by J Bennett
* * *
We wander past the fields, past the community garden, past the dog park and into the woods. We stay away from the flashlights, from the others tromping around calling to Sunshine Bailey’s ghost. The angel is everywhere, in each small noise, each gust of wind rattling the branches, each new smell that clamors for my attention.
A little ways into the woods, Gabe curls up on a bench positioning a stained duffle bag under his head. He checks his pistol then, still holding the semi-automatic, tucks both hands into the sleeves of his khaki coat. I watch in amazement as his energy lowers and flattens around his body almost as if he were sleeping.
Tarren and I hunker down in the trees 100 yards away. Tarren lies on his stomach, eye fixed to the scope of his sniper rifle. I drape myself across a wide branch above him and watch his energy slow and dampen also.
“How do you do that?” I whisper.
“No talking.” He doesn’t look up.
“Your energy, it’s going down.”
“You can see that?” There’s an edge to his voice.
“I can feel it. Sometimes,” I hedge.
“Angels can connect to the energy output of humans,” Tarren whispers. “They can sense emotions like fear or nervousness. When we hunt we have to lock down on those things.”
“How?”
“There are mental tricks. Breathing. Now quiet.”
I’m too nervous to be quiet. I don’t like Gabe out in the open all alone. I keep imaging a black shadow swooping down and snatching him away. The rain falls around us, tagging the leaves and dripping through my thin, cotton pants. The water skews the world, disrupting the normal smells, blanketing the sounds of the forest. My senses are off kilter, and I feel naked without them. And it’s cold.
“Why don’t I track the volunteers,” I whisper to Tarren. “Split up, cover more ground, or wait for the angel where I found the piece of fabric. It might come back there again.”
“No.”
“You don’t trust me. You don’t think I can control myself,” I accuse.
“You can’t take on an angel by yourself.”
“Then give me a gun.”
“End of discussion Maya.”
I rest my chin on my gloved hands and fume. The hunger hasn’t let up, and it erodes away my composure. I think of a massive nail file wearing away at my frontal cortex and then can’t get the image out of my head for the next hour. I feel helpless, melding with this branch, thinking about nail files, waiting for something to come down and try to kill my brother.
I know exactly what Tarren’s rifle sounds like, how cleanly it pierces through the aluminum soup cans the brothers have rigged all throughout their wooded backyard. I wonder if the angel will tumble backwards, flipping end over end. I wonder how much blood I should expect — if there will be any terrible screeches of death, any stammering final monologs like in the movies.
The minutes and hours are stubborn, digging in their heels. Each second presses the cold and wet deeper into the center of my bones so that my limbs ache with it. I press my teeth together to keep them from chattering. The initial fear and jitters exhaust themselves, dulling into a waxy wariness. I try to keep my eyes on Gabe’s form, but they keep slipping away as my thoughts wander to my own discomfort, to these new secrets I’ve added to the pile. The restrained memories twist against their chains, screaming terrible things beneath their gags.
Beyond the hum of all these wretched thoughts, my ears pick up a sound — a grunt of surprise somewhere far off to my right. The rain has stopped, and the sound carries across the wide space of the forest. My body tenses, my ears honing. Then it comes, a low strangled call, uh, uh, uh. I recognize this guttural cry. Ryan made the same seizing sound as Grand tore the life from his body.
“Maya, no!”
I don’t understand Tarren’s shout until I realize that my feet are planting into the muddy ground as I launch myself through the trees.
Chapter 37
Leaves slap against me like wet hands, and I’m charging through roots, twisting around trees without thinking. I need to get to the sound, I need to save Ryan.
Only it isn’t Ryan. I find the crumpled body of a man a half mile away from our stakeout. He is all wrong in many ways — the torqued upper body, the wide unfocused eyes, the mouth still caught in a last garbled choke — but most of all because he is colorless. There is no aura around him, no dance of emotion, no churning cloud of life.
My brain starts inconspicuously edging out of the room, and this is what panic feels like. I kneel down next to the man. I am too terrified to touch him, so my hand just lingers above his shoulder. If only his eyes weren’t open. Dead, the word punches into my head. Dead, dead, dead. I listen for a heartbeat, watch his chest for breath and find nothing.
Then, because it’s me, things get a lot worse. I hear the sound of footsteps approaching. I assume this is Tarren ready to pull me up by the scruff of my neck and drag me back to the car. Stupid, I think and finally, finally realize that an angel was just here, could still be here. I stare at the shadowed figure emerging from the woods wondering what this angel will look like, if it will have long, dripping claws, and what it will do when it finds me.
The boy who steps out from the trees is not an angel or Tarren. For this reason alone, I fall wildly in love with him. My eyes latch to the reddish-hued energy circling around his body, and he is so amazingly, utterly…human. I love his entrenched dark eyes, his tall, skinny body, all those tuffs of brown hair standing up on his head and even the weird goatee thing on his chin.
“You here?” the boy asks. His flashlight sweeps across the ground. I see the light coming, but I just stand there, dumb as a rock. It hits the body and stops.
“Pastor Reynolds?” the boy chokes. The beam of light jerks, hits my knee and then rushes up my body.
The boy’s aura unleashes bright canary yellows and whites, and in response, every muscle I have clenches hard. Through the beam of light I just stare at his aura and listen to the song.
“Your hands,” he whispers.
I don’t have to look down to know they are glowing. I can feel the skin scrolling back, the feeding buds rising from their chambers and throwing out flares of heat.
“It’s just that I’m hungry, and you —” I say and then stop. Just stop. Holy hells, bells, gazelles.
“What…what are you?” the boy whispers. Not a boy, really; he must be my age. I turn and run. After a pause, I hear his steps come crashing after me. This kid must be dumber than I am. Who chases the boogey man? I am aware that all I have to do is stop, turn around and peel these horrible, itchy gloves off my hands. The boy would run right into my embrace.
There must be at least some small smidgeon of Maya still controlling my brain, because I keep running, leaping into the trees and springing across the distance. I feel Tarren’s energy coming at me, simmering an angry orange that he’s obviously trying to hold in check. I drop down, run toward him. He stops when he sees me. I hook my arm in his and swing him around roughly.
Tarren trusts me enough not to automatically shoot me, which, I guess, is something. I tug him behind me, keep running. After a slight hesitation, he picks up the pace, and I let go of his arm.
Behind us the boy screams, “Come back here!”
I can almost feel Tarren’s mega-scowl searing into my back. A whistle hollers, then another. Soon, a whole chorus of shrill notes rise up out of the forest.
Tarren and I run together, and I try to pretend this is just another run in the woods. Another glorious morning where the sun will soon peek its flat face up and over the horizon.
This is what brings me down enough to start thinking. We collect Gabe, who has packed up the sniper rifle, and then I weave us around the frantic humans and their bright, pounding energies.
We make it back to the car, and I can already hear the cry of police sirens pitching in the distance, growing louder. Tarren lets the leash on his energy slip just a little and his aura ratchets
in bright oranges and reds that set my body humming.
He stares at me, and his hand hovers over the gun at his waist.
“Look,” I whimper, “I heard the guy scream, I couldn’t just —”
“Stand still,” Tarren growls, and it’s a feral, dangerous sound.
“Tarren, she didn’t —,” Gabe starts.
“Quiet,” Tarren cuts off his brother. “Don’t get in my way.” His eyes flash back on me, gray as flint and just as hard. There’s nothing in Tarren’s face, not the merest crevice to cling to. I watch his fingers brush the barrel of his gun, ready to flip it from his holster and shoot. I think he’s actually going to kill me. Gabe’s energy is bright as a star.
I am shivering so hard that water droplets jump out of my hair. The monster presses against the paper thin wall of my control, keeps pushing, pushing, pushing…
Tarren’s body relaxes, and his hand drops away from the gun.
“Get in the car,” he tells me with the quiet menace of a rattlesnake.
Gabe sighs — such a long whoosh of air. “Thank you Jesus,” he mutters, and the red slowly dissipates from his aura. He goes around back, opens the trunk.
“Move!” Tarren hollers at him.
I crawl into the back seat and slump against the opposite window. My hands are still glowing, so I press them into my belly and pull my legs up tight to pin them in place. Gabe opens the back door I’m not leaning against and holds out a wool blanket. Even when I don’t acknowledge the offering, even though the sirens are loud enough so that the boys must be able to hear them by now, Gabe doesn’t move. His face is wrecked with heroic intent.
Slowly, I lower my knees, unwind my arms, reach out and take the blanket from his hand.
Chapter 38
On the ride back I expect Tarren to charge at me fast and loud as a wailing freight train. Instead, his voice drops to a dangerous quiet, and all he says is, “You jeopardized everything.”
Gabe has told me how Diana could wither her children with a stare, how the softest words from her mouth often carried the deadliest stings. Tarren must be so much like her.
“Just lay off,” Gabe says, though there’s been a long pause of silence. I just pull the itchy blanket tighter around my frame and try not to look at anything.
Back in our motel room sponsored by the color beige, I stand in the corner until Tarren and Gabe finish their review. Tarren flashes me a deep scowl — he’s really perfected the art of menace — and then leaves for his room.
“Go ahead,” I tell Gabe as soon as the door closes.
“And do what?” He hefts his bag onto his bed and starts digging through.
“I’m a fucking mess. I deserve a monumental ‘I told you so.’”
“It’s not that,” Gabe says, almost to himself. He pulls out shampoo, soap and a clean pair of boxers from the bag and tosses them onto the bed.
“Running after that angel, that was stupid. Dangerous. Maya…” he looks up at me, and the trickster light is gone from his eyes. “Don’t ever do that again.”
This is the second time he’s said that to me today.
“Why do you even care so much about me?” My voice is high as a yelp, because this question has been gnawing on my conscience every night since this whole angel thing started. I still haven’t figured out any type of answer that makes sense.
Gabe stiffens, and a wave of red goes through his aura. I realize that he’s actually going to tell me the truth, and I suddenly don’t want to hear it.
“I didn’t know my father. To me he was always gone,” Gabe says and looks away. “I felt sad, but I was only missing the idea of something, not the real thing. Then Mom got sick, and when she...” Gabe forces the word out, “…died, it was, god it was awful.”
“Gabe, stop.”
He grips the sides of his bag, and the words rush on. “But then there was you. It wasn’t, like, a tradeoff or anything. But I hadn’t known before. We lost Mom, but now I had a sister. It was something, you understand? Something to fill the void. And then Tammy.” Gabe’s voice loses its strength. His aura alights in bright reds that slam a wrecking ball against my shaky control.
“Please stop,” I whisper, and this seems to spur him on. He looks up at me through the messy bangs of his wet hair, and those honey-colored eyes are intent in his pale face.
“Tarren is different now…” Gabe’s brows pinch together as he struggles to speak. “He’s so…so far away and I can’t figure out how to find him and bring him back. It’s been years, but he hasn’t gotten better. He wants to die. He tries to, and if something happens to him…I won’t, I just can’t. Maya!” Gabe’s voice pitches out as a sob that cuts something small and fragile inside of me. “You can’t do stupid shit like that, you can’t.”
His aura is a rush of rusted oranges, browns and reds. This is how I learn what Gabe’s fear looks like and how it etches deep ravines of pain in his face.
“Alright,” I blubber back.
“You have to take care of yourself. Let us keep you safe.”
“Alright, Gabe, alright!”
“Thanks,” he says hoarsely. He gathers up his supplies and walks to the bathroom. His knee pops, and it’s such a normal little thing that I almost laugh.
Instead, I call out to him, “What happened when we got back to the car?” Gabe stops but doesn’t say anything.
“The way Tarren stared at me, like he was going to kill me.”
“He was,” Gabe says this so soft, I wonder if he meant to say it out loud. “He, uh, was checking to make sure…” Gabe swallows. “After an angel feeds, its skin flushes, sometimes even glows for a little while. He was checking…”
“…to make sure I didn’t kill anyone,” I finish. “Oh, okay.”
“I knew you didn’t…but he had to check, Maya. He had to.” Gabe stands still for a while until he realizes I’m not going to say anything back. We just leave that right there, and Gabe goes into the bathroom, closes the door.
Even though I’m wet as all hell, I collapse backward onto my bed and just lie there listening to the hiss of the shower.
* * *
When Gabe comes out, he’s in a pair of gray boxers and a ratty undershirt. I’m almost 100% sure he doesn’t actually own a set of pajamas.
I’m still lying on top of my covers, just staring out the dark window.
“Your turn,” Gabe says indicating the bathroom with his head.
“Too tired. I’ll do it in the morning.”
“Your life,” Gabe shrugs and apparently doesn’t realize the irony of that statement or the wave of jumpy, angry emotions it sends through me.
Things are still tense in the room. I can feel it, see it in Gabe’s energy. The peak of my hunger hasn’t really faded, and I’m honing in on Gabe’s aura, aware that we are alone together in this room without Tarren’s warning eyes and itchy trigger finger.
“Did Diana know about angels before you were born?” I ask.
Gabe drops gracelessly into his bed. “Ha! Actually, yes. When my dad killed Robert Thane, he got real scraped up. Mom confronted him. She had this way of grilling you until you sang like a canary. Dad told her everything, about Thane, about Dr. Cook, about the angels and his mission to kill them. Mom was so pissed that she went into labor right then and there. I was born right in the middle of the worst argument they ever had.”
My fingers find a hole in the comforter and immediately begin to unbraid the loose threads. “Then why did she name you Gabriel?”
“Aw man,” Gabe says. I wait for him to continue. He doesn’t.
“What?”
“She had this kind of idea.” Again I wait. Again he doesn’t speak until I prod.
“What idea?”
Gabe rolls onto his side and pegs me with a stare. “Okay, but you have to swear not to be all, you know, give me shit about it.”
I put my hand over my heart and raise my other hand. “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”
“Alright, so Mom was pissed at my dad and overwhelmed and terrified out of her mind. Here she was with a newborn in her arms, and she’d just learned that her geeky, scientist husband’s been battling superhuman monsters. The way she told it, she kicked my father and the Ts, Tammy and Tarren, out of her hospital room. She rocked me and cried, and I was just staring at her, calm and composed. She kissed me, and I laughed, though I looked it up once and newborns don’t laugh until, like, a couple months. Anyway, she swears I laughed, and she looked into my eyes and had this kind of epiphany.” Gabe sighs, and his aura pulses a tangy orange that I’m beginning to associate with his embarrassment or distress.
“Mom believed in angels, real angels, the fluffy winged kind, and she wanted…” Gabe pauses, thinking. “She wanted to remember what angels really were. I was her reminder of a better world, I guess. So she named me Gabriel.”
“Gabriel is supposed to be God’s messenger,” I say. I find a new thread and pull it loose. The hole in the comforter yawns open, large enough for me to slip my hand through.
“Yeah, he brings people hope and stuff…”
“Wow.”
Gabe tucks his face into his pillow. His voice is muffled. “I know. Kind of a lot to live up to.”
“Now who’s angelic?”
“Oh, lame.” Gabe reaches out for the lamp on the table between our beds. “I’m calling it a night.” He clicks off the lamp, dousing the room in darkness.
* * *
I don’t intend to fall asleep, but I do…until the hunger pulls me away from my restless dreams. My mind is cloudy and confused as I slowly bob along the surface of consciousness. The song plays in my head, pure notes of hunger. It really is a fire, with flames that burn a different, deeper burn. I sit up, fumbling with my gloves before I stop myself. It takes me a second to remember why.
The skin on my palms is peeling back, the veiny orbs lifting up, throbbing. It’s still night, and I hear Gabe breathing the slow notes of sleep from his bed. His energy is a noose around my mind, pulling me closer, tightening.
