Fall From Grace (4 page)

She could hear both
men cursing even over the roar of the engine. The driver slammed
the accelerator to the floor. Plumes of smoke engulfed the street
as the screaming tires spun, fighting for traction. Evie clearly
saw the goon in the passenger seat aim a massive handgun – a Magnum
by the look of it – and open fire, shattering the windshield into
thousands of jagged fragments. Keeping one hand firmly on the hood,
she swatted the bullets aside like bugs with the other.

Time to end this.

Drawing her sword
with her free hand, she sliced effortlessly through the entire
front end of the car, severing the engine block. There was a burst
of flames and a terrible twisted shriek of metal as the car spun
away in two parts, spewing oil.

The men scrambled out
of the wreck, guns blazing. One of them had a shotgun now as well
as the handguns. Evie sighed. These guys were not going to give up.
Stepping between time, she easily dodged the bullets. At this
moment, she was moving so quickly they could not even see her.

Confused, both men
stopped firing to look around, waving their guns this way and that,
staring wild eyed.

“Where is she,
goddamn it!” The man who'd been driving snarled.

“Right here,” Evie
whispered.

Reappearing directly
in front of him, the Angel plunged her bright sword to the hilt in
his chest.

Blood bubbled from deep in his throat making a gurgling sound.
His eyes locked on hers. The murderer's heavy features, mottled
with dark stubble, broken blood vessels and old scars, sagged as if
gravity itself was pulling him from the top down into the grave.
Using her
sight
,
Evie looked into his soul. Just as she thought, there was such evil
there. Stepping away, she let him fall in a broken sprawl onto the
pitted concrete.

The other man
screamed in fear, the note of hysteria unmistakable. Finally
realizing he was in a situation a gun could not get him out of.
Throwing his shotgun to the ground, he tried to run. Fool. With a
single downswing of her wings she caught up and grabbed a fistful
of his long, dirty brown hair. Spinning him around to face her, she
easily lifted the man off the ground as her wings beat the dust and
leaves into a whirlwind.

“No wait, wait,” he
screamed. “I repent. Mercy, have mercy on me!”

She smiled. His soul
was just as tainted and dirty as the other man's.

“Sucks for you, buddy. Wrong sort of Angel. Mercy is so
not
my
mandate.”

She was still smiling
as she ran him through.

Both men lay at her
feet. The police would find no mark on them when they came, nothing
but a scorched bit of cloth where her sword entered their bodies.
“Heart attack,” the corner would say about the burst organ. Evie
watched as their dark spirits began to crawl out of their skin.
What was coming for them was far darker still. She could feel it in
the air, smell it getting closer. Evie did not know exactly what
would happen to them; she hoped for the sake of the girl's murdered
parents, it would be very bad.

She
glanced at the wreckage of the car burning fitfully, the dark smoke
rising up to smudge the sky.
That
was not going to be so easy for the police to
explain. Especially the precision cut directly through the center
of the engine block. Oh well, give those college guys and gals in
the forensics department something to work on.

Sheathing her sword,
she walked to the other side of the wrecked car. The girl had
managed to drag herself out of the back seat and lay half in the
gutter and half on the sidewalk.

With
a
whoosh
of air in
the wind, the girl's Guardian Angel arrived.

'
Better late than
never,
' Evie sighed to herself.

He took Evie's hand
and held it reverently to his forehead. “Thank you.”

She glanced at the
girl. The poor little thing was in bad shape, shaking
uncontrollably. Evie automatically reached for the cell phone in
her pocket to call the police. That's when she remembered she was
only wearing an over-bleached hotel sheet tied roughly around her.
McKitrick had taken her phone along with her clothes. Damn him.

“We need to call 911.
I lost my cell. Do you have yours on you?”

He looked at her
blankly, “Do Angels carry cell phones? Is that even possible?”

She
rolled her eyes, “Just how new at this
are
you?” Guardian Angels, in her
opinion, spent way to much time in the Otherwhere.

Nothing for it but to
go through the bodies. A darkness was drawing in around the
corpses, icy cold and bleak. Sidestepping the ooze, which had no
interest in her anyway, she felt in their pockets.

“Got one!” She held
the cell up for him to see and he stared back, still wide-eyed and
clueless.

Of course the
dispatcher wanted to know their location and Evie had no idea
beyond a street full of dark and shuttered doorways. They were in
one of those commercial/residential blocks where people didn't want
to know what was going on beyond their double-locked front doors.
Slipping once again into stealth mode, she spread her wings and
flew over to the corner to see where the hell they were. 911 call
completed, she held onto the dead guy's phone, he certainly
wouldn't be needing it. Back at the scene of the crash she found
the Guardian Angel crouched by the girl, invisible to the mortal
now, just like Evie. The Angel extended his wings, gathering her up
in his embrace. His wings were beautiful, Evie noted, shades of
brown and cinnamon with streaks of white, like a falcon's.

The girl's eyes were
open, unfocused with shock. She probably wouldn't have seen the
Angels even if they manifested right in front of her in all their
heavenly glory. Brushing the skin lightly with his fingertips, the
Guardian Angel closed her eyes before allowing his power to
manifest. Waves of healing energy flowed through his fingers into
the girl. She gave a little gasp that eased into a sigh as the pain
began to ebb. The terrible lines of suffering twisting her face
relaxed as she slipped fully into the Angel's healing embrace.
There would still be scars, mental and physical, but they would not
destroy her. Guardian Angels were gentle souls. Too gentle, Evie
thought ruefully. That did not mean they couldn't summon powerful
magic when they chose to.

The boy stroked the
sleeping girl's hair, his eyes never leaving her face.

"What's her
name?"

"Stef.
Stephanie.
Stephanie Chen. Her Dad is Vietnamese and her mother is French
Chinese. Was.
Were
."

“You know, all
Guardian Angels fall in love with their charges,” Evie's voice was
gentle.

His eyes flashed up
to hers, face flushed as though he had been caught doing something
shameful, dirty.

Evie kneeled down
beside him, “What's your name?”

“Josh.”

“Josh, it's okay to
love Stephanie. In fact, that's how this is meant to be. You don't
have to be ashamed. There is one non-negotiable prerequisite for
this job. You can't be an Angel without love in your heart. A lot
of love.”

His
expression mirrored the confusion and doubt of his and Evie's
actions. “But I received no
orders
to interfere. What if I have changed her destiny,
or someone else's through this event? Remember, there's no 'I' in
Angel.”

She looked at
him.

He stared back,
apparently completely sincere.

Despite the two dead
men and gathering darkness roiling up from the Otherwhere to take
them, despite the burning car and injured girl, Evie laughed out
loud. “Please, tell me your trainers didn't really give you that
line after your transition? Not really.”

“No 'I' in Angel,” he
said the words again, like a child reciting a lesson.

She
cut him off before he could say anything else. Though no matter
what he said, it couldn't be as stupid as
that
. Reaching over she loosened his
tightly knotted black tie. Josh was dressed like all the Guardian
Angels – man or woman – she had seen: black suit, a little too
tight across the shoulders, starched white shirts and, of course,
the slim black tie. They looked like extras from the “Men in Black”
movie series.

“First of all, this tie is so tight it's cutting off oxygen to
your brain. There, that's better. Now, take a deep breath and stop
beating yourself up. Listen carefully. What are the odds that an
Avenging Angel,” she pointed at herself. “Equipped with a golden
sword,” she waggled the sword in its scabbard, “would be winging it
over the wrong side of LAX at the precise moment on
this
night to hear you
crying? Believe me, it's been a helluva' day and I never expected
to end up here.”

He seemed to consider
what she said. Answering finally with a cautious nod.

“Exactly. Very long odds indeed. I'd say since you couldn't or
wouldn't take matters into your own hands, a way was found. I mean
a '
way
', you know?
Things worked out pretty much as they were meant to and the poor
thing did not meet a terrifying death. Though I wish you had taken
out those two bastards before they shot her parents.”

He gave her a
stricken look and his wings tightened protectively around the
girl.

“Not everyone has
their very own Guardian Angel. Unfair, right? To compensate, you,”
she pointed at him, “are supposed to quietly multitask and keep an
eye on those less fortunate. Sometimes destiny means just going out
and kicking some righteous ass. Orders or no orders. Okay, Josh? If
the Otherwhere wanted blind obedience in their Guardian or Avenging
Angels, they wouldn't choose humans. They'd animate mannequins for
those jobs or squirrels or something.”

That got a smile out
of him.

“Neither you nor I
are Celestials and somehow that is how this gig is supposed to
work."

"So I may interpret
the events and act accordingly if I have no orders to the
contrary?"

That question had no
easy answer. "Faith does not preclude analysis and judgment.
Sometimes we make the right mistake for all the wrong reasons and
vice versa. Destiny and free will get intertwined like two
long-tailed black cats in a brawl. Hard to tell where one ends and
the other begins. Just like in life, we can only do what we think
is right and hope for the best."

His reached over to
stroke the girl's hair again, "What if I, um, you know, get
fired?"

Actually that was a
possibility. Even as an Angel, your contract was always up for
review.

"Isn't she worth that
chance?"

Evie waited with him
until the ambulance and police cars arrived, using the time to give
young Josh some much needed advice on interpreting his Angelic
mandate and Guardian-related ass kicking. She wasn't quite sure if
she was qualified to play Yoda to the kid. Really, was she any
wiser in the ways of the 'force'? And maybe that wasn't such a good
analogy since things hadn't turned out so well for the Jedi as she
recalled. Still, somebody had to do something and Evie was right
here, right now. Standing by and doing nothing had never been an
option she was comfortable with. Besides, if she was reading this
young girl's aura right, Stephanie Chen was destined for something
important and going to need a lot of guarding. Josh would have to
man up, and fast.

Once the Angel was hustled off with his charge,
she spread her wings and decided to head home. Home in the Mortal
world was above the garage at St. Jude's Church in Torrance.
Celestials believed Avenging Angels needed to be among the living.
The passions and urgency that drove mankind, after all, played a
pivotal role in their mandate. Which suited Evie just fine. Though
she didn't have to eat, she liked to. Ditto for sleeping. And all
the other little pleasures of life, she thought to herself with a
slightly wicked grin. Just because she was dead didn't mean she was
beyond life. In fact she'd had some very satisfactory, if short
lived, liaisons since her transition.

St. Jude was the
patron saint of lost causes, which always made Evie smile. She
thought it was probably a not so subtle lesson from her bosses. The
rundown church stood in a nice part of Torrance near the sprawling
Del Almo Mall. Though St. Jude's had long ago stopped holding
regular services, Father James Cortez kept the nave open for prayer
and was always ready to talk with anyone in need of counsel. Human
or supernatural. Mostly the place served as HQ for acolyte activity
in the Western United States and Cortez the man who kept it running
smoothly.

Offices for the humans that served the Otherwhere,
coordinating whatever it was they coordinated, sat in the old
social hall. Evie was not exactly sure how they chose or were
chosen for this kind of work. They were a bit reclusive. She either
phoned them or left little post-it notes on the acolytes' office
door when she needed money, information, use of a car or whatever.
In return, they called or left little post-it notes on
her
door above the garage
detailing where/how she could pick up the item. Though she'd caught
glimpses of the very normal looking men and women a number of
times, they seemed terrified of her. Scuttling back into their
offices and locking the door if they so much as saw her shadow.
You'd think she was Medusa the way they ran and hid.

Not so their boss.
Well, their earthly boss. After Evie was dropped off on his
doorstep, a bewildered newborn Avenging Angel, Father Cortez had
lifted up his hands and given a heartfelt prayer of thanks. Not so
much for the blessing of an Angel in their midst as the addition of
a strong pair of hands to help him keep his fruit and vegetable
garden in order. The church had quite extensive grounds and the
Priest a green thumb. Enviably green. They were in the middle of a
drought (weren't they always in SoCal?) yet somehow the priest's
garden thrived and flowered. Apricots, plums, green apples, lemons
and limes hung heavy on the many fruit trees. Father Cortez had no
problem confronting her at all whenever he needed weeds pulled,
pests dealt with, rose bushes trimmed, rows dug, leaves raked,
fruit picked or branches in the taller fruit trees pruned. Her
wings coming in especially handy for that.