I glared at him to hide the sinking feeling of despair that crept into my stomach.
He gave me a twisted smile, and directed Al to turn down another side road.
While we drove, I came to understand something about which I had been mistaken all my life. I had always thought my mother regretted having me, that I was the mistake that ruined her chances for happiness.
Her misery had begun before I was born. It was obvious Terence had loved my mother: he had kept her close to him all these years, even though he was forbidden to see her. He had left her half his company in his will. I could only guess why they didn’t pursue their relationship after Terence’s father died, and maybe I would never know. Perhaps she had kept me a secret from him too long, and couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth; who knew how he would react to finding out he had a bastard child?
In any event, I had been a product of that illicit affair, and was a constant reminder to my mother of what might have been, but could never be. It was no wonder she tried to chase her troubles away with a bottle of vodka.
The SUV stopped at a clearing that had a long gravel runway. To one side was a twin-prop airplane, and I recognized it as one of the twelve-passenger models Worldwind produced before they switched entirely to jets.
“I’m not evil,” David said to me. “I just want what’s rightfully mine.”
Tom got out of his side. Al got out of the driver’s seat and joined him at the back of the SUV.
Al opened the gate. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Until I started working for Worldwind Avionics, I was fine with heights. Stairs, ladders, and swings had never caused me so much as to bat an eye. Before I passed my driver’s test, I rode the monorail without any problems. I’d even gone up to the Space Needle and stood on the observation platform shortly after I got out of jail, just to look around.
My first time in a plane was a month before I met Stacy.
One of the Worldwind pilots, Wyatt Graves, was taking out a jet for a test run. He was just going to fly to the Atlantic, and then turn back around. It was a ten-minute round trip, and since I’d helped him move the weekend before, he offered me a ride.
Thrilled, I accepted.
The takeoff made me nervous, and I started having trouble breathing with the increase in pressure. Not wanting the pilot to think I was a wimp, I hid my discomfort and gave him the thumbs-up.
At the first spot of turbulence, all rational thought fled me, and I thought I was going to die.
I don’t think Wyatt was aware how terrified I was at that moment. Like many pilots, he wanted to show off, and so he put the jet into several aerobatic maneuvers that would make a veteran sea dog want to toss his lunch.
I puked until I passed out, and the next thing I knew, we were back on the runway with one of the airport medics trying to revive me.
From that moment on, every time I got too far from the ground, I felt a wave of sickness overcome me. It wasn’t vertigo; it was abject fear.
Now, I realized they were going to take us back to Seattle in the airplane, and my entire body broke out in a cold sweat. My breathing sped up, and I could feel my heart thumping in my chest so hard it hurt.
Al grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me out of the SUV. I resisted, and he gave me a jab to the stomach. The breath went out of me in a rush. My bowels tightened, and I was sure I was either going to vomit or soil my pants.
Tom helped, and together the two of them dragged me to the plane. When they got me there, Tom climbed inside and made ready to pull while Al pushed me in.
“Don’t be such a pansy,” Al growled when I wrapped one leg around the stepladder hanging from the portal to stop them from pulling me inside. His face was close to me, and I threw my head back, and it connected with his nose.
“Goddamn it!” he screamed, letting me go as he held his hand to his now bleeding nose.
I tried to scramble away, but my foot was still caught on the ladder, and I fell over.
Al hovered over me, and I saw he had grabbed a wrench from somewhere.
“Fine,” he said. “Have it your way.” I tried to duck away, but Al hit me square in the temple with the wrench.
* * *
When consciousness returned, my head was ringing. My skull throbbed in pain. I coughed and tried to speak, but it felt like my eyes would pop out with the effort.
The voice that spoke then felt like an arrow through my head.
“Stay still,” Darcy said. “If you have a concussion and move around too much, you might make yourself sick.”
I forced my eyes open and looked around.
David sat in the pilot’s seat with Al beside him. Tom sat in the front row, looking out the window.
Darcy and I were strapped into the seats in the last row, and Stacy was in the seat ahead of me, propped against the window with a pillow under her head.
We were in the air, and before I could stop myself, I looked out my window to see that we were just above cloud level.
My stomach rolled, and I could sense all rational thought flee from me.
“It’s all right,” Darcy said. “Get hold of yourself. Do you remember when we practiced focusing to control the power? You need to do that now. Block everything out and simply concentrate on one small thing; I don’t know, think about lying in a bathtub or something. Peaceful, relaxing, calm.”
She continued to talk to me like that for several minutes, and I found, after a while, I was able to get myself back together. My breathing evened out, and I tried to not to think about how many miles separated us from the ground.
“This is your domain, after all,” Darcy said, and that got my attention.
I opened my eyes and looked at her. “What?”
“Air, wind. That is your power. You should be at home here. This is your fallen angel’s natural habitat—if that’s what you call it.”
“The only problem with that,” I said as I looked out the window and quickly shut my eyes, “is that I can’t summon the power. If we crash, we’re dead.”
“We’re not going to crash,” Darcy said. “There are thousands of planes in the air every day.”
I imagined all those planes flying into one another. “That’s not helping.”
“Sorry.”
I shook my head, and instantly regretted the sudden action as a shot of pain blossomed at my temples. “No. Talking helps.”
Carefully, I opened my eyes, but made sure I focused on Stacy; not what was on the other side of the window. “How long have we been airborne?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes. David said we’d be there in less than half an hour.”
“Not much time, then.”
Darcy stared at me. “Time for what?”
“Once we land, David will most likely have more men waiting there. We need to do something now, while the odds are even.”
“Odds are even?” she asked. “They’re three armed men, and we’re trussed up like a Sunday roast. Stacy’s unconscious. What do you imagine we can do? Jump?”
“No. They don’t keep parachutes on these planes. If something went wrong, we’d hit the ground before we could get the chute on, anyway. No, we need to take control of the plane, somehow. If I get Tom’s gun, maybe we can force David to land somewhere else.”
“You mean, hijack the plane?” Darcy continued to look at me like I was crazy. She wriggled her bound hands. “And how are we going to do that, head-butt them?” Immediately, she looked contrite. “Sorry I said that. I know you were just acting out of fear.”
I felt a rush of blood rise to my cheeks at how I had let those fears turn me into a panicked idiot.
“We might have a chance if we can get loose.”
Darcy tried to shrug, but the harness was too tight for her to do more than move her shoulders a quarter of an inch. “If you have any idea how to do that, I’m all ears.”
Instead of answering, I tried to lean forward. I couldn’t move far because of the seat belt.
Straining against the harness, I tried to pitch my voice low enough that David and Al couldn’t hear me.
“Stacy. Stace. Wake up. Are you awake?”
I didn’t know what kind of tranquilizer they had given her, or how long the effects would last, but our very survival was pinned on her regaining consciousness soon enough to help.
“Stace,” I said louder. “Wake up. We need you to untie us.” Conscious of Darcy beside me, I continued to speak to Stacy. “We need you, babe. I need you. Stace, please wake up!”
David turned his head around, and looked directly at me. He smiled and took off his earphones.
To Al, he said, “Just keep it steady.” He extracted himself from the pilot’s seat, made his way past Tom, and came back toward us.
Sitting in the seat in front of Darcy, he said to me, “Welcome back to the land of the living. How’s the head feeling? Al really rang your bell, didn’t he?”
I bared my teeth at him. “What, did you come back here to gloat or something?”
“No. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to make peace with yourself.”
I wasn’t following his meaning.
He said, “You may have been wondering why I haven’t killed you yet. You see, I had to be certain you were our father’s only bastard. Can’t risk the creature jumping to someone else. Father Putnam assures me there are two factors that decide who gets possessed. There’s the strength of the bloodlines, and geographic proximity. I’m pretty sure Tom and Al aren’t related to me, but I believe in being thorough.
“I just received a message a few minutes ago: We don’t have any living aunts or uncles or cousins, Richard. Our closest relative is a second cousin who lives in England.
“As much as I was looking forward to watching Father Putnam exorcise the fallen angel from you, I’d rather not take any chances. You have until we land to make your peace.”
He looked at Darcy. “You might be interested to know that one of my researchers did some digging on you, Ms. Anderson. I really didn’t know what I was going to do with you. I mean, I don’t think you’d come work for me.”
“It would never happen,” Darcy said with a fire in her eyes.
“Exactly.” He rubbed his chin. “I wasn’t looking forward to keeping you tied up forever. That would be too costly, and there are too many things that can go wrong.”
He paused, as if hoping someone would prompt him to deliver the punch line. When neither of us rose to the bait, he winked at her. “It looks as if we will be having an exorcism after all. I could just shoot you, but Al said he wanted to watch you scream as we slowly ripped the creature out of you. He’s never seen an exorcism before, and I believe in giving my employees little perks like this.”
Darcy made a puzzled face at David’s meaning, but it came to me a moment before he made his big reveal.
David reached out and brushed Darcy’s hair back from her face. She tried to pull away, but couldn’t.
“I bet you thought you didn’t have any relatives,” he said. “But good news! Looks like your father had one cousin, and it turns out he’s living in California on welfare. He had some kind of a workplace accident or something a while back. He seems to be a real down-on-his-luck guy. I’m sure I could work with him.”
I could see the horror in Darcy’s expression. “You’re insane,” she said in a hoarse whisper.
David looked surprised at the accusation. “I’m no different than any other successful businessman. I seize opportunities when they present themselves, and make the necessary decisions—”
That was when, to my utter shock, a dark-haired ball of fury flew past me and collided with David.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I didn’t know how long it had been since Stacy had regained consciousness, but I could imagine the rage she felt, seeing David—her brother’s murderer—sitting in the seat across from her, a smug look on his face.
It was natural for her to want to exact revenge.
Before I knew she was awake, she had launched herself at him, using the weight of her body to drive him into the opposite wall of the plane. The force of it knocked his head into the window behind him so hard the glass cracked. If the blow didn’t kill him, it certainly rendered him unconscious.
“Stace,” I said when I recovered from my surprise. “Untie us.”
Either the impact must have stunned her, or she was still feeling the remnants of the tranquilizer in her system, but Stacy was very slow to pull herself away from David’s unconscious body.
Al and Tom were not so slow. Both men turned at the sound, and Tom immediately struggled to unfasten his seat belt.
Remaining at the controls of the airplane, Al yelled, “David!” When he said it, his hand must have moved the wheel, because the airplane pitched to the left. The motion made my stomach heave, and I tasted bile.
Growling a curse as he leveled the plane again, Al said to Tom, “Kill that bitch. We don’t need her.”
By that time, Tom had untangled himself from his belt, and moved into the aisle. He pulled out his gun and held it in front of him as he picked his way toward us.
“Don’t shoot,” Al said in warning. “Just break her neck.”
“Stace, get up!” I shouted.
With her hands propped on the armrests of the seat, Stacy lifted her head and looked at me. Her eyes weren’t focusing, and her mouth hung open.
“I don’t feel good,” she said in a croak.
“Behind you,” Darcy said. But Tom was already on her, and he grabbed her by the neck from behind.
Stacy, screaming in terror, reacted by mule-kicking, and her heel connected with Tom’s groin. He grunted and doubled over, releasing his grip long enough for Stacy to get off the seat and run toward the back of the plane.
With an incomprehensible shout, Tom lunged forward and managed to catch Stacy’s ankle, tripping her up. She fell heavily on the aisle floor beside me, and I could hear her breath rush out of her.
Like an animal, Tom pounced on her. With his large fist, he struck at her with a hammering action. She was still conscious, and managed to duck far enough to the side that his first blow glanced off the side of her head. His knuckles connected with the floor, and when he pulled his hand back up, I could see he had torn skin. Rivulets of blood dripped from his fingers.
Bound hand and foot, I was powerless to stop Tom from killing her right in front of me. “Get off her, you bastard.”
Tom, snarling, took aim and punched. What saved Stacy, oddly enough, was Al. He had turned around to see what was happening, and lost control again. The plane pitched one way, and then jerked back the other as Al corrected course. The motion made Tom lose balance, and he fell into the space between Darcy and the seat in front of her.
Although the harness bound our hands, Darcy had somehow managed to wriggle her fingers out, and she clawed at Tom’s head. He pulled back with a yowling sound, a bloody lock of his hair ripping away from his head.
Standing on uneasy legs, Tom backhanded Darcy across the face. She cried out, and I could see the blow had dazed her.
My rage continued to build like a hurricane, aching to be released. I fought against my bonds, but could not break free.
Stacy managed to get to her hands and knees. She scurried behind me. She reached up and grabbed the fastener of my collar with one hand, but before she could undo it, Tom leaned over the seat and slapped her hard, knocking her back from me.
At the same time, he pulled out his gun. Despite Al yelling like a madman for him not to shoot, Tom had had enough.
He fired his gun, and Stacy gasped as the bullet struck home.
What Tom didn’t know was that when he had hit Stacy, her fingers had caught on the rosary around my neck. As she fell back, she tore the necklace away from me.
The cord of the rosary snapped … and the spiritual binding broke.
The fallen angel inside me rose up.
“Stace!” The sound of the gunshot sent a bolt of panic through me.
In a blind rage, I drew in the air around me, focusing it on the strap binding my hands. Loosening it enough to get my hands free, I quickly wriggled out of the harness.
Freed, I turned, kneeling in my seat, and released a torrent of wind at Tom, who was still pointing his gun at Stacy, as if waiting for her to move so he could shoot her again.
I sucked in every available particle of air inside the cabin, and threw it at Tom with as much power as I could, hoping it would crush him against the fuselage.
The impact sent him hurtling into the rear exit door. The force of the blast was enough to knock the door open.
Tom was sucked out into the atmosphere, and the air pressure change inside the cabin was so fierce my ears popped. The roaring of the wind was overwhelming, and drowned out my screams.
Stacy, the front of her shirt bloodied from the bullet wound, began to slide across the cabin floor to the open door. I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead, but if she got sucked out, there would be no help for her.
Throwing the remnants of the leather harness off me, I jumped across the seat to grab her, but I wasn’t fast enough, and she followed Tom out of the plane, into the wide-open sky miles above the ground.
“Richard, no!” Darcy called out, but I was running on instinct.
Without a moment’s hesitation, and no thought of my fear of heights, I dived out the door after Stacy.
I had always had an idea what free fall would feel like, but the reality was much different from what I had imagined.
The fear of falling I had developed after my first experience came back—this time with a vengeance. A wall of air slammed into me, ripping at my clothes, skin, and hair. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t stop my throat from contracting against the rush of air.
The ground far below me didn’t seem to be getting bigger very quickly at first, but then I could see I was running out of time. It was in that moment that I remembered what Darcy had said.
I had the power to control air.
Instinctively, I willed the air particles below me to come together to make the atmosphere under me more dense, creating more resistance and slowing my fall.
Angel's Breath: The Second Book of Fallen Angels Page 15
