Shattering Halos (13 page)

Amused, he fixated on something behind me, and his spell on me slipped.

“Sorry, Cassiel, I don’t keep company with demons.” I pivoted to head back to Marina.

I didn’t see him move and jumped when his nose almost touched my forehead. Motionless, he stood tall in front of me, blocking my retreat. He cocked his head, examining my expression.

“Obsessed with demons, are we? Sorry to disappoint. I’m no demon, but—ta-dah,” he opened his arms wide, “you’ve met your first fallen angel!”

He bared an impressive row of pearly-whites in a car salesman smile. I sucked in air, choked, and started coughing. Cassiel loved the reaction and slapped the outline of his six-pack, guffawing.

Good God. If this guy’s a Fallen, I better not run into an actual demon.

Yet again, my life was taking a turn for the worse. I tried to pass him, but he caught my wrist and jerked me to him.

Not a trace of cheerfulness remained when he wheezed through his teeth. “I needed a closer look at who’s done this to Gabriel.”

My brain was a muddle of fear and questions. I wanted to ask what I had done to Gabriel. How he knew him. With my wrists crossed tight in one fist, he yanked me off the ground.

“You should’ve been dead for years by now. Dead! Get it? Instead, everything’s falling apart. Because you are
not
dead.”

His laughter was soft and seductively menacing.

“All your fault, babe,” he whispered. I dangled over the floor inches from his face. “And you’ll destroy me too.”

In a flash, his other hand crushed me close. His mouth seized mine and kissed me with an avenging passion my body couldn’t even absorb.

Every light bulb at Johnny O’s exploded simultaneously. Darkness enveloped the stunned silence. The ground started shaking in sideways tremors. As he dropped me and I collapsed, the vibrations traveled through me and crept up the walls to the ceiling.

Screams rose around me as drinks fell and crashed to the ground, but I was entranced by Cassiel’s bright laughter.

“Good one, Gabe,” he said conversationally as he walked off. “Who knew you had it in you? She’s tasty, but you’re still pretty damn pathetic.”

He whistled as he disappeared into the dark.

****

Cassiel

The second I ducked out of Johnny O’s, he was in my face. From the way he’d stopped shimmering since their fall-out, I figured he’d lost his powers. Let’s just say I was wrong.

I should’ve seen the writing on the wall with his little vibration exercise from the bar. Now, he was roaring at me. Refreshing how he almost looked like his old self, though. Gabriel was appropriately glorious and shining—and absolutely enraged.

Before I could laugh, he fired off a force field that sent me across the mountain chain at the speed of light.

He was already at the summit when I got to my feet. With eyes narrowed in anger, he bombarded me with razor-sharp ice crystals from all sides. Oh, yes, somebody was out of control.

I regained my senses and shot a couple of lightning bolts at him myself. Instead of reversing them at double speed, Gabriel waited until I was back up on my knees.

I had time for a single eye-roll before he flattened me to the ground with the most god-awful tremors since the War in Heaven.

We kept going for a while, and despite the excruciating pain, I enjoyed seeing him engaged. A year was nothing in angel time, but I’d already spent too long watching the horrendously boring show of Gabriel sinking into a goddamn swamp of deplorable misery.

After the last shot he flung at me, I moaned like a girl over the shoes he ruined. They were my only Pradas with gold buckles on the sides, pretty hard to find. Time for the hands-up-in-defeat move.

“All right, you’re ticked—I get it. Just giving you a hand, man.”

“By ravishing her? You’re insane, Cassiel!”

“A complimentary smooch is not me ‘ravishing’ anybody. Which reminds me, it’s been too long since you’ve seen the real deal—we should…”

He stared me down, effectively stopping the invite. While I waited for him to say the words, I sighed. He had to get it off his chest.

“Don’t you ever. Touch her. Again.”

“Lover Boy, as I said, ’twas just a taste. She’s quite a…”

My verbal appreciation hung unfinished in the air while I crashed to the ground with Gabriel crouched on top of me like a winged tiger. Oh well, I couldn’t help chortling a little. Jealousy. One of the nonexistent sins for an angel of God. Poor Gabriel was tumbling off the pedestal. I brushed him off of me and sat up.

“Enough of this. Let’s talk.”

“Cassiel, we’ve got nothing to discuss. You need to get lost and stay the hell away from her.”

“Oh right, so you can keep working on the mess you’ve created? The archangels will swoop in, Gabriel. You’ve got to get your shit together!”

He’d gotten me good, and I popped a broken rib into place before I continued. “Are you so stuck in your own little wretched world that you can’t see what the two of you have started?”

“Cassiel, it’s over.”

“It’s
not
goddamn over. Look at yourself! You’re
head over heels
for the chick. That’s one,” I said, tapping off the Heavenly Rule on my fingers. I didn’t bother mentioning the obvious, how he’d started the whole ordeal by saving her life.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Number two, you interfere in her life.”

“Absolutely not. I stay invisible and don’t communicate with her.”

“Oh, I can think of at least five times you’ve affected her life.”

“Cut the crap, Cassiel.”

“You compelled a doctor to come to her house on Christmas Eve when he otherwise would have been in Florida with his beyond-ancient mother.
Somebody
also persuaded him to know exactly what your Earthling’s problem was and how to fix her. I wonder who?

“But I’ll give you some slack and only count those two examples as one.” I took a moment to wiggle my eyebrows playfully. “Two, you extinguished her pain.”

“No, I just…”

“…chilled her heart with the healing touch of oblivion, you say? Right, because that’s so different. C’mon Gabriel. You might as well fess up. You don’t possess the ability to lie, remember? For now at least.”

I snorted at my own joke, and he groaned.

“How come you keep a better eye on me than I do, Cassiel? Stalker tendencies or just bored?”

He knew it required no energy on an angel’s behalf to track someone. I could have full overview of Gabriel in seconds. Since I wasn’t up for another detonation, I didn’t remind him.

“Three, you just let all hell break loose to protect her from a little kiss. Pitiful, Gabriel, just pitiful.”

“Okay, stop talking, Cassiel.” He’d straightened up, and I could tell he was praying for an excuse to attack me again in one of his kitty pounces.

“Sorry, brother, not done yet.”

Sighing as if performing a tiresome duty, I went on counting Heavenly violations. “You want her. Four.”

“Give me a break, Cassiel. You’re counting the same infraction twice.”

I explained the difference between violation number one and four with a leering look. Surprisingly, he chuckled, ashamed for a second.

“Worst of all, though, is the fifth: the female loves you like crazy.”

“No, no, she’s over me.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I guess it’s just a
coincidence
that she hasn’t kissed another human since she met you.”

“She kissed—”

“No, she didn’t. Wishy-washy pecks by little boys at movies don’t count.”

Troubled, he ran a hand through his hair, but I was on a roll.

“Also, it must be a
coincidence
that her heart feels wrong to her, and it’s probably a
coincidence
that all she ever paints, draws, and sculpts at that silly college of hers is you.”

“Wait, what did you say about her heart?”

I shut my eyes impatiently for a second.

“Please, Gabriel, tell me you’re aware of the ins and outs of the emotional oblivion you induced? You realize that you also provoked an emotional void, right? Since you broke her heart, a vacuum is festering in it.”

The expression on his face was priceless. He looked deceived, like he’d had no idea of the impact of his actions. Gabriel grabbed my shoulders and shook me.

“Have I erased her ability to love?”

“Oh man! Do you ever think outside your own little box? God, I forgot how annoying you can be. What part of ‘she loves you like crazy’ did you not get?” I slapped his hands off of me.

“Here’s the deal: Her heart broke. You took away her pain but not her love for you. The void won’t be filled until she’s allowed to love you freely or go through the actual heartbreak.”

Of course things couldn’t be simple. We were talking about Gabriel here.

“Those are not options.”

“Eh, guess you’re right. The only real choice we have…”

“We?” he interjected, frowning. “Since when are we together in this, Cassiel?”

“Since you started altering my kickass world on me. You’re tearing it down with your bare hands here, and I’m not snoozing through your demolition to wake up in Hell.”

With eyes suddenly brimming with tears, Gabriel was the perfect image of a beautiful, sad angel. Any earthly female would have killed to console him. A very human nausea rose in me.

To make it stop, I clapped his back in my best rendition of empathy. “There, there, we’ll fix this, little guy. Let’s have her die. She’s overdue by years anyway. The Heavenly balance will be restored, the archangels won’t come, and you’ll be assigned another, less perceptive Earthling.”

My last thought slipped out on its own. “Plus, I get to keep my lifestyle.”

Apparently, the reasoning didn’t cut it for him. Out of the blue, he splayed me out in the dirt for what seemed like the twentieth time, and I coughed. I’d tell him I was over being flung on my back like a chick as soon as I regained the ability to speak.

The skies blazed with electrifying light, while Gabriel hurled needle-sharp ice pellets and fountains of boiling lava my way.

By the time I got to my feet, he’d vanished. I found him at his Earthling’s place, protecting her. She was asleep, and seeing that she was fine, he’d calmed down. I had to laugh at how he placed his body between her and me.

“We need a plan, Gabriel. Seriously, what do you think will happen if we don’t do something? The archangels are not going to let this slide.”

He nodded, tired. “I thought Michael was giving me a second chance. Too good to be true, I guess.”

“Sorry, bro. No way is he giving you twenty-one second chances. You’ve been so lucky it’s not even funny.”

“I need time to think. All I know is that she can’t die. What if we erase the love?”

“Gabriel, you’ve got to be kidding. ‘Erase the love?’ Doesn’t even
thinking
that hit a surreal cord? It’s like believing that angels can induce hate!”

“Enough, Cassiel, you’re killing me.” His eyes squeezed shut with impatience.

I snickered. Just the reaction I wanted.

“Honestly, Gabriel. The least conspicuous way is to just act on the love. Don’t let your loss swell
further. Date her, dude. Kiss her.”

“Gaia wants me to stay invisible. And I can’t see how it would help her if I fell.”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s change the subject to me, right? One of the main reasons why Michael threw us out was our flings with mortal chicks, and none of us have been pardoned and asked to return. Big deal.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

God, how cutesy sweet he was. So Celestial.

“Whatever. I’m still kicking, Gabriel, after everything. As long as we stay below the radar, we don’t get imprisoned or banished. The Boss still believes we’re somewhat of a good influence down here. Now we enjoy unlimited, free time since we’re not trusted with human assignments. It’s not too shabby.”

The female sighed, and the sheets slipped off her shoulder, exposing delicate skin. Our gaze snapped to her, and Gabriel’s movements blurred as he covered her up to her neck.

Without thinking, he let a finger slide down her cheek, and we both watched her smile in her sleep. I shook my head at him.

“Un-freaking-believable how you keep breaking rules. You hurt even when you touch her! Rumors from Upstairs say your loss is heading for the gate of the Third Heaven already.” Gabriel pulled his hand back and pressed two fingers around the bridge of his nose.

“If this is true, we’ve got a single gate left to go before it explodes in our faces, Gabriel—you
know
they’ll resolve this in Michael’s Heaven.”

I appealed to his increasingly human desires. “Gaia will die, and they won’t let you see her anymore.”

His face disappeared into his hands.

“I need some time, Cassiel. Is there nothing I can do to make sure she’s okay?”

“Hey. No time, remember? Third Gate, man, I’m telling you: get her under the radar. Right now, the quick fix is to act on your love so your loss can stop resonating. You both have to be happy. Get it?”

“I can’t. Being with me is not right for her, and I’m going to respect that.”

Oh, the annoyance. Thanks to the disregard for his own angelic wellbeing, I’d have to take care of matters alone. Even from the Creator’s perspective, her expiration date was out, so I had no scruples about making her die.

Nothing wrong with happily ever after. She’d be in Heaven, and playing her cards right, she might even join the ranks of the angels within mere millennia. Never tied down by that pesky, human love deal again, she’d feel no pain, no void.

The only one in limbo would be Gabriel. Who cared, though? With his lack of self-preservation
he
sure as hellfire wouldn’t. And he’d end up forgiving me. It was, after all, the nature of the Celestials.

Under the window, a sexy brunette traipsed by after a late night out. I flashed to her sorority house. With plans to make, I’d think clearer after a glass of strawberry champagne and a tryst with a warm body. I sat down on the steps of her mansion and stretched out my legs. Soon enough, she fell into my lap with nothing but a submissive sigh.

Chapter 15 — They’ll Forget

Gaia