by Amy Vansant
The Pee-Peeeeee-Yew!
Anne paused, trying to block Con’s commentary from her mind.
“Sorry…um… We’ve been informed that you missed your last test. Can I come in?”
“I—” Elana looked behind her and fiddled with her hair. “Did I? When was that? I’m so sorry. I’ll go as soon as I get dressed. Thanks for letting me know.”
Elana smiled and began to close the door.
Anne put her foot forward to block the door’s progress.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like—”
The door exploded. Anne watched it, stunned, as if the blast had happened in slow motion. A blue-green laser light burst through the shower of splinters and Anne fell away, diving to avoid a skewering by the Angelus’ weaponized wing.
Yep. Perfidian.
Anne was used to hunting sloppy, anemic Perfidians. Advanced cases. Long corrupted Angeli made formidable foes, but newly infected Elana had true vigor on her side. She appeared healthy and glowed more teal than a sickly green. She’d detonated the door like a bomb with the thrust of her wing, so she was far from weakened by the disease.
The tip of Elana’s wing swept across Anne’s side. She felt the burn of energy loss as it passed through her rib cage. She hit the doors of the elevator face first and fell to the ground, her nose throbbing.
“Annie! Now!”
It took her a moment to realize the voice wasn’t in her head.
Anne rolled to her side and stood. She ran into the apartment, surprised to find Con laying on his stomach, his hands clamped around Elana’s bare ankles, absorbing her energy as quickly as he could. In the chaos, she’d never felt Con leave.
Elana thrashed, her wings swiping at her feet as she tried to dislodge the wraith-like Sentinel.
Anne dove into the air and flew over the pair. She felt a breeze as one of the wings swiped at her soaring form, just missing. She tucked and rolled on the opposite side of Elana, and, crouching, spun to face the struggling Angelus. She manifested her swords and plunged them into the young woman’s skull. Elana opened her mouth wide in a silent scream. Her wings dissipated and she fell limp as Anne and Con drained her dry. A minute later, she exploded into a shower of white light and disappeared.
Anne rocked back and sat on the ground, her flaming orange blades of light retracting back into her fists.
“That was close. I’d almost forgotten you were with me. Glad you jumped clear before I smashed my face into the elevator.”
Anne pushed on her nose and heard it snap back into place. She winced in pain and disgust. She hated the sound of cartilage and bones. Particularly when they were her own.
“I could tell she was off her nut. I was sneaking out of you and into the apartment when I saw the light of those wings and I just grabbed her.”
“Good thing. It might have been the only thing that made her miss me.”
Con grinned. “I like that double sword to the head thing. Very cool.”
“It’s what I used on the red Angelus. Seems to disrupt their synapses and buys time to gain the edge. Helps if you have a semi-transparent Irishman attached to their ankles, too.”
Con solidified his hand long enough to help her to her feet.
A loud knocking made them both jump and whip their attention to a closed door on the left side of the apartment.
“What’s that?”
He walked to the door.
“Help!” came a voice from inside.
Motioning to Anne to get ready, he turned the knob and opened the door to peer inside.
“What is it?” asked Anne.
Con looked at her, a strange guilty grin on his face. “Um…I’m not sure. The door to heaven?”
Anne stepped behind him and peered into the room. Inside, six scantily clad women sat bound together, eyes wide with fear.
“I think I’ve seen this in my dreams…”
She slapped his arm and he giggled.
“Models?” he asked them.
One of the girls nodded and another pointed at Con.
“Is he a ghost?”
Several of the others screamed.
“Con,” said Anne stepping in front of him while trying not to step through him. “You should maybe back away.”
“Aw, come on…”
“Move it.”
“You know I have that effect on women. Always makin’ ‘em scream…”
Anne rolled her eyes. “What a rich fantasy life you lead.”
“You have to get us out of here!” said a blonde near the foot of the bed.
“Were you being held here by Elana?”
They all nodded.
“She went crazy!”
She began untying the girls and motioned for them to exit as they broke free.
“Go ahead girls, you’re free to go,” Con said, shooing them along as they burst from the room. They gave his ghostly form wide berth.
“Don’t we have to talk to the police? And where’s Elana?” asked a buxom brunette.
“You’ve nothing to fear from Elana,” said Anne.
“Where are our clothes?” asked another girl. “We can’t call a cab in our underwear.”
Con chuckled. “I’m sure you could. It would be brilliant, really.”
Anne motioned to another room as she pulled her phone from her pocket.
“That looks like Elana’s bedroom. Take anything you need to wear and get out of here.”
A couple of the girls squealed and ran toward the bedroom, the others hot on their heels and grabbing at their shoulders to slow them down.
Anne called Michael.
“We’re done.”
“Did it go well?”
“I think so…” she said, scanning the apartment for signs of trouble.
Other than the broken door, no one could ever guess a crazy model had been eating her coworkers.
Chapter Nine
Tyannah sat up and took a great gulp of air.
Her eyes focused on familiar surroundings, but nothing felt comfortable. Images flashed through her mind like old-timey movies, flickering images of strange hairy men with protruding foreheads, trees, rocks, and animals with horns and bones that didn’t belong to them. The pictures came faster until her mind whirled with a tornado of color and sound. She covered her eyes with her hands and screamed.
“Stop!”
The visions ceased. The room fell quiet, but for the steady drip of the hall bathroom sink.
My bathroom sink.
She was good with tools and knew how to fix the leak, but she refused to do it. The staccato drip annoyed her brother and anything that bothered him was a friend, even water droplets. She pretended she didn’t know how to fix it and he had neither the money nor the ability to do it himself.
Donny only knew how to lift, carry and hurt. Which, to his credit, was one more talent than their daddy had. He’d had a bad back and couldn’t carry much at all.
She scanned her surroundings. She was at home, in her room. The room was empty, but for her sparse furnishing.
A boy appeared in the doorway and she jumped, scrambling against the headboard. She drew her knees to her chest and hugged them there, knowing there was nowhere in the room to hide.
Why do I remember wings?
She could see them glowing in her mind, wings, thousands of them, fluttering through the darkness like falling leaves. She shook her head to clear it. A minute had passed and the boy in her doorway hadn’t said a word. Silences like these never ended well. She felt her stomach roil with nerves.
The stranger seemed familiar but she didn’t know why. She wasn’t really frightened of him. He was shorter than she was and he seemed nice. Passive. He was pretty as a girl. With his long, straight blond hair, he looked like the elf in those Hobbit movies, though he dressed like a high school athlete.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Only what I had to.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m…” he paused, his
front teeth resting on his lower lip, frozen in the act of sounding out a word. “Rath…” he shook his head. “No, Rathe. Like the ghost. Yep. I’m sure of it now.”
“What ghost?”
“Ghost like wraith—Never mind. It doesn’t matter. It’s Rathe, rhymes with faith.”
He chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
He shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”
He glanced at his arm where his sleeve was pushed to his elbow and Tyannah’s gaze drew to the red latticework carved in his skin. She reached up and fingered the side of her head, feeling her own familiar pattern of scars.
“What’s on your arm?”
“This?” He held up his hand and she could see the scars on his arm formed a word.
Rathe.
“My name. Let me ask you real quick… How would you pronounce this word?”
She sounded it out in her head, unsure. “Don’t you know your own name?”
He shrugged.
“Your hair is pretty.”
He touched his long blond hair. It was so shiny it almost glowed.
“Thanks. I’m good with the hair. My eyes are a constant struggle—”
“Why am I here?” she asked, cutting him short. “Did you touch me?”
He took a step into the room, swinging his hands behind his back and clasping them there. Only as he moved did she notice he held something in his right hand, the hand without the scar, but she couldn’t see what.
“Did I touch you? I carried you into bed…I had to touch you to carry you…”
Tyannah’s eyes narrowed.
He can’t be that stupid.
The man studied her own steely gaze, and then his eyes widened and his mouth fell open.
“Oh! If you mean did I kill you, yes. I can see how that would be upsetting. Sorry about that.”
The room swam and Tyannah hugged her shins tighter, breathing heavily through her nose, her mouth pinched shut in a tight frown. She felt like he was telling the truth, but it didn’t make any sense.
I’m not dead. Am I?
The boy did look like an angel.
“Did you drug me? I feel crazy.”
“No. That would be overkill after killing you, don’t you think? Like, literally overkill? But hey, I brought you a present.”
He pulled a small fire log from behind his back, five inches round.
“Firewood? I have plenty of firewood downstairs.”
“I know,” he said, walking to the side of her bed. “That’s where I found this. Here, take it.”
He held out the log.
She stared at him, scowling.
“Take it. It’s a log. It isn’t going to bite you.”
She released her knees and let her legs slide away from her. She reached out and grasped the log, her large hands and long fingers easily encircling its diameter.
The boy stepped back. “Break it,” he said.
“What?”
“Break it. Just take it by either end and snap it in the middle like a breadstick.”
She put a hand on either end of the wood.
“It’s too thick! See? It’s—”
The log broke in half, sending a shower of splinters sprinkling to the bed sheets.
Her jaw fell.
“How did I do that?”
He smiled. “You’re different now. Just as I promised. Stronger, faster and…”
Rathe whipped a small paring knife from the front pocket of his sweatshirt and stabbed it to the hilt in her thigh. She screamed and rolled off the bed as he thrust both hands into the air above his head and let her go.
She stood gaping at the knife handle protruding from her leg, just below the edge of her shorts. She recognized it as her own, knew the kitchen drawer in which he had found it.
Peeling potatoes, she’d never dreamed the wooden handle of the blade would someday protrude from her thigh.
“Why would you do that?”
“Pull it out.”
“I might bleed to death!”
“You won’t. Pull it out.”
She shook her head. He sighed and in one leap, half jumped, half floated to her side of the bed. The move wasn’t possible, but she watched him do it.
“No!” she screamed, terrified he would remove the knife.
She had a flash of him floating in the air above her, only they weren’t in the bedroom; they were in the foyer downstairs.
We were fighting…
He settled beside her and she took a step away. Though she knew she should keep an eye on the strange elf boy, her eyes pulled toward the knife in her leg like a magnet.
She heard a rustle and looked away from the weapon for a second. Her pain radiated anew and her eyes shot back to her leg before she could focus on anything else.
Blood pumped from the wound.
The knife was gone.
She looked up to find the knife in Rathe’s hand, a smug smile on his lips. She moaned, clasping the gash with her hand.
“Call an am’blance!”
She pressed as hard as she could, praying the blade hadn’t struck her artery.
“Move your hand,” he said.
“No! You’re crazy!”
“Just move your hand.”
He grabbed her wrist and squeezed until the pain in her arm outweighed the pain in her leg.
“Move your hand.”
She jerked her hand from the wound. No blood flowed. She licked her fingers and rubbed at the red smear obscuring the gash she knew was there. She didn’t feel any pain. She spat on her fingers and rubbed harder.
Her skin was unbroken.
“You stabbed me… Where’s the hole?”
“Healed.” He flipped the knife in the air and caught the bloody point, thrusting the handle toward her. “Take it. Slash away. Cut your arm off if you like.”
She waved away the weapon. “No, thank you. I believe you.”
She took a deep breath and ran in place, lifting her knees high in the air.
“I feel good,” she said.
“Good.”
She glanced through her bedroom window and grinned.
“I have to go outside and run!”
Tyannah scrambled over the bed and ran out of the room. She pounded down the stairs, eager to try her speed in the field behind the house. When she hit the stair landing, she stopped, nearly toppling down the last few stairs. She put her hand on the wall to steady herself.
Her brother, Donny, lay in a pool of blood in the entrance hall, his throat replaced by a ragged brown wound. His face glowed pale and white in the moonlight, his mouth and eyes open and unmoving.
She approached the body, avoiding the blood on the wooden flooring as best she could. She sat on her heels and stroked the matted brown hair away from Donny’s forehead as the steady rhythm of footsteps moved along the staircase above her.
She looked up at Rathe.
“You killed my brother?”
“I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“You didn’t think I’d mind? He was all I had!”
Rathe glided down and through the rest of the stairs to grab Tyannah’s short hair, yanking her to her feet. She yelped, caught by surprise.
“What this?” he hissed in her ear. He rubbed the right side of her head with his free hand. “What are these bumps?”
“Don’t…”
“Tell me!”
Head held at an awkward angle, her words caught in her throat as he jerked the hair from her scalp.
“Bitch,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Bitch. He carved bitch into my scalp with a skinnin’ knife.”
“Is anyone ever going to do anything like that to you again?”
She shook her head as best she could under the circumstances.
“I can’t hear you!”
“No!”
“Right! That’s my girl!”
With a downward thrust he released her and she fell to her knees. She almost fe
lt like she would cry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. Then the feeling passed and she fell numb as she stared into her brother’s lifeless eyes. She wondered how many times she’d thought about killing him.
“Now go pack. We’re leaving. We have work to do.”
Rathe stormed outside, slamming the door behind him.
She stood and lightly kicked her brother’s arm.
“All in all, I guess you got what you deserved,” she said.
She walked outside.
Rathe stood on the porch, staring out at the dying cornfield.
“You’re right. I don’t know why I would hold on to him. He was a monster, just like our daddy.”
“I know. I saw it. I’m sorry I got angry. It makes me crazy what they did to you.”
She opened her mouth to ask how he could know and then thought better of it. The boy had powers she didn’t understand; it was best not to ask too many questions.
“Do you have your things?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“I ain’t got nothin’.”
Chapter Ten
Anne slipped into the cab, Con tucked inside of her like a Russian nesting doll. She bounced her leg, riddled with the extra energy she’d drained from Elana. Opening the door of the cab, she’d felt as though she could yank it off, fling it aside, and then flip the taxi to the roof of a nearby apartment building. If she could bottle the invigorating effects of siphoning an angel, she’d make a gazillion dollars. Moody young people desperate for experiences would flock to taste pure essence of angel. It would sell itself. Though she suspected there was a clause in her Sentinel contract against becoming pusher. And name-wise, angel dust was already taken…
“You know, I was thinking…” she said aloud.
“What’s that, ma’am?” asked the cabbie, a heavy-set middle eastern man.
She jumped at the sound of his voice. She’d been talking to Con and forgotten all about the driver.
“Just talking to myself.”
What? asked Con in her head.
Anne put her hand to her mouth and rested her nose against her knuckles to hide her moving lips from the driver.
“The fact that the red Angelus attacked me makes sense, because Sentinels are probably his natural enemy, right?”
I guess…
“But you said that Seth said two and a half down, eighteen and a half more to go. He’s obviously talking about the Archs.”
