Angel's Messiah (21 page)

Gina laughed. “I know.”

She sounded so much like me with those two little words. She may still have a lot to learn, but she was growing up fast. Deep down I knew it was only a matter of months before she’d leave. She wouldn’t be celebrating her second birthday with us.

“Thank you everyone,” Gina said. “I had a lovely party. I shall remember it always.”

Danny took our hands and we walked away, slowing fading before we disappeared, reappearing outside Gina’s tiny home.

“The cake is on the table. You can have a little bit more then off to bed with you,” Danny said.

She kissed and hugged us. “I love you, Helena and Danizriel.”

I hadn’t heard her call us by those names in almost a year — the day after she’d been born — and it added to my fear that her time with us was short. Danny realised her use of our names upset me somehow, and he took charge of the conversation.

“We love you too, Gina. Now off you go.”

Danny wrapped his arm around my waist and guided me back to the cottage. My tail responded in kind, wrapping itself around his waist.

“What is it with that tail?” he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders and played dumb. There were some things best left unsaid.

“Do you remember a dream I had before you died … that involved honey?” I whispered in his ear.

“Yes. What about it?”

“You never told me you could
eat
…”

“What’s that go to do with …” Danny looked at my face and the decidedly wicked grin and gleam in my eyes. “Oh! Do you think I’ll like the taste?”

“It’s not
your
pleasure I’m thinking about,” I purred in his ear.

“Oh,” he said, and shook his head, chuckling. “The things I’m willing to do for love.”

Danny quite liked the taste of honey, so it was a win-win situation, though a very sticky one. We relaxed in the spa bath afterwards, enjoying each other’s company and the relative quiet.

“Did you know honey is poisonous to demons?” I asked.

“It is?” Danny asked idly.

“Yes.”

“How did you find that out?”

“There was a place I visited in hell. I won’t tell you its name. I think it’s too rude to tell an angel, but I spoke to a demon there and she told me there’s only one food left on earth that kills demons. Apparently they’ve been trying to make bees extinct forever, but the little buggers are more resilient than they look.”

Danny sat up, interested all of a sudden. “How can it be that I don’t have those memories?”

“What, of my time in hell?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been holding anything back if that’s what you mean. Maybe it’s like the time you spent with God. You couldn’t show me that, remember.”

“I guess you’re right. Perhaps it’s best I don’t see what happened in hell.”

“I’d share them with you if I could, Danny, you know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. You’ve never hidden anything from me intentionally, but I must admit I am curious about the choice of outfit you wore tonight.”

“The one Gina clothed me in,” I pointed out. “It wasn’t
my
choice.”

“I presume you wore that in hell,” Danny said, and I nodded. “How did she know?”

“Danny, Gina has
all
of my memories. Whether or not she would’ve had memories of my time in hell if she hadn’t been there herself, I don’t know.”

“There is one other thing I’d like to know about your time in hell.”

“What?” I asked.

“I know you drank his blood, but was there anything else you did with him that I should know about?”

At last. Here was something I didn’t have to feel ashamed about.

“No, we did not have sex,” I said firmly. “Not willingly or unwillingly.”

“That’s nice to know.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

“I would still love you and I would’ve married you regardless, but yes, it would have made a difference.”

Perhaps some of my
morality
, as Danny called it, was beginning to rub off on him. He had all but admitted he would’ve been jealous if I’d had some sort of relationship with Satan. I wondered why what I’d told him I’d done with Drake didn’t seem to matter though. Did he consider Satan too big a
personality
to compete against?

All of us slept in. It had been a really big night for Gina and the partying hadn’t stopped for Danny and me until the early hours of the morning. The sun was almost above the treetops when we finally ventured into the garden.

“Michael has been calling me for days now. I should go.”

“Why don’t we all go, Danny? Gina should meet some of her other family.”

I hoped to keep Gina occupied elsewhere, and if that meant a trip to heaven, so be it. I’d do anything to keep her with us for as long as possible.

Gina clapped her hands. “At last, a real archangel.”

“Yes, the real deal,” I said, “though his wings are nowhere near as beautiful as yours. Even your father’s weren’t as pretty.”

“You had wings, Father?” she asked.

“Only because your mother imagined all angels had wings. My gift to her was to allow her to see me with the wings she thought I should have.”

“Show me,” Gina demanded.

I heard his shirt rip as the wings grew from his back and he unfurled them. I’d forgotten how he’d looked with wings. Perhaps he could wear them again later.

“Father, you would have made a wondrous archangel.”

“He almost did,” I said.

“But if I had, more likely than not Gina would not be here.”

“True,” I conceded.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I could not stay with him if he accepted his wings. I wasn’t welcome.”

“That’s not quite true,” Danny said. “Your mother is a different sort of angel and while Michael would have welcomed her, she is bound to the earth, not the heavens. She can visit, but not stay — not unless she dies.”

“That’s not fair,” Gina said.

“We know it’s not fair, Gina,” Danny replied, “but life is not always fair.”

Danny’s wings disappeared and he held in his hand a single feather. He tucked it behind Gina’s ear. I remembered when he’d given me a feather and sighed.

“A keepsake,” Danny said. “Your mother has one just like it.”

I thought of the feather and it appeared in my hand, still in the bindings I used to secure it to my arm when I went hunting.

“Little Mother’s is different,” Gina said.

“Not the feather,” I told her, “only the way it’s worn. It’s my good luck charm.”

“What’s a good luck charm?” she asked.

“It’s something you keep with you to stop bad things from happening,” I replied.

“Then I shall keep my feather with me always, so nothing bad will ever happen,” she said.

Danny laughed. “Next you’ll be telling her Friday the thirteenth is a bad day, not to walk under ladders and not to open an umbrella indoors, Helena. You’re going to make her superstitious.”

“I’m not superstitious, Danny, it’s just bad things have been to known to happen. Besides, Friday the thirteenth
isn’t
a bad day, September eleven is.”

He chuckled and shook his head. Just because one good thing happened on my birthday, albeit an amazingly wonderful thing — Danny had returned from the dead — it didn’t cancel out all the other bad things.

Gina touched the feather sitting behind her ear and smiled.

“Can we visit Michael, Father, just for an hour or so? I’d like to show
someone
from your side of the family my wings. I won’t have them for long.”

My heart sank. I hated it when Gina talked about losing her wings, or it being almost time to leave. It was like sitting on a time bomb, not knowing when it would explode and rip you apart.

Danny smiled and brushed her cheek with his hand. “I can’t deny either of you anything. I am but a puppet …”

“And
we,
” I linked my arm through Gina’s, “are the puppet masters.”

Danny stood in front of us and took our hands. He walked backwards, pulling us with him as we entered the lights. Gina liked the lights and had been practicing recreating them herself. Hers were much more dazzling than Danny’s — a little on the gaudy side — but she liked them.

“Are we going to the clouds?” Gina asked.

“It depends where Michael is,” Danny explained. He tilted his head to the side as though listening to a message. “Today he is on a mountain plateau. Tomorrow he may be back in the clouds, at the library, or visiting Father Time at the Sands of Time.”

“What? Wait, Father Time and the Sands of Time?” I asked.

“Even mortals talk of Father Time,” Danny replied, “but not many would know of the Sands of Time. Did you not see him when you were there?”

“I’ve never been to the Sands of Time,” I scoffed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course, why would you equate where you were with the Sands of Time?” Danny said.

“Stop talking in riddles and tell me what you mean.”

“Helena, take your mind back to your encounter with Raphael, in what you described as a desert sandstorm. Those were the Sands of Time. Raphael took you there and sped up time, something that is forbidden, in an attempt to
erode
you from existence.”

“Really?” I asked, amazed.

“Really,” Danny replied.

The lights faded and we were indeed on a mountain, very high up.

“Danizriel,” Michael yelled out. “Over here.”

He was waving from a few hundred metres away and we walked the short distance to meet him. He was looking into the green valley below. It was very peaceful and serene. Gina stood behind us, not sure what to expect.

“It’s funny, but I thought you might bring some guests with you,” Michael said.

“Michael, you remember Helena.”

Michael reached forward and grasped my hand in his.

“Lovely lady, it is good to see you have returned to Danizriel. You’re looking very well.”

“Thank you, Michael.”

Danny stood to the side. “And this is Gina.”

Michael took a step back to take a proper look at Gina. His eyes sparkled and his lips curled upwards in a smile. He held out his arms and when Gina looked to Danny he nodded. She crossed the gap between them and he hugged her.

“My dear girl, you are most welcome here.”

“Unlike my mother?” she asked in a whisper.

Michael seemed shocked by the question. “It is not of my doing, child. You of all people should know that.”

“Rules are meant to be broken, or bent,” she whispered.

“Ah, the folly of youth,” Michael chuckled.

“Our Father
wants
Little Mother and Father to be happy,” she said.

“But they are, are they not?” Michael asked.

“I suppose so,” she pouted. “But they would have been happy here too.”

Michael chuckled again and let Gina go. She skipped the few steps back to us and took our hands, swinging them back and forth. If anything was a giveaway that she was very young, this simple act was it.

“You wanted to see me, Michael?” Danny asked.

“I had not heard from you since Helena disappeared. I was concerned you may have done something rash.”

“I did,” Danny replied. “I sought aid from a vampire.”

Michael nodded his head thoughtfully.

“Please, let us sit in comfort,” Michael said.

Four chairs appeared and we sat down, Gina dragging her chair so she could sit between Danny and me. Danny explained the story of how he’d approached Drake, and Drake’s account of the rescue. I kept tight-lipped about my time in hell. It was none of his business as far as I was concerned.

Michael asked Gina about herself and if she liked having wings. He asked what she had learned since her birth and the dreaded question about how long it was before she had to leave.

“Soon,” she said, “but not yet. When I lose my wings I’ll know it’s time to go.”

She gave one wing a sharp tug and I cringed, expecting it to come off in her hand.

“They’re still fixed tight,” she said happily.

Michael chuckled. “She’s a funny little thing, Danizriel. There’s much of her mother in her I think.”

I folded my arms across my chest and crossed my legs, narrowed my eyes and said, “And that’s a bad thing.”

“Not at all, Helena. Gina will need a little spunk to survive in the mortal world. Who better to provide her with it than you?”

We stayed with Michael a surprisingly long time and a number of other angels, including Hael — now sporting wings — came to visit and talk with Gina. She liked the attention, yet knew that if she were an ordinary angel, or an earth-bound one, she would not be of interest to many of them at all.