Falling (17 page)

“Grand didn’t know you were coming,” I say quickly. “You
saved my life.”

“We should have done more.” Gabe stands up, but I beat him
to the door.

“You did enough.” I turn the knob and let Tarren in.

Tarren’s face is flushed, and he’s freshly shaven. I can
hardly catch his scent even when I’m only five feet away. Now I understand the
pumice stone and the alcohol lotion.  He wears a snug black jacket and black
pants. Gabe is still in his torn jeans and wrinkled shirt. He hasn’t showered
or shaved.

Without a word, we make our way out of the motel. Tarren
looks every inch the professional spy. I exude mentally handicapped charity
case and Gabe just comes off as homeless. I learn on the drive over that this
is exactly the point.

The boys munch on protein bars, and Gabe sucks down two Red
Bulls before we make it back to Marymoor Park. Rain patters against the windows
of the SUV, and I shiver. The clouds are losing their glow, and in the
encroaching dusk I see the sweep of flashlights threading through the woods.

“Shit,” Gabe mutters.

“They’re still searching for her,” Tarren confirms.

“We’ve got to get them out of the park. They’re easy
pickings for the angel.”

Tarren is silent a moment, thinking. “We can’t,” he decides.

“They’re in danger.”

“We won’t be able to find them all.”

“We could set a fire. A little one. The fire trucks come,
shoo the people away.”

“First, it’s raining. Second, the volunteers would come back
as soon as the fire was out. Third, the firemen would be just as likely
targets.”

“But —” Gabe begins.

“We can’t do anything about them,” Tarren says sternly.
“What we can do is present a more tempting target. The volunteers are in pairs
and groups. They have flashlights and whistles. Risky for an angel. It will be
looking for the most vulnerable prey. The easiest kill.”

The brothers look at each other, energies syncing again.
Gabe sighs.

* * *

We wander past the fields, past the community garden, past
the dog park and into the woods. We stay away from the flashlights, from the
others tromping around calling to Sunshine Bailey’s ghost. The angel is
everywhere, in each small noise, each gust of wind rattling the branches, each
new smell that clamors for my attention.

A little ways into the woods, Gabe curls up on a bench
positioning a stained duffle bag under his head. He checks his pistol then,
still holding the semi-automatic, tucks both hands into the sleeves of his
khaki coat.  I watch in amazement as his energy lowers and flattens around his
body almost as if he were sleeping.

Tarren and I hunker down in the trees 100 yards away. Tarren
lies on his stomach, eye fixed to the scope of his sniper rifle. I drape myself
across a wide branch above him and watch his energy slow and dampen also.

“How do you do that?” I whisper.

“No talking.” He doesn’t look up.

“Your energy, it’s going down.”

“You can see that?” There’s an edge to his voice.

“I can feel it. Sometimes,” I hedge.

“Angels can connect to the energy output of humans,” Tarren
whispers. “They can sense emotions like fear or nervousness. When we hunt we
have to lock down on those things.”

“How?”

“There are mental tricks. Breathing. Now quiet.”

I’m too nervous to be quiet. I don’t like Gabe out in the
open all alone. I keep imaging a black shadow swooping down and snatching him
away. The rain falls around us, tagging the leaves and dripping through my
thin, cotton pants. The water skews the world, disrupting the normal smells,
blanketing the sounds of the forest. My senses are off kilter, and I feel naked
without them.  And it’s cold.

“Why don’t I track the volunteers,” I whisper to Tarren.
“Split up, cover more ground, or wait for the angel where I found the piece of
fabric. It might come back there again.”

“No.”

“You don’t trust me. You don’t think I can control myself,”
I accuse.

“You can’t take on an angel by yourself.”

“Then give me a gun.”

“End of discussion Maya.”

I rest my chin on my gloved hands and fume. The hunger
hasn’t let up, and it erodes away my composure. I think of a massive nail file
wearing away at my frontal cortex and then can’t get the image out of my head
for the next hour. I feel helpless, melding with this branch, thinking about
nail files, waiting for something to come down and try to kill my brother.

I know exactly what Tarren’s rifle sounds like, how cleanly
it pierces through the aluminum soup cans the brothers have rigged all
throughout their wooded backyard. I wonder if the angel will tumble backwards,
flipping end over end. I wonder how much blood I should expect — if there will
be any terrible screeches of death, any stammering final monologs like in the
movies.

The minutes and hours are stubborn, digging in their heels.
Each second presses the cold and wet deeper into the center of my bones so that
my limbs ache with it. I press my teeth together to keep them from chattering.
The initial fear and jitters exhaust themselves, dulling into a waxy wariness.
I try to keep my eyes on Gabe’s form, but they keep slipping away as my
thoughts wander to my own discomfort, to these new secrets I’ve added to the
pile. The restrained memories twist against their chains, screaming terrible
things beneath their gags.

Beyond the hum of all these wretched thoughts, my ears pick
up a sound — a grunt of surprise somewhere far off to my right. The rain has
stopped, and the sound carries across the wide space of the forest. My body
tenses, my ears honing. Then it comes, a low strangled call,
uh, uh, uh.
I recognize this guttural cry. Ryan made the
same seizing sound as Grand tore the life from his body.

“Maya, no!”

I don’t understand Tarren’s shout until I realize that my
feet are planting into the muddy ground as I launch myself through the trees.

Leaves slap against me like wet hands, and I’m charging
through roots, twisting around trees without thinking. I need to get to the
sound, I need to save Ryan.

Only it isn’t Ryan. I find the crumpled body of a man a half
mile away from our stakeout. He is all wrong in many ways — the torqued upper
body, the wide unfocused eyes, the mouth still caught in a last garbled choke —
but most of all because he is colorless. There is no aura around him, no dance
of emotion, no churning cloud of life.

My brain starts inconspicuously edging out of the room, and
this is what panic feels like. I kneel down next to the man. I am too terrified
to touch him, so my hand just lingers above his shoulder.  If only his eyes
weren’t open.
Dead
, the word punches into my head.
Dead, dead, dead.
I listen for a heartbeat, watch his
chest for breath and find nothing.

Then, because it’s me, things get a lot worse. I hear the
sound of footsteps approaching. I assume this is Tarren ready to pull me up by
the scruff of my neck and drag me back to the car.
Stupid
,
I think and finally, finally realize that an angel was just here, could still
be here. I stare at the shadowed figure emerging from the woods wondering what
this angel will look like, if it will have long, dripping claws, and what it
will do when it finds me.

The boy who steps out from the trees is not an angel or
Tarren. For this reason alone, I fall wildly in love with him. My eyes latch to
the reddish-hued energy circling around his body, and he is so amazingly,
utterly…human.  I love his entrenched dark eyes, his tall, skinny body, all
those tuffs of brown hair standing up on his head and even the weird goatee
thing on his chin. 

“You here?” the boy asks. His flashlight sweeps across the
ground. I see the light coming, but I just stand there, dumb as a rock. It hits
the body and stops.

“Pastor Reynolds?” the boy chokes. The beam of light jerks,
hits my knee and then rushes up my body.

The boy’s aura unleashes bright canary yellows and whites,
and in response, every muscle I have clenches hard. Through the beam of light I
just stare at his aura and listen to the song.

“Your hands,” he whispers.

I don’t have to look down to know they are glowing. I can
feel the skin scrolling back, the feeding buds rising from their chambers and
throwing out flares of heat.

“It’s just that I’m hungry, and you —” I say and then stop.
Just stop.
Holy hells, bells, gazelles.

“What…what are you?” the boy whispers. Not a boy, really; he
must be my age. I turn and run. After a pause, I hear his steps come crashing
after me. This kid must be dumber than I am. Who chases the boogey man? I am
aware that all I have to do is stop, turn around and peel these horrible, itchy
gloves off my hands. The boy would run right into my embrace.

There must be at least some small smidgeon of Maya still
controlling my brain, because I keep running, leaping into the trees and
springing across the distance. I feel Tarren’s energy coming at me, simmering
an angry orange that he’s obviously trying to hold in check. I drop down, run
toward him. He stops when he sees me. I hook my arm in his and swing him around
roughly.

Tarren trusts me enough not to automatically shoot me,
which, I guess, is something. I tug him behind me, keep running. After a slight
hesitation, he picks up the pace, and I let go of his arm.

Behind us the boy screams, “Come back here!”

I can almost feel Tarren’s mega-scowl searing into my back.
A whistle hollers, then another. Soon, a whole chorus of shrill notes rise up
out of the forest.

Tarren and I run together, and I try to pretend this is just
another run in the woods. Another glorious morning where the sun will soon peek
its flat face up and over the horizon.

This is what brings me down enough to start thinking. We
collect Gabe, who has packed up the sniper rifle, and then I weave us around
the frantic humans and their bright, pounding energies.

We make it back to the car, and I can already hear the cry
of police sirens pitching in the distance, growing louder. Tarren lets the
leash on his energy slip just a little and his aura ratchets in bright oranges
and reds that set my body humming.

He stares at me, and his hand hovers over the gun at his
waist.

“Look,” I whimper, “I heard the guy scream, I couldn’t just
—”

“Stand still,” Tarren growls, and it’s a feral, dangerous
sound.

“Tarren, she didn’t —,” Gabe starts.

“Quiet,” Tarren cuts off his brother. “Don’t get in my way.”
His eyes flash back on me, gray as flint and just as hard. There’s nothing in
Tarren’s face, not the merest crevice to cling to. I watch his fingers brush
the barrel of his gun, ready to flip it from his holster and shoot. I think
he’s actually going to kill me. Gabe’s energy is bright as a star.

I am shivering so hard that water droplets jump out of my
hair. The monster presses against the paper thin wall of my control, keeps
pushing, pushing, pushing…

Tarren’s body relaxes, and his hand drops away from the gun.

“Get in the car,” he tells me with the quiet menace of a
rattlesnake.

Gabe sighs — such a long whoosh of air. “Thank fucking
Jesus,” he mutters, and the red slowly dissipates from his aura. He goes around
back, opens the trunk.

“Move!” Tarren hollers at him.

I crawl into the back seat and slump against the opposite
window. My hands are still glowing, so I press them into my belly and pull my
legs up tight to pin them in place. Gabe opens the back door I’m not leaning
against and holds out a wool blanket. Even when I don’t acknowledge the
offering, even though the sirens are loud enough so that the boys must be able
to hear them by now, Gabe doesn’t move. His face is wrecked with heroic intent.

Slowly, I lower my knees, unwind my arms, reach out and take
the blanket from his hand.

On the ride back I expect Tarren to charge at me fast and
loud as a wailing freight train. Instead, his voice drops to a dangerous quiet,
and all he says is, “You jeopardized everything.”

Gabe has told me how Diana could wither her children with a
stare, how the softest words from her mouth often carried the deadliest stings.
Tarren must be so much like her.

“Just lay off,” Gabe says, though there’s been a long pause
of silence. I just pull the itchy blanket tighter around my frame and try not
to look at anything.

Back in our motel room sponsored by the color beige, I stand
in the corner until Tarren and Gabe finish their review. Tarren flashes me a
deep scowl — he’s really perfected the art of menace — and then leaves for his room.

“Go ahead,” I tell Gabe as soon as the door closes.

“And do what?” He hefts his bag onto his bed and starts
digging through.

“I’m a fucking mess. I deserve a monumental ‘I told you
so.’”

“It’s not that,” Gabe says, almost to himself. He pulls out
shampoo, soap and a clean pair of boxers from the bag and tosses them onto the
bed.

“Running after that angel, that was stupid. Dangerous.
Maya…” he looks up at me, and the trickster light is gone from his eyes. “Don’t
ever do that again.”

This is the second time he’s said that to me today.

“Why do you even care so much about me?” My voice is high as
a yelp, because this question has been gnawing on my conscience every night
since this whole angel thing started. I still haven’t figured out any type of
answer that makes sense.

Gabe stiffens, and a wave of red goes through his aura. I
realize that he’s actually going to tell me the truth, and I suddenly don’t
want to hear it.

“I didn’t know my father. To me he was always gone,” Gabe
says and looks away. “I felt sad, but I was only missing the idea of something,
not the real thing. Then Mom got sick, and when she...” Gabe forces the word
out, “…died, it was, god it was awful.”

“Gabe, stop.”

He grips the sides of his bag, and the words rush on. “But
then there was you. It wasn’t, like, a tradeoff or anything. But I hadn’t known
before. We lost Mom, but now I had a sister. It was something, you understand?
Something to fill the void. And then Tammy.” Gabe’s voice loses its strength.
His aura alights in bright reds that slam a wrecking ball against my shaky
control.

“Please stop,” I whisper, and this seems to spur him on. He
looks up at me through the messy bangs of his wet hair, and those honey-colored
eyes are intent in his pale face.

“Tarren is different now…” Gabe’s brows pinch together as he
struggles to speak. “He’s so…so far away and I can’t figure out how to find him
and bring him back. It’s been years, but he hasn’t gotten better. He wants to
die. He tries to, and if something happens to him…I won’t, I just can’t. Maya!”
Gabe’s voice pitches out as a sob that cuts something small and fragile inside
of me. “You can’t do stupid shit like that, you can’t.”

His aura is a rush of rusted oranges, browns and reds. This
is how I learn what Gabe’s fear looks like and how it etches deep ravines of
pain in his face.

“Alright,” I blubber back.

“You have to take care of yourself. Let us keep you safe.”

“Alright, Gabe, alright!”

“Thanks,” he says hoarsely. He gathers up his supplies and
walks to the bathroom. His knee pops, and it’s such a normal little thing that
I almost laugh.

Instead, I call out to him, “What happened when we got back
to the car?” Gabe stops but doesn’t say anything.

“The way Tarren stared at me, like he was going to kill me.”

“He was,” Gabe says this so soft, I wonder if he meant to
say it out loud. “He, uh, was checking to make sure…” Gabe swallows. “After an
angel feeds, its skin flushes, sometimes even glows for a little while. He was
checking…”

“…to make sure I didn’t kill anyone,” I finish. “Oh, okay.”

“I knew you didn’t…but he had to check, Maya. He had to.”
Gabe stands still for a while until he realizes I’m not going to say anything
back. We just leave that right there, and Gabe goes into the bathroom, closes
the door.

Even though I’m wet as all hell, I collapse backward onto my
bed and just lie there listening to the hiss of the shower.

* * *

When Gabe comes out, he’s in a pair of gray boxers and a
ratty undershirt. I’m almost 100% sure he doesn’t actually own a set of
pajamas.

I’m still lying on top of my covers, just staring out the
dark window.

“Your turn,” Gabe says indicating the bathroom with his
head.

“Too tired. I’ll do it in the morning.”

“Your life,” Gabe shrugs and apparently doesn’t realize the
irony of that statement or the wave of jumpy, angry emotions it sends through
me.

Things are still tense in the room. I can feel it, see it in
Gabe’s energy. The peak of my hunger hasn’t really faded, and I’m honing in on
Gabe’s aura, aware that we are alone together in this room without Tarren’s warning
eyes and itchy trigger finger.

“Did Diana know about angels before you were born?” I ask.

Gabe drops gracelessly into his bed. “Ha! Actually, yes.
When my dad killed Robert Thane, he got real scraped up. Mom confronted him.
She had this way of grilling you until you sang like a canary. Dad told her
everything, about Thane, about Dr. Cook, about the angels and his mission to
kill them. Mom was so pissed that she went into labor right then and there. I
was born right in the middle of the worst argument they ever had.”

My fingers find a hole in the comforter and immediately
begin to unbraid the loose threads.  “Then why did she name you Gabriel?”

“Aw man,” Gabe says. I wait for him to continue. He doesn’t.

“What?”

“She had this kind of idea.” Again I wait. Again he doesn’t
speak until I prod.

“What idea?”

Gabe rolls onto his side and pegs me with a stare. “Okay,
but you have to swear not to be all, you know, give me shit about it.”

I put my hand over my heart and raise my other hand. “Cross
my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

“Alright, so Mom was pissed at my dad and overwhelmed and
terrified out of her mind. Here she was with a newborn in her arms, and she’d
just learned that her geeky, scientist husband’s been battling superhuman
monsters. The way she told it, she kicked my father and the Ts, Tammy and
Tarren, out of her hospital room. She rocked me and cried, and I was just
staring at her, calm and composed. She kissed me, and I laughed, though I
looked it up once and newborns don’t laugh until, like, a couple months.
Anyway, she swears I laughed, and she looked into my eyes and had this kind of
epiphany.” Gabe sighs, and his aura pulses a tangy orange that I’m beginning to
associate with his embarrassment or distress.

“Mom believed in angels, real angels, the fluffy winged
kind, and she wanted…” Gabe pauses, thinking. “She wanted to remember what
angels really were. I was her reminder of a better world, I guess. So she named
me Gabriel.”

“Gabriel is supposed to be God’s messenger,” I say. I find a
new thread and pull it loose. The hole in the comforter yawns open, large
enough for me to slip my hand through.

“Yeah, he brings people hope and stuff…”

“Wow.”

Gabe tucks his face into his pillow. His voice is muffled.
“I know. Kind of a lot to live up to.”

“Now who’s angelic?”

“Oh, lame.” Gabe reaches out for the lamp on the table
between our beds. “I’m calling it a night.” He clicks off the lamp, dousing the
room in darkness.

* * *

I don’t intend to fall asleep, but I do…until the hunger
pulls me away from my restless dreams. My mind is cloudy and confused as I
slowly bob along the surface of consciousness. The song plays in my head, pure
notes of hunger. It really is a fire, with flames that burn a different, deeper
burn.  I sit up, fumbling with my gloves before I stop myself. It takes me a
second to remember why.

The skin on my palms is peeling back, the veiny orbs lifting
up, throbbing. It’s still night, and I hear Gabe breathing the slow notes of
sleep from his bed. His energy is a noose around my mind, pulling me closer,
tightening.

I step out of bed. A part of me is fighting this, but her
words are papery whispers.
Go away Maya
, I think,
but she insists, so I tiptoe to the rabbit cage instead. My gloves are gone,
and my thoughts are all short-circuiting, fingers twitching, senses so keen
that I can hear Gabe’s steady heart beat from across the room; can feel Tarren
jumping in and out of sleep just beyond the thin wall.

I pull open the cage. I can’t even tell the rabbits apart.
All I see is their bright energy hooping around their bodies in golden bands. I
grab one of the shapes and tear its life away, hiccupping with pleasure. It’s
not enough to slake the hunger. Not even close. I turn to take the last rabbit,
but the door hangs open, and the cage is empty. A blur of energy streaks across
the room and slips under Gabe’s bed.

“Little fucker!”

“Maya?” Gabe’s voice is heavy, skewed by the pillow.

“Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

“Was I in a lake?”

“It’s the rain. You’re dreaming.”

“K, thanks,” Gabe sighs. He pulls the blanket up over his
shoulders as if this could possibly hide his energy. Hide anything. His breath
is even again. Vulnerable.

I crawl to the farthest corner of the room and lean my
forehead against the wall. The memories lash against their bonds, the ones I
can’t think about.

Grand’s fingers trailing down my back.
Finding what they will find. His words carved into my mind so my
thick-fingered, un-enhanced memory won’t drop them.

“Maya. I knew they would find you.”

After a while I pull my legs to my chest and rock slowly
back and forth. The motion is soothing and lulls me into a dreamless sleep.