“Untie her,” Michael said softly as he got off the big motorcycle.
Charles gave an ugly laugh as he pointed a gun at Michael’s head. “Don’t make me laugh. Get over here with her.”
“Gladly,” Michael said as he sauntered toward Emily, then took her from Charles’ grip. Michael put his hand on the tape on Emily’s mouth and she prepared herself for the pain of its removal, but the tape came off and she felt no pain.
“You can’t kill them both,” David said, his voice high pitched with nervousness.
“Of course we can,” the woman said. “In fact, this is perfect. He kills her then shoots himself. Perfect. It happens all the time.”
“I have told the police where you are,” Michael said softly as he untied Emily’s hands and feet. At least she knew they came untied but Michael didn’t seem to move.
“You think we don’t pay off the police?” Statler said. “And besides, Donald the idiot has blackened this woman’s name enough that everyone will think that she got what she deserved.”
The woman gave a cold smile to Emily. “Honey, it’s a little late to learn this now, but never trust a man. It was Donald on the phone. He sold you out for a promise of being in the running for governor next primary.”
At that Emily gasped and Michael’s warm hand slipped into hers, and as always, she calmed. And as she did, she sent thoughts of love to him. He must have read her mind because he squeezed her hand and she felt much better. But then Michael always made her feel safe.
“You can’t kill me,” Michael said softly, standing just to the side of Emily. “No matter what you do to me you can’t kill me until Heaven is ready for me to leave this earth.”
Michael was looking at David and his sister so he couldn’t see Charles standing to the side. With a smirk on his face, Charles lifted his gun and aimed to fire.
Emily didn’t think about what she did. All she knew was that she didn’t want to be on the planet without Michael. If he was going to leave this earth, then so was she, and wherever they ended up, they would be together.
Without a thought for her own life, she threw her body in front of Michael’s and the bullet went straight through her heart.
Epilogue
MICHAEL WAS STANDING BEFORE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL and the magnificence of the angel was terrifying. He was a soldier, an angel who had overseen all the wars in recorded history, and his handsome, commanding presence sent fear through his namesake.
“I sent you to do a job,” the archangel said, looking down his aristocratic nose at Michael.
Michael had always wanted to be allowed to see the face of this most exalted of angels, but now that he was trembling in his presence, he almost regretted his wish. “And I failed,” Michael whispered. “I admit my failure and I beg forgiveness.”
The archangel looked away toward his friend Gabriel, an angel many thousands of years old. Gabriel had once ruled the planet earth but long ago he had turned it over to the younger archangel, Michael. “You have been punished so go now.”
But Michael didn’t move.
“What is it?” the archangel said, his dark brows drawing into a single line.
“I want to be with her,” Michael said, trying to be brave but the words caught in his throat.
“You will be for the next hundred years then—”
“No!” Michael said more sharply than he meant to, then he softened. “I mean that I want to be with her here in this life and now. On earth. In human form.”
The archangel looked at Michael with a gaze so piercing that he was sure his soul was being flambéed. “But her earthly body has died.”
Michael took a breath then swallowed. “It can be resurrected.”
“Only God can do that,” Archangel Michael said softly, looking at Michael with curiosity.
“Then I will ask Him,” Michael said firmly.
“But there must be a reason for such a resurrection,” Gabriel said from behind his young friend.
Michael gathered all the courage he had. “I will give anything to bring her body back to life and to be able to be with her.”
In Heaven, one did not have to elaborate as the minds of lower-level spirits like Michael were easily read by archangels. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yes, I do,” Michael said and as he said it, the fear left his body. “Yes, I know exactly what I’m saying.”
“Are you saying that you’d give up being an angel for her? You would give up Heaven for her?”
“Yes,” Michael said without hesitation. “She gave up her life for me so I will give up all for her.”
Archangel Michael dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “But she goes on to a better life. She has done well in this life even if it was short so she’ll be given better next time.”
“I want to be with her in this life and in…in all future lives. I will give up Heaven for that,” Michael said and tried to keep the trembling from starting again.
Archangel Michael looked at him for several moments. “If you did that you would be taking on all the horrors of human life. There would be pain and sadness, tragedy and—”
“And love,” Michael said, and as he spoke he gained courage. “I love her. I have always loved her, I know that now. I’m not good as a guardian angel. I gave too much time to Emily and not enough to the others. And I manipulated lives, something that is impermissible. I even manipulated Emily’s lives because I could not bear to see her with other men. What kind of guardian angel am I if I interfere like that? And I bear her a mortal’s love. There is nothing holy about my love for Emily. In fact, it is very carnal.”
“Ah, then,” the archangel said, still looking hard at Michael. “But you must understand that if you give up Heaven you cannot change your mind.”
For a moment Michael almost hesitated, but then he smiled. “No, I won’t. I have loved her for centuries so my mind’s not likely to change.”
“You will have no memory of the time when you were an angel. You will be plagued with all human ills.”
“I understand and I am willing to give what it takes. Will you bring her body back to life?”
“If you are determined. You will not change your mind?”
“No. I am sure,” and when he said it, he was.
“Then it is done,” Archangel Michael said. And it was.
Epilogue 2
IT’S DONE.”
“You’re kidding,” Emily said, holding their eight-week-old son on her knee as she tried to fasten her dress. “No more rewrites?” she asked, teasing him.
“None. Here, let me have him while you change,” Michael said as he reached for the baby.
“Change into what?”
“Very funny. Change your clothes because I’m taking the two of you out to dinner to celebrate. It isn’t every day that a man finishes a book.”
“It isn’t every day that a man of thirty-seven writes his autobiography.”
“Our autobiography,” he said, taking the baby and kissing him before snuggling him onto his shoulder.
“Yours,” Emily said, smiling as she headed up the stairs of the big old house, and as she went, she thought over the last two years of their life. She thought how she’d met Michael, by nearly running him over with her car, how he’d had a case of amnesia and they had worked together to try to find out who he was. It was during their search, with the FBI chasing them, mistakenly thinking Michael was a wanted criminal, that they’d found out that someone was trying to kill Emily.
For a moment she paused on the landing and looked down at the dark head of her husband holding their baby, gently swaying with him as they listened to the child’s favorite recording by Enya.
She remembered how Michael had rescued her from those men, how they got away on Michael’s motorcycle and how, behind them, the car containing the three men and the woman had plunged down the side of a mountain. All four had been killed instantly. When it was revealed that Donald Stewart, Emily’s television news reporte
r fiancé had been involved in the plot, he’d been discredited and fired. She’d heard that Donald was now doing weather broadcasts in some small town no one knew the name of.
Afterward, Emily had claimed her inheritance, the Madison house, and she and Michael had married. They had used some of the captain’s fortune to renovate the old house until it was a beautiful home which she and Michael planned to fill with children.
Odd, she thought, how such a seemingly unhappy beginning could work out so well. Sometimes she wondered how her life would be different now if she or Michael had not escaped that day when the men held guns on them.
“But we did escape,” she said aloud then continued up the stairs. “And thank God and all of Heaven that we did.” For a moment she stopped to stare up at the huge stained glass window that went from the top of the house down to the first story. The original had been shattered years ago and when Emily inherited the house the space had been boarded up so when they went to replace it, Michael had said, “Let’s have a picture of Archangel Michael made.”
“And do you have a photo of him to give the glass maker?” Emily had asked teasingly.
“No, but oddly enough I know just what he looks like.”
So now there was a window of a twelve-foot-tall man, an extraordinarily handsome man wearing black armor and scowling down at all who pass by him. But even with the scowl, there was something benevolent in his expression and Emily smiled at the angel every time she passed him.
“Thanks to you too,” she whispered, but didn’t know why. What did a fictional character like Archangel Michael have to do with their being saved from men with guns?
Having no answer, Emily shrugged and went up the stairs to their bedroom and opened her closet door. “So, Captain, what should I wear tonight?” she said aloud, referring to the ghost that people said haunted the house. But neither she nor Michael had ever seen any evidence of a ghost in the house, and, besides, they didn’t believe in them.
Looking down at her belly, which still left a lot to be desired in flatness, she grimaced. “Come on, Captain, have some pity. What do you have that a fat, just-had-a-baby woman like me could wear that would entice her husband? I need help.”
She said the words in jest, but in the next moment, she heard a sound in the top of the closet. “Not squirrels again!” she said, peering up at the ceiling. She turned on the light, then to her horrified amazement, she saw what looked like the entire ceiling of the closet begin to fall down. Termites? she thought, still staring as the boards fell away. When they crashed down, she ducked, but not before something hit her on the head, and when she put up her hand, she felt something smooth and cold.
When the dust had settled, Emily looked down at her hand and saw that she was holding an emerald necklace and at her feet and on her shoulder and caught on the top of her clothes were what looked to be a pirate’s hoard of jewels.
“Oh my,” Emily said, eyes wide as she stared at the glittering pieces.
“What was that?” Michael yelled as he came bounding up the stairs, the baby held tightly to him. “Are you okay? It sounded like the roof was caving in.”
Slowly, Emily turned toward him and held up her hands. “I think we found the great-grannie’s jewels,” she said softly.
“I’ll be damned,” Michael said, picking up a bracelet of what appeared to be yellow diamonds from the floor. “So you have.” He looked into a corner of the room. “Thanks, old man,” he said, then both he and Emily could have sworn they heard a hearty laugh.
“Let’s get out of here,” Michael said. Then he took Emily by the hand and the three of them ran down the stairs laughing.
Gabriel looked up at Archangel Michael and said, “Why did you send him to earth?”
“Because over the centuries Michael had fallen in love with Emily. This sometimes happens but in this case Michael was interfering in a negative way. Emily has a very good heart but she keeps falling for rotten men. In the last two lives, rather than see Emily married to a man who treats her like dirt, Michael broke the pattern and prevented the marriages.”
“Isn’t that good?” Gabriel asked, eyes twinkling because he knew the answer. It was always amusing to him to see such a glorious soldier as the archangel Michael involved in something besides war and peace.
“It would have been except that Michael couldn’t bear for any other man to marry her so Emily lived the life of a spinster. For two lifetimes she has died a virgin, with no children, a burden on her relatives, sad, lonely lives. And that was not her destiny.”
“So in essence, you sent him to earth to make up his mind whether or not he wanted to be with the woman he loved.”
“Exactly.”
“And did he do as you hoped?”
“Oh yes. He has pleased me very much. The two of them are good people and they will produce good children. From them will radiate much love and goodness. The earth can always use love and goodness.”
“Then our young friend Michael won’t be demoted?”
The Archangel Michael looked at his old friend and saw that he was being teased and he smiled. No matter how threatening his countenance, he never frightened Gabriel, or even fooled him, for Gabriel, along with God, knew that Michael had a sweet, soft heart. “Not quite,” Michael murmured, then gave his attention back to what was going on in the Middle East. “No, not quite.”
Jude Deveraux, An Angel for Emily
(Series: # )
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