Angel in Crisis

by C. L. Coffey

  “We’re doing it so we don’t have to tell the world about the existence of angels and fallen angels,” Joshua pointed out.

  “Oh, I know,” I agreed. “Aside from the fact no one is supposed to know about us, look how well it turned out when they found out about me and Veronica. There’s still people who linger outside the churches, you know.”

  “To get a glimpse of you, who wouldn’t?” Joshua smiled, his other hand reaching for a lock of my hair which he promptly started to twirl around in his fingers.

  Now who was deflecting? “Regardless: you shouldn’t be put in that position. Neither of you should. My instruction to protect you shouldn’t just stop at keeping you alive. It should also involve keeping you out of trouble. You shouldn’t be lying about gas leaks – assuming that even works.” I puffed up my cheeks and blew out slowly. “We need to find a way to trap the Fallen and stop them from trying to escape long enough that we can exorcise them. It seems to do less damage than killing them.”

  “You want me to call up Acme and see if they have any platinum nets we can drop over them?” Joshua asked, his lips quirking up at the corner.

  “I was thinking of something a little subtler than that.” I pursed my lips. “Something which we can hide so that they won’t notice.”

  “You want to create a demon trap?”

  “Not that I’d complain if Sam and Dean were here to exorcise them.” Joshua gently tugged at my hair, pouting. “But something like that. Maybe we can find another abandoned building, preferably in a less inhabited part of town, and create a sigil. Veronica said they took some setting up, but we might get a couple of uses out of it before we have to top it up.” Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. If we could move quickly and find a suitable location – somewhere like I said: vacant and isolated, but somewhere a detective or fallen angel would visit without becoming suspicious – we could have something ready before Leon and Joshua had their next suspect lined up.

  “You’ve gone quiet again. Don’t tell me that’s all that’s going on up there,” Joshua muttered, tapping my forehead.

  “Far from it,” I disagreed. “I hope you don’t have anywhere else to go tonight, because I have plenty to share.”

  Joshua gave me a smirk. “The underwear didn’t give you a clue?”

  His underwear gave me plenty of things, but a clue wasn’t one of them. “I didn’t want to assume anything.” When he gave me a pointed look, I shrugged. “Next up on the list, I suppose, is that Cupid knows about us.”

  Joshua shifted, his position becoming more upright, and he stared down at me. “I think you probably should have led with that one, darlin’,” he informed me.

  “He found out this morning. We went dress shopping,” I started to explain, but a bemused smile appeared on Joshua’s lips. “What?”

  “Just imagining you in a dress,” he said. He dropped the lock of hair he’d been playing with and let his hand rest on my stomach. At some point, my top must have ridden up because half of his hand was resting on fabric, and the other half was on my skin. “But that’s not the important thing here. What did he say?”

  “That the covenant was put there to protect us,” I told him. As Joshua began tracking patterns over my skin, I closed my eyes.

  “That’s nothing we haven’t heard before, darlin’,” Joshua said. “We’ve been over this, I love you, but I know better than to start worshiping you over God.”

  I lay there, eyes closed, chewing at my lip. I didn’t want to tell him the rest. It was selfish, but what if he agreed with Cupid? I had gone from liking him, to trying to get him reassigned a new guardian angel, to wanting to spend as much time with the person I was in love with as I could. But part of what I had to do was protect him, and hiding something like this from him wasn’t protecting him.

  “Angel,” he pressed, gently. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”

  When I opened my eyes, I found him staring at me with such concern, I knew I had to tell him. I rolled onto my side to face him, his hand stayed on me, following my turn and coming to a rest on my hip. “What if by being with me, I’m stopping you from being with the person you’re meant to be with?” I asked him, finally. “For all we know, I could be the one who is supposed to introduce you to the love of your life and you’re going to have a baby who brings peace on earth.”

  “Are we playing the ‘what if’ game now?” he asked, the concern quickly replaced with amusement.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m being serious, Joshua! I had thought the reason I was here was to protect you from Asmodeus, but he has gone and you still have me as your guardian angel. There is a really good chance that maybe that’s not what I’m here for.”

  “What if the Saints end their sponsorship with Mercedes Benz? What if their new sponsor is Marvel and they rename it the Superhero Superdome and then paint it so it’s a replica of Captain America’s shield?” he asked me, somehow keeping a straight face.

  I, on the other hand, was staring at him incredulously. “How can you even joke about it?”

  “I thought you were,” he said, giving me a one shouldered shrug. His hands splayed out and started moving up and down my side.

  “I’m being serious,” I insisted.

  “Darlin’, I say this with love, but you’re being pretty ridiculous.” My mouth fell open. Irritated, I suddenly sat upright, “You and Cupid seem to keep forgetting one very important thing.”

  “And what is that?” I asked, scowling down at him.

  “God’s greatest gift was Free Will.”

  “Which he also presented to the angels,” I shot back at him. “The angels were given Free Will, and they are just as fallible as humans – that’s why Lucifer fell.”

  “There’s a bit more to his fall than that,” he said, dismissing the statement. “But you’re missing my point: If in your hypothetical situation, I meet a girl and together we make babies, you’re assuming that I actually choose to be with her, and you’re assuming she chooses me. Free Will dictates I don’t have to. There are two parties involved there, just like there are with you and me. You might think that choosing to be with me is stopping me from doing other things, but you’re forgetting that I’m choosing to be with you too. Sure, it’s not the average relationship, but neither of us has been forced to be in it.”

  I slumped backwards against the wall, staring down at him as I pondered his words. This was one of the times when being an angel royally sucked. They both made excellent points. I stared up at the ceiling, chewing on my lower lip. Okay, God, I’m not great at this praying thing, so I’m just going to say this… If I need to protect Joshua for whatever reason you’ve deemed, I need to trust him. So that’s what I’m going to do, and I really hope that’s cool with you. I frowned. Amen.

  “Do I have to pull another twenty out?” Joshua asked me, pushing himself into a sitting position and maneuvering himself beside me.

  “Only because I’m certain that being dead is the only way I’m getting out of paying my student loan back, I’ll let you keep your money, wherever you are producing that from,” I murmured, running my hand through my hair. “I think you make sense. I also think Cupid makes sense,” I told him. “But I am happy to carry on as we are doing, so long as you are happy to do the same?”

  “There’s no need to question it,” Joshua assured me, his hands wrapping around my waist. With little resistance from me, he tugged me over so I was straddling him. “I love you.”

  “I love you,” I said, leaning down to kiss him.

  * * *

  The knocking which awoke me the following morning felt so alien thanks to getting used to Cupid being my personal alarm clock and bounding in, that at first I thought I was dreaming. Although we had fallen asleep with me on top of the covers and him underneath them, I was currently sprawled out all over him. Even if we were both in clothing (well, his underwear and my pajamas), I hurried to extract myself, just in case someone decided not to wait for me to call them in. I opened the d
oor a crack and found Nyle staring at me, looking worried. “Has Eugene gone missing again?” I asked in an exasperated whisper.

  “Zachary and Savannah are here,” Nyle told me.

  My stomach plummeted. “Where?”

  “Your office. You said not to disturb Cupid-”

  “No,” I agreed. “You’ve done the right thing: he needs to rest, not get stressed by those two. I’ll get dressed and go down. Let them know I’m on my way.” When Nyle nodded his head and started down the corridor, I shut the door, letting my head slump against the wood, muttering curses under my breath.

  “Calm down there, sailor.”

  I turned around, continuing to rest against the door, and rubbed the palms of my hands in my eyes. “Zachary and Savannah are here.” I dropped my hands with a sigh.

  “I heard,” Joshua nodded. “Want me to come with you?”

  I did, yes, but that was not a great idea. Instead I shook my head. “You should head into the precinct and see what Leon needs,” I told him. “I will meet up with you both later this afternoon,” I added as he got off the bed and strode towards me. I watched him, expectantly, as he came to a stop in front of me, reaching out to grasp my hips.

  “You’ve got this,” he assured me, his blue eyes were bright, staring earnestly at me. “That pair have clearly got issues.” I had filled him in on the last meeting. “And what’s more, you defeated another one of the Fallen.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead.

  I knew this, but hearing his words did give me a burst of confidence… confidence that lasted for precisely the first eight seconds after walking into my office. I had contemplated dressing in the smart suit I had originally been assigned when I had first arrived at the convent, but eventually decided against it. The weight of the Kevlar in my jeans was reassuring, and I was so used to carrying my main dagger around with me that it felt like I was missing a limb when I wasn’t. The second dagger had now taken a permanent residence on my ankle on the opposite leg as Gabriel had suggested. That was taking a little more to get used to: all the more reason to be dressed in my combative clothes.

  There was also something reassuring to know both weapons were with me when I entered my office and found Savannah sitting behind my desk, snooping through my drawers. “Let me guess: you need to borrow a pen?” I asked, folding my arms as I glared at her.

  Savannah flicked her long, sleek hair over her shoulder and fixed me an impatient look. “You took your time.”

  “Well, if I knew to be expecting you, I would have been here to meet you,” I responded, making my voice as icy as I could.

  “After the spectacle you orchestrated last night, how could you not be?” Zachary asked.

  I could feel the blood draining from my face as the expression on his told me he seemed to know more about something than I did. I didn’t like it. I forced myself to meet his glare and keep my expression as neutral possible. “What spectacle?”

  Zachary marched over and thrust a newspaper in my face. “That spectacle.”

  I pulled the New Orleans Advocate from his hands and scanned the front page. The main focus was the weather – the city was experiencing record highs for this time of year (shocker) and there had been fifty consecutive days without rain. Otherwise, there was the start of an article about a restaurant which had been robbed in Uptown, a murder in one of the Wards, and an update on one of the Saint’s players who had been injured in a previous game. I glanced over the top of the paper at Zachary and arched an eyebrow. “While I appreciate the compliments, and agree that I am pretty damn hot, I’m not the one causing the heatwave.”

  Before I could inform them the cause of the heatwave was in fact Beelzebub, Savannah snorted rudely. “Hardly. Look on page fourteen.”

  With an impatient sigh, I began leafing through the newspaper until I finally found page fourteen. I folded the second page back and, ignoring the half page advert for a car dealership, focused on the only other story on there: a gas explosion in an abandoned building.

  The same abandoned building I had been in the night before when we had confronted Jezebeth. I stared at the small three-inch squared photograph of a fire truck and half a dozen firemen bringing the fire under control, and then quickly read the article. By the time I had finished, I was ready to laugh in relief. “It has been reported as a gas leak,” I told Zachary. “There isn’t any hint in there that they think it was anything other than that, or that any of us were involved.” I needed to buy Leon a case of beer, or something.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Zachary disagreed. “You have brought more attention to us, yet again.”

  “Bullshit,” I snorted before I could stop myself. Zachary and Savannah started at me, mortified – though I wasn’t sure if it was at my cuss word, or that I would talk back to them. “This story reports it as a gas leak. There is no mention of anyone being seen at the location – angelic or otherwise. How the hell would anyone assume from that story that something supernatural was the cause of it? They didn’t even jump to terrorism.” My eyes narrowed. “If they didn’t, why would you?” The paper bunched up in my grip as my hands found my hips. “Why the hell are you here?”

  “As we told you,” Savannah started, rising to her feet.

  “No, you didn’t,” I cut her off.

  “That spectacle you caused,” she snapped back at me.

  “That spectacle which nobody thinks is caused by anything other than a gas explosion,” I shot back at her. “Unless you’ve got another paper hidden away somewhere. Or is that why you’re here? So I can remove it from your-”

  “You are causing damage and destruction to this city once more!” Zachary yelled.

  “You might want to consider loosening that man bun of yours,” I told him, surprising even myself that I had refrained from yelling back at him. “The damage and destruction affected one abandoned building, and only happened because we managed to defeat another one of the Fallen.”

  Zachary, whose eyes had almost bulged out of his head when I insulted his hair, faltered. “You managed to defeat another one of the Fallen.”

  I decided to ignore his jibe, and nodded my head. “Cupid, Gabriel and myself, yes.”

  “Who?” Savannah demanded.

  “Jezebeth,” I replied, calmly. Savannah and Zachary shared a look which I found equally satisfying and irritating. “So, I repeat my question: why the hell are you here?” I glared at them both.

  “New Orleans is on our radar,” Savannah eventually admitted. “We’re monitoring every news story being reported out of it.”

  “You’re taking pot luck guesses as to which are caused by supernatural elements?” I asked in surprise.

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  “Why, what?” Zachary asked, looking confused.

  I rolled my eyes. “Why is New Orleans on your radar? Who put it there?” The two virtues shared another look, but neither answered my question. Their silence spoke volumes. “You two are on a witch hunt. You’ve been perfectly clear about your feelings over Cupid and me running this House. This is just the both of you doing your best to try to find dirt on us and get yourselves put in charge of this House instead. I can’t help but wonder what Grace would say if she knew what you two were doing? I mean, that can’t be your only job, otherwise she would be here as well. Am I right?” Again, I was greeted with stony silence. “If all the pair of you are doing is trying to find a way for me and for Cupid to fail, then you can leave right now. That negativity is not welcome in this House, and neither are you.”

  Zachary’s blue eyes were glacial. “You and Cupid shouldn’t be running this House. We know it, you know, and even Grace knows it. The only reason you are is because Michael had some outlandish idea that you would be more suitable than Savannah and I.”

  “Get. Out,” I growled at him through gritted teeth.

  “We’re not finished with you,” Savannah chimed in. “We’re going to be keeping a close eye on this city,
and the goings on in it.”

  “Get out!” I yelled at them. Finally, they listened and disappeared, leaving me regretting the fact I should have told them that they needed to keep a better eye on the city than they were doing, because that was another one of the Fallen that had been missed. Their attention was focused on the wrong place... they were both idiots who needed their divine eyesights checked. I started pacing back and forth, trying to stop my clenched hands from shaking, and cool off, realizing as I did so, that maybe it was good thing I hadn’t said any of that… or at least the last part.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Difference of Opinions

  I was ready to go back to bed. Dealing with Zachary and Savannah was tiring, and the thought of everything I needed to do today was enough for me to want to curl up under the covers and pretend they didn’t exist. Sadly, I didn’t do that. After checking my desk to see if I could work out what Savannah had been looking for (honestly, I barely used it, so there was nothing there), I made my way to the dining room.

  Breakfast was underway, although the atmosphere was more subdued than it had been for a while. I grabbed a blueberry muffin and stood by the hatch, watching the angels eat in near silence. Cupid and I had planned on waiting until after the structural work had been completed on the other side of the convent before we tackled the job of redecorating the interior. The aim was to do it all at once, but maybe it was time to give the angels something new to focus on. Making a mental note to discuss it with Cupid later, I ate the muffin, grabbed a second, and then walked into the kitchen.

  The kitchen was the only room which didn’t have the lingering smell of smoke. It usually smelled of whatever was cooking, but right now, all I could smell was bleach. Two other angels were busy scrubbing down the aluminum surfaces with Eugene overseeing them. As soon as he saw me, his eyes lit up. “Shopping time?”

  I’d forgotten about that. I slowly shook my head, watching as his face fell in disappointment. “I don’t have much time today, and I’d rather spend it helping with the prep work, seeing as I haven’t been in here much. I’ve done the grocery order this week, and I know that chilies were on there,” I assured him. “There are vegetables to be chopped and chicken to be diced.”