Falling for Cyn

by Anne Conley

  Too drunk to drive, she allowed Evelyn to help her into her car. When they reached a corner convenience store, she said, “Pull over here. I need some water.”

  “Okay, babe. You want me to go in?”

  “No, I got it.” She wondered if Evelyn regretted taking her out. She was a maudlin mess.

  The convenience store was lit with a garish green glow that she ignored on her quest for water. Concentrating on keeping her steps steady, she didn’t notice at first that a man had followed her in. Raised voices at the front of the store got her attention, and when she walked around the aisle to the check-out counter, she realized what was going on.

  A young kid was holding a sawed-off shotgun to the clerk’s head.

  “I said, everything in the register! I don’t give a shit about the safe!”

  A gasp rose from her throat with instant sobriety. Cynthia clutched the bottle of water to her chest like a shield, her mind suddenly focused on the events in front of her like tunnel vision. It was surreal, as if she were watching them from outside, a bystander.

  Instantly, the clerk’s face changed, morphing from a look of fear to a slack-jawed mask, eyes rolled back in his head.

  “Don’t fuck around, dude!” The shotgun-wielding kid’s voice cracked in his desperate yell.

  Opening his shirt to expose his bare chest, the clerk’s skin bubbled. Cynthia looked on helplessly as burn marks appeared in the shape of an upside down cross, followed by three sixes. Suddenly, she knew.

  Damien was here.

  “Holy fuck!” The would-be robber stepped back, lowering his weapon, unable to take his eyes off the clerk.

  The man, in his early sixties, Cynthia guessed, backed into the wall of cigarettes behind him and started crawling, his arms and legs like spider’s legs, gripping the shelving as an inhuman growl escaped his mouth. When he got to the ceiling, impossibly, his body contorted to climb along the ceiling, the growl continuing to rise from him.

  When his head spun around in a complete circle, Cynthia couldn’t stop the eye roll. “Damien,” she muttered, shaking her head. The robber had wet himself, a common reaction to the Devil’s antics, she assumed. Dark green goo started streaming from the clerk’s mouth, and Cynthia had had enough. “Damien! Stop this right now! You’re scaring him!”

  Abruptly, the man stopped spewing the yuck coming out of his mouth, and his burns disappeared. He climbed down from the ceiling almost sheepishly.

  The kid, whose initial intent had been to rob the store, ran from it screaming something about losing his shit, and Cynthia watched everything return to rights. The green goo went away, disappearing off the tile floor, and the man buttoned his shirt back up before looking at her.

  Damien’s voice came from his mouth. “I didn’t think you’d want me to kill him. He was a good kid, just desperate.”

  “Yeah, but…” She motioned to the cameras, unable to digest, feeling drunk again.

  “Cameras can be fixed. He won’t tell anybody what happened. The clerk won’t remember.” With dawning clarity, she realized Damien was here. With her.

  “You’re dead.” Her voice was a whisper, stating the obvious, talking to this sixty-year-old man with her lover’s soul inside it. Could he possess somebody and be with her? Was that possible?

  “Yes. I’m dead. And yes, it’s possible,” he stated, reading her mind. “But I can’t rob somebody of their life.” He had changed, unwilling to sacrifice another life to be with her. “I have a soul. And some residual powers, but doing what you’re thinking would jeopardize things for us. After.”

  “But…” His words sobered her. He meant after life. As in, when she died they’d be together again.

  “Go home, Cynthia. Stay safe.” Damien’s voice disappeared, and as if nothing had ever happened, the clerk reached for her bottle and rang it up. Cynthia stood there, stunned.

  “Have a nice night,” he drawled at her, voice husky with a two pack-a-day habit.

  She paid and left, mind reeling.

  Darkness fitted around her like a glove, and Cynthia’s body finally slackened into the seat. Evelyn looked at her, a question in her eyes.

  “Did you see anything in the store?”

  “No. Did something happen?” Evelyn peered at the front of the store, trying to find something out of the ordinary.

  “Never mind.”

  “Let’s get you home, sugar-britches.”

  She watched her friend start the car. The alcohol had numbed Cynthia, and the altercation hadn’t done anything to get adrenaline pumping in her veins, so she just sat there, staring.

  Trying to process what had just happened.

  That night, under her covers, she toyed with her new memory of Damien. And formulated a plan.

  In the next few weeks, Cynthia discovered adrenaline junkies used an abundance of safety precautions. All of the seemingly dangerous activities weren’t really dangerous at all. Adrenaline junkies were all about success stories. Successful building climbs, successful jumps, successful falls, successful everything. She couldn’t skydive without a tandem jumper, and all sorts of safety mechanisms were in place for her protection. They didn’t want to take a rookie with a death wish out on their excursions, and she couldn’t convince them to.

  She craved danger, though. Damien came to her when she was in danger, to protect her. He’d said he’d always be there for her, and if he couldn’t come to her while she was safe and snug with her memories in bed, she would do something to make him come. So she did what she could.

  She drove to a camping spot outside of town and slept outside, with no tent, surrounded by junk food, taunting the wildlife.

  She sped when she drove, without a seat belt.

  She went to the ATM machine at night and got out the maximum amount of cash, walking around with it in her pocket, talking out loud about how much money she had.

  She walked around alone at night in dangerous areas of the city.

  Cynthia wasn’t suicidal. She didn’t have the guts for something so final. But she wouldn’t mind dying. She’d faced death once before and could do it again. She just couldn’t cause it, not directly, anyway. She felt a sense of futility. She would never see Damien again, unless she was in danger, and she did everything she could think of to create dangerous situations for herself. She didn’t want to put others in danger like she had Evelyn. She didn’t want that on her conscience.

  Back in the classroom, Cynthia looked at the men who all sat slumped in their desks, staring at nothing. She was struck by their similarities and how the sameness of them emphasized their differences. They all were fit and beautiful, nearly blindingly so. Specimens of perfection, like Damien. The blond was smaller, with bright blue eyes—Uriel. The auburn-haired, green-eyed man was taller than the rest, his physique that of a swimmer, long and lean. He was Rafael, the healing one who’d pulled the plug on her. The brunette with mocha eyes had a sturdy build, wider than the others, but not as massive as Michael. Michael had the body of a fitness model, ripped and toned, with his black hair and silver eyes. He exuded danger, and just looking at him filled Cynthia with rage. He’d killed Damien.

  Even the remorse she saw in him right now didn’t change that fact.

  They didn’t seem to see her, and since she knew she was dreaming, she wasn’t sure if they ever would. But she sat in her own desk in the back of the room and watched them.

  They were mourning Damien, that much was clear, and once again, she wondered at their relationship with one another. Was Damien the brother they never really got along with but loved nonetheless?

  When the door opened and the Teacher stepped through, the men sat up straighter, but still didn’t look at Him. Uri wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, sniffling. Good. A sense of righteousness swelled inside Cynthia. They needed to feel bad. She hoped they all rotted in hell for taking Damien away from her.

  That thought brought her up. She’d never thought something like that about anyone before. She felt a little g
uilty about it but not too badly. She really wanted something to happen to them besides their own self-imposed grief. They deserved more than that.

  “We’re sorry, Boss,” the brunette started. Cynthia decided that must have been Gabriel, by process of elimination. Besides, he seemed to be the spokesperson of the group. That fit with the whole messenger thing.

  “Apologies don’t bring him back now, do they?” The Teacher’s voice was soft but still commanding.

  “I don’t like your lack of choice for his successor. It’s going to mess up the balance.” Michael spoke through clenched teeth, obviously angry, but Cynthia couldn’t tell at whom.

  “You don’t have a say in the matter, Michael.” The Teacher walked between the rows until He was next to the silver-eyed angel. “If I were you, I’d be more concerned with how you will be treated in the afterlife, how you will gain redemption for what you’ve done.” The Teacher’s usually unflappable demeanor showed chinks of emotion—a sadness Cynthia completely commiserated with.

  “Can’t you bring him back?”

  The question from Rafael was met with silence from the Teacher as He walked through the room. When He spoke, His voice filled the room with its softness. “I can, but I’m not sure if I should.” Spinning, He turned on the men. “You are mortal now. I don’t think you realized the permanence of death, having never been human before now. You really need to learn to be more careful with your lives.”

  Gabriel spoke. “So you’re going to make an example of him? Why? Because Michael lost his temper?”

  God spread his hands, looking at Michael squarely, obviously the focus of his attention. “I would have much rather you settled your differences with a dance off, but that didn’t happen, did it?”

  Michael shook his head, looking at the desk in front of him. The Teacher’s eyes rose to the back of the room and locked with Cynthia’s before He winked at her.

  Cynthia woke up, confused, in her apartment. She was frustrated she missed the end of the dream. She wanted to know what happened next. It was obviously a planned meeting. She wanted to know what steps would be taken to bring Damien back to her.

  So she continued going about her own life, walking around the city at night, chatting with herself aloud about how alone she was, how much money she had stuffed in her bra, whatever she thought it would take to bring him to her.

  When the freak ice storm came through, she took her car out of town, along the highway going over the river. The icy bridge yawned ahead of her, black and slick. She floored her accelerator.

  It was perfection. As soon as her tires hit the bridge, she felt them lose traction, and the car slid sideways. At the speed she was going, she hit the guardrail nearly instantaneously, but her mind played it all for her in slow motion. As the guardrail bent, then gave way, she felt nothing but weightlessness as her car dove over the edge. The black depths of water rose up to meet her, but she didn’t feel afraid. The blackness of the water was too much like the blackness of Damien’s eyes, and she imagined herself falling into them. Not the river.

  When the car hit the water, the impact wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be. She didn’t feel panicked like she should have been. Instead, a peace rose up inside her, along with the water level outside the car. Water started seeping in around her door and up the floorboard, but she remained calm. He would come. He had to.

  This was dangerous.

  He would be here.

  When the water was up to her waist, her car was nearly completely underwater. The depths of the river were just as black as the top of it, and Cynthia imagined she was inside Damien now. She’d dove into his eyes, and he surrounded her. She felt protected. At peace. Leaning her head back on the headrest, she closed her eyes and waited for the end. Waited for him. She could feel the car sliding further under water, a strange weightlessness as she floated down, down.

  A loud knocking on her window snapped her head to the side, the water having risen to her neck inside the car. A flicker of panic tickled her gut. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. When black hair swirled in the water around Damien’s face, she watched him mouth to her, “Open the door.”

  She smiled and released the door lever, abruptly being pushed back by the shift of water pressure, the iciness suddenly bracing. But Damien’s hand grabbed her wrist and he yanked her out of the car as it sank to the murky depths below.

  Cynthia had forgotten to breathe before opening the door, and her lungs were tight, needing air, as Damien tugged her toward the surface, his powerful legs kicking.

  When they broke through the surface, she was sputtering, gasping for breath, but remarkably not as cold as she’d thought she’d be. That was probably a sign of hypothermia, but she could only think of the man gripping her now as she gazed into the fully formed face of a very tangible-looking man.

  She had to know. “Are you… real?” Her hand cupped his face, relishing the warm stubble under her skin.

  His eyes bore into hers, flicking back and forth between them. “I’m as real as you are, Cyn.”

  Their faces crept closer and closer to each other while they kicked their feet to stay afloat. When they met, his lips consumed hers, and she was lost in his warmth.

  It contrasted with the chill surrounding her, as his breath breathed life into her weary bones. She was tired. So tired. But Damien made her feel alive.

  She wasn’t going to mourn him anymore. They were together now.

  Under the cover of darkness, Faith utilized Michael’s waning skills to find her way inside the building. Since he’d fallen and become hers, her own skills were finally on par with his, but he could sense things she couldn’t. When he gave her the go-ahead with a flash of the silver in his eyes, she entered the door, hoping beyond hope that this would go far in his redemption. He’d fucked up, and she could murder the bastard if she didn’t love him so damn much.

  Killing Damien had been a step too far, and it had probably led to the downfall of Cynthia, the poor soul who’d been chosen for him. But Faith had enough sense not to meddle in The Boss’ affairs if Michael didn’t. What an idiot.

  But now, they had the chance to do something right, so they were here at her former place of employment, wrecking the batch of fragrance. Hoping that would help something.

  Sneaking down the hallway, with Michael pointing out cameras and infrared technology, she disabled it all with her tools cleverly hidden under her clothing. She had to ignore the heat in Michael’s eyes.

  “Sorry. It gets me hot.” He shrugged.

  “Stop reading my head,” she snapped. “I’m concentrating.”

  “You’re doing fantastic,” he growled at her, and she stifled the tremor of need snaking through her. Now was not the time.

  When they got to the storage area, they were stumped.

  “Okay, now what?” she muttered to Michael.

  Wordlessly, he waved his hand around and a subtle wave flickered through the air. If you weren’t looking for it, you might miss it, like a heat wave emanating off concrete on a sweltering day. Then it was gone.

  “There. Ruined.”

  “You never cease to amaze me,” Faith said, honestly awed by Michael’s remaining powers. He still had a fraction of his angelic prowess, and if that fraction was anything to go by, he’d been a force to be reckoned with as a celestial being.

  He pulled her to him in a fierce grip, wrapping his massive paws around her waist. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Deal.”

  Damien awoke, his dream quickly dissipating into the ether of his subconscious mind and replacing itself with a familiar heaviness. He knew without prompting this heaviness was a sadness he’d felt for a while. As he looked around, he saw the blinding white all around and heard the steady beep of the monitor next to him. He was in a bed, flat on his back, and everything smelled of disinfectant and death.

  Why was he in a hospital? Clutching at fragments of his dream, he could only remember an iciness, coupled with the dichotomy of warmth,
and nothing made sense. Darkness. Everything was dark. He had been with someone. Green eyes glittered out of the darkness and he struggled to remember something. Anything about them.

  But he couldn’t. As long as he looked at the white walls of his current prison, he couldn’t remember anything and the white pushed away the darkness, no matter how much he tried to grasp it. In fact, the harder he tried, the harder it was to remember.

  The darkness left. Gone. And with it the green eyes. He couldn’t even remember what the eyes were, who they belonged to. All he knew was they were gone, and he couldn’t remember anything.

  He brought his hands up to rub at his eyes and tried to sit up. Remarkably, he felt fine. Wondering how long he had been here, Damien looked around. It was a standard hospital room with a lone bouquet of red roses on the windowsill. Familiar roses. Not that he’d seen those particular roses before, but he had an idea they meant something to him.

  Trying again to grasp some meaning to his awakening, some memory, anything, he failed. The scene out the window was equally inspiring. A generic rooftop with air conditioning exhaust fans met his gaze.

  Flopping himself back on the pillows with a huff, Damien wondered if he tried to go back to sleep, if he would remember anything upon waking.

  The only thing he felt was sadness, a gnawing ache in his chest making everything hurt. But he couldn’t remember what made him so sad. He could only think he’d lost something very important to him.

  Or someone.

  Oh God. Had he lost someone? Had he loved a woman and she died? That had to be it, as the sadness morphed into a sharp, stabbing pain at the thought. Although, try as he might, he couldn’t remember anything.

  Nothing.

  He couldn’t remember his childhood, his parents, his friends, any siblings, jobs, education. Nothing. He couldn’t remember who he’d lost and that alone made him want to weep.