Leaping (11 page)

“Hmmm,” Rain squints at the
squiggled drawings on Gabe’s skin. “I see some butterflies. A mermaid. Oh look,
he got someone’s number.” Rain points to the sloppy digits hovering above the
elastic band of Gabe’s boxers. “But the main thing, I don’t know. Maybe a
tiger?”

I drape the blanket over Gabe and
tuck a pillow under his head. “I kind of thought it was a monkey.”

“A monkey. How do you get that?”

I lift the blanket up and point.
“See, the tail.”

“No, those are the whiskers. What
were you talking about before with the Cloak of Invisibility?”

I let the blanket drop and turn to
Rain. “It’s our code word for ‘Don’t tell Tarren I got wasted and boinked some
random girls.’ Of course, in my case it’s, ‘Don’t tell Tarren that I snuck off
to meet you.’”

Rain smiles at me, and Gabe is
right about another thing. Rain does have great hair. I want to run my hands
through all those wild brown tufts. I want to kiss him and know that he’s safe
at night instead of falling out of trees.

“Are we still breaking up?” Rain
asks.

I wrap my arms around my waist.
“Yes.”

I walk the dark, quiet streets of
Grand Junction, sucking in the frigid night air, glad to have escaped the
stifling motel room. I already know I’ve made a mistake about Rain. I knew
before the words even came out of my mouth, but I said it anyway. My heart
doesn’t know what to do. It wobbles. It aches. It wants to hug a pillow and
sob.

I can’t keep waiting for Rain to be
killed. It’s like hanging above a lake of fire by a fraying rope. You know the
plummet is coming, but until it does you hang…you wait…you envision the coming
devastation.

My stupid brain kicks in an
opinion:
But aren’t you doing the same thing with your brothers?

That’s different,
I think
back…to myself…because that’s totally normal. I tuck my hands deep into the
pockets of my coat as I plod through lonely pools of light from the overhead
streetlamps. The town feels almost abandoned at this time of night.
My
brothers are trained. They’re safe. Smart…well, smart when it comes to mission
stuff.

A truck rolls by, its engine a
menacing purr. I step out of the light and wait for it to pass.

That didn’t save Tammy,
my
thoughts whisper.

Tammy.

That name does all sorts of damage
inside me. She is the ghost that haunts us all. Even though I never met her in
life, I feel like I know her through Gabe’s stories, the bright flicks of color
in his aura when he describes his sister’s long black hair, flashing brown
eyes, and her laugh that could get so loud it seemed to rock the house on its
hinges. Tammy was loud about everything she did, playing jokes, tantalizing
men, fighting the mission. If Gabe’s stories are to be believed, she was a
mixture of brave and reckless, crude and tender, loyal and ferocious. So unlike
Tarren, yet he practically worshipped his twin sister.

I think about the makeshift
cemetery my brothers have created in a small grove in the woods a mile away
from their house. Three distinct piles of stone sit in the cemetery. Carved on
the top stone in each pile is a name: Canton Fox, Diana Fox…Tammy Fox. No body
lays beneath Tammy’s grave, but Gabe still places handfuls of wildflowers on it
when they bloom. Tammy loved bright colors, wild oranges, yellows, and reds,
and these are the flowers Gabe tries to find for her.

I stop and lean against a brick
wall while my thoughts tumble and rotate. Every time Gabe and I walk out to the
cemetery, I feel grateful that Tarren didn’t tell him the full story about
Tammy’s death. Four years ago, she got a lead on Grand, the angel who killed
her father and raped her mother, planting the seed of me inside of Diana. After
an epic fight with Gabe, Tammy snuck out at night to go after him, Tarren
sulking at her heels. She had that power over him.

I remember Gabe’s exact words when
he told me this story for the first time. “Tarren would follow Tammy to the
gates of hell if that’s where she wanted to go.” The mission was a trap, one of
many Grand set over the years, trying to wipe out Diana Fox and her gun-toting
children. This one worked, and Tarren and Tammy fell into his clutches.

I push off from the wall and start
walking again. The cold fills my lungs. My legs beg to run, muscles needing a
release, but I hold myself in check. I feel a few scattered auras around me and
hear slow footsteps on the next street over.

In my mind, I hear Gabe’s trembling
voice, feel the phantom flares of pain spiking in his aura as he described how
Grand cut Tarren, opening up a map of scars all over his body just to make
Tammy suffer. As far as Gabe knows, Grand killed Tammy, and Tarren managed to
escape despite his injuries.

I sometimes wonder why Gabe has
never questioned the improbability of this story. Tarren couldn’t have escaped
from an angel like Grand. My biological father could probably hear a fly buzz a
mile away and crush it with his mind from that same distance.

The version of the story that I’ve
cobbled together is much different, darker, and more complex, and it ends with
a lingering question mark. The footsteps from the other street grow closer,
bringing a sluggish aura with it. I pause and wait, watching the young man
cross the street and head my way. His steps are unsteady, and I can see the
drunkenness in the languid, swirling colors of his aura. Maybe one of Gabe’s
drinking buddies?

Another time, another place, this
scenario might have kindled fear in the pit of my stomach. Little college girl
Maya would never want to be caught out alone at night with this heavyset,
intoxicated man stumbling toward her. She wouldn’t have liked the studs in his
eyebrows and nose, the shaved head, the black jacket zipped up over broad,
menacing shoulders.

But that was a lifetime ago. Fear
still coils in my stomach, but I’m not afraid for myself. I ball my hands into
fists and melt into the shadows, pressing myself against the front edge of a
building. Humans are so blind at night, even when sober.

As he comes closer, that animal
part of me is awake, still poised and ready despite the filling energy of the
sun I took on the roof this afternoon. Feral thoughts whisper to me.
He
would be so easy to take. No one would see. No one would hear. You could bury
the body, and your brothers would never know.

      The man shuffles past, and I
stare at the glow of his aura. I can almost imagine the taste of it, the feel
as it rushed through my body like rocket fuel.

Breathe, breathe, breathe,
I
tell myself. The monster part of me is close to the surface, and now that she’s
piqued, she wants to play. My thoughts keep churning, and I lay them out like
pieces of a puzzle I still can’t quite decode.

My half-brother Gem was in the
warehouse when Grand cut Tarren to ribbons. I’ve felt the cavities of regret
inside his soul. Under Grand’s direction, he used his mental abilities to try
and break into Tarren’s mind, a mental tug-of-war that resulted in a
revelation…me. Tarren gave up the secret that his mother had given birth to a daughter,
Grand’s biological daughter, and left her at a police station in some nothing
town on the East Coast.

I turn and walk back to the motel.
Something has set inside of me. Tonight I get answers. Tarren revealed one
secret on the night I killed Grand. He never escaped from Grand’s warehouse. He
was released, but only after Grand turned Tammy into a full angel for his own
sick amusement. He probably expected Tammy to drain her own brother in the
unbearable throes of hunger. Instead, she begged Tarren to kill her. And he
did.

He says that he did.

***

The motel room is dark, punctured
by Gabe’s snores and the slow, steady breathing of Rain. I watch both of their
auras slowly drift in sleep. Rain’s energy is a cloud of deep, shining blue.
Peaceful and steady. Gabe, who only snores when he’s drunk, is surrounded by a
hazy, blue-gray cloud that presses in close to his body.

I close the door softly behind me
and kneel next to my brother. Sir Hopsalot observes me with black, glossy eyes
and ever-wriggling nose from a spot just behind Gabe’s head. His expression
seems sad.
He’s just a bunny,
I remind myself,
totally incapable of
reflecting your guilt.
I shouldn’t be doing this. Really, really shouldn’t
be doing this. But I don’t think Gabe will remember. Not with this much alcohol
in him. Still, this is going to earn me Shitty Sister of the Year Award, hands
down.

“Gabe,” I hiss and reach through
his aura to put a hand on his shoulder. I rock him a little, but he doesn’t
stir. The stale beer and vomit on his breath is particularly horrid. I don’t
care how hung over he is tomorrow. I’m making him take a shower and gurgle
mouthwash for five minutes before we get in a car together.

“Gabe.” I press my nails into his
shoulder and shake him a little harder. His aura brushes against my fingertips
and wrists, kindling heat in my hands. The skin across my palms grows tight as
the bulbs press against the sensitive seams.

“Mmmphf,” Gabe snorts, and his aura
shifts.

“Come on.” If I shake him any
harder, I might give him a brain damage.

“Gonna get you,” he mumbles and
laughs.

Yikes. “It’s me.”

He swallows and cracks his eyelids
open just a hair. “Go way. Can’t be here. No sister allowed.”

I don’t even want know what kind of
kinky dream he’s having. It probably involves Francesca in a French maid’s
uniform with heaving bosoms.

“Gabe, I just need to ask you a
question, then you can go back to your sex castle.”

“This a dream?” His words are still
thick, but his eyes open a little wider.

I sit back on my heels.
Wrong,
wrong, wrong,
I think to myself, but the hushed words come out anyway.
“Gabe, if…if Tammy were turned into an angel. A full angel. Do you…do you think
Tarren would kill her?”

Gabe groans and buries his face
into his pillow. “Fucked up,” he mutters. “Why’r you askin this?”

“Would he?”

I watch hazy red bands trickle into
Gabe’s aura. “No,” he responds, “course not.”

I watch the red grow deeper in his
aura. And it crushes me, hurting Gabe like this. He gives me a My Little Pony butt
sticker, and I twist his Francesca sex dreams into a nightmare of his sister’s
death.

“Are you sure? What if she begged
him to kill her?”

“No!” Gabe’s voice is ragged, and
he lifts his head up. His eyes focus on me, and they seem too sharp for the
amount of alcohol in his system. Maybe with all the puking and water I made him
drink he’s more sober than I thought. “Tarren wouldn’t ever, ever, ever hurt
Tammy. He couldn’t. He loved her more’n hisself. Go away. You suck right now.” His
head drops back down onto the pillow.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur and back away
from him. My head is reeling with his words.
Wouldn’t ever, ever, ever hurt
Tammy.

Gabe grunts, but the red is already
draining out of his aura. A few moments later his breathing is slow and even.

“Who’s Tammy?”

I sigh and turn toward the bed.
Dawn lightens the windows, turning the darkness in the room to gray. Rain sits
up and blinks at me, and his toes peek out from the edge of the sheet over his
legs.

“No one,” I tell him.
Except my
half-sister. My half-sister who is a full angel and who is…

I look away from Rain. Damn Tarren.
Damn his secrets.

A half-sister who is alive.

Gabe groans and pulls his lucky hat lower over his eyes. “Can’t
you turn that damn thing off?” He hunches over in the passenger seat of the
jeep, and sickly shades of yellow tremble in his aura.

I squint through the windshield. “The
sun? Not exactly.”

“Shoot a nuclear missile at it.”

“Then you’d be bitching about how
cold and dark and nuclear winterish everything was as soon as you got over your
hangover.”

Gabe groans again. “I think this
one is permanent.”

I wonder if I’ll have to pull over
again so he can throw up on the side of the highway. The biggest problem with
Gabe’s “nights out” are the days after when he can barely open his eyes without
whimpering.

“Drink some more water,” I tell
him.

“Where’s Bear?” Gabe looks around
as if the Totem’s leader could possibly be stashed somewhere in the jeep.

“Back at the hotel room taking care
of Penguin,” I respond. Bear, real name Doug, had tapped on the door this
morning right at 6 AM. In the nine months since I’d seen him last, he’d ditched
his glasses and about 50 pounds of extra weight. At least he still wore a
stodgy sweater vest so my long-held image of him as the penultimate math
teacher wasn’t completely punctured. His cheeks had been ruddy with cold, and
bags hung under his eyes, but he’d looked strong. The flicker of hardness I’d
seen before in his gaze was more prominent, and I’d wondered if that was a good
thing.

“I had this really important thing
I wanted to tell him,” Gabe says.

“Would that happen to be your
horrible joke about Chuck Norris’s beard making a guy’s head explode? Don’t
worry, you already botched it in front of him.”

“Botched it? I’ve never botched a
joke in my life,” Gabe scoffs. “Especially not a Chuck Norris joke.”

The wide open land of Utah spreads
on each side of this two-lane highway. It’s primal land, all red rock, looming
mountains, and rugged space. It eases my soul to see ground untamed by Walmarts
and McDonalds, to envision what this country might have looked liked before the
first settlers rolled their wagon wheels this far. This place gives me room to
think, and I’ve been thinking a lot as Gabe naps on and off next to me.

Bear and I’d had a short
conversation about Rain’s injury. I’d repeated Dr. Lee’s instructions, and then
we’d debriefed about our latest missions. Bear was thorough and thoughtful as
he described the evolving tactics of The Totem. They were still stumbling,
still making mistakes, but Bear was learning from each one of them, absorbing
every experience and creating new contingencies. I knew that he and Gabe spoke regularly,
and I recognized many of his methods from the Fox Brother vigilante playbook.

A rumbling tractor trailer chugs a
mile ahead on the highway, and our jeep eats up the space between us. My mind
plays over something Bear told me. Three different reports from his teams of
angels wearing sideways crosses around their necks. Bear wasn’t sure what it
meant, but I’d felt a queasiness grip my stomach. I remember what Tucker
Cartwright said about a rising angel religious movement…a movement led by a
violent and craven angel named Warren. He goes by War for short, and never was
a malicious nickname so fitting.  

The lumbering truck is still half a
mile away, but my heightened vision can already read the license plate, count
each big hole punched in the back. I catch the faint whiff of manure. We gain
ground.

The idea of an angel religious cult
shakes up my insides like a washing machine from hell. I can’t help but think
back to an angel I met in Peoria named Nicolas. He was mesmerizing, devout, and
so very handsome. He believed that the angels were an instrument of the end
times – God’s Angels of Death, created to prey upon the sinful, weak humans. Before
I blew a hole in his head, I never got around to informing Nicolas that the
first angels came out of a very human genetics lab, not the pearly gates.

This morning, I’d told Bear about
Nicolas, and he’d looked at me with grave eyes and said, “If these angels
believe they have God’s blessing to feed, then killing becomes a duty, an exercise
in grace. That scares the holy hell out of me.”

Yep, me too. It means we won’t just
be dealing with shit-bag murderers anymore. We’ll be dealing with true
believers. Our mission just turned into a crusade.

“Something’s wrong with you,” Gabe
says, pulling me back into the moment.

“Actually between the two of us, I’m
doing pretty well considering,” I respond. The truck is right in front of us,
and the air in the car fills with the dusky, outdoor smell of a barn.

“Shit,” Gabe moans and pulls his
shirt up over his nose.

“That’s about right,” I say. “Need
to puke?” I flick on my blinker and cruise by the truck, glancing at the solid,
black bodies of the steer inside. I don’t want to think about where these
big-eyed, gentle creatures might be heading. Within a few seconds, the air
streaming from the vents freshens, and Gabe warily lowers his shirt.

 “Your face is going all scrunchy,”
he says, picking up his previous thought. “Something’s on your mind.”

I think your sister is alive,
and I’m pretty sure she broke my boyfriend’s leg…ex-boyfriend’s leg.

“I broke up with Rain.”

I really don’t want to think about my
awkward goodbye with Rain in the motel room, how I could barely even look at
him as I slinked out the door. I’d glanced up, just once, and seen red
filaments of pain burrowed through his aura like pulsating veins.

“Stay safe,” I’d told him.

“You too, Buffy,” he’d responded.

I’d known he would take the high
road, but a part of me wished he’d hurled an insult at me just to make it
easier to close that door between us.  

“Aw, come on, you can’t break up
with him just ‘cause he’s a fuck up,” Gabe says, head slowly turning my
direction. “That’s part of his charm.”

“Drink some water. And why do you
care anyway?”

“I care because you like him. And
not just
like
him.” A few wavy threads of green appear in Gabe’s aura.
“You
like, like
him.”

My fingers curl around the wheel.
“I
like, like
him?”

“I see it. When he texts, you get
this goofy smile on your face and little hearts float around your head,” Gabe teases.

“He isn’t going to make it, Gabe.
You know it.”

My brother’s face turns serious. I
know he’s regretting egging me onto this topic. He doesn’t like to go here,
into the dark places where reality lurks.

“It’s worth it,” he finally says. I
think he means the mission, until he adds, “Love is worth it.”

I watch red tendrils unfold in his
aura. Is he thinking about our mother, Diana, and the cancer that ate her body
away to dust? Or is it Tammy?

“It’s only a matter of time.” This
is my fear funneling right to my lips. “It will be Rain, or Bear, or me, or…..”

“It doesn’t have to,” Gabe snaps.
His hands close tight on his kneecaps. “Fuck. Everyone thinks Armageddon is
just around the corner. We’re going to be all heroic, fighting to the last
breath, dropping one by one. Martyrs for the cause. Tarren believes it.
Sometimes I think he wants it.” Gabe’s words are spilling out, ragged and
angry, and I grip the wheel hard as his aura brightens and expands around his
body in sharp red hues.

“But who made up those rules?” he
continues. “Who decided the ending already?”

Gabe pins me with a hard stare. My
brother is made for laughter and smiles and utterly stupid Chuck Norris jokes.
When I see anger in his eyes, my world just drops out of its orbit.

“Maybe we can actually win this
thing. You ever think of that?” he says. “Maybe Tarren and Lo create a cure and
we turn everyone back, including you. We all live.” He pulls in a big,
shuttering breath and repeats, “We all live.” His voice is ardent, like he has
to believe it or he’ll fall apart. I think that maybe he does.

I stare straight ahead at the
snowcapped mountains and raw red canyons all around us. “I broke up with Rain
for the same reason you won’t ask Francesca out.” 

Gabe frowns and turns his gaze
forward. “That’s different. Francesca didn’t choose this life.”

I shouldn’t say anything. He’s
miserable enough, but the words come out anyway. “Gabe, she just did.”

Reds deepen in his aura, and he
hunches over as if he can block my words like an oncoming punch. “She didn’t
understand. I didn’t explain it right. I’m gonna talk to her…”

“Gabe.” The word is a sigh.

“Did I say anything last night?” He
looks are me. His eyes are narrowed, probably from a pounding headache, but his
gaze looks suspicious.

“You said a lot of things last
night,” I reply as casually as I can. “Does My Little Pony ring a bell?”

“About…about Tammy?”

“Your sister?” I hitch my voice
just a little and force my muscles to stay relaxed. I feel Gabe looking at me.
Tarren would see through the lie in an instant. He’s too observant. Too good at
playing this same sick game.

“I had this dream. This really,
really fucking horrible dream about Tammy and Tarren,” Gabe says with a sigh
and closes his eyes. I swallow and wonder if I can ever make this up to him;
ever be worth his trust and love. I’m pretty sure not.   

“Wanna talk about it?” I ask.
Please,
please, please don’t talk about it.

Gabe just shakes his head. “Can you
pull over?”

“Yup.” I turn my blinker to the
whole empty world and glide onto the shoulder of the highway. The air is fresh
and bracing as I lean again the front bumper and listen to Gabe retch a few
feet away. The tractor trailer rumbles past, making my hair dance around my
face and washing me in the rich scent of manure, hay, and sleepy cow.

***

In the daylight, Vegas looks as
hung over as Gabe. The casinos that are commanding and playful at night,
swathed in thousands of twinkling lights, look bloated and gimmicky in the
daylight. Huge screens blast faded messages into the sunlight, and the high
towers speak of hubris.

“Maybe we can hit up some of the
casinos while we’re here,” Gabe mutters, nibbling cautiously on a protein bar.
He’s looking better, which is to say almost human, and hasn’t dry heaved in two
hours.

“Maybe,” I answer but silently pray
that we stay as far away from this heaving, crazy town as possible. As we’ve
recently discovered, Gabe and I make a pretty good poker duo. His bluffing
skills are almost as legendary as he believes, and my ability to see raw
emotions gives him the perfect unfair advantage. Between the two of us, we can
usually turn a few hundred dollars into a few thousand with no one the wiser. I’m
pretty sure Gabe would do it even without the financial stakes just for the
opportunity to paste on fake mustaches and practice all his different accents.
I usually settle for a wig, big sunglasses, and one of the three slinky dresses
I bought at a secondhand shop a couple of miles off the strip.

Fake facial hair or not, poker is
as good a way to fill our shallow coffers as any of Gabe’s other schemes…As
long as I don’t lose control and go Godzilla on my fellow gamblers. Before the Prism,
I wouldn’t have been able to step foot inside a casino. Now, I can manage it
for about an hour at a time, though it’s not easy.

We make it out of Vegas and into
the surrounding suburbs. As I drive farther, the lookalike ranch houses drop
away, and the houses grow bigger, more imposing, until they sprawl out in vast
estates. At the top of a steep incline, I turn into a long driveway lined by
palm trees. The wrought iron gate opens when I punch in the code, and we cruise
up to a gaudy, resplendent mansion.

“God, I hate that fucking
fountain,” Gabe groans.

In the center of the circular
driveway an elegant marble lion rears its head, spitting a gush of water upwards.
It slaps back down into the fountain. The jeep growls as it climbs up the
driveway. My hands ache, and I realize I’m squeezing the wheel almost hard
enough to break it in half. I’ll have to confront Tarren. I’ll have to tell him
that I know Tammy is alive. That I know he’s been lying to Gabe for years,
letting her death poison his soul while he collected wildflowers every spring
for her grave.
My feelings are as clear as a Jackson Pollock painting,
and this long trip has only created more questions. Tarren must have a reason
for hiding Tammy.
Is she dangerous? Out of control? Is he keeping her chained
up in a cage somewhere?
Maybe she somehow escaped whatever prison he was
holding her in, and of course the person to bumble into her would be Rain.
There could be other explanations, and I’ve probably thought of all of them on
this long drive.

What if Tammy doesn’t want Gabe
to see her as an angel? Maybe she swore Tarren to a blood oath of secrecy.

All I know is that I can’t tell
Gabe. Not yet. Not before I give Tarren a chance to explain. I owe him that
much, especially as someone keeping her own dark family secrets.

 I park on the side of the driveway
behind Carmen’s Lexus “errand car,” as she calls it. Speaking of Lo’s colorful,
curvy, step-mom, she flings open the front door and greets us with her usual gushing
enthusiasm.

“Lee, my sweet boy!” she cries.
“You are still too skinny.”

Gabe, despite his rueful state,
slides a warm smile on his face, takes her hand, and gives it a gallant kiss.
“And you are still too beautiful, mi amor.” He exaggerates the trill on the R, and
Carmen bursts into giggles. Her copper extensions bounce along with her ample
bosom.

“Mentiroso,” chides him. Her face
turns serious for a moment. “The cancer? Sweet one, tell me it’s good news.”

“Still in remission,” Gabe tells
her, and a ripple of vulnerability touches his face.

“Gracias a Dios,” Carmen murmurs,
crossing herself.