not help it when her thoughts leak out. Sometimes her mind is so loud that she may as well be screaming everything.

She gets especially bad at night.

I made efforts to calm her down whenever I'm around. Honestly, I hate listening to the demons inside human's minds. The way their own thoughts haunted and tormented them. That's gotta be hard.

I felt bad that she's suffering the way she does.

Jade slept restlessly just as she did every night. I loomed over watching her, I don't even know why I watch her so closely. This is not something I do, this is what guardian angels does, they whisper and influence human's thoughts. They are a completely different kind of angels, different department, different job, not at all like me.

I'm not knocking it, but hauling humans for judgement is way harder than whispering and protecting. All guardian angels does is whisper while death reapers like me are the opposite, we take human lives and reap their souls out. We do not protect, we kill.

Jade shifted in her sleep, drawing my attention to her.

I think she can feel me because she kept yanking her head up, waking up out of nowhere and looking around, like she knew someone is in the bedroom with her.

She purred in her sleep and I knew she's deep asleep right now. Nights like this is when her nightmares get bad.

I stood by her bedside, loomed over like I usually am, feeling her nightmare about to rise when I calmed her soul down. I stopped her nightmare before it even began.

She shifted, her face relaxed and I could see the relief she had even as she slept. This is the first time I interfered like this and I wished I hadn't because using just a little bit of my influence was enough to stir her.

She woke up, her eyes snapped open and looked right at me. She stared at me catching me off guard. It caught me by surprise that it took a minute for me to even react.

I hate when this happens. It was unexpected and I was unprepared. She stared at me while I stared right back at her.

It was me who quickly snapped out and faded into the darkness. But it was too late because she already saw me and this counted as the third time she'd seen me. Counting the day we met, the incident this afternoon, and now, this.

A little too many for a human to see the same angel over and over. I know I'm frightening her now, I must have.

I need to do something, I got to do something. I didn't want to kill her. I almost killed her this afternoon luring her to the traffic, but I didn't want to do that again.

I need to come up with something different, something safe, something more human.