Conspiracy of Angels

by Laurence MacNaughton

  Tucked underneath one corner of the laptop was a folded-up map. She hopped off the table and pulled the map out, unfolding it just enough to make out a section on the north side of town, where Michael had highlighted several streets and circled one block in red ink.

  She refolded the map and stuffed it in her pocket, then searched the kitchen until she found the biggest knife she could, one with an old wooden handle and a rust spot on the blade. It made her feel a little better.

  She crept over to the door and eased it open. The hall was empty. She could see straight through to the garage and the edge of Brutus’s fender. Just the sight of that fender made her feel a surge of confidence. She could do this. She could get out. She knew it.

  The van sat there, too. Apparently no one had tried to drive it yet, or found the note she’d taped to the steering wheel.

  Good. They’d figure it out soon enough. But first, she needed a few things.

  She crept down the hall to her room. It looked just the way she’d left it. Air mattress on the floor. Lava lamp. Two duffel bags of clothes, one clean, one dirty. A bookshelf made of boards and concrete blocks, with the stumps of burned candles on top.

  She grabbed the bag of clean clothes. Found her shop manual on the shelf, the one her dad had given her after they found the car and Geneva named him Brutus. She felt under her pillow for her pulser. Checked the charge. The light glowed green.

  She put the book and the knife in her bag. She looked around for her goggles, but they didn’t turn up. She couldn’t remember bringing them back inside, either. Maybe they were still in Brutus.

  Just then, glass shattered somewhere in the far end of the building. A thin electronic beeping filled the air.

  A cold feeling rushed through her body. That alarm was Michael’s phase detector. If it was going off, it meant only one thing.

  The Archangel was here.

  She ran down the hall toward Michael’s old room and Arthur, pulser held high.

  TEN

  It was quiet in the black Lincoln, except for the woman’s voice coming out of the dashboard. “Turn left in one half mile,” she said.

  Mitch frowned at the little screen. “Why don’t you turn this thing off? It keeps trying to get us back onto Colfax.”

  Lanny shook his head. “Man, you know how hard it is to set that thing?”

  “Where’d you set it for?”

  “I don’t know. Thought I set it for Ruben’s Conoco.”

  “The Conoco’s not on Colfax,” Mitch said.

  Lanny sighed. “Man, I know that.”

  The dashboard said, “Turn left at the next intersection.”

  “So why don’t you just turn it off?”

  “You know how hard it is to turn it back on?”

  Clean poked his head up from the back seat. “Hey Lanny, you remember to take those training wheels off this morning?”

  “Did I ask you? Huh?”

  The dashboard said, “Please make a legal U-turn.”

  Mitch shut it off and pulled down the spring-loaded lid that said NAVIGATOR in big chrome letters. He leaned back in the seat. They were cruising past warehouses and manufacturing places with big loading docks. Half the buildings looked deserted. Rusted barrels and chain link fences slid past the windows. Ruben had said he saw her drive off this way.

  This way. That didn’t exactly narrow it down.

  A plastic bag crinkled, and Clean started munching on something. The noise was loud in the padded silence.

  Lanny looked up in the rearview mirror. “What is that?”

  “What is what?”

  “Man, I told you. Do not eat in my whip.”

  “I know what you told me.” He kept crunching.

  “You can get out now, man.”

  “Sure, you let me out in front of a KFC. Or a Popeye’s.”

  Lanny shook his head. “Man’s always with the fried chicken. Enough to make your arteries clog up just listening to him.”

  “What’s wrong with fried chicken? It’s all protein. Low carbs.”

  “Man, am I trying to die? Am I? You know how much saturated fat you’re sucking down with just like one of them drumsticks?”

  Mitch rubbed the back of his neck. He was getting a headache. “Look, let’s just find the girl and get this over with.”

  “Yeah,” Clean said. “I got better things to do. Like get laid.”

  Mitch turned around in his seat.

  Clean stopped with a corn chip halfway to his mouth. “What?”

  “Listen, we get there, you stay in the car.”

  “What? Screw that.”

  “I just want to talk to this girl. I don’t want anybody scaring her. You understand me? No complications.”

  Lanny peered over the tops of his sunglasses at Mitch. “You want to run that one past me one more time? Girl put the smackdown on your TV set. Shot you with a stun gun, knocked your ass out.”

  “Yeah.” Mitch shrugged. “I got a funny feeling about that, though. Something I was missing.”

  Clean snorted. “She tries to draw a bead on me with any stun gun, ka-bam!” He clapped his hands together. “I’ll put the smackdown on her so fast.”

  “You know what your problem is?” Mitch said, not bothering to look at him. “You got no sense of consequences.”

  Lanny rolled down his window, letting in the noise of the wind. He drummed his fingers on the black paint. “Man, how we going to find this girl, anyway? For real, no way I’m going up and down this row of warehouses all day, hoping we just run into her.”

  A double-wide garage door on their left burst apart, big pieces of bent metal flying out as a black Cougar roared through, backward. It turned as it hit the street, tires smoking.

  Lanny yanked hard on the wheel. The Lincoln swerved out of the way. Mitch caught a glimpse of the black-haired girl behind the wheel of the Cougar. Somebody was in the passenger seat next to her. Then the Lincoln hit the curb and Mitch just about cracked his head on the windshield.

  A beat-up gray van drove through what was left of the garage door, sending more pieces skittering across the lot. Mitch recognized the van and its mashed grille. It turned and took off after the Cougar.

  Lanny and Mitch looked at each other.

  Clean pounded his fist into the back of Lanny’s seat. “Don’t sit there! Go! Go!”

  Lanny turned the Lincoln around and floored it.

  Mitch put on his seat belt.

  A few seconds later, they caught up to the van. A piece of paper flew out of the van’s window and flipped end over end, then stuck on the Lincoln’s windshield. It had three words written on it in black magic marker: DON’T DRIVE ME. Then it blew off.

  Mitch had no idea what that was supposed to mean. He pulled out his .45 and racked a round into the chamber.

  Ahead of them, the Cougar slowed at a stop sign, long enough to make sure no one was coming through. Then the girl took off again, chirping the tires, leaving little patches of rubber on the pavement.

  But something was wrong with the van. The brake lights kept coming on, but the van didn’t slow down at all.

  A guy with a red beard leaned out the passenger window with an AK-47, aiming at the Cougar.

  Lanny said, “Aw, damn. Mitch, you didn’t say nothing about this.”

  Mitch buzzed down his window.

  The red-bearded guy opened up with his AK-47. A tongue of hot muzzle flash lit up the front of the gun. Brass casings flew back and clattered off the Lincoln’s windshield.

  Mitch leaned out into the wind. There was no way he’d hit the guy from here. But maybe he could get his attention.

  He aimed as carefully as he could, bracing his arms on the Lincoln’s side mirror. He squeezed off a shot just as Lanny hit a bump. Missed. He aimed again, fired and blew out the van’s right rear window.

  The guy with the rifle craned his head around, yelled something into the van.

  Mitch shouted at him, “That’s right, you son of a bitch.” He let loose one sho
t after another, taking out the other back window. “Remember me?”

  Lanny started to yell something, but Mitch got distracted by a blur of movement outside. He squinted up at it but he couldn’t make it out, even as it came down right on top of him. The Lincoln’s roof crashed in, collapsing down around their heads. Lanny screamed at the top of his lungs.

  The Lincoln’s tires screeched, skidding to a halt. The sudden stop threw Mitch against the seat belt. Something big and blurry rolled off the roof, dented the hood and landed on the road in front of them with a sound like a brick wall coming down.

  Mitch sank back in the seat, gasping for breath. He looked over at Lanny. He could see him from the chest down. Everything else was hidden by the mashed-in roof.

  Lanny ducked to look at Mitch around the deep dent in the roof. “I got to be tripping, man. You see this?”

  The thing that hit them, whatever it was, rose up in the road in front of them. Mitch couldn’t make it out through the broken windshield, not exactly. Just wavy ripples in the air where it stood, as if it was vibrating ungodly fast, staying just a split second in front of his eyes.

  Mitch had once seen a guy on trial for robbing a bank. They’d showed a bunch of clips from the bank’s security cameras, and during the testimony they’d sped up the film to get to the parts they wanted. On the TV screen, the room and the parking lot stayed the same, but the people moved so fast you couldn’t see them. You knew they were there, zipping through the picture, but they were nothing but blurs.

  And that’s exactly what this thing looked like.

  Mitch shoved the door open and got out, aiming the .45 at it. The thing loomed over him, a jittery shadow with long arms, and something rising from its back that might have been wings. He had the chilly feeling it was looking right back at him.

  Ahead of them, the van disappeared around the corner, swaying hard to the side, tires letting out one long squeal that ended in a whump of metal hitting something solid.

  There was a change in the air, a sensation of movement. Mitch didn’t blink, but the blur was gone. Just like that.

  *

  Michael felt it all happen in slow motion. Genie’s black Cougar sped around the corner, and as Michael followed, the brake pedal went all the way to the floor. He tried to pump it, but the pedal stayed flat beneath his foot. The brakes were dead.

  The van swayed steeply as they turned. Michael shifted into neutral, but it was too late. They tilted beyond the point of no return. Michael fought the steering wheel as it seemed to come alive, twisting itself out of his hands. The tires let out a single warbling protest as the van tilted onto two wheels and tipped over.

  “Hang on!” he shouted.

  Raph pulled himself back inside the window just as the van toppled over and hit the ground with a deafening boom. They skidded off the road toward a chain link fence. Metal crumpled and screamed. The van sledded across the asphalt, rattling Michael’s teeth.

  They hit the fence and stopped hard. Everything inside the van flew. Tools, loose ammo and cans of food bounced off the dashboard and pelted Michael’s body. The windshield, cracked across the middle from the crash, erupted with a dozen spiderwebs of broken glass.

  Michael stood up, bruised and disoriented, and almost lost his footing. The seats were sideways. The windows of the van looked up at the sky. Junk littered the crumpled side of the van, which had become the floor.

  Raph slung his AK-47 over his shoulder. With a rag, he wiped blood off of Gabe’s face. Gabe coughed, and broken glass rained out of his hair.

  Michael sized him up. “How bad?”

  Gabe took the rag and waved Raph off, but the blood ran down the front of his shirt.

  Raph turned to Michael with a dangerous look in his eyes. “Mitch Turner, chasing us. Did you see him? This is why we should have finished him last night.”

  “I told you only to question him.”

  Raph shrugged. “And I told you. He got away.”

  Gabe grabbed onto a seat for support. “Michael. What now?”

  “What do you think?” Raph spat. “Eliminate the loose ends.” He slammed a new magazine into the AK-47.

  “Wait,” Michael said. “Not yet.”

  “Now. I’ve had enough. This time, I’ll do it myself.” Raph climbed back through the van and forced the rear doors open. He stepped out, disappearing into the bright sunlight.

  Michael pulled Gabe to his feet. “How did Arthur get the black box?”

  Gabe shook his head and repositioned the bloody rag. “I don’t know. Genie must have helped him.”

  It hit Michael then: the note taped to the steering wheel, written in Genie’s handwriting. Don’t Drive Me. She’d truly turned against him.

  “The Archangel.” Gabe touched Michael’s shoulder. “If it gets the black box …”

  “It won’t. We’ll find them before it does. Can you move?”

  Gabe felt the back of his neck and winced. “Good enough. What about Raph?”

  “Let him go. Worry about the Archangel first.”

  *

  Geneva heard the van crash, but she kept going for a few blocks, putting distance between them. Her heart hammered in her chest.

  Michael could be dead. She slowed down, unsure of herself.

  In the passenger seat, Arthur clutched the black box tight to his chest. “What do you think you’re doing? Drive!”

  She pictured Michael unconscious in the van. Maybe trapped. It could be on fire.

  “What have I done?” she whispered.

  “What?” Arthur turned around and peered through the back window. “We have to get out of here!”

  She did a U-turn and headed back.

  “Are you crazy?” Arthur looked like he wanted to jump out of the car while it was still moving. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I don’t know.” A sick feeling rose up inside her when she spotted the van. She hit the gas.

  The van was lying on its site, crumpled like an aluminum can, its rear wheels still spinning. She flew down the street toward it and laid on the brakes, skidding to a stop right behind it. It lay across a flattened chain link fence at the edge of some kind of junk lot. The place was a maze: huge piles of scrap metal, racks of steel drums, a few battered forklifts and cranes parked on dirt. She didn’t see any sign of life.

  “I’ve got to find Michael.” Geneva could hear the panic in her own voice. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” She got out of the car, leaving the door open behind her.

  “They’re going to kill us!” Arthur scrambled out after her.

  “Just stay here.” Geneva switched on her pulser. “Get back in and lock the doors.”

  Arthur turned and charged off into the maze of scrap metal and barrels. She lost sight of him almost instantly.

  “Arthur!” She chased after him for a few steps, then stopped. “Damn it!”

  She ran back to the rear of the van. The doors were partly open. “Michael?” she called out softly.

  She coughed. The van’s engine was still running, and blue smoke started to chug out of the tailpipe. She bent down and peeked inside the back doors. The van was empty.

  In the distance, something screeched. It wasn’t human.

  She jerked her head up, heart pounding. She knew that sound. She’d heard it the night her parents died.

  It was the Archangel.

  ELEVEN

  Mitch came around to the driver’s side of the Lincoln and found Lanny staring straight ahead at the empty road, his eyes wide. Slowly, he turned his head toward Mitch. He didn’t blink. “Okay. That’s it for me, man. I’m done.”

  “Yeah.” Mitch popped the clip out of his gun, swapped it for a full one from his pocket.

  “That’s all you got to say? ‘Yeah’? Did you just see that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lanny looked at him expectantly. “For real, I’m done. I got no idea what that thing was. And ask me if I even want to know. Go on. Ask me.”

  “You
want to find out the truth about Jocelyn? About how she really died?”

  Lanny’s expression softened. “Dog, don’t do this to me. She was family to me, all right? I’m as broke up about her as anybody.”

  Mitch shot him a look. “Really.”

  Lanny looked down the road again, hissing through his teeth. A column of black, oily smoke rose up over the rooftops. Lanny shook his head. “The things I do for you, man.”

  Mitch came back around the Lincoln, got in and racked a round into the .45. “Let’s go. Slow.”

  They got to the corner of the brick building and Mitch had Lanny stop. He got out and crept along the wall, the .45 tight in both hands. He peeked his head around the corner, just for a moment. He caught a glimpse of the van crumpled on its side, thick black smoke churning up from its engine. It had crashed through a chain link fence into a paved back lot. The place was full of rusty oil drums and piles of scrap metal. The fence spread out on both sides of the van, like a smashed metal hammock.

  The black Cougar sat just outside the hole in the fence, behind the van, two long trails of skid marks leading to its tires.

  Both of the Cougar’s doors were open. There was nobody in sight, living or dead.

  He pulled his head back and leaned against the sun-warmed wall, figuring out his options. He didn’t like the idea of going in there. But he needed to find the girl before those guys in the van got to her. And before they got to him.

  Either that, or he’d have to pack it in and go on the run. He didn’t like that option either. There was one thing he had learned, doing time. If someone was after you, you didn’t have the opportunity to sit around and work it out. You could hide, for a while. But sooner or later, you’d meet up, and someone had to take a fall. Better to do it on your own terms.

  Around the corner, someone let loose with an automatic weapon. Mitch ducked his head on instinct. In the Lincoln, Lanny slid down until only his eyes showed over the steering wheel.

  Someone, a man, shouted something in the back lot. It wasn’t in English.

  Mitch waited. Nothing.