When Angels Fall (33 page)

Gabriel laughed, “Of course we didn’t. You passed out as soon as you crossed the threshold. You’ve lost a lot of blood. You’ll be weak for a few days, but you’ll be alright soon.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

She didn’t know why, but she didn’t believe him. She was su
re sh
e
was weak from the blood loss
, but she was equally as sure that she
hadn’t
passed out. Not on her own, anyway.

“So,” she said, changing the subject. “Did all the people at the restaurant die today when the demons converged on it?”

“No,” Gabriel said. “Humans can’t actually see demons unless the demon wants to be seen, and the demons today had no interest in the humans in that building. There was some screaming, but I imagine that was from the sheer
smell
of the demons. They probably thought they were breathing in poison.”

“Why can’t they see them?” Dani asked. “I’m human and I can see them.”

“You carry the B
lood of God,” he said. “That changes things a bit.”

“That girl that helped me today,” Dani said. “She had no idea that she was a Nephilim. How is that possible?”

“No Nephilim knows what they are before they’re needed,” he explained. “Cambion only know what they are because they are contacted early in their life by their demon father. A demon that creates a Nephilim
never
contacts the child. To do so would alert other demons to what they have done. It would mean the death of them
and
their child.”

“So a Nephilim leads a normal life until they’re called on to serve God?”

“
If
they are ever called on at all,” Gabriel said. “Most Nephilim lead their entire lives without knowing they’re different from everyone else.”

“I guess it’s better that way,” Dani said. “That girl was terrified.”

Gabriel shrugged.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

Gabriel took her hand and kissed her fingers, “I will be. I just didn’t expect to have to fight Heaven
and
Hell.”

Dani jumped when Gabriel jerked his head around and stared out into the darkness. She held her breath until his shoulders relaxed.

“What was it?” she asked nervously.

“Just a ghost,” he said. “Don’t worry, it can’t hurt you.”

“
I know a ghost can’t hurt me,” she said. “I know there’s
no
such thing as ghosts,
Gabriel,
so stop teasing me.”

“Ghosts are
very
real,” Gabriel said, and smiled at her. “You’ve even met one in the last few days.”

“Right…” she said. “I think I would have noticed if I’d met a ghost, Gabriel.”

“I bet you wouldn’t have. Not now anyway, because he’s no longer a ghost. He was…I mean not to long ago…he used to…never mind, it’s a mess. A lot about Potter’s family is confusing. Even to me.”

“One of Potter’s family members used to be a ghost?” she asked in astonishment. “Who?”

Gabriel laughed, “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

“That’s not fair,” she said.

He laughed again, “Life rarely is.”

“Are you serious?” she asked. “Is there
really
a ghost out there?”

“Yes, there is.”

“Okay then,” she said and launched herself into his lap.

Gabriel laughed and put his arm around her, “Are you telling me that you’re more afraid of ghosts than you are demons and Cambion?”

“I can
see
the Cambion and demons,” she said. “I can’t see the ghost. That makes it creepier.”

“I can fix that,” he said and raised his hand out in front of him.

In the distance
,
she saw something start to glow and shimmer. She didn’t know if Gabriel was causing it, but it was also getting closer. She buried her face in Gabriel’s neck.

“Look at it, Dani,” Gabriel said. “It’s not going to hurt you.”

She slowly
raised her head and looked in front of them. What she saw wasn’t so much scary as it was sad. It was an old woman in long
,
old fashioned dress that went from her neck to her feet. The ghost gazed at them. The look in the woman’s eyes was almost as if she were pleading with them.

Dani whispered, “What’s wrong with her? Why does she look so sad?”

“She’s just lost,” Gabriel said. “She can’t go back and she can’t go forward. She’s stuck on this plane of existence and can’t find a way out.”

“How did she get lost?”

“She either chose not to go with her angel or her angel never came for her at the time of her death,” he explained. “Either way she’s stuck here until the final Day of Judgment comes.”

“Can’t you help her?”

“I could, but it’s not really my place to do so,” he said. “She has an angel somewhere that is responsible for her.”

“Well pardon me for saying so, but her
angel
ha
s shit the bed on this one,” Dani
said. “Help her.”

“Dani, I shouldn’t…”

“You did something horribly wrong tonight,” she reminded him. “Now do something
right
.”

Gabriel thought about it for a few seconds before nodding his head and standing up to walk over to the ghost.

“I’m going to help you,” he said to the woman. “This won’t hurt, but I need you to stay
very
still. Can you do that?”

The old woman nodded her head
,
and Gabriel slid his hands inside the ghost’s body. When he pulled his hands back out, the woman was gone and Gabriel was cupping a bright purple light the size of a softball in his hands.

He held his hand up and blew on th
e ball of ligh
t. It reminded
Dani
of how she’d blow
n on dandelion puffs as a child;
scattering the seeds to the wind. The ball lifted from his hands and hovered in the air for a moment befo
re starting to rise
.

The light rose slowly at first, but the higher i
t went
,
the faster it flew. S
oon it had zipped out of sight.

“That was beautiful,” she said in wonder. “Is it always like that?”

“Not for me. The souls
reap tend to be of a darker nature. The pretty work is for the lesser angels.”

“Are the souls always purple?” she asked.

“No,” he answered. “They can be any color at all. It just depends on the soul.”

“How do you feel?”

“A little better, actually,” he admitted. “It’s been a long time since I’ve actually
helped
a soul.”

Dani smiled at him, “Good,” she said and yawned.

“Bed,” Gabriel said and pulled her to her feet. “You need to rest if you want to get your strength back any time soon.”

“Okay, just don’t…”

“Knock you out, I know,” he said, and walked her into the house. “I promised you I wouldn’t do that again.”

“So it was Michael then?”

“Dani, let it go,” Gabriel said. “Go up to bed.”

“Not without you.”

“I don’t need to go to bed,” he reminded her. “I don’t sleep.”

“I didn’t ask you to sleep,” she said and pulled him up the stairs to the master bedroom.

1.

“Does an angel have to fall to Earth every time they come down here?” Dani asked awhile after their lovemaking. “Because I’ve notice
d
Michael just seems to come and go as he pleases.”

“No, we only have to fall once to establish a connection. After that
,
it’s just a matter of transporting back and forth until our work here is done. If we haven’t been down here for awhile
,
then the connection is broken and you have to fall again,” he explained. “And
you’re
supposed to be sleeping.”

“I’m trying, but I can’t turn my brain off,” she said, and rolled over in the bed to lay her head on his chest. “I’m scared.”

Gabriel
traced his fingers down her back, smiling in the dark when he felt goosebumps rise on her skin, “There’s no need to be.”

“Be that as it may, I’m terrified about what’s going to happen when Lucifer rises.”

“I’m going to kill him,” he said. “End of story. There will be no trip to Tartarus for him. Now go to sleep.”

“You’ve said that word several times,” she said. “What
is
Tartarus?”

“It’s where evil souls and bound
angels go to await God’s final
Judgment. It’s not quite Hell, but it’s not a good place.”

“Okay. What if Lucifer kills you?” she asked. “What happens then?”

“Then Lucifer will win you, but that’s not going to happen.”

She was quiet for a few minutes
,
and Gabriel thought she’d finally slipped off to sleep. He was startled when she spoke again.

“Talk to me,” she said.

“About what?”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Talk about anything. Tell me something biblical that I don’t know.”

“Biblical,” he said, “Alright. Would you like to know where Jesus was during his
lost
years?”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “I would
love
to know that. Absolutely
no one
has any idea where he was during that time. All we know is that he was missing from the Bible from the age of twelve to thirty.”

“He was with me and the Angels of Ministry.”

“Who are the Angels of Ministry?” she asked. “I’ve never heard of them.”

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “The Angels of Ministry are sent down by my Father to humans He has personally selected. They deliver the real word of God to Earth.”

“Okay, but where
was
Jesus for seventeen years?”

“At a place known as Pumapunku near
Tiwanaku
,
Bolivia
,” he said.

“Bullshit,” she exclaimed. “I asked for a biblical story, not a fairytale.”

“Why do you think it’s a fairytale?”

She said, “Because I know a lot about that place.”

“Then by all means, fill me in,” he said, laughing. “You
must
know more about it than I do.”

“I know it’s really old and that it’s
yet
another
site that
the
conspiracy theorist think was built by aliens,” she said. “All of the huge stones there were moved and carved in a way that we can’t even match
now
, so it
must
have been built by little green men.

“Pumapunku was eventually abandoned. They assume
d
that there was an environmental change that caused the people that resided there
to
move on. There’s no written word from that time to prove anything, so all Archeologists’ can do is guess at what Pumapunku’s purpose was and what happened to force the people to abandon it.”

“Did you learn that in school along with the Tunguska Event?”

“No,” she admitted. “The History Channel; it’s my guilty pleasure. I love watching the documentaries about ancient mystery spots.”

“It’s a very nice story,” he said, “But
your
version of Pumapunku is the fairytale. The truth is that no
little green men
were required to build Pumapunku. The stones were moved and carved by the swords of Archangels; mostly mine and Michael’s.

“We built it as a Holy place. A place where the
Chosen
could come and learn the Word of God, undisturbed by outside stimuli. I was on Earth for thirty years at that time; from the time Jesus was born until his teachings at Pumapunku were complete. But Jesus wasn’t the first man that was brought there.

“Moses and several others spent time there as well, though they weren’t there as long as Jesus. Jesus was the last person to receive the Teachings of God there. After
he left
,
we abandoned the site. Before that, t
he site was always occupied by angels, even when not in use.

“It didn’t take the people surrounding Pumapunku long to figure out we had left. They thought they must have done something to displease us, and started sacrificing humans to regain our favor.

“God wasn’t happy about that; my Father is very touchy about the
Thou Shall Not Kill
thing. We were ordered to destroy Pumapunku and its inhab
itants. None of the people that lived in the vicinity of Pumapunku
ever left the area; I smote them all. And that is the
real
story of Pumapunku. Now go to sleep.”