Authors: J Bennett
Gem plunges deeper into my mind. Far
away, I hear a guttural moan bubble out of my lips. I see Tarren again and
again. Running out of the burning building in Poughkeepsie with Rain’s
unconscious body slung over his shoulder. The steadiness of his arm when he
dragged me out an acrobatic show the time I almost lost control of the hunger. Tarren’s
silhouette, tall and unbreakable below an overcast sky, when he stood his
ground against Grand so that I could escape.
He will come for you
,
Gem says in my mind.
He’s not here,
I argue weakly,
and
even if he was, he wouldn’t.
But Gem has seen the
truth. Tarren will always sacrifice himself for another, even me, who he
doesn’t like at all. It’s his nature. His duty. His atonement.
No, not from duty,
Gem says.
All the pictures and memories of Tarren drop
away from my mind, and I’m back in the room, dizzy and surrounded by hostile
angels.
“You want her dead? You want her to
suffer?” Gem says. “Then I’ll give her the same consideration she gave to my
father.”
He extends his left hand, and a flame
dances to life in his palm. Just like the match that night in Wichita Falls,
Texas. Grand’s body was inside the gasoline soaked warehouse, but my hands were
shaking so badly that I couldn’t light any of the matches. I was down to the
last one, and it sprang to life before I even tried to strike it. That’s when
I’d noticed Gem standing on the roof of the opposite building with that
unreadable smile on his face.
It’ll be close, perhaps too
close,
Gem says in my mind,
but it must look real.
He’s not here,
I think back at him.
You want me to believe that there’s still hope.
In response, he reaches out with his
right hand and sets me back on my toes. His eyes are sad, and for one crazy
stupid moment I actually believe him.
Why would you help me?
I ask
“We need to discuss this,” Diamond says.
“We can still use her.”
“There’s nothing to be discussed. I’m
done with her, and we’ve got greater concerns,” Gem says. I feel the crackle of
static in my mind. Diamond must be communicating directly to her nephew.
Her face turns dark. “That’s
ridiculous,” she says out loud. “I don’t sense….”Her eyes widen. She pulls in a
sharp breath that hisses out through her nostrils. The windows blaze with
sudden spears of lightening.
“Don’t try to fight them, Diamond,” Gem
says. “Just run. Tell all your people to run.”
“Run from what?” Heather asks in a
trembling voice.
The calm mask has slipped from Diamond’s
face, revealing an angry snarl and something else. I think it might be fear.
“We don’t run. Your father should have
taught you that,” she spits at Gem.
“He was never very successful in
teaching me much of anything,” Gem responds.
Thunder crashes overhead, and Heather
squeaks and grasps War’s arm.
“Will someone tell me what the fuck is
going on?” War growls.
Diamond’s head snaps to him. The static
returns, and fear dawns onto Heather’s face. She presses herself into War, and
he pushes her roughly away.
“Shhhhhit,” the bald angel groans. He
looks to Diamond, almost beseeching.
“Good,” War says, smoothing out his
leather jacket. “I owe those fuckers.”
“Take care of her,” Diamond hisses to
Gem. She glances around, her flint gaze landing on each member of the group for
a moment. “We fight. This is the beginning, the reason for all that we’ve
done.”
The bald angel nods, though I notice the
big swallow he takes. Heather’s face is pale with fear. Gem doesn’t move, but
fire sprouts around us in a ring, engulfing the checkered curtains and eating
up the lemon colored walls.
Diamond gives me a long, steady look. No
words. Just disappointment in those cool, blue eyes. She turns, and I watch her
tall figure retreat.
“Burn you ugly bitch,” Heather calls out
beyond the flames, as she and War and the other angel follow Diamond out the
door. That leaves just Gem and me encircled by the flames. The light plays
across his features, lighting up those sad, weary blue eyes.
Because you did what I never
could.
Gem’s voice in my head is almost drowned
out by the heavy roar of flames.
You
killed our father.
He turns, and the flames open up before
him, allowing him a tunnel of escape. I hear the door open and close. The
flames dance around me. They make a brilliant light, but I still wish I could
have seen the sun one last time.
Smoke. Curling inside my lungs. Hot poison.
The flames roar, really roar, like they’re angry with me. The Monet reprint
catches, and I watch fire run across the smooth, cool water, gobbling up all
those pink and purple lilies.
And I pray, a small tiny prayer.
Tarren,
please don’t come. Please be far, far away from here.
Because if he does come, they’ll
surround him and hurt him, and it will be my fault.
But it was probably a lie. Had to be a
lie. I said Styx
,
and Tarren always follows the rules.
The smoke will kill me long before the
flames. My head swims, my chest choking with coughs that only suck more ash
into my lungs. The room is dim and loud and hot. I lose my precarious footing
once, twice, and the third time I don’t try to find it again. I let the cuffs
bear my weight.
Tarren will soldier on. He’ll probably welcome
the relief of my absence. But Gabe, he will take it hard. Who will force him to
drink his protein shakes every four hours and try to stop him from smoking and
drinking too much? Who will laugh at his jokes and watch the same stupid Chuck
Norris movies with him over and over again?
Drifting. The sound of fire flattens
out, like distant elevator music. I’m in Avalon, the naïve sanctuary that Ryan
and I created back before everything important happened in my life. Before he
got cold and became my own personal ghost.
I’m in a lush, sunny park, surrounded by
circular roads where the citizens bike and skate to their destinations or drive
in their silent, electric cars. Gabe is here, leaning against a tree in the
shade with Sir Hopsalot in his lap. Tarren sits cross-legged on a blanket to my
left reading his battered copy of
The
Odyssey.
Rain is farther away, walking down one
of the paths, hands in his pockets, penguin mask pushed up off his face. Ryan
is behind me, always the silent watcher, the moral compass that I’ve ignored
far too often. Karen and Henry sit on a bench further down talking to Dr. Lee and
Francesca. Gretchen, my college roommate, whizzes by on a shiny purple bike. I
gaze around the park and see more familiar faces: The mail lady, elementary
school classmates, my old Raggedy Ann doll that I kept on the dresser in my bedroom
and even brought to college.
“This is my going away party,” I say to
them, and they all look at me and nod.
“Maya,” a voice says in the crowd.
Softly. Far away.
“I just want to feel the sun,” I say.
“Maya,” the voice says again. Insistent.
Energy. So near. Pulling me back.
“Open your eyes. Maya!”
The fire is louder. So much louder. My lids
crack open, just slits, and there’s only smoke and the wavering form that I
know is Tarren standing in front of me.
“Go away,” I croak at him. The colors shift
in his aura, the blue brightening for a moment as he whispers something under
his breath.
“How are you secured?” he asks, and this
is how I know it’s not a dream. Because if it were a dream, Tarren would have
said, “Hello” or “Thank god I found you,” or something that wasn’t nearly so
calm and practical as “How are you secured?”
“Trap. Go…way,” I say as loudly as I
can. The smoke seizes my lungs, and I sputter helplessly.
Tarren comes closer. I just want to
close my eyes, let go of my convulsing lungs, but the nearness of his energy is
a stimulant, keeping me conscious. Now he stands right in front of me, and I
can see the silhouette of his body outlined in the bright glow of his aura.
He pulls his gloves off with his teeth
and then reaches for something in his coat.
“Styx,” I say, but my voice is harsh and
garbled. “Styx,” I say louder between coughs and then again, “Styx. STYX!”
Tarren ignores me and presses his body
into mine. He might be trying to hug me, but then this really would be a dream.
Tarren doesn’t hug, never hugs, especially not me, because he knows what it
would do to me. His energy cloaks my skin, prickling every hair on my body as
the song roars louder than the flames ever could.
Every muscle clinches. I arch, and my
toes try to find a perch so I can pull against the cuffs.
Tarren reaches up towards the shackles. There’s
something in his hand, a small black thing that bends beneath the sheen of
tears leaking out of my eyes.
Lock pick,
my mind churns up. My body jacks with
the conflicting need for air and sustenance. The bulbs lift out of my palms,
and this is all so fucked. Tarren is here. Tarren is trying to save me. I want
to strip every last ounce of energy out of his body.
“You can’t…” My words are disrupted by
another choking cough. My wrists are too high up. Tarren couldn’t even see the
lock if the room wasn’t billowing with smoke, and he doesn’t have the natural
feel for lock picking that Gabe does despite all the recent practice.
“Go,” I beg, because the only thing
that’s going to happen is Tarren dying here with me, and his aura is making me
crazy besides. “Please.”
“I can get it,” Tarren says as tears
stream from his red eyes. Deep coughs rack his body, and he doubles over,
dropping the picks. He kneels down to find them.
“For Gabe,” I say, but my voice is faint
and slurring, and I don’t think he hears. “You have to…go… for Gabe,” I say
louder.
Then things start to slip away. The
heat, the sound of flames, the pain in my wrists. The last thing to leave is
Tarren’s energy and his determined face behind it. This I see even as the rest
turns dark.
Loud concussions.
Floor.
Flames.
Someone kneeling over me. Pulsing colors.
Wrapping something around my hands.
“Stay with me.”
Arms, solid and strong, under my back. Something
cracks. He’s over me, cloaking me in energy, and I long to reach up, to connect
to that energy even as he screams, a big roar of pain.
Then I fall into darkness.
The song. Gentle, tantalizing notes of
music find me in the deep crevasse of darkness.
Energy. It spills over the faraway husk
of my body, urging me to wakefulness. Skin of my palms peeling back.
Want
it. Need it.
Pressure. Lips. On my lips.
Air streams into my battered lungs. I
gasp in a breath. Choking. Sputtering. I try to grope for the body bending over
mine. That energy. Hands tangled.
Loud. The song. So loud.
“Get away from her!” a hoarse voice
calls.
“Don’t worry, I’m certified,” says the
one leaning over me. “She’s coming round.”
“Yeah, you’re gonna wanna back up, like now,”
a third voice says.
“Hey!”
The energy is suddenly receding, and I
strike, bolting up and thrusting my hands toward it. Twisted, heavy hands. I
rake the empty air in front of me. The body is gone, but still nearby. The
energy calls to me.
“Gabe, careful…”
“Yeah, yeah, I got this.”
I claw at the fabric twisted around my
hands and cast it aside.
Energy, energy.
I flip over to my knees, my
body a clumsy thing. Slushy snow between my fingers. Energy still close. I can crawl
toward it or maybe make it to my feet if the ground would stop swaying…
“Hey Sis, it’s me. Hey. Heelllooo,
you’re on the no people diet, remember?” Shoes block my path – wet scuffed
sneakers with laces all bunched into knots. I focus on them, on the word
excelsior
scrawled on the left sneaker in red Sharpie. A memory comes unbidden.
Gabe is in the front seat of the Murano,
feet propped up on the dashboard, drawing on his shoe in a moment of boredom
while Tarren fills the car with gas. We’re on one of our interminable road
trips. I ask him why he feels like branding his shoe with the nerd word of
power, and he shrugs and says, “Why do I do anything?”
“Gabe,” I whisper, and my eyes sweep up
his wasted frame to his flushed face and mischief brown eyes. His lucky cap
sits snug over his short hair. “How? Why? How?”
“Day needed saving,” he says with an
easy shrug. He hunches down next to me, and the humor is gone from his face.
“You good now?” he asks softly.
It kind of settles on me that I’m alive.
That Gabe is here. That Tarren is a few feet away, reaching out for the black
fabric that covered my hands – his jacket. That no angels are popping out of
the bushes.
I give into the cough that has been
building in my chest, letting loud, wet hacks shudder through my whole body as
my mind whirls and fights against the improbability of it all. The coughs consume
my entire existence for the next few minutes, rattling my ribs, and twisting my
lungs. Dark globs dribble from my lips, staining the beaten snow below me, and
my stomach heaves back and forth trying to eject its emptiness.
When the last of the spasms pass, I look
up and find Gabe’s honey brown eyes on me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I manage.
“You look like something they’d peel off
the highway after a Hummer parade.” He grins at me, a Gabe grin, and pale
shades of lilac nudge into his aura.
I can’t speak yet, so I just back up on
my hands and knees, needing more space, more air. More awayness from all their
energy. Behind us, the flames continue to roar, eating away at the guest house
where I should still be chained inside.
It will be close.
Gem’s words echo in my mind. Did he…but
why…it has to be a trick.
“Let me get those cuffs off you.” This
is Gabe’s voice.
“Huh?” I look down and notice with a
start that the shackles are still clamped around my wrists.
I also notice something else. My gaze
swings around, landing on Rain who stands a couple feet away, arms folded over
his chest. The penguin mask is pushed up to his forehead, revealing suspicious
brown eyes. His lips are smudged with ash.
“Hold out your hands,” Gabe says. I
don’t take my eyes off Rain as I extend my arms, keeping my fists clamped
tight. I open my mouth, not sure what I’m going to say.
“Why are you here?” Tarren’s voice is
hoarse and angry. I think at first he’s speaking to Rain, but his gaze drills
into Gabe.
“What? You think after that message of
yours that I was going to stay put? I had to help.” Gabe pulls his lock pick
kit from a pocket within his duster.
“No you didn’t. You were supposed to get
everyone to secure locations.” Tarren’s pale eyes seem to glow from his
ash-streaked face. He zips up his jacket.
“We just saved your lives!”
“I had the situation under control.” Tarren
rises slowly to his feet, obviously still feeling the effects of the smoke. His
aura vibrates with the reds of his anger.
“You were face down in the snow right in
the middle of Angels-R-Us you fucking lunatic,” Gabe shouts back. He nods at
me. “She wasn’t even breathing.”
Tarren glances at Rain and then back to
this brother. “We’ll discuss this later.”
“Are you hurt?” Gabe’s voice is softer.
“We need to clean this up,” Tarren snaps.
Gabe looks back down to my wrists. He
sees the glow leaking between my fists, feels my arms shaking. “Keep ‘er
steady,” he whispers to me.
“I’m fine,” I hiss between clamped
teeth. “Just get them off.”
Even Gabe’s pale, listless aura calls to
me. I feel it, brushing my skin as he puts a second pick into the lock. I
remember how it felt. The power.
Gem saw that too.
The cuffs click open. “Ta-da,” Gabe
sings. “Let’s see the damage.” He reaches to pull the cuff off, but I turn away
from him.
“No, I got it. I…ah…” I pry first cuff
away from bloody gouges. “I’m fine. I just need…”
“Space,” Gabe says. “I know.”
“How are you here?” I whisper to him.
That proud grin makes a second fleeting
appearance. “Well, that’s a damn good story.”
Two new tugs of energy steal my
attention. Milo and Bear Mask walk from the main house. Both wear their masks
and clutch guns. Bear Mask shakes from head to foot, his aura all wild colored
and leaping off his frame in sharp points. Milo’s dark eyes land on Tarren. His
whole body goes rigid, and his aura ripples with an infusion of deep, wine colored
purples. He takes a step back, turning his face away.
The bright spasms of Milo’s aura makes my
fingers twitch, and I plunge my hands into the snow. I feel Rain watching as
the ice melts quickly under the intense heat of my palms.
“So, allow me to introduce my new
posse,” Gabe says, rising to his feet. He points to Milo. “That one over there
is Chad.”
“Chain.”
“That’s what I said.”
Milo’s aura dances hot and heavy. “Hey,”
he nods toward Tarren.
“We don’t have time for this,” Tarren
says to Gabe.
More words go back and forth, but my
mind wanders away from the conversation. My body is beginning to remind me of
all the abuse I’ve taken over the last twenty-four hours. God, has it only been
a single day?
I work off the cuff from my left wrist.
This one is much worse. My whole forearm is swollen and tender from Nicolas’s
blow. The deep bite around my wrist dribbles blood when I carefully dig out the
metal cuff.
“That looks pretty bad.” The words are
soft and uncertain. I look up to see Rain’s long figure casting a shadow over
me.
“You shouldn’t stand so close,” I
whisper, and my voice sounds unnatural, like I rubbed sandpaper down my throat.
“Oh, sorry. I don’t…uh, know what it’s
like for you.” He backs up. His aura is fused with a thousand delicate strands
of color woven together, like he’s battling against a whole army of different
emotions.
“It’s okay.” I keep my eyes down.
“Thanks for saving my life, I guess.”
“The irony of it, huh.” He makes a short
sound, which might be a laugh.
“I’m sorry about your friend. Garret.”
“Garret was….” Rain pauses. “I’m trying
to think of something nice to say, but he was kind of a douche bag. How long
until after someone’s dead can you call them a douche bag?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Hey, you two slackers over there,” Gabe
calls over to us. “We’ve got some bodies to move.”
I look up to see Milo and Bear Mask – I
still don’t know his real name – each dragging a dead body through the snow
from the direction of the main house. I recognize the girl Milo pulls from the heart
tattooed on her neck. She was the one who insisted on watching
SpongeBob
SquarePants
. Now she’ll never watch anything again. I wonder who that heart
was for.
Upon Gabe’s instruction, both bodies are
heaved through the open front door of the burning guest house. I see his plan –
it’s the same thing we did with the dead angels in Poughkeepsie. The
authorities will discover the bodies, but if we give the fire enough time to feast,
the coroner shouldn’t find any clear evidence of their mutation.
The Totem members trudge back to the
main house, presumably for more bodies. Moisture drips from Bear’s chin, and
his aura is so wild with emotions, that I’m not sure whether those beads are
sweat or tears.
How many angels did they kill? How did my
brothers find me? Why is Rain Bailey, of all people, standing next to me
shivering. My head hurts, along with the rest of me.
“We need to help,” I say and only then
wonder if my legs will even hold me. Apparently they do, because soon I’m
standing with only a little dizziness. I try to swallow, but my throat is raw,
still bruised from Heather’s invisible, crushing grip.
When I start walking, Rain follows. He
keeps looking at me and then away.
“Say it,” I tell him, too tired and
dazed for even an attempt at small talk.
“It’s hard to believe.”
“What?” Stupidest question in the
universe. What part of any of this would a normal person find conceivable?
“That you’re on our side,” he finishes.
Long streaks of bright, slushy blood
streak the snow between the main house and the guest house. It reminds me of a
cherry snow cone. I might be totally losing it.
Ignore the problem. Find a
distraction.
“Tell me what happened,” I demand of Rain
with a voice that sounds like it’s coming up from beneath a pound of sand.
He looks at me. “We’re not Gabe’s
posse.”
“I know.”
I look at his trembling hands and then
his pale face.
“This is…this is..,” he stutters.
I recognize that frightened-but-trying-for-the-love-of-god-not-to-show-it
expression on his face.
“I know,” I say to Rain. Our eyes meet,
and something passes between us, some sort of shared crucible. Or it could just
all be in my head. Bear Mask and Milo pass us, each dragging another body. Bear
pulls the corpse of the bald angel who was among the group watching my torture
in the guest house. He compared killing angels to swatting raindrops in a
downpour.
One less raindrop in the storm, you
bastard.
A smattering of bullet holes pock the
backside of the mansion. Three remaining bodies lay sprawled in the snow like discarded
marionettes.
“That one, she flew,” Rain says. “I
didn’t know they could fly. Is that why they’re called angels?” He points at
Diamond who lays face down, sunk deep in the snow like she was pressed into it.
Her hair fans around her head, those golden locks now streaked with red.
I turn her over and carefully lift her
onto my shoulder. Rain hooks his arms under a slight male with a shaved head
and pierced nose, and I lift the last body – a teen boy – over my other
shoulder. I notice Rain’s gaze, but he doesn’t say anything.
As we walk to the guest house, he tells
me his version of events in a soft voice. I mentally cache his story so I can
puzzle it together with what Gabe and Tarren tell me later.
When he finishes his story, I call out
to Gabe, “Sirens about two miles off.”
We’re right in front of the guest house,
so close I can feel the heat of the flames stroking my skin. Rain heaves the
angel’s body through the open door, and I follow with the male angel on my left
shoulder. Diamond is the last one in. I expect to feel something. She was
family.
She chose her family.
Diamond’s words fill my head. I heft her
body through the front door of the guest house and hear the distant thud of its
landing. Then I retreat. Gabe huddles in discussion with Bear Mask a few feet
away. Milo stays conspicuously far from the flames, averting his eyes. Every
few moments, his gaze darts furtively around as if he’s looking for something
or someone.
Tarren is not here, and I wonder what
loose ends he might be tying up.
My eyes wander to the flames, and I can’t
help but think of Diamond within them.
It will be close.
Gem’s words
haunt me, and I look around, somehow expecting to find him staring down from
the rooftop of the mansion. His corpse wasn’t on the lawn. War and Heather also
seem to have escaped the slaughter.