“Then I’d love to stay,” she said.
“But we’ll only be staying one more night. I know it will take a while for Lucifer to walk off what Dani said to him, but I refuse to risk you lives,” Gabriel said, “The moment he rises, he’ll be able to find me wherever I am, and no matter how good you are, you cannot stand against him.”
They talked for a few more minutes before Potter called over to Gabriel from across the yard, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“You may,” Gabriel said and walked with Potter towards the driveway.
4.
Gabriel followed Potter most of the way down the long driveway before Potter turned to talk to him, “Can I ask you a question without offending you?”
“I’ll answer any question I can,” Gabriel said.
“Should you be doing what you’re doing with Dani?” Potter asked.
“Can I be honest with you?” he asked and Potter nodded. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. None of this was suppose to happen between the two of us. I was supposed to come down here, keep Dani safe, strike down Lucifer, and hopefully go home. Then I fell in love with her, and now…,” Gabriel said and stopped himself from saying more.
“Is there any real chance of you going home now?” Potter asked. “I heard your brother say that you’d already been kicked out of Heaven. What are the odds of you getting back in now that you’ve fuc…” that was as far as Potter got before Gabriel grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground.
“If you use that word to describe what Dani and I have done, I will kill you right here and now, hunter,” Gabriel said and dropped Potter.
“My apologies,” Potter said rubbing his throat, “I didn’t mean to offend you, it’s just how I’m accustomed to talking. I just lost my head.”
“You’ll loose it literally if those words ever leave your mouth,” Gabriel warned. “But to answer your question, I don’t really care about going back to Heaven anymore. I just want to keep Dani alive through the coming battle. What happens to me doesn’t matter after that. I’ll either get to stay here with her or I’ll be dead.”
“You sound like you’re really in love,” Potter said. “And if you’re happy, then I’m happy for you.”
“I’m very happy to be with her, even it’s to only be for a short time,” Gabriel said. “But why are you asking me about this? I appreciate what you’ve done for Dani, but how I feel about her is a little above of your pay grade, don’t you think?”
“It’s a safety issue,” Potter said, and shrugged. “Demons and Cambion we can deal with, but if God starts throwing lightning bolts at you, we kinda need to know when to duck and cover.”
Gabriel laughed,” Don’t worry, my Father won’t summon me until this is over. And if He starts throwing lightning bolts at me, He will not miss.”
5.
“What was that all about?” Dani asked Gabriel when they were walking back to their temporary home.
Gabriel smiled down at her, “He just wanted to discuss some safety concerns he had. I told him there was nothing to worry about.”
Gabriel led her to D.J.’s Bridge, “Sit down for a minute, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
Dani sat down on the bridge and let her legs dangle over the creek, which had turned out to be a good twenty feet deep. She hoped he wasn’t going to tell her something that she didn’t want to hear.
“It’s about your father,” Gabriel said, sitting down next to her and taking her hand.
“I don’t want to talk about my father,” she said, and tried to pull her hand away.
Dani’s father and his abandonment of her and her mom had always been a touchy subject for her. She didn’t want to hear from Gabriel that she needed to forgive him.
Dani’s mother had taught her to forgive people and Dani had forgiven everyone who had ever done her wrong, although usually only after she’d attacked them for that wrong. But she had never forgiven her father, nor did she feel he deserved her forgiveness.
“I don’t want to talk about him,” she repeated, trying again to pull her hand from his grasp so she could get up, but he held tight.
“Daniel Reese Coulter is dead, Dani,” Gabriel said.
“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “He deserved to die for leaving me and my mom like he did.”
“He died before you were born,” he said. “He never abandoned you, Dani.”
Dani sat in shocked silence for awhile. She didn’t know what to do or how to feel.
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” she asked.
“I would lie to you if I thought it was in your best interest,” he said. “But I’m not lying to you about this. All the birth fathers of the Daughters of God die in the month or two that precedes the birth of their child.”
“Why?” Dani asked angrily. “How?”
“They die in different ways. Mostly they’re killed by demons or Cambion, but there have been some natural deaths as well,” Gabriel said. “As to why they die, we don’t really know; maybe because they’ve served their purpose on Earth. I know they all ascend to Heaven at the point of their deaths.”
“But my grandfather…,” Dani was saying.
“He wasn’t your mother’s birth father. Your grandmother married him three months after your mother was born,” Gabriel said.
“But they were so happy together,” Dani said.
“There was no reason why they shouldn’t have been. Most of the Daughters of God have gone on to remarry and live happy lives. They just can’t bear that man a child.”
He explained, “The demons may have killed some of the birth fathers to prevent a Daughter of God from bearing him anymore children since she could only bear a child for one man, but it was a wasted effort. A Daughter of God will only ever be able to have one child.”
It was unfair to tell her this now; after all of the years she’d thought her father had left her.
She looked away from him to hide the pain in her eyes, “Did my mother know my grandfather wasn’t her real father?”
“I don’t know, love.”
“He was her real father, Dani; he just wasn’t her birth father,” Michael said from behind them. “Your grandfather took another mans seed and raised it as his own, and he loved her as if she were his birth child. Don’t take that away from him. But to answer your question, no, they never told your mother about it. They felt no need.”
“So all the fathers just die? That doesn’t seem fair to th…oh no,” Dani gasped. “What if I’m pregnant from us making love last night? Doesn’t that mean you’ll die?”
Gabriel laughed, “I wish I could have a child with you, Dani; a daughter every bit as beautiful as her mother, but I’m not human. I lack the necessary ingredients needed to create life.”
Dani felt a deep disappointment, “So we can never have kids?”
“If we get through this alive, you can have as many children as you like,” he said.
“I don’t want to be with another man,” she said.
“Nor do I want you to be,” Gabriel said, smiling. “I said I lacked the ingredients to create life, not that we couldn’t get them. They have clinics everywhere now where you can go in and buy a bottle of whatever father you wish.”
Dani nodded. She hadn’t thought about that. Then she thought about her father again.
“How did my father die?” she asked.
Gabriel looked to Michael.
“See if you’d have watched the bloodline, you’d know these answers,” Michael said to Gabriel.
Gabriel glared at him, “Do you know or not?”
“Of course I do,” Michael said. “Sammeal killed him.”
“Who is Sammeal?” she asked.
“Sammeal is a prince among demons,” Gabriel said. “He’s an Angel of Death.”
“How did he kill my father?”
“Your father loved nature,” Michael said. “Six weeks before you were born your mother had a baby show
er. While she was busy with her friends, your father snuck away to go fishing at the river. Sammeal pulled him from the rocks, dragged him beneath the water and pinned him to the Earth. His bones are still there under the silt. No human will ever be there to drag them up.”
Dani let this settle in her mind for a moment, and then leaned over and heaved her last meal into the creek below.
“Could I have a moment alone, please?” she asked and pulled her hand from Gabriel’s grasp.
“Dani…” he said, reaching for her again, but she put her hands in her lap and looked away.
“Gabriel, give her some time to sit with this,” Michael said. “Walk with me, brother.”
6.
“Is there a point to you coming down here or did you come just to make this day more difficult than it already has been?” Gabriel asked Michael as they walked through the woods.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt her,” Michael said. “She wanted to know how her father died, so I told her.”
“You could have just said he’d drowned. You didn’t have to give her all the gory details of his death.”
“Now I’m supposed to lie to her?” Michael said, stopping to look at his brother. “She deserved to know the truth, Gabriel.”
“Why are you here, Michael?”
“Why did you sleep with Dani last night?” Michael said.
“You’re the one that told me to make a decision about Dani.”
“I said make a decision about her, not jump in bed with her,” Michael said. “Why couldn’t you wait until this was over and then talk to our Father about it? Do you know what you’ve done?”
“I’m fully aware of what I’ve done,” Gabriel said. “Did you really come down here to talk me out of something that’s already happened or is there another reason?”
“I was sent down to give you a message,” Michael said. “Just don’t kill the messenger, alright?”
“A message from whom?” Gabriel asked suspiciously.
“Our Father,” Michael said.
Gabriel’s heart sank with dread. If his Father sent him a message, Gabriel knew it would be nothing good.
“What’s the message?”
Michael stepped back from Gabriel before speaking, “You are not worthy to lie with the last Daughter of God.”
Gabriel stood in stunned silence. He wasn’t worthy? His Father thought less of him than Gabriel had believed.
“But I love her,” Gabriel said.
“He knows that. He doesn’t care.” Michael said. “Gabriel, I hate to say it, but you may want to step back from Dani and just do your job. Maybe if you do, He will still forgive you.”
“I won’t give her up,” Gabriel said.
“Gabriel…,” Michael said.
“No! “Gabriel roared.
“You know what you’ve done! You know what’s going to happen! If you don’t back away you may end up in Hell yourself!”
“Then so be it!” Gabriel yelled, spreading his wings. “You tell Our Father that if he wants me away from Dani before Lucifer comes for her then he’ll have to pull me home Himself or strike me dead now, because I will not give her up!”
The sky split open and three lightning bolts struck around where they were standing, setting a few of the trees on fire.
“Stop this, Gabriel! You’ll only be here a few more days; maybe less!” Michael roared. “She’s not worth this!”
Gabriel crashed into Michael and drove him backward through the trees. Michael tried to fight back, but he never stood a chance against Gabriel. He slammed Michael to the ground and pulled his sword from its sheath.
He held his sword to Michael’s throat, “God’s punishment of me worked; never doubt that, Michael. All those years outside the Gates were not in vain. I have no qualms about killing one of my brothers anymore. Don’t make me start with you.”
“You would kill me? Over her; over a human woman?” Michael said in astonishment.
“Without hesitation,” Gabriel said. “If you don’t believe me then say one more word to me about what you think Dani’s not worth, just one, and I’ll prove it to you.”
Michael studied Gabriel’s face before speaking, “You’re all in on this, aren’t you?”
“It’s too late to be anything else,” Gabriel said. “I have no regrets about Dani or about what now has to be. For your own best interest, I would advise you to accept it as I have.”
“But you’re my brother! I love you,” Michael said.
“As I love you,” Gabriel said, then pulled Michael to his feet and put his sword back in its sheath.
“I must have never have actually been in love with Tzahala?” Michael said.
“Why do you say that?”
Michael smiled at him, “Because being in love obviously drives angles insane.”
Gabriel asked, “You think I’ve gone crazy?”
“You’re defying God again, so yes, I think you’ve gone crazy,” Michael said.
“I’m not crazy, little brother, just determined not to leave her.”
“Like I said; crazy,” Michael said with a sad smile and disappeared.
Gabriel drew a deep breath, blew out the fire that still burned in the trees, then headed back to Dani.
Chapter Fourteen
1.
Dani sat on the bridge and thought about what she’d learned about her father. It kind of made sense from the things her mother had told her. She hadn’t known that her father had left on the day of her moms baby shower, but she knew he hadn’t taken his car. He wouldn’t have needed to. The river was right down the street. He could have walked there in ten minutes.
She tried to imagine what he’d been thinking when he was being dragged beneath the water. Or how he felt when he’d come face to face with a demon. He had to have died in terror. She wanted to feel differently about him, but she didn’t; at least not yet. She’d believed he’d left them for so long that it was hard to accept the reality that he’d been taken from them.
She knew that she would eventually come to terms with what had really happened, but right now it was too new. She wondered if he’d thought of her mom or his unborn child while he was dying. Then she decided that she didn’t want to know.
She didn’t even know what he’d looked like. Her mom had thrown all his pictures away when she thought he’d left her. Dani jumped when she heard three quick bangs. It sounded almost like thunder, but the sky was clear blue. Gabriel walked back onto the bridge a few minutes later.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything’s fine,” Gabriel said. “Why do you ask?”
“I thought I heard…never mind,” she said.
She stood up and looked at him. He looked tense and maybe a little angry, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” he said stiffly.
“Don’t lie to me,” she said, stepping over to him.
Gabriel took a small step back, “I just had a small disagreement with Michael.”
“Because he told me about my father?”
“That was part of it. He didn’t need to tell you all that he did. You have enough on your mind right now without him throwing details of your father’s death into the mix.”
“It’s alright; really,” she said. “I asked him to tell me.”
“That’s not the point. He doesn’t think about what he says before he says it.”
“Come on, let’s go in the house and we can talk about it there,” she said.
“You go on ahead; I’ll be there in a bit.”
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I said I’m fine. Now go, woman!” he snapped at her.
She looked at him one more time, and then walked away.
2.
Dani waited at the house for two hours before she finally gave up on waiting and made them lunch out of what she could find in the fridge. But Gabriel never showed up to eat his. She lay do
wn on the couch, intending to just rest her eyes, but she drifted off. When she woke up it was already getting dark outside.
“Gabriel,” she called out, but there was no answer.
She thought about making dinner, but decided she wasn’t really hungry. It occurred to her that maybe Gabriel wasn’t coming back, but he wouldn’t just leave her. Would he? She turned on the T.V. to take her mind off of him. She watched two, hour long shows and then turned off the television.
As soon as it was off, she couldn’t remember a damn thing she’d watched. She roamed the house for awhile, trying to keep her abandonment issues at bay, but her brain wouldn’t leave her alone. It kept whispering to her. She wanted to pretend it was whispering ‘When’s he coming back?’ But what it was really whispering was ‘Is he coming back?”
It was ten thirty at night when she decided she needed to take a walk and get rid of the nervous energy that was coursing through her.
She went outside and looked up at the bright moon. The yard was awash in its white glow. She decided to forgo the path and take a walk in the woods instead. She walked for about fifteen minutes before she realized that the trees were getting thicker and blocking out the moonlight, making it almost pitch black around her.
She decided to push through and keep going. The property couldn’t be that big; it had to come out somewhere. She tripped over a fallen branch and fell face first onto the ground. She sat up and put her hand to her forehead. Her hand came away wet. She was bleeding.
She stood up to walk back to the house, but the fall had spun her around. She didn’t know what direction she’d come from, and there was no light to show her the way. She took a step backwards and fell, ass over end, into the creek below.
3.
Dani landed on her side with her right arm lodged underneath her. She tried to sit up and cried out in pain.
She’d hurt her arm. She rolled face down in the water and used her left arm to push herself up. She looked up at the steep sides of the creek and realized she was trapped; there was no way for her to get out. She was about to scream for help when she heard a quiet splash to her left.
When Angels Fall Page 13
