Broken Angels

by Harambee K. Grey-Sun

  The blonde stumbled backward a few feet then sprang forward, her hands in front of her, her fingers bent and curled to resemble a hawk’s talons.

  It was far too dark and Darryl was much too weak to manipulate light as he would’ve wanted. In other circumstances, he’d have blinded her with an old-fashioned-camera-like flash, or he’d have shot a thin ray of infrared radiation at her forehead. Instead he had to rely on the basics.

  He grabbed one of Veronica’s wrists and ducked, dipping down to his knees, as he pulled the woman’s long body onto his shoulders and dumped her on her back, onto the floor, using a fireman’s-carry wrestling technique he’d learned from Robert.

  He hopped back to his feet and rushed for the first woman he saw, the lady in the lime-green gown. He was stopped after three steps. The woman in tangerine blindsided him with a sharp-toenailed kick to the kidney.

  Darryl fell down to a knee.

  The lady in lemon helped him back up to his feet. She grabbed him by his bleeding neck, made fresh wounds with her fingernails, and shoved him back toward Veronica.

  Veronica used her own wrestling technique to trap Darryl’s arms behind him and lock her hands. It was an unbreakable hold. The blonde chuckled before leaning in to whisper into his ear.

  “Watched you fight on the Mall,” she said. “Just watched; didn’t need to study. You’re beyond pathetic.”

  Darryl struggled as best as he could manage. He might as well have been frozen.

  “Fighting is futile,” Veronica said. “It’s all Charma, and it’s all good.”

  Darryl cursed at her.

  Her response was to shove him away as she shouted, “Ladies! Level two!”

  The painted patterns on the floor began shifting from concentric circles to intersecting triangles.

  Instead of standing and walking on the painted lines as they had been, the ladies in the fruit-colored apparel began to walk and stand only in the black spaces between the new geometric shapes.

  Darryl continued to move wherever he was pushed; the ladies in orange, yellow, and green continued to shift and shape their faces into those of his past charity cases; and he continued to try to fight them. But he hadn’t been lied to. It was futile.

  No longer constrained to circles, the women fought in a more sophisticated manner, using graceful styles of fighting that were foreign to Darryl. Even when he tried to dodge their blows or run away, he couldn’t escape. When he moved too far away from the colored lines, he felt as if he were suffocating on the shadows; he could only breathe when a foot or fist emerged from the black air, causing him to inhale with shock, and exhale on impact. As if to accentuate their new style and manner of combat, some of the ladies also broke out into song or recited familiar lyrics as they moved, avoiding the glowing lines, and making spot-on contact with some part of Darryl’s weakened, bruised, and increasingly bloody body. In between his hollers and screams, Darryl heard sounds he hadn’t heard in years, songs he had once associated with happy times or beautiful moments. But, as his torment went on and on, these sounds devolved into mere noises, purplish-white sounds, pale, irritating, drained of all meaning. He began to feel the noise was an appropriate accompaniment to the scene. As the ladies had hinted before they attacked, his life was being bleached of any purpose it ever had.

  THIRTEEN

  Robert tried to double the legal speed limit on the way to Darryl’s apartment. The Stang’s V8 engine was up to it, but at this point in the evening, it wasn’t easy to move so fast. Traffic was thicker than earlier in the day, thicker than usual. A lot of folks had come out with the sun after the midday rain shower.

  When they finally arrived, Robert asked Ava to stay in the car while he took a quick look around. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t fuss.

  Darryl’s Miata was parked in its usual spot. Its hood was cold, and the space under the vehicle was drier than the space around it. Robert still took the time to peer through each window, looking for anything of interest. He found nothing and moved on, up the stairs to the fourth floor of the garden-apartment complex.

  The key-tool he’d borrowed from Zel got him into the apartment.

  Robert’s first reaction on stepping into the one-bedroom was always the same. Darryl had “convinced” a talented interior designer to lavishly decorate it for free. The place was stylish and no doubt aesthetically pleasing to certain types of women and men, but to Robert, it all seemed a bit overdone. With all the plants, the randomly placed knickknacks, the framed photographs and other wall hangings, and the furniture chosen and arranged to match Darryl’s “life compass,” Robert felt like choking each time he crossed the apartment’s threshold. But he had a job to do, and he proceeded to do a thorough survey for clues to Darryl’s whereabouts.

  After examining everything else, Robert turned his attention to the real potential treasure chest—Darryl’s laptop. He turned it on, entered Darryl’s password, and searched through his recent e-mails, his website history, recently saved documents, and anything else that might’ve been helpful.

  On Saturday, his partner had apparently done a lot of searches on swastikas, the Star of David and, to a lesser extent, something called “Charma.” The strange word seemed distantly familiar to Robert, but all he knew—based the web pages Darryl had found— was that it referred to some kind of esoteric spiritual philosophy. There were no real details. And there’d been no other searches within the past twenty-four hours.

  Robert left the apartment with no more useful information than when he’d entered, but there were other leads to follow. One of them was leaning against his car with her arms crossed.

  “Well?”

  “No luck,” he said.

  “What’re you thinking?” Ava asked. “You know he’s not just missing. I can tell, you think something else is up.”

  Robert looked straight at her eyes for the first time since she’d put on her new glasses. However crisp and clear the world now appeared to Ava, to him, her eyes were now obscured by the glass, which offered him a pale-but-detailed reflection of himself. Too close to a mirror, he found it difficult to look at the lenses. It made him queasy, but he maintained it, staring at this ghostly apparition of himself as he leveled with her.

  “I found out how you lost your memory.”

  “What?” She unfolded her arms and started toward him.

  “At least I think I did,” he said. “At the house where we found you, you were beat up by two women. They were angels. That’s how you got your bruises, and it’s probably how you lost your memory.”

  “How do you know this? How long have you known this?”

  “I just found out this morning.” He purposely ignored her first question.

  “Who told you? Adam? What else did he find out?” Her questions came out rapid-fire. Robert answered her in a slower manner, hoping to calm her a bit.

  “There is nothing else,” he said. “I haven’t told anyone at the Institution about this yet.”

  “Why the heck not?”

  “Because I haven’t had time.”

  “Use those stupid watches on your stupid wrists!”

  “That’s something that has to be told in person, face-to-face.” Not necessarily, but Robert had set his own priorities. “Right now, we’ve got to find Darryl before the same thing happens to him.”

  “Robert, you better take me back to that house—now.” Ava opened the car’s passenger door and slammed it behind her.

  “Why?” He said it even though he already knew the answer; asking the question was just a natural reaction. He knew taking Ava back to the scene of her vicious beating—the crime scene where she was robbed of a portion of her mind—might perhaps trigger a recollection, a memory of where her attackers had come from, or a thought about the place the two women might currently call home.

  When Robert got behind the wheel, Ava only said, “I want to look things over for myself.” That’s all she said, but he knew what she meant.

  As they raced down Arlingto
n’s streets, Robert told her Adam had contacted him while he was in the apartment to tell him the entire IAI had been alerted Darryl was missing. All anyone knew at the moment was Darryl had gone to brunch on Sunday morning. All Watcher agents not too deep into other research had been ordered to enter the field and follow up on any hunches they might have.

  “None of them will even get close.”

  “That’s some faith you have in your brethren,” Ava said.

  “That’s not a commentary on them,” Robert said. “It’s an honest fear of what I think we’re dealing with.”

  Ava didn’t ask for a clarification. She seemed to become lost in her own thoughts and stayed there until Robert turned the corner that put the house into view. They got out of the car together. He followed behind her as she took her first tentative steps across the street and onto the sidewalk. The streets weren’t as empty as they’d been the first time Robert was here. He saw a few dog-walkers and two strolling couples, all minding their own business; that was it. Police tape was still around the property. Neither Robert nor Ava paid it any heed as they stepped onto the lawn, but Ava stopped after two steps. Her face went blank. Robert saw her expression and thought it best to give her some breathing room.

  “I’m going to check out the inside.” He might as well have been talking to himself.

  Robert opened the front door and walked in, searching for clues like he did at Darryl’s, by manipulating light and his eyesight in every manner he could think of. With his eyes and mind, he counted all objects and measured every distance between one and the rest of them, hoping for a hint of anything askew, anything out of place. He looked for anything the police might’ve missed, or any sign left behind by someone who might’ve come back after the authorities left. He wasn’t completely sure what he’d do with anything he found; he wasn’t exactly the world’s greatest detective. But, depending on what he spotted, Robert figured maybe his mathematical instincts or the intuitional processes in his subconscious might push him on to the next step.

  When he left the house, he saw Ava hadn’t moved a muscle. He didn’t want to risk breaking whatever trance she might be in, so he circled around to the backyard to give her a few more minutes of privacy. But he shouldn’t have bothered.

  “Nothing,” she said when Robert stepped back into the front yard.

  “What?”

  “I don’t remember a thing about this place,” Ava said. “Or about what happened to me here.”

  “Oh.” He shared her disappointment even though he knew her failure to recall anything was a much greater loss for her, a much more significant blow to her sense of self, her sense of wholeness.

  “What about you?” she asked. “What’d you find?”

  “Nothing useful.”

  Ava blew a puff of air through her nostrils. “So we’ve come full circle. All for nothing.”

  “No.” Robert looked at his left wristwatch. “We’re not done. It’s time for us to go speak with a friend of mine.”

  “Dawn club?” Ava said.

  Robert rolled down the driver’s side window and glanced both ways before making a left turn. “Yes,” he said. “Dawnclub.”

  “They don’t have those where I’m from.”

  Robert didn’t much feel like engaging in small talk. But in his mind, in his mood, he felt as if too many periods of silence would have the same effect as tiny pellets bouncing up against his eardrums—damn irritating.

  “It’s a metropolitan thing,” he said. “Primarily on the East Coast. They’re all lounges and clubs that open up around four in the morning and stay open till about eleven, noon, or sometimes one in the afternoon. They’re a quieter answer to nightclubs. No alcohol, little noise. Most promote local performers—musicians, singers, poets. Mostly amateurs, but they’re all practitioners in the quiet arts. No rockers, angry rappers, or screamers. Just something to help the sun get smoothly into the sky.”

  “They sound nice.”

  Robert pulled the car into the lot, trying his best to avoid running over any busted bottles.

  “Some are nicer than others,” he said.

  “Quite a few hours till four a.m.,” Ava said as they got out of the car. “Aren’t they closed?”

  “The woman we want to see is here. She’ll let us in.”

  Ava stood still, surveying her surroundings. Robert just glanced at her and kept moving; there was nothing he needed to see on the outside. He knocked on the club’s front door in a rhythmic manner, alerting the few people inside to his presence and his identity. He had to follow the same pattern twice more before the door finally cracked open. Half a face appeared in the opening.

  “Hey, Rob. What’s up?”

  “Hey, Julio. Sonya’s around, right?”

  “Yeah.” Julio pulled the door all the way open. “At the bar.”

  “Thanks. Didn’t see my boy here this morn, did you?”

  “Darryl? Nah. He’s rarely here unless you are.”

  Ava followed Robert to the bar, where two women were sitting and talking. Seeing Robert, one of them smiled and waved.

  “Rob!”

  He nodded in return. The other woman said nothing. She just tightened her lips and widened her eyes. Robert narrowed his as he met her stare, searching for any recollection that he might know this person. He then turned to Sonya.

  “Got a minute?”

  “Sure,” Sonya said. “I’ll meet you for a smoke out back, VaShawna.”

  The other woman stood up, looked at Robert with no sense of pleasantness, and headed toward a side door.

  Sonya grinned. “Nice to see you up past bedtime for once.”

  Robert waited until VaShawna had vanished before responding. He nodded in the direction of the slammed door. “Who’s that?”

  “New employee,” Sonya said. “Bartender. Get used to her.”

  Robert made a noise in his throat—part grunt, part hum—then said, “Sonya, this is Ava. The girl Darryl and I found on Friday.”

  “Oh!” Sonya rushed to embrace Ava before she could back away. “We’re so glad you were found!”

  Ava looked embarrassed. “Did I—did I know you?”

  “No,” Sonya said, “but every found person is a recovery for us all.”

  Ava looked at Robert; he only looked at his left-wristwatch and asked Sonya, “Can I get some water, please? Lukewarm.”

  “Oh, sure.” Sonya went behind the bar and retrieved a plastic bottle.

  “Thanks.” Robert untwisted the cap and sipped a little, just enough to wet his tongue and throat. He then took a pill bottle from his jeans pocket, untwisted it, and shook out the last two multicolored capsules. His regular dosage was four; he’d have to remember to refill at The Burrow as soon as he returned. He swallowed the two pills together, gulping them down as Ava eyed him curiously. He ignored her and asked Sonya, “You haven’t seen or heard from Darryl, have you?”

  “Not since Saturday. Why?”

  “One day we find one, another day we lose one.”

  “Seriously?”

  Robert nodded.

  “Well, he can take care of himself, Rob. You know that.”

  “I know he can’t take care of himself in the situation I think he’s in,” Robert said. “On Saturday, you saw that blonde he was speaking to, right?”

  “Yeah,” Sonya said. “She asked me about him before she went over.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “Just his name, and that he wasn’t married.”

  “She give you a name?” Robert asked.

  “You mean hers?”

  Robert nodded.

  “It’s Veronica Blake.”

  “You know her?” Robert asked.

  “Of course,” Sonya said. “She’s a talent scout. And the manager of Phantasie’s rEVEnge.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.

  “Why would I?”

  “Any idea where I can find her?” Robert asked.

  “She mostly goes where
the band goes,” Sonya said. “Find them, and she’s probably nearby.”

  “Well, they were here two days ago…” Robert looked at the stage. “I don’t suppose anyone here has a schedule of their performances?”

  “I can do a quick search on the web,” Sonya said. “Benjy’s got a laptop in back. Hold on.”

  After she left, Ava asked, “You really trust her?”

  “What do you mean?” Robert asked.

  “I mean you believe she’s not going to send you running after red herrings? How do you know she’s not friends with this Blake woman? How do you know she’s telling you everything, or that she’s not back there making phone calls?”

  “Because I trust her absolutely,” Robert said. “One hundred percent. I wouldn’t have come to her if I didn’t.”

  “Well, I guess that makes one person on the planet who can fit into your little circle.”

  “It’s an exclusive club,” Robert replied. “Maybe one day you’ll have the currency to pay your way inside.”

  “I can think of better ways to waste my money,” Ava said with a snort.

  The amusing comeback almost put a smile on his lips, but Robert was quick to prevent it by taking another drink of water.

  Ava waited for him to finish the bottle before asking, “What were those pills?”

  “Huh?”

  “Those pills you took a few minutes ago.”

  “A placebo,” he said with a joyless grin. “Something to help keep the visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. Without it, I’d trip on my feet and fall right on my ass.”

  The poor joke most likely went over her head, but one thing he’d said touched a nerve.

  “Language.” Ava shook her head. “All the cursing is really annoying.”

  “Then bless me, Arkangel. Maybe that’ll help me keep balance.”

  Ava started to respond, but Sonya rushed back into the room, waving a piece of paper. “Their schedule for the whole month!”

  Robert grabbed the sheet and quickly scanned it.

  “Sorry it took so long,” Sonya said. “The printer kept jamming. I hope it’s useful.”