Fall From Grace (5 page)

Tonight, except for a
lone light in the acolyte's office, the church was dark. Hopefully
Father Cortez was asleep and not waiting to leap out, thrust an
oversized bag of fertilizer in her hands and tell her to get to
work.

Mouser, the church
cat, lay in a fuzzy, ginger-colored lump in front of her door. They
were good pals, she and the cat. Scooping him up, she kissed him on
his furry head and he breathed a sleepy meow.

“Hello, Evie.”

Evie jumped at least
a foot, dropping Mouser in her surprise, her wings popping straight
out.

Father Cortez stood
at the other end of the landing, flashlight in hand. He was wearing
pajamas, a UCLA sweatshirt and rubber boots.

There were two sets
of stairs to her apartment. One from inside the church building and
the other from the garden. Evie generally just swooped in and
hopped the railing as she had tonight.

“
Jeez
, don't
do that!”

The priest squeezed
by one wing in the narrow space as Evie tried to get them back in
order.

“Sorry, Evangeline.
Mole hunting duty. Before dawn is best. Purely catch and release.”
He gave her a wink. “Saw you swoop in. Could you...”

She
held up both hands, “Oh Father, can the mole invasion
please
wait until another
day...night...morning?”

Moving forward, Father Cortez pushed open the door to her
little home. Mouser trotted in with an impatient lash of her tail
as though to say, '
finally!'
heading for the bedroom and the pile of soft
blankets and pillows there. Evie followed, nearly tripping over her
sheet which had become somewhat tangled during the flight
home.

“I did not come up
here to recruit you for mole duty.”

The priest clomped
across the hardwood floor in his rubber boots, looking at her
expectantly. She followed him inside.

“From the way you
were flying I could tell all was not well in Avenging Angel
land.”

“You mean I fly with
emotional resonance?”

“Yes, you do. The set
of your wings is very revealing. Now sit,” he pointed to one of the
two easy chairs in the small living room. “And talk. Especially
about why you look like the statue of Columbia in that movie studio
logo, minus the torch.”

With a sigh of
resignation, Evie flopped down into the chair and explained in a
slightly disjointed fashion the progress of events over this very
unusual day-into-night-into-day again.

Father Cortez
listened in silence, fingers pressed together, elbows on his knees,
chin resting on his thumbs, watching her closely.

“...and
then
they shut the doors on Stephanie and Josh. Who assures me he
will be guarding more assiduously from now on and I flew back
here...” She trailed off as her narrative wound down and the priest
continued to say nothing. “You know, to change
clothes...”

“Well,” he said at
last. “A Fallen Angel. How extraordinary. Truly. I myself have not
encountered a Fallen for a very long time.”

Evie couldn't hide
the surprise on her face. As far as she knew, he never strayed far
from the church and she could hardly see a Fallen showing up in
Torrance. West Hollywood. Yes. Torrance. No.

“You
need not give me
that
look. As though I am only an old parish priest. My life has
been very much one of service to the higher powers. Very active
service for many years. In the late seventies an entire cadre of
acolytes disappeared in Mexico City. Just vanished.
Poof
. Ten souls gone
without a trace, the offices left apparently untouched. That is
when and where I met her. The Fallen one.”

“What did she do with
them?”

“Nothing. She was not
responsible. However, their disappearance was linked to a demon she
was tracking for her own purposes. Their deaths, the acolytes I
mean, were nothing but a red herring to confuse us as the real plan
went forward. She and I worked together to solve it.” The priest
leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs.

“Well? What was the
mystery?” Evie demanded, completely intrigued as this new side of
Father Cortez came into focus.

“Another time,
perhaps. We have your Fallen to contend with here and now.”

“But...”

“I do not think this
happened only by chance.”

“Funny, that's
exactly what I said to young Josh a little while ago.”

“Things are going to
change.”

“For who?” Evie was a
little surprised by the serious tone of the priest. Usually he was
relaxed and casual in the extreme.

“You. Us. Your
Reaper. You know my thoughts on free will.”

She nodded, the two
of them had talked of this often after her arrival. He was much
more than her landlord. He was also her mentor. “Many choices are
open to us and many destinies. There is no one, perfect way.”

“Precisely. Things don't always happen
to
us. Often they happen
because
of us. We serve
as the catalyst. You made choices today, as did your mischievous
Reaper. The Fallen, too, must make choices. Each of these is like a
sonic boom, spreading out in wider and wider circles.”

The priest seemed
very intent. Worried, almost. Had she done something very wrong
today? Evie pulled her legs up into the chair and hugged her knees.
She'd spent much of her time as an Avenging Angel avoiding
reflection. Content to pursue the goals and missions set out for
her by the Celestials. Focus on the job. Get it done. Enjoy the
little luxuries of her born-again life. A passionate fling here and
there as the world went on without her. The Reaper had made her
question her mandate. That was wrong. Surely.

The priest stood,
tugging his sweatshirt into place. “The moles await me and you have
your mission and your Reaper to deal with.” He stepped over to
stand beside her. “Evie, life after death can, in many ways, be
much more difficult than being alive. No matter your choices, you
know I will stand by you.” And with that, Father Cortez saw himself
out, shutting the door behind. She heard him clomping down the
stairs in his boots as he headed for the garden.

Through her windows
she saw the sky was still dark. Dawn a few hours away. Shoving her
doubts aside and thinking back over the course of events, she
managed to fan the fires of her rage at least into glowing
embers.

Mandate or no mandate, it was time for a shower, real clothes
and then she really,
desperately
, had to find a Starbuck's
and get a double espresso over ice. After that, she would figure
out how to track Trick McKitrick and kick his ass all the way to
Hell.

Trick McKitrick shivered, someone walking over
his grave as his mother used to say.

He
was sitting in the offices of Barracuda Bail Bonds in Compton, a
couple of blocks on the wrong side of the 91 freeway. The place was
in a roomy old bungalow painted pale, sherbet yellow with white
trim. One of the few houses left after zoning changed this to a
commercial area, paving the way, literally, for a succession of
interchangeable strip malls. By the front walk a neon sign in the
shape of a sharp-toothed barracuda glowed, its bright green
dollar-sign eyes blinking on and off. The company's CEO, bonded and
licensed, Roman Barracuda, sat across the desk opposite him.
Barracuda was the man's real name. Though whether he was a real man
– as in human – Trick had serious doubts. Roman was just way too
powerful in the
juju
department to be mortal. He dealt in a lot more than 'get out
of jail' bail bonds for the average felon. The little house saw a
frightening parade of supernaturals and humans looking, most often
desperately, for protection charms and personal wards. Barracuda's
was the place to go when a body needed to fly under the paranormal
radar.
Way
under.

“I need a charm to
blur a Death Mark.”

Roman raised his eyebrows several notches. He was a large
black man with large black hair who had gotten stuck in a time warp
somewhere in the seventies. The 1970s. Though he had lived through
the 1870s and several seventies before that. Isaac Hayes, Otis
Redding, Kool and The Gang, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye – those and
many other artists made the 1970s
the
decade worth remembering as far
as he was concerned. Roman was wearing one of his favorite
geometric-patterned, polyester wide-collared shirts, this one in
maroon, tucked into matching plain maroon pants with a sharp crease
sewn down the front of each pants leg. His tinted reading glasses,
what they used to call Granny glasses back in the day, perched low
on his broad nose. In the background, Barry White crooned a
low-voiced ballad.

Pansy and Rose Marie
LaRue, Roman's collectors, were behind him in the other room, the
door open, filing paperwork and keeping an eye on Trick. They
probably outweighed their boss by several pounds and all of it pure
muscle. Except maybe for five pounds of bright red hair tortuously
tossed and teased. Not too many Barracuda customers skipped bail
with the LaRue sisters on the job. Or gave their boss any
grief.

Roman burst into
laughter.

Trick ran his hands
through his hair, “No, really, Barracuda. I sort of left an
Avenging Angel tied up with my flaming lasso in a hotel by the
airport and she sort of wants to kill me.”

Roman sat back in his chair, a big old-fashioned wooden office
chair with an upholstered back and seat, “Does this have anything
to do with the
last
amulet I gave you?"

"Maybe. Well,
yea."

“
Hmmm
." He
stared critically at Trick. "Was it a nice hotel?"

"Sort of Holiday
Inn-ish."

"Full service?"

"Express."

"Fool!" Roman managed
to squeeze a lot of contempt into that one short word. "You are
asking to be killed. An Avenging Angel deserves a suite at the Ritz
Carlton or the Grand Hyatt at the very least. And a trip to
Disneyland. What were you thinking?"

He
wasn't thinking, obviously. At least not with his
head
when he got mixed up
in this mess.

"Did
she want to kill you
before
you tied her up at the Holiday Inn?”

Trick shifted
uncomfortably in his chair, “Actually, that would be a 'yes'
again.”

He
peered at Trick over his glasses, “She is going to hand you your
cowboy ass on a collection plate and
then
she is going to use that sword
of hers to cut out your heart. No 'sort of' about it.” He gave a
hearty laugh and slapped one broad thigh as though it was a very
good joke. Trick could hear the LaRue sisters in the back room
giggling along with him.

“
Nice
. Can
you help me postpone that delightful scenario or not?”

He was laughing so
hard he had to wipe his eyes. The phone on the desk rang. An
old-fashioned sort, just one generation up from a rotary dial. He
held up a finger to Trick as a signal to wait. Picking up the phone
he said in a flat, business-like voice, “Barracuda Bail Bonds, how
may I direct your call?”

Trick listened in as
Roman tried to calm a seemingly distraught woman in Spanish on the
other end. Swiveling around, he pulled a file out of the top drawer
of the tall metal cabinet behind him and threw it down on the desk,
all the while making soothing noises to the woman on the other end.
He jotted some notes in the file and with a few final words of
encouragement, hung up.

“Pansy, Rose Marie?”
He called over his shoulder, “Little Estella Barraza's no good
husband Paco is in trouble with the law again. Draw up a contract
and get a motorcycle messenger to deliver it to Eagle Rock. And see
you leave out the interest charges. Tell her we got a special going
on or something. Don't want to hurt her pride.” He jotted down an
address on a bright pink post-it note.

Marie leaned her
not-inconsiderable-self out of the doorway, her hair nearly as wide
as the frame, and grabbed the note. “Poor Estella. Four kids, two
jobs and nothing to show for it but that husband who drinks up her
pay and shames the family name. What say we arrange a little
accident for ol' Paco, Boss? He could accidentally fall in front of
the Light Rail over there by Avon after he gets out on bail. You
just know he's going to head to Santa Anita Racetrack."

“You think she'd
thank us for this if she knew? She's had four kids by him.”

“And twice that many
trips to the emergency room from his fists,” Rose growled.

Roman's eyes drew
together in an angry “V”. The room grew dark and two shadows rose
up on either side of the big man. The shadows writhed and swayed
and Trick drew back in his chair. One had horns. The male, he
thought. The other obviously female, with a fish tail that flipped
up and back.

“That's an evil thing to do. Hit a woman. Hit
your
woman. We don't like
that> We don't like that at all, do we?”

He seemed to be
addressing the dancing shadows. Trick could have sworn they nodded
their insubstantial heads in agreement.

“She got insurance,
Pansie, Rose Marie?

Marie smiled,
extending an admirable set of fangs. “We'll make sure to back-date
some right now. She and the kids will be okay.”

He nodded, the
shadows melted away, and the light returned. “Let's do it. You,” he
jabbed a finger at Trick, “however, do not have four hungry,
wide-eyed, crying children and are not a charity case. What were
you plannin' to give me in exchange for this so-called Death Mark
charm you think I might be able to provide?”