Authors: J Bennett
Snow flurries accompany us out of Detroit.
I glance at Tarren in the driver’s seat. His eyes are red and swollen from the
mace. Even though he ducked Ambrosia’s main assault, the wind whipped it
through the alley as we cleaned up. I can still feel the chemicals crawling on
my skin and tickling the back of my throat like a colony of fire ants biting
down.
We’ve been 30 hours without sleep, and Tarren’s
control of his aura is loosening as exhaustion sets in. Pale pink hues drift
over his shoulders. He’s sore from the hour and a half we spent opening up a
decent sized grave in the frozen soil.
I turn my head, my eyes drifting to the gray,
empty surroundings. The night pulls back the curtain on the first hints of a
cloudy dawn. I mentally pull up the image of our dead angel from the driver’s
license we found in his wallet. Jeff Sikes was not a handsome fellow.
Thirty-two years old, 177 pounds, 5’11”, at least according to his license. I
wait to feel something in response to the life I took. Guilt. Regret. I’ll even
accept that weird kind of giddiness that sometimes washes over me when I can’t
process real emotion. But nothing comes. It’s all hollow and echoey inside my
chest; been like that ever since Gabe got hurt.
“Ambrosia will be okay,” I say to combat
this repressive quiet. “It was a cold night, but she had that big coat on.”
Even with the mace trashing my senses, I hadn’t had any difficultly sniffing
out the black ’97 Camry radiating her perfume. While Tarren loaded the angel’s
body into the jeep, I’d quickly picked the car’s lock and carefully laid
Ambrosia out in the backseat.
“She had a backpack in her car and some
University of Phoenix folders,” I announce.
Tarren glances at me, offering nothing
to the conversation. Something about this is funny, how long my brother and I
have spent sitting next to each other over the last months and yet how far
apart we are.
“Clearly she’s trying to better her
life,” I persist. “You know, overcome her trials and stuff.” I don’t mention
the crumbled fast food containers that littered the floor of Ambrosia’s car,
the piles of clothing, empty cans of Diet Coke, and plastic bags half-filled
with Fruit-Loop knock-off cereal.
Tarren’s eyebrows arch just for a
moment.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says in a neutral tone,
which means he’s itching to rain all over my parade.
“Say it.”
“For-profit colleges typically yield
very low graduation rates,” he informs me.
I turn and give him a stare that I hope
rubs him raw as sandpaper. Typical. This is so typical of Tarren.
“It’s under 25 percent,” he adds.
“Well, MAYBE Ambrosia is different. Ever
consider that?” My voice rises. I’m still waiting for him to compliment me on
the amazing shot I made and how calmly and efficiently I handled the aftermath.
This was only my second official kill, after all. “MAYBE she’s going to pull
her life together, graduate, quit the strip club, and achieve her dream of
becoming a…a….scuba diving instructor, and then she’ll write a book about her
life and be on
The View
, and everyone will think she’s this amazing,
inspirational person.”
I glare at Tarren, daring him to
contradict me.
“She doesn’t need a college degree to be
a scuba diving instructor,” he says finally.
I throw myself against the seat and
cross my arms over my chest. Tarren and I had a moment, a real moment, where it
seemed like we might just be able to build a rope bridge across the chasm that
divided us. It was just after Gabe had woken. I’d gone to the house, and Tarren
had been there, back from wherever he’d fled while his brother was in a coma
for five days. He forgave me for what I did, and I’d hoped that this was a new
beginning for us.
Dumb Pixie Girl.
While Tarren has decided to tolerate me,
I’ve come to realize that his heart is too well guarded to ever let me in. He
sees me – not incorrectly – as a threat, a bomb waiting to go off. That’s what
I’ll always be in his eyes. It’s fine, though. I’m still going to save him.
***
A steady rain follows us out of Chicago.
Tarren constantly adjusts the wipers to precisely meet the pace of the rain. I
glance in the jeep’s backseat at the bag that contains the hard drives from
Jeff Sike’s computers, along with his cell phone and tablet. It’d been easy
enough to case the Chicago condo listed on our angel’s license, engage in a
little breaking and entering fun, and then grab some electronic goodies for
Gabe to tinker with later. Somewhere within all that data we may be able to
find a trail to other angels. They usually associate in loose networks.
“You need to finish sewing in the
picks,” Tarren says, drawing my attention back to the front.
“What?”
“Lock picks.”
“Oh yeah. I’ve got most of them done.”
“They all need to be done,” Tarren
insists, and I don’t argue.
Tarren’s latest mandate is that we both
must sew a basic double ball lock pick into the cuff of every long-sleeved
shirt we own, and that I sew them into the front and back hem of all my
short-sleeved shirts, even my tank tops.
Good thing lock picks are insanely cheap
online. I’ve spent practically every minute of downtime on this trip with a
sewing needle in hand or practicing releasing handcuffs from every conceivable
position. Tarren’s been a tyrant about it, but I’m not about to make a peep of
protest. It doesn’t matter that the chances of either of us ever getting
handcuffed again is exactly nil. This isn’t about practicality. Though he won’t
say it, I know Tarren thinks that if he could have gotten out of the cuffs
faster in Grand’s warehouse, or if he’d had even a simple pick in hand from the
beginning, he might have been able to stop me from…
“I hate when they do that.” I motion
toward a billboard featuring a cartoon pig in oversized sunglasses and a paisley
apron. A speech bubble by his snout proclaims, “Pig out at Ed’s Rib Shack! Next
exit.”
Tarren glances at it.
“I mean, they sell ribs and their mascot
is a pig?”
“It makes a certain sort of sense,”
Tarren says and adjusts the wipers again.
“Yeah, a sadistic sort of sense.”
I wait for Tarren to jump back in, and I
keep waiting. This is one of so many reasons why I miss Gabe. He and I could
have easily turned that billboard into a half hour conversation that would get
us laughing so hard his aura would turn a dazzling, emerald green all the way
through.
The sky spreads out in front of us,
white and filmy. Endless miles fall beneath our wheels. Endless silence. Uncomfortable
thoughts begin to push their way to the surface. I’d never really considered
anything beyond killing Grand. But here I am. Grand’s been dead almost three
months, and what now? Only this, the mission.
Tarren adjusts the wipers. It’s too
much.
“Why not keep them alive for
questioning before you kill them?” I blurt out.
“Angels?” Tarren guesses correctly.
“Tranq them, tie them up, and make them
tell you who created them, or if they know any other angels.”
“Our parents considered this option, but
they decided that it was too dangerous.” Tarren looks over at me, measures my
interest, and, after a pause for deliberation, continues. “Angels metabolize
the tranquilizers at different rates based on their individual strength and the
speed of their healing. It’s difficult to judge the correct amount to
administer.”
This is always how Tarren talks, with
the vocabulary and dynamism of a 40-year-old calculus teacher. The rain plinks
all around us.
“Those issues can be handled, more or
less, but…,” Tarren stares straight ahead, and I can tell he’s carefully
parsing his next words.
“Are you waiting for a drum roll?” I
prod him.
“The abilities.”
I turn away and stare out of my window.
“Oh yeah.”
“They range,” Tarren continues. “Some
angels can generate fire. Others have superior strength even above and beyond
the general enhancements. Telekinesis is common.”
I can feel the weight of his eyes on me.
“I haven’t been able to do it again,” I
whisper. “Not since that night. I’ve tried.” Tarren and I have never spoken
about what happened in the warehouse, how I killed Grand.
“It’s impossible to control for the
abilities,” Tarren continues softly. “There are still so many we haven’t yet
been able to catalogue.”
Tarren is quiet, and his energy shivers
with red hues. “We cannot ever hesitate,” he says, parroting the number one
rule in the code Diana created to keep her children and herself safe on
missions. I try not to roll my eyes. I get why the code is important, but I’m
not exactly the reverent acolyte that Tarren is. Then again, I never knew my
biological mother, so there’s that.
We lapse into a silence that feels
sodden and unbreachable. I stare out the window, but all I can think about is
the closeness of Tarren’s energy, all those little ticks and hiccups, that mind
always running at such a furious, brutal pace.
***
By the time we cross into Nebraska I’ve
finished sewing lock picks into all the tops I brought on this trip. I’ve drawn
so many pictures into the condensation on the window that they all merge
together into a blob. The hunger beats heavily at my consciousness. The clouds
haven’t let through any sunlight all day. Not even a thin trickle of energy
that I can absorb to keep the edge off. Angels are able to absorb energy from sunlight,
but it’s not enough. Never enough to fully sate the hunger.
“You sure you don’t want me to drive?” I
ask Tarren with no hope of an affirmative answer.
“No, I’m fine,” he says.
“Okay, I’ll text Gabe and let him know
we’ll be there in…” The calculation comes easily, “…about ten hours.”
“We’re going straight to Lo’s,” Tarren
says.
“What?” I turn toward him. “We haven’t
been home in over two weeks!”
I shouldn’t actually be surprised. Ever
since Gabe woke up, Tarren’s insisted on stopping at Lo’s mansion between every
mission so he and the foul-mouthed boy genius can lock themselves away in Lo’s
lab while I’m forced to make nice with his alcoholic step-mother.
“This is important.”
“Oh yes, the cure.” I put as much
sarcasm into my voice as possible to let Tarren know I think he’s full of
bullshit. “How’s that going? When can I expect to be human again? Tomorrow?
Next week?”
Tarren responds with his classic
fallback, a deep scowl. I can’t help but notice how his skin indents around his
scar whenever his mouth turns down.
“We need to go home,” I press him. “We
need to be with Gabe.”
“Maya,” Tarren begins.
“You think he doesn’t notice how you
never want to be home?” I cut him off. “How, even when you are, you do
everything to avoid looking at him?”
My words reflect in Tarren’s aura as
pale wisps of amber. I know that shade. Guilt. I wonder how dark the hue would
be if he loosened his control and I saw the full depth of his emotions. Tarren
looks straight out the windshield. His voice is soft, almost sad.
“You should tell him what really
happened.”
“Oh that’s fucking rich, coming from
you!” The vehemence in my voice surprises me.
“He’d forgive you,” Tarren says calmly.
I shake my head. I’ve already played the
scenario out a thousand different ways – it’s what I do instead of sleep – and
it always comes out the same. Horror dawns on Gabe’s face as all those soft
lavender shades of love and trust drain out of his aura.
“He’d be afraid of me,” I say. “I just
couldn’t….couldn’t deal if he were…” I stop there. This is cutting me too deep,
bringing all my latent fears to the surface. I’m back in that warehouse again,
feeling Gabe’s energy flow into my body, lost in the exquisite silence even
though somewhere far away he screams and fights against me. The only saving
grace of that entire episode is that Gabe has no memory of it.
“You can drown in secrets,” Tarren says.
It’s an odd thing to come out of his mouth. Poetic almost. Then again, if
anyone knows about secrets, it’s Tarren. He’s got more than any of us.
Shattering secrets, and those are only the ones I know about.
Tarren’s phone rings.
I’m immediately on alert. Gabe always
calls me, not Tarren. Could be Lo, but Lo only texts.
Tarren slides the phone out of his
pocket and looks at the number. Worry erupts from his aura like a fireball, so
big, so sudden that I actually shudder and turn away from him. I press my
gloved hands against my kneecaps even as the skin of my palms itches to retract
and allow the feeding bulbs to the surface. Tarren quickly leashes his aura,
sucking those powerful brown waves back into his body, dominating his emotions
with an iron grip as he answers the phone.
“T…Tarren,” a female voice I don’t
recognize trembles. “It’s…it’s hap-“
“I’m not alone,” Tarren cuts her off in
a brusque voice. He knows my sensitive ears can easily pick up the other end of
the conversation. “I’ll call you back…” His voice softens, “soon.”