When Angels Fall

Dedicated to
Lynn
, As alwa
ys

With all my love to
Rebecca Goppert,
Danielle Roberts
and Leslie Crutcher

1.

Dan
ielle Coulter sat on the ground
in the cooling summer night breeze,
crying
at
the edge of her mother’s grave
at
Riverview
Cemetery
in
Clarksville
,
Tennessee
. Her mother had loved this place. She remembered coming here wi
th her
when she was a child
. Her mother had enjoyed doing charcoal gravestone rubbings on warm summer afternoons. Dani had always thought that it was a
strange
thing to do, but her mother had loved it.

And even as a child she’d known how hard her mother had worked to put food on the table and pay the bills in their home; a home they would not have had if her Grandma hadn’t have willed it to her mother, so she’d never complained about being d
ragged here on sunny afternoons;
even though she would have rather been playing with her friends. Dani’s mother, Annie
Coulter, would t
ell
her about the grave
yard’s history while she did the
charcoal rubbings
,
and Dani remembered everything her mother had taught her about the cemetery.

She knew that
the
Riverview
Cemetery
is the oldest cemetery in
Clarksville
and had been in place since the first burial on
February 23, 1800
, when
Clarksville
was still ju
st a small village. The land had been
donated by the first person to be interred there: Valentine Sevier.

It was up on a hill that overlooked the
Cumberland River
, but which
now
also overlooked the fast food restaurants’ and car lots that wound their way down
Riverside Drive
. She
remembered
the
Cemetery
history, but it meant little to her now. It was hard to believe that she was really here; that her mother had
actually
died.

Breast Cancer; it was no way for anyone to die. She hated hearing stories of how a woman fought breast cancer; how the woman wouldn’t give up and how she beat it. Her mother had fought for her life,
tooth and nail
, and she had
never
given up. She had clawed her way into remission twice; but in the end, the cancer had taken her anyway. You didn’t hear stories like that; stories of women who had fought valiantly, and lost.

She knew it was because stories like that would disillusion some women, but the reality was that the majority of
breast
cancer fights end
in
death.

She’d witnessed that for herself three days ago, when cancer took her mother from her; had taken the only family m
ember Dani had had
. She was angry, but at the same time she was glad that her
mother’s suffering was over. But Annie
was
gone, and now Dani was alone in the world. She’d come back tonight to say her
private
good-byes to her mom.

She
’d
attended the funeral; of course, but that was more for the friends of the deceased to express their condolences to the family, more that anything else. And
condole
they had.

Her mother’s entire church congregation, the All Saints Immaculate Conception Catholic Church of Clarksville, had attended the viewing and services. She couldn’t count the number of times she had heard the phrases
‘She’s gone home’
and
‘
She’s gone to be with the Lord’
, and her all time favorite, ‘
She’s in a better place’
. All the things people said to make each other feel better.

Dani had said
thank you
to every condolence, but religion had never been her thing. Annie Coulter had tried to get her daughter ‘
Right with Jesus
’, as she put it, but it had never taken. Dani had gone to Sunday school for years and had heard all the Bible stories, but it had all sounded like fairy tales to her; and Dani had never believed in fairy tales. Not even as a small child.

It was hard to believe in such childish things when you saw your mother fall asleep at the dinner table because she was exhausted from the two jobs she worked
that day
,
only making enough
money
to
just
barely
scrape
by;
or
when you’d never had a father because he left before you were even born.

Her mother had
never
complained, but Dani had seen the toll that being a single mother had taken on her
mother’s life. Dani
had sworn to herself that it would never happen to her.

She wasn’t the virgin her mother would have
liked
her to be, but she took her birth control every day and had never failed to practice safe sex. Not that
any
sex had happened in the last eight months of her mom’s illness.

Dani had broken up with her abusive ex-boyfriend, Buddy, after he had beaten her in a drunken rage, and put her in the hospital for two weeks.

She’d filed
a Restraining Order against Buddy
and been back home with her mom, recovering, when cancer came back for her mom
full force
. There
was to be
no remission this time.

Cancer had ridden her mother all the way to the finish line. Dani had dropped everything in her life to care for her mother full time. It’s what
her mom would have done for
her
.

  
Dani was a hair st
ylist, and had a wonderful boss named
Candy. Candy told her
to take all the time off that she needed, and that her job would be waiting for her when she was ready to come back. Dani had enough money saved to get by for a few more weeks before she’d have to go back to work. That would give her time to grieve a little (she knew that some of her grief and pain would be with her forever)
,
and take care of her mom’s final affairs.

She looked up at the sky and noticed flashes of lightning
in the distance. Thunder
storms were coming. It was time
for her
to go.

“I love you, Mom, and I’ll miss you more than you could ever imagine,” she said, and tried to push herself up from the ground.

Only she never made it all the way up. Someone grab
bed her by the back of her hair
and threw her several feet, headfi
rst, into a headstone. Bright lights
flashed in her head
,
and she collapsed onto the stranger’s grave.

She tried to push
herself up again, but just couldn’t
find the strength
to do it
. She heard her a
ttacker laugh; the sound of his laughter echoed in her head
.

“That was
a
lot
easier than I thought it was going to be,” he said.

He stuck his foot under her shoulder and flipped her onto her back. She tried to see his face, but her eyes refused to focus.
Everything
was blurry.

He laughed again,
“Come on, Sunshine. We got
places to go and people to see.
”

He grabbed her by her ankle and started dragging her across the ground like she was nothing more than a bag of garbage. She weakly kicked out at him; he didn’t like
that
at all. He turned, leaned down, and punched her it the face. She heard a crunch deep in her ears and
felt her nose break. She nearly choked on the blood that rushed into her throat.

“
Be good,” he said, as if he were talking to a small child.

His breath brushed across
her face
and
gagged
her
. Even
through her broken nose she could smell
the unmistakably
rank scent of decomposition. He started dragging her again. She was barely holding on to consciousness, but
she
was too terrified to pass out. She knew if she passed out, she was dead.

She had dealt with Buddy’s multiple attacks on her (the last landing her in the hospital), but Buddy was a
known
enemy; an asshole with a drinking problem. This was a different animal altogether, and she knew it. She was trying to formulate a plan of escape when lightning; the brightest lightning she’d ever seen, flashed above her.

It was followed by a roar of thunder so loud and
so
close that the ground rolled beneath her. Her attacker dropped her legs a
t the sound of the thunder
,
and
she did the only thing she could think of to do; she screamed. Once she started screaming, she couldn’t stop. Even when she heard the sound of running footstep
s
; she couldn’t stop.

Then, amazingly, her attacker was screaming with her. Though her attackers scream was brief, it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. Then her savior was leaning over her.

“Hush now,”
t
he
man
said and placed his hand over her mouth, effectively cutting off her screams.

It was the last thing she remembered before she fell into the darkness.

2.

She woke up on a hotel room bed some time later; how much later, she wasn’t sure. What was going on? How did she get h
ere? She did a quick body check,
wiggling her fingers and toes, rolling her head left and right. Everything seemed to be in working order.

She reached up to gingerly touch her nose, and jerked her hand away in shock. Her nose was
fine
. I
t wasn’t even sore. That, of course, was impossible. She had heard
and
felt it break. She didn’t feel like she was in shock (she’d never been in shock, so she couldn’t be sure)
,
but knew that it
had
to be what was going on.

She was sure the pain would come when her mind was more capable of dealing with it. For now
,
she just wanted to go home; to forget this horrible day had ever happened. She took
a look around the room to try and
figure out
exactly
where she was. Her mom had cleaned hotel rooms during the day
, so
Dani knew what most of the ones in town
looked like.
This room
didn’t look familiar.

But what she
did
see made her jaw drop. Standing in the middle of the room was a man; she assumed he was the man that
had
saved her, and…he was
naked
. Wel
l, not completely naked. The only thing he was wearing was
three inch wide gold cuff
s
around his wrist
s
and ankles. She wasn’t twelve years old; she had been in a room with a naked man before, but never one quite like this.