Lavender Fields

by Natalina Reis

  © 2017 Lavender Fields by Natalina Reis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any written, electronic, recorded, or photocopied format without the express permission from the author or publisher as allowed under the terms and conditions with which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution, circulation or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Lavender Fields is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events and places found therein are either from the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to persons alive or dead, actual events, locations, or organizations is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For information, contact the publisher, Hot Tree Publishing.

  www.hottreepublishing.com

  Editing: Hot Tree Editing

  Cover Designer: Claire Smith

  ISBN: 978-1-925448-98-6

  Dedication

  Falling

  Starting Again

  Waking Up

  Samael

  Punished

  Falling Again

  Together

  Pain

  Wingless

  Surprises

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  More from Natalina

  About the Publisher

  Dedication

  ____________

  To my son with love

  Falling

  ____________

  SKY

  “What’s happening?” I mumbled to myself. My mouth was parched and my eyelids, heavy as lead, struggled to open.

  A sliver of bright light reached my eyes and I blinked rapidly, trying to force away the fogginess in my brain. Painfully slow, my eyes adjusted to the shock of the sudden brightness and fluttered open.

  Was I dreaming or were there five pairs of round, flickering orbs floating above me? I blinked again and wiped what was left of my sleep-induced blurriness with my hand. Not orbs. Eyes. There were five pairs of eyes staring at me—three brown, one blue, but it was the fifth one that caught my attention. There was something odd about them. Not odd ugly, but rather beautiful like a pair of very rare gems. They didn’t match. One was emerald green, the other a deep shade of violet. I had seen wind-whipped fields of lavender, but none as entrancing as the color mix of those eyes.

  My hearing was coming back as well. I could hear their hushed voices as they murmured to each other, wondering who or—more appropriately—what I was. It wasn’t the first time something unexpected like this had happened to me. I was well known among my people as the klutz, the accident-prone one. My direct supervisor addressed me as “the liability.”

  “One of these days you’re going to really mess up things for us all,” he was known to say. As much as I would rather disagree, I couldn’t. The truth was I was indeed a genuine klutz, someone who seemed to attract disaster and—worse, in my line of work—attention.

  “What are you?” I heard a soft voice say. I blinked again and matched the voice to the owner of the strange pair of eyes. It was a male. Possibly in his mid- to late-twenties. In fact, now that my vision had cleared, I realized they were all young men, all staring at me curiously.

  With a groan, I attempted sitting up, but my head spun and I fell onto my back again.

  “Easy,” the multicolored-eyed man said, reaching out to support me and help me up. “You must have bumped your head.”

  Had I ever! My descent had been abrupt, steep, and speedy. My body had picked up speed as it approached the ground, and even though I remember the fall into the beach, the second I hit the sand had ruptured my memory. That was by far my biggest fall ever.

  The young man with the odd eyes slipped his hands under my arms and pulled me to my feet carefully. “There’s no blood,” he told me after checking the back of my head. “I think you’ll be all right.”

  I brushed my jeans and my black T-shirt, which were covered in sand.

  “I’m Caleb,” Mr. Lavender Fields said, offering a hand in welcome. “These are my friends. We were out for a walk on the beach and found you unconscious.”

  As I shook each of their hands, I studied them. They seemed to be in shock, almost in awe as they studied me in turn. I must have looked a fright, covered in sand and gravel—I seemed to have obliterated a big rock as I fell—as if I had been dumped on by a construction truck.

  “Who are you?” the one called Caleb asked me. He seemed to be the only one who had fully functioning vocal cords.

  “Sky,” I answered, my throat scratchy from disuse. I hadn’t used it in a very long time. I cleared my throat. “Thank you all for coming to my rescue.” Even though, truth be told, I was in no need of rescuing. My kind did not get hurt in the human sense of the word.

  “May I ask you what you are?”

  Now that was a loaded and strange question. I looked like any other human. Maybe a little paler around my freckles, my blond hair streaked with more silver than in most people of my perceived age, but other than that I looked like a regular everyday human.

  My eyebrow arched in question and I noticed his small pointing nod toward my back. Heavens! In the chaos of the fall, the loss of consciousness, and my general klutziness, I had forgotten to hide my wings. There they were, unfurled to their full glory, fluttering in the breeze like giant butterfly wings. Strike three for the clumsiest angel in Raphael’s crew.

  “Well….” What exactly can I say— “I’m a freaking angel, deal with it”? “I was trying out my new wings for the upcoming Comic Con.” Lying shouldn’t come so easily for an angel.

  Judging by the relief on everyone’s faces, I knew they believed me. All but Caleb, who was boring into my soul with those eyes.

  “I don’t believe it,” he whispered for my ears only. I blinked and looked around, but the other men were moving away already, relaxed in the knowledge that I was just a regular geeky human.

  “Well, it’s true,” I said, my lie weighing heavily on my conscience. An angel should never lie. Ever. But this was for a good cause. I couldn’t out a whole race of creatures because I couldn’t keep my flying speed under control, could I?

  He pulled me aside, our backs—and now my retracted wings—to the others. “You’re an angel.” It was not a question. “I’ve seen one of your kind before.”

  So I wasn’t the only clumsy angel in the realm. That was oddly comforting.

  “What about you?” I asked, scanning his face for an answer. “Who has eyes like that?”

  Caleb smiled. He had the sunniest smile I had ever seen. Something stirred inside of me. “Heterochromia. It runs in the family,” he said with a soft chuckle. “Just a birth defect.”

  We sat down on a big rock, facing the ocean. “More like a gift,” I said before I could stop myself. Why was I trying to impress this human with my silvery tongue? I had never been too flirty or too into the dating scene among my kind or humankind; as an angel, my proverbial plate was pretty full already with all my chores and responsibilities. Of course, we did get free time that theoretically could be used for romance, but I would have to stop making so many mistakes. My free time was spent mostly fixing my mess-ups, leaving very little time for fun.

  The striking young man blushed at my comment, and my angel heart fluttered. How sweet was that?

  “Is it hard?” he asked, his hand shyly inching toward mine on the rock between us. “To be an angel, I mean? What do you do exactly?”

  “It’s hard only when you’re the biggest klutz in the history of Heaven like I am,” I said, laughing and breaching the space between our hands. His was warm a
nd soft underneath mine. Little electric shocks started with the contact and crawled up my arm. I had forgotten how nice this was.

  His amazing mismatched eyes came to rest on mine, and my insides came alive with the force of a hurricane.

  “What happened to you?” he asked, his voice lowering an octave, fingers interlacing with mine. “How did you fall? Are you a fallen angel?”

  I’m falling for you. Seriously? What kind of magic was this human performing on me? I couldn’t remember the last time I had feelings for anyone, and there I was quite literally falling for him.

  “No, I’m just a regular angel here to collect a soul,” I said, then immediately regretted it. Could I sound any creepier? Collecting souls?

  “You’re an angel of death?” He didn’t look scared, merely intrigued. This one was a hard one to impress.

  “Well, I guess so,” I said, my hand itching to pull him closer. “On my way, I lost control of my speed and crashed.” Because, as usual, I was going too fast.

  “The souls don’t mind waiting, Sky,” Raphael always said. “They can wait. They’re not going anywhere.” But I had this superstitious streak that always feared the “other side” would get there first and collect the soul I was after. It didn’t work like that, of course. You couldn’t “steal” a soul. When a human died, their souls knew—even if their living bodies didn’t—which way they were going. It was either up or down, and by that time it was too late to change the destination.

  “How is it done? The harvesting of souls?” he asked, curiosity lightening his amazing eyes. “Do you have to watch them die like the Grim Reaper?”

  That was too morbid even for this angel. “No, nothing like that,” I explained. “We’re given a list—sometimes with only one name, other times many. We get the name, place, time, and—so we’re prepared—the manner of death. I try to get there as soon as possible after they pass so I can bring them the solace of Heaven as quickly as I can.” In hopes the joy of a heavenly ever-after will compensate for the loss of loved ones.

  Caleb was silent, his thumb playing havoc with my senses as he brushed it against the palm of my hand.

  “I don’t envy your job,” he said. “You may be taking them to Heaven but also away from everything and everyone they’ve ever known or loved. It can’t be easy.”

  He was right about that. “I’ve been trying for years to switch to the guardian angel patrol, but I’m too much of a screwup to elicit Raphael’s trust. At least my charges are already dead. There isn’t much harm I can do to them now.”

  Caleb laughed, then scooted closer to me. I sank against his heat, suddenly starved for his touch.

  “Are angels allowed to date humans?” he asked suddenly, a faint blush spreading across his cheeks.

  I looked around. Realizing the others had left us alone on the beach, I unfurled my white wings fully and, like a peacock, strutted them shamelessly. Then I tilted his chin up and kissed him, slowly and timidly at first, not sure of what his reaction would be. But his lips hungrily devoured mine. My angelic body turned to mush as his arms encircled my waist and pulled me against him. I buried my fingers into the silky folds of his black hair, drawing him closer. Folding my wings around us like a protective cocoon, I allowed myself a moment of total selfishness. I’d been an angel for a few hundred years, but I was certain I’d been created for that single moment in time.

  I didn’t want to go and, for a second, I considered handing in my resignation and becoming a mere mortal so I could spend a few years loving this human. His lips tasted of milk and honey, better than anything I had ever tasted before. I wanted to linger on them, savoring him, craving more of him. I wanted to lose myself in the lavender fields of his eyes. But of course I couldn’t. Not right then. Not yet. I had a soul to collect.

  I sighed, ending the kiss. “I have to go, Caleb,” I said. “Souls to save and all that.”

  Caleb brushed his hand across my face in a tender yet electrifying caress. “Wings aside,” he said, hot gaze meeting mine, “you are the most beautiful man I have ever met.”

  A silly smile stretched across my lips. “I’ll be back,” I whispered, standing reluctantly. “Give me your full name and I’ll find you.” I had Heaven’s complete directory of living souls, after all.

  “Caleb Pierce,” he said, kissing me one last time.

  With a great flap of my wings, I flew away, my heart already longing for Caleb’s eyes. I would harvest my assigned soul and come back to his arms. I watched him from above as he waved at me and then walked the few yards to the beach’s parking lot, climbed on his motorcycle, and drove away.

  Taking a deep breath, I dug in my pocket for the name and address of the soul I was to harvest. The small piece of vellum was rolled into a tight little cylinder that I fought to unroll. I hoped I hadn’t made the soul wait too long. It was five after six in the afternoon, and the sun was starting to descend into the ocean.

  The vellum note held the deadly power of a dagger to my heart, for in it a lonely name had been scribbled in careless script. A name that a mere hour before wouldn’t have held any particular meaning, but meant the world to me now.

  Caleb Pierce, 6:10 p.m., Sunset Beach Ave, Motorcycle accident

  ____________

  TROUBLE

  If you think angels never get angry, you’ve never met Gabriel. His face, normally peaceful and pale, was a visceral shade of red, and I could swear I saw smoke coming out of his ears. He leaned over, gripping the sides of his desk so fiercely I thought his knuckles were going to explode.

  “You went too far this time, Sky.” Spittle flew out of his mouth, and his eyes bulged out as if trying to escape their sockets. “It’s bad enough that you have showered the Angelic Corps with all kinds of indignities thanks to a total lack of common sense or respect for our laws.”

  I’d had many tongue lashings in the past, but this one was turning out to be a real doozy. My face burned, though whether from shame or frustration I couldn’t tell. I leaned back on my chair and my wings retracted on their own as if even they were afraid of this furious archangel.

  “Twice in the past six months we’ve had to repair your broken wings. Twice.” His voice was lowered to a threatening whisper. “Do you know how hard it is to repair angel wings? Do you know all that it involves? Of course you do. You just don’t care.” His voice, deceptively mild now, made me quiver in my shoes. “Three weeks ago, you practically caused a national panic when you were spotted flying low over Boothbay Harbor. What in Heaven’s name possessed you to do such a stupid thing?”

  I bit my tongue to prevent myself from answering. It was the thrill of the thing—the amazing feeling of the wind under my wings, the cold ocean air making my face tingle and my eyes water. It was exhilarating.

  “Earlier this year, you were featured in the news in Portland as a UFO when you were reckless enough to hover over the bay during a full moon.” I remembered that one well. My shock at seeing my glowing wings in a thankfully fuzzy photograph both in the newspaper and on television was quickly replaced by a sense of amusement. UFO indeed! I had been called many things before, but that was a first. Of course, Gabriel had not been amused.

  “And now, the witch coven on Squirrel Island has been holding special ceremonies making offerings to the fallen angel they found napping on their private beach.” His thin lips stretched even thinner, and his voice went up several octaves as he stared me down with those laser eyes of his. “Enough is enough, Sky. You’re not a fledgling any longer. As a full-grown angel, you must be aware of our safeguards at every moment. They exist for a reason. They protect both the Corps and the humans.”

  With my head lowered for effect, I bit my lip again, not sure how I was going to get out of this one. Trouble seemed to follow me, I knew. I wasn’t mischievous, just clumsy and a bit impulsive. Sometimes I wished there was some sort of ADHD medicine for angelic creatures so I could get a little help controlling my crazy instincts.

  “And now the cherry on top
of the ice cream,” Gabriel said. “You go and save a human from his fate? Let me remind you what your job is, my son. You are an angel of death. You collect the souls of the departed and escort them to Heaven. That’s it! You are not allowed to have a say in whichever fate befalls your charges. No choice at all. What made you think it was okay to prevent this man’s death? What madness could have possibly crossed your weak little brain to make you do something so stupid? Answer me!” He was yelling now and, even though I didn’t look, I was sure there were quite a few curious eyes and ears perking up behind the glass-like curtain that partitioned his office.

  What could I say? That I had fallen in love with a mortal I didn’t even know until a half hour before his death? That I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him so shortly after I found him? That his eyes had me under a spell that rendered me incapable of intelligent decisions? After all, being an angel meant feeling everything hundredfold, stronger and faster. In spite of that, these answers wouldn’t have gone down well with the enraged, and by now purple, archangel.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” He wouldn’t stop until I said something. Anything. Not that he’d believe anything I said or that it would make a difference on how he felt about me and my actions, but he was used to being obeyed, and the fact that I was blatantly disobeying his order had to be chaffing him big time. “Speak!”

  “It didn’t seem right.” My voice came out in a whisper. I was afraid of raising my eyes to him, so I kept them securely on my hands anchored on my lap.

  “What did you say?” His voice boomed like thunder in the quiet of the night. “Speak up!”

  I did raise my eyes then. Shaking inside, the familiar burn of injustice scorched my being. I was all about being fair and just. All angels were by definition. But we were also creatures bound by our own rules and by those who had authority over us. I had a lot of trouble following those rules sometimes. If anything remotely smelled of wrongdoing, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My whole being rebelled against it, and that’s how I got myself in constant trouble. I had never done anything as serious as this though. For an angel in the death squad like me, saving the man I was supposed to guide into eternity was a huge no-no.