When Angels Fall (23 page)

“That’s not the point. He doesn’t think about what he says before he says it.”

“Come on, let’s go i
n the house and we can talk about it there,” she said.

“You go on ahead; I’ll be there in a bit.”

“Are you okay?
” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Are you sure
?
”

“I said I’m
fine
.
Now
go, woman!” he snapped at her.

She looked at him one more time, and then walked away.

2.

Dani waited at the house for two hours before she finally gave up on waiting and made them lunch out of what she could find in the fridge. But Gabriel never showed up to eat his. She lay down on the couch, intending to just rest her eye
s
, but she drifted off. When she woke up it was already getting dark outside.

“Gabriel,” she called out, but there was no answer.

She thought about making dinner, but decided she wasn’t really hungry. It occurred to her that maybe Gabriel
wasn’t
coming back, but he wouldn’t just leave her.
Would he
? She turned on the T.V. to take her mind off of him. She watched two, hour long shows and then turned off the television.

As soon as it was off
,
she couldn’t remember a damn thing she’d watched. She roamed the house for awhile, trying to keep her abandonment issues a
t
bay, but her brain wouldn’t leave her alone. It kept whispering to her. She wanted to pretend it was whispering ‘
When’
s
he coming back?’ But what it was really whispering was
‘Is
he coming back?”

It was
ten thirty
at night when she decided she needed to take a walk and get rid of the nervous energy that was coursing through her.

She went outside and looked up at the bright moon. The yard was awash in its white glow. She decided to forgo the path and take a walk in the woods instead. She walked for about fifteen minutes before she realized that the trees were getting thicker and blocking out the moonlight, making it almost pitch black around her.

She decided to push through and keep going. The property couldn’t be that big; it
had
to come out somewhere. She tripped over a fallen branch and fell face first onto the ground. She sat up and put her hand to her forehead. Her hand came away wet. She was bleeding.

She stood up to walk back to the house, but the fall had spun her around. She didn’t know what direction she’d come from, and there
was no light to show her the way. She took a step backwards and fell, ass over end, into the creek below
.

3.

Dani
landed on her side with her right arm lodged underneath her. She tried to sit up and cried out in pain.

She’d hurt her arm. She rolled face down in the water and used her left arm to push herself up. She looked up at the steep sides of the creek and realized she was trapped; there was no way for her to get out. She was about to scream for help when she heard a
quiet
splash to her left.

“Don’t you know any better than to go walking alone in the woods at night?” she heard a man with a thick Irish brogue say.

The accent didn’t help her with his identity.
Most
of the men here had an Irish accent.

“Who’s there?” she said.

The man stepped closer to her. I
t was the man from the bedroom the night before.

“It’s Wesley,” he said.

“You don’t know
how
good it is to see you, Wes,” she said. “Can you get me out of this creek?”

“Of course I can, but let me look at your arm first,” he said and lifted her arm to his face.

He didn’t actually look at her arm. He just smelled it.

“It’s broken,” he said and gently crossed her arm across her chest. “Hold it there until I get you home. We don’t want to damage it further by bumping it.”

“How do you
know it’s broken?
All you did was sniff it,
” she said
.

“That’s all I need to do, lovey. I can smell your bone marrow leaking into your blood st
r
eam,” he said simply, as if smelling escaped bone marrow was a common everyday skill.

“You can actually
smell
bone marrow?”

“Aye, darlin’,” he said. “I surely can.”

He picked her up like a baby, bent his legs
,
and jumped. He ascended quickly and landed silently at the top of the creek.

“How do you do that?” she asked in wonder.

He looked at her in confusion, “How do I do what?”

“Jump like that and then land without making a sound.”

He laughed quietly, “The jumping comes naturally, lovey. The silent landing is a learned skill. You’ll
never
catch a vampire if it hears you coming.”

He started walking back through the trees.

“You can’t carry me through there! It’s too dark,” she said.

He laughed again, “It’s too dark to
you
.
I
however, can see just fine.”

He had a sexy laugh and was a
very
attractive man with dark hair and beautiful brown eyes. If Dani wasn’t in love with Gabriel, she’d be all over him.

“So what brings you out on a fine night such as this, if I may be so bold as to ask?”

“I just felt like going for a walk,” she said.

“Is that right?” he said. “And where is your angel, darlin’?”

“Well Wesley, to you th
e truth, I have no fucking idea,
” she answered honestly.

Her arm was starting to really throb. If Gabrie
l didn’t come back soon she’
d
have
to go to the hospital.

She was starting to feel very lightheaded.

“I’m dizzy,” she said.

“Aye, that would be the marrow,” he said.

She looked up at him, “Would you mind if I rested my head on your shoulder?”

“Not at all, lovey,” he said. “Consider it yours.”

Dani rested her head against him and closed her eyes. She’d started to drift into a pain filled sleep when she felt something crawling on the base her back where her shirt had pulled loose from her jeans. She had one thought and one thought alone.
SPIDER!

She opened her eyes and tried to launch herself out of Wesley’s arms.

Her bottom half fell, but he held tight to the upper half of her body. She tried to twist around to slap at her back with her good arm, but only managed to pull them both over. She fell on her back and Wesley landed on top of her with his hips between her thighs.

“Praise be to God, woman! What the
hell
was that all about?” he snapped, rising up on his elbows.

“There was a spider on my back,” she said through gritted teeth.

“So logically, you thought the best course of action would be to kill us both and hope the little bugger died in the fall as well?”

“I wasn’t exactly thinking that far ahead,” she said. “I just wanted to kill it.”

“Well
,
do you think you got the little bastard?” he asked with a smile in his voice. “Is it safe to get up now or do
you
want to roll around a few times to make sure he’s well and truly squished?”

“Shut up and get off of me,” she said.

He tried to get up, but her hips came up with him, “What the hell?”

“I think my button is stu
ck in your zipper,” Wesley said.
“Hold still while I try to free it. I don’t want to jar your arm anymore than we already have.”

4.

Gabriel had needed to do something to work off his anger, so he’d done something he hadn’t done in eons; he swam. He’d walked across the land that Potter’s family lived on and jumped over a small cliff at the edge of the property. He flew across a field, made his way to the
Cumberland River
on the other side and dove in.

He tried not to think about what his Father thought of him, but it happened anyway. Gabriel had served Him loyally from nearly the beginning of time. In all the time since Gabriel had been created he’d defied his Father only once.

He could almost understand if He was against him being with Dani because Gabriel was an angel. He could debate that point with

his Father. But He thought Gabriel wasn’t
worthy
of Dani! Dani must have believed Gabriel was worthy of her because she’d opened her body and her heart to him
.
She loved him!

Or at least she had until he’d bitten her head off on
D.J.
Bridge
for showing concern for him and then practically yelled at her to go away. She may now think that be
ing with him was a bad decision
after all. He would have to find a way to make it up to her without explaining to her exactly
w
hy
he was so angry.

He couldn’t say
‘I’m sorry I yelled at you, Dani. My Father had just told me to keep my hands off of you. And I’d just damn near chopped my brother’s head off because he said you weren’t worth the price I have to pay for having made love to you.’
She would take the responsibility for all of that on herself.

And it wasn’t hers to bear. Gabriel had made the choices that had brought things to this point, not her. He was the one who would pay for those choices, not her.
As long as Gabriel lived, she would never know the truth of it.
The truth would
destroy
her
before Lucifer had the chance
.

Gabriel hadn’t realized how long he’d swam until he surfaced and saw the sun had started to set. Dani would be wondering where he was. He dove back under the water and swam back to the point in the river where he’d jumped in. When he climbed out onto the bank of the river, it was full dark.

He walked back to the house where he and Dani were staying and went inside. She wasn’t downstairs. He thought that she must have gone to bed and went up to check on her, but the bed was empty. Where could she be? He closed his eyes and dematerialized.

When he rematerialized at Dani’s location
,
Gabriel couldn’t believe the scene going on before him. Wesley was lying in between Dani’s thighs on the ground beneath the trees.

“Hurry up, Wes,” Dani said.

“I’m trying, lovey,” Wesley said. “Maybe if you grab hold of the button, I can ease down the zipper and get this thing out. I don’t want to tear your pants open.”

“Fine,” Dani said.
“Ouch! Be easy, that hurt.”

“Sorry, darlin’,” Wesley said.
“Maybe if you were to raise up just a wee bit.”

Dani wrapped one arm around Wesley’s shoulders and arched her hips up against him.

“No, lovey, never mind,” Wesley said. “I can’t reach your zipper with you grinding into me like that.”

Gabriel had seen enough.

“Wesley, you little
son of a bitch
, if there isn’t one
hell
of a good reason for what I see going on before me right now I’m going to rip your little Irish ass into fucking shreds and spread your remains between the stars!” Gabriel yelled.

Wesley froze in the act of whatever he was doing, “Did I do you a wrong in a previous life, love, and now you’ll have nothing short of my death as punishment?”

“Wesley,” Gabriel warned in a bone chilling voice.

“Right,” Wesley said.
“Believe or not
,
I can
actually
explain the compromising position that you’ve found us in.”

“I’m going to start counting, Wesley, and if you haven’t fully explained this situation by the time I get to three, so help me God, I’m going
to kill you,” Gabriel growled.
“One.”

“Gabriel, stop! I ju…,” Dani tried to explain.

“Shut your mouth, woman!” Gabriel snapped and
took away her ability to speak.
“Two.”

“Your wife went walking in the woods alone after dark and fell into the creek and hurt her arm. I got her out and was carrying her home when a
wee little
spider climbed onto her back.

“Your wife, at that point, decided the only sensible course of action was to perform a triple back flip summersault with a twist. I
personally
think it was the twist that fucked us over.