Flying, page 23
part #5 of Girl With Broken Wings Series
BOOM! Rain shoots, misses. The angel whips around toward the direction of the sound. I take my shot. I don’t miss. The angel goes down.
Gabe turns at the shot, sees the crumpled form of the angel, and then gives me a quick thumbs up.
“In place.” Rattlesnake is breathing heavily into her comm.
I make it to the house. Gabe is ten feet away from me.
His eyes are fierce. “Find her,” he yells across the carnage then scrambles down through the window into the basement.
I step over the dead angel sprawled across the threshold of the open doorway and throw myself against the wall, both Glocks extended. I pan the room searching for any flicker of motion, any target. Danielle said over a dozen of War’s most trusted followers were in the house. Wherever they are, it’s not here in this outdated kitchen.
“Team Three is in,” I say. While Gabe does his work in the basement, I edge across the kitchen toward the opening into the main foyer. I already know exactly where Maya is, thanks to Danielle’s information…or where she was last night. I lean cautiously out of the doorway expecting bullets. Nothing but a short whimper. The sound comes from a woman who huddles under a big oak dining room table as if she were protecting herself against an earthquake instead of a gun fight.
She squeals when she sees me and grabs the silver sideways cross at her neck. “Dear Jesus, protect me. Protect me. In your name. Protect me from evil.” She rocks with her words, eyes squeezed shut. She has a plain face, but beautiful brown hair that streams down her shoulders. Artful tattoos twist and turn down her left arm.
I pause, assessing, but if she had a weapon or offensive ability I assume she would have used it by now.
“In your name, Jesus. Please, please, save me from evil,” she whispers in a trembling voice.
It shouldn’t matter that she’s kneeling. Praying. She’s still a killer, but I decide to save my bullets. I walk past her and pound up the stairs. The house is too quiet. Too empty. War and his personal guard might be holed up in some sort of safe room waiting out the fight, but I have a growing suspicion that he isn’t in the house. Did Danielle warn him? Did they take Maya?
I round up toward the top floor.
BANG!
A bullet cracks into the wall just in front of my face, and I stumble back, retreating two steps.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The wall splinters above me as I duck my head down.
Silence. I pull in a very slow, deliberate breath. One. Two. Three.
I raise my Glock and fire toward where I think he is. BANG! BANGI BANG! I rush up the stairs, diving for the side of the wall.
BANG! BANG! From his gun.
I feel the impact and hear my gun hit the floor. The pain is far away. I see the figure now, a little farther down the hall, flattened in a doorway frame. I re-grip the Glock in my left hand. The angel leans out to shoot again.
BANG! I get a shot off first. He cries. BANG! Now he doubles over. BANG! He slides slowly down the wall, blood pumping out of two wounds in his chest and one in his neck. His eyes are round and afraid, but when he opens his mouth to speak, only a burble of blood dribbles out. I take a step forward, stumble.
I nearly forgot that I was hit. The pain is more insistent now, not just on the left side of my chest below my heart anymore. I put a hand up against the wall for balance. The vest caught it. The vest caught it. But then I see the red smudge my hand leaves against the wood paneling on the wall as I take another step forward. Blood spills into my palm. I see it now, a growing stain on the sleeve of my right forearm. I don’t know how bad it is, don’t have time to worry about it. I can still hold my gun in my left hand, and that’s good enough.
A single doorway sits at the end of the short hallway. The air is hot. Sweat runs freely down my face now. I grab the gasping, bleeding angel and drag him out of the way of the doorframe. He tries to clutch at me, weakly, and I bat away a wrist stamped with a four leaf clover.
“Tarren, you okay?” Gabe’s voice is insistent in my ear. I realize that he must have heard the exchange of gunfire.
“Yes,” I say sharply. I stare at the door. War isn’t in the house, I think. Danielle lied…or she was found out. Maybe they lulled us in here. Maybe they’re laying in wait. If it is a trap, any guards stationed inside the room will have heard the exchange of gunfire. They will feel my aura approaching, and I can only hold a single weapon. But if Maya’s in the room, and they’ve been starving her… I tuck the Glock back in the holster at my hip, reach behind me, and grip the tranq gun in my left hand.
My right hand shakes. I tighten my grip on the tranq gun and kick the door open. I sweep the room, gun up.
The room is empty.
A hollowness opens up inside of me.
Danielle lied. Or they moved her…or….I force myself to confront the possibility. Or she died and they disposed of the body.
I take a step into the room. It smells strongly of blood and urine. The roof slants sharply, and a single small window provides a weak light that doesn’t reach into the shadowed corners. I see a dark, round stain in the wood, and I know what it is. Blood.
Something glints in the light, and I twitch toward it. Chains. Two sets of thick chains bolted into the walls. My eyes follow the chains into a corner. They lead to a shape, barely discernable in the darkness.
I approach very, very slowly, the tranq gun up.
“Maya?”
As I come closer and my eyes adjust to the shadows, I see that she is lying in a fetal position, her face turned away from me. The round knobs of her spine punch up beneath almost translucent skin. She wears only a sports bra and black underwear.
“Did you find her?”
“Is she okay?”
The voices of Gabe and Rain mingle in my ear.
My father extensively researched angel metabolism, and so I knew intellectually what even a few days without energy could do to Maya. I thought I was prepared. I thought I knew what to expect. Not this. Her arms are nothing but bone wrapped in skin. Her wrist is a sharp jut ending in skeletal fingers.
“Tarren, god dammit, do you have her?”
I fish into my pocket awkwardly with my left hand and hang up on our shared call. Their frantic voices cut out.
Silence.
“Maya?” I say again.
I notice a soiled bandage hanging limply around one bony thigh.
“Maya, turn your head. Look at me.” I keep my voice steady. Calm. I want to run to her. Throw my jacket around her bare shoulders, but she is still dangerous. If she’s too far gone, she won’t know me. She’ll lash out at any energy she feels.
My feet move over a piece of white tape on the floor. I understand what it means, and I keep my tranq gun trained on her. I can’t tell from this angle whether she is breathing. I stop, just far enough away that if she leaps I’ll be able to get a shot off with the tranq gun.
“Maya, I need you to look at me,” I say. I wait. One second. Two seconds.
And then no more waiting.
I take the final step and kneel down next to her. The bulletproof vest presses against my fractured rib as I sink clumsily down to my knees, and I have to close my eyes at the spike of pain. Maya is limp in my arms as I gently pull her over. Her eyes are closed, face slack.
Dead, I think. It was all for nothing. I try to feel for a pulse in her neck with the bloody fingers of my right hand, but my own arm is throbbing too loudly with its own pulse of pain. So instead, I lay my ear on her chest. I think I hear it, the faintest of beats. So slow. Such cavernous silences between each pale echo.
I calculate.
If I gathered her up right now, took off running at a dead sprint, made it to the waiting four wheeler 100 yards out and then back to the two trucks five miles away where the small case of rats sits in the back seat, it would take at least 30 minutes. …If I was fast enough. …If we didn’t meet any resistance.
She might make it.
She might not.
I sit back on my heels and look at Maya’s pale face, imagine her stormy eyes hidden behind her closed lids. She’s so different from Tammy. More like me than I’ve ever wanted to admit. And brave. Not the bravado that Tammy wore with pride. Maya’s courage is often quiet and small. A little smile. The offer of a Power Bar. The laugh that Gabe needs from a joke. My phone magically absconded so I sleep past the alarm.
I couldn’t save Tammy. On that day in Grand’s lab, she chose who lived and who died, and I’ve resented that choice every single day of my life.
And now, finally, it’s my choice.
I take Maya’s hand and massage her palm with my thumb, brushing across the flaps of skin that hide the feeding mechanism.
Nothing.
“Come on,” I say. I press her hand against my chest. Nothing. Her body should react on instinct alone, drawn to the energy, but she’s so far gone. With my left hand, I tear down the zipper of my coat and painfully pull it off my body. Next, I unstrap the vest. It clunks heavily to the floor. I breathe out with the waves of pain from my chest.
“This’ll be easier for you,” I say, pressing her hand against the thin fabric of my Under Amour shirt. I close my eyes, reach into my mind, and kick the lids off all of my boxes. All of the emotions I’ve packed so neatly and tightly away pour out of me. I hear the echoes of Tammy’s sobs as she handed me the knife, see the accusing burn in Maya’s eyes when she realized that I knowingly used her as bait to draw out Grand. And now I also have the memory of horror and disgust dawning across Gabe’s face as he learned the truth of Tammy’s death. I open up that last tender box of pain and let it swell my aura with raw emotion.
“Please,” I say. “Maya, pl—”
It happens. Suddenly. Her body jerks. The hand I’m pressing over my heart slams hard into me, causing the pain of my cracked rib to ripple all the way to the back of my teeth. Then I feel it, the draining of my energy. Slow at first, then faster. My body trembles, but I try to stay relaxed.
Far away, I feel her other hand clutch onto my arm.
“Good. You’re doing good,” I murmur as a wave of weariness drops over me like a veil.
Chapter 32 – Gabe
Fucking hell. First the gunshots crackling across the com link. Then he said her name. Tarren said her name.
“Where is he? What’s going on?” Rain’s voice is loud and desperate in my ear.
“Tarren, report you motherfucker,” I say. And again, nothing. I want to kick one of the pillars now artfully decorated with two bricks of Semtex. The basement is prepped. Easy to do when there’s absolutely no one down here. I glance at the broken window behind me, the one I should be crawling out of now that my part in the plan is done.
“I’m going after them,” I say, bounding up the stairs. I try to make at least a token effort at a sound tactical advance, holding both Barettas in front of me, peering carefully around the basement door before I burst up into a game room.
I hear feet clamoring down stairs and duck behind a pool table, waiting. A woman wails hysterically. I see bodies move past the opening of the room. Three angels half-carry, half drag a woman with long brown hair and a tatted up arm with them. I hear a sporadic spray of gunfire outside from the thinned defenders of the house and then its faint echoes through the open com link.
When the doorway is clear, I wait an epic three seconds and then rush out. The big, drafty foyer is empty. Hell, Tarren’s informant was way off on his count. This was supposed to be a bloody shootout. It’s more like an angel ghost town. Leaning against a wall, I tuck one gun under my arm and fish my phone out of my pocket. I open up the tracking app, and find Tarren’s red dot. It blinks, almost right on top of me. I crane my head up the stairs.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch movement. I spin, dropping the phone and aim my Beretta toward the open archway of another room. I see just a flick of long black hair disappearing on the other side.
Dammit. No time to go after her. The bulletproof vest makes it a bitch to bend over, but I shove my phone back into my coat pocket and re-grip my second gun. Then I clomp up the stairs, my adrenaline pouring out all it’s got.
“We’ve got a small group getting into an SUV,” Chain says.
Tarren is offline. Bear was injured and is off scene. That leaves…aw hell. ”Keep ‘em pinned down,” I shout. “War could be a part of that group. No one gets—”
BOOM! A rifle blast from the other side of my com cuts off my words.
“Gonna be a lot harder to drive away with three tires,” Chain says with no small amount of satisfaction. “They’re still trying though.”
BOOM!
“What about Maya?” Rain’s voice is quieter.
“I’ll report when I know something.” I’ve made it to the second landing. I look out at a long row of doors on each side of the hallway. Any one of them could lead to my siblings…or an ambush. I suck in a breath, glance up, and notice the bullet holes in the ghastly wood paneling at the top of the stairs.
Bingo. Yahtzee. Connect Four.
The air grows hotter and hotter as I climb. It feels almost sticky against my face. The stairs creak under my boots. They could probably rent out this place as a sauna. I reach the top stair and see a bullet hole in the wall… then the trail of blood. Not a light little dribble of it either.
My stomach clenches, and a wave of nausea hits me hard as bricks. I spot the crumpled form in the doorway.
Tarren. For one brief second – BAM -- my world breaks apart. I’m just about to barf up everything I’ve ever eaten in my whole life, when I recognize that the body isn’t my brother. Looks nothing like him. I do recognize that LEGO head and the four-leaf clover on the wrist.
The door is open behind the body. I move toward it, following the trail of blood drops on the floor. I hear a creak behind me as if someone is tip-toeing up the steps. I turn, gun up. Nothing.
Creepy. Everything about this house is terrible.
I step over the poor dead bastard with the now sadly ironic tattoo on his wrist, and when I enter the room I see Tarren. Then Maya. Then what’s doing in that order. My brain snaps through relief, joy, and then spins into a sick lurch of horror.
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” I start to squeeze the trigger before I realize I have the wrong gun. The kind that shoots bullets. I need the other gun.
Tarren trembles, his eyes half-lidded, head sagging forward. A high whine comes out of Maya’s throat as her hands press into him like claws.
“Maya, stop!” I scream at her, stumbling forward, grabbing at the tranq gun at my side. It takes me one, two grabs, but I get it out of the holster, swing it around, and put a dart in her shoulder. Tarren insisted that we load up the most potent darts we have. They’re supposed to take an angel down almost instantly.
“What’s happening?” Rain babbles in the com.
Maya is still clutching Tarren, her eyes practically bugging out of her pale face.
“Stop. You have to stop!” I holler at her. I’m on my knees, ripping her away from him. She weighs nothing in my arms, but her hands are crazy strong. I yank hard, and finally she comes loose, howling and scrabbling in my arms like a rabid raccoon.
Tarren topples over backwards, and Maya’s movements slow. Her hands press against me, but then slip off as she goes limp. Oh, Maya. My soul is just breaking for her. For the ribs I can easily count. For the impossibly skinny legs. It’s like she melted away over the last four days, but how is that possible?
“What happened? Is she okay?” Rain’s voice is scared.
“Shut the fuck up! I’ve got a situation,” I scream at him. “Tarren!” Holding Maya to me, a weightless rag doll, I move to Tarren. He blinks up at me, his eyes bleary. I crawl over his discarded coat, see his vest nearby.
Aw, fuck.
“What were you thinking?” I screech at him. His right arm is soaked in blood on top of everything else, and I know he took a hit when we made our run at the house.
“Get her outside. I’ll be right behind,” Tarren says, his voice faint and slow, like he has to concentrate to put even these few words together. Right behind me? I’d bet my left testicle that he can’t even sit up right now.
BOOM! I hear the loud echo of the shot in my com.
“They’re trying to make a run for it,” Rattlesnake says.
This is around the time that I notice the shackles clamped around Maya’s ankles. I take a deep, deep, Grand Canyon-sized breath and gently lay Maya down. I reach into my coat and slide out the tightly bound roll of my lock pick kit.
BOOM! “Keep ‘em pinned down. Nobody leave,” Chain growls.
“Rain?” I venture into the com as I explore the cuffs around Maya’s chaffed ankles. Those sick bastards left her almost naked.
“Is she alive? Tell me what the hell is going on.” Rain’s voice is a mad rush in my ear.
I pull out a wrench and a pick and get to work. My hands are sweaty and shaking, and it’s a hard feel. I haven’t exactly practiced often on dungeon-worthy shackles.
“I’ve got her. She’s alive, but…” I can’t even look at her or I’ll start weeping like a little bitch. How could they have done this? It’s only been four days! “She’s in bad shape,” I manage.
Fucking. Lock. I switch out the wrench for something smaller. Dig back in. Try to concentrate. Tarren hasn’t moved from his lifeless puppet impersonation.
“I’m bringing her out on your side. Have the four wheeler waiting right at the edge of the woods. Soon as I turn her over, get to the trucks and get her fed. Fast as you can.”
“Okay, okay. Check. Bumble Bee, bring me a ride.”
“On my way.”
The lock clicks, and both cuffs comes open. I rip them off her ankles. Don’t even bother picking up my tools. “I’m coming out now.”
But I don’t. Instead, I grab Tarren by the front of his shirt, lift him into a sitting position and wrap his left hand around his Glock. His eyes blink slowly, and he doesn’t object to my manhandling. That’s how I know things are really fucking bad with him.
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