Knight's Fall

by Angela Henry

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2015

  A Kindle Scout selection

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  Being cast out was supposed to make the fallen feel regret, despair, anguish, and a whole lot of guilt. Me? Yeah, I’ll admit I felt all of those things. But mostly I was pissed as hell. I’d been purposefully dropped from the gates in a way that forced me to watch the heavens disappear as I fell, and see the only life I’d known grow dimmer with each passing second. But that had been the whole point. Once I’d fallen through the thick, luminous, gold clouds that shrouded heaven, I slowed and floated in space, my body bathed in the brilliant glow of a billion stars. Even in my current situation I could still appreciate the beauty of the galaxy and the fullness of the moon, but only for the few seconds it took me to enter earth’s atmosphere and gravity grabbed my ass, pulling me violently downward. I fell so fast that the frigid air rushing past me absorbed my screams and the thick stench of ozone filled my nose and mouth, burning my throat and lungs. It’s a damned good thing I blacked out long before I landed.

  Searing pain woke me. Blue flames licked along my limbs before engulfing my face and torso, burning away the translucent layer of outer skin that made me invisible to humans unless I wanted them to see me. And sometimes I did. But usually they looked right through me like I was made of glass. If they did see something, maybe a shimmer out of the corner of their eye, I’d already be long gone by the time they took a second look. As my skin sizzled, I bit my bottom lip hard to keep from screaming as I writhed and moaned in agony. I had to be quiet. There were things that lurked in the shadows ready to pounce on the weak and helpless. And I was in no shape to protect myself. Once the flames had completed their grim work, leaving my skin as cracked and blackened as a burnt log, I passed out again.

  The pain greeted me like an old friend when I woke for the second time. Curled onto my side, the slightest movement sent needles of pain shooting through me, making my eyes water. With supreme effort I rolled onto my back. Big mistake. The searing pain quickly reminded me of my biggest loss, my wings. They were gone. Sliced neatly from my back with one swift, sharp ax blow, leaving not even the slightest nub with which I could grow another set. Not that I wanted another set. I wanted my old wings back, with their thirty-foot wingspan of burnished bronze feathers tipped in shimmering silver. But they’d been ceremonially burnt as a warning to my fellow guardian brethren. That warning being: don’t fuck up like this loser did.

  I finally looked around to see where I’d landed. I’d been so eaten up by the pain I didn’t notice the stench of hot garbage right away. There was another, sour smell mixed in with it. I’d rescued enough humans from sudden violent illnesses, poisonings, and accidental drug overdoses to recognize it immediately. Vomit. I managed to lift my head and spied a slimy pool of it on the ground about fifteen feet away. There were trash bags piled up beside me to my left and a rusted dumpster directly in front of me. I was lying behind a six-story building in a shallow hollowed-out ditch of broken brick that had been crushed by my body upon impact. Shards of brick dug into the gaping wounds on my back. But at least the pain kept me alert.

  I slowed my ragged breathing and listened to the sounds that drifted through the thick, muggy night air of voices talking, laughing, and yelling. There was also music. It floated all around me. They were all having a much better time than me. Not that it would take much. I had no idea what day or time it was, let alone what city I’d landed in. I reached out and touched the nearest trash bag and feebly prodded and poked at the plastic until I torn open a hole big enough to fit my hand inside. I groped around the bag’s innards until I encountered something hard and round. I pulled out a dented yellow can and held it up to my face. The words Café Du Monde were written in black letters above a picture of a building. Below the picture were the words coffee and chicory. Tossing the can aside I reached back into the bag and pulled out a greasy stained envelope. The address on the front confirmed my suspicions. Chopping my wings off and kicking me out hadn’t been punishment enough. They’d sent me back to New Orleans, the scene of my crime. Who said heaven didn’t have a sense of humor?

  Moving wore me out so I put my head back and looked up at the stars. They were still going to shine regardless of how fucked-up my situation was. I needed to get someplace safe but I could barely move. If humans found me, they’d take me to a hospital, where I’d be asked a hell of a lot of questions I wouldn’t be able to answer. But humans were the least of my problems. The bounty hunters who worked for Lucifer would be out in force at night searching for lost and tortured souls. I’m betting that finding a fallen angel would be like hitting hell’s Powerball.

  I tried to sit up and almost passed out again when I suddenly detected a presence and jerked my head to the right. A white cat sat among the garbage and debris staring at me with large, blue, slanted eyes. The cat had no fur and a homely, wrinkled face. I blinked and the cat was gone, replaced by a young woman as bald and hairless as the cat but much more beautiful. At first I thought she was a ghost. Her skin was so pale and translucent I could see the blue veins running beneath it. She wore a short, silver dress with a black silk scarf tied around her waist as a belt and was barefoot, with a pair of black high heels dangling from her left hand. She knelt next to me and my body involuntarily tensed. She pressed a cool hand to my fevered brow.

  “Kill me.” My throat was still raw from the ozone and screaming, and my voice sounded as rough and harsh as wind whistling through a rusted pipe.

  “Shh, don’t try and talk.” She untied the scarf from around her waist and began gently cleaning my sooty, blistered face.

  “Please,” I begged. It would be so easy for her to cover my nose and mouth with the scarf and smother me. But she didn’t. A few minutes later, she spoke again.

  “What’s your name?” Her voice was as soft and soothing as ointment on my burnt skin.

  I opened my mouth to say Xavier when suddenly she hissed. Her eyes narrowed to slits, her back arched, and her head jerked toward the back of the building I was lying behind. I looked, too. Cast against the chipped and weathered brick was a horned shadow, a demon bounty hunter. The smell of brimstone and sulfur filled the air. We both looked around wildly for the owner of the shadow but couldn’t see anything. The shadow turned sideways, revealing a grotesque profile with a smaller horn sticking out of the middle of its forehead, along with a pointed chin and a snoutlike nose. It cocked its head back like it was sniffing the air. It must have smelled my soul, which was no longer pure. Being a fallen one meant my formerly pristine soul was now tarnished like a new house infected with toxic mold. If I made it through the night, how
I lived my time on earth would determine just how much darker my soul would get. And Lucifer was always looking for new recruits.

  The girl quickly gathered me into her arms. The fact that she avoided touching the wounds on my back made me realize she must have known what I was even though I didn’t exactly know what she was. As she held me close, the rapid beat of her heart echoed in my ear and the heat of her skin warmed me. I realized she was masking my scent with her own. After a few tense seconds, the shadow faded away, taking its putrid stench with it. But the girl continued to hold me. My pain began to subside and I relaxed. A few minutes later, she lowered me back onto the ground, and I wondered if she was leaving me there to die. Suddenly I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone. But I wasn’t alone. She was gone. But the cat had come back, flicking its pink tongue against my hand, licking away the burnt skin and exposing the new, raw, human skin beneath while I stared up at the stars.

  TWO

  One Year Later

  I turned off the narrow dirt road and parked next to a large, uprooted cypress tree that looked hundreds of years old and now lay with its exposed roots baking in the sweltering August sun. If Katrina hadn’t uprooted it, then some other catastrophe surely had.

  I’d been driving around for half an hour trying to find a secluded spot. Now that I’d found it, it was time to get to work. After looking to make sure no one was around, I got out of my black 1967 Fleetwood and opened the back door on the driver’s side. Looking out at me from the back seat was a teenage boy, with terror-filled eyes.

  “Get out,” I told him. But he was frozen to the spot and wouldn’t budge. I scowled, reached into the backseat, grabbed the boy by the front of his shirt, and hauled him out of the car.

  Once his feet touched the ground, he jerked out of my grasp and took off running. I leaned against the car with a half smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. I let the kid get a few feet away before quickly popping the trunk and pulling out a partially deflated basketball. I threw it at the back of his legs, knocking him flat on his face. By the time I reached him, fat tears streamed down his face and thick snot ran from his nose.

  “Please, mister, don’t kill me! I won’t steal again! I swear!” He started to sob. I started to soften just a little. But I couldn’t waver. I’d been hired to do a job, and I wanted my client to get their money’s worth.

  Darius Wade was seventeen years old and on the slippery slope to a life of crime, with arrests for shoplifting and vandalism already on his rap sheet. He’d been sent from Atlanta to live with his grandmother eight months ago when his parents shipped off to Iraq and Afghanistan respectively. His grandmother was getting too old to deal with her thug-in-training grandson. The kid was spoiled, bored, and missing his parents. He was acting out and had hooked up with the wrong crowd. He was throwing rocks at the jailhouse door. And in a year he’d be considered an adult, even sooner depending on what he did, and that door would open and swallow him alive. Either that or he’d end up dead.

  Darius’s grandmother didn’t want to worry her daughter and son-in-law, so she reached out to Father Sims, the priest of her church. Father Sims had assured her he’d take the boy in hand. But after he witnessed the ballsy kid stealing from the donation box, Sims hired me to have a little chat with Darius and gave me a free hand at handling him any way I saw fit. In the year that I’d been here, I’d quickly developed a reputation in and around New Orleans as the go-to guy for dirty jobs that straddled the line between right and wrong. Scaring a minor shitless in hopes of putting him back on the straight and narrow certainly fell into a gray zone. I don’t come cheap but I get the job done.

  “That’s funny ’cause I’m looking at your face, asswipe. I don’t see sorry anywhere on it. And you can save the crocodile tears. They aren’t impressing me at all.”

  I loomed over Darius, glaring down at him, and hoped I looked scary. I was thugged out for the occasion in faded, baggy jeans and a tight, white, wifebeater T-shirt that showed off what I’d been doing for a year. I bet he thought I was an ex-con. And as far as heaven was concerned, I guess I was. I never wanted to feel as weak and helpless as I did when I’d landed in that alley a year ago and had worked out religiously. Besides, there wasn’t much else for me to do when I wasn’t working except think about the shit that got me clipped, and there was nothing to be gained from dwelling on the things I can’t change. So, working out became my therapy.

  “I’m sorry! I really am!”

  “Sorry you stole my money or sorry you got caught?” I lowered my already gravelly voice, which never quite recovered from the trauma of my fall, making me sound truly frightening.

  “I won’t do it again, mister. I swear! Please let me go!”

  “Not good enough. That money you stole from St. Jude’s was money they collected to pay me for fixing the roof, not for you to buy new kicks.” I spit a hocker near the boy’s brand-new black Air Jordans.

  “I’ll take ’em back and get your money! I still got the receipt! We can go right now!”

  “That only takes care of a few hundred bucks. What about the other grand?”

  “It’s gone. I can’t get it back.”

  “Why? What’d you spend it on?” He stared at me with a sullen expression and didn’t answer.

  I slapped irritably at the mosquitoes feasting on my neck and forearm, and the kid used my momentary distraction to try and run past me. I caught him around the waist, and hefted him under one arm in one fluid motion. He was short for his age and couldn’t have weighed more than a buck twenty.

  “Maybe I should let you spend a little time in my trunk. Think that would jog your memory?” He didn’t know I was bluffing. And we were almost at the Fleetwood’s still open trunk, when he finally blurted out what he’d done with the rest of the money.

  “A gun!” he shouted in a shrill, high-pitched voice, “I used the money to buy a gun!” I lowered him to the ground, and then blocked his path as he tried to crawl under the car to get away from me.

  “What the hell does a kid like you need a gun for? Is somebody messing with you?”

  “Everybody in my crew’s got a gun. They said I couldn’t hang with them unless I had one. I need to be able to protect myself in case some fools roll up on me,” said Darius, with his chin jutted out defiantly.

  Jesus! Things were much worse than I thought. A gun was beyond bad news. It was a tragedy in the making. Darius’s bottom lip began to quiver. His eyes so defiant just a moment ago wavered under my intense stare. He was lying. The kid suddenly looked a whole lot younger than seventeen and in desperate need of a friend. I sighed and reached into my back pocket.

  “Calm down, kid,” I told him when his eyes got big. Instead of the weapon he was obviously expecting, I pulled out a handkerchief and gave it to him to wipe the tears and snot from his face. “All right; now tell me about this so-called crew of yours.”

  ****

  Two hours later I’d headed back to the French Quarter, having retrieved the gun from Darius’s grandmother’s house and getting assurances from the kid that he’d be working after school every day for Father Sims doing odd jobs around the church to earn back the money he stole. Turned out there was no crew. He’d been trying to impress some teenage thugs, and everything he’d done thus far had been to get their attention. But lucky for him they thought he was a joke. And I intended to make sure it stayed that way.

  After collecting my fee from Darius’s grandmother by way of Father Sims and setting some of it aside for food and rent, I headed straight for Zeno’s for my next order of business. Zeno’s was in the Quarter on a street that five years after Katrina was finally making a comeback, though the businesses on either side of the bar and directly across the street were still shuttered and closed with signs assuring patrons they’d be reopening and listing dates that were already three years in the past. Having been built on higher ground, the Quarter had been virtually unscathed by the hurricane. It was the lack of tourist dollars that had accomplished wha
t Katrina couldn’t and closed many of the businesses that called the Quarter home. Zeno’s was one of many businesses now owned by one of the legion of neocarpetbaggers that infused the city once the floodwaters receded.

  When I walked in it took a minute or so for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. It didn’t matter if it was day or night; it always stayed cool and dark as a cave. The usual suspects were propping up the bar and shooting the shit with George Zeno, the owner. George was like most people I’d met who moved to New Orleans. He’d been here once or twice for Mardi Gras and had such a good time he decided he wanted to live here and let the good times roll on and on. But from what I could see from the half-empty bar, the good times had rolled right past Zeno’s. There were never more than a half-dozen people in the place, and I wondered how the hell George kept it running. But for my purposes, Zeno’s was the perfect spot to conduct some private business.

  “X, my man. What can I get you?” George asked me the same question every single time I walked in, and my answer was always the same.

  “Corona, frosted glass, two wedges of lime.” That was usually the extent of our conversation. I wasn’t much for small talk, and most of what I knew about George I’d overheard him telling other customers.

  George handed me my drink, and after squeezing the lime wedges into it to make it more palatable, I chugged it down in one gulp and set the empty glass down on the bar. George didn’t mind me using Zeno’s as my office, but the price was the cost of a drink, and not a soft drink. He had a business to run after all. I preferred port but purposefully didn’t drink it because I didn’t need to feed another weakness. Weakness had gotten me clipped. I tossed money and a tip on the bar, and George nodded toward the back, where a man sat in a booth next to the ancient Wurlitzer jukebox I used when I didn’t want people listening to my conversations. I walked over and stuck some quarters into the slot and pressed a button, then slid into the booth just as Etta James began to sing “Something’s Got A Hold On Me.”