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  Never Ride Faster

  A.J. Downey

  Author’s Note

  To get the full story behind Tab & Addy, read the Angel’s Grace Trilogy by myself and Jeffrey Cook.

  “You two need some much needed time off,” Gabriel said and winked one of her bright blue eyes in my direction.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Tab told her and I smiled, hefting my pack onto my shoulders.

  “I know what I’d like to do,” I said.

  “Oh?” Tab turned to look at me as he adjusted the collar on his long black coat.

  “Yeah. I’d like to go for a drive. Just go, find someplace I’ve never been and take a few days, you know? Too bad my car is toast.”

  “Mm, I have a better idea anyway,” Gabriel said with a wicked grin. She let a keychain dangle from her hand and tossed it to me. I caught it and before I could look, another flash of metal sailed past me for Tab to catch.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “Come down and look,” she said and without seeing if we would follow, left out of the room Tab and I had shared at the frat house that wasn’t a frat house and wandered up the hall.

  We trailed her, Tab and I exchanging bewildered looks, all the way to the frat house front door. Gabriel opened it, and leaned against the doorframe her arms crossed nonchalantly under her breasts. She raised her eyebrows and I laughed, just at the same time that Tab declared a dubious “No!”

  Two shiny motorcycles waited, parked at the curb. Harley-Davidson’s if I had to guess from here, which wasn’t exactly my first choice in bike. I liked my bikes like I liked my cars, fast and Japanese, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “Oh, my god! This is the best idea ever.” I looked at Tab who looked decidedly less thrilled than I did.

  “Oh, come on!” I cried.

  “Adelaide just because you are immune to death, does not –”

  “Mean I’m immune to debilitating injury,” I finished with him and rolled my eyes. “What, are you telling me you don’t know how to ride?”

  “I know how, though I admit, it has been quite some time…”

  “Yeah how long?” I asked stepping out under Seattle’s overcast skies.

  “The fifties, or was it the sixties, Tab?” Gabriel tapped one long fingernail against her lips. I looked back at her.

  “There you go again,” I complained.

  “Not my fault you’re just a wee widdle baby,” she mocked. I gave her a one-fingered salute and laughing, stepped off the front steps and took the broken pathway to the street.

  I stepped up to the smaller of the two bikes and trailed my fingertips along the buttery soft leather saddle. I wanted this. I wanted to go for a ride with Tab and let the wind wash over us and tear the sadness, bitterness, and all the rest of the heavy emotion of the whole ordeal from us. I wanted to go someplace secluded, someplace where we could finally just be together, just me and him.

  “Addy?” he murmured softly from behind me and I startled, as if waking from a dream where my deep thoughts had carried me. I turned and looked up into his concerned, gray eyes.

  “I’m okay,” I reassured him.

  He touched the side of my face, and didn’t look like he believed me, but behind us were the days where I could be lying. I had been stripped of the grace of Iaoel, the Angel of Visions and it was only me now. No more visions, no more angel in my head, trying to possess my body. No more slivers of Hell, either around my neck or trying to inhabit my body… just me, just Adelaide… finally.

  I smiled, and hand shaking, placed it over the back of his, turning my head so I could lay a kiss in the center of his palm, closing my eyes and breathing him in, that reassuring scent of wind, metal, and leather. I looked up at him, a small contented smile playing on his sensual lips, his hair grown a bit too long; the black locks flopping into his beautiful gray eyes.

  “Okay! Great, so you two go on, take off, have a good time and take some time for yourselves… with each other… you know, away from anything and everything to do with saving the world and stopping the apocalypse.” Tab and I turned our heads in unison to take Gabriel in, I raised an eyebrow and she rolled her eyes. “Get the message here, Cupcake! It is, after all, what I do! You know, being the messenger and all?”

  “You gonna rain a plague down on us if we don’t get moving?” I asked.

  “Addy, don’t…” Tab said and Gabriel grinned, super wide and I laughed.

  “We’re going, we’re going! Spare us the locusts or the…”

  Thip! Ribbit…

  “You just had to bring it up, didn’t you?” Tab asked with a gusty sigh.

  “Seriously!?” I cried, “You’re gonna make it rain frogs?”

  “Good bye, you two! See you when I see you.”

  I pulled the helmet off the handlebar it was hanging from and undid the chinstrap, getting it onto my head before I got a frog in my hair. The rain was coming down in a light sprinkle, and for every five or six raindrops a tiny frog fell from the sky.

  “Where are we even going to go?” I cried through the open facemask of my helmet at Tab. He put on his own helmet, not for any real need of using one other than to not get pulled over by the human authorities. Helmet laws still applied, immortal or not.

  “Ride with me,” he said, “I know a place.”

  A sense of excitement and freedom thrummed to life along with the motorcycle between my thighs. I smiled to myself, and took a deep, satisfied breath, making sure to familiarize myself with the new and unfamiliar instruments. I’d ridden before, but it was a different sort of bike. Plastic and colorful paint versus leather and shiny chrome. Still, a motorcycle was a motorcycle and the principle was the same.

  I rode with Tab, and kept it slow and steady until I could get the feel of the handling, but the American bike, unlike the Japanese I’d ridden before, was actually way different; its center of gravity lower and as a result, the bike was more cumbersome. Probably because math, but I’d always sucked at the subject and didn’t really want to think too hard about it when I was navigating down Seattle hills, newly slicked with rain.

  We carefully wended down off the hill and made our way toward I-5, the excitement ratcheting up a notch when it was clear that that was where Tab was heading. I so wanted to hit the freeway, open this up and ride until the wind washed the residual heavy feelings of everything we’d been through these long months off of me. I needed to leave it as far behind me as I could.

  I quickly discovered that the Harley was much less nimble and far less quick than the sport bikes I’d learned on and grown used to. It was also, on the flipside, way more comfortable made for the long haul and distance riding rather than the short, quick trips that city driving had afforded me on the occasions I could borrow a bike to ride.

  I missed my Subaru, but I couldn’t deny, the motorcycle I was on was a definite trade up from my car. Leave it to Gabriel to go with comfort and luxury over speed. Of course, knowing him, and yes, I did say him, because despite his massive gender bending, that’s how I first met him, he probably thought the thrill ride would come later. Of course, I was kind of hoping so too…

  It wasn’t like Tab and I didn’t have time, it was just hard to get it on when his very ex-girlfriend had been taking up space in a corner of my mind. It would have been tacky, not to mention really super cruel to get it on when she was essentially along for the ride. So what if she’d technically broken up with him by stabbing him in the back and sending him to Hell… the first time…

  Yeah, shit between Tab and Iaoel hadn’t been complicated at all
.

  I was kind of amazed that he could love me, knowing she was on board in my mind, but somehow… somehow, love had found a way despite either of our best efforts to keep it at arm’s length.

  Yeah. I was really looking forward to putting on some speed and the wind therapy that came along with it. I leaned the bike into a cautious turn to guide it up onto the I-5 north onramp and kept pace with Tab, riding together.

  I had no idea where we were going but I couldn’t deny I trusted Tab with every fiber of my being. Of course, being the Angel of Free Will, Tab had put no little trust in me. Forever and always he stood by my right to choose and never, not once, did he ever try to sway my decision. He simply presented the facts and waited for my decision.

  I loved him for that. The fact he so staunchly stood by my side, protecting me and my right to be an individual, my freedom and independence. It made me just as fiercely protective of him. I’d go back to Hell for him in a heartbeat and I’d already been there once.

  We rode for an hour or so, which then stretched into two. I was beginning to think we were going to make the crossing into Canada, but nope. He turned off at one of the northern most exits to Bellingham. We rode east and the small cityscape dissolved into country winding roads as we made our way closer to the north Cascades.

  It was beautiful up here. We’d left the leaden rainclouds behind and it was blue skies with fluffy cirrus clouds as far as the eye could see. The grass was green and the trees greener and with all the world hopping we’d done, I was a little sad to realize I wasn’t quite sure what season it was supposed to be. I couldn’t even say what month or date it was or whatever with all the travel between realms and into my own mind I’d done.

  If I had to guess, with the temperature and the weather being what it was, I would say it was spring but again, I just didn’t know for sure. It bothered me, a lot more than I cared to admit.

  I rode with Tab further and further into the countryside, the mountains of the North Cascades rising in defiance against the blue cap of sky, their gray surface jagged. The lack of snow pack on their peaks was pushing me further towards a mild summer rather than spring and I was jarred to realize that if it were summer, Tab and I were coming up on a year together. A whole year of one flight to the next, running not just for our lives but for the lives of all humanity. An entire year of fight or flight seriously wears on a person and I was far from the indecisive bitter girl he’d hauled up off the floor of that waterfront antiques shop.

  I was starting to get antsy the further into the countryside we rode. Past farmland, cows, and pastures, until it didn’t even feel like we were in Washington at all. Finally, Tab turned carefully onto a dirt and gravel track and I followed suit, nerves jangling. Unfamiliar bike plus unfamiliar riding surface equaled a tingling sensation and heightened anxiety all the way until we spilled out of the tree lined drive in front of an impressive looking house sitting right on a riverbank.

  Tab killed the engine to his bike and I followed suit, heeling down the kickstand. I pulled off my helmet and breathed deep the clean mountain air before asking, “Where are we?”

  “Someplace where you two can be alone, like I suggested. Now I have a nice dinner planned for the both of you so move it or lose it.” I blinked and looked from Gabriel to Tab who was smiling to himself and shaking his head.

  Gabriel was a man again, his gender-bending knowing no bounds. His long black hair in a loose ponytail down his back. He wore a white thermal shirt, the waffle patterned cotton tight over the muscles in his arms and chest. He’d paired the shirt with some worn, butter soft jeans over some tawny colored boots and the look worked for him. It was rugged like the scenery around us and the house behind him which looked less like a house and more like a modern take on a cabin.

  Tab and I exchanged a look and a shrug, I laughed lightly and got off of my bike, Tab following suit. It tickled me that we were in almost perfect synch. We went towards Gabriel and the door, he stood aside gallantly and said, “Down the hall, second door on the right past the stairwell. Showers and dress for dinner. Tab, might I suggest Basil’s?”

  I didn’t turn to look at Tab who was coming into the place behind me, but I could hear his smile in his voice when he said, “An excellent choice, Gabriel… though are you sure it is wise given the circumstances?”

  “They’re as neutral as it gets Tabby Cat. I’m sure it’ll be fine and I’ll make the reservation. Have a good time, Cupcake!” I turned to say something but when I looked past Tab, Gabriel was already gone; the door we’d come through shut firmly on the outside world.

  Tab smiled faintly and gestured for me to continue my forward march to the door Gabriel had indicated. I opened it up and went through into a beautiful and surprising bedroom.

  It had once been a closed in sun room, though heavily remodeled. The glass ceiling sloped and the view of the river astounding. A fireplace burned bright and cheery, set into what was once the outside wall of the cabin, and another door on the other side of it led into a bathroom. The bed was a sleigh bed and easily a king, just inside the door. Across from it, down the narrow room, a couple of chairs and a table set between them. I closed my eyes a second and imagined a morning of coffee across from one another, quietly talking. I couldn’t wait.

  “Here, let me take this,” Tab murmured and lifted my pack from my shoulders. I let him have it, and he set it beside his bag on the bed.

  “You go first,” I murmured, indicating the bathroom.

  “I need a haircut,” he said.

  “I know, which is why I need you to go first. I can’t do it with your hair dry, it won’t come out right.”

  He looked at me curiously, “I didn’t know you could cut hair,” he said.

  I smiled at him slyly, “You don’t know everything about me.”

  “You are correct,” he said drawing me into his arms, “I do not… However, I very much so look forward to learning.” He murmured the last before placing his lips to mine in a kiss that stole my breath away.

  Tab went first when it came to a shower while I slipped out and scared up a pair of scissors. Gabriel was gone again, though I did find a kindly older woman who ran what was apparently a bed and breakfast that we’d be staying in for tonight. I trusted Tab so implicitly, I hadn’t even been curious as to where we were going or where we were staying. It just was what it was, and it wasn’t like I had anything I wanted to go back for or to.

  For a moment an incredible sadness over that settled over my shoulders, guilt running its fingers down my spine.

  My mom and I never got along, but as far as she probably knew, my boss had been murdered and I’d disappeared. It’d been over a year by now and I wondered to myself if she was over it, or if like so many other times when it came to me, she simply swept me under the rug and didn’t acknowledge my existence. That was kind of where our relationship had left off the last time I’d seen her. I was her greatest disappointment but then again, I couldn’t be anything other than me and the me that I was just didn’t fit what my mother wanted me to be.

  I tried not to dwell on it long because where I was my mother’s greatest disappointment, to Tab, I was one hell of an achievement and his love was definitely making up for having been love-starved for most of my life. The way I would catch him looking at me, the way I would turn and see that ghost of a smile on his otherwise stoic face, that made up for so much I couldn’t even begin to put it into words.

  I went back to our room, the zippered leather case of stylist’s equipment in my hands. I was still surprised that it’d just been given to me. Faye, the woman running the bed and breakfast had insisted and I was sure I had room in my pack for such a useful item; if I didn’t, then I’d make some.

  When I slipped back through the door it was to Tab, already out of the shower and mostly dressed in a neat pair of pressed black slacks and a black button down shirt. The fabric screamed expensive and I raised an eyebrow.

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked.


  “You,” he said with a smile, “and dinner out tonight.”

  “Like a date?” I asked, teasing.

  Tab looked thoughtful for a moment but he couldn’t suppress the creeping smile forcing its way back onto his lips.

  “Yes,” he answered me finally. “Exactly like a date. Go and get cleaned up, my hair can wait a moment longer.”

  I set the grooming kit on the table by the bed and picked up my pack, “I’ll dress to impress,” I said.

  “I am the only one in attendance tonight,” he said absently, tucking in the tail of his shirt.

  “Exactly,” I stated, wrinkling my nose with impish humor. I scooped up my pack and his laughter chased me into the bathroom where I shut the door on it.

  I sighed and stared at myself in the mirror for a minute. I didn’t exactly have any dressy clothes so I was a little dejected. I wouldn’t look half as good as Tab, but I could at least try to come in at a close second. Maybe if I wore the Chinese silk blouse Mei-lei had given me so long ago back at the temple. I mean, I could pair it with jeans and it would look pretty good…

  My brain clicked off when I opened the top of my back to a tissue paper wrapped package. I stilled, and lifted the light package off the top with careful fingers, turning the plain white tag over so I could read it.

  Cupcake-

  You didn’t think I was going to let you get out of here with only your dreadful man-clothes, did you? Hang it up in the bathroom with you when you shower, the wrinkles should come right out.

  XoXo,

  Gabriel

  (AKA The sexy Archangel.)

  I chuckled and slipped the ribbon holding everything together free of its bow. I had a feeling I knew what was inside. I mean, the lavender satin of the ribbon was kind of a dead giveaway and I was hoping against hope that I was right.

  I couldn’t help but give a little triumphant jump while at the same time suppressing the victorious yelp that was struggling to crawl up my throat. I held in my hands the beautiful lavender silk dress edged in hand-sewn on amethyst crystals. While it was something Tabbris had seen me in before, I couldn’t help but feel giddy about wearing it for him during a time he wasn’t wounded and the whole world was on the brink of collapse.