When Angels Fall (22 page)

Dani’s father and his abandonment of her and her mom had always been a touchy subject for her. She didn’t want to hear from Gabriel that she needed to forgive him.

Dani’s mother had taught her to forgive people and Dani had forgiven everyone who had ever done her wrong, although usually only after she’d attacked them
for
that wrong. But she had never forgiven her father, nor did she feel he deserved her forgiveness.

“I
don’t
w
ant to talk about him,” she repeated
, trying
again
to pull her hand from his grasp so she could get up, but he held tight.

“Daniel Reese Coulter is dead,
Dani,” Gabriel said.

“Good,
I’m glad to hear it,” she said.
“H
e deserved to die for leaving me and my mom
like he did.”

“He died
before you were born,” he said.
“He never abandoned you, Dani.”

Dani sat in shocked silence for awhile. She didn’t know what to do or how to feel.

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” she asked.

“I
would
lie to you if I thought it was
in your best interest,” he said.
“But I’m not lying to you about this. All the birth fathers
of the Daughters of God die in the
month or two that precedes the birth of their child.”

“Why?” Dani asked angrily.
“How?”

“They die in different ways. Mostly they’re killed by demons or Cambion, but there have been some natura
l deaths as well,”
Gabriel said.
“As to why they die, we don’t really know; maybe because they’ve served their purpose on Earth. I know they all ascend to Heaven at the point of their deaths.”

“But my grandfather…,” Dani was saying.

“He wasn’t your mother’s birth father. Your grandmother married him three months after your mother was born,” Gabriel said.

“But they were so happy together,” Dani said.

“There was no reason why they shouldn’t have been. Most of the Daughters of God have gone on to remarry and live happy lives. T
hey just can’t bear that man
a child.”

He explained, “The demons may have killed some of the birth fathers to prevent a Daughter of God from bearing him anymore children since she could only bear a child for one man, but it was a wasted effort.  A Daughter of God will only ever be able to have
one
child.”

It was unfair to tell her this now; after all of the years she’d thought her father had left her.

She looked away from him to hide the pain in her eyes, “Did my mother know my grandfather wasn’t her real father?”

“I don’t know, love.”

“He
was
her real father, Dani; he just wasn’t her birth father,” Michael said from behind them. “Your grandfather took another mans seed a
nd raised it as his own,
and he loved her as if she
were
his birth child. Don’t take that away from him. But to answer your question, no, they never told your mother about it. They felt no need.”

“So all the fathers just die? That doesn’t seem fair to th…
oh no
,” Dani gasped.
“
What if I’m pregnant from us making love last night? Doesn’t that mean
you’ll
die?”

Gabriel laughed, “I wish I could have a child with you, Dani; a daughter every bit as beautiful as her mother, but I’m not human. I lack the necessary ingredients needed to create life.”

Dani felt a deep disappointment, “So we can never have kids?”

“If we get through this alive, you can have as many children as you like,” he said.

“I don’t want to be with another man,” she said.

“Nor do I want you to be,” Gabriel said, smiling. “I said
I
lacked the ingredients
to create life, not that we couldn’t
get
them. They have clinics everywhere now where you can go in and buy a bottle of whatever father you wish.”

Dani nodded. She hadn’t thought about that. Then she thought about her father again.

“How did my father die?” she asked.

Gabriel looked to Michael.

“See if you’d have watched the bloodline, you’d know these answers,” Michael said to Gabriel.

Gabriel glared at him, “Do you know or not?”

“Of course I do,”
Michael said. “Sammeal killed him.”

“Who is Sammeal?” she asked.

“Sammeal is a prince among demons,” Gabriel said. “He’s a
n Angel of Death.
”

“How did he kill my father
?”

“Your father loved nature,” Michael said. “Six weeks before you were born your mother had a baby shower. While she was busy with
her friends
,
your father snuck away to go fishing at the river. Sammeal pulled him from the rocks, dragged him beneath the water and pinned him to the Earth. His bones are still there under the silt. No human will ever be there to drag them up.”

Dani let this settle in her mind for a moment, and then leaned over and heaved her last meal into the creek below.

“Could I have a moment alone, please?” she asked and pulled her hand from Gabriel’s grasp.

“Dani…” he said, reaching for her a
gain, but she put her hands in
her lap and looked away.

“Gabriel, give her some time to sit with this,” Michael said. “Walk with me, brother.”

6.

“Is there a point to you coming down here or did you come just to make this day more difficult than it already has been?” Gabriel asked Michael as they walked through the woods.

“I wasn’t tr
ying to hurt her,” Michael said.
“She wanted to know how her father died, so I told her.”

“You could have just said he’d drowned. You didn’t have to give her all the
gory
de
tails of his death.
”

“Now
I’m
supposed to lie to her?” Michael said, stopping to look at his brother. “She deserved to know the truth, Gabriel.”

“Why are you here, Michael?”

“Why did you sleep with Dani last night?” Michael said.

“You’re the one that told me to make a decision about Dani.”

“I said make a decision about her, not jump in bed with her,” Michael said. “Why couldn’t you wait until this was over and then talk to our Father about it? Do you know what you’ve done?”

“I’m fully aware of what I’ve done,” Gabriel said. “Did you really come down here to talk me out of something that’s already happened or is there another reason?”

“I was sent down to give you a message,” Michael said. “Just don’t kill the messenger, alright?”

“A message from whom?” Gabriel asked suspiciously.

“Our Father,” Michael said.

Gabriel’s heart sank with dread. If his Father sent him a message, Gabriel knew it would be nothing good.

“What’s the message?”

Michael
stepped back from Gabriel before speaking, “You are not worthy to lie with the last Daughter of God.”

Gabriel stood in stunned silence. He wasn’t
worthy
? His Father thought less of him than Gabriel had believed.

“But I
love
her,” Gabriel said.

“He knows that. He doesn’t care.” Michael said. “Gabriel, I hate to say it, but you may want to step back from Dani and just
do your job. Maybe if you do, He will sti
ll forgive you.”

“I won’t give her up,” Gabriel said.

“Gabriel…,” Michael said.

“
No!
“Gabriel roared.

“You know what you’ve done!  You know what’s going to happen! If you don’t back away
you
may end up in Hell yourself!”

“Then so be it!” Gabr
iel yelled, spreading his wings.
“You tell Our Father that if he wants me away from Dani before Lucifer
comes for her then he’ll have to pull me home Himself or strike me dead now, because
I will not give her up!”

The sky split open and three lightning bolts struck around where they were standing, setting a few of
the
trees on fire.

“
Stop this
, Gabriel! You’ll only be here a few more da
ys; maybe less!” Michael roared.
“She
’s
not worth this!”

Gabriel crash
ed into Michael and drove him backward
through the trees. Michael tried to fight back, but he never stood a chance against Gabriel. He slammed Michael to the ground and pulled his sword from its sheath.

He held his
sword to Michael’s throat, “God’s punishment of me worked; never doubt that, Michael. All those years outside the Gates were not in vain. I have no qualms about killing one of my brothers anymore. Don’t make me start with you.”

“You would kill me? Over her; over a human woman?” Michael said in astonishment.

“Without hesitation,” Gabriel said. “If you don’t believe me then say one more word to me about what you think Dani’s
not
worth, just one, and I’ll prove it to you.”

Michael studied Gabriel’s face before speaking, “You’re all in on this, aren’t you?”

“It’s too late to be anything else,” Gabriel said. “I have no regrets about Dani or about what now has to be. For your
own best interest, I would advi
s
e you to accept it as I have.”

“But you’re my brother!
I love you,” Michael said.

“As I love you,” Gabriel said, then pulled Michael to his feet and put his sword back in its sheath.

“I must have
never have actually been in love with Tzahala?” Michael said.

“Why do you say that?”

Michael smiled at him, “Because being in love
obviously
drives angles insane.”

Gabriel asked, “You think I’ve gone crazy?”

“You’re defying God again, so yes, I think you’ve gone crazy,” Michael said.

“I’m not crazy, little brother, just determined not to leave her.”

“Like I said; crazy,” Michael said with a sad smile and disappeared.

Gabriel drew a deep breath,
blew out the fire that still burned in the trees, then headed back to Dani.

1.

Dani sat on the bridge and thought about what she’d learned
about her father
. It kind of made sens
e from the things her mother had told her. She hadn’t known that her father had left on the day of her moms baby shower, but she knew he hadn’t taken his car. He wouldn’t have nee
ded to. The river was right down
the street. He could have walked there in ten minutes.

She tried to imagine what he’d been thinking when he was being dragged beneath the water. Or how he felt when he’d come face to face with a demon. He
had
to have died in terror. She wanted to feel differ
ently about him, but she didn’t;
at least not yet. She’d believed he’d left them for so long that it was hard to accept the reality that he’d been
taken
from them.

She knew that she would eventually come to terms with what had really happened, but right now it was too new. She wondered if he’d thought of her mom or his unborn child while he was dying. Then she decided that she didn’t want to know.

She didn’t even know what he’d looked like. Her mom had thrown all his pictures away when she thought he’d left her. Dani jumped when she heard three quick bangs. It sounded almost like thunder
,
but the sky was clear blue. Gabriel walked back onto the bridge a few minutes later.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Everything’s fine,” Gabriel said. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought I heard…never mind,” she said.

She stood up and looked at him. He looked tense and maybe a little angry, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he said stiffly.

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, stepping over to him.

Gabriel took a small step back, “I just had a small disagreement with Michael.”

“Because he told me about my father?”

“That was part of it. He didn’t need to tell you all that he did. You have enough on your mind right now without him throwing details of your father’s death into the mix.”

“
It’s alright; really,” she said.
“I asked him to tell me.”