by Angel Payne
I hiss while baring my teeth.
I seethe golden fire into my gaze as I torch every cell of my bloodstream.
And I realize, inside a second, the man at my side is doing the same. We’re a pair of rebel alliance members, anticipating Vader himself in that lift car. Reece has the light sabers; I have the blaster cannons.
And my fingers on the triggers.
“Holy. Crap.”
Until I back them off. With sudden, sickened swiftness.
“Stop. No, Reece. Stop!”
I catch his backward flick of both hands, his version of priming his lightning barrels, and I’m terrified that he’s already too deep in his battle zone to hear my scream. Luckily, my downward blast gives me the boost to fly in front of the shaft.
At once, I block the aperture with my outstretched arms. Reece, finally getting the point, redirects his lightning tines to the side. They rip an impressive slice out of the wall to my left. I almost want to reward him with a fist pump, but the creatures in the elevator are sucking every molecule of my attention. And shock. And astonishment. And wonderment. And about a thousand other emotions that invade my senses in the same cavalcade, threatening to crush my chest.
I can’t move.
I’m locked in place, hands still gripping the sides of the opening.
My breaths pump in and out of me in astonished, agonized heaves.
“For the love of fuck!” Reece roars. “Emmalina, what the—”
“Kids.”
“What?” he barks.
“Kids!” The single word taxes my physical strength and emotional composure. My glow surges anew as the fierce lioness inside takes over, but I’m able to get in some normal inhalations at seeing Reece acknowledge them too. Sort of. While he’s stood down with his arms and hands, his posture is still as threatening as a Sith’s, and his stare is still as piercing as an Asgardian’s.
“Kids.” I give the word a third verbal stomp, already discerning my husband is hearing but not listening. The utter stillness from him can mean one of two things: he really doesn’t understand yet, or he’s dead. “As in children!” I challenge once more, figuring it’s at least worth a try.
But there’s still no change in his expression as I turn around. If anything, he’s throwing up more mental shields as he scoots forward, watching my back literally as well as figuratively. Yeah, that is the best word for it. My own defenses have raised again, but I meet the confession with shame. Whether we’re about to confront children or adults or an elevator full of frogs, it doesn’t matter. Of the many truths Lux has proven since his birth, the one that impresses me now is this: what one sees isn’t always what one gets.
I drop to my knees. Tears brim and then roll down my cheeks—as I struggle to vocalize what I’m really looking at.
“Angels.”
My stud hero of a husband hunches behind me, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck. His fingers are trembling.
Because he feels it too. He knows it too.
“Reece. They’re…they’re angels.”
Chapter Two
Reece
I’m so ready to believe her.
Fuck, I hate admitting it…but I am.
The twin girls appear older than Lux—at least on the outside—by at least a year. They look like three-year-olds who should be modeling in clothing and toy ads after being discovered by an agent in the Brentwood Whole Foods. They’re decked in the finest, trendiest toddler wear as if to prove it, with hair and coloring that look like Moana and Snow White had a pair of angel love children. I’m awestruck by their black curls, cinnamon skin, and expressive eyes.
No. Not expressive.
All-seeing.
All-knowing.
Not exaggerations.
At first, they seem fascinated by Emma—probably her light hair and eyes, the opposite of what they see in the mirror every day—but as soon as they refocus, peering at me, I almost fall off my haunches and back onto my ass. Nobody except the woman in front of me and the child she gave me have been able to stare so completely down to my soul.
Holy. God.
And this time, I mean it literally.
Where the hell else would two children this beautiful, this ethereal, this surreal just suddenly appear from?
My logic hurls the answer into my heart—which then bursts like shrapnel of adrenaline through my body. At once, I’m back on my feet. The next second, my fingertips are light-blaring homing beacons. I angle the beams at my sides, pointing them outward like Wolverine in strike-ready mode with his claws. Another fitting comparison. I step away from Emma, making sure the two cherubs—or whatever the damnation they are—can see that I’ve got ignition and I’m not afraid to use it.
The girls shrink back with matching sets of O-shaped lips and we’ve-seen-a-goblin eyes. And while I hate being that ogre, it’s better than trusting their exterior just to find out they’re actually demons on the interior.
“Hey. Hey. Whoa!”
Emma’s protest coincides with the girls’ frantic retreat, but she’s not fast enough to stop them from scurrying backward. They disappear through the burned-out hole in the elevator’s floor. Okay, not fully vanishing. Their little hands stay visible, their petite fingertips clinging to that angry black lip. But they aren’t screaming, and their huge impish eyes reappear after just a couple of seconds. What the living hell?
“It’s all right!” Emma cries. “We mean you no harm! Reece,” she hisses, “put those damn things away.”
I grunt, enduring her glare as I pull back on my fingers’ intensity. But just by a little. I’m the guy who once believed everything at such face value, I thought a “fun ride” into the Barcelona suburbs was going to land me in a kink club with Angie LaSalle’s throat around my cock. Instead, I wound up on the Consortium’s lab table with a needle jammed down that unfortunate cock. Now that the cock’s back where I want it, I’m not trusting anything about this situation. Not even the two innocent faces that reemerge from the hole and get propped atop their seriously strong hands, sizing up Emma and me with renewed concentration.
“Hi again, beauties.” Emma’s sweet murmur etches a new crack in my heart. The tenderness she’s displaying for these littles, not knowing anything except that they belong on a designer kids-wear ad over Downtown Disney, is moving…mesmerizing. “Come out, come out. I’m not going to let the scary man hurt you, okay?”
Record scratch. So much for “mesmerizing.”
“Scary?” I spit.
“Zeus,” she admonishes. “Isn’t it obvious?” She tilts her head, sending them an engaging smile. Past her upturned lips, she levels, “I’m not sure they know where they are—or if they’ve seen the real world before.”
“What?” I snap. “What do you mean, ‘the real world’? Like they’ve never been—”
The twins turn over my answer before it’s fully formed. Warming to Emma’s soft coaxes, the pair finally steps across the threshold of the elevator into the halogen glare from the first-responder staging area. As soon as the garish beams flow across their faces, they let out taut, tearful screeches and then collapse to their knees, burrowing their heads into their folded arms.
Emma whips up her head, her stunned stare likely a mirror of my own. Clearly that twist wasn’t on her list of expectations. Her distress has me crumpling down to the floor too. I reach out for the girls, though the action is probably too little too late. I hate that they’ve flinched because of me. Fuck. As far as I’ve come as a human being, sometimes I’m still an unthinking moron.
The girls beat a frantic retreat back to their mysterious hole, but instead of dropping back into the opening, they skid to a screeching stop right in front of it. They look down, heads nearly melding into each other like conjoined twins, before emitting more of those otherworldly shrieks.
“Oh, my God,” Emma rasps. “What are they…why are they…”
“It looks like they’re…grieving,” I stammer.
“Or just seri
ously stressing?” she conjectures. “Wait. Now what? Are they…talking? To each other?”
Her point is validated by rapid-fire sibilance from the girls, carrying the ups and downs of a conversation. But my ears confirm Davidson’s assertion—they’re not communicating in any recognizable language. Being a global playboy in my former life has guaranteed I know a bit of nearly every popular language.
“But who are they talking to?” Emma presses. “Just…each other? Or someone down there?”
“You mean several floors down an elevator shaft?” My snark isn’t intentional, but hanging on to a modicum of logic makes it necessary—which has to be the oxymoron of the year. Am I really standing here with neon-blue fingers, watching a pair of perfect anime characters, worrying about hanging on to my logic?
But in this case, the rationality is justified—perhaps the key to maintaining my sanity. Because if what she’s saying is true and something from down there helped the girls get up here…
But who?
And how?
And why now?
“Well, do you think those two children bore that hole through an elevator car by themselves?”
That astute question from my brilliant wife is only going to be answered in one way.
But as soon as I clear one footstep across the gap into the lift, the twins cut loose once more with their unearthly shrieks.
Then spin around with terrorized expressions to match.
Gone are the pair of skittish doll faces. In their place are two visages with peeled-back lips, green-veined skin—and eyes that shine out at me in that same zombie-bright shade. And this time, it’s no metaphor. Their eyes are definitely shining—glowing as if the cosmos has taken the light sticks of my fingers, changed the shade to bright green, and then shoved them into these kids’ heads.
The effect is so jarring, I freeze in place. And wait for their adorable little heads to start three-sixty spins atop their bodies.
“The fuck?” I spew, unable to edit the profanity past my shock. But I’m certain that if Emma was capable of speech, she’d be spilling something similar. For the moment, her air is stuck in her throat and emerges only as a few shocked chokes at a time. “What— What the hell is—” But my breath isn’t coming any easier. I’m not sure I want it to. If I complete the question, I have to consider an answer.
I have to supply the obvious answer.
And I can’t.
Emma’s form stiffens. Her glow falters. Her breath shivers like a flow of unstable ions. “Wh-What do we do now?”
I’m pathetically silent. Not by choice. I keep hoping that a shaft of enlightenment will explode open on top of this shaft, bearing seraphs who play harps with songs of divine wisdom for us. My pride wards off arrows of uncertainty, creating a full war zone in my senses. For fuck’s sake, I’ve fought nearly every category of lowlife Los Angeles has to offer—so why the hell are two little girls unraveling my fortitude like cheap socks?
But they are.
Even through the next long moment and then the next. And the two after that. Nothing’s changing about our bizarre standoff with the winsome twosome. Well, winsome up until a minute ago, when I dared too close to their territory. Their reaction, still blatant across their faces, continues to validate the hopelessness beneath Emma’s query.
What do we do now? How are we going to find that answer?
Unless it’s the light we’ve had all along—and have simply refused to acknowledge.
The light…
In the form of our amazing, dazzling, whizzing, whirling son.
Who accomplishes every breathtaking bolt of that wizardry through the air over our heads.
Through the air.
Over our heads.
I shouldn’t be witnessing his flight with my jaw dropped nearly to the floor. The kid already showed us his aerial abilities less than an hour ago, zooming his way into our bedroom in the Brocade’s penthouse. I guess this is a little like a parent who’s watched his kid rehearsing clarinet at home but not with everyone watching.
Only this isn’t exactly the clarinet. And the people watching aren’t my son’s teachers and peers.
My son, Lux Mitchell Tycin Richards, is airborne in front of a couple of fire battalions, their dumbfounded chiefs, and half a dozen SWAT guys.
With arrogant ease, I swing a smirk over my shoulder at all of them. Fruit of my loins, motherfuckers. Watch and learn.
Who the hell am I kidding?
I’m right here along with them. Watching. Learning.
Lux twists and straightens and then touches down in a perfect landing just a few inches from the terrified twins.
He breathes steadily, despite how they react as if a rattlesnake has flown in and landed.
He scoots forward, tilting his bright towhead to the left and then to the right. As he favors each side, the little girl corresponding to that direction undergoes a sudden—and eye-popping—transformation.
As if my kid has brought some kind of wand along with his flight, the twins have been transformed. While traces of the green light still linger in their eyes, I don’t still suspect they’re about to summon the hounds of hell to help them out. Though part of me—a prominent part—still wonders if hell is exactly what they’re used to, considering their bizarre behavior of the last five minutes. If that’s the case, it was likely a hell inflicted by adults, since even Lux’s unorthodox arrival didn’t elicit as much as an eye blink from the two.
Holy Christ.
What the hell have these girls been through? What kinds of atrocities have they truly endured?
Just contemplating those answers makes me yearn to slice open the wall again.
Stupidly, I let the rage roll right out of me in a turbulent flood. It hits the twins as if I’ve physically charged into the elevator and stabbed lightning bolts into them. I attempt a correction, backing away and roping back my aggression, but not before the girls slide down to their backsides in the corner, each attempting to curl into the lap of the other.
Which lands me in a puddle of self-recrimination.
But beyond that…self-congratulation.
Yeah, at the same time.
Because though Papa Richards has messed up, Lux Richards is there to show the old man how this “rescuing people” thing is really supposed to go.
By rolling up all two and a half feet of his posture and then gallantly extending a hand toward one of the girls. And then the other.
By waiting there, with the patience most men—let alone boys—don’t have, as the twins openly debate his offer.
By letting them reach back out to him, finally slipping their small hands into the comforting embrace of his.
And at last, by showing me—showing us all—the real, true lesson we have to watch and learn from him here.
From all three of these incredible beings.
EMMA
“Oh…my God.” I’m aware of the words leaving my lips, but my awed whisper is wrapped in a thousand clouds inside my mind. My eyes are seeing this, but my senses aren’t understanding it. Or maybe they don’t want to. Perhaps because they already know what I’ll be forced to admit once they do.
A recognition not sitting well with the rest of me. My belly is a taut, tangled wad. My breaths are dull blades shinking in and out through the sharpening stones of my lungs. My blood thunders in my ears. But I can’t deny the facts I have to face, manifesting with such resplendence before me. Amazing me but daunting me. Moving me but paralyzing me. Brimming tears to my eyes that sting with both wonder and terror in the same heavy drops.
And then heavier, as the children wrap themselves tighter around each other. As soon as they do, each juncture of their hands becomes a conduit for their energies: Lux’s blue and gold streams begin mixing with their bright-green ones, forming sizzling arcs that swiftly blend into crackling electric rainbows. But the visual is just the start of their impact on the air. There’s a vibration they give off, happy as waves of sunshine heat on a summer bea
ch. And then a music they play, sweet as a choir lifted in praise to the heavens. And then a pronounced leap of energy…
Like three children rejoicing in the discovery of a new friendship.
My tears roll down harder. I look up to my husband, smiling softly as his jaw juts from the pressure of holding his own shit together. He’s as moved as I am—but he’s also just as conflicted. Because he knows, just as I do, exactly what we’re beholding.
Our son has never been happier…because he’s found others like him.
Which makes this more than just a new friendship. More than just meeting “mortal” friends on the playground, exchanging contact information for playdates, and then lecturing Lux once more about the necessity of using his limits, hiding who and what he is.
In this moment, he no longer has to hide.
He’s Lux the Incredible, in every form he wants to unleash that brilliance. He’s Lux the Miracle, full of power. He’s Lux the Extraordinary, full of light. But best of all, he’s no longer Lux the Only. Or Lux the Lonely.
A celebration for him—but the world’s worst dilemma for his Dada and Mama. I see that realization across Reece’s tense face, as well. This isn’t a we-can-face-that-tomorrow kind of thing, either. This is the part where we summon all the mettle behind our superhero designations. The part where we prove, in the crucibles of our hearts and souls, why and how we can rise above the rest.
By confronting the slew of obvious questions because of all this. The questions that already turn our stomachs, despite the beautiful package in which they’ve been wrapped. The questions that make us think of ripping out our fingernails as a delightful alternative.
Who are these girls?
Where did they come from?
Why are they exactly like Lux?
And the shittiest queries of them all:
Who the hell sent them here? And why?
In the moment Reece and I join our stares, our eyes bleak, before we can start conjectures about those answers, there are a couple of new figures in our periphery. We tick our heads in tandem to see the small crowd of first responders has grown by two figures, their faces full of as much gawk factor as ours.
