Walking on Air Read Online Free Page A

the hell are your wings? Do you dress different to greet newcomers or something? And am I at the wrong entrance or is this the back way into hell?”
    Gabe had never pictured male angels with bony knees and hairy legs. Now that he thought about it, he’d always had a vague idea that angels were female. And he wasn’t any too sure he wanted into heaven if it meant he’d have to wear one of those girlish-looking robes. Not that he was likely to get an engraved invitation, anyway.
    The two men began shuffling a little frantically through their papers. Their eyes widened as they scanned Gabe’s life history. With an appalled expression on his face, the blond angel glanced up and asked how a man with a respectable name like Gabriel could have led such a deplorable life. Gabe suspected he was face-to-face with the archangel Gabriel—a biblical figure almost everyone had heard of, even if they didn’t go to church. Apparently the angel was none too pleased that one of his namesakes had been such a miserable sinner.
    Still, delivered by an angel or not, such a sweeping condemnation seemed uncalled-for. Gabe felt a little indignant. “Come on,” he said. “I haven’t lived
that
bad a life. Aside from killing a few people, of course. But that was in self-defense, and I never really had a choice. It was shoot back or die myself. You going to hold that against me?”
    The two men assumed stern expressions, making Gabe feel like a boy about to be dressed down by the schoolmaster, not that he’d ever been fortunate enough to experience that dubious pleasure. Even so, he wasn’t far off the mark. From out of the clouds surrounding the shack, Gabe suddenly heard voices. After listening a moment, he realized they belonged to people from his past, a recounting of conversations they’d once had about him. In nearly every exchange, he was either cursed or greatly feared by the speakers. Only a couple of old ladies who knew him as a boy had anything good to say, and that was more pitying than anything else.
Poor little Gabriel Valance. That boy doesn’t stand a chance.
    Gabe figured that just about covered his life story, and since he was clearly dead, his chance to make amends was gone. Never a man to put off the inevitable, he asked, “Where is hell? Sounds to me like I may as well make tracks in that direction. As you two have pointed out, I’ve killed fourteen men, counting the one this morning. Why bother reading the rest of my history? I don’t want to wear a damned robe, anyway.”
    The two men regarded Gabe with saddened expressions, and in a flash, the clouds around Gabe’s ankles turned to flame.
    “Ow! Holy hell, that’s hot!” He lifted his feet, trying in vain to escape the heat. “This isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to go through this until I actually get there!”
    Before Gabe felt any real sting, the angels waved away the flames. “Do you still have an aversion to wearing a robe?” the blond asked.
    “Rather than roast like a bird on a spit, I’d wear just about anything, petticoats included,” snapped Gabe, belatedly tacking on a respectful, “sir.” Relieved that the flames were gone, however temporarily, Gabe added, more to himself than to the angels, “I can’t believe hellfire actually exists. How can God call Himself merciful and yet sentence sinners to burn for eternity? I’ve got a hell of a lot of faults, but I wouldn’t be that cruel to a dog.”
    The dark-haired man studied Gabe with solemn brown eyes. “It is indeed a very harsh punishment, but it isn’t of God’s making. The flames are Satan’s creation, which is why Gabriel and I—Michael is my name, by the way—are assigned to heaven’s gates. It’s our job to save everyone we can, even men like you.”
    Gabe gave a bitter laugh and gestured at the shack. “Gates? What gates?”
    Michael shrugged. “It’s also our job to make every new arrival feel comfortable, and because you don’t truly believe in the existence of