Heather nods vigorously as she listens, and Rachel gazes at Nicolas with reverence. Even Raven’s head is up, her eyes affixed to Nicolas. Personally, I can’t help but notice that he hasn’t mentioned any of the Jesus parts of the Bible yet or that whole pesky ‘You shall not murder’ commandment.

  “We are the new chosen people,” Nicolas continues. “We are the Israelites of old whom the Lord will lead to the Promised Land when the rapture comes. He has made us stronger than humans, faster, and smarter. He has given us special gifts that are beyond the realm of understanding.”

  I hold my tongue. God didn’t create these angels; it was a misguided scientist named Dr. Gary Cook. Gabe told the whole story, how Dr. Cook spent his life searching for a way to let humans access their full potential. Imagine his surprise when the formula he’d been working on for decades created strong, swift killers who fed on the energies of humans.

  “We are here to bring a new Heaven and a new earth as God foretold in the Book of Revelations,” Nicolas is saying. “We are his instruments on earth to wipe out wickedness and sin. When we kill to feed, we destroy evil in God’s service.” Nicolas’s voice builds to a crescendo. “It is his will. We are his angels of death. WE ARE THE RAPTURE!”

  “Hallelujah!” Heather and Rachel cry in unison. Heather smiles from ear to ear, and Rachel clasps her hands over her heart. I concentrate on keeping my expression neutral, but alarm bells clatter like crazy inside my head. The fucking rapture? Nicolas is just handsome, well-spoken, and worst of all, a true believer. I understand immediately how dangerous he and his honeyed tongue could be. His words could give Diamond’s teenage army God’s blessing to take out the entire human race.

  I have to find Tarren. We have to stop this.

  “I just like the high,” War breaks in and laughs. “It’s better than anything, baby. Better than heroine. And it makes me so fucking strong!”

  “Aw, War, you ruined it!” Heather pouts.

  “You’re going to want to take the Airport Road exit,” I call out, glad to move us away from the topic of divinely sanctioned murder.

  After cutting off two more cars, War complies and sails us down the off ramp.

  Heather turns in her seat. Her long eyelashes bat as she stares at me. “What were the Vigils like? Were they handsome? Did they look like cowboys?”

  “Cowboys?” I almost laugh but hold it back. “They weren’t riding around on horses.”

  “Ya know what I mean,” Heather says. “Were they, like, you know, heroic?”

  “They were vicious,” War says. “6’5 at least, built like professional wrestlers. Guns strapped to every inch of their bodies. They were beating up on poor Betsy before I got to the scene. I let them capture me, by the way. They handcuffed me to a chair, but as you ladies are well aware, handcuffs can’t hold me.”

  I clear my throat loudly. “Take this right.” I spend the next five minutes giving War turn-by-turn directions onto increasingly less plowed roads. Big lazy flakes fall from the sky, landing almost gently on the windshield.

  War misses the entrance to Rocky Glen and makes a U-turn in the middle of the road, causing both the tires and Heather to squeal. Somehow, we make it to the side of the road without a collision.

  We all take in the pit of blackness in front of us

  “We’re not…actually going out there,” Heather says in a soft voice.

  “This is where I dumped the bodies,” I say and try to sound as confident as possible though my heart is pummeling in my chest. There are no other cars pulled off to the side of the roads, and I’m satisfied that we won’t come across any hapless humans.

  “Did you, like, pick the creepiest place on purpose?” Heather whines.

  “It’s not too far in. There’s a ravine, I just threw them down,” I say.

  War is grimacing. “You really fucking brought them here?”

  “Whenever I go to a new town I always pick a park or wooded area for body dumping.”

  “I don’t like this,” Nicolas says. He turns in his seat to look at me. Those blue eyes of his pierce through me, and I imagine him reading the lies in my aura.

  “Yeah, this looks like a trap place. An ambush place,” Heather says. “Maybe you just go War, and we stay in the car.”

  “Everybody out!” War hollers and pushes his door open. Nicolas continues to stare, and there’s nothing I can do except give him a blank expression that I hope says, La-de-dah, totally not desperately trying to figure out a way to kill you. Finally, he pushes his door open and exits.

  “It ain’t so bad,” Rachel whispers to Heather. “We’ll just stay in back, let the boys handle things.”

  “Is he serious? We all have tah go?” Heather asks, and Rachel answers by opening her own door. A cold rush of snowflakes punctures the warm envelope of the car. After the girls get out, I maneuver around the seats and drop into the snow.

  “Come on Raven, you too!” War yells and bangs on her window.

  A moment later, Raven slinks out, her gaze darting from side to side as she picks up the groans and creaks coming from the woods. My padded coat is gone. So are my scarf and mittens with the purple snowflakes on them and my knit cap, but I don’t even feel the cold. My body is pumping adrenaline, and my skin is trying to crawl right off my bones. Can they see the lie on my face, the obviousness of my desperation?

  Take out War and Nicolas first, I coach myself. Then the twins. And Raven… I don’t know what the fuck to do about Raven. I’ll take her with me. Give her some rats to feed on. I can watch her, train her. And when we find Tarren, then what? Maybe we can open up a happy, fun, fun angel rehab facility together. We’ll call it ‘Angels Reborn’.

  Shut up, I think to my brain.

  Lazy snowflakes tumble through the air.

  “Let’s fucking do this,” War grumbles. “Move,” he tells me, and I oblige, picking a random direction and walking into the heavy darkness.

  Chapter 19

  My boots crunch through the icy crust of snow, sinking ankle deep. My heart will give me away. It pounds, every beat ringing like a confession in my ears. The others will hear. They’ll know. The soft groans of snow behind me indicate that War, Nicolas, the twins, and Raven are following me into this heavy shroud of darkness.

  “After we take a look at these bodies, we’ll go out and have us a nice snack,” War says to Raven who straggles at the back of this brave expedition to nowhere.

  War jogs up to the front, and gives me a smirk when he reaches me.

  “I’m Raven’s Guide,” he says. “You know what that is?’

  I do, but shake my head, feigning ignorance.

  “I granted her Ascension. I made her, which means she’s my responsibility,” War says with pride. “It’s up to me to teach her the ways of being an angel. She’s lucky. Some angels don’t take their responsibility as a Guide seriously, but I do. Right girls?” he calls back to Rachel and Heather.

  “Yeah, sure,” Heather says without enthusiasm as she plunges her heeled boots into the snow. She gazes around the park with obvious uncertainty.

  I tuck my hands close to my body and remember how Kyle and Jane offered to be my Guides…how tempting it was. I push up deeper into the park.

  “I don’t see any other sets of tracks,” Nicolas says behind me, his voice hard as stone, “from when you dropped the bodies.”

  “Came from a different direction,” I assure him. “And the snow’s probably filed them in anyway.” Hopefully he’ll contribute the catch in my voice to the cold, but probably not.

  “One more thing,” War says. He fishes beneath his leather jacket and produces a huge silver Colt pistol. “You fuck with me, you get a kiss from Lila here.”

  “You named your gun Lila?”

  “She’s a beaut.” War rubs his gun with quite some passion.

  “Alright then,” I say, “it’s just up here.” Icy slush dribbles into my boots and soaks into my socks. Everywhere the forest produces groans and whistles and once a sharp crack as a branch snaps under the weight of snow.

  I’m probably going to die here, I think, and this thought fills my bones with lead. I weigh thousands of pounds, and each step forward costs nearly all my strength. I don’t even know what ability each angel possesses. When I make my move, they could throw anything at me, fireballs, plasma rays, globs of magma. Trust in the skills your brothers taught you, I tell myself, but then I’m thinking about Gabe and Tarren and how they’re not here. How they won’t save me this time.

  We come to a small ravine. The bottom is so black that even my enhanced vision can’t cut through.

  “Down there,” I say, and somehow the words make it through my tight throat.

  War steps up next to me and peers down. “Shit,” he murmurs.

  This is it, the moment I need, the only moment I get.

  I throw a fist into War’s neck, making a solid connection. As he drops with an impotent wheeze, I grab his arm, spin, and take that stupid, big-ass Colt easily from his grip. I sweep it toward Nicolas and shoot. He’s already in motion, ducking behind a tree.

  One of the girls screams.

  I side-step, gun held firmly in both hands, opening up a small window to Nicolas. He turns, and I notice a dark gray stain erupting from the open chambers in his palms, soaking down past his wrists.

  I shoot again. He holds up his hands in a hopeless effort to shield himself. The bullet hits his gray palm and ricochets back at me with a spark. I throw myself to the ground just as the bullet hisses above me. Shit!

  Bulletproof. Of course his ability ends up being some kind of bulletproof coating. Time for a new plan. Really need my brain to step in right now, but all it gives me is an endless refrain of, Shit, Shit, Shit!

  “The Lord will judge you,” Nicolas says, and a silver cross swings from the chain around his neck. He moves toward me, and his steps seem ungainly and loud, like he’s bringing down far too much weight with each step.

  I have no good response, just the hours and hours of sparring that I’ve done with Tarren. I leap up from the snow, just in time to duck a heavy swing from Nicolas. I parry his next blow with my left arm, and pain explodes through my bone at the contact. I cry out, and stumble away, tucking my injured arm into my body. His skin is hard as stone.

  Nicolas comes at me again, the gray stain creeping up his neck. He reaches for me, and I don’t dare try to block him again. I duck away, but he grabs my shirt, dragging me forward. I watch the stain cover his chin, his mouth, his eyes.

  Light bulb!

  He pulls me close. I only have one chance. I extend Lila, pressing the barrel to his hairline, just above the gray stain, and pull the trigger. BOOM! The bullet tears through his forehead. I pull myself from Nicolas’s grip, and he collapses like a puppet with sheared strings.

  I haul in one heavy breath, eardrums throbbing, and sense rapid movement in my peripheral. The Colt tracks with my gaze. A shadow descends upon me from above. Swinging blonde braid. I pivot, shoot. BOOM! A red flower spreads across Rachel’s chest, and she crashes into the snow next to me. She doesn’t get up.

  War.

  I turn, chambering another round. He’s only managed to crawl a few feet away from the ravine, and his breaths are weak sobs. I line up a perfect head shot. My finger strokes the trigger, and then hands grasp my throat and squeeze. I pull the trigger. BOOM! War screams.

  I grab at the hands around my throat, but my fingers meet nothing – no solid skin or bones to ward off.

  “What did you do?” a voice whispers behind me. The hands around my throat spin me around. Heather stands twenty feet away, her hands extended from her body. They glow an ethereal white that sears away the darkness around her.

  Somewhere in the background, War lists off a string of obscenities. Heather squeezes the empty air in front of her, and I feel the invisible hands crushing my windpipe.

  “What did you do?” Her voice ratchets up to a squeal. I raise the gun and pull the trigger, but my shot goes wild. She motions and one phantom hand grabs my wrist and squeezes until the gun drops into the snow at my feet.

  Run, run, run, I think. I break from the grip, stagger two steps, and feel those phantom fingers wrap around my neck again. Squeezing, squeezing. I try to clutch at them, but my hands rake the skin of my neck as my lungs begin to burn.

  I sink to my knees still grappling with the nothingness around me. Desperately, I plunge my hands into the snow. My fingers close upon something. Without looking, I hurl it at Heather. She staggers back a step as the small stone hits her thigh, but those phantom hands never let up.

  “WHAT DID YOU DO?” she screeches. She raises her arms, and I feel my feet lifting off the ground. I kick, desperately, uselessly, trying to connect with something. Anything. But there is nothing to kick, nothing to hit, or push, or scratch. Only the empty night and my buckling lungs.

  I’m going to die.

  My thoughts are slipping away. I claw at my throat, feel the spill of blood.

  I try to keep my arms up, have to keep my arms up. They sink down to my sides. I command my legs to kick, but they just hang below me, twitching. The pale glow of the overhead moon is lost beneath black waves.

  Tarren, I think. Tarren will come.

  The world drowns.

  Chapter 20

  Crying. Heavy, loud sobs filled with snot and phlegm and heartbreak.

  “Shut up!” coughs a raspy voice. “Just shut the fuck up!”

  The ground is moving under me. Am I crying? I don’t feel tears on my cheeks, and the noise seems to be coming from somewhere else. My head is…terrible. Throbbing, my thoughts all loose like escaping balloons. Shiny and stretched.

  The ground jumps, and my head kind of explodes, but it doesn’t, because it’s still here on my shoulders a minute later when I drag my eyes open again.

  Throat. Ring of fire. I can’t swallow.

  “I…want…to kill her!” a ragged voice rages.

  “Diamond said no,” the raspy voice snaps. “Don’t worry. They’ll torture her, squeeze out every drop of information, and then I’ll kill her myself. Lying bitch.”

  Car, I think. I’m in the backseat of a car. I can smell the leather upholstery under my nose, feel the smooth surface against my cheek.

  After some time this is followed by a new thought, I have to get out of the car.

  I try to raise myself just a little, but my head isn’t playing that game, and my arms aren’t working. I look down my body, and it takes a while to compute the white plastic ties cinched across my ankles and the fact that my arms are nowhere to be seen. I feel the stretch of my shoulders and the painful rub of the ties across my wrists, which are pulled behind me.

  The car takes a sharp turn, and my vision clouds over. A blurry object rolls across the floor from beneath the seat. I blink, and the gray blur resolves into the cracked Transformer. Memories flit through my mind, ice, gun, invisible hands.

  I ignore them, focusing instead on lying still. I try not to move, or think, or swallow, or do anything that will cause pain. This is hard. The car keeps jolting, and the plastic tie presses painfully into my left wrist, which is not fully healed. My entire left forearm throbs with unyielding pain, though I can’t remember why. More aches bloom into my consciousness – ribs, hip, left shin. Why? What happened? I try to swallow sending snakes of fire into my throat.

  I’m scared, but in a far off kind of way where I think this might just be a dream.

  A wash of bright light tears away the soothing darkness of the car and makes me wince.

  “Is that lightning?” the female voice asks.

  “Yup,” the male responds.

  A loud boom of thunder follows so closely that it shakes the car.

  “You’ve made Diamond very unhappy,” the raspy voice says. “Nick was her favorite.” I turn my face. War looks back at me from the driver’s seat, his ugly face twisted into a sneer.

  The car bumps one more time and slows.

  “They’re going to skin you alive,” he says. His neck is swollen and discolored, and I think I might have done that to him.

  “You’re gonna die,” one of the twins says. She’s in the passenger seat, her hands clamped so hard on the hand rests that her nails have punctured the leather. “I’m gonna drain that little aura right out of you, after they’re done.”

  I study her red eyes and the smears of mascara trailing down her cheeks. The situation is starting to come together. The fight. The choking. I’m in the SUV. They’ve taken me back.

  Tarren didn’t come.

  Oh god.

  The door next to me is wrenched open, and I feel hands grip my ankles. I’m pulled from the SUV and crash onto the snow-covered pavement. The world fades out, and when it comes back, I’m gasping for breath, trying to pull oxygen through my battered esophagus.

  My body cries in so many different spots – places I don’t remember being hurt. Did Nicolas get in more hits than I remember, or did War add a few of his own after I was down?

  War grabs the back of my shirt and roughly drags me. More bruises wake up along my legs. Yes, War definitely laid down some cheap shots while I was out. I watch the heels of my boots make trenches in the snow up the driveway, and then I look up overhead at the black sky. A faint veil of light paints the horizon a ruddy purple.

  The sun is coming up, I think for no reason, but I’ll never see it.

  As if on command, another spear of lightening splits the sky, washing the world in an eerie white light. The thunder follows, loud as a cannon as if it were trying to shatter the heavens.

  As War drags me up the long driveway I notice that he’s limping. I remember pointing Lila at him, pulling the trigger. I must have at least tagged him. The door to the mansion grows closer. I can’t let them bring me inside; I’ll never come back out.

 

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