by J Bennett
“We need to think about this.” Tarren’s voice is careful. “You can’t let your emotions…”
“I’m so sick of…” Gabe bites back his next words. “Forget it.”
Somehow this is funny. My mind is little jagged puzzle pieces all falling apart. The pull of energy makes words hard to string together. Tarren is mad and Gabe is mad, and monster Maya is mad, mad, mad and hungry too. She thinks the sun is playing a trick on her and a swan dive might be fun and maybe Ryan is somewhere waiting in a place with no songs, no sounds.
The boys glower at each other. Their jaws are set almost identically. Tarren is half a head taller, packed with wiry muscle. His face is all sharp bones, strong chin and cruel smiling scar. Gabe’s cheeks are flushed, and his blunt dashes of eyebrows tilt toward each other sharing secrets.
“Gloves,” I say.
They both turn to me.
“I’ll wear gloves. That way you’ll have some warning if I decide to kill you both.”
Silence, then Gabe’s eyebrows part ways.
“Ah!” he cries, “she’s got a sense of humor. Thank god! I need all the help I can get.”
He smiles at me, and I smile back. Tarren’s frown furrows deeper into the corners of his mouth. This is the moment I decide that I will run away. Tonight. No matter what.
Chapter 12
Gabe tells me that we’re going home. Home is Farewell, Colorado, just outside of Pueblo. We sit in Tarren’s silver Murano and wait for him to finish wiping down the motel room.
Gabe is in the passenger seat, scrolling through police blotters on his laptop. In the backseat, I tug against my handcuffs and enjoy the sparks of pain that alight as the plastic presses against the open wounds. In an unspoken compromise, Tarren cuffed my hands in front of me. I bring my knees to my chest, loop my arms over them. I like this position, feeling that I am as small and unobtrusive as I can be.
My mind is starting to go crazy again. I see Ryan fall, hear the last pained hiccups dry on his lips. Chapped lips. Warm lips filled with electricity.
“You didn’t finish your story,” I say to Gabe.
He looks up, clicks off his window. His computer wallpaper features Keira Knightley dressed in a strange leather halter top and leggings with a sword strapped to her thin waist.
“I want to hear the rest,” I say.
He sighs, closes the lid of his computer. “Yeah. Sure. Where was I?”
“The super evil club,” I say and then effortlessly pluck his exact words from my memory. “Rich as hell and bored of buying all the crap they could ever want. They decided to search for a way to become even more powerful. What they found was Dr. Cook. He was the key.”
The smile drops off of Gabe’s face. There’s some sort of conflict going on in his mind. I see it in the shifting ribbons of color in his aura.
“Good memory,” he says at last and reaches forward to switch the air on high. “Thane and his group financed Dr. Cook’s work. You have to understand that to Cook the whole thing was about advancing the human race and stamping out hunger. He was your average oblivious scientist. He didn’t realize Thane’s motives. Not until it was too late.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Yeah,” Gabe goes on. “For a long time, Cook came up with nada. All he had to show for years of work were violent lab rats with serious cases of radiation poisoning. I mean, he spent a lifetime on this thing. Dabbled in biology, chemistry, radiation and mutations, even genetics, which was still a very new frontier back then. Eventually, he made a breakthrough. This was twenty-five years ago. Dr. Cook was growing old, and Thane was getting impatient. He didn’t want to wait for all the proper testing and convinced Dr. Cook to hand over the formula. Thane’s son, Grand, was the first angel. Once Thane saw the results, he infected himself and his two other children. The other financial backers were next.”
Gabe stops. His energy begins to churn faster around his body. I’m not sure what this means. I press my palms harder into my knee caps.
“Keep going,” I tell him.
He takes a deep breath and then continues. “The formula worked. The people who took it changed. They couldn’t digest real food anymore; could only drink purified water. Their hearing got better. So did their sight and sense of smell. They ran faster. Lifted more weight. Became incredibly agile. Could memorize whole books in an afternoon.” Gabe’s voice wavers, but he catches himself, picks it back up. “It was all Dr. Cook had dreamed of, except for one thing.”
“The hunger.”
“The hunger,” Gabe nods. “The angels were able to absorb energy from the sun just like you’re doing now, but it wasn’t enough. They needed more, and the hunger was overwhelming. They soon learned that they could absorb concentrated amounts of energy directly from living creatures: puppies, kittens, ferrets, elephants even. They needed to feed constantly, and the more they fed, the stronger they became. Many of the angels even developed incredible abilities just like Dr. Cook predicated, including flight. But it all demanded a constant supply of energy. The angels all eventually turned to feeding on humans.”
“But why?” I whisper.
Gabe takes off his cap, massages the inside rim with his thumbs. The air from the vents catches in his hair and sends the smell of his sweat and shampoo throughout the car.
“Humans offer huge caches of energy, and they’re easy to obtain.”
“Wait. If these are really rich guys, can’t they develop secret puppy mills or buy elephants or something?”
“They can, but there’s something else.” Gabe lays his head back against the headrest. “Control. The hunger is overwhelming, and humans are the easiest targets. Some angels have learned to control the hunger better than others. A lot of them don’t care. But even the ones who try to control themselves will slip occasionally. They can’t fight it forever, and with your food walking all around you every day, you’re bound to snap…well, I mean, not you you. I meant the others. The full angels. You’re different.”
“You hope,” I say quietly.
“It’s not fair.” Gabe turns his face toward me. I’m beginning to understand his aura, how it reveals his psyche, like now when little red streaks of pain spiral through. “This shouldn’t have happened,” he says. “Not to you.” More red.
“Tarren’s coming,” I say.
The front door of the motel swings open, and Tarren strides out. Striding fits his long, lean figure and the don’t mess with me expression he seems intent on permanently attaching to his face.
“He won’t hurt you,” Gabe whispers. “I won’t let him.”
Tarren gets into the driver’s seat, and Gabe turns his face forward. We all sit there in this awkward silence for a while. Tarren’s aura is choppy, unnerving, tinged with red.
“You sure you feel up to driving?” Gabe asks him.
Tarren’s eyes lock on mine in the rearview mirror. “Don’t make any sudden moves,” he says. “If you need anything, just ask.”
In the resulting silence, I realize that I am meant to answer. It crosses my mind that no matter how nice Gabe seems to be, I’m sitting in a car with two very dangerous psychopaths. I can remember in perfect detail all the blood soaking Tarren’s shirt last night.
“Alright,” I say and try to keep my voice steady.
“Seatbelts,” Gabe says.
Tarren turns the key, and the Murano wakes with a smooth hum. As soon as we get onto the highway, Gabe continues his story without prompting.
“Cook was devastated when he realized what his formula did. He sought the betterment of mankind, but created monsters instead. Had he read his comic books, he would’ve realized that this kind of backfire was practically inevitable.”
Tarren looks at his brother.
“She wanted to know,” Gabe shrugs.
“Careful.”
“I’m right here,” I say to him. Those artic eyes peer at me through the rearview mirror again. The silence is so heavy I could almost choke on it. Gabe clears his throat.<
br />
“Thane and the others didn’t care about the hunger and killing. They enjoyed it actually. Thane convinced them that angels were destined to become a superior race, the highest evolution of mankind.”
“The Exalted,” Tarren says quietly.
In the passenger side mirror, I see Gabe roll his eyes. “Thane demanded that Dr. Cook give him more of the formula so he could infect select members of the elite. Dr. Cook recognized what was happening and knew he had to destroy the thing he had dedicated his entire life to. Quite a kick in the balls, right?” Gabe offers a little smile, but it doesn’t get too far.
I look out the window, watch the road streaming beneath our wheels, carrying me farther and farther away from…well, everything.
“Dr. Cook needed help, and there was only one person he trusted,” Gabe says.
Tarren’s aura jolts. Long fingers of red reach all the way through his energy. My body responds, those bulbs pushing through my palms to lift up from my kneecaps. I tug against my cuffs and concentrate on the pain that runs hot laps around my wrists. The sunlight falls across me in bands, and this helps a little.
“Enter the handsome, young protégé,” Gabe is saying. “Dr. Cook confessed everything to an up-and-coming science professor at the university; a man he considered to be like a son. That man’s name was Canton Fox. He was our father. I mean, Tarren’s and mine.”
Tarren’s hands tighten on the wheel, and he stares straight ahead out the windshield. His body—back, arms, neck—is composed entirely of straight lines, like he was welded into position with no hinges.
Gabe shrugs. “Together, they destroyed all of Cook’s research. Burned his notes, smashed his equipment and set fire to his lab. But there was one more thing. Dr. Cook knew Thane would come for him, for the formula. Thane always had a way of getting what he wanted. Before Cook shot himself in the head, he extracted a promise from my father. Cook had no one else to turn to.”
Gabe’s eyes go far away. His words are soft. “I think about what it must have been like for my dad; how he must have felt. Mom always told us that he was a good man, very brave, and funny. I don’t remember him. Tarren does.”
“Only a little,” Tarren whispers. His knuckles are turning white on the steering wheel. He says, “Our father promised Dr. Cook that he would kill all those who had taken the formula. It is a promise he gave his life for. A promise my brother and I carry forward.”
“That’s what we do,” Gabe says.
I think I finally understand. “You hunt angels.”
In the mirror, Gabe smiles. “Yeah,” he says and looks at his brother. It’s a sad smile, heavy with purpose and pain. I don’t like the way it pulls all the warmth from his face; how tired it makes him look.
Tarren turns his head, and I am amazed to watch their auras swell up in unison as if they were unconsciously reaching out to share each other’s burden.
Chapter 13
We graze along the highway. Sun drizzles through the windows, and I drop into sleep. My consciousness is confused, wandering through melting dreams and briefly surfacing when I hear voices up front.
I am walking through a forest, and the trees are falling down after me. One by one, their heavy trunks smack the ground in thunderous explosions that send vibrations through the soles of my feet.
“…totally exhausted,” Gabe’s voice in the background. “Did you see the shirt I got her? Pretty sweet, huh?”
“This is a bad idea,” Tarren says.
“Yeah, I kind of figured you were against the whole thing back when you were trying to shoot her.”
“Gabe, this is serious. There were cops all over the campus. People heard her scream. They’re already running pictures of her. Think it’s an abduction.”
“Well, it kind of is.”
“Someone saw you standing over the boy’s body with a gun. If we get caught…”
“Tarren, she needs us. We’ve got to teach her how to control the hunger, and Grand will want her back. We have to protect her.”
“That’s the other thing…”
I am looking for Ryan. Karen is with me, but she isn’t helping. She tells me that she has Lyme disease, though I know she’s overreacting again. I keep telling her that Ryan is in trouble. I don’t know what kind of trouble, but I have to rescue him. Karen doesn’t care. She’s got an acupuncturist appointment. She keeps wandering off, and I have to chase her, but I can’t touch her or she’ll die. I run up to her and beg her to come with me. Time is running out.
“…looks like Mom a little, don’t you think?” Gabe’s voice.
“I don’t know.”
“Come on. She does. Same nose, and she has this way of looking at you. It’s her eyes. I don’t know. They get all sad and angry at the same time. I swear Mom had the exact same look. And then, when we were on the roof, she did this sigh.”
“A lot of people sigh.”
“No, no, but it was like this super sigh, like ‘the whole world is crumbling, but I have to be all strong about it’ sigh. Just like you. She’s totally got Tarren sighs.”
“Come on.”
“And get this, I hacked her records, and she’s a literature major. Wild, huh?”
Ryan is lost at sea. He fell out of a boat. Karen has wandered off, but she gave me a bottle of her perfume. She told me to spray it in the air when I get to the ocean and she will come back.
I am on the beach. I’ve lost the perfume. I am looking out across the waves, knowing Ryan is drowning in the depths somewhere. It all suddenly seems so vast. I realize that I’ll never find him. I decide to build a sandcastle in Ryan’s memory. It will be a beautiful sandcastle that people will come from all over the world to see. They will know how much I loved Ryan and how much I miss him. I wander the beach looking for a bucket.
“…to be careful about how much she feeds,” Tarren says. “If she takes in too much energy, she’ll lose control and be too strong to stop. We have to watch her. All the time.”
“Yeah, and we need to find something ugly for her to kill. No more puppies.”
Tarren sighs. “How’s this going to work? She’ll just live with us forever? We’ll become fast friends and go angel hunting together? Turn our backs every time she has to raid the local zoo to get a fix?”
“Nah, she’s going to live with us for a while,” Gabe says. “You’re going to find a cure. Maya will be turned back to normal, but she’ll like us so much… well, she’ll like me so much, she’ll want to stay and help. We’ll all go angel hunting together and sing harmonious songs in the car or maybe play the license plate game.
“We’ll kill or cure all the angels, and our life’s mission will be complete. You’ll stand over Mom and Dad’s graves and say in an oh-so-noble voice, ‘It’s finished. You can rest well now.’ While I’ll sweep Francesca off her feet. You’ll be my best man at the wedding. Maya will be a bridesmaid. Francesca and I will live next door with our passel of the world’s most beautiful children. Maya will write a bestselling book all about our adventures, and maybe, just maybe you’ll get yourself laid. That’s how it’s going to work.”
“Jesus.”
Chapter 14
I pick through the Target shopping bag Tarren has dropped in front of me. There is something black and sticky tangled in the shag carpet fibers near my knee. I look around this new motel room — at the peeling wallpaper, the framed prints of hunting scenes and the rack of antlers hung between the two beds. So this is Missouri.
I am forcing myself only to think of the present, to observe without judgment. All emotions must be controlled and locked away so that I can get through this minute. And the next and the next after that. I don’t know how I can possibly keep this up, but that’s why I’ve got to stay in the present. One breath at a time. First, change clothes. Second, figure out which of the millions of questions to start with. Third, check the locks on the windows when Tarren isn’t looking.
“I didn’t know small or medium, so I got medium,” Tarren mutters b
ehind me. “There’s dye and scissors in the other bag.”
I pull out a pair of jeans and a flower-patterned tank top. Both are a size too large. I lay them aside, careful to avoid the black carpet stain. I pull out a pack of white cotton full coverage underwear. The kind that settles just under the belly button.
“This is grandma underwear,” I whine, tossing the pack away from me.
Tarren’s face grows cloudy. “I didn’t have to get you anything at all.”
“Oh! You’re right. I’ve been so rude.” I hold up my gloved hands. Dusk has settled, and without the sun’s sustenance, the song is growing loud, tightening around my bones. “It was so genteel of you to let me out of my cuffs for dinner. Your incredible hospitality knows no bounds.” I gather up my clothes and escape to the bathroom.
I sit on the toilet for a half hour, picking at my black, fingerless gloves—Maya the motorcycle bitch—and wonder if I am truly capable of a daring escape. I am. Tarren said people are looking for me. I could make a mad dash for the front office or scream like a crazy woman. My voice could carry through these thin walls. But the boys have guns, and I know Tarren will use his if he has to.
That means I have to get away from them first. Our motel is off the main road, but I could find my way back into town, flag down a motorist and make my way to the local police station. This scenario assumes that I don’t accidentally kill the helpful motorist on the way, or the police don’t happen to notice the new slits in my hands.
Maybe I won’t go to the police. Maybe I’ll go straight home to Karen and Henry. Karen is probably in full panic attack mode right about now, inhaler cemented to her mouth. Henry is grimacing and trying to figure out who he can hand her off to now that I’m not there. I imagine Karen’s tear-streaked face on the local news begging for my captors to bring me home. She’ll probably even be wearing a t-shirt with my face on it. Karen in a t-shirt? No, she’ll stick with a rhinestone encrusted “Find Maya” button. Henry might even take a long lunch from the office to stand by her side looking stern.
