Angel Eyes (26 page)
Stupid, stupid humans
.
Threatening dismemberment, he sent them into Stratus. Demanded they locate and apprehend Jake and Brielle. But it’s been hours, and his phone remains silent. They could be anywhere, and Damien is out of time.
The buyers will be arriving tonight. Tonight! And with them, the Fallen. Gathering four such influential brothers again will be difficult. This may be the very last chance he has to impress the Prince.
“Um, sir?” From outside the motel room door, a whiny voice makes its way inside. “We’ve had complaints about the noise.”
With a flick of his wrist, Damien sends the knife tumbling across the room again. It lands with a thud in the wall beyond. He crosses the room to retrieve it.
“Yes, sir,” the whine continues. “That’s just the noise I’m talking about. The lady who shares that wall with you—well, she won’t stop calling the front desk, and—”
Damien stalks to the door and yanks it open. Before him is a pimply-faced boy with a passion for all things Vulcan, by the looks of his shirt. The boy blanches, his mouth gapes. Damien pulls back his fist and slams it into the kid’s jaw. The kid collapses—all knees and elbows—but Damien finds little delight in the pain he’s inflicted.
Pain is not nearly as satisfying as fear.
He turns and aims his knife once more at the wall behind him. End over end it flies, shooting with ease through the wall in question. The resulting shriek of his peace-loving neighbor whets his appetite, and he closes his eyes, imagining how satisfying it will be to hear Jake Shield scream like that.
A moment is all he allows himself, and then he advances on the wall. It’s a small room, and three strides is all it takes. Eyeing the puncture wound he’s just given it, he abandons himself to rage and smashes first his left fist and then his right through the wall. They cut through with ease, and he repeats the action again and again, until at last the opening is large enough to permit his powerful build to pass through.
He ignores his neighbor’s quaking, squealing form. She huddles against the queen-sized headboard as he stomps through her room, Sheetrock dust marking each step. Damien pulls his knife from the wall, where it’s sunk to the hilt, pinning the polyester drape to the door frame.
He flings open the door, now on the far side of the motel, opposite the parking lot, and slides the Green Beret tactical knife into a sheath strapped to his thigh. He took it years ago from a captive, and soon thereafter assassinated, soldier.
Human weapons are of limited value to the Fallen, useful only in the Terrestrial. But this one he has kept. It reminds him of the violence people inflict upon themselves, of their sheer depravity. It reminds him that sometimes terror triumphs, and even knights on white horses can be defeated.
Today of all days, he needs these reassurances.
Because Canaan’s right. Damien’s not free. Not really. Mortal, immortal—all serve one master or the other. He’s free
to not worship
the Creator, that’s true. The Creator won’t accept halfhearted worship anyway and seemed more than willing to release the malcontent to follow the Deceiver. But that freedom came with a price. It chained them to utter darkness and caused their spirit selves to atrophy.
It forced them to cling to the Deceiver.
To the Prince of Darkness.
Originally they were enamored by him—his beauty, his charisma, his courageous challenge of the only power in the universe. But their preference for the Deceiver soon grew into downright hatred of the Creator and His world of light. Eventually the light itself turned on them and began to eat away at their senses. Darkness and its Prince were their only refuge. The Fallen serve him now because they have no choice, and it’s nothing less than a battle to secure positions away from the light.
Damien shakes his head clear of recollection. If he’s going to get Jake and Brielle to the warehouse in time, he has to act now. If he doesn’t have something of value to show his brothers when they arrive, they will likely turn on him.
He doesn’t want to risk another one-on-one with Canaan. Or Helene, for that matter—wretched little angel made him drop the girl last night—but he’s out of options. He throws a rigid glance over each shoulder and then transfers with a groan of release into the Celestial. As he does, his phone vibrates.
With some exertion he pulls himself back to the Terrestrial and snaps the phone to his ear. “Juan, tell me you’ve found them.”
“They’re in the city.”
This news takes him by surprise, and his pulse quickens.
“Where?”
Juan’s voice wavers. “We don’t . . . know exactly.”
“What
do you
know?” Damien shouts, spit flying.
“There’s a girl here . . .”
“Brielle Matthews?”
“No, a friend of hers.”
The idiot launches into a story. An excuse. Damien’s chest rumbles with impatience.
“We got here, to the house, but it was empty. We went door to door for a while, flashing Jake’s picture, pretending to be the Feds, but the only thing the neighbors could tell us was that the kid was new in town. We decided to check the house again and found this sweet little thing sitting on the porch waiting for us.”
Damien hears muffled cries in the background.
“She heard we were asking around and wanted to make sure her friend was all right. It seems they had plans and Brielle cancelled. Meeting her boyfriend’s dad in the city, she said. The text message says it’s some sort of an emergency.” Juan doesn’t continue.
Is he pausing for effect?
Wrong audience.
“Is that it?!” Damien roars into the phone.
“Yes, yes. That’s it. That’s all she knows.”
Fury tightens Damien’s muscled body. They’re on their way to Canaan. It’s possible, likely even, they’ve already met up. Hours and hours of futile patience, and his prey have driven right by. A cold chill climbs up his spine as he considers the words he’s just heard: some sort of an emergency.
What kind of emergency?
Do they know about the trade?
About tonight?
The consequences of his own mistakes are piling up, and if Damien doesn’t act quickly they’re sure to crush him.
“Yo, D. You there?”
Damien grinds his teeth, forces his temper into submission.
“Get to the warehouse, Juan. You’re handling the buyers tonight.”
“Where’s Horacio?”
This is exactly why he needs a right hand—all these details, minutiae he despises.
“The warehouse. Be there.”
“Sure, Boss, whatever you say. What do you want me to do with the girl?”
“Bring her with you,” Damien says.
“No prob. Eddie will like that.”
Damien wads the phone up, like a mistake, the first draft of a saga he means to rewrite, and he drops the plastic remnants to the floor.
He couldn’t care less what Eddie will like.
He transfers to the Celestial and launches into the sky. The sickness in his chest—the panic spreading like wildfire—fuels him. He flies hard and fast away from the motel, away from the taunting little town of Stratus, toward the warehouse by the river.
Has his nasty little secret been unearthed?
T
he warehouse is positioned at an angle under the Maelstrom Bridge. Its crooked position seems accidental, a haphazard mistake. Behind it, the dirty river reflects the city lights. I peer out my window, looking for the moon, but she’s not showing herself tonight. Instead I see heavy black clouds. They close in slowly, bringing the very storm we’ve been hoping to avoid. The silhouettes of several other warehouses line the water, and the whistle of a train sounds overhead. Dust and rubble sprinkle the air as the train pulls in.
Next to the warehouse is a gravel lot surrounded by a tarnished chain-link fence. A van, ghostly white against the night sky, is parked there. Jake pulls the car into an abandoned gas station across the street, and I glare out my window at a rusted tin sign squeaking back and forth in the wind.
There’s an old garage bay next to a boarded-up mini-mart. Jake jumps out and tries the rolling door. With a little effort it slides open. The bay is empty, so Jake backs the car into it. The shadows swallow the Karmann Ghia, though I doubt anyone would think twice if it were seen. Jake’s car looks as old and abandoned as the gas station.
I slide into my green Chucks and stare out the windshield.
What could be hiding in the depths of that aluminum building? Two light fixtures hang precariously over the front sliding doors. Like the torches framing the gateway to Kong’s Skull Island, they flicker erratically. A line I memorized in acting class comes to mind.
Screw your courage to the sticking-place and we’ll not fail
, Lady Macbeth told her husband. Of course, she was advocating murder.
I shake off the thought. Her counsel, beneficial though it is, brings visions of violence and bloodstained hands to mind— visions that contradict the apparent wisdom of her words.
Next to me, Jake sits rigid in the driver’s seat.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’ve just never done this without Canaan.”
“Should we try his cell?”
It’s been hours since our last contact with Canaan, and though Jake assures me my concerns for his guardian are ridiculous, I’m worried about him.
“No. As soon as he’s able to talk, he’ll call. We could interrupt or give away his position.”
“What about Marco? Should we wake him?”
Behind us, Marco snores lightly, Ali’s journal clutched to his chest, the halo sitting lightly on his knee. Jake’s eyes drift to the backseat and scrutinize the peaceful form quizzically, as though Marco is a calculus problem he can’t solve.
“I don’t think so. If this turns into anything, he’s really not up for it.”
I just nod. I want to ask what this could possibly “turn into”—what he expects that I do not—but I’m too chicken to ask.
As promised, I delivered the journal to Marco. At the halfway point, we stopped at a service station so Jake could refill his battered car with gas. I waited until Jake went inside to pay before I slipped the journal out of my bag and passed it to Marco.
“What’s this?”
“Ali’s journal,” I said softly.
A muffled sob escaped Marco’s lips. “Did you . . .”
“I haven’t read it,” I told him. “I couldn’t. It isn’t mine to read.”
He picked up the leather book and turned it in his hands.
“I shouldn’t,” he said. “Maybe her mom or . . .”
“Ali’d want you to have it,” I said as generously as I could. “If you want to share it with her mom that’s up to you, but it’s yours. She gave you everything she had to give, Marco—her heart, her body. She wouldn’t want anyone else to possess her mind.”
Glistening tears magnified Marco’s emerald eyes, and he ran a hand through his black hair—a move he seems to have trademarked. He nodded and opened the journal. Slowly his fingers moved over the words written on the first page. Her pixie-like hand penned each and every thought there. I blinked against the tears stinging my eyes and turned my face away. He deserved time alone with her. Time to say good-bye. Time that had been stolen by a psycho with a gun.
Over the next few hours Marco was quietly immersed in Ali’s memories. Several times a suppressed laugh or cry would betray his silence, but mostly he spent the drive alone with Ali. Jake and I did our best to honor his vigil and spoke quietly, if at all, listening to music on whatever radio signals we happened to catch. Finally Marco fell into a restless sleep, and in a move I considered genius, I slid the halo off my wrist and laid it softly on his knee. Within moments his body stilled. I smiled up at Jake, and he winked back at me, though his face showed some concern.
Now, with Marco snoring in the backseat, Jake’s face again shows apprehension.
“You should stay with him,” he says.
I should have known he’d try to be noble.
“Not a chance,” I say. “Maybe
I
wanna be the hero this time.”
In truth, I can’t imagine sending Jake in there alone. Knowing what Marco looked like after a run-in with Damien, knowing that somewhere that beast is searching for Jake—I want to protect him, to be his shield. And I want to destroy Damien, whatever he is. I have no idea how to do these things, but I can’t do any of them from the car.
“Sometimes the hero doesn’t make it,” Jake says, repeating my earlier caution.
“Sometimes she does.”
We stare at each other for a minute or two, our fingers knotted together, the rumbling train overhead. At last he pulls the halo from Marco’s knee.
“If we can’t have Canaan, at least we have his eyes.”
We climb out, meeting again at the Karmann Ghia’s dented hood, still shrouded by the dark garage. Jake steps toward me, the halo in his outstretched hands.
“Angel eyes,” he offers.