When Angels Fall (28 page)

“If everyone has an angel watching over them, then why is there so many accidents and murders and so forth?” she asked.

“Everyone has angels watching over them, but only a few have an actual
Guardian Angel
to
guide them through their lives,
” Gabriel said. “It’s not an angel’s job to protect you from life. What they do is
record
a soul’s life on Earth and testify
for
you or
against
you in God’s court when your Day of Judgment comes.
”

“Great,” Dani said dryly. “Angel lawyers.”

Gabriel laughed, “I’ve never thought of them in that way, but I guess it fits.”

“So you testify in God’s court?” she asked.

“No, not me personally,” he said. “The people I watch over are the one
s
that have the capacity to cross over into
true
evil. I
f they do I smite them, and send their souls to Tartarus or to God for immediate judgment.”

“Who’s doing your job while you’re with me?” she asked.

Gabriel looked at her, “Other angels, I would imagine. They can’t smite a human as I can, but they can surely kill them. They also can’t send a soul straight to Judgment. All the souls they collect will go to Tartarus, where they will remain until Judgment Day, when life on this world is at its end.

Dani glanced down at her wrist where she normally wore her watch, but it wasn’t there. She’d forgotten to put it on before they’d left her home for the last time.

Gabriel smiled, “It’s 5:47 a.m. Is there somewhere you need to be?”

“I’m just getting hungry, but the Pancake House doesn’t open until 6:00,” she said. “If we start walking now we should get there right when they open. But you can’t go in without
a
shirt and shoes.”

“I think I can get away with it,” he said and held his hand out to her. “Lead the way.”

5.

Gabriel was a little surprised when they walked into the small diner a few minutes later.

“Are you really hungry or did you just need an excuse to come see your friend?” Gabriel asked Dani when he saw Donna taking the order of an older couple sitting in the corner booth of the restaurant.

“I could eat,” Dani said with a smile. “And since we were so close to the diner anyway, I figured we might as well eat here. Donna working here is just a bonus.”

“Where in the
hell
have you been?” Donna asked after she’d handed the couples order to the cook. “I’ve been calling you for two days! I even called the salon thinking that you must of gone back early, but nobody there had heard from you
,
either.”

“Sorry about that,” Dani said. “We’ve been visiting some friend
s
of Gabriel’s.”

Donna led them over to a table on the other side of the restaurant. Gabriel sat beside
Dani,
and Donna took a seat on the other side of the table. Gabriel looked around the diner. The wallpaper looked old and faded and the floor had seen before days, but the food smelled excellent.

“You couldn’t have called?” Donna chided.

“I would have, but I left my phone at the house,” Dani said. “Why were you trying so hard to find me?”

“You haven’t heard what happened at Kicker’s after we left the other night?” Donna asked Dani. Dani shook her head. “Apparently
someone called in about a bar fight, but when the police got there they said that everyone in the bar was unconscious.”

“Must have been one hell of a bar fight?” Dani said.

Donna laughed, “No, they think it must have been some sort of a gas leak, but they haven’t found a source yet. Did you smell anything before we left the bar?”

“Me? No, I was as drunk as you were. I don’t remember much about that night,” Dani said, and the turned to Gabriel with mischief dancing in her eyes. “How about you, Gabriel? What do
you
think could have caused
all
those poor people to pass out?”

Gabriel took Dani’s hand and kissed it, “Maybe it was Divine Intervention.”

Donna looked at their hands and smiled, “I see
the two of you have come out of the closet
about your relationship.”

“I was force
d
to admit to myself that I love Dani more than anything else in creation,” Gabriel said. “I was lucky to find that she love me a little in return.”

“I love you a
little
?
” Dani asked, raising her eyebrow at him.

Gabriel smiled at her and pulled her chair closer to his, “Do you love me
more
than a little?”

Donna
ignored them and
con
tinued on with her conversation,
“I also heard that the police found a man’s body in the cemetery that your mom’s buried in.”

“It’s really not that odd to find a body in a cemetery,” Gabriel said. “That
is
where you put them.”

“It’s odd to find a fresh one lying on top of the ground,” Donna said and leaned across the table. “I heard from the cops that come in here that the man had a hole through him the size of a softball. They said his heart had been torn out. What could do something like that?”

“I have no idea,” Dani said smiling
,
and looked at Gabriel. “But I’m sure the man
vexed
his killer.”

“Yes, I’m positive that his killer was vexed,” Gabriel said, smiling.

“You two are weird, so I’m gonna leave you alone and go get you some food.” Donna said. “I’ll be right back.”

“She didn’t ask us what we want to eat,” Gabriel said, watching Donna walk back to the counter.

“She never asks her friends what they want, because she doesn’t let them tip her,” Dani said. “She says you’ll eat what she brings you and be happy to get it.”

Donna returned a few minutes later with plates piled high with bacon, eggs
,
and fried potatoes.

“Enjoy,” Donna said, and went to greet several customers that had just entered the diner.

“Donna seems to be up on all the latest local news,” Gabriel said, digging into the food.

“She’s here Monday though Friday from opening until the end of the lunch rush,” Dani explained. “That’s two different shifts of cops. They come in and talk about everything that’s happened during their shift, and Donna hears it all. Not much happens in Clarksville that she
doesn’t
hear about it first.”

“I thought she went to
Cosmetology
School
with you?” Gabriel said. “What’s she doing working in a diner?”

“She does hair out of her house from three in the afternoon until around nine at night,” Dani said. “She’s doing both jobs until she has enough money to open her own solon. She’s been saving money for three years now.

“She’s exhausted most of the time, but she only needs another five grand to get her started. She figures she can save that if she stays here another two years.”

Gabriel was impressed by Donna’s drive to succeed. He glanced around the diner again and spotted a plastic case full of scratch off lottery tickets.
Why not
?

“Give me two dollars?” Gabriel said to Dani.

Dani pulled her small wallet from the duffel bag and handed him the bills, “What are you doing
?”

“Watch and see,” he said and walked over to where Donna was leaning against the counter waiting for the food orders to come up, and held the two dollar bills out to her.

Donna looked at the money, “What’s this?”

“Consider it a tip,” Gabriel said.

“No way,” Donna said, “I don’t accept tips from friends.”

“We’re not
technically
friends,” Gabriel said. “I insist.”

She took the money from his hand, and Gabriel said, “Now buy that lottery ticket.”

“I’d just as soon throw the cash in the garbage,” Donna said. “Those things are a waste of good money.”

“It’s money that you didn’t want anyway,” Gabriel said. “Buy the ticket. What do you have to lose?”

“Two dollars,” Donna sighed and went behide the counter. “Which one?”

Gabriel pointed at a brightly colored $2 ticket, “That one.”

Donna pulled the ticket, rang up the purchase on the register
,
and came back around the counter.

“Go ahead,” Gabriel said nodding at the ticket.

Donna pulled a dime from her
tip pouch
and scratched the little boxes on the ticke
t. And then Gabriel heard her
catch
her breath
.

“That can’t be right,” Donna said quietly and raised her eyes to Gabriel. “It says I won $15,000.”

Gabriel smiled, “Congratulations.”

She tried to hand the ticket to him, “This is yours. I used your money to buy it.”

“No
,
you used
your
money to buy it,” Gabriel said, pushing her hand back. “All I did was tip you for doing your job.”

She stared at him for a few more moments and the screamed, “
I just won $15,000!”

She ran to Dani, who’d jumped up when Donna screamed, and danced around the diner with her.

“How did you know?” Donna asked Gabriel when she’d calmed d
own a bit. “How did you know that
lottery ticket would win?”

“Just a lucky guess,” Gabriel said.

“Bullshit,” Donna said. “But thank you. I can put the money to good use.”

“Was that winning ticket even in that case
,
or did you create it from thin air?” Dani asked when they left the Pancake House a little while later.

“Does it matter?” Gabriel asked.
“The ticket is valid. You said she needed the money. Now she has it, plus a little extra to help her along.”

“That was really nice of you,” she said.

“I’m an
angel
,” Gabriel said. “I don’t just kill shit. I do have other skills.”

Dani laughed, “You’re killing me with your cussing. I never would have guessed that an angel would swear like you and Michael do.”

“I told you, we adjust to blend with the humans around us,” he said. “And angels aren’t the innocent harp carrying creatures that humans imagine us to be.”

“So where are we going next?” she asked.

“I ha
ve a location in mind,” he said.
“It’s a few miles from here so I’ll wait until after dark to fly you there.”

“Okay, where do we go until then?”

“Nowhere,” Gabriel said. “We stay out in the open and blend in with other people.”

“You don’t have a shirt or shoes on. You can’t blend in with anyone.”

“I’m projecting clothes, if that makes you feel any better,” he said. “Everyone around us sees me as completely dressed. Don’t you think Donna would have mentioned it if I’d come into her place of business half naked?”

Dani said, “I don’t see anything but your pants.”

“That’s because you carry the B
lood of God,” Gabriel said. “Most angel mind tricks don’t work on you.”

“Good to know,” she said.

6.

They walked around Clarksville mos
t of the morning
, just seeing the sites that she’d seen her whole life and talking.

It was nearly noon
when Dani said, “Well shit, here comes
this
hooker bitch.”

They were about to cross the street at a place Dani had called Five Points.

Gabriel looked up the road in front of them and saw a tall black haired woman walking in their direction, “I take
it
you have a problem with her?”

“Constantly. Sheena was Buddy’s girlfriend before he started dating me. She’s the one that got him into all the heavy drinking,” Dani said. “She hates me
,
and I hate her ass
,
too.”

“Hi, Dani,” t
he woman said when their paths intersected. “Buddy still whippin’ your ass on a nightly basis?”

“Hey, Sheena,” Dani said. “You still trading pussy for pills?”

“Bitch,” Sheena said to Dani, immediately pissing Gabriel off.

“Whore,” Dani
calmly
retorted.

Gabriel listened to them bicker back and forth. When Sheena called Dani a
punching bag for a loser,
Gabriel had had enough.

He quoted from the Bible
,
“
Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.  So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in
Egypt
your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.”