While unexpected, Nathan wasn’t too surprised to see one of his fellow guides waiting for him at the airport. He assumed if he was being directed to leave Tucson, he was going to be dealing with a bigger mess than usual.
Maggy was the second most effective guide, whose rating was also ninety-nine percent - above zero instead of below, like Nathan’s. She did everything the right way while Nathan did everything his way. If the Other Side was assigning their top two guides to a mission, it was another sign that something was very wrong.
“Coffee,” Maggy said, handing out the offering.
Nathan took it and began walking, not speaking to her. The tall, attractive brunette drew looks wherever she went. She knew him well enough to know he needed at least one large cappuccino in his system after an all-nighter before he was open to anyone talking to him.
Nathan gave her a sidelong glance. She appeared to be calm and was well put together as usual, but the nervous dart of her eyes gave her away. He didn’t make her wait through his first coffee.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as they reached the relative quiet of the parking garage.
“What makes you think something is wrong?” she asked too casually.
“You put the right amount of sweetener in my coffee. You must want me here for some reason,” he replied. “Unless you called me for some naked reiki?”
A smile crossed Maggy’s face, and he saw the tension ease from her. She chuckled.
“With you?” she asked, winking. “Any time.”
He grunted and opened the car door, dropping into the driver’s seat. There was something comforting about being around someone so familiar. He and Maggy had been a thing off and on for a few hundred years. She knew he needed three pink sweeteners in his cappuccino and that he always drove, even if it was her car. Likewise, he knew when his closest friend was upset and why she was twisting the ring on her finger.
He kept his observations to himself. The sight of nervousness from Maggy – the only woman he knew who could handle just about anything he could – made him concerned.
“How bad?” he asked.
“The worst.”
“Ever?”
“Yeah.”
“Spill.”
She was quiet for a moment. Nathan gave her to the count of ten and focused on guiding the car out of the garage to the loop that circled the Dulles airport.
“We have to find someone,” she started.
“Okay. Incarnated angel or guide?”
“Angel, first gen.”
“Pedro can’t help us?” he asked.
“Well … he can. He has. Sorta.”
“We spent half a year naked together. You’re really going to try to hide something from me?” Nathan challenged.
“That was a long time ago.”
“We still are who we were then. At least, at our cores.”
“Are you?” She peered at him curiously. “You haven’t changed?”
“I told you I’d call you first if I did,” Nathan replied, entertained she still held out for him to change his mind about getting married one day. Their relationship ended twenty years before. They’d barely spoken since, outside of official communications.
What was it with women wanting more from him?
“All right. Anyway, we know where she is. Through back channels, I figured out who she is. The challenge is twofold: we have to break her out first and then we have to keep her under the radar from everyone. As in, even Pedro and the rest of his crew.”
Nathan glanced at her, weighing her words for a long moment. It was nearly impossible to hide from the angel corps as a whole.
“First things first. Break her out of where? Jail?” he asked.
“A mental institution.”
“Interesting. Okay, for how long do we have to hide her?”
“Until we find what’s chasing her,” Maggy replied in a determined tone.
“Start from the beginning.”
Maggy looked at him, surprised.
“I still know when you’re lying,” Nathan said. “Any time you want to stop …”
“Fine.” Maggy sighed. “The angels won’t trust us humans with the information. All I know is that I was charged with recovering a girl, a first gen whose spirit guide got killed.”
“Yeah.” Nathan frowned. “We can’t die, unless a demon takes us out, someone from the Other Side gets rid of us or we blow ourselves up.”
“Usually, yeah. But … this wasn’t a demon.” Maggy shook her head. “I’ll tell you that part later. I just … put that all aside to focus on the mission.”
Nathan wanted to pry more than anything but didn’t. Maggy was highly disciplined, organized and most comfortable when handling things one at a time. With the polar opposite astrological sign – Leo - she didn’t share his adaptability and preferred to follow the rules rather than think outside them.
“I tried twice to get this girl, Nate. You know I can and will break into anywhere, no questions asked. What Pedro didn’t tell me, aside from a whole bunch of other shit, was that we’re not the only ones after her. Something else is here, in Virginia, looking. It followed me both times, so I aborted my missions and went home.”
“Demons?” he asked, intrigued by the unknown.
“I tried to tell Pedro about it, and he said it wasn’t possible. A fallen angel.”
“So, what? We deal with those all the time. Track them down, kill them and send them to Hell.”
“This is a fallen guardian angel. The first ever.”
Nathan took this unexpected information in. There was the general angel corps, and there was the guardian angel corps, an elite group of angels who had earned their way to the top by their purity, good deeds and the unwavering belief in the sacredness of humans and life. For one to choose evil over good was unheard of, before this.
“I take it that this fallen angel is currently assigned to a human,” he said, disturbed by the idea of the fallen guardian.
“Exactly. I can’t even find the human,” Maggy said in frustration. “Even if I did, I can’t kill him per protocol, and that’s the only way to free the fallen guardian to send it to Hell.”
“In the meantime, the fallen guardian is able to do what demons can’t.”
“Yep. Go after this first gen. We know she’s important, but Pedro won’t tell us why. He gave me that little laugh and said not to worry, just to save her and keep her safe. But I want to know more, after Scott’s death, so we’re hiding her from the angels, until we figure out what’s so important, a spirit guide got killed for it.”
“This is good,” Nathan said. “This will be a nice challenge.”
Maggy appeared taken aback. She looked ready to say something but didn’t.
“What do we do when we find the human?” Nathan asked. “A fallen guardian will be hell for us to try to manage.”
“There’s protocol that everyone else follows, and there’s … your way of doing things,” she said.
“You want me to kill the human anchoring the fallen guardian in the human world.”
“Yeah.” She studied him carefully. “You’re not going to turn around and fly back to Arizona, are you?”
Nathan smiled. “You wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t the last resort, and I am not opposed to the idea, which you know from my history. Fighting a fallen guardian to get to its human will be a new experience. I’m looking forward to it.”
“There might be other alternatives. I’ve got my people researching. But, just in case, I wanted to know that we could pull the trigger if needed.”
“I get it. How long before this fallen guardian figures out you’ve got help?” he asked.
Maggy cleared her throat and held up a second cappuccino. “I got gear in the trunk. It’s a few hours drive. We’re doing this part my way.”
He snorted. “You only want me because I have the worst rating in the guide corps and Pedro won’t get rid of me.”
“Duh. You never fail.”
Nathan grinned. “What’s your plan?”
“Break her out this evening. Hide her in my secret hiding spot, not the one Pedro got you, and then some naked reiki.”
“Best plan ever.”
They fell into silence. Maggy put up a GPS that began spouting directions at him. Nathan followed them, pensive. He’d never thought a guardian could fall. He wondered what caused it and if it would take what Maggy was preparing for in order to send the fallen guardian to Hell.
There were alternatives, but they all relied upon the guardian voluntarily going to Hell. Chances were, this fallen guardian wasn’t about to cooperate.
Long ago, before he became a spirit guide, Nathan made a name for himself as a foot soldier in the Imperial Roman armies. He was a sentry with a unique gift that enabled him to access the Other Side in a way no other spirit guide, medium or spiritual healer in history ever had.
It had been a while, but he knew how to kill. He was in the same physical shape he’d been in as a soldier, his body frozen in time while at its peak performance, which he reached at the age of twenty-nine. He hadn’t aged in three thousand years, and he hadn’t forgotten what the blood of another felt like when it ran across his hands.
Wiser now than when he’d been a grunt, he also understood the value of life much more and in a way that only a spirit guide could. Peering into the depths of someone’s soul was routine work for him. The idea of killing didn’t discourage him from the mission, but he no longer found glory in chalking up the number of dead falling beneath his weapons.
No, death was a serious matter, something Maggy knew as well. If she was asking him to kill an innocent human, it was because she really thought there was no other way to salvage the rest of humanity.
And he wouldn’t hesitate, no matter what he understood now about life and death.