Forgiven

by Fall, Carly

  “He left?” the officer asked incredulously.

  Adela nodded.

  “And why did he do that?”

  “He was on his way out anyway,” Gunnar replied. “The whole business with the shooting was just a side-track. He was only staying with us for a few days.”

  The sheriff eyed them warily and Adela tried her best not to let her nervousness show. She smiled at the sheriff and he jotted some other notes in his notebook.

  “Do you know where he went?” he asked.

  “He said something about possibly heading to Sacramento,” Gunnar said.

  “So he’s involved in taking down a shooter and he leaves immediately afterward?” the sheriff asked.

  “He’s had run-ins with the law before,” Adela explained, her cheeks burning with the lies she told. “He didn’t want any trouble. “

  “What type of run-ins?” the sheriff asked, leaning forward.

  “He said it was all a mix-up, but it was something to do with burglary,” Adela said.

  The deputy made more notes and eyed them both warily.

  “What was he driving?” the sheriff asked.

  “A blue pickup,” Gunnar answered. The fact of the matter was there wasn’t a blue pickup, but they had decided that was how Liam left in the fabrication they designed.

  “Do you happen to know the license plate?”

  Adela shook her head.

  “What does Liam look like?”

  “He’s just over six feet, brown hair with green eyes,” Gunnar said.

  “What was he wearing?” the sheriff asked.

  “Um . . . jeans with a white long sleeved shirt. He also has a black parka with him,” Adela answered.

  The sheriff turned to his partner. “Put out on APB on the pick up truck driven by a male with that description.”

  The deputy nodded, and headed for the door.

  “Do you two have identification?” the sheriff asked.

  Adela’s stomach flip-flipped and she felt her breakfast ready to reappear. No, they didn’t have identification, unless the crystals on their backs were to be counted.

  Evangeline appeared behind the deputy, waved her hand and pointed into the kitchen.

  “Um, just a moment,” Adela hedged, and went into the kitchen.

  There on the counter were two identification cards. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, and walked back into the living room. Evangeline was gone.

  “Here you are,” she said, handing the deputy the cards. She moved back to the couch and sat down with Gunnar.

  There was silence as the sheriff took down their information.

  “May I ask a question?” Adela asked.

  “Sure,” the sheriff answered.

  “Was the shooter’s name Jonathan?”

  The sheriff nodded. “Yes. That’s what Jackie told us.”

  “Thank you,” Adela said, remembering the first time she’d seen Jonathan, but he’d been too far away for her to make out his features.

  “Any particular reason why you wanted to know?” the sheriff asked.

  Adela shook her head. “No. It’s just that Jackie has spoken of him before, but we’ve just never met him.”

  The sheriff nodded and made a couple more notes on his pad of paper.

  “Are you both sure you don’t require medical care?” he asked, closing the notepad.

  “No, we’re fine. Thank you,” Gunnar answered.

  The sheriff stood and they walked him to the door. Adela wanted him out of the house so badly she thought she might have a nervous breakdown.

  “Oh, one last thing,” the sheriff said, pulling on his coat. “We can’t find the weapon. We’re having a team search around the house, but the snow is pretty deep. Jackie said that she thought she saw this Liam guy toss it.”

  Adela shrugged. She didn’t know if Liam had the weapon or not, so at least she wasn’t lying about this. “We were both trying to hide in the trees,” she said. “I don’t remember seeing the weapon once the shooting stopped.”

  The officer nodded and slipped on his sunglasses. “Well, if you talk to Liam, please tell him we’d like to speak to him. He’s not in any trouble. We just mainly wanted to get his point of view on everything, make sure it jives with what Jackie said.”

  “Will do, sir,” Gunnar said, opening the door for them.

  The sheriffs walked out and down the steps. Adela leaned over and put her hands on her knees, trying to get control of her racing heart and erratic breathing.

  “Are you okay?” Gunnar whispered as he shut the door.

  She nodded, and stood up. “Where is Liam?”

  “I don’t know, Adela. I’ve never seen anything like that before in all my time as an Angel of Death.”

  “Do you . . . do you think she sent him to Hell?”

  Gunnar flipped the lock, leaned on the door and crossed his arms over his chest. “Let’s hope not.”

  Chapter 28

  Liam didn’t want to open his eyes. His body ached as if he’d been beaten with a bat, every muscle and tendon screaming in agony. He rolled over and realized he was on a very hard floor, which did nothing for the pain radiating throughout his body.

  Opening his eyes, he saw nothing but shiny black, and he quickly realized he was in the Archangel Michael’s quarters again.

  Shit.

  How had he ended up here?

  He remembered the relief that flowed through him as he realized that Adela hadn’t been hurt by the gunfire, just scared half to death. He also recalled his irritation at Gunnar as he didn’t seem to want to leave Adela alone. Well, he thought it was Gunnar, but it had been Evangeline who touched him.

  And he’d hit her.

  Oh, hell.

  He sat up and heard the clacking of Michael’s sandals on the floor. He glanced up to see the angel coming down the corridor toward him. It took a great deal of effort, but Liam managed to stand.

  As the angel approached, a dark, swirling storm cloud hung above him. Liam recalled the previous time he’d seen Michael upset, and tried to steel himself for the bolts of lightning that may be coming. Michael’s eyes still glowed a golden color, so Liam was hopeful he would hold the tempest at bay.

  “Liam,” Michael said, as he approached. “Please follow me.”

  He trailed Michael into his private quarters and Michael motioned him to sit in the same chair he had taken before. Liam gingerly lowered himself into the seat, his body hurting so badly, his eyes stung with tears. What the hell had Evangeline hit him with?

  Michael sat in the chair on the other end of the black table and folded his hands in front of him. The storm cloud above him brewed.

  “You have laid a hand on an angel from the Inner Circle,” Michael said.

  “It was a mistake,” Liam said. “I won’t deny that it was done, but I didn’t mean to. I would never lay a violent hand on a woman, and certainly not Evangeline.”

  He could recall a time or two where he wanted to strangle her, but he would never actually do it, no matter how much satisfaction he thought he may get out of it.

  Michael nodded. “You must still atone.”

  Crap. “What does that mean? I apologized to her.”

  “Yes, but that’s not the type of atonement I mean.”

  Liam’s gut clenched. He was obviously in some trouble, and he had no idea what type of reparation Michael had in mind. Scrubbing floors? Maybe putting him in the role as an Angel of Sin?

  God, he hoped it wasn’t the latter. Those guys were as much fun as full set of ingrown toenails. “What do you mean?”

  Michael stood and began to pace. “What you don’t seem to understand, Liam, is that you have derailed your assignment by hitting Evangeline.”

  “Well, I can go back and apologize again, and then get back to work.”

  Michael shook his head. “I can’t allow that. No one must ever lay a hand on an angel from the Inner Circle, yet you are an intricate part of this assignment.”

  “What do
es that mean?” Liam asked. “How am I an intricate part of this assignment?”

  Michael ignored him and continued to pace. “There is only one thing I can think of to do,” he sighed, stopping a foot or so away from Liam.

  The storm cloud still hung over the unhappy seven-foot angel and Liam swallowed hard. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be pleased with this outcome. “What’s that?” he croaked.

  “I need to send you to Eternity.”

  “You’re going to send me to . . . Eternity?”

  “Yes.”

  Liam didn’t get a chance to ask what Eternity entailed. A golden orb appeared in Michael’s hand, similar to the one Evangeline had thrown at him, and Liam instinctively held up his hand to block it.

  “Don’t throw that thing at me!” he yelled, leaning back in his chair.

  Michael didn’t listen, and once again Liam suffered immeasurable pain and paralysis when the orb hit him. He lay on the floor staring up at the black ceiling, praying the darkness to overtake him. Finally, his vision dimmed and his world went black.

  Chapter 29

  Adela shut the door to her room and leaned against it. She needed some time to decompress from everything that had happened in the past few hours, and what a crazy few hours it had been. She’d seen Gunnar naked, she’d been shot at, Liam had disappeared right before her eyes, and she had lied to the police.

  How she longed for a repeat of the quiet afternoon on the couch she and Liam had shared a few days ago.

  She sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands, exhausted. The stress had her body humming, the muscles in her neck tight, and her stomach churning. What was she going to do without Liam?

  Trying to get a grasp on her panic, she looked at things logically. She could make coffee on her own. No, she’d never cooked anything, but she’d watched Liam enough she figured she could make something edible. She tried to remember all the little tips he’d told her, things like to scramble the eggs on medium and stir them frequently; to check the temperature of the chicken in the over by sticking a thermometer in it; to always follow the directions on a microwaveable product, except the popcorn. For that, she needed to hit the popcorn button on the microwave.

  She calmed down a bit. At least they wouldn’t starve.

  As she brushed out her hair, her mind whirled with plans of their next course of action.

  They needed to find out what happened to Jonathan, so they must talk to Jackie. What if Jonathan had been taken away to jail? What happened then? How did they make sure the two of them stayed together and were happy and in love if they incarcerated Jonathan? Adela really wasn’t up on what the punishment was for standing on a deck, half-naked, in the snow and screaming at the top of your lungs while shooting a gun, but she assumed there had to be one, and it wouldn’t be a light one. She cringed thinking that she’d been hung for mixing a few herbs together in her kitchen, and she wished she’d paid more attention to the current legal system in the United States so that she had an idea of what Jonathan’s punishment would entail.

  Where in the world had Liam gone and would he ever be back? No, he shouldn’t have hit Evangeline, but it had been an accident. He had been trying to hit Gunnar, but the question was, why?

  It seemed that Liam was protective of her in the forest, which sort of contradicted his “mistake” comment. She recalled his arms around her and how he had held her so tightly, and she thought she had felt his relief at her safety. She had told Gunnar to leave her alone, and Liam had made sure that had happened.

  When Evangeline came back, Adela would convince her that Liam needed to return. Yes, she had requested a separation after this assignment, but Liam certainly didn’t deserve to be punished for what transpired earlier.

  “Adela!”

  Adela sighed as she pulled on her sweater. She opened the door to her bedroom to see what Gunnar wanted and smelled something burning.

  She ran down the hallway and saw tendrils of smoke wafting from the microwave. Gunnar stepped away from it, and as she hit the off button, she yelled, “What did you do?”

  “I was hungry,” he explained. “I put one of those meals from the freezer in there. I saw Liam do it and thought it couldn’t be that difficult.”

  Adela opened the microwave door. There sat a charred meal. “How long did you put this in for, Gunnar?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  Sighing, Adela asked, “Did you read the directions?”

  Gunnar shook his head.

  “This is a microwave, Gunnar. It cooks food quickly. If you had read the directions, you would have seen that it requires only a few minutes.”

  Adela retrieved a towel from the counter and pulled out the scorched meal. She couldn’t even tell what it had been.

  “Sorry about that,” Gunnar mumbled.

  “We’ll let it cool before we throw it away.”

  Gunnar nodded. “While that cools, what can we—”

  The doorbell rang.

  Chapter 30

  Liam looked all around, seeing nothing but white, except for a bright light in the distance. The area all around him stretched for what seemed like forever. The temperature was ambient—not too hot, yet not too cold.

  He turned slowly, noticing he was back in angel form. Stretching his wings, he noted that something was off, but then he realized that his boots made no sound on the white, tiled floor. He stomped his foot and heard nothing but dead silence.

  What was this place?

  He decided to walk around a bit, and headed to his left. It was eerie not hearing his boots on the floor. As he gently flapped his wings, he realized he didn’t feel any wind, and there was no sound of the feathers rustling.

  Stopping, he cupped his hands together, brought them to his face and yelled, “Hello!”

  There wasn’t the echo that could usually be heard when yelling into an empty space. It was as if he had just shouted into a pillow.

  Turning, he began to walk toward the light. He walked for what seemed like hours, and then finally stopped. He wasn’t getting any closer to it. Stretching his wings to the sides, he plucked two black feathers. Grimacing at the twinge of pain, he laid them on the ground and continued walking.

  In a short time, he came upon his feathers again. It was as if there was no end and no beginning to the space he was in, and there was nothing in any direction he went. He ran to his right, and again came upon the black feathers in a very short period of time.

  Panic welled in him.

  What had Michael called this place?

  Eternity. He had called it Eternity—a place with no beginning and no end.

  Liam spun around in a slow circle again and flapped his wings, taking flight. He flew higher and higher – it seemed as if the space never ended. Then suddenly, he saw his feathers again, and landed next to them.

  His throat constricted and he took off in flight, flying as fast as he could toward the light. The muscles in his back strained as he pushed himself harder and harder, determined to get to the light. A while later, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye—the feathers he had plucked and laid on the ground.

  “Michael!” he shouted. He couldn’t stay here—he’d go stark raving mad. There was no sound except his own voice, nothing to see except white, and a light it seemed he could never reach. “Michael, I can’t stay here!”

  There was no answer. Liam landed, folded his wings at his back, and sat down. Closing his eyes, he tried to reel in his panic. He had to think logically.

  Michael had said that Liam was an intricate part of the assignment on Earth, but Liam didn’t understand how. Jackie and Jonathan needed to be together, but Liam didn’t know how that was going to fare with Jonathan locked up. He was going on the assumption that the sheriff’s office didn’t take too kindly to people randomly shooting guns off.

  How was Adela going to explain his disappearance to the police? The police surely had to show up. What was she going to tell them?

  “Hell,”
he mumbled. He didn’t know how long he’d been in Eternity, but he already felt the effects of it. The total sensory deprivation was making him nuts.

  Closing his eyes, he tried to let his mind wander, to distract himself from what was happening to him.

  When left alone with his thoughts, the night Annie was killed came back. It had been that way since she died, and that was why he’d lived fast and hard while he was alive. He tried to think of other things, but the memories wouldn’t let go.

  He’d come home from a particularly busy twenty-four shift, and Annie was half-way through a bottle of wine. Instead of coming home and cuddling up to watch a movie like he had been looking forward to, Annie insisted they go out to dinner. He argued with her for a moment, but then realized it was futile. Annie had been stubborn to begin with, but that night she seemed particularly unreasonable.

  Sitting across the table from her at the restaurant, Liam realized she was pissed, drunker than he had seen her in a long time. He wondered if he had caught her in the middle of her second bottle of wine when he arrived home. He was drinking coffee just to try to stay awake, but found that the adrenaline from his irritation with Annie was helping quite a bit.

  “I just don’t think we belong together,” she slurred, pushing her brown hair behind her ear.

  “And why is that?” he asked. He just wanted her to finish the damn cheesecake as fast as she had drunk her two glasses of wine over dinner so they could leave the restaurant.

  “I just don’t think you love me, Liam.”

  He smiled, trying to calm his annoyance with her. He loved Annie more than his own life, and he had told her so on many occasions. Liam knew she wanted to get married, but he hadn’t had the balls to ask her yet. However, that was all going to change in a few days. The ring felt like it was burning a hole in his pocket, and all he was waiting for was a banner he had specially made that said, “Annie, please marry me.” He had the surprise all worked out with his fire crew: they would hang the banner from one of the trucks and roll up in front of Annie’s work, lights flashing, and Liam would be down on one knee on top of the truck with roses.