I couldn't have been more pleased than when I got a surprise from the amazingly talented A-Marie Walter of
www.estetikaexposure.com late last night. She emailed the final cover for
WAR ANGEL II: Where Angels Fear to Tread. (I actually woke my kids up to take a look) I haven't stopped working to finish the novel or smiling since. As promised, here's the sneak peek I promised for today and as a bonus, I'm also sharing the cover. As always, feel free to leave comments and feedback. (Please pardon any typos.) Enjoy.
WAR ANGEL II
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Copyright © 2013 Keith Kareem Williams
All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1 – The 7th Month
Such secluded, charming, rustic tranquility was
supposed to be relaxing but all it really did was make Jahaira ache for the
familiar ruckus of the places she was used to. The gentle hush of the evening
hours probably brought a certain kind of comfort to people who sought peace but
she was more inclined to compare it to being trapped in a padded room. Only the
muted symphony of insects and critters merrily making their noises disturbed
the silence so as quiet as it was, her new home happened to be very crawly.
They had purchased the country house in the dead of winter so they had no idea
how alive the place would become because everything crawled, scampered,
flew or slithered had been hiding from the bitter cold. Things were very
different now that the summer heat had put its lips to the ground and kissed
the countryside, as she liked to call the lonely suburbs where they
lived now. After weeks of warm weather, it was still unsettling for a woman who
had been raised in a much more urban environment, caged in by towering
buildings and rocked to sleep by all of the sounds of insomniac streets since
she was a baby. Never in her life would she have ever believed that she could
desperately long for the screeching, twisted metal screams of traffic accidents,
the violent swearing that accompanied a good street fight, or the wails of
police cars and fire truck sirens. Trying to guess what types of bugs buzzed
around was a sharp contrast to trying to tell the difference between cars
backfiring, fireworks or gunshots. Living in such seclusion was way too strange
for her to ever get used to. Country Life was not for her. She was
slightly ashamed to admit that she missed walking down crowded streets,
surrounded by people trying to keep up with the latest fashion and shopping til
she dropped. In less than a New York City minute she would have traded the
flying pests that constantly dined on her flesh for a fearless, subway rat or a
super-sized cockroach or two. She guessed that city girl must have been
a delicacy to them the way they attacked her. She imagined how messy she must
have looked, caught outside in the cruel embrace of the sweltering heat,
sitting on her porch in her sunflower-yellow summer dress, barefoot and
pregnant with sweat trickling down the middle of her back.
“Ouch!” she cried out as some sneaky, flying thing
bit her on the left side of her neck.
With a lightning-quick, heavy-handed slap, she
flattened the bug’s body into a messy mangle of crushed wings and broken,
spindly legs. That was your last meal buddy, she thought as she scraped
what was left of it off of her neck. After wiping her hand clean of the bug
goop on the hem of her dress, she turned her attention back to the huge, untidy
front yard and the lonely road beyond it that led up to the house. The
fireflies’ butts lit up, turning off and on in random intervals as they hovered
like helicopters, just above the grass she kept asking Lenox to cut, in their
beautiful aerial ballet. As she watched them, they reminded her of lazy
afternoons spent in the backyard of her parents’ house in the summertime. Even
in the middle of the city, the fireflies had danced there as well. She wondered
if any still showed up to glow above the charred ruins that had once been her
home. She was still conflicted and confused about how she should feel about her
mother burning to death in that house. Carmen had done her fair share of wicked
things but that was not the end Jahaira would have wished on her. The familiar sound
of Lenox’s car coming up the road made her heart flutter and pulled her away
from melancholy thoughts of that could not be undone.
She was sure that every mosquito for miles must
have choked to death on the powder-white smoke that spewed from the old, black
Mustang’s exhaust. After spending hours that actually felt like days alone, she
was almost giddy that he was finally home. Lately, she had also had the
unmistakable feeling of unseen eyes on her whenever she was outside the house.
She sighed, relieved when he parked in front of the house.
“I still don’t see why you didn’t buy a better car
than that old piece of shit on four wheels. You’re lucky that it even makes it
down to the city and back without breaking down,” Jahaira coughed as he got out
of the car and walked towards her.
“We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile out
here. How inconspicuous would a young black guy in an eighty thousand-dollar
car be? Our friendly neighbors would have the local cops pulling me over
every night on my way home, searching my trunk for drugs or mistakin’ me for their
kids’ favorite rapper and askin’ for my autograph,” he joked before he leaned
down to playfully kiss her on the nose. He thought it was cute how chubby her
face had become over the past few months.
“Neopolitan again?” she complained after she looked
inside the plastic grocery store bag he handed her.
“Well, ‘round these here parts we only gots us a
gas station convenience store lil lady and there ain’ts too much to choose
from,” he answered in a fake hillbilly accent. “Now, if someone had
asked for ice cream while I was still down in the city, before I was almost
home, I might have been able to get that person whatever flavor they wanted
from a real supermarket.”
“I know, I know…but I get my cravings at weird
times,” she answered.
“No one knows that better than me.”
“Oh shut it. You love being my little errand boy,”
she giggled.
“Let’s get off this porch before these bugs eat us
alive,” he said as he swatted at a mosquito the size of a fighter jet that
seemed intent on landing on his forehead.
He held her hand and helped her to her feet. Even
under her loose-fitting dress, he saw that her belly was huge and loved her
even more because she carried his unborn child. She groaned as she walked with
her own palm pressed against her lower back because of the consistent
discomfort and agonizing aches. Just before she waddled in side behind him, she
could have sworn that someone was in the bushes, just beyond their front yard.
She looked back over her shoulder before Lenox closed their front door but
whatever, or whoever it might have been was gone.
“What’s wrong?” Lenox asked.
“Nothing,” she answered. “It’s this heat. I think
it’s playing with my mind.”
***
“So, how’s business?” Jahaira asked as she used her
spoon to carefully scoop out only the strawberry ice cream into her favorite,
rainbow-colored bowl. She wasn’t in the mood for the chocolate or the vanilla.
“Business is good. Some music video vixen chick’s sugar
daddy rented four limos for her birthday bash at one of the big strip clubs
in Manhattan. The cheap, arrogant, dickhead felt like I didn’t give him a big
enough discount so he was about to look for another company but Emily handled
it. She worked out a deal on bottle service for him with the strip club owner
so he changed his mind and stayed with us. You know, she sat behind that
receptionist’s desk at the office for years but I probably could have let her
run the whole place for me a long time ago. She’s good at it and people like
her.”
“Well, that’s great. That means that once the baby
comes you can be here with me and leave her in charge, at least for a little
while.”
“Awww, you’re so sweet. You really do miss me when
I’m gone don’t you?”
“I do,” she mumbled with a mouthful of the blandest
strawberry ice cream she had ever tasted. “It’s lonely and boring being here by
myself. It drives me crazy.”
“I’ve been thinking about hiring a nurse to stay
with you.”
“I don’t need a nursemaid. I’m not an old lady,”
she complained.
“But you ARE pregnant and you could use the help.”
“I already have help. I have you. I’m not sure
about how I feel about a stranger living with us.”
“Yeah, I understand that but if the baby comes
early, or something goes wrong, we’re really far from the hospital. I would
feel much better if someone was here with you that could help out medically in
case of an emergency.”
“Fine, but no creepy old ladies.”
“Definitely not!”
“And no hot, young chicks with big butts either. I
know what you like Mister,” she said as she got up from the kitchen table,
turned around and slapped her own butt.
“Dammit! I never get to have any fun. Why you gotta
go and ruin my plans?” he joked.
“Shut up,” she laughed. “C’mon, let’s go take a
bath.”
***
The enormous bathroom was one of the few things
that Jahaira actually liked about their new home and she really loved the huge,
white, antique, claw-footed bathtub which was a welcomed change from the tiny
shower in the apartment in Brooklyn. The lovers fit together comfortably in the
old-fashioned, vintage tub. She stretched her legs out all the way to Lenox’s
chest so he could massage her swollen feet. Pregnancy had not been very kind to
her and she suffered since she had discovered that she was with child.
The nausea hadn’t gone away like her obstetrician had promised. Besides
that, her feet and back ached constantly without mercy. Occasionally she would
cry while looking in the mirror because of how round and bulbous her nose had
become, almost as if it was trying to match her chunky, chipmunk cheeks. Lenox
loved to pinch her face but she prayed that after the baby was born she could
lose all of the weight she had grudgingly gained. It felt like wishful thinking
because she didn’t see how her body could ever go back to being what it was.
She was certain that the stretch marks were there to stay. She sighed, closed her
eyes and concentrated on her foot massage. His hands caressing away the pain in
the soles of her feet felt almost as good as sex. On most days, they hurt so
badly that she tried not to walk anywhere unless she absolutely had to. If he
kept making her feel as good as he was, she was going to give him some
after their bath, big belly or not. Her engorged boobs had grown at least a
whole cup size and it hurt when anything touched her nipples so, if they did
have sex later on, she wasn’t going to let him suck on them.
Jon, Maragaret chance, Wolf, Caesar, Anna and Hector
were the names on Lenox’s mind as he rubbed Jahaira’s feet, eternally written
in red ink in his ledger. Some had deserved their final fate more than others.
He didn’t include Carmen on that list because technically, he hadn’t been
directly, or indirectly, involved in her death. No one was entirely sure how
she met her fiery demise and mysteriously burned up in her own house but he was
pretty damn sure that Hector had a hand in that bit of vicious business. As for
as the others, he sometimes saw their faces in his dreams but he did not fear
them. They were only ghosts that lived in the part of his mind that controlled
guilt. The people who hadn’t been sent screaming to the afterlife were the ones
that frightened him. Anya and Anika, Jahaira’s twin aunts were still very much
alive and that concerned him a great deal. He was sure that somewhere, they
were laying low, licking their wounds, concocting some unholy plan to take
revenge for their older sister’s death. That was why he purchased a house so
far outside of the city. It was thoughts of those two pale demons that kept him
up at night. That pair of witches was responsible for every unexplained chill
he felt. Inside the shadows of every dark corner, he thought he saw their eerie
blue eyes watching him and half-expected their cold hands to claw at his ankles
from under the bed like some horror concocted in a child’s nightmares. No
matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he and Jahaira were safe,
that they had escaped, deep down he believed that it was only a matter of time
before the twins tracked them down. When they did, he would kill them before he
let them harm Jahaira or the baby.
“I miss Granny,” said Jahaira as she rinsed the
soap from her shoulder with her washcloth. “Did you get a chance to check on
her today?”
“I did. She’s grateful that you wanted to give her
the insurance money from the fire at your parents’ house but she said that you
should keep it for the baby.”
“I don’t want any of that money.”
“That’s what I told her but she insisted. You know
how stubborn your grandmother is. Anyway, I eventually got her to accept the
check but she said that as soon as we decide on a name, she’s going to open a
bank account for the baby.”
“And speaking of naming our little bundle of joy,
when are we going to?” Jahaira asked.
“After he or she is born,” he answered.
“Well, I’ve been thinking of names and I’ve come up
with the perfect one. I want to name the baby…” she started to say.
“Shush!” he cut her off.
“But why? I really want to tell you.”
“And I told you that I don’t want to know if it’s a
boy or girl until AFTER you give birth. I understand that they already told you
the baby’s sex after the sonogram but I want to be surprised.”
“You’re so stubborn, AND weird,” she growled,
shaking her head, annoyed that he wouldn’t let her share the big secret
with him.
“But that’s why you love me,” he answered and
playfully splashed water in her face.
“Because of you, I have to be buying all of the
baby stuff in duck yellow or that awful pistachio green.”
“Our little one is growing inside you. You’re
connected to our child and you can feel the baby every day. I just want to be
surprised when the day comes that I finally meet my son or daughter face-to-face.
I want to hear the doctor say, ‘It’s a girl’ or ‘It’s a boy.’ I
want to experience that, especially with my first child.”
“You can be so soft and sentimental sometimes.”
“But that’s another reason why you love me.”
“That’s true,” she answered, standing up and
carefully stepping out of the tub. “Come, let’s go to bed,” she said as she
wrapped herself in her favorite fluffy towel.
***
In the bedroom, Lenox started to step into one of
the pairs of basketball shorts he usually slept in but Jahaira stopped him. She
kissed him like a wild woman which totally caught him by surprise because for
the last few weeks, she had been uncharacteristically, sexually passive. When
she pulled her lips away from his, she climbed up on the mattress and bent over
so that he could take her from behind. Her belly got in the way in most other
positions but she didn’t mind doing it like that and as unladylike as it may
have sounded, doggy-style was one of her favorite sexual positions anyway.
“Not too rough. Remember what the doctor said. I
don’t want to go into labor,” she reminded him.
“I’ll be gentle,” he answered and then slowly
worked his way inside her.
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