Steam and the stink of battery acid clogged Jen’s nose. She opened her eyes but the exhaust stung them to tears. Everything blurred.

Manny? Where’s Manny?

Jen’s vision spun worse than her head. She managed to glance toward the driver’s side, barely registering the full moon outside the window or the crumpled metal and broken glass that used to be the front of the car.

She found Manny. Her boyfriend lay limp against the steering wheel. The last minute, toilet-paper bandages of his mummy costume hung listlessly from his arms. He smelled like one too many beers and bright blood leaked from the crack in his head. Black clumps of hair made cowlicks around the wound. His dark eyes stared right through her, unblinking.

Jen reached over to shake Manny. A stabbing pain between her shoulder and neck stopped her halfway. Her collarbone hadn’t held up under the strain of the impact between her body and her seat belt. The massive airbag sagging over the dashboard must have prevented her from the same fate as her boyfriend. She used her other hand to feel around for the seat-belt latch. She had to find a nearby house or gas station with a phone so she could dial 9-1-1.

Another sharp pain stopped her, this one from her swollen stomach.

The baby!

Only seven or eight months along, she counted in her head, still too early. Her heart beat in her ears as she clawed for that latch. The plastic black wig that had come with her Cleopatra costume fell away from her sandy blonde hair and into her eyes. She tried using her other hand to help tug the thing off. Another sharp spasm from her collarbone made her see flashing white spots. Trapped under that seat belt, her breathing picked up near the point of hyperventilation. Gruesome pictures of Manny’s empty face flashed in her mind, then more of a bloodied fetus slipping down between her legs, a red stain blossoming around the lifeless lump.

“Quite a grim situation you have here,” a stranger said with an odd accent that echoed two languages at once. The woman’s hair flowed down her back in waves and its color matched the fresh blood running across Manny’s face. She wore a sheer white dress that draped over every slender curve of her body, its train pooling around her bare feet. A dark chain bracelet dangled from each of her wrists.

Jen hugged her stomach as her panic settled some. “Thank God. I-I need a hospital. Please go find a payphone or…or something.”

“I doubt the girl will be alive for much longer if I do that. I wonder what she would have looked like.” The tall woman bent over to peek through the shattered windshield. She focused on Jen’s stomach, her ethereal gray and silver eyes turning down and her slitted pupils widening with interest.

“How’d you know it was a girl?” Jen froze and only then noticed the way the woman’s skin glowed. It illuminated the space around them as it accentuated her creamy complexion and narrow features.

The stranger’s full mouth turned up in a knowing smile.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Jen gave her savior a second once over. Everything about her seemed to fit together without a single flaw and she’d appeared in the nick of time. “Are you an angel?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Her smile tightened to a line. The skin at the corners of her lips didn’t wrinkle like it should.

“Am I dead?” New tears prickled in Jen’s eyes.

“I am not here to deliver you to any afterlife. My purpose is to grant your requests, your heart’s desires.” She tapped her nail on Jen’s stomach. “Perform any special favors you might need.”

“Manny and the baby,” Jen begged. “Save them, please.”

“It is a little too late for him, dearie.” The woman waved toward Manny’s body. His arms still dangled from the steering wheel and red drenched his white t-shirt. “I am afraid you should have acted sooner for him. Any more puttering around and the child will share his fate.”

Another contraction tore through Jen.

“No, help her,” Jen cried. “I’ll do anything!”

“Anything? I can work with that.” She set her palm on Jen’s belly. An eerie calm settled over the teenager.

“Your name, girl?”

“Jennifer Diaz.” The pain dulled to a tolerable ache and Jen’s mind cleared. “What do I have to do?”

“I am Riona of Bri Leith,” the woman said, her tone losing all sarcasm or sweetness. “In exchange for making your child well, you must promise me something in return.”

“Of course. Anything.”

“I seek you and your daughter coming home with me.”

Jen flinched back into her seat. Her collarbone throbbed, but not enough for her to notice under the angel’s strange touch. She shook her head.

“This is not a dire punishment, but a blessing,” Riona said. “I would take you and the child to my homeland, let you raise her. Where I come from is a beautiful place with every pleasure you can imagine and more. Both of you would live forever in rolling green hills among lords and ladies, palaces and grand courts. She could learn the ways of magic, of the earth and its children.”

“But I don’t even know you.” Jen thought of all the homes she had seen since her single mother’s arrest. She’d always had a packed suitcase under her bed, just in case. “Manny’s mom let me live with them. She’s supposed to help with the baby. Why do we have to go with you?”

“It is the way of these things,” Riona said. “To get something of this value, you must give up something equivalent in return.”

“No. I’m staying here and so is she.”

“Fine. You have made it clear you want to stay in this world and rot. What about your daughter? You still want her to live, do you not?” Riona narrowed her steely eyes and lifted her hand away from Jen for a second. “You said you would grant me anything.”

Another contraction shot through the teenager. Needles upon needles stabbed into her stomach. An invisible vice squeezed her middle until she wanted to pop like a piece of ripe fruit. Nothing existed but that pain and she would have done anything to end it.

Jen whimpered and ground her teeth together.

“So, do we have a deal?”

She nodded.

“I, Riona of Bri Leith, hereby heal this babe and her mother of any infirmities or ill effects this untimely tragedy has rent upon them. In exchange, you, Jennifer Diaz, will surrender your daughter into my care when I come to collect her.” A blinding white light trailed down Riona’s arm and engulfed Jen.

Jen’s skin buzzed like an electric current ran through her veins. The two parts of her collarbone crawled into place, two halves of a worm fusing back together. Her stomach bulged even more as the growing baby girl kicked and swiveled around in the confined womb. Jen clutched the edges of the passenger seat as she cried and squirmed against all of it. The radiance faded to nothing and the sensations eased with it.

“It is done.” The “angel” stepped back from the window. “Be sure you are ready when I return. I would hate for all of my hard work to undo itself over a broken bargain.”

The instant Riona moved away, the contractions returned with a vengeance. Jen screamed with the suddenness of it and squeezed her eyes shut. When the spasm settled, she looked around, only to find that Riona of Bri Leith had vanished without a trace.