The Lost Fallen Read online

  Serenity’s eyes washed over the classroom. It was full of color, unlike her heart. Inside, there was a darkness that threatened to spill out at any moment. Despite her calm exterior, Serenity knew she was barely keeping herself together. She needed to draw, needed to find the release that came from creating something new, something brilliant, something special.

  Gregory was working on drawing a dragon. He was always drawing dragons. They made him feel like he was strong and brave and invincible. She walked by as he was finishing the first outline, but he didn’t reach for the colored pencils. Not just yet. Serenity knew that Gregory would erase and redraw his work several times before it was perfect.

  She handed him a 6H pencil from the pile at the center of the table. Gregory looked up at Serenity in surprise. She rarely intervened in his drawing, preferring to let the student figure out what worked and what didn’t.

  “You might like this one for the details around the snout,” she said. “It’ll give you a little more definitely here,” she pointed to the nostrils of the dragon.

  Gregory accepted the pencil, but said nothing. Serenity wasn’t offended. Each of her students was different. They each had their own stories, their own tales. They each had things that made them unique, and those characteristics weren’t always positive.

  Did she wish Gregory would actually speak to her?

  Absolutely.

  Having a student who would verbally communicate would make her life much easier, but Gregory was a kid who had seen darkness, and speaking to his teacher who was not only white, but a woman, wasn’t something he was interested in.

  “How’s it going, Tanya?” Serenity asked her next pupil. Tanya’s hair was piled on top of her head and her bright red glasses brought out her beautiful eyes. Tanya smiled as she looked up from the drawing she’d been working on.

  “What do you think?” Tanya asked in response. Tanya almost always responded with questions. Serenity wasn’t sure why, but she had learned not to push Tanya to give her direct answers.

  Tanya was drawing a portrait of a woman. The subject was quite old, if the wiggly lines on her cheeks were, in fact, wrinkles. Serenity wasn’t completely sure who was the person was supposed to be, but she could tell this was someone Tanya cared very deeply about. The woman was smiling brightly in the picture. Tanya’s pictures almost always featured people who were happy.

  “I like the lines here,” Serenity pointed to the edges of the woman’s face. “They give her a distinct personality, I think. Is this a woman in your family?”

  “Doesn’t she look like a grandmother?” Tanya asked. Serenity nodded, and moved on. Her next two students were still busy selecting their pencils.

  “Just remember,” Serenity said. “It doesn’t matter if your first drawing today is perfect. Perfection isn’t something an artist is ever going to achieve. What’s important is that you get something down on paper, and then you can change it or alter it as needed.”

  When she got to Michael’s picture, she wasn’t surprised to see harsh, angry lines.

  “What are you working on today, Michael?” Michael was just eight years old. He came to the community center every day after school and stayed until his mother got off work. He took all of the free classes that were offered and on the rare occasion there wasn’t a class offered, he would sit in the lobby with his favorite racecar and play toys until his mother came.

  “A picture,” Michael said.

  “I can see that,” Serenity nodded. She pointed to an area with particularly dark swirls. “This looks really interesting. Would you like to tell me about this part of your drawing, Michael?”

  He shook his head.

  “Are you going to add some color?”

  He shook his head again. Serenity patted him on the shoulder and moved on. Sometimes her students seemed to love her and sometimes they hated her. All of them were different, and no two classes were the same. She’d been teaching at the center for two years, and sometimes she wondered if it was all worth it.

  After all, she wasn’t even supposed to be here, on Earth.

  She was supposed to be in a different realm, in a different world, experiencing a different life.

  She was supposed to be living for eternity, but Oliver had changed all of that, and just because he was dead, didn’t mean she got to go back.

  When an angel cut off its wings, it was forever. There were no take-backs. There was no apologizing. There was no changing your mind. Serenity could have begged to be allowed back into the realm of angels, could have petitioned to have her immortality restored, but she hadn’t.

  She had accepted her fate.

  Each day, she aged a little. She found a new wrinkle or a new sunspot she hadn’t noticed before. Her nose was speckled with freckles now, and every once in awhile, she’d get hurt, and her skin wouldn’t heal completely. She’d be left with a tiny scar: a small reminder that she was now human, and there was no going back.

  She tried not to think about Oliver too much. She tried not to think about the choice she had made. Her mother and sister had begged her not to, had promised her that no man was worth giving up eternity for, but there was something they hadn’t known about Serenity.

  Serenity had been lonely.

  She had been scared.

  She had been tired.

  She had lived so many years in the angelic realm that she wondered if that was all there was, if that was all there was to eternity.

  What good was being immortal if there was no passion? No fire? No spirit?

  What good was living forever if you were completely bored out of your mind while you did it?

  Wasn’t it better to live a shorter life, but a passionate one?

  Wasn’t it better to live on Earth, but have adventures?

  There were so many things Serenity loved about her world now: ice cream and butterflies and warm summer days. She loved the leaves that fell in the autumn and the snow that covered the Earth in the winter. She loved the first signs of spring and the way the coldness melted away each year.

  She loved so many things, but she missed Oliver.

  Their time together had been shorter than it should have been. What should have been decades together had been condensed into three very brief years, and it hadn’t been enough. When it came to Oliver, she wanted more time. She wanted more with him, but that was the problem with becoming human.

  You felt things very deeply, but there was never enough time.

  “How is your drawing coming along, Clemecia?” She asked her student in the back row. Clemecia – who always insisted on calling herself Clover – smiled at Serenity.

  “Perfectly, of course,” Clemecia said with a big, gap-toothed smile. Clemecia came to each art class Serenity taught. Rain or shine, snow or hail, Clemecia was there. She was always glad to draw. She wasn’t particularly talented when it came to art, but she always gave it her best shot.

  “What are you working on today?” Serenity peeked at her student’s drawing of a house. It was obviously her own home. The lines were a little sloppy and crooked, and the colors were a bit strange, but Serenity thought it was obvious this picture had been drawn with love.

  “My house,” Clemecia confirmed. “Look at the chimney,” she pointed to it proudly, and Serenity smiled. Then Clemecia leaned over conspiratorially and whispered, “We don’t really have a chimney, you know. I just added it for Santa Clause.”

  “I know,” Serenity whispered back. “And I think that’s quite clever.”

  She moved along to the next person at the table. It was the man: the new student. Wrath, Clemecia had called him, and she could see why. He was tall, even for a man. She bet he must be well over six feet tall, and wide. He was muscular, but the kind of muscle that comes from years of hard work: not from hitting the gym a few times a week. His eyes were dark, and watchful. She bet not a lot got past him, and although Serenity was always happy to have a new student, she thought it was weird he had chosen her class to attend.

/>   “Would you like to tell me about your drawing, Wrath?” She asked quietly. “Or do you prefer to be called John?” His body tensed, and he shook his head.

  “Wrath is fine,” he said. “Just fine.”

  “All right, Wrath. What are you drawing today?” To be honest, she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at. Thick, dark lines filled the page, and the glare that spread over Wrath’s face matched the emotion of the piece.

  He said nothing. Instead, he turned back to the picture and stared at it. Serenity waited for a moment. Wrath didn’t scare her. She’d been working here long enough that she’d had students who had done time in prison, students who were addicted to drugs, students who were currently on probation. She’d seen it all, and someone glaring at her certainly wasn’t going to frighten her.

  He wasn’t going to intimidate her.

  “It looks like an interesting piece,” she said, hoping he would respond to what she said. Then again, perhaps Wrath was like Gregory. Maybe he didn’t like to speak about the things he was drawing.

  Wrath just shrugged, and Serenity moved on. She had plenty of other students to check on. She wouldn’t let this one bother her. She finished making her way around the room and then she went to the front of the class again.

  “As you work on your artwork,” she said. “Make sure you’re paying attention to the emotions you want to convey. Is this piece supposed to be sad? Is it supposed to express joy? What are you feeling as you draw? Remember,” Serenity smiled at her class. “You can each draw the same exact thing and have it come out looking completely different. If you’re each drawing an apple, for example, some of you are going to draw it in a way that seems sad. Some of you will draw it in a way that seems happy. This is totally natural and normal. Don’t be afraid to let your emotions show on the paper.”

  The class continued drawing, but soon enough, it was time for them to leave the community center. Each of the students worked together to tidy up the room, return the pencils and drawing supplies to the teacher’s desk, and straighten the chairs. Serenity loved her class. She didn’t tolerate disrespect and her students didn’t give her any. They had been working together long enough that they knew what to expect from her.

  “Wrath,” she said as the students began to exit. “Don’t forget! I have that registration form for you. It’ll only take a moment.”

  He strode up to her with a sort of sway in his hips. He looked like a country-kid-turned-city-boy who wasn’t entirely sure who he was supposed to be.

  “Does this class have a price tag?” He asked, taking the form from her.

  “No.”

  He raised an eyebrow, obviously surprised.

  “It’s sponsored by the community center,” Serenity explained. “Some of the classes do have a fee to cover supplies, but this one is free.”

  “No offense, but how is that possible?” He looked around the room, which was basically falling apart. “How can the center afford to offer this for free?”

  “Because I volunteer my time and provide all of the supplies,” she said simply. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the smallest hint of respect flashed in Wrath’s eyes. She must have imagined it, though, because this wasn’t the kind of guy who was used to being in a classroom like this.

  No, Wrath was the kind of guy who was used to calling the shots. She’d seen his kind before. He was big, and he thought that meant he could be bossy. Well, Serenity was big, too. Just not on the outside.

  He leaned over her desk and started to fill out the form.

  “What do you need this information for, anyway?”

  “It’s for the center,” she said. “They keep track of how many students each class has. You only have to fill it out once per course, so if you want to come back next week, you don’t have to fill it out again.”

  “You meet every week?”

  “Same time, same place.”

  “Huh.” Wrath finished filling out the form, but didn’t say whether he’d come back the next week or not. Serenity wasn’t sure whether to expect him, either, but she didn’t like to push her students in that way. She was happy to have repeat students, but she wasn’t getting paid for this. It might sound shitty, but if they didn’t want to waste their time coming, then she didn’t want them to.

  Art was supposed to help people express themselves.

  People with no interest in that shouldn’t bother coming to her class. It would just waste everyone’s time.

  Wrath handed her the form, and as Serenity reached for it, her sleeve slid up just the smallest amount, revealing her angelic scars. Wrath surprised her by grabbing her wrist with his opposite hand and pushing her sleeve up just a tiny bit more. He looked up at her, surprised, but didn’t say anything.

  He couldn’t know what they meant. There was no way. No living being on Earth knew about the angelic scars that came from cutting off your wings. It was a closely guarded secret: one she didn’t have any interest in discussing. For the briefest moment, Serenity felt afraid, like he might know her secret, but then Wrath let go of her wrist and let her take the form.

  “Nice tats,” he said, and walked away.

  Chapter 3

  So the little art teacher was a fallen angel.

  Who would have thought?

  Wrath hadn’t met a lost fallen in a very, very long time. Not in about eight hundred years, to be exact. He should have known before he saw her scars that she was different from any woman born on Earth. No Earth-born female would have the patience she did, the heart. It simply wasn’t possible.

  Then again, a lot of things shouldn’t be possible that were.

  Angelic scarring, for example.

  Wrath hadn’t been sure when he left the class that he would go back, but now he realized he had to. He didn’t have much of a choice. Serenity was the oldest living being he’d encountered since he’d been banished to Earth. She was the only person who could even fathom what he’d been through.

  Not that she’d want to talk to him, of course.

  She was an art teacher: not a therapist.

  Still, he had to try.

  He had been going crazy trying to make friends he could relate to, but the truth was that no one could really understand what he was going through. The entire banishment process had been disappointing, frustrating. It had been utterly exhausting and Wrath was ready for something new.

  Someone new.

  “See you next week, then,” a cheery voice said as Wrath exited the community center. He turned to see Clemecia leaning against the side of the building. She smiled at him and gave a little wave.

  “What makes you say that?” Wrath said gruffly. He wasn’t making promises to a little kid.

  “I saw you looking at my teacher,” Clemecia pointed out the obvious. Fucking smart kid. “I bet you twenty bucks you’ll be back next week, just ‘cause you think she’s pretty.”

  “You don’t have twenty bucks to bet,” Wrath pointed out.

  “You don’t know about my business,” Clemecia glared at him, the smile gone. “A bet’s a bet. I’m good for the money.”

  He didn’t want to bet with a little kid, especially one like Clemecia. She was a bright kid who happened to be born on the wrong side of the tracks. She didn’t seem to realize that, though. She didn’t seem to realize that the whole world was going to be against her as she got older.

  No, Clemecia was bright and cheerful and a light in the sadness that had enveloped Wrath’s life.

  “All right,” he said slowly. “A bet’s a bet. Twenty bucks.”

  “If you come next week, I get the money,” Clemecia said, making sure Wrath understood the terms. They shook hands.

  “Of course.”

  “Hey,” Clemecia said as he started to head toward his beat-down pickup. “Can I have a ride?”

  “Didn’t your mama teach you not to take rides from strangers?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “My legs hurt,” Clemecia said. “I don’t want to walk that far tonight. Besi
des, she’s still at work. She won’t know.”

  Wrath sighed and motioned to his car. Clemecia grabbed her backpack, which had been sitting at her feet, and ran toward his car, as if worried he’d change his mind if she took too long. She climbed in and sat eagerly in the front seat.

  “Seatbelt,” he said.

  “It’s not far.”

  “Seatbelt,” he repeated.

  Clemecia groaned, but pulled her seatbelt on and leaned back in the seat, obviously ready for what she considered to be an adventure. The engine roared to life and he pulled out of the little parking lot and turned down the street.

  Clemecia chattered loudly and constantly and occasionally gave Wrath directions to the home where she lived with her mother, her brother, and her Uncle Herb. How fitting, Wrath thought. It seemed like every human he’d ever met had had an Uncle Herb.

  As they drove, Clemecia told Wrath about her life, and he tried to listen, but his thoughts were consumed with his teacher: the fallen.

  How did she end up here, in Bradshaw?

  Why would she have chosen this city, of all the cities in the world, to make her residence?

  And why, oh why, was she wasting her humanity teaching art classes?

  Not that Wrath was the expert on appropriately using your newly-given humanity. He wasn’t. Not by any means. He himself worked as a chef. All right, he was a line cook. It was boring, tedious work, but it was routine. Each day, he went in to the restaurant and he knew exactly how long he would be at work, what he would be doing, and how he would be doing it.

  He didn’t take special orders or have to do requests.

  No, all Wrath had to do was show up, and it was by far the easiest job he’d ever had in his life.

  And since he’d been a demon, most of the supernatural beings would argue that was saying something. Living in the realm of darkness didn’t exactly put him high on anyone’s list of people who deserve respect.

  He certainly wasn’t high on his own list, by any means.

  But an angel was different.

  They were valued, cherished. Angels were loved. They were adored. Some humans even worshipped them. Oh, humans were such idiots as a group. They didn’t know the first thing about angels, yet they had created an entire mythos about them.