Fall From Grace Read online

  The icy cold clutched at her arms and legs with frozen fingers, dragging her deeper until she had no breath left. The last thing she saw was the beautiful, wasted face of the one-winged man, so near she could feel his breath on her skin.

  Chapter 3

  “Hey there,” said a deep voice by her ear, the warm breath a silky caress on her bare neck. “Are you awake?”

  Evie gave a sleepy smile as memories of her past life and waking up in a soft bed next to a hard body coursed through her. Then she caught that whiff of smoke and the events in the alley came rushing back. Nathan McKitrick lay next to her, his handsome face just inches away, head propped up on one tan, muscular arm. Directly above him floated the Death Mark.

  Throwing the covers off, she leaped to her feet in one swift move, gathering her mantle of energy around her. In her hands an energy ball formed, sparking and spitting with power. Raising it high, she prepared to throw it at the Reaper.

  He scrambled out of the bed, backing away from her, hands held high in a placating gesture. “Wait, wait, wait. I'm the good guy in this picture.”

  She stared.

  He was naked.

  Oh gosh, he was wonderfully, beautifully, wide shouldered, flat ab, narrow hip, and rippling muscle naked.

  She let her eyes linger on the rugged body and smooth skin. The energy ball in her hands flared brighter. Dang it. 'Control,' she implored her inner self. Evie's eyes strayed a little further down. Forget control. What lay between this man's legs was truly a thing of beauty. Her wings popped out fully extended knocking over both bedside tables with a crash, lamps and all.

  “Oh, that's comin' out of the credit card,” Trick sighed.

  “You were,” her voice came out in a squeak. Clearing her throat, she tried again, “You were in the alley. I saw you.”

  “Of course you did. I was fighting to reach the guy in the fancy suit with only one wing. You know, the one who tried to take you out with a black ice crystal shoved directly into your soft, white, bouncy breast?”

  She looked down. There was a blue mark with spidery black veins spread across the middle of her chest between her breasts. 'Wait,' she thought, 'blue mark on my chest.' Chest. Breasts. Oh stars.

  She looked up at him, “I'm naked!”

  He gave her the same engaging crooked grin as in the bar, “Oh yes, you are.”

  She threw the energy ball straight at him. Nothing but a blur of motion, he turned slipstreaming between time, literally running up the wall, throwing himself into a backwards somersault in a back bending, eye-popping twist. The momentum carried him up and over the ball of light. The blast burned a hole through a poorly colored print of Santa Monica, several layers of wallpaper, plaster and cement, before disappearing out into the night and setting off car alarms far into the distance.

  He gave her an affronted stare, “Hey! That would have hurt!”

  She pulled her sword from its scabbard and it flared into life. Despite being naked, no one and nothing could remove the sword belt except her.

  Instead of running or putting up his fists to fight, Trick stood very still, his hands at his sides. “You were freezing, from the inside out.”

  “I'm an Angel, I can't die.”

  A look flashed across his face, as though there was something he wanted to say, Evie thought. He ran both hands through his hair and when he met her eyes again, his face was composed.

  “That doesn't mean you can't be hurt – at least temporarily – or captured. The Fallen's weapon was meant to weaken you, render you helpless. Pardon me for thinking you might have wanted an exit strategy right about then. I grabbed you and ran like a jackrabbit with a coyote on its tail. Brought you here. My powers are heat based. You were blue with cold, Ms. Grace. I was healing you.”

  “Oh, healing. Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” She didn't bother hiding the sarcasm in her voice.

  He let his eyes linger on the smooth, full curves of her body. Her round breasts, the swell of hips and thighs. Healing had been the last thing on his mind as he held her through the night.

  Getting her here, however, had required quite a bit effort. The hotel he chose ended up being booked right up to the fifth floor. Key card in hand, he had dashed up to the room, thrown open the sliding window and, pulling a shadow over himself, jumped down to get her. Trick had stashed the Angel in the bushes camouflaging the property's venting system near the parking lot. Trying to jump straight up with an armful of Angel trailing her wide, white wings had not gone so well, even for someone as strong as Trick. After several tries, he'd finally had to get a running start across the parking lot and launch himself from the top of a van before landing – just barely – inside the room.

  Undressing had been more a matter of urgency than lascivious intent. She was cold and getting colder, the blue tinge on her skin deepening as he worked. Throwing off his own clothes, he pulled the blankets around them, belly to belly, and ramped up his energy level like an electric blanket on high.

  Holding her tightly, skin to skin, gradually the sense of urgency that had driven him began to diminish. Replaced by other, different sensations. The touch of her hair. The feel of her neck and shoulders. The jut of her hip bone against his. A sweet perfume as she began to warm against him. Like lavender in bloom under the afternoon sun. The smell of angels.

  He'd grown so hard. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. More than anything he wanted to slip between her thighs, enter her fully and let the two become one. He was many things in the nasty half-life of his; rapist was not one of them. Yet how delicious during those long hours of the night to contemplate the feel of her strong legs wrapped around him, squeezing his waist, pulling him closer. He wanted to bury himself in that velvet soft sheath of muscles and let the passion there consume them both.

  Not that he ever got the chance, morals or not. Her damn wings kept flipping out, knocking him off the bed again and again and again.

  Dogs ran in their sleepy dreams.

  Apparently, Angels flew.

  Climbing up off the floor for about the tenth time as the afternoon turned to night, he felt his ardor cooling a little. It was all he could do just to keep hold of her and let his magic do its work. He wasn't lying when he told her he was healing her. Hours passed before he was able to warm her back to consciousness.

  “No weapon?”

  Trick blinked, pulling his attention back to the here and now. “What?”

  She pointed to his empty hands, “You had an iron bar-type thing, in the alley.”

  “Oh, yeah, iron is very good against supernaturals.”

  “You're a supernatural,” she pointed out.

  He shrugged, “Exactly. That's how I know. Anyway, I dropped the bar and scooped you up. What with those damn wings and all, you're a two-handed sort of woman.”

  “And how did we manage to escape from a Fallen? You are just a Reaper.”

  “I'll ignore that slur on my powers.” He held up a wide bracelet on one wrist, a collection of amber beads and what looked like metal amulets ringing it. The whole thing seemed burned and blackened, as if by fire. “This amulet is capable of shrouding me, us as it turned out, from just about anything for a time. A short time. When there is a Fallen involved, it pays to take a few precautions, no matter what side you or they are on. One time use only, I'm afraid.”

  Pulling the thing off, he tossed the amulet in the wastebasket.

  “You were expecting him?”

  There was a fierce pounding on the door. They both jumped.

  “This is the manager! Just what in God's name is going on in there! Open this door! I've called the police.” The door handle jiggled and the person attached to the voice tried to push it open. Luckily the heavy slide bolt held fast. Evie would prefer not to have to explain to the night manager of an obviously mediocre establishment what a fully manifested naked angel with a shining sword and an equally naked Reaper – very handsome and well-built naked Reaper – were doing to his hotel room.

  The De
ath Mark flared above the Reaper's head.

  Enough talk.

  Raising her sword, she swept the flaming blade directly at him. Unfortunately for Evie and fortunately for Trick, the sword cut through nothing except empty space and a floor lamp that fell with a crash. Trick had jumped in a flash to the other side of the room, the bathroom now behind him. In a flare of energy, spectral flames burst out to surround him in a burning halo.

  “Evie, please. Let me explain.”

  “There's nothing to explain. You killed those people in Hungary. Vengeance is mine.”

  She rushed him. Instead of evading the blow, he ran at her, grabbing the sword's hilt in both of his hands, trying to push the edge away from his throat. Trick was flaming red, she was flaming gold. He must be very strong, Evie thought, to even touch the blade let alone hold it. She let her energy flare higher, he wouldn't be able to hold it long.

  She pushed him back, through the bathroom doors and inside as they struggled. Her blade sliced through the glass shower doors, the window and then the bathtub where it gouged out a deep V-shaped cut as they jostled for position. Somehow Trick managed to twist out of the way, still holding the hilt.

  “I didn't kill anybody!”

  “Not kill anybody? I find that hard to believe,” Evie panted, pushing back as they careened around the small space. Snaking one leg around the back of his knee, she threw him hard into the mirror above the sink, shattering it and wrenching several layers of plaster from the wall. His face was very close to hers.

  He stared into her dark eyes, “Ow! Okay, Reaper and all. I concede that. What I mean is, whoever your talking about, I didn't kill.”

  “My Death Mark says differently.”

  The sink crumbled and a fountain of water shot out, drenching them both.

  “Good god that sword's hot!” He exclaimed as he was forced to finally let go of the hilt.

  He backed up, jumping up on the rim of the toilet seat and grabbing the ceramic top of the tank. He held it out like a shield. “Your Death Mark is wrong!”

  “The Mark is never wrong!” She sliced through the ceramic lid. It was easier than cutting through soft butter. So easy that the sword just kept going right through the base of the toilet and deep into the floor. More water washed out onto the hotel room carpet. Spinning, she kicked him hard as he tried to jump by her, out of the bathroom.

  Cursing, knocked off balance, he managed to recover in less than the blink of an eye. As he sailed by, she struck out with a mighty blow that cut right through the bed – mattress, frame and all. It fell in two neat pieces. The sword, though, kept right on going, penetrating deeply into the cement floor beneath where it got stuck. Very stuck. Evie tugged and tugged finally pulling loose a large chunk of concrete and metal. Pulling and pushing, she finally pried the block off her blade.

  Trick jumped away, pushing off the desk to bounce from the floor to the ceiling as though the earth had no hold. Evie sliced after him, the sword gouging more deep trenches in the floor several feet deep. Metal and concrete melted away from the blade.

  Trick ran up one wall to crouch on the ceiling. Defying gravity, he hung there upside down. “If you'd just listen to me!”

  Evie gave an angry roar. She jumped onto one half of the ruined mattress, bouncing up and down, trying to run him through as he scrambled this way and that just out of reach. There wasn't enough room to get any lift under her wings and really corner him.

  “Have you ever questioned it? Question who you were sent to kill?” He said breathlessly.

  She paused for a moment, her sword raised and burning above her. “No, I don't have to. I feel the truth in it. The vengeance flares in my heart. The pain and fear of those unjustly murdered.”

  “And do you feel it with me? Do you?” He demanded.

  His words brought her up short. She had felt a lot of things for this Reaper from the moment she saw him walk in that West Hollywood bar. None of them had to do with the agonized cries of the innocent. She stretched out with her feelings and was surprised. Nothing. No rage, no anger. What the hell was going on.

  Jumping down, he grabbed the desk chair, holding it out in front of him cartoon lion-tamer style. “Nothing, right?”

  The pounding on the door increased in fury. There seemed to be several people in the hall now.

  She stood her ground on the broken bed, wings stretched out as wide as they could go. No matter. The Mark had been called. She raised the sword high for the killing blow, “Vengeance!”

  There was an ominous creaking and with no more warning than that, the bed fell through the floor into the room below with a thunderous crash. Plaster and cement rained down on Evie's head as she stood there blinking in surprise.

  'Well,' she thought. 'That was unexpected.'

  She looked up to see Trick's face peering down, “Are you all right?”

  Without answering him, she spread her wings and using them as leverage, jumped back up through the gaping hole in the ceiling. Thank the stars the room below had been empty. She shuddered. Killing innocents in pursuit of vengeance was not part of her job description.

  Back in their room, water was shooting out of the bathroom in a high arc. The place was full of smoke and dust. At least the banging on the door had stopped. Out of the corner of her eye, a heartbeat too late, she saw something bright and shining. Spinning through the air to coil around her, pinning her arms to her sides. Trick held what looked like a burning length of rope in his hands. He had lassoed her! With a flick of his wrist, the lasso spun out like a living thing to wrap around and around Evie until she was tied up as tight as a Sunday roast. She teetered there amidst the wreckage.

  “Sorry, Miss Grace and Beauty. I guess explanations will have to wait until you're a little calmer.”

  “I am calm!” she screamed.

  The pounding on the door started again much louder. Maybe they had found a battering ram. Sirens howled close by.

  Trick gathered up a pile of clothes and gave her a jaunty salute, “I must escape into the night like a thief. Until we meet again.” He flashed her a smile that lit up his face and with a wild laugh ran to the windows. Holding the pile of clothes in front of him, Trick crashed through the glass of the closed window and was gone.

  With a cry of rage Evie volted up her energy, burning through the coils of spell-cast rope. Running to the shattered window sill, she thought she saw the Reaper trance jumping incredible distances, already far away. They were no longer in Hollywood, she noted but closer to LAX. The colored light columns at the airport's entrance glowed brightly in the distance. Below her, a squad of police cars and two firetrucks, sirens blaring and lights flashing, screeched into the parking lot.

  Time to go.

  She looked around the room for her clothes. Only then she realized the Reaper had taken them with him.

  “Nathan McKitrick, you bastard!” She shouted, shaking her fist at the air.

  Chapter 4

  The Guardian Angel had his beautiful wings wrapped around himself as he rocked back and forth on the pavement, sobbing.

  Evie heard him crying as she flew over the city, cursing in an extremely un-Angelic way and trying to pick up Trick's trail. The Reaper had used something to mask his magical signature and she was only able to narrow it down to a vague direction towards the Hollywood Park race track. The smell of horses and hay drifted up on the night air. A few miles along Century Boulevard, she lost the trail completely. Circling round and round, she comforted herself thinking of all the very nasty things she would do to the Reaper when she finally caught up with him. And there was no doubt in her mind she would find him. Evangeline Grace had never failed on a mission yet. Dead or alive.

  Breaking through her satisfying thoughts of torture and dismemberment – plus a few images of him standing there naked in all his manly glory, damn it. And the way his hair curled over his ear. Augh, damn it again. She heard the sound of crying.

  Evie criss-crossed the dimly lit streets below, soaring the air cu
rrents on silent wings. It must be two or three in the morning.

  There.

  Directly below her. An Angel was sobbing. The sound unmistakable. An Angel's tears were fey and fearsome things. Such was their power, she heard each tear drop as it hit the pavement.

  Winging down in big circles, she watched two thugs drag a thin, Asian looking girl out of a small all-night grocery and throw her into the back of a big old boat of a Cadillac. The girl looked no more than sixteen or seventeen. They had already hurt her. Evie stared at them with her spirit vision, seeing beyond the flesh and blood, into their hearts. They were going to hurt her more.

  Folding her wings back, she landed lightly on the sidewalk as the driver gunned the engine and roared off down the street. An alarm was ringing hollowly nearby. Evie walked to the shop and peered inside. A man and woman lay tumbled together in an untidy heap. Their blood pooling on the floor. They were already gone, only a soft golden aura left of the souls they had been. Soon that, too, would dissipate. Life to afterlife. She returned to the Angel. He seemed very young, both cosmically and chronologically.

  “Are you her Guardian Angel or theirs?” She pointed at the bodies with one wing.

  He sniffed, wiping the tears away with the sleeve of his tight black suit jacket, “Hers.”

  Evie looked after the car as it disappeared around the corner. “Well then, why don't you get yourself in gear and start guarding, kid? Go on. Get after them and smite.”

  His voice was ragged with grief, “I received no mandate. No orders to step in and save her. I prayed, I called out, I begged.”

  Evie looked at the bodies by the store counter. Innocents. Their lives stolen from them by a couple of murderous bastards who were getting away. Soon one more life would be lost.

  Still staring after the car, she asked the young Angel, “Did you receive specific orders not to interfere?”

  The boy looked up, his face suddenly full of hope, “No.”