by eden Hudson
“No offense,” Scout said in that voice that means all the offense, “But do you even know which way to point a gun?”
Willow smiled. She reached behind her back, lifted up the hem of her baby-t and pulled out a big honking .45 with mother-of-pearl grips and a laser sight clipped to the barrel. She popped the mag, stuck it in her pocket, pulled back the slide, ejected the round from the chamber, and caught the thing midair.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Will said.
Scout’s jaw hit the floor, but she covered that up fast with a scowl. That might’ve been the first time I’d felt like smiling for real over the last few days.
“Where’d you get that?” someone behind me asked. I looked over my shoulder. It was Drake.
And almost every other human in the building.
“It used to be my dad’s.” Will’s ears went red, but she didn’t quit grinning. “One of the foot soldiers snuck up on me and Owen when we were practicing with it a few years ago, but I made a deal with him so we could keep it. Pretty good deal—I got a daughter and the only legal conceal and carry in Halo.”
That burned away what was left of my good mood. Will was so nice. She’d never done anything wrong or hurt anybody in her life. People like her weren’t supposed to get screwed over—literally in her case—by the authorities.
“Wait,” Addison said. “Whose is Bitsy? Is she Ashtaroth’s? She’s Ashtaroth’s, isn’t she?”
“No,” Dodge said. “Bitsy isn’t some fallen angel’s. She’s Willow’s. End of story. And now that we’re all done asking stupid questions, we should probably talk about Tough’s plan. We’re attacking the Dark Mansion tonight.”
Apparently, that was what everybody needed to hear to get them back on track because they all shut up and looked at me like I was going to miraculously start talking.
I pushed Scout out in front of me, then I crossed my arms and leaned against the piercing display counter. She wanted to be the general, let her.
Scout cleared her throat.
That feeling of having been in that exact same spot before was back. How many times had I stood around in crowds of people while we waited for Dad to tell us the plan?
“We’re moving against the Dark Mansion tonight,” Scout said. “I know we thought we were going to have more time to get familiar with our weapons, maybe even some time for target practice, but it looks like tonight or never. We’re going after the Sword of Judgment, Mikal’s fiery sword. Rian has it now.”
Dodge stepped up. “There’s a hostage, too. Tough’s girlfriend.”
Scout flinched when Dodge said girlfriend, but it happened so fast that I think I was the only one who noticed.
“This is volunteer only,” Scout said. “But we need to stress that most of the volunteers will probably die. It’s the fallen angels, so there’s a pretty good chance that all the training in the world wouldn’t have helped us anyway. Tonight isn’t really about finesse. We’re basically just looking to dump as much lead into them as possible while we try to get the sword and while Tough tries to get the hostage out.”
I thought I saw a flicker of uncertainty in her gray eyes, but it was gone before I could be sure.
“We’re not expecting tonight’s assault to be graceful or flawless,” Scout said. “I mean, crap, you guys, we have about as much experience with fighting non-people as vamps have sun-bathing. It’s going to be messy. So really think about this before you say you’re in. Think about what you’re saying yes to. Odds are that for most of us, this is a suicide mission.”
She paused to let that sink in. I waited for somebody to say something, to make any kind of argument about how retarded this was, about how we were all going to die because these were some deadly-ass hornets that we were about to stir up. Hornets who couldn’t die or be killed. Hornets who were faster, stronger, smarter, and a whole hell of a lot more experienced than we were.
The whole tattoo parlor had gone silent. The coyotes and the crows were watching us.
The tension in the back of my neck cranked up a few notches, and I tried to look around at the humans without being obvious about it. You can’t show weakness to any NP—even ones who are supposed to be on your side. That was pretty much the first thing you learned in this town. The second thing you learned was not to fight them because you would lose. Know you’re weaker, but don’t show you’re weaker.
I had no idea how Scout had convinced these people to even show up tonight, much less agree to fight the power. It went against everything they’d done so far to stay alive. Those freedom speeches she’d been feeding them must’ve been seriously powerful.
No human said anything. They were waiting for Scout to go on.
Scout took a deep breath. “There’s one other thing. The Sword of Judgment…the one we’re after… In case you don’t know, if it cuts you at all, it sends you straight to Heaven or Hell. So, if you’re going to volunteer, you should make sure you know where you’re going and make sure you’re okay with it. Like I said, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get there sometime tonight.”
Less than a second passed.
“I’m in,” Dodge said.
“Me, too,” Willow said.
Scout and I already knew they were volunteering, but I knew why they had said it again in front of everyone. It was something the band had figured out a long time ago, playing at Rowdy’s—if you plant somebody out in the crowd to yell the first request, it breaks the ice and lets everybody else know it’s okay to jump in.
That crow-boy, Cash Pershing shouldered through the humans and nodded at Scout. “You going, too, shiny girl?”
Scout didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Then I’m in.” Him and Lonely had probably worked it out so that he would be the crow to speak up for the murder. He was the one these kids went to school with. Out of all the NPs in town, they liked and trusted him the most.
“I’m in.”
“Me, too.”
Jim and Tawny Hicks spoke up at the same time. Then a girl from Scout’s class. Then it was like a mudslide of people volunteering. Nobody wanted to be left out of the dying.
I squeezed the place where my neck met the back of my head, trying to force some of the tension out, and tried not to think about how we had worked the crowd. Just focus on getting Desty away from Kathan. Remember that this was what they’d wanted when they signed up for Scout’s army. But it still felt like we’d tricked them.
Scout must’ve felt it, too, because she let out a little puff of breath and said, “If you die tonight, I’m sorry. I—” She swallowed and tried again, but she couldn’t go on. After a while, she gave up on that thought. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Clarion and Lonely are going to explain the details of the attack and we’ll sort out who is going in when. Then Cash and Talitha and I are going to hand out weapons to anybody who doesn’t have one. Try to get as familiar with them as possible. When we get there…just do whatever you can. It’ll be enough, I promise. And if you see Rian with that flaming sword Mikal used to carry around, scream and fill him full of lead.” She stood up straighter and looked around the room, meeting every eye in the crowd. “This is it, guys. This is where it starts. We closed down the Armistice Celebration and sent the tourists packing. Tonight we show the angels that we’re going to do the same to them.”
“Hell yeah!” one of the boys from Scout’s class yelled.
A couple people nodded. Someone near the back of the crowd clapped.
Dodge stepped forward again. “Uh, I think maybe now would be a good time to pray. I know I’m not exactly a saint and I don’t do much more than lead the Sunday service, but since—” He nodded at me. “—since Tough can’t pray out loud anymore, or at all I guess, I will. Anybody who wants to can join in. Anybody who doesn’t want to or is offended at me suggesting it is welcome to fuck off.”
That got some laughs. Everybody circled up. A few grabbed hands. Then a few more.
Clarion and his packs came over. “Would it
be all right if we joined in?”
“Sure,” Dodge said. “Plenty of you guys are dying tonight, too.”
More laughs. Even I smirked.
Dodge took off his hat and looked around to see if everybody was ready. And since I wasn’t ready and never would be again, I took Dodge’s suggestion and fucked off. After a couple seconds, Lonely followed me.
Upstairs, I grabbed a 12-gauge and that box of armor-piercing incendiary rounds I’d seen earlier. We’d never had any of these come through the arsenal back when I was still hanging around. Which was probably for the best. Ryder would’ve had way too much fun with those.
Lonely smirked at my train of thought. “Point away from yourself. You’re a mite more flammable than you used to be.”
I nodded. I wasn’t looking to spend any more time burning than I had to. I loaded the tube. It took eight rounds. If I survived long enough to run through those, I would probably get staked before I could reload, but I stuck a handful of shells in each pocket anyway. Better safe than sorry.
That made me laugh. Probably the first and the last time I would ever think that.
Lonely cocked his head at me. “You want to know why crows follow the shiny ones?”
Sure, why not?
“The entertainment value.”
I snorted. If you like this, you’re going to love my next trick.
Lonely threw his head back and cackled.
“Try not to get yourself staked, tarnished one,” he said.
Yeah. Hey, do me a favor. There’s someone I don’t want going to the Dark Mansion tonight.
He raised a metal-studded eyebrow. “Who?”
Willow Bue. Distract her, drug her, do that paralyzing trick. I don’t care what you do, just keep her away.
Tempie
One more time, I begged Kathan.
He pressed his ear to the spot just under my bellybutton and listened for several seconds.
The seed’s already taken, he said.
Not for that, I said. For me. I know what’s going to happen when Desty and I become the Destroyer. I know it’s not going to be like this anymore.
He didn’t deny it.
What seemed like long minutes passed with only the touch of our bodies. This time, he didn’t pull me into his mind. More than anything, I wanted to be shattered into those thousand pieces and feel my loathsome self burned away, but I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer.
When it was over, I hugged myself to his chest. Don’t go marching off to war, Johnny.
You’ve always been honest with me, Kathan. You’ve never hidden anything from me.
Are you asking now?
No. I know how you work.
You’re speaking of that old “fallen angels use the truth to lie” axiom.
Better than using a lie to lie, I said. I respect you for it. And I respect that you’re the same all the time. You never change. I think that’s what I like the most about fallen angels. Whatever they were yesterday, they are today, too. If something makes you angry once, it always makes you angry. If something makes you happy once, it always makes you happy.
Constant, Kathan said. That’s called being constant.
Yeah. You’re constant. Humans…they might say they hate something today and tomorrow you find them screwing it out behind the barn.
Temperance, you’re not some fickle whore. I couldn’t have stomached you for this long if you were. Your devotion is constant. Your fury is constant.
No, I said. It was gone sometimes. Really gone. Sometimes…sometimes you made me feel so good…sometimes you almost made me believe that I deserved to feel good.
Silence seeped back into the room and we put it to good use. I was panting and soaked with sweat when it was over, but Kathan wasn’t even breathing hard. He wiped the wet hair out of my eyes and kissed my forehead.
Your anger is a gift, he said.
He was right. But the tag on that present didn’t say “To: Tempie.” No, scrawled in fat black Sharpie on the wrapping paper was the name KATHAN and the instructions FRONT TOWARD ENEMY.
Tough
The first place I went after I left the tattoo parlor was to get my truck. I’d left it parked over behind the bank when I’d tried to get to the bakery to help Colt.
A ghost of a memory whispered in my brain. Tried? Talk about a nice way to say failed.
Well, I was done fucking up and failing. I fired the truck up and headed for the Dark Mansion.
Clare and Lonely had left it up to me to decide how I would get inside without getting staked at the door. I had considered sneaking in the back way again, but that hadn’t done me any good earlier. This time I figured I would just drive right up to the front door.
I thought I heard myself giggle at that, then I remembered that I didn’t have a voice to giggle with anymore. A shiver rolled down my back. This was the kind of crazy you went when you knew you were about fifteen minutes away from waking up in Hell.
The truck fishtailed as I took the turnoff onto gravel, but I didn’t downshift or take my foot off the gas. The muscles in my arms pulled tighter and tighter the closer I got to the Dark Mansion. I was almost to the mansion’s lane before I realized I was silent-humming and tapping my thumbs on the steering wheel along with the psycho-thrash death metal playing in my head.
I turned down the lane, fishtailing again, but I still didn’t touch the clutch or the brake. The little orange needle on my speedometer was climbing toward sixty.
That parking lot full of Hummers and helicopters was coming up fast.
I spun the wheel so that my headlights were shining on the Dark Mansion’s front steps. Something about the headlights was bothering me, but whatever it was, it couldn’t get through the noise in my brain. Something about darkness and light? I’d almost got ahold of the thought when it occurred to me that there wasn’t any old barn where I used to play basketball to distract me this time.
The needle on the speedometer jumped up over the halfway point on my gauge and started heading south again toward 110 mph. Usually my truck topped out at 106, but tonight she was running like a champ.
I grinned. That Whitney luck’s finally starting to kick in.
The headlights lit up the t-post with what was left of my brother’s body wrapped around it.
Dead ahead. I swallowed another silent crazy-giggle at the thought.
I couldn’t swerve or I would flip the truck. It wasn’t Colt anymore, anyway. It was just rotting meat. My stomach clenched, but I gritted my teeth and mowed the post down.
In addition to the eight-inch lift and the badass speakers, my truck’s got a set of mud grips that would make an off-roader cream his jeans. They cost me two months’ pay from Rowdy’s and they were worth every penny. When the truck’s front wheels hit the steps, the grips grabbed ahold and hauled me up, bouncing and throwing me around inside the cab. If I hadn’t had the vamp strength and a strangle-hold on the wheel, I probably would’ve broken my neck.
The big front doors splintered across the hood of the truck. Both side mirrors snapped off. I watched the passenger mirror spin through the air and drop into the bed of the truck.
Then I was wrapped around the dash with the steering column sticking through my left lung and out the back window. The engine block was on fire. I could tell because it was sitting in the seat next to me. Out my window, I saw black smoke billowing up from the wheel wells.
Sound faded back in. The engine roaring, the tires spinning. My foot must still be on the gas. I took it off. The truck lurched, died, and rolled back a few inches from one of the big stone columns in the Dark Mansion’s entrance hall.
The maggots started chewing away at my face, arms, and legs, so I must’ve been pretty messed up. I pulled my right arm out of the hole it’d made in the windshield, then went to work trying to un-impale myself.
Foot soldiers flooded the scene of the crash like first responders. Except these first responders were holding guns on me and screaming to get my hands in the air and my
ass out of the truck.
With both hands, I shoved the dash as hard as I could. There was this squishing sound. Pieces inside me that weren’t supposed to move moved. Another shove. Another squishy burping sound. Then a wet pop and I was off the steering column. I fell back in the seat and slumped over.
“Get out of the truck!” a foot soldier with a pistol screamed at me through the glassless passenger side window. He was one of the newbies I didn’t recognize. “Get out of the truck!”
I nodded and reached for the door handle with my left hand. The maggots picked that moment to go to town on my chest wound. I fell over, squirming around in the cab while they crawled and chewed and generally drove me insane from the inside out. You can’t scratch your internal organs.
Through the vamp healing fit, I could hear the foot soldiers yelling—newbies were yelling at me, locals were yelling at newbies that I was a vamp, everybody was yelling at everybody to find a stake.
When the last maggot finally stopped crawling around inside my chest, my hand was resting on the butt of the shotgun. I laughed. If things kept up like this, I wasn’t going to be able to make any more jokes about Whitney luck.
I picked the shotty up and kicked the bent metal that used to be my truck’s driver side door. It screeched open. I came out shooting.
One for you. The shotgun exploded fire, leaving the entrance hall burning and one foot soldier minus most of his right wing.
I pumped the action.
One for you. Another fireworks show that splattered charbroiled angel shoulder-meat across the walls.
That wreck must’ve screwed up something in my brain because I was pulling to the left. I’d been aiming for his head.
I racked the shotgun and picked another target that I wouldn’t miss by enough to matter.
One for you.
Most of the foot soldiers who weren’t on fire had pulled their sidearms and started shooting. They were probably wishing that they hadn’t brought pussy bullets to an armor-piercing incendiary round fight. I could feel the little nines and .22s slamming into my body, but the pain was far away, like listening to the bass line from a vehicle somewhere down the block.
