Leaping (13 page)

Color me impressed. Tarren considers
the Totem to be rank amateurs who might as well shoot themselves in the face to
get their impending deaths over with. But there’s another part of Tarren, the
ruthlessly practical part, the part who knowingly led Grand to me just for the
chance to entrap him. That chance slipped away and cost me my humanity. I’ve
forgiven Tarren for that betrayal, but I can’t forget, and the wound is still raw.
How will Gabe react when he finds out that Tarren has kept the knowledge that
his sister lives from him? Will our family shatter apart on the sharp edge of
that secret?

“We’ve got movement,” Gabe says,
pulling me into the present.

A short man approaches the glass
front door and begins wiping it down with a cloth. Every part of his small,
sharp-boned body disappears behind his severe nose. His wire-rimmed glasses look
comically small perched on that nose.   

“Angel,” I confirm, searching and
failing to find a colorful aura cloaking his frame.

Tarren’s eyes swing from the wide
glass front of the shop to the people bustling in and out of Target nearby. I
know exactly what he’s going to say.

“Not here. Too open. Too many
witnesses,” Tarren says right on cue. “We’ll sit on him, see if we can observe
an ability. Then we take him at his home.”

“What if he goes to feed first?” I
ask.

“He’ll likely choose a secluded
spot. We can get him before he hurts anyone.”

With our orders in place, we sit
and wait in the parking lot a few stores down from the accounting office. This
is the absolute least sexy part of being a vigilante.

Sitting.

Waiting.

Listening to Gabe’s stomach gurgle.

Trying to keep all my swirly
thoughts tied down. All the pangs and worry surrounding Rain compete with how
much I just want to scream, “Tammy is alive!” as loud as I can in the car just
to see what happens.

Fortunately, Theodore Morrison
provides us with at least a little bit of amusement. The guy is a cleaning nut.
He starts by wiping down the glass door and moves across the front, cleaning window
by window with precise strokes. Within fifteen minutes, I know, just know, that
he’s the sort of guy who insists everyone call him Theodore. Not Theo. Not Ted.
And God forbid, Teddy. Only Theodore.

Every half hour or so a customer
walks in, and Theodore dutifully tucks his glass cleaner and cloth away and
meets with them.

“You think his customers are at
risk?” I ask Tarren.

He shakes his head. “He’s
controlled. Methodical. He won’t kill at his place of business. It’d be too easy
to trace back to him if his customers started disappearing.”

As soon as the customers leave, Theodore
breaks out his cleaning supplies again. An hour into our watch, he starts with
the dusting and then the vacuuming. We take turns sneaking into the Target to
go to the bathroom, hiding our faces beneath ball caps and sunglasses. The sun
sinks below the horizon as we wait.

I come back from my allotted
bathroom break carrying a bag containing a new pair of jeans, two sports bras,
eye liner, body wash, deodorant, socks, and a hotdog for Gabe. I stare at
Tarren as I pull off my wig, just daring him to argue. I receive a pretty
standard scowl, about a 5 on Tarren’s scowl chart, and a fist bump from Gabe as
his eyes alight on the hotdog.

When the hotdog is nothing more
than faint fumes lingering in the car, Gabe curls up in the back seat. Sir
Hopsalot sits on his chest. “Let me know if we need to kill anyone,” Gabe says.

Outside, the sky is a brilliant
palette of colors, fiery orange and wild purple. If the sky were an aura it
would be filled with anxiety, fear, and love. How appropriate for the thoughts
filling my head. I wait until the peaks and valleys of Gabe’s aura slow into
gentle waves of sleep.
Now,
I think,
ask him about Tammy.

“How is Rain?” Tarren’s voice is
jarring. He’s giving me a look, going for stern mixed with displeasure. The
growing night paints shadows on his face.

I sigh. “You knew about us.”

Tarren’s expression shifts, and I
see his lips press together, those pale blue eyes chilling over. This is his
hard mask, the way he looks when I’ve disappointed him, or right before he does
something dangerous and heroic. “Maya, you can’t…”

“I know. I broke up with him.” My
words are short and blunt and they hurt. I’m not ready for how much they hurt.
“It was stupid. Really, really stupid. It’s done though, and it won’t happen
again.”

I want this conversation to be
over, and I’m sure Tarren does too, but he speaks again, his words precise yet
soft. “Emotions cloud our judgment, and the people we love can be turned into
weapons against us.”

“I know that.” All I have to do is
call up Tarren’s devastated face the night I almost killed Gabe. I remember how
his aura hung listless around his frame, so void of color it was almost black.
The way he just shut down, gave up, was terrifying.

My brother pins me with a stare.
“But for you…” his words hang there, and I hate where I think he’s going. “With
your condition, it’s irresponsible of you…”

“We didn’t…” I stammer, my cheeks
flaming. “I mean, I was careful. I never let him…”

“It just takes one slip,” Tarren
says. He hasn’t raised his voice one decibel, but every word is a whip slicing
right through my weak, vulnerable skin. Because he’s right. I put Rain in
danger. I was selfish.

Tarren’s disappointment is an anvil
pressing on my ribs, flattening out my lungs. As much as I hate him sometimes,
I love him much much more. I think someday the weight of all his disappointment
will crush me.

“He’s on the move,” I manage.

Tarren’s gaze slides past me to the
front of the shop, where Theodore – not Ted or Theo or Teddy – Morrison flips
the Closed sign on the door, locks up, and spends another five minutes wiping
the glass panes on the outside of the door with a rag before taking brisk steps
to a gray Lexus. I turn in my seat and shake Gabe. Even that brief moment of
contact awakens the song of hunger in my mind, prickling the hairs on my arms.
Tarren’s face doesn’t change, but I see the way his muscles unconsciously tighten
beneath his shirt, the infinitesimal setting of his shoulders, every time I
touch Gabe.

“Yup, awake,” Gabe groans and rubs
a palm across his eyes as he tucks Sir Hopsalot into the crook of his arm. My
hand is already back in my lap, curled into a tight fist.

***

Theodore Morrison’s silver Lexus
hugs the speed limit, stops at every yellow light, and helpfully indicates each
turn with a blinking signal. In other words, he drives like Tarren, so boringly
I’m surprised he doesn’t put the drivers behind him to sleep and cause a
massive wake of crashes.

Tarren stays a few car lengths
back, and we trail the Lexus into a pristine subdivision filled with large
family homes. Cute. Idyllic. Creepy in a Stepford Wifeish way. Under the glow
of the street lights, I can see that many of the houses are decorated tastefully
for Halloween, showcasing splatted fake witches on the door, happy pumpkins on
the porches, and scarecrows pitched in yards landscaped with pebbles and
drought-resistant plants.

I feel a tick in Tarren’s aura and
follow his gaze. My stomach is suddenly filled with fluttery moth wings. Over a
dozen cars line the curb outside a charming taupe-colored house with lovely manicured
shrubs in the front yard. Theodore uses his blinker and slides against the
nearest open curb behind a glossy black Acura. He gets out of his car holding
something tight under his right arm.

“What is…” Gabe starts.

“A Bible,” I whisper.

Gabe sits back as Tarren continues
down the street, turns at the corner, and then makes a U-turn so we have a
straight-line view of the taupe house.

“So, he’s going to Bible study?”
Gabe asks, clearly confused. “I don’t remember Jesus saying it was okay to kill
bunches of people.”

“Could be how he targets his
victims,” Tarren says.

No,
I think remembering
Bear’s report of angels wearing sideways crosses and Tucker Cartwright’s
mocking mention of a new angel religious movement.
This is something
different. Something much, much worse.

Theodore waves as the front door of
the taupe house opens, and I audibly gasp in that way no one ever actually does
in real life. A figure stands in the doorway, his hand held up in greeting. My
stomach churns. I know that squashed on nose, those beetle black eyebrows,
those small, bright, violent eyes. Warren steps aside, the large sideways cross
gently swinging around his neck, as Theodore passes him into the house.   

“We need to shoot the place up, take them all out.” The
words just spill out of me. A year ago, I was a mousey college sophomore who
wore too much eye makeup and thought maybe she could change the world for the
better, at least a little. The closest thing to a gun I’d ever held was a pea
shooter at a carnival booth. But when I say we need to destroy War and everyone
who follows him, I mean it.

I really, really do. 

“Jeez, Maya, “ Gabe breaths, because he’s never had to
listen to War wax poetic about the delightful high he gets from draining the
life out of people. He’s never had to see those greedy little eyes gleam when
they landed on Raven, the innocent girl he transformed into a hunger-wracked
angel.

“We can’t,” Tarren says. In the two seconds since my
pronouncement, his mind has been fast at work, gears grinding, calculators
calculating. “We don’t know who’s in that house. Could be humans in the mix.”

“That was Warren.” Neither of my brothers has had the
pleasure of crossing his slimy path yet, but I’ve told them plenty about what
happened in Peoria earlier this year when I spent way too much time with War in
undercover mode.  “He’s re-building Diamond’s army, I know it,” I insist. “I
think he’s using religion to do it.” 

My aunt didn’t plan on taking over the world like my
biological father, Grand, but she believed that discovery of the angels was imminent,
and she wasn’t about to lie down and let the governments or the world paint
angels as public enemy number one. Her solution was to turn disenchanted teens
in small cities all across the country into newly minted angels, creating
pockets of genetically altered killer gangs. She was making good headway on her
scheme until Gabe made an impossible shot and took Diamond right out of the
sky. But War escaped, and he has neither the brains nor the poise of Diamond,
just a neanderthal glee for violence and destruction. And now he’s teaching
Bible study.

Tarren shakes his head. “We’re too exposed out here, we have
no idea how many angels we’re dealing with, and we’re surrounded by civilians.”

His calm, icy voice only stirs my desperation higher. “We’ve
taken on a group of angels before. Gabe did it in Peoria.”

 “Peoria.” The thinnest sour note hits Tarren’s voice, and I
see a streak of yellow anxiety waver in his aura before he reins it in. “Gabe
was lucky. Those angels were young and afraid. They ran, but they could just as
easily have turned on him.”

Yeah, Tarren still hasn’t gotten over Gabe’s little stunt,
though it probably saved both our lives. Actually, I haven’t really gotten over
it either. The audacity of Gabe taking on an entire house filled with angels,
backed by a rag tag team of amateurs still stuns me. That’s Gabe in a nutshell.
He’s read so many comics I think he really does believe that impossible odds
are just the starting point of a great story. On this one occasion he beat them
and won the day…but it could have so easily gone differently.

“Don’t resent the genius,” Gabe says, but his voice is
lackluster.

My eyes scan the row of cars on the curb. Eleven, with two
in the driveway. Thirteen. A cherry red Infiniti purrs down the road and grabs
some curb. Make that fourteen.

Tarren is still calculating. “Any gunshots in this neighborhood
would be reported immediately. Nearest police station?”

Gabe is on his smartphone already. “Eight miles away.”

“They’d be here in minutes,” Tarren says.

A thin woman with a severe face that looks like it was
chiseled from granite steps out of the Infiniti. Her short, steel-gray hair
blows in a sudden breeze, and she claws it down as if the wind were a personal
affront to her. No aura.

 “Angel,” I confirm to my brothers. I stare at Tarren,
trying to mind zap him into compliance. He looks…so tired.

“We wait here,” Tarren says, impervious to my mental wiles.
“Then we follow Morrison after the meeting and find an opportunity to grab
him.”

 “And leave all those angels on the table?” Gabe is
incredulous. “How many innocent people are they going to snack on today,
tomorrow, next week?”

“We have to kill War. At least him,” I insist.

“No,” Tarren responds, his voice going growly.

“He could be like angel Hitler,” I cry. “You could be the
guy who had a chance to kill angel Hitler and you just let him walk!”

“Maya, go.” Gabe’s voice is soft but sure. Tarren and I both
turn back to face him. “We need to see what they’re up to. You get close, use
your super hearing, and listen in on the meeting. I’ll put trackers on the
cars, or at least as many as we have and get down the license plates of the
rest. Tarren, you stay on point. Tune into the local police radio in case
things get dicey. When the meeting is over, we follow War and take him out when
we get a good shot. Then we call the Totem to help mop up the rest. Somewhere
in there, we can snag one of them for your sicko experiments.”

Gabe says this all in the rush of a single breath.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Gabe’s plan is solid.
I shouldn’t be so surprised. Gabe never gives himself enough credit on the IQ
front, but he’s got a lot going on beneath the brim of that dingy backwards
baseball cap, especially when he tries.

“We’ll be highly exposed,” Tarren says softly. His aura
ripples, and I can imagine the machinery in his brain clacking on all cylinders
as he tries to probe the plan for all its weak points. He rubs his face,
something I’ve never seen him do before. It’s as if he’s trying to scrub his
exhaustion away, “…but it might work.”

Proud greens rush through Gabe’s aura. “Let’s get to work,”
he grumbles.

***

The moon is out and round as a pearl as I slip from the
jeep. I dig through my duffle bag and shrug on a black pea coat to hide my
holstered weapons. How am I supposed to sneak up on an entire gaggle of angels
who possess incredibly keen sight and hearing as well as an unknown array of
extra abilities? And what exactly do you call a group of angels? A gaggle? A herd?
Pod? Hive? No, how about a murder of angels? That would be fitting.

 “Good luck,” Gabe tells me at the same time Tarren murmurs,
“Stay safe,” in a voice almost too low for human ears. I nod and pull my coat
tighter across my body. I stroll down the street across from the taupe house as
if I was just the most normal girl in the world going for a brisk night walk to
get her 10,000 steps in for the day. I walk past four houses delightfully
decorated with blow-up pumpkins, zombie hands risings up from the ground, and
fake tombstones. Then I duck behind one home into a neat backyard.

No dogs prowl in any of the backyards, and no motion sensor
lights flash on as I as I jog over well-manicured grass and swing around large
barbeques. This is a community where the dogs stay inside, and where no one
apparently fears what might be lurking just outside their door. I feel auras
within the homes and imagine all the normal people living their normal lives as
a secret battle stirs just outside their doors. We need to be so, so, so
careful about this. A swarm of angry angels could shear through this
neighborhood like the plague. Hmmm, swarm of angels. That might work.

Ducking my face into the upturned collar of my coat –
nothing suspicious here people! – I keep up my jog across the back lawns until
I come to the angle house of doom. My heart thuds hard in my chest, and for a
moment, I wonder if they can hear it from inside, even this far away. I take a
deep, cleansing breath, and remember what Tarren has told me during training.

“Breathe out your fears. A clear mind is poised.”

Gabe’s favorite saying is, “Fear is the mind killer,” which he
got from some book or SciFi TV show.

I try to breathe out my fears, but they seem lodged in my
brain like rancid bubble gum. Okay, back to my usual plan – let the fear ride
shotgun and just keep going anyway. I stare at the high, long windows of the
house and wonder if anyone is standing behind them, looking at me looking up.
I’m too exposed out here. I need to get close, but not too close. Even if the
angels don’t hear my thudding heart, they’ll sure as hell pick up on my faint
aura if I try to slip through a window.

Inside, a soft murmur of voices suddenly ceases, and then,
after a slight pause, they begin to sing. The music of the voices inside is
sweet. Innocent. It raises the hairs along my arms. In quick, fluid motions, I
run up and flip myself over and onto the deck, landing with only the softest
sigh. I quickly lay flat on the wooden floor next to a barbeque and a leafy
potted plant that needs a little water.

My heart is doing a swift jig in my chest. The singing
voices rise together, some squeaking on the higher notes. I hear their joy.
Their faith. It throws kinks in every inch of my intestines. What the fuck is
going on in there?

I dig into my pocket and unmute my phone. “In position,” I
hiss into my earpiece.

“Were you seen?” Tarren’s voice is sharp like he’s angry,
but I know it’s worry.

“No. They’re…singing,” I whisper back.  

“All quiet on the radio,” Tarren responds. “Gabe, go.”

I breathe, breathe, breathe, all the cleansing poising
breaths that I can. The song reaches a crescendo. One lusty female voice from
within the walls sounds familiar, but before I can place it, the song ends.
Silence follows.

I unbutton my coat and slide my small, powerful Glock 19 out
of its holster.

A commanding voice thunders below, so loud that I can
understand the words effortlessly.

 “Our gifts,” War booms into the silence, “were not given to
us by man. They are gifts from God. We are angels. We stand at God’s side,
dispensing his justice. Dispensing his wrath.” War pauses here to let his lies
really sink in. Every terrible, gnawing worry I’ve had since I saw that Bible
tucked beneath Theodore Morrison’s arm reverberates inside me.

This doesn’t make sense. The War I knew would more likely
piss on a Bible than open it.

 “You have each been through the cleansing fire and been
judged worthy,” War continues. His voice is lower now, and I can imagine the
angels bending forward to catch every word as if they had normal human ears
again. “You have shed your human form and your human sins to be rebornas
angels!”

This pronouncement receives a warm murmur of approval. “And
we have a mission, my friends. A mission set out in the book of Revelations.
Humankind has grown wicked again. They have fallen away from God and proven
themselves unworthy of His Grace. He has declared that the era of humanity is
over! A failed experiment. We are His new children. Pure of heart and spirit.
Our creation, our need to extinguish human life is proof of our Lord’s mandate.
He has commanded that we are to inherit the earth!”

His voice is loud now, practically reverberating through the
walls, filled with passion and anger and dramatic flair.
Cult leader,
I
think, and those words grip me with icy fingers. War is the little boy who
delights in tearing the wings off butterflies. He cares nothing about redemption.
Only violence. Only death.  

“We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and
wast, and art to come,” War intones solemnly, “because thou hast taken to thee
thy great power, and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is
come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou
shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and
them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which
destroy the earth.”

“Amen!” a woman cries with the fervor of a true believer. Now
I recognize that voice even as it is drowned out by others. “Amen! Amen! Amen!”

Heather. My throat tightens just remembering the feel of her
phantom hands wrapping around my neck, crushing the air out of my windpipe in
Peoria on the night I shot Nicolas…and also killed her twin sister, Rachel.

War speaks again. “Many of you, in your human, lesser lives,
were first transformed and cleansed out of greed and pride. You sought power
over others. You took lives for your own pleasure. But soon you found that the
hunger was like an addiction. Like a sword of fire that you could not wield.
You killed those you loved and were forced to flee with faces hidden.”

Another dramatic pause. I can’t help myself, I tense, waiting
to hear his next line as Rain’s face floats in my mind.

“You were powerless. The hunger wielded you!” War’s voice is
sad and pitying. “That was the old, human part of you, still trying to steer
you with human thoughts and human failings. But I am here to tell you that you
need not fight the hunger. You need not cling to your worldly wealth. Let your
coins feed our cause. Embrace the hunger. Dine on the souls of the sinful. Take
away their wicked lives, and in doing so, you will cleanse them and cleanse the
earth.”

I let my breath out slowly. Oh. Holy. Crapsicle. This is
bad. Poisoned Kool-Aid bad.

“For the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of
the earth is ripe.”

“AMEN!” The voices are louder, more frenzied.

“When?” a trembling voice asks. “When?”

“Soon,” War answers. “We are not yet strong enough, so we
must hide ourselves, like wolves among the flock.”

“No!” voices ring out but are quickly quieted. I can imagine
War holding out his massive, hairy hands to sush his congregation.

“Live a shadow life among the humans so that they do not suspect
our presence while we grow stronger. Pick off the weakest members first and do
not raise suspicions. Ascend those who would follow us, who are angels waiting
to shed the illness of their humanity. You will know them. The Lord will tell
you in your heart whom to choose.”

War’s voice goes silent, and I wonder how many people are
with him, leaning forward, waiting for his next words. Can they really believe
him? Gulp down his snake oil so readily?