Angel's Breath (Fallen Angels - Book 2) (18 page)

Al nodded and went into the building. When he came out less than a minute later, I saw a plume of smoke rise out of the door. A fire alarm sounded as Al and David jumped into the front seat and drove off.

“You’re burning it down?” I said. “People knew we were here.”

“Don’t worry about it.” David turned in his seat and gave me a reassuring smile. “If anyone comes forward, we’ll take care of it.” A second later, his smile faded. “And I’m not happy that you involved Jorge in this matter. I had rather liked him.”

I gasped, remembering the security guard. It was then that I began to grasp the extent of David’s madness.

He turned back around to face the front as we pulled out of the parking lot and said to Al, “Remind me to make an anonymous donation for Jorge’s family. After all, we orphans need to stick together.”

Behind us, people ran from the strip mall as the fire spread to the other units.

* * *

I never asked for what happened to me, and I didn’t believe Darcy wanted to be possessed either.

David had mentioned exorcism earlier. That was exactly what I wanted. If—
when!
I corrected myself—I managed to get out of this situation, an exorcism was the first thing I was going to do. Find a legitimate priest and get him to rip this thing out of me and send it back to hell.

David, on the other hand, wanted to be possessed by it. I’m sure he imagined all the wealth and fame and power he would gain by enslaving a fallen angel. On the drive to wherever Al was taking us, I realized that someone who
wanted
to be possessed would not feel the slightest amount of guilt at killing anyone who stood in his way.

I had caused the death of others, but I hated that I had done it. If I had known what I was doing, and if I had control over the power, I knew, deep in my heart, I would not have used the elements as I had. The destruction I had wrought was beyond forgiveness.

Someone like David would not contain that power; he would unleash it upon the world until he achieved whatever goal of domination he craved.

I would exorcise the thing inside me, but I would have to be certain I sent it to hell, and not allow it to make a dark pact with David, or anyone like him.

There was one small point that gave me pause.

According to Darcy’s tale, the fallen angels’ downfall had been when they mixed with humans, and they chose their descendants as hosts. When one host died, for whatever reason, then they jumped to the next person in the bloodline.

When I had snuck into the internet café, I had not gone to check on Darcy’s past; I had gone to check on a different story. I needed to find out if it was true.

“You are not my father,” I said to David. Beside me, Darcy turned her head and made a puzzled face.

“Don’t be stupid,” David said. “Your father left before you were born. I remember hearing about it.”

I detected an odd note in the tone of his voice, and that was enough for me to believe my suspicions were well founded.

I said, “The man my mother was seeing left when he found out she was pregnant with me. But he wasn’t my father, either.” I felt a chill run down my back when I said it.

When David turned in my direction, I knew from the way he looked at me that I was on to the truth.

Keeping my gaze fixed on him, I said, “Terence Matheson is—was—my father.”

In the middle seat, Tom turned his head and looked at me with mild surprise.

A cloud of darkness settled over David’s face. “I was at university when cancer took my mother. I only came back home long enough for the funeral, so there was no one left to console my father … except your mother. I don’t know how long it lasted, but my father ended it when my grandfather threatened to cut him out of his will unless he stopped ‘disgracing’ the family.

“I never suspected the affair; no one else guessed. Your mother never blackmailed anyone or even mentioned it in all the years she worked at Worldwind. I only figured it out yesterday when I saw my father’s will. He left her fifty percent. Damn him!” He growled at this last point. “Now that she’s dead, you inherit her share. However, if you’re dead…”

That was a revelation to me. I wasn’t sure how to take the news.

David narrowed his eyes at me. “My father never even suspected you were his bastard. When did you figure it out?”

“Earlier this morning.” I glanced at Darcy. “I found a picture on the internet of the person who I believed was my father all these years. Turns out, he’s short, pudgy and isn’t wearing any glasses. I’m tall and thin. Until the other day, I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me.

“Then I looked up an archived picture of you and your father at a press conference when you first joined the company.”

David let out a short laugh. “A lot of people wear glasses. That doesn’t mean anything. We both underwent eye surgery ten years ago.” He faced forward again.

I said, “What clinched it was when the kid helping me asked if it was me and my dad in the picture.”

Darcy gave me a funny look, and I figured out she had just realized that I had not been checking on her past this morning. She turned red with embarrassment and looked away.

Next to her, Stacy was still unconscious, but I could see the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

I had the answers to a few of my questions, but I needed to know more.

“This thing inside me is also passed along through bloodlines. I’m guessing our father became afflicted with it when his father died.” A thought came to me. “Is that when you figured it out?”

David said, “I never knew about our family ‘curse’ until later. My grandfather hid the power all his life. What a waste!” He shook his head. “When he died, the creature jumped to our father. He had no idea how to control it, and hired Al, here, to protect the world from him. How do you like that?”

I looked around and noticed we were leaving the Vancouver city limits heading north, and we had passed the Cedars North Airpark. Where were we going?

David continued his story. “A month ago, Al saw my father decimate one of our old barns with a small tornado he had created out of thin air. You see, my father discovered he could keep the power from overcoming him by releasing it occasionally, kind of like a pressure valve.

“Of course, Al came to me with the information, and we figured out what was happening. The first step was to trick the old man into binding the fallen. We arranged a ‘chance encounter’ with Father Putnam, who convinced him it was the only way to keep the world safe from his power. After that, we were free to do what we wanted.”

We turned off onto a gravel road surrounded by a canopy of trees.

“So now you’re going to kill me and take the power into you?” I asked.

David shook his head. “Don’t worry. There are a few other loose ends to tie up before we get to that part.”

I glared at him to hide the sinking feeling of despair that crept into my stomach.

He gave me a twisted smile, and directed Al to turn down another side road.

While we drove, I came to understand something about which I had been mistaken all my life. I had always thought my mother regretted having me, that I was the mistake that ruined her chances for happiness.

Her misery had begun before I was born. It was obvious Terence had loved my mother: he had kept her close to him all these years, even though he was forbidden to see her. He had left her half his company in his will. I could only guess why they didn’t pursue their relationship after Terence’s father died, and maybe I would never know. Perhaps she had kept me a secret from him too long, and couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth; who knew how he would react to finding out he had a bastard child?

In any event, I had been a product of that illicit affair, and was a constant reminder to my mother of what might have been, but could never be. It was no wonder she tried to chase her troubles away with a bottle of vodka.

The SUV stopped at a clearing that had a long gravel runway. To one side was a twin-prop airplane, and I recognized it as one of the twelve-passenger models Worldwind produced before they switched entirely to jets.

“I’m not evil,” David said to me. “I just want what’s rightfully mine.”

Tom got out of his side. Al got out of the driver’s seat and joined him at the back of the SUV.

Al opened the gate. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Until I started
working for Worldwind Avionics, I was fine with heights. Stairs, ladders, and swings had never caused me any stress. Before I passed my driver’s test, I rode the monorail without any problems. I’d even gone up to the Space Needle and stood on the observation platform shortly after I got out of jail, just to look around.

My first time in a plane was a month before I met Stacy.

One of the Worldwind pilots, Wyatt Graves, was taking out a jet for a test run. He was just going to fly to the Atlantic, and then turn back around. It was a ten-minute round trip, and since I’d helped him move the weekend before, he offered me a ride.

Thrilled, I accepted.

The takeoff made me nervous, and I started having trouble breathing with the increase in pressure. Not wanting the pilot to think I was a wimp, I hid my discomfort and gave him the thumbs-up.

At the first spot of turbulence, all rational thought fled me, and I thought I was going to die.

I don’t think Wyatt was aware how terrified I was at that moment. Like many pilots, he wanted to show off, and so he put the jet into several aerobatic maneuvers that would make a veteran sea dog want to toss his lunch.

I puked until I passed out, and the next thing I knew, we were back on the runway with one of the airport medics trying to revive me.

From that moment on, every time I got too far from the ground, I felt a wave of sickness overcome me. It wasn’t vertigo; it was abject fear.

Now, I realized they were going to take us back to Seattle in the airplane, and my entire body broke out in a cold sweat. My breathing sped up, and I could feel my heart thumping in my chest so hard it hurt.

Al grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me out of the SUV. I resisted, and he gave me a jab to the stomach. The breath went out of me in a rush. My bowels tightened, and I was sure I was either going to vomit or soil my pants.

Tom helped, and together the two of them dragged me to the plane. When they got me there, Tom climbed inside and made ready to pull while Al pushed me in.

“Don’t be such a pansy,” Al growled when I wrapped one leg around the stepladder hanging from the portal to stop them from pulling me inside. His face was close to me, and I threw my head back, and it connected with his nose.

“Goddamn it!” he screamed, letting me go as he held his hand to his now bleeding nose.

I tried to scramble away, but my foot was still caught on the ladder, and I fell over.

Al hovered over me, and I saw he had grabbed a wrench from somewhere.

“Fine,” he said. “Have it your way.” I tried to duck away, but Al hit me square in the temple with the wrench.

* * *

When consciousness returned, my head was ringing. My skull throbbed in pain. I coughed and tried to speak, but it felt like my eyes would pop out with the effort.

The voice that spoke then felt like an arrow through my head.

“Stay still,” Darcy said. “If you have a concussion and move around too much, you might make yourself sick.”

I forced my eyes open and looked around.

David sat in the pilot’s seat with Al beside him. Tom sat in the front row, looking out the window.

Darcy and I were strapped into the seats in the last row, and Stacy was in the seat ahead of me, propped against the window with a pillow under her head.

We were in the air, and before I could stop myself, I looked out my window to see that we were just above cloud level.

My stomach rolled, and I could sense all rational thought flee from me.

“It’s all right,” Darcy said. “Get hold of yourself. Do you remember when we practiced focusing to control the power? You need to do that now. Block everything out and simply concentrate on one small thing; I don’t know, think about lying in a bathtub or something. Peaceful, relaxing, calm.”

She continued to talk to me like that for several minutes, and I found, after a while, I was able to get myself back together. My breathing evened out, and I tried to not to think about how many miles separated us from the ground.

“This is your domain, after all,” Darcy said, and that got my attention.

I opened my eyes and looked at her. “What?”

“Air, wind. That is your power. You should be at home here. This is your fallen angel’s natural habitat—if that’s what you call it.”

“The only problem with that,” I said as I looked out the window and quickly shut my eyes, “is that I can’t summon the power. If we crash, we’re dead.”

“We’re not going to crash,” Darcy said. “There are thousands of planes in the air every day.”

I imagined all those planes flying into one another. “That’s not helping.”

“Sorry.”

I shook my head, and instantly regretted the sudden action as a shot of pain blossomed at my temples. “No. Talking helps.”

Carefully, I opened my eyes, but made sure I focused on Stacy; not what was on the other side of the window. “How long have we been airborne?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes. David said we’d be there in less than half an hour.”

“Not much time, then.”

Darcy stared at me. “Time for what?”

“Once we land, David will most likely have more men waiting there. We need to do something now, while the odds are even.”

“Odds are even?” she asked. “They’re three armed men, and we’re trussed up like a Sunday roast. Stacy’s unconscious. What do you imagine we can do? Jump?”

“No. They don’t keep parachutes on these planes. If something went wrong, we’d hit the ground before we could get the chute on, anyway. No, we need to take control of the plane, somehow. If I get Tom’s gun, maybe we can force David to land somewhere else.”

“You mean, hijack the plane?” Darcy continued to look at me like I was crazy. She wriggled her bound hands. “And how are we going to do that, head-butt them?” Immediately, she looked contrite. “Sorry I said that. I know you were just acting out of fear.”