Fall From Grace Read Online Free Page A

escape into
the night like a thief. Until we meet again.” He flashed her a
smile that lit up his face and with a wild laugh ran to the
windows. Holding the pile of clothes in front of him, Trick crashed
through the glass of the closed window and was gone.
    With a cry of rage
Evie volted up her energy, burning through the coils of spell-cast
rope. Running to the shattered window sill, she thought she saw the
Reaper trance jumping incredible distances, already far away. They
were no longer in Hollywood, she noted but closer to LAX. The
colored light columns at the airport's entrance glowed brightly in
the distance. Below her, a squad of police cars and two firetrucks,
sirens blaring and lights flashing, screeched into the parking
lot.
    Time to go.
    She looked around the
room for her clothes. Only then she realized the Reaper had taken
them with him.
    “Nathan McKitrick,
you bastard!” She shouted, shaking her fist at the air.

Chapter 4
    The Guardian Angel had his beautiful wings
wrapped around himself as he rocked back and forth on the pavement,
sobbing.
    Evie heard him crying
as she flew over the city, cursing in an extremely un-Angelic way
and trying to pick up Trick's trail. The Reaper had used something
to mask his magical signature and she was only able to narrow it
down to a vague direction towards the Hollywood Park race track.
The smell of horses and hay drifted up on the night air. A few
miles along Century Boulevard, she lost the trail completely.
Circling round and round, she comforted herself thinking of all the
very nasty things she would do to the Reaper when she finally
caught up with him. And there was no doubt in her mind she would
find him. Evangeline Grace had never failed on a mission yet. Dead
or alive.
    Breaking through her satisfying thoughts of torture and
dismemberment – plus a few images of him standing there naked in
all his manly glory, damn it . And the way his hair
curled over his ear. Augh, damn it again. She heard the sound of
crying.
    Evie criss-crossed
the dimly lit streets below, soaring the air currents on silent
wings. It must be two or three in the morning.
    There.
    Directly below her.
An Angel was sobbing. The sound unmistakable. An Angel's tears were
fey and fearsome things. Such was their power, she heard each tear
drop as it hit the pavement.
    Winging down in big
circles, she watched two thugs drag a thin, Asian looking girl out
of a small all-night grocery and throw her into the back of a big
old boat of a Cadillac. The girl looked no more than sixteen or
seventeen. They had already hurt her. Evie stared at them with her
spirit vision, seeing beyond the flesh and blood, into their
hearts. They were going to hurt her more.
    Folding her wings
back, she landed lightly on the sidewalk as the driver gunned the
engine and roared off down the street. An alarm was ringing
hollowly nearby. Evie walked to the shop and peered inside. A man
and woman lay tumbled together in an untidy heap. Their blood
pooling on the floor. They were already gone, only a soft golden
aura left of the souls they had been. Soon that, too, would
dissipate. Life to afterlife. She returned to the Angel. He seemed
very young, both cosmically and chronologically.
    “Are you her Guardian
Angel or theirs?” She pointed at the bodies with one wing.
    He sniffed, wiping
the tears away with the sleeve of his tight black suit jacket,
“Hers.”
    Evie
looked after the car as it disappeared around the corner. “Well
then, why don't you get yourself in gear and start guarding , kid? Go on. Get
after them and smite.”
    His
voice was ragged with grief, “I received no mandate. No orders to
step in and save her. I prayed, I called out, I begged .”
    Evie looked at the
bodies by the store counter. Innocents. Their lives stolen from
them by a couple of murderous bastards who were getting away. Soon
one more life would be lost.
    Still staring after the car, she asked the young Angel, “Did
you receive specific orders not to