The Lost Fallen Read online

  Did Serenity know what people thought about angels?

  Had anyone ever discovered the truth about her or why she was teaching art lessons to poor kids?

  “This one,” Clemecia said suddenly, pointing at the little brick townhouse. It was squished between two other homes and had a big yard and a tiny porch.

  “You sure you wanna go home?” Wrath asked, raising an eyebrow. “This ain’t exactly the Hilton.”

  “Fuck you,” Clemecia said. “I like my house.”

  “Where’d you learn to swear like that, kid? You could give some of my servers a run for their money.”

  Clemecia sat up a little taller, a little prouder. She pushed her shoulders back and looked at Wrath. “I can take care of myself,” she told him.

  “I know you can, kid. I know you can.”

  “See you next week,” she said, hopping out of the truck.

  “We’ll see,” he told her, and Clemecia ran up the little walkway to the house, opened the door, and disappeared inside.

  Chapter 4

  Wrath made Serenity uncomfortable.

  Oh, that wasn’t really saying anything. Plenty of people made her uncomfortable, but Wrath? Wrath was different. He was dark, deep. He had the eyes of someone who knew things, who had seen things, and Serenity wanted to know what those things were.

  Or maybe she didn’t.

  He had recognized her scars, she realized, and that wasn’t a good thing. How did he know? Or perhaps she had only imagined his reaction when her sleeve had slipped up. She didn’t advertise her scars. Even in the summer, Serenity wore long sleeves. She had perfected the “I burn easily” lie, and that seemed to satisfy people.

  She went home after class ended and poured herself a cup of tea. She sat at the small table in the center of her kitchen, and she sipped at the drink.

  He couldn’t have known.

  The details of angelic rituals were closely guarded secrets. There was no way for a mortal, especially a human, to know exactly what happened when an angel cut off its wings. Then again, it was such a rare occurrence that most angels didn’t know, either.

  Serenity certainly hadn’t known.

  She hadn’t been young, but she had been in love, and she thought years with Oliver would be better than an eternity alone.

  How silly she had been.

  Their time together had been so short, but so perfect, and even though Serenity was now destined to walk the Earth alone, to die alone, to experience things alone, she thought it might all be worth it to have had those years with her beloved.

  She heard a meow and looked down to see Panda rubbing against her leg.

  “Hey, little guy,” she scooped the cat into her arms and held him against herself for a long minute. He meowed again and she smiled. “Missed me, did you?”

  Panda only purred.

  When Serenity finished her tea, she took a bath, and then she climbed into bed to read a book. The words blurred on the pages, though, and she wondered how she was supposed to act normally when she saw Wrath again next week. She hadn’t been so sure he’d come back, but then he’d seen her arms. He’d seen her reaction. Surely both of those things would leave a lasting impression on the stranger who called himself John Smith.

  She closed her eyes and set the book down.

  It was no use worrying about this tonight.

  Serenity would have to see him next week, and she would deal with this then.

  For now, sleep.

  She would sleep.

  *

  The week passed quickly and soon it was time to return to Bradshaw Community Center. The little building had seen better times, but then, they all had. Just as the exterior of the building had worn, Serenity thought the exterior of the people who worked there had worn. What may have started as a summer job had, for many employees, turned into a lifelong career.

  This wasn’t always a positive thing.

  “Good afternoon, Bob,” she gave a little wave to the man at the front desk, who simply nodded his head at her. Serenity was used to people being different by now. Oh, some of them were quiet and some of them were loud, but they were all unique. They all had their little quirks.

  As an angel, she hadn’t been allowed to visit the human realm. That wasn’t her place. Humans stayed in human places and angels stayed in angel places. That was the rule, but she had broken it so many times. She’d been sneaky, and she’d never been caught.

  Until she decided to give it all up, anyway.

  Serenity went down the little hallway to her classroom and when she opened the door, she was surprised to see Wrath sitting on the edge of her desk.

  “Mr. Smith,” she said.

  “Miss Serenity.”

  “I didn’t expect to see you back here again,” she said, walking past him and setting her things down on the desk. Today, they were going to be doing a little bit of painting. Serenity didn’t often have her students paint just because it was so messy. Although there were no toddlers in her class to go crazy and throw paint around, she had learned that teenagers and even young adults could be just as bad when it came to making messes with art.

  “Why’s that?” Wrath jumped off the edge of the desk and moved so he was standing beside her. The scent of sandalwood wafted toward her nostrils. He smelled nice. She’d give him that much.

  “You didn’t seem particularly interested in drawing last week.”

  “On the contrary, I love to draw. I just don’t always like to answer questions about my work.”

  “Unfortunately for you, the entire point of art class is to get better at art.”

  “How does answering your questions help me with that?” He asked. Serenity glanced up at him, expecting to see a sneer on his face, but instead she saw openness and a strange vulnerability. Who was this man?

  “Perhaps today you should try answering them and see for yourself,” she said simply. She grabbed a stack of paper and began walking through the classroom. She placed a single sheet in front of each student.

  “What are we doing today?” He asked. “More drawing?”

  “Painting,” Serenity told him as she moved through the classroom.

  “Why not just draw?” He asked.

  “You like to draw?” Serenity glanced over at the man. He was watching her, but his gaze didn’t make her uncomfortable the way she thought it probably should. No, the way Wrath looked at her made her feel admired. He was looking at her with respect and she wasn’t sure what she had done to deserve that.

  “I like a lot of things.”

  “Drawing being one of them.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Drawing being one of them.”

  “What inspired this interest in art?” Serenity asked. She didn’t want to stereotype Wrath. In her time as an instructor, she had taught students from all walks of life. Some of them had been tall, skinny, clean-cut businessmen. Some of them had been hippies with long dreads and big smiles. Some of them had been scared, afraid of what their art might reveal about them.

  Some of them had been eager.

  Some of them had been happy.

  Wrath, it seemed, was something of a mystery. At first glance, he looked precisely ordinary. Perhaps that was the problem. He wore jeans with a button-down shirt. It fit just right, like it wasn’t very old. It looked new, but he wasn’t playing up that fact. His converse sneakers were still mostly clean. The white toes of the shoes weren’t yet dark and scuffed, which meant he didn’t wear them often. Serenity’s converse had gotten scuffed the first night she’d worn them out.

  The only thing out of the ordinary was his leather jacket, which he didn’t seem to ever remove. Although the classroom was warm, he kept it firmly on his body with no intention of taking it off.

  Peculiar.

  “My boss,” Wrath said.

  “Your boss likes art?” What kind of work did this man do? Serenity wondered. His nails were short, but not dirty. Clean. He worked with his hands, she guessed, but in a place where good hygiene
was important. If he had been a businessman of some sort, his nails would have been longer, and he would have had a manicure recently.

  “Loves it,” he chuckled, and Serenity smiled.

  “Me too.”

  “Miss Serenity!” A cheerful voice sounded from the door and Serenity turned to see Clemecia coming into the room. The girl stopped when she saw Wrath and snickered. Then she held her palm out. “You owe me twenty bucks, loser.”

  “Clemecia!” Serenity chastised her.

  “It was a fair bet,” Clemecia insisted. “And call me Clover.”

  “I’ll call you by the name your mama gave you,” Serenity said. “And we don’t call people losers in this class. It’s mean.”

  “You call Wrath by his nickname,” Clemecia pouted.

  “That’s because…”

  It’s because John Smith obviously wasn’t his real name, Serenity thought, but she couldn’t very well call him out. Not just yet. He was too interesting, too fascinating, and it had been a long time since anyone interested Serenity. She was used to being the smartest one in the room, but with Wrath, she wasn’t quite sure if that was true.

  “That’s because I’m very handsome,” Wrath said without missing a beat. “And I get whatever I want.”

  “Wrath!” Serenity gasped, caught off guard. What a cocky, arrogant…

  Clemecia laughed.

  Really laughed.

  She laughed so hard that she doubled over, grabbing her belly as she chuckled. Serenity thought it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. Clemecia was a happy girl, but even she rarely laughed.

  “You’re funny,” Clemecia said. “But I still want my twenty bucks.”

  Serenity looked at Wrath. With a shrug, he pulled out his wallet and handed over a crisp twenty dollar bill. Clemecia looked at it like she’d never seen so much money before in her entire life.

  “Put that away,” Serenity said quietly. “It’s time for class to start.”

  Chapter 5

  Serenity was drawn to him. Wrath could tell. She was much too self-controlled to simply admit this to herself, though, and that was fine. If there was one thing Wrath had these days, it was time.

  He worked throughout the class, painting a picture of a rainbow. Oh, Serenity had placed fruit bowls on each table and wanted them to create something silly, but he wasn’t interested. No, he’d paint a rainbow, and it would be the most beautiful thing he’d ever created.

  As Wrath swiped his paintbrush over the sheet of paper, he realized he felt different. Freer. He felt freer. He wasn’t quite sure why he felt that way or even why it mattered. It was simply a new, different feeling. After centuries of only feeling anger and hatred, being able to feel anything else felt like…well, it felt like a blessing.

  Maybe that’s why everyone liked angels.

  Wrath? He’d never been a fan. Angels and demons didn’t interact nearly as much as people liked to imagine they did, but he always found the white warriors to be a bit pretentious, if not downright arrogant. A fallen, though…well, that was different. Especially if this was a lost fallen.

  Those were rare.

  Usually, when an angel cut off its wings, there was a good reason. He was in love with a human or she had grown tired of being bossed around for all eternity. What most angels didn’t realize, though, is that there were people whose entire lives revolved around hunting down fallen angels and using their bodies for magic.

  Dark magic: not that there was any other kind, really. Magic was magic, and Wrath felt a strange sense of foreboding when he thought about Serenity. Those scars were unmistakable. The thick, black lines that marked her as a fallen must have appeared when she was still bleeding. The blade used to cut off an angel’s wings hurt more than anyone could possibly imagine, but it was the scars that really cemented her fate.

  They marked her.

  He had seen them for the first time long ago. The fallen he’d been with in the 13th century during one of his many outings to Earth had shown him. She’d shown him the way the black spirals covered her arms and extended to her shoulders and back. They completely covered where her wings had been, making it impossible for a human to ever tell there had once been wings there.

  But the scars had done more than simply concealing her former life as an angel.

  They had shown the world what she was.

  Serenity must have realized that there was danger lurking on Earth. Why else would she be so careful to cover her scars? Wrath never would have noticed them if her shirt hadn’t slipped just so the week prior. Then again, if that was all it took to make her scars visible, perhaps someone else has noticed.

  He wanted to warn her to be careful, wanted to ask her to protect herself, to watch out. Stealing the life of a fallen angel wouldn’t grant immortality, wouldn’t do anything. Fallen angels were human. They were thoroughly, completely human. There was nothing special in their body or their blood that would grant their killer any immunities, yet it didn’t seem to matter.

  Wrath knew exactly how many people were willing to do just that and it was what he’d dedicated his life to doing after Harmony died.

  Harmony.

  She had been so perfect, so sweet, so innocent. She was a kind woman with big dreams and her head in the clouds. She had never even seen the magic users coming. Then again, neither had Wrath. They’d both been caught by surprise, but while he had powers in the realm of demons, he did not have those same strengths on Earth.

  He had been unable to save Harmony.

  He had been unable to keep her from death.

  He had been unable to do the one thing he had so desperately wanted to do: protect her from a dark and deadly future.

  It had been over in a matter of minutes. She had died, and then they had taken vials of her blood.

  It won’t do anything, he had screamed at them, begged them to save her, begged them to use their magic to bring her back to life, but the witches hadn’t cared. They had simply looked at him, and then disregarded him as an idle threat, and they had left him to wait with her body until someone discovered what had happened.

  Wrath had never been the same.

  He had changed that day, watching Harmony die. He had changed, and the entire world of demons knew it. Demons were known for having bad attitudes, but after Harmony’s death, Wrath’s had been especially terrible. He was never calm again, never at ease. He was always restless, always looking for ways to get up to Earth and protect the fallen angels he could find.

  He had made his way through different places, teaching classes, instructing people, writing books and stories and tales. He had made it his life’s goal to expose the fact that killing a fallen angel could not, would not, grant you immortal life. It wouldn’t grant you anything except the label of MURDERER.

  It would do nothing.

  That was the thing about humans, though: they just didn’t care. They didn’t care what he said or what he did. They didn’t care about the stories, the explanations. All they cared about was the fact that there were supernatural beings on the planet, and they wanted a taste.

  Every fallen angel died.

  There was a reason cutting your wings off was such a huge problem. There was a reason it was so frowned upon in the angelic community, and it had nothing to do with becoming human. It had everything to do with the fact that you would be hunted, caught, tortured. You would be hurt.

  Angels weren’t hard to find once they were on Earth. They all congregated to the same areas, mostly. They all hung out around churches and places of worship. They all tended to wear the same bright, flowy clothes they’d worn in the angelic realm. They were easy to find, and there were demons who looked after them.

  Like Wrath had.

  The demons didn’t have the same powers on Earth as they did in other realms, but it didn’t matter. Typically, they had brute force. They had strength. More importantly, they had the knowledge that the newly fallen angels did not. They knew about the magic users, and they could warn t
he angels.

  Why the angels themselves didn’t warn their brethren about dangers on Earth, Wrath would never understand. The entire wing-cutting process was time consuming and painful. According to the angels he’d spoken with, it was the most terrible pain they’d ever felt in their lives, and it hurt longer than they could have imagined.

  But that was it.

  Their wings were cut, and then they were human. They would be deposited on Earth to live out their remaining days. The angels just never understood that with their angelic scars, those days would be numbered.

  Wrath and his friends would try to warn the angels to cover their scars, to move around, to dress in different ways. Don’t act like an angel, they would say, but the fallens never listened.

  So why was Serenity so different?

  How did she get to be lost?

  All angels were tracked on Earth, either by demons or other angels, but every so often, one of them disappeared. It wasn’t easy to do. It required completely hiding their scars from watchful eyes, and blending in with the humans. They also had to stay away from holy places because those were essentially hangouts for the supernatural.

  There was only one lost fallen in the last eight hundred years that he knew of. It was one from just a few years ago, one of the angels’ most beloved.

  She had been adored, but she had left.

  He tried to remember the story, tried to wrack his brain to think of the details. He couldn’t remember her name, but that was unimportant. Angelic names were unpronounceable, anyway.

  Then it hit him.

  She had done it all for love.

  Chapter 6

  Serenity watched Wrath paint. He stared at each brush, considering their size and use. He could use a large one or a small one. He could pick something with hard or soft bristles. He had an incredible number of options, and he seemed to carefully consider his choice before making it.

  When he finally chose his brush, he dipped it in pain and began to make long, sweeping motions over the paper. Every so often, his eyes met hers, but then he quickly moved them back to the paper, back to the project. He quickly began to work harder and harder on his painting. He became completely absorbed in what he was doing, and it fascinated her.