Authors: J Bennett
“I think you’re right,” I say softly,
“about the humans finding out about us. It will be only a matter of time. I’m tired
of trying to do this alone.” I force my eyes up. “I’m tired of chasing the
Vigils and running from them at the same time. I want a family again; I want to
be changed, fully Ascended.”
“I can see to that.”
The heavy hum starts up in my mind
again. Nicolas opens the glass doors. He wears a thick blue jacket that complements
his eyes.
“What did you do with the bodies?”
Diamond asks, and I swivel my head back to her. My skin starts itching in weird
places, and I force myself not to scratching it off.
“Bodies?” I manage through lips as dry
as sandpaper.
“The Vigils, what—”
“Buried,” I interrupt. “I, ah, buried
them in a wooded area near where…they…where they held us.”
Diamond pushes herself off the desk. “Can
you describe the location to Nicolas?”
My brain seizes on a tiny glimmer of
hope. “No…I mean, it was deep in the woods. Everything looks the same. It’d be
really hard to explain.” I pull in a breath, trying not to wheeze.
Casual,
be casual. They can read your aura.
“But, I could go, lead the way.”
Diamond takes a step forward and seems
to grow six inches in height, while I feel myself shrinking by an equal margin.
She places a hand on my shoulder that feels like a shackle and then looks at
Nicolas. The hum pulses in the room as they speak through a mental channel that
I cannot access.
My thoughts take up a furious sprint.
She
knows it’s a trick. She won’t ever let me leave. They’re debating who’s going
to clean up all the blood stains after she squishes me like a rotten apple.
I resist the urge to make a desperate
lunge for the doors. If I’m going down, it won’t be running away.
Nicolas nods at Diamond’s silent
instructions.
“When War’s identified the bodies, take
any phones and wallets and then rebury them. Feed before you get back,” Diamond
speaks. “I want it done quickly. We’re running out of time here.”
Nicolas nods again. I don’t understand.
Diamond leans down, and her voice is
soft in my ear. “I truly hope you are as you say. My brother spent his last
years searching for you. He dreamed that you would be the one to help him
create an empire.”
She straightens up, and releases me from
her grip. I try not to gasp with relief.
“Come on,” Nicolas says and motions with
his head toward the door.
It takes me a moment to realize what’s
happening.
She’s going to let me take him to the bodies.
I’m
out
as in outside,
out
of this lion’s den,
out
into the world where I
might be able to escape and find Tarren so we can regroup and somehow stop them
all.
I look at Diamond, wondering what I
should say.
“Go,” she says and makes a shooing
motion with her hand. “There will be plenty of time to catch up when you get
back. I’ve invited a special guest; someone with a talent for reading people.”
Diamond lets out a sudden trill of laughter. For some reason that laugh scares
me more than any other part of this conversation. I turn on shaky knees and
follow Nicolas as he retreats through the glass doors.
“You just want to get onto the 74 and
then switch to the 474 when you can,” I tell War as we speed away from the
large estate, our back wheels slipping on the ice. “I’ll let you know where to
turn off.”
It took just a few seconds of scouring
all the mental data I’d stored about Peoria to come up with Rocky Glen as our
destination. It’s a big and isolated patch of wilderness in West Peoria that
has no reason to attract any civilians who might unsuspectingly serve as
appetizers for my new friends. It’ll be dark, empty – the perfect place to make
some kind of stand…or try to run away as fast as my legs will carry me. My
energy-fueled courage is quickly dissipating, and I feel Mousey Maya nudging
her way back to the surface.
I just need to keep up this charade a
little longer without hyperventilating or otherwise giving away that I’m not on
board the angel express.
“Why we going to see some dead Vigils
anyway?” Heather calls out while applying a new layer of lip gloss. She presses
her lips together and then puckers them. “I thought we were ‘posed to go feed
and then skedaddle.”
“Oh we’ll do that too,” War chuckles
from the driver’s seat.
Six of us are packed into a black Lexus
SUV that War plunges down partially-plowed roads with less care than a
six-year-old gives his Matchbox cars. Nicolas sits in the front passenger seat,
and the twins occupy the front row, each wrapped in a puffy parka. I’m in the
back, sitting next to the young black teen who has balled her shivering frame
into the corner and keeps her face turned to the dark.
“They want to see if I’m telling the
truth,” I inform Heather.
Heather smacks her shiny lips together
one more time before dropping the lip gloss back into a laughably large Prada
purse. “Yeah, but why do we all have to come?”
“In case I’m not.”
The somber darkness on the other side of
my window and the lack of cars sharing the road with us indicates that it’s
either very late or very early. Could it only have been a single day since
Tarren and I were patrolling the sidewalks in downtown Peoria? Since he
criticized my mittens, and I told him about Santa Claus parades?
I touch the cold glass of the window
with my finger trying to see things in the night that aren’t there.
Where are you?
I think as my finger traces a line
through the condensation.
Are you already putting me behind you, trying to
move on, and keeping Gabe from doing anything stupid?
I sit back into the seat and feel the
bite of something solid against my hip. I reach, and my fingers wrap around
something hard and plastic. When I bring it around, I see that I hold a
Transformer action figure. I stare at it and wonder what faces were hidden in
the picture frames that Diamond laid flat on the bookshelf in the office. Was
there a little boy in one of those pictures? A boy who used to ride in this
seat playing with his Transformer?
I sense movement next to me, and when I
look over, I find the wide, brown eyes of the young girl staring at me. Tear-weary
eyes glazed with hunger.
“What’s your name?” I ask her, keeping
my voice low and soft.
She blinks, and I notice that her gaze shifts
rapidly, following the flow of something around me. My aura.
“R…Raven,” she finally mutters.
The Transformer in my hand creaks.
“Raven?”
She nods. I want it to be a different
Raven, not the bored, sulky teenager I listened to all night in the motel room
below us at Bluebell Estates. But I recognize her voice now. I study the girl
again, her long, skinny body that shakes with addiction, and I feel a piece of
my soul crack and flake off.
She just wanted to go to the mall. She has a
little brother named Abe who jumps on beds just like I did when I was young.
The car swings to the right as we curve around
the on ramp to the highway.
“What happened to you?” I ask Raven.
She flinches at my words and burrows
deeper into the oversized man’s sweater that swallows her small body. At last
she says, “We were at the mall…They wanted to see a movie, but I…” She glances
at me and then away again. “It was a kid’s movie for my brother, and I thought
it was stupid…so I…I…”
“You hung out on your own while your
parents took your brother to the movie?” I can imagine her sitting alone in the
food court, her aura throwing off hues of anger, resentment, and
boredom…exactly what War was looking for.
“And did you have a choice?” The
Transformer cracks in my fist.
Raven is quiet.
“Of course there was a choice,” War
booms from the front. “She could have picked death.”
Heather titters, but Rachel doesn’t. She
casts a long glance back at us.
I release the cracked Transformer, but
it’s an effort. The growing fear in my chest is gone, replaced by anger that
boils hot and crackling like oil.
I hold onto the anger, let it grow.
They
forced the change on her, and I’ll kill them for it. I’ll kill them twice and
then maybe one more time for good measure.
Raven turns her face back into the
darkness. Her shoulders shake.
“The first days are the hardest,” I tell
her. “You haven’t gotten used to the enhanced senses yet. All the noises are too
loud, the lights too bright. The touch of even the softest cotton seems rough.”
She nods without looking at me.
“And the hunger…” But I don’t know what
to say about the hunger.
“It won’t….it won’t get out of my head,”
she says.
“Like a song only you can hear.” My
voice is rough.
“I don’t…want to…kill people,” she whimpers,
and her shoulders shake harder.
“You got to,” Heather says. “S’okay
though, we’re evolved. God meant for us to be this…oh!”
War hauls the SUV hard to the left, whipping
around a tractor trailer. The truck honks long and loud.
“Jesus!” Heather cries out.
“Careful,” Nicolas says, bracing his
hand against the dashboard.
“Fucking asshole,” War growls,
apparently at the trucker he just cut off. The Transformer slides across the
leather and hits my leg. I push it onto the floor.
“Tell her Nicki,” Heather says. “Tell
her ‘bout God’s plan.” She looks at Raven. “He says it real nice.”
Nicolas is quiet for a moment, his head
bowed forward and his eyes closed. His hand comes to the chain on his neck.
“We are all God’s creatures,” he says in
a soft, melodious voice, “from the smallest mite to the whale that swallowed
Jonah. Everything around you, these cars, this road, the snowflakes on the
windshield, was created by him. All endeavors of mankind are guided by his
will.”
He takes a deep breath, and his voice
grows louder, more reverent, “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be
fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
He turns in his seat and looks back at
us. Headlights from a car passing in the opposite direction light up the
windshield, throwing Nicolas’s features into momentary relief. His voice
continues. “Those were the commands the Lord gave to mankind when he created
Adam from the dust of the earth, but mankind was weak and corrupted as they
have always been weak and corrupted. God showed his displeasure through the
flood, through the fire and brimstone he rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah,
through the plagues that punished the Egyptians, and now he sends it through
us.”
Heather nods vigorously as she listens,
and Rachel gazes at Nicolas with reverence. Even Raven’s head is up, her eyes
affixed to Nicolas. Personally, I can’t help but notice that he hasn’t
mentioned any of the Jesus parts of the Bible yet or that whole pesky ‘You
shall not murder’ commandment.
“We are the new chosen people,” Nicolas
continues. “We are the Israelites of old whom the Lord will lead to the Promised
Land when the rapture comes. He has made us stronger than humans, faster, and
smarter. He has given us special gifts that are beyond the realm of
understanding.”
I hold my tongue. God didn’t create these
angels; it was a misguided scientist named Dr. Gary Cook. Gabe told the whole
story, how Dr. Cook spent his life searching for a way to let humans access
their full potential. Imagine his surprise when the formula he’d been working
on for decades created strong, swift killers who fed on the energies of humans.
“We are here to bring a new Heaven and a
new earth as God foretold in the Book of Revelations,” Nicolas is saying. “We
are his instruments on earth to wipe out wickedness and sin. When we kill to
feed, we destroy evil in God’s service.” Nicolas’s voice builds to a crescendo.
“It is his will. We are his angels of death. WE ARE THE RAPTURE!”
“Hallelujah!” Heather and Rachel cry in
unison. Heather smiles from ear to ear, and Rachel clasps her hands over her
heart. I concentrate on keeping my expression neutral, but alarm bells clatter
like crazy inside my head.
The fucking rapture?
Nicolas is just handsome,
well-spoken, and worst of all, a true believer. I understand immediately how
dangerous he and his honeyed tongue could be. His words could give Diamond’s
teenage army God’s blessing to take out the entire human race.
I have to find Tarren. We have to stop
this.
“I just like the high,” War breaks in
and laughs. “It’s better than anything, baby. Better than heroine. And it makes
me so fucking strong!”
“Aw, War, you ruined it!” Heather pouts.
“You’re going to want to take the Airport
Road exit,” I call out, glad to move us away from the topic of divinely
sanctioned murder.
After cutting off two more cars, War
complies and sails us down the off ramp.
Heather turns in her seat. Her long eyelashes
bat as she stares at me. “What were the Vigils like? Were they handsome? Did
they look like cowboys?”
“Cowboys?” I almost laugh but hold it
back. “They weren’t riding around on horses.”
“Ya know what I mean,” Heather says. “Were
they, like, you know, heroic?”
“They were vicious,” War says. “6’5 at
least, built like professional wrestlers. Guns strapped to every inch of their
bodies. They were beating up on poor Betsy before I got to the scene. I let
them capture me, by the way. They handcuffed me to a chair, but as you ladies
are well aware, handcuffs can’t hold me.”
I clear my throat loudly. “Take this
right.” I spend the next five minutes giving War turn-by-turn directions onto
increasingly less plowed roads. Big lazy flakes fall from the sky, landing
almost gently on the windshield.
War misses the entrance to Rocky Glen
and makes a U-turn in the middle of the road, causing both the tires and Heather
to squeal. Somehow, we make it to the side of the road without a collision.
We all take in the pit of blackness in
front of us
“We’re not…actually going out there,”
Heather says in a soft voice.
“This is where I dumped the bodies,” I
say and try to sound as confident as possible though my heart is pummeling in
my chest. There are no other cars pulled off to the side of the roads, and I’m
satisfied that we won’t come across any hapless humans.
“Did you, like, pick the creepiest place
on purpose?” Heather whines.
“It’s not too far in. There’s a ravine,
I just threw them down,” I say.
War is grimacing. “You really fucking
brought them here?”
“Whenever I go to a new town I always
pick a park or wooded area for body dumping.”
“I don’t like this,” Nicolas says. He
turns in his seat to look at me. Those blue eyes of his pierce through me, and
I imagine him reading the lies in my aura.
“Yeah, this looks like a trap place. An
ambush place,” Heather says. “Maybe you just go War, and we stay in the car.”
“Everybody out!” War hollers and pushes
his door open. Nicolas continues to stare, and there’s nothing I can do except
give him a blank expression that I hope says,
La-de-dah, totally not
desperately trying to figure out a way to kill you.
Finally, he pushes his
door open and exits.
“It ain’t so bad,” Rachel whispers to
Heather. “We’ll just stay in back, let the boys handle things.”
“Is he serious? We all have tah go?”
Heather asks, and Rachel answers by opening her own door. A cold rush of
snowflakes punctures the warm envelope of the car. After the girls get out, I
maneuver around the seats and drop into the snow.
“Come on Raven, you too!” War yells and
bangs on her window.
A moment later, Raven slinks out, her gaze
darting from side to side as she picks up the groans and creaks coming from the
woods. My padded coat is gone. So are my scarf and mittens with the purple snowflakes
on them and my knit cap, but I don’t even feel the cold. My body is pumping
adrenaline, and my skin is trying to crawl right off my bones. Can they see the
lie on my face, the obviousness of my desperation?