Jonah sat without moving as Beth described the encounter, finishing with: “She saw my angel; she knew exactly what had been happening. But she — she told me horrible things. I mean, really horrible things.” He could hear tension running through the girl’s tone, like a thin steel wire.
“Can you tell me what?” asked Jonah. He reached for a pencil on his desk and fiddled with it nervously, tapping it against a yellow legal pad.
“I don’t really like talking about it,” said Beth. “But if the angels have asked . . . ” She took a deep breath. “She — she said that my angel wasn’t good. That he was . . . killing me and that I should get away from him. She got really insistent about it, in fact. She said that if I joined the Church, I would keep getting sicker and sicker.”
Jonah cleared his throat, his thoughts whirling. “I see. And . . . you haven’t, of course.”
“No, of course not!” said Beth. “I mean — yeah, I’m pretty tired sometimes, and my muscles ache, but I think I might just have the flu or something. I’m fine. I couldn’t be happier. Do you know if she’s been found yet?”
“No, not yet,” said Jonah.
“Oh,” said Beth. “I was hoping —” She sighed. “I just really hate the thought that she’s out there and that she might hurt the angels.”
“We’ll get her soon,” said Jonah distantly. “Thanks for your help, Beth. The angels be with you.”
After he hung up, he sat at his desk for a long time, looking at Willow’s smiling photo and trying to take in what he had just found out. Willow had thought that Paschar was a danger; she’d tried to stop Beth from joining the Church because she was worried about what it might do to her. Far from being an evil threat, it sounded as if Willow had actually been concerned about Beth and trying to help her.
And now the angels wanted her dead.
Jonah stared blindly at the screen, hating the thoughts that were icing through his mind. The angels had saved him. They had saved him; there was no doubt at all about that. Yet he was starting to wonder if maybe he was the exception.
Who could tell him what was really happening? Who could he go to for answers?
A thought came to him; he stiffened. Slowly, he clicked his mouse a few times and pulled up an e-mail on his screen. Since the assassin’s disappearance, Jonah himself was no longer responsible for dealing with the problem of the traitor angels — but when information came to Raziel by e-mail, he was still often copied in on it. Now he sat gazing at the three-line e-mail with its brief contact details, his heart thudding. The very idea was repugnant: to actually talk to one of them? Yet if he really wanted answers, this might be the only place he could find them.
I can’t, thought Jonah, clutching his temples. I’m just getting it all wrong. I’ve got to believe in them. What else do I have?
But there were Raziel’s laughing words. The woman slumped against the wall, her face drained. And the smiling girl on the website, who had tried to warn someone that an angel was hurting her.
It felt as if the whole world was ringing in his ears.
Jonah reached for his pencil and the legal pad. His hands shaking slightly, he glanced back at the e-mail and wrote down a phone number.
The camp lay in the southern part of the state, twenty miles out in the desert: a hard, scrubby land with bare, flat-topped mountains rising up from the horizon. There were no signs or roads, but Alex knew the way like he knew his own face in the mirror — though he’d never imagined making the drive in a boatlike Chevy that belonged back in the seventies with sideburns and bell-bottom jeans. He kept the speed low as the car moved slowly over the rough ground, watching the temperature gauge and praying that the radiator wouldn’t overheat. It already felt like it was nearing a hundred outside. And, just to make things even more fun, the car seemed to be out of Freon now. Even with the windows rolled down, it was stifling.
The tension from when he’d picked the glass out of Willow’s hair had faded with the morning, and he and Willow talked easily on the journey. Her slim arms were glowing with a faint sheen of sweat as she sat with her bare feet propped up onto the dashboard. “I wish I had a pair of shorts,” she said, fanning herself.
“We can probably get you some at the camp,” said Alex. “Someone should have something you can wear.”
Her green eyes looked thoughtful. “Are there female AKs?”
Alex nodded. “Sure, some really good ones. In fact, women tend to take to the chakra work better than men.” He went silent as they came to a dried-out riverbed, concentrating as he guided them over the rocky ground. A lizard sat on a nearby boulder, observing them with a contemptuous stare. Do you really think that thing’s going to make it? Good luck, sucker. Hope you enjoy being buzzard meat. Christ, all they needed was to break an axle out here. Not even Willow could fix that.
The Chevy groaned as it struggled up the riverbank, and Alex winced, wondering if they were going to have to walk the rest of the way. Then, with a sudden straining heave, the car made it up and over. He let out a breath.
Willow pulled her long hair off her neck and knotted it back in a bun. She cleared her throat as she finished. “You know, I’m sort of nervous about this.”
“What? Going to the camp?”
She nodded, tapping her hand against the open window. “With all the Angel Killers there, when I’m . . . what I am. They’re not exactly going to be my new best friends, are they?” Her voice sounded tense.
Stupidly, this hadn’t even occurred to him. He thought about it as he steered them around a series of ruts. “I guess some of them might be pretty taken aback at first,” he said. As he had been; he didn’t say this, but he knew they were both thinking it. “But, Willow, it’s not like you’re on the angels’ side — they want you dead; they think you can destroy them. That’s what everyone will be interested in, not what you are.”
She grimaced. “I hope so.”
The urge to touch her was overwhelming. Alex gave into it, resting his fingers fleetingly on her arm. “Hey, don’t worry. It’ll be OK.”
Willow’s face relaxed a fraction. She shot him a small smile. “All right. Thanks.”
They drove in silence for a while as the Chevy wheezed and moaned across the desert. Spiky yucca plants dotted the dry soil, and lizards scuttled out of their way. Finally, Alex saw the camp’s chain-link fence come into view, wavering with heat lines in the distance. “Guess what. I think we made it,” he said.
Willow sat up straight. “Is that it?”
“That’s it.” Viewing the camp through her eyes, he saw a cluster of low white buildings in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a chain-link fence with razor-edged wire curling at its top. There were no trees, no ornamentation of any kind. It was sparse and functional, completely featureless.
It was the only home he’d ever really known.
Willow pulled her shoes on, not taking her eyes off the camp as they neared it. “It looks just like what I saw.” She gave him an uncertain glance. “So, how many people will be there? Do you know?”
He shook his head. “No idea. The most there ever were when I lived here was thirty-seven.”
“That’s all?”
Alex shrugged. “It varied,” he said. Varied, depending on who had gotten killed that week and on whether his father had managed to recruit anyone new. They had gotten a lot of crazies out there — people who couldn’t handle the energy work and ended up drifting around in a dreamy haze, or psychos who just wanted to shoot up everything in sight. The core number of AKs that you could actually count on had been more like twelve.
As they neared the gates, he slowed the Chevy almost to a stop and untwisted the wires under its steering wheel. Obediently, the car died.
He stepped out into the baking sun, shading his eyes as he gazed around the camp. Apprehension crawled across his neck. It was much too quiet; there wasn’t a single other vehicle in sight. On the gate in front of them, the sign that said PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT AT RISK OF PHYSICAL HARM was
hanging sideways, dangling loosely from one screw.
On the other side of the car, Willow had gotten out, too, staring in at the buildings beyond the fence. She looked quickly at him, not saying anything.
Alex had a very bad feeling about this. Walking up to the gate, he saw that the lock that had always hung there was missing; there was only a latch in its place. He lifted it, and the gate pushed open easily at his touch. Inside, the building that they’d used as general storage stood with its metal door open, obviously vacant. The other buildings looked similarly abandoned. Jesus, it was a ghost town in there.
Willow moved to his side, hugging her arms. “So what does this mean?”
“It means I’m an idiot,” said Alex. He slapped his hand against the chain-link fence; it trembled and rattled. “Shit. The CIA must have moved the whole operation after they took over. The training camp could be anywhere now.”
Willow bit her lip. “Oh.” She looked back at the buildings. “Do you think Cully is definitely where the camp is?”
“I don’t know. I just assumed he’d be training new AKs, but . . . ” Alex pushed harshly at the PRIVATE PROPERTY sign, so that it swung on its remaining screw. “I don’t even know how to get hold of him. None of us have any of the other’s cell phone numbers anymore.”
Willow looked deep in thought. “Well — what if he’s not training new AKs?” she suggested finally. “Where would he be, then? Maybe we could start with that, and see if we can track him down.”
Her reasonable tone calmed him, made it easier to think. “Yeah, maybe . . . We could try Albuquerque, I guess. I know most of his old hangouts. If he’s not with the AKs, he’s probably there somewhere.”
“OK,” said Willow. “Albuquerque it is.”
She gave him a smile, and Alex managed a rueful one in return, relieved that she wasn’t blaming him for his stupidity — he was blaming himself enough already for both of them. He started to head back to the car, already dreading the thought of trying to get the thing across the desert again.
“Wait — could we have a look around before we go?”
Alex turned to her in surprise. She was still standing at the fence gazing into the camp, the sun casting chain-link diamonds across her face.
“What for?” he asked.
Willow ran her finger along one of the chain links, and glanced back at him with a smile. “I’d just really like to see where you grew up.”
“This was the canteen,” said Alex.
They were in a long, low building with a counter on one side. The metal folding tables and chairs were still there, the chairs scattered about the tables as if everyone had just gotten up and trooped off to the rec room to play poker, or to the range for some target practice. Standing beside the counter, Alex shoved his hands in his back pockets, gazing around him. It was like seeing two scenes at once, one overlaid on the other: there were Cully and some of the other AKs, sitting laughing at a table. Man, what is this crap? Cully had demanded at practically every meal. Where’s that lowlife cook, so I can shoot him? Alex smiled slightly, remembering. There had been no cook; they’d lived off canned goods and stuff in plastic packets.
Willow drifted around the room. Her fingers trailed across the back of a chair as she passed. “What was it like, growing up here?”
“I don’t know. It just seemed normal to me.” Alex picked up an empty coffee mug from the counter and turned it over in his hands. “We didn’t have a TV because it would drain the generator, so I didn’t really know how weird it was. I mean, I sort of knew that the rest of the world didn’t live like this, but . . . ” He shrugged, putting the mug back.
“How old were you when you moved here?”
“Five,” he said.
“God, so young,” she murmured. “Where are you from originally?”
“Chicago. I don’t really remember it, though.”
There was a light dusting of sand on the floor. It made a scraping noise under Willow’s sneakers as she moved to join him. “So what did you learn here, if you didn’t go to school?”
He laughed suddenly. “Hey, we had school. We did target practice, and we learned how to spot angels, take care of our weapons, read auras, manipulate chakra energy . . . ” He raised an eyebrow at her. “I was probably busier than you were.”
Willow shook her head, looking dazed. “Yeah, you probably were. When I was five, I was still trying to color inside the lines.” She leaned against the counter beside him, taking in the empty room. Alex saw that her hair had slipped slightly from its knot, resting on her neck in a loose coil. Against his will, he found himself remembering the softness of it, the silkiness of its long strands as he’d stroked his hands through them the night before.
“And your father started this place?” asked Willow, looking up at him.
Glad for the distraction, Alex pushed himself away from the counter. “Yeah. Come on, I’ll show you the bunkhouse.” The sunlight dazzled the white buildings as they went back outside, nova-bright. “My dad worked for the CIA,” he said as they walked through the burning heat. “I guess he specialized in some pretty strange stuff — before he joined the CIA, he spent a few years in Asia, learning about human energy fields, how to work with them.”
Their shadows moved ahead of them on the concrete. Walking silently at his side, Willow glanced up at him as she listened.
“He traveled a lot when I was little,” Alex went on. “Then when I was five, his assignment changed or something, and he was home a lot more. And . . . that’s when he first found out about angels.”
They had come to the bunkhouse. The metal door was partly open; Alex pushed it with the flat of his hand and stepped inside. It was relatively cool in here, with shadows painting the walls. The metal bunk beds were still in place, though the mattresses and bedding were gone. “Here’s where I used to sleep,” he said, going over to the second bunk on the right. “My brother, Jake, always took the top bunk, and I got the bottom.”
Willow went still. “Your brother?”
Alex nodded, recalling a hundred fights: “Jake, you jerk-off, you just stepped on my face.” “Hey, you like my smelly feet, don’t you, bro? Here, you want ’em again?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Two years older than me.”
Willow came to stand beside him. She touched his arm. “Alex, I’m . . . really sorry.”
She already knew about Jake. Alex’s muscles tightened, and he kept his eyes on the bunk as images of the Los Angeles canyon flashed past like a deck of shuffled cards. Finally he said, “Do you know the details?”
Willow shook her head. “No. I didn’t see it when I read you. I just sort of guessed. I meant to tell you I was sorry before, but — well, I didn’t like you very much then.” She gave a small smile.
He felt himself relax a fraction. Thank God; having her sympathy for how Jake had died would be like torture. “I don’t blame you,” he said after a pause. “I wouldn’t have liked me very much, either, if I were you.” Glancing down at her, he managed a wry grin.
Their eyes locked and held. Willow’s hand felt warm on his arm, slightly damp from the heat. All thoughts of Jake faded. Alex felt his pulse suddenly beat faster as he looked down at her upturned face. The moment froze, neither of them moving. All at once Willow seemed to realize how close she was standing, and she dropped her hand and stepped back, looking flustered.
Alex cleared his throat, his thoughts tumbling. “Thanks,” he said. “About Jake, I mean. It was a while ago, what happened, but . . . thanks.”
Willow’s cheeks were pink. “You were telling me about your father, and how he first realized about the angels.” She sat on the metal frame of the bottom bunk, leaning against the support post. Alex sat on the other end, careful to keep a few feet between them.
“Yeah.” Suddenly he didn’t feel like dwelling on this. His voice turned curt, impersonal. “See, my mom had been acting really distracted, leaving the house at all hours, that kind of thing. So my dad got suspicious. He thought
she was having an affair or something. So one day he followed her when she said she was going running and found her in the middle of the path, just sort of standing there, smiling up at the sky.”
“Oh, no,” whispered Willow.
“He tried shaking her, slapping her — nothing. Finally, because of all the energy work he’d done, I guess he sensed something strange, and he moved his consciousness up through his chakras. And he saw the angel right there, feeding off her.”
There was utter silence around them.
“The angel was pretty startled when it realized it had been seen by someone it wasn’t feeding from. It turned on my dad and he managed to fight it, using his own energy. That’s not something we do anymore; it’s too dangerous. But meanwhile my mom was screaming and crying, telling Dad to stop, that he didn’t understand. She got in between them, and the angel just . . . ripped her life energy away, all at once.”
Willow’s green eyes were large. Her throat moved as she swallowed.
“The angel took off, and my mom had a massive stroke. She went into a coma and died the next day.” Unbidden, another memory came: himself and Jake, standing at the side of their mother’s hospital bed with their father behind them, gripping their shoulders. Alex remembered feeling more confused than sad, not understanding why she wouldn’t get up.
“Oh, Alex,” breathed Willow. “I am so sorry.”
He gave a brusque shrug. “Anyway, the CIA probably thought Dad was crazy when he started talking about angels killing people, but he’d been with them a long time, so they gave him some funding and let him do what he wanted. Nobody took it seriously, though, back then. Except for the AKs.”
“And . . . then the Invasion happened,” said Willow.
Alex nodded. He had one arm looped around the support post, and he rubbed its warm metal with his thumb. “Yeah. And suddenly the CIA was a lot more interested in whatever it was that Dad had been doing out here all these years. They took over the whole operation, like I told you. And I guess they improved it in a lot of ways. We got better weapons, better cars. And decent salaries for a change.”
Angel Burn Page 20
