Fall From Grace (3 page)

“
You're
a
supernatural,” she pointed out.

He shrugged,
“Exactly. That's how I know. Anyway, I dropped the bar and scooped
you up. What with those damn wings and all, you're a two-handed
sort of woman.”

“And how did we
manage to escape from a Fallen? You are just a Reaper.”

“I'll ignore that slur on my powers.” He held up a wide
bracelet on one wrist, a collection of amber beads and what looked
like metal amulets ringing it. The whole thing seemed burned and
blackened, as if by fire. “This amulet is capable of shrouding me,
us as it turned out
,
from just about anything for a time. A
short
time. When there is a Fallen
involved, it pays to take a few precautions, no matter what side
you or they are on. One time use only, I'm afraid.”

Pulling the thing
off, he tossed the amulet in the wastebasket.

“You
were
expecting
him?”

There was a fierce
pounding on the door. They both jumped.

“This is the manager! Just what in God's name is going on in
there! Open this door! I've called the police.” The door handle
jiggled and the person attached to the voice tried to push it open.
Luckily the heavy slide bolt held fast. Evie would prefer not to
have to explain to the night manager of an obviously mediocre
establishment what a fully manifested
naked
angel with a shining sword and
an equally naked Reaper – very handsome and well-built naked Reaper
– were doing to his hotel room.

The Death Mark flared
above the Reaper's head.

Enough talk.

Raising her sword, she swept the flaming blade directly at
him. Unfortunately for Evie and fortunately for Trick, the sword
cut through nothing except empty space and a floor lamp that fell
with a
crash
.
Trick had jumped in a flash to the other side of the room, the
bathroom now behind him. In a flare of energy, spectral flames
burst out to surround him in a burning halo.

“Evie, please. Let me
explain.”

“There's nothing to
explain. You killed those people in Hungary. Vengeance is
mine.”

She rushed him.
Instead of evading the blow, he ran at her, grabbing the sword's
hilt in both of his hands, trying to push the edge away from his
throat. Trick was flaming red, she was flaming gold. He must be
very strong, Evie thought, to even touch the blade let alone hold
it. She let her energy flare higher, he wouldn't be able to hold it
long.

She pushed him back,
through the bathroom doors and inside as they struggled. Her blade
sliced through the glass shower doors, the window and then the
bathtub where it gouged out a deep V-shaped cut as they jostled for
position. Somehow Trick managed to twist out of the way, still
holding the hilt.

“I
didn't kill
anybody
!”

“Not
kill anybody? I find that hard
to believe,”
Evie panted, pushing back as they careened around the small space.
Snaking one leg around the back of his knee, she threw him hard
into the mirror above the sink, shattering it and wrenching several
layers of plaster from the wall. His face was very close to
hers.

He
stared into her dark eyes, “
Ow
!
Okay,
Reaper and all. I concede that. What I mean is, whoever your
talking
about, I didn't kill.”

“My Death Mark says
differently.”

The sink crumbled and
a fountain of water shot out, drenching them both.

“
Good god
that sword's hot!” He exclaimed as he was forced to finally
let go of the hilt.

He backed up, jumping
up on the rim of the toilet seat and grabbing the ceramic top of
the tank. He held it out like a shield. “Your Death Mark is
wrong!”

“The Mark is never
wrong!” She sliced through the ceramic lid. It was easier than
cutting through soft butter. So easy that the sword just kept going
right through the base of the toilet and deep into the floor. More
water washed out onto the hotel room carpet. Spinning, she kicked
him hard as he tried to jump by her, out of the bathroom.

Cursing, knocked off
balance, he managed to recover in less than the blink of an eye. As
he sailed by, she struck out with a mighty blow that cut right
through the bed – mattress, frame and all. It fell in two neat
pieces. The sword, though, kept right on going, penetrating deeply
into the cement floor beneath where it got stuck. Very stuck. Evie
tugged and tugged finally pulling loose a large chunk of concrete
and metal. Pulling and pushing, she finally pried the block off her
blade.

Trick jumped away,
pushing off the desk to bounce from the floor to the ceiling as
though the earth had no hold. Evie sliced after him, the sword
gouging more deep trenches in the floor several feet deep. Metal
and concrete melted away from the blade.

Trick ran up one wall
to crouch on the ceiling. Defying gravity, he hung there upside
down. “If you'd just listen to me!”

Evie gave an angry
roar. She jumped onto one half of the ruined mattress, bouncing up
and down, trying to run him through as he scrambled this way and
that just out of reach. There wasn't enough room to get any lift
under her wings and really corner him.

“Have you ever
questioned it? Question who you were sent to kill?” He said
breathlessly.

She paused for a
moment, her sword raised and burning above her. “No, I don't have
to. I feel the truth in it. The vengeance flares in my heart. The
pain and fear of those unjustly murdered.”

“And do you feel it
with me? Do you?” He demanded.

His
words brought her up short. She had felt a lot of things for this
Reaper from the moment she saw him walk in that West Hollywood bar.
None of them had to do with the agonized cries of the innocent. She
stretched out with her feelings and was surprised. Nothing. No
rage, no anger. What the
hell
was going on.

Jumping down, he
grabbed the desk chair, holding it out in front of him cartoon
lion-tamer style. “Nothing, right?”

The pounding on the
door increased in fury. There seemed to be several people in the
hall now.

She stood her ground
on the broken bed, wings stretched out as wide as they could go. No
matter. The Mark had been called. She raised the sword high for the
killing blow, “Vengeance!”

There was an ominous
creaking and with no more warning than that, the bed fell through
the floor into the room below with a thunderous crash. Plaster and
cement rained down on Evie's head as she stood there blinking in
surprise.

'
Well,
' she
thought.
'That was unexpected.'

She looked up to see
Trick's face peering down, “Are you all right?”

Without answering him, she spread her wings and using them as
leverage, jumped back up through the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Thank the stars the room below had been empty. She shuddered.
Killing innocents in pursuit of vengeance was
not
part of her job
description.

Back in their room,
water was shooting out of the bathroom in a high arc. The place was
full of smoke and dust. At least the banging on the door had
stopped. Out of the corner of her eye, a heartbeat too late, she
saw something bright and shining. Spinning through the air to coil
around her, pinning her arms to her sides. Trick held what looked
like a burning length of rope in his hands. He had lassoed her!
With a flick of his wrist, the lasso spun out like a living thing
to wrap around and around Evie until she was tied up as tight as a
Sunday roast. She teetered there amidst the wreckage.

“Sorry, Miss Grace
and Beauty. I guess explanations will have to wait until you're a
little calmer.”

“I am calm!” she
screamed.

The pounding on the
door started again much louder. Maybe they had found a battering
ram. Sirens howled close by.

Trick gathered up a
pile of clothes and gave her a jaunty salute, “I must escape into
the night like a thief. Until we meet again.” He flashed her a
smile that lit up his face and with a wild laugh ran to the
windows. Holding the pile of clothes in front of him, Trick crashed
through the glass of the closed window and was gone.

With a cry of rage
Evie volted up her energy, burning through the coils of spell-cast
rope. Running to the shattered window sill, she thought she saw the
Reaper trance jumping incredible distances, already far away. They
were no longer in Hollywood, she noted but closer to LAX. The
colored light columns at the airport's entrance glowed brightly in
the distance. Below her, a squad of police cars and two firetrucks,
sirens blaring and lights flashing, screeched into the parking
lot.

Time to go.

She looked around the
room for her clothes. Only then she realized the Reaper had taken
them with him.

“Nathan McKitrick,
you bastard!” She shouted, shaking her fist at the air.

The Guardian Angel had his beautiful wings
wrapped around himself as he rocked back and forth on the pavement,
sobbing.

Evie heard him crying
as she flew over the city, cursing in an extremely un-Angelic way
and trying to pick up Trick's trail. The Reaper had used something
to mask his magical signature and she was only able to narrow it
down to a vague direction towards the Hollywood Park race track.
The smell of horses and hay drifted up on the night air. A few
miles along Century Boulevard, she lost the trail completely.
Circling round and round, she comforted herself thinking of all the
very nasty things she would do to the Reaper when she finally
caught up with him. And there was no doubt in her mind she would
find him. Evangeline Grace had never failed on a mission yet. Dead
or alive.

Breaking through her satisfying thoughts of torture and
dismemberment – plus a few images of him standing there naked in
all his manly glory,
damn
it
. And the way his hair
curled over his ear.
Augh,
damn it again. She heard the sound of
crying.

Evie criss-crossed
the dimly lit streets below, soaring the air currents on silent
wings. It must be two or three in the morning.

There.

Directly below her.
An Angel was sobbing. The sound unmistakable. An Angel's tears were
fey and fearsome things. Such was their power, she heard each tear
drop as it hit the pavement.

Winging down in big
circles, she watched two thugs drag a thin, Asian looking girl out
of a small all-night grocery and throw her into the back of a big
old boat of a Cadillac. The girl looked no more than sixteen or
seventeen. They had already hurt her. Evie stared at them with her
spirit vision, seeing beyond the flesh and blood, into their
hearts. They were going to hurt her more.

Folding her wings
back, she landed lightly on the sidewalk as the driver gunned the
engine and roared off down the street. An alarm was ringing
hollowly nearby. Evie walked to the shop and peered inside. A man
and woman lay tumbled together in an untidy heap. Their blood
pooling on the floor. They were already gone, only a soft golden
aura left of the souls they had been. Soon that, too, would
dissipate. Life to afterlife. She returned to the Angel. He seemed
very young, both cosmically and chronologically.

“Are you her Guardian
Angel or theirs?” She pointed at the bodies with one wing.

He sniffed, wiping
the tears away with the sleeve of his tight black suit jacket,
“Hers.”

Evie
looked after the car as it disappeared around the corner. “Well
then, why don't you get yourself in gear and start
guarding
, kid? Go on. Get
after them and smite.”

His
voice was ragged with grief, “I received no mandate. No orders to
step in and save her. I prayed, I called out, I
begged
.”

Evie looked at the
bodies by the store counter. Innocents. Their lives stolen from
them by a couple of murderous bastards who were getting away. Soon
one more life would be lost.

Still staring after the car, she asked the young Angel, “Did
you receive specific orders
not
to interfere?”

The boy looked up,
his face suddenly full of hope, “No.”

Evie nodded, “Good
enough for me.”

Spreading her wings,
she drew her sword and flaming with golden fury, flew after
them.

It
took only moments to overtake and pass the speeding vehicle.
Shedding her
glamour
, fully visible, she came down a hundred yards in front of the
car on the empty street, sword blazing. She could only imagine what
the murderers inside the car thought as a winged angel, haloed in
magnificent light, clothed in white (courtesy of a slightly slashed
top sheet) manifested directly in front of them.

To Evie's
disappointment, this heavenly vision did not bring on an epiphany
to end their evil ways, stop the car, fall to their knees and beg
for forgiveness while simultaneously dialing 911and pleading to
turn themselves in. No. Instead the wretched bastards accelerated,
determined to run her down. With a crooked smile, she sheathed her
sword. Digging in, Evie stood her ground, both hands stretched out
straight in front of her. The car rammed into the Angel at probably
around seventy miles an hour.

The
laughing, twisted faces of the murderers turned to shock when they
realized not only was she still standing; she was pushing
back
. The driver gunned
the engine, revving the motor higher and higher. Instead of roaring
away, the car came to a stop as Evie began pushing it up the
street, one barefoot step at a time.