Rising, page 23
part #3 of Girl With Broken Wings Series
I train my gun on her chest, ready to load her up with enough tranqs to take down a buffalo, except that my arm starts to sink. The girl’s face pinches in concentration. She’s doing something, and that something is making the gun heavy as solid gold. No, I could lift a solid gold gun. This is heavier – a hundred bricks of solid gold all compacted into my palm. I tense my muscles, grab my wrist with my other hand, but still the gun lowers until my fingers ache with the weight of it, and I have no choice but to drop it.
I expect a great crash, like a grand piano tumbling from an upper story window, but the gun lands lightly into the snow’s embrace. The girl is doing something to my mind, changing my perception of mass. Tarren would have a field day with this information. I remember how he filled pages in his notebook when I gave him details about what Kyle and Jane could do. My brain is being pointless. Tarren won’t ever learn about this new angel ability.
I’m cemented to the ground.
When the girl takes a step forward, I bring my arms up in front of my body, prepared to fight. My feet want to shift sideways, but all I can do is bend my knees a little to put more weight behind my punches. I might be a sitting duck, but I’ll still go out clawing and screaming if I can. I owe that to Tarren, to the wounds he took to save my life. How sadly ironic that he only gained me a single day for all his trouble.
The girl steps out of the tree’s shadow, and the moon paints lines of silver down her cheeks. Tear tracks. Her chest is heaving hard; I’d thought it was from the stress of using her power, but it might be sobs she’s trying to keep down.
The panic is my chest is almost as heavy and unmovable as my feet. I just keep my arms up, hoping she’ll do something stupid like come into arm’s reach. Her face pinches, and before I can even wince in the expectation of something painful, I’m stomach down in the snow.
She’s doing her thing, and it feels like an entire tower of elephants is standing on my back. Obese elephants. Obese elephants carrying saddlebags filled with concrete slabs. I can’t breathe. My ribs are going to splinter. My stomach will rupture, and my organs will come rushing out, hot and slippery. The panic is gone. Manic desperation is my only companion. My last companion.
A shot rings out. Rain’s aim is as good as all his other angel hunting skills. The bullet buries itself into the tree next to the angel, but she flinches, and the weight crushing my body dissipates. I roll to my side, wet fingers clasping the handle of the dagger in my belt – the one Gabe always makes fun of me for carrying. As the angel’s attention turns back to me, I aim and throw.
The weapon whistles through the air and sheathes itself in her throat. She falls back, gushing black ink onto the snow.
Cold. Wet. I’m on my knees in the snow listening to my own wreaked wheezing. I press my hands under my breasts, testing the integrity of my ribs. I half expect to feel splintered mush beneath my fingertips, but my ribs are there, each one strong and solid. It was all in my head.
The world is still sloshing as I get to my feet and stagger over toward the angel. Her face is ghastly white, and her hands clutch the hilt of the dagger. Ruby tides pump out of the wound, pulsing with the weakening beats of her heart. Her thin lips open and close. No words come out, just bloody bubbles that dribble down her chin.
I’m used to blood by now. Used to death and the round holes that our well placed bullets make through the heads and hearts of the angels we kill. But this is new to me, this slow and messy death, the girl’s terrified eyes pleading with me for something that I can’t give.
I want to run, find a cave dark and quiet. I want to curl into a ball and compress these memories so small that I’ll never see them again. Instead, I kneel down and put a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s almost over,” I say to her.
I grab the bloody hilt of my blade and pull it from the girl’s neck. It makes a wet sucking sound as it comes out, and now nothing stems the blood but the girl’s shaking hands. A heart tattoo decorates her right wrist.
She gurgles, and the blood slows, each pump smaller and smaller. Her lids descend halfway over her eyes, and she proves me true.
After digging my guns out of the snow, I turn toward the weak keening that still rings in my ears. Curled beneath the tree where Rain and I kept our watch, the angel who’d made that suicidal run cradles his stomach and moans.
Blood slips through his fingers. Blood and blood and blood. So much of it inside of us.
When I get a better look, I recognize the boy with the curly red hair who poked his head out of the kitchen the first time I came to the mansion. His face had been so hostile on my second, less voluntary visit. Now that hostility is gone, replaced by fear and pain.
His legs swivel in the snow as he groans and weeps. Rain stands next to him staring down. The gun at his side shakes with the tremors of his hand. He’s lost his bright red hat, and his hair lies flat on his head.
“Are there others out here?” he asks the angel in a husky voice.
“I’m dying,” the angel moans. “I feel it. I’m dying.” Tears slide down his face. His pants ride up his ankles revealing mismatched socks.
“How many,” Rain says again. He’s trying to sound brave, but his teeth clack together, and his aura is a fountain of wild yellows, whites, and reds.
Is Raven with you? I don’t voice this question out loud, but I gaze around, trying to spot any movement. Nothing. Just the night and the silent dead.
“Three. Just three,” the angel gasps.
“What happened to the others who escaped the house?” Rain’s voice quakes.
Even as a pained moan escapes his lips, the angel reaches one hand toward Rain. A glowing hand.
“It wasn’t wrong, what we did,” he whispers. “Nicolas told us it was God’s plan…God gave us the hunger for a reason.” The skin of his palm peels back, and the feeding bulb lifts up, ready to latch onto Rain’s aura.
Rain steps back. “Where are the other angels from the house?”
The angel’s eyes are glazed and hungry. He keeps reaching out a bloody hand even though Rain is out of his reach.
“Gone,” he says. “Diamond is dead. Shot out of the sky. War left, and most of the rest went with him. He wants…to be the…new leader.”
“But you stayed.” I step up next to Rain and clench the bloody dagger in my hand. We need to end this soon. Even the distant neighbors were bound to hear all those gunshots. We’ve got three bodies to load before the first responders get here. And Rain’s fucking hat to find.
“I…Rachel. She shouldn’t have been with him.”
“Who?” Rain asks.
The angel stares at his aura. He digs an elbow into the ground and drags himself forward even as Rain takes another step back to maintain the distance.
“War,” the angel says and either laughs or sobs. “I had money too. I would have bought her things. Beautiful things. Taken care of her….Treated her with…with dignity.” He drags himself a little closer. “She deserved dignity.”
“We need to go,” I say. Rain looks over at me. His eyes travel to my dagger.
“I’ll do it,” he says. His aura is a fireworks show. No wonder our dying angel is giving up all his intel. Who can concentrate with all those hues vibrating into a song so loud and tempting? I force myself to look through the colors to the terrified boy beneath. His face is pale and rigid, and his throat flexes like he’s trying to keep down vomit.
I was like that once, so afraid and so determined to get my hands bloody at the same time. I stare at the sticky mess on my palms. Those bloody bubbles dripping off that girl’s chin will be in my memories forever.
“You have to walk away from this,” I tell him softly.
Anger flickers in Rain’s aura, and I know I have said the wrong words. His mouth sets in a stubborn line. “And go back to what? Bagging groceries?”
“You don’t want this.” I don’t want this for you. “You’ll get killed.”
“Yeah, probably.” A note of uncertainty enters his voice.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of…of the shadow of death…,” the red-headed angel whispers.
“I couldn’t save Sunshine,” Rain says.
“Her killer is dead,” I tell him.
“…I will fear no evil…”
“He could kill someone else’s sister.” Rain chokes on the words.
“…for thou…thou….” The angel reaches out to Rain, his bloody fingers inches from Rain’s shoes.
Rain lines up his shot. Quivering gun.
The angel stares up into the barrel of the gun. “FOR THOU ART WITH ME!”
Rain’s shot finds that mop of orange hair and turns it red. The prayer cuts off, and the angel sags in the snow. There is no silence. Rain’s breath is ragged, and his aura bucks up and down, keeping the symphony of hunger loud in my ears.
“I’m gonna puke,” he says but continues standing, swaying, as tears scrawl down his face. I ache to reach out to him, to share his pain with the simple, beautiful, human consolation of touch. Instead, I take a step back, balling my hands tight to keep a reign on my concentration. His throbbing aura wears down my control like sandpaper.
“I’ll bring the jeep around so we can load the bodies,” I tell him. “Go find your hat.”
Chapter 30
It turns out that Rain is just about as good at digging graves as climbing trees. Maybe it’s just the general incompetence he seems to bring to every endeavor, but I suspect that shock is also a factor.
My chosen gravesite is an anonymous patch of woodland in Pekin Lake, a large wildlife conservation area just south of Peoria. After leaving the highway, we passed a few mom & pop bait and tackle shops, the indomitable golden arches of McDonalds, and not much else.
I’ve never picked a burial ground on my own before, but Pekin Lake is big, quiet, and empty – the perfect trifecta when needing to get corpses into the ground quickly. I can’t help but wonder if Tarren would have chosen this place or found problems that I’ve overlooked. Every little sound has me gripping the handle of my shovel so hard that I’m likely to snap it in half.
And then there’s Rain.
He pushes his shovel into the snow and struggles to get it out.
“Push it in at an angle,” I tell him.
“Angels?” His head whips around, and he clasps the shovel to his body like a weapon.
“Angle. Your shovel.” I demonstrate by plunging mine into the ground. “The top foot or so will be frozen, so just go in shallow.” I dump the icy dirt onto my growing pile.
“Okay.”
This curt, business-only dialogue has been the way of it since we slung the three bodies into the back of the jeep and made it out just as two police cruisers sped by, sirens screaming. I study Rain, his red-tipped, running nose, his faraway eyes, and his aura churning with so many different colors. I wish I could read him better.
We dig.
Rain tires quickly; stitches of red deepen in his aura, but we keep going. I try to dig fast, scooping up big shovelfuls once we get past the first frozen layer, so he won’t have to do as much work.
I’m not sure what to say to him. There are no Hallmark cards after you’ve shot a begging, wounded man at point blank range. We’re both sticky with blood and barbed memories. At least his memories will fade with time. Mine never do.
The silence is too much.
“It doesn’t get easier,” I tell him as I pull up another thick shovelful of black dirt. “Just more routine.”
“This was routine for you?” he asks dully.
“We try to operate cleaner than this, but sometimes…” I remember the stories Gabe has told me about drowning an angel in his own pool or how they sometimes break into houses and slit throats so as not to wake the neighbors with gunshots. “Sometimes it has to be messy.”
I glance at him to see if my words are having any effect. His bare hands must be freezing, but he doesn’t say anything about them.
“It will hollow you out.”
“It hasn’t hollowed you out,” he says right back, and those brown eyes challenge me.
“How would you know?”
“Because you could have killed us, down in the basement when we captured you. You could have killed us, but you didn’t.” Rain pauses to wipe his runny nose on his sleeve. “Because you care enough that you don’t want me to be a part of this for my own good. Because, well, because when you laughed at me before, it sounded real.”
I could laugh now. Or cry. The fact that he considers me functional is hardly a ringing endorsement of his perceptive skills.
“My brothers keep me sane,” I confide to him. Well, mostly Gabe and not by much.
I am acutely aware of the fact that I shouldn’t have brought Rain along for body burying. Tarren would’ve never allowed such an unnecessary risk. As soon as we get back, Rain might very well march into the first bar he finds, get shitfaced, and blurt out everything. Tarren’s injuries will keep us here for days. If Rains opens his mouth, if any of his team talks, then we’re all royally screwed.
But I did drag Rain out here, and it obviously has nothing to do with his unimpressive digging skills. I give him another once over from the corner of my eye, noting the frown of concentration on his face and his tall, well-limbed body.
Rain Bailey, world’s worst angel hunter, won’t survive long in his new profession. That means I have to save him, and I’m going to do it by showing him the absolute misery of this life. It’s not just the violence and gore, it’s also this right here – these long, cold digs that blister hands and cramp up the lower back. It’s the disappointing numbness when the tarp-wrapped bodies disappear beneath a shower of dirt. The wheel of violence, death, and danger that never stops turning.
An unbidden thought intrudes. Why do I care so much about saving Rain Bailey? After all, I’ve hardly given any thought to Milo, Bear Mask, or the young girl behind the yellow bird mask.
My brain needs to mind its own fucking business. There’s nothing between me and Rain. There can never be anything between us. So what if I want to feel his lips on mine again? I also want to absorb every last drop of his velvet aura. There hasn’t been a more doomed relationship since King Kong took Ann Darrow to the top of the Empire State Building on their first date.
And Ryan. I try to pull up the memory of his face. Why is it so hard? I can remember pieces – his dark eyes, jet black hair, the way he would tuck my body into his at night. But when I try to put them together it doesn’t seem to fit. My boyfriend has been dead for less than a year, and I’m already starting to pant after another. What the hell is wrong with me?
“You have a weird expression on your face,” Rain says. “I’d ask you if you were alright, but, well…” He motions at the grave opening up in front of us.
“I was just arguing with myself,” I say and bring up another large shovelful of dirt.
Rain is quiet for a moment as he pulls up his shovel and lets its contents fall into the small pile behind him. “Who won?” he asks.
I scramble for a clever answer, but nothing comes up. “I don’t know.”
When the grave is almost finished, I jump into the hole and carve out the sides to make it wider. Rain takes the bodies from the back of the jeep one at a time and lays them by the edge of the grave.
I hear the soft whump as each body lands next to the grave. One, two, three. Then Rain’s voice above.
“What if we get caught?” he asks.
“I’d hear anyone coming long before they got here.”
“Really? Your hearing is that good?”
“It’s pretty good.”
“What else?”
“What else, what?”
“What else is pretty good?”
I look up and see his face floating over the edge of the grave above me. He doesn’t mean it the way Tarren does. He’s not trying to study me and break me down for his analysis and reports. But still…the last thing I want to talk about is what a freak I am.
“It’s fine now,” I say and heft my shovel out of the hole before scrambling out. Rain lets his question go, but his eyes swing between our two piles of dirt, mine twice as high as his and then some.
The swaddled bodies look more like thick blue logs than people. Good thing I packed extra tarp for the mission. I roll them into the grave, and they thud one on top of the other. The tallest log is James Turner, the red-headed angel. I have his wallet in the jeep. His 24th birthday would have been next week. The two women didn’t have ID, so I don’t even know their names or why the girl with the glowing eyes decided to attack us. Maybe Gabe and his “Gabettes” killed someone close to her too. The heart tattoo on the wrist of the last attacker – the girl with a boy’s haircut – matched the heart tattoo on the neck of one of the teens killed at that mansion. She’d been the fan of SpongeBob SquarePants reruns. I wonder about their relationship – sisters, best friends, lovers? I’ll never know.
When I see the blue logs settled at the bottom of the grave, I worry that the hole isn’t deep enough, but I start pushing on the dirt anyway. Rain watches me, watches the shower of dirt hide the lives we’ve taken, and then he joins in. When all the dirt is packed in, I throw on some snow for good measure. We’ve made a big muddy mess, but hopefully the falling flakes will hide it by morning, which shouldn’t be too far off now.
“That’s it?” Rain asks, his voice soft and sad.
“No.”
I close my eyes and prepare to say the words I’ve made up to make myself feel a little better each time we put a new body in the ground. My brothers always tolerate this little routine of mine, loading up the car while I do it.
Rain hesitates, then steps next to me. Too close, but he doesn’t know any better yet.
I say the words out loud for him. “You embraced the change and chose to feed off the lives of innocents. Your death was merited, and I do not regret it. But I know how loudly the hunger calls. I know we all have some measure of darkness in our hearts. May you be at peace.”
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