Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) (30 page)

She stood up, walked into the kitchen, and returned with a glass of water for Jack. She found him holding the bandage to the back of his head. “I have to say that I would actually agree with them. You do know
something
.”

Jack was in too much agony to play games. “Do you always treat your victims’ wounds before physical interrogation? There’s another wall you can toss me through,” he said, nodding towards an unblemished wall near his office. He wanted to know if he was going to need to prepare himself for more torture. The woman chuckled.

“I wouldn’t be able to toss you if I tried. I’m not like them,” she said, pointing to the Angel cocooned in a blanket. “I’m just a regular, human girl.”

Jack’s grasp of reality had been shaken, but he did not trust the new woman any more than he trusted the one who had just tried - and almost succeeded - to kill him. She stood up and spoke into the console on her arm.

“This is Felicia. I’m going to need help with an extraction of Mr. Evans and an agent.” She noticed Jack staring at her. Their eyes locked for several moments when she huffed. “If I wanted to you dead, Mr. Evans, I would have just let her finish what she started.
Relax.
” She walked over to the rolled up blanket, grabbed one end and dragged it across the floor into the kitchen. Jack could hear grunts and heavy breathing. Turning his head as far as he could he watched Felicia heft the body up onto her shoulder, and trudge to the open patio door. Jack wondered if that was how she had snuck into the apartment during the attack.

She dropped the blanket onto the railing with a clang, letting it fall over the edge. Jack felt a small twinge of sadness. An Angel, even one that had tried to kill him, died while his life was spared. He knew he was going to need therapy if he survived the night, and more dark irony flashed through his foggy mind. The death of the Angel posing as a counsellor would drive him to much needed professional counselling.

Jack did not see the body fall into the open bed of a garbage transport heading to the LTZ for recycling. His eyes canvassed the room; the bloody stains on the carpet, the cracked end table, photographs that had fallen like confetti as the album soared towards the clock.

The clock. Evangeline would be devastated when she found out how much damage it had sustained. Then his eyes caught something that seemed out of place in the disheveled room. A small piece of paper, curled in on itself, sticking out of the broken shaft of the pendulum.

Jack’s eyes darted to the kitchen where he spied Felicia standing on the balcony engaged in a hushed conversation with her arm.

He reached down to the floor to pick up the broken piece of metal, and his neck burst into flame as pain shot up his arm. Ignoring the agony, Jack retrieved the yellowed paper from its cocoon. The small roll of paper resembled a stick being wound up to tight for who knows how long. Jack wondered if Evangeline even knew about the clock’s secret document.

Jack unrolled the paper enough to see the printed words; it appeared to be the title page of an old book, a rarity hidden within a rarity. Under the title there were words scratched in neat handwriting:

“They are living, but there is no life.”

Jack looked over the shattered remains of Evangeline’s family clock. Gears, springs, and shards of wood lay strewn around on the floor. A conversation he had shared with Evangeline in the early months of their marriage surfaced in his memory. It had been just after they had moved into the unit together.

They had been arranging furniture and hanging pictures and other decorations on the walls. Jack opened one of Evangeline’s storage crates and found the clock swaddled in bubble-wrap. He pulled it out of the crate and unwrapped the old wood clock. A smile broke out on his face, as if he had opened up a birthday present.

“What’s this?” he called out over his shoulder.

“What’s what?” Evangeline yelled back at him from the bedroom.

“What’s with the clock?” Jack said with a raised voice without taking his eyes off the wooden artifact in his hands. He caressed his fingers against the intricate scrolling on the edges and textured metal faceplate. His smile spread wider. He had heard about ancient timepieces, but had never seen a real one before.
So beautiful
. The authentic wood was golden, a hue so pure and natural it almost glowed. He held the clock up to his ear, anxious to listen to the whirring of mechanisms, but only silence met his ear. He drew the clock away from his ear, disappointed.

Jack heard soft footfalls and a sniffle behind him. He turned to find Evangeline staring at him from down the hall. Her hands trembled as they covered her mouth, and tears spilled down her cheeks. Jack set the clock back down in the crate with extreme care and walked over to his new wife.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he rest his hands on her shoulders.

Evangeline’s glistening eyes focused on the clock lying in the crate across the room. For several minutes she stared in silence while Jack waited, uneasy, for an explanation for her emotional demonstration. Feeling embarrassed by his impish excitement he cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry if I wasn’t supposed to unpack that,” he offered. “Should it have stayed in storage?”

Evangeline brushed the tears from her cheeks and turned her shining eyes to her new husband. Her chin quivered as she searched his questioning eyes.

“No,” she stumbled over her words. “It’s okay. It’s an old family heirloom that’s been passed down from mother to daughter since before the Collapse. I haven’t looked at in in years. I put it away because I’ll never have a daughter of my own, so… .” Her voice trailed off as fresh tears flowed down her face.

When Evangeline had fallen in love with Jack, and knew he would be a significant part of the rest of her life, she told him about the hard decision she had made when she enlisted to be a TRTV pilot. Because of her parents’ traitorous background, she would not be permitted her own biological offspring, and she signed away her reproductive rights. She had been afraid her barrenness would be a deal-breaker for the man who had become more important to her than any other person had. But Jack - gentle, steady, dependable Jack - had pulled her into an embrace and said he loved her, all of her, just the way she was. All he wanted out of life was to be able to spend the rest of his years at her side.

Jack went back to the clock and began rewrapping it in the plastic bubble paper. Evangeline’s silent pain was palatable, leaving the new groom uncertain what to do.

Evangeline walked over and put her arms around Jack’s waist from behind. He set the bundled clock down in the crate and squeezed her arms.

“I’m sorry I got this out before asking you about it,” he whispered.

She sniffled behind his back and pressed her head between his shoulder blades.

“No,” she said. “It’s okay. We can hang it up. Just promise me one thing.”

Jack pulled her arms apart and turned in place to face her. He raised his hands to her cheeks and brushed away the moisture with his thumbs. “Anything for you, my love.” His beaming smile illuminated the room.

“I won’t ever have a daughter to pass this down to, so,” she began with a catch in her throat. “If anything ever happens to me, I want you to destroy the clock. Promise?”

Jack knit his eyebrows as he considered the request. A pre-Collapse artifact was rare in Olympus. He did not know how many artifacts even existed in his home community. He could count the ones he knew of on one hand. The thought of destroying something so valuable was a startling concept to him, but his love for Evangeline, and his faith in her, was more important.

He looked down at her with solemn eyes. “I promise.”

Jack bent over, pretended to brace himself up to stand, and stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket next to the neural interface.

FORTY-FIVE

By the time the sedative started wearing off, and Evangeline was coming-to in the back of the vehicle, the entire night had passed. The last thing Evangeline remembered was the unnamed yet familiar voice reassuring her of her safety. Distant, mumbled voices seemed to echo in her mind when the sound of her own name cut through the haze. But, before her heavy mind could recall the face that belonged to the voice, she had slipped again into the dark oblivion of sleep.

The transport hit a hard bump, jarring Evangeline from her slumber. She remained motionless in her seat, and allowed her body to press forward against her harness as her head bobbed against her chest. She wanted to listen and gather as much information about
forward against her harness and let her head bob against her chest.11111111111111111111
her whereabouts without alerting her captors she was awake.

The sounds from outside the transport were deafening, almost as if they were passing through a parking garage as a hundred other vehicles revved their engines. A few of the people around Evangeline tried talking over the roar, but their conversations dissipated into babble, overwhelmed by the thunder pounding in her ears. She distinguished four different voices in the transport with her, but grew frustrated none of them were clear enough to understand what they were saying.

The vehicle veered to the left, forcing her head to whip backward and slam against the sidewall with a thud. She winced and let out an involuntary yelp, her hand reflexively reaching up to check her head for bumps. It was then she realized the absence of her bonds. She felt a burst of adrenaline rushing through her veins. She was still blindfolded, strapped into the seat, but her arms and legs were free. She toyed with a plan of launching her hands and feet in random directions in hopes she would make contact with her captors. She chose to play it calm, and filled her lungs with a deep breath.

“Garrett,” that soothing, familiar voice raised above the din from outside, reaching her ears from the opposite corner of the transport. “She’s waking up.” The mumbled conversations ended mid-sentence.

Evangeline felt a shiver course up and down her spine. She was in a precarious situation, surrounded by strangers she did not trust. She did not know why they had taken her or where they were going. Her mind explored various scenarios in which they took her into the wastelands for interrogation, torture, and a shallow grave.

“Captain?” Garrett’s voice rose above the noise outside the vehicle. “Would you like us to remove your blindfold? Or would you prefer to continue pretending to be asleep?” A chorus of chuckles sounded about her, and she picked out the voices of two additional individuals. She was outnumbered six to one. She raised her head and flinched as she felt a hand brush against her hair.

“Take it easy!” Garrett’s voice scolded. “I’m just trying to take off the blindfold.”

“Are you sure you’re out of danger? Maybe you should wait until you have more than six men to protect yourselves from me,” Evangeline spat back. “I wouldn’t want you to feel outnumbered!” His hand withdrew from her hair, and through her boots, she could sense his footsteps retreating from her.

“It’s okay, Boyd,” the familiar voice rose above the others. “No one here is going to hurt you.” His voice was calm and assuring, and something within her wanted to trust that voice. She was certain that she knew its owner, yet his face continued to elude her in her mind.

He spoke again. “Garrett, let me do it.”

She hesitated for a moment, and then nodded her head. Vibrations from another pair of feet approached her from the opposite direction Garrett had taken. The footsteps fell silent before her, and her ears told her he was crouching down at her knees. She imagined her hearing compensated for the absence of her vision when she thought she heard the pulse in his wrist as it reached past her ear. Large, warm hands loosened the knot behind her head and the blindfold fell into her lap.

The man pulled his hands away and lowered himself onto the bench beside her. The air felt refreshing and cool against her smothered cheekbones and eyelids. Her sticky eyelids peeled themselves open in agonizing slowness. Sitting in a blindfold for the past several hours made even the dim lights in the transport feel like high noon on her pupils. She squinted, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the new brightness. She looked down to avoid the direct glare from above and saw the blindfold resting on her thighs.

She guessed it had been many hours, given how much it hurt to open her eyes. She tried to gaze around the vehicle to get a look at her captors, but their faces were blurred and blotchy shapes hovering about her, as if she were looking at them through translucent glass.

The man next to her rested his hand on her shoulder. She flinched away; even now that she could see his hazy face she was no closer to resolving his identity.

“Easy, Boyd,” he said, withdrawing his hand again. “Remember your training. Let your eyes adjust. It’s just like after the procedure, huh?” The man chuckled. The reference to the neural mapping surgery triggered the connection. She turned to face him, still squinting in the brightness. The longer she stared, more of his features came into focus. There were more wrinkles around his smiling eyes and perhaps his hair was a bit grayer, but he looked just as he had the last time she saw him.

“B.B.?” she whispered, her eyes as large as moons. Her mouth hung open as she stared at him. It must be some kind of trick of the eyes, or her captors were trying to fool her. Maybe she was losing her mind - all the trauma from the past few days cascading down on her all at once. She could not reconcile what she saw with what she knew to be true. The man that sat next to her could not be Kevin Turner.

Kevin “B.B.” Turner was dead.