When Angels Fall (Fallen Angels)

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright© 2012
JO CATTELL

Edited by Bonnie Lea Elliott

Cover Art by Wicked Muse Covers

No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of excerpts or quotations embodied for reviews.

This book is dedicated in loving memory to my sweet

baby niece, Chloe Nichole, who left us way too soon.

There are so many people I want to thank for their love and support while I made my dream come true. I should start with my husband who gave me the time to write, and my little girls, who gave up Mommy for a while to write.

To my oldest daughter Ams, for letting me pitch ideas and read to give me feedback. To my mom and Aunts Debbie and Marty, who always believed in me, and my dad, for being my dad. To my new author friends, Lucy Swing and DeShanna Neal, for their help and advice.

To Keren Spencer, who was my first test Beta Reader and gave me the best input. And to all the Beta Readers I had, for taking the time to do that for me. To Sharon Whitehurst, for being my editor and bugging me for pages, and most of all, to you my readers, for giving me the chance to bring this story to you.

Prologue

The bonfire flames grew higher, casting an eerie glow onto the faces of the group who stood around talking and laughing.

Someone called out that it was ghost story time.

Members of the group all seemed to look around, waiting for someone to volunteer.

Stepping up to the front, one of the teen girls stood in front of the fire. She gave the group an evil grin. “The Corpse Girl, a town legend.” Firelight danced along her features, as she announced the name with a low tone in her voice.

“The Corpse Girl? Are you kidding me?”One of the teen boys called out to her. “That never happened!”

The girl seemed to ignore his outburst and looked over at someone who stood at the far edge of the fire, her eyes narrowing. “Oh, yes it did. It happened almost six years ago. A quiet ten-year-old girl was left to care for her sick, dying mother. Day after day, night after night, the girl watched as her mother’s body slowly grew weaker. Her father had left and, in his parting words to his young daughter, he said, ‘If you kill your mother and end this suffering, I will claim you as my child and give you all you ever wanted. But only after you have truly ended her life.”

At her pause of the story, a few shocked gasps could be heard around the bonfire.

“The girl, who was desperate for her father’s love, did the only thing she could. One night, she made her mother a cup of tea. She crushed up a full bottle of sleeping pills and painkillers and stirred them in the hot liquid. Adding sugar, so that it was very sweet, she took the deadly drink to her sickly mother. The girl watched as her poor mother drank it down, leaving nothing but a few bitter granules at the bottom of the cup.”

A quiet weeping started from one of the listeners, as the group all stared at the girl telling the story. Her eyes were ablaze with wicked satisfaction as she glared toward the sound of weeping and continued the story, “Her mother started to gag, clawing at her throat. She looked at the girl in horror, realizing what her child had done. Her final word in her last breath was, ‘Why?’ The girl called her father and he never answered. For three days, she sat with her mother’s body. The stench of the rotting flesh was filling the room and house. At night, she sat in the dark, the word ‘why’ haunting her.”

Pausing, the glee filled storyteller smiled. “Finally, the father returned and found what his child had done. Disgusted, he shut her in her room, locking her away from prying eyes, so that no one could see the monster that the girl had become. After the funeral, the girl, overcome with guilt, would go off to the cemetery at night and sat vigil at her mother’s grave. She would trace her mother’s name over and over onto the cold gravestone until her fingers bled.”

“Shut up. No one believes you,” a girl shouted at her now.

“No, let her finish,” a teen boy with dark curls spoke up, “It just seems so unreal, and if there was any truth to it, it’s pretty scary.” He didn’t even seem to notice the girl with strawberry blonde hair who stood right next to him with huge tears streaming along her paling cheeks.

Hearing that seemed to give the excited storyteller the cue she needed to finish the story. “So, fed up with dealing with the girl, the father sent her to school. Our school. There were whispers and rumors, but no one really knew for sure if it were, in fact, the girl who we had all come to know. The quiet one who would sit under a tree and draw. Until last year, when the guilt over came the girl.”

The teen girl telling the horrifying story paused and her smile grew, as everyone around the fire could hear that someone was gasping loudly for air.

“She’d killed her mother in a lame attempt to make her father love her. No one liked her, really liked her, because of who she was. So, she went into the girls’ bathroom on the anniversary of the day she murdered her mother and taking a razor, she slit her wrists. With her blood, she wrote on the bathroom wall, ‘I’m sorry’. If you drive past Heavens Cemetery late at night, you may still see her, sitting by her mother’s cold grave by the light of a single candle, begging for her forgiveness.”

Chapter One

The summer was coming to an end when the Allen family finally moved into their new home. School was to start the next week and Nicholas Allen was not looking forward to this new fresh start. He was tired of new beginnings, new schools, and new friends. To make matters worse, his parents were dragging him to the carnival at the church to mingle with some of the new people who would be in their lives. He stared out the window of the van and hated every minute of this fresh new start.

“Nicky,” came his little brother’s voice. “Will you take me on some rides? Kevin already said no.” Max sat pouting in his seat as he looked up at him with those sad, pleading eyes.

“Sure, why not?” Nick mumbled, glad to keep himself busy with his little brother, rather than to have to listen to his father go on about how this was the start of an exciting adventure for them all.

“Don’t get so excited, you might explode,” Kevin, his older brother, kidded him.

“I hate these things. We go and they introduce us as this loving family who enjoys all the traveling we do and thinks nothing of starting over,” he rambled, pissed at the world because he seemed to be the only one affected by the move.

“Nicky, dad said this is the last move. We have to hope he’s right,” Mark, his oldest brother, added.

“Whatever,” Nick said between clenched jaws. He just wanted this night to be over.

In the stickiness of the summer night, Nick pulled his dark curls back from his face. He steered Max around the carnival and waited for him to get done at the bumper cars. He looked past the rides and games, and saw his new school.

The old brick building was attached to the church where his father was now an administrator. This was the place he would start out next week in his junior year, and Kevin his senior. It was the same as any other school he‘d been to, but this year, he would keep to himself. He didn’t want a repeat of his good-bye with Kelly. He wished things could have gone differently that day, that he could’ve made her understand why he left her there. It was too late now. The damage had been done and he was 500 miles away now.

The scent of popcorn and cotton candy filled the air, as he watched a couple having a hot and heavy make-out session while they were waiting to go on the ride. Nick stared, as the girl swung her ponytail back while the guy nibbled at her neck. What interested him was the look in her eyes as she kissed his nose and the way the guy held her, caressing her back and running his hands down to her tight ass.