Leaping (14 page)

“The Vigils are out there.” War’s voice is sharp as the
crack of a whip. “Agents of Satan, imbued with his dark magics. They want to
stop us. They want the reign of poisonous man to continue so all the souls of
the wicked will keep walking through his black gates and fill his empire in
hell. They will hunt us and kill us, but their numbers are small and ours grow
every day.”

Their numbers are small.
I think of my little family
of three racing across the country on teaspoons of sleep to throw pathetic
buckets of water on a raging inferno.

“They want to instill fear into your heart, but they are
small, weak creatures who merely cast large shadows.” War’s voice is rising
toward another crescendo. “Will you fear shadows?” he booms.

“No!” the voices cry back.

“Will you run away from shadows?”

“No!”

“Will you allow shadows to stop our sacred and blessed
mission?

“No!”

“When they murdered our prophet, Nicolas, they only made us
stronger!”

Heather wails, and the other voices join her, emitting howls
of grief and long, choked sobs.

I remember Nicolas’s pure blue eyes, his wavy blond hair,
high cheekbones, and the thick silver cross that hung on a chain around his
neck. I remember too, the way he spoke about God and angels and the coming new
world order in such fervent tones that you almost longed for the apocalypse.
Nicolas made angels seem blessed, the hunger a higher calling, the need to kill
a righteous crusade. Nicolas could have raised armies with that honey voice and
sent a wave of destruction onto humanity like the great plagues of the Old
Testament.

So I silenced him with a single bullet.

And now I understand.

War possesses the crude intelligence of a born huckster, the
ability to see vulnerabilities and exploit them. War is a true believer, but he
worships power, not The Good Book. Nicolas’s words commanded love and ardor.
War saw an opportunity. He recognized those words as free weapons. Weapons that
could build an army.

War’s voice rises again, and the voices of the others follow.
They holler, “Amen!” and, “Praise the Lord!” or just groan in a feverish
ecstasy.

“And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an
hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men,”
War cries.

“Gabe, you’ve got…,” Tarren starts.

Two gunshots.
BOOM
!
BOOM
!

They crack like thunder from the street, silencing the
frenzied voices in the house.

“Slight problem,” Gabe whispers into my earpiece.

For a single moment I am encapsulated in a silent, blinding
bubble of shock.

Then it pops, and the world rushes forward at sonic speeds.
Voices clatter all around.

 “So yeah, I most definitely just ended a set of wings in
public,” Gabe is breathing into my earpiece. “Must’a been a scout. Shit, shit.”

Tarren is talking over him. “Two witnesses just stepped out
of their houses. Three. Four. Gabe, you’re…”

“Comprised as hell. Got it.” I hear the slap of his shoes on
the pavement.

“I’m coming…” Tarren starts.

“No. Don’t let them see the jeep,” Gabe cuts him off.

“They’re here,” War says inside the house, his voice a
predatory growl.

For one fraction of a second an impulse washes over me to
storm the house. I owe War a bullet through the brain. But I know that these
angels won’t flee like the newbies in Peoria. Which means that we…

“Run,” I choke out. “They’re coming. Run. Run!” This was
supposed to be a whisper, but my voice jumps on the last word. And I know that
in the silence of the house, with all ears and senses straining, the angels
heard.

“Outside!” War bellows. “They’re closing in. We fight!”

I’m already leaping from the deck. I spring up from the
landing and practically kick up dirt as I start forward as fast as my legs will
carry me.

“The police have been notified,” Tarren’s voice is fast,
clipped, but ridiculously calm. “They’ll be here in eight minutes. They’ll
block each entrance. We need to get out.”

The door to the deck crashes open. I turn and shoot.

BOOM
!

The bullet thuds into the side of the house, but it forces the
angels to retreat back for a second. Window curtains rip open along the nearby
houses as all the normal people living their normal lives realize something
terrible has intruded their sweet little neighborhood. 

“Maya,” Tarren says.

“They’re chasing.” I turn and look again. Three angels leap
from the deck. One of the shadows is short, thick-shouldered, and ugly. War. I
level my next shot at him. He dives as I pull the trigger.

BOOM
!

My bullet takes a chunk of his shirt sleeve and maybe some
skin with it.  Not enough though. Our eyes meet, and his widen in surprise. I
pull the trigger again.

BOOM
!

Someone throws himself in front of War, taking the bullet
and collapsing, silent as a tree. I recognize those small glasses twisting next
to the prominent nose on the ground. Theodore Morrison just stole the death I
was delivering straight to War. Damn him! The third angel is gaining ground on
me, and four others spill out into the yard from a back door. I hear a screech
of rage. Heather stands on the lawn, stock still, her ruby lips parted.

Nothing like learning the girl who killed your twin sister
didn’t melt in a huge bonfire like you thought. 

War screams one word. “JEZEBEL!”

 I pull the trigger again and again as I run,
BOOM
!
BOOM
!,
to scatter them as I try to open up more space. One angel yelps with pain,

No more time for bullets. Only running.

“Get to the front,” Tarren says in my ear.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Three shots crack in quick succession behind me, followed by
a fourth and fifth.

BOOM! BOOM!

At least one of the angels is armed. Something else is
happening. Weird lights flicker in the sky around me. Dazzling streaks of
oranges and greens wash out the stars like the spill of fireworks. Someone’s
using an ability, and I really, really don’t want to find out what it is.

“No gifts in public!” a woman yells from the pursuing group
behind me. The lights in the sky quickly die. Just as I’m crossing onto another
lawn, a human runs into the backyard of the house in front of me. He clutches a
baseball bat in his hands, face white with fear.

“Stop! Stop!” he yells.

“Frank, don’t! They have guns!” a woman screeches from a
window.

The man’s aura is a raging fire of white fear as he squints
into the night. The bat trembles on his shoulder. He holds it like a baseball
player, body angled to the side, and I wonder if beneath that stretched paunch
a trim athlete once existed.

I clench my teeth hard as the feeding bulbs punch up from my
palms. I run right at Frank, duck the slow swing of his bat, and veer across
the lawn into the front yard. The jeep is ahead of me.

“I see you,” Tarren says, and the passenger door flings
open.

“Don’t slow down,” I yell and force my legs faster and
faster. Something brushes against my neck. Not the wind, not something made of
flesh. It brushes again, this time harder, and I feel distinct digits clutching
at my hair.

“I’ll KILL YOU BITCH!” Heather cries. I don’t dare look
behind me, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. Heather’s psychic constructs are
invisible to the naked eye but real enough, especially when she turns them into
hands for choking or grabbing or tearing me limb from limb at a distance. I
must be just out of her range. I hear a scream behind me. Frank and his pitiful
baseball bat were no match for the pack of frenzied angels. More screams,
female now. His wife.  Phantom fingers grab my wrist, pressing hard. I swing my
gun and shoot without looking.

BOOM
!

The fingers release.

Sirens scream in the distance. The jeep is right in front of
me, a single chance for sanctuary. I propel my legs even harder.

Line up with the open cavity.

Throw myself sideways with utter abandon.

I hit the dashboard hard and spill awkwardly across Tarren’s
lap.

“Go! Go!” I scream. I feel his arm shift under my rib cage,
and the jeep bucks with speed. Something bangs against the side of the jeep.
Fists. A window shatters in the back. Heather howls like a crazed animal. We
swerve, and I suddenly realize Tarren’s aura is all around me, pulsing strong
but controlled. My palms are open beneath my gloves.

The monster inside of me is tense. Ready. So willing.

I push back away from him and manage to twist into the
passenger seat. Tarren takes a sharp turn, and I grab the passenger door,
pulling it closed just before it smashes into a parked car.

Gabe’s voice chatters in my ear.

“Don’t know. Sounded like gunshots. Scary shit. Is anyone
hurt? Hear all those sirens? …Yeah, must’a been something. Maybe like a
domestic dispute.”

“We have to get out,” I gasp.
Queen of Obviousness

Tarren doesn’t even dignify this with a response. He drives
hard down the street, going for the outlet on the other side. The sirens are
growing louder. Then it hits me.
Gabe.

As if reading my mind, Taren speaks calmly into his earpiece.
“Our window is closing. Gabe, can you find another way out on foot?”

“Yeah man, right here in a neighborhood like this. What in
the hell is the world coming to? Excuse my language,” he responds, and I hear
murmurs from other voices on his side of the com.

“He’s hiding in plain sight,” I say, apparently vying with
myself for most obvious statement of the year. My heart is practically hitting
my rib cage with each fast beat, and adrenaline jacks through my body. My
thoughts are a bag of colorful marbles, bouncing around so fast I can’t even
hope to grasp them.

“Dammit. DAMMIT!” I choke out. I put both hands on the
dashboard and press hard. All I know is that War is still alive. I had a chance
to put him in the ground, and I missed. Again.

Oh, and that we totally and utterly created the mother of
all fuck storms. I really hope dead people don’t actually turn in their graves,
because Diana might actually drill herself to the surface with this royal screw
up.

Tarren makes another sharp turn, and the back exit of the
subdivision is in front of us. The police radio on the floor near my feet is
crackling with voices. They’ve already got a road block at the main entrance.
Two cars are on their way to block the back. A helicopter is moving into
position.

I am hyper-aware of everything. The way the streetlights
wash over the jeep briefly lighting Tarren’s face. The tight set of his lips that
pull the scar up. His long-lashed eyes, so focused. The deep crimson stains on
his jeans.

“You’re hurt!” I gasp.

Tarren turns out of the subdivision, freeing us from the
closing trap. The wind rushes through the shattered window. We race down the
street, blasting past two stop signs and turning onto a thoroughfare. Tarren
says nothing as we merge into traffic and slow. When we stop at a red light in
a tight pack of cars, he looks down at his pants and then to me.

Very calmly, he mutes his com before he says, “You’re hit.”

“What?” I look at him and follow his eyes to the wet
handprint that looks black as oil on the dashboard in front of me.  

The cars move forward, and we go with them. A fire engine
streaks past on the other side of the road. My ears ache with the scream of its
siren. Overhead, the sky fills with the
whomp, whomp, whomp
of a
chopper.

Seemingly in slow motion, I look around my body unable to
process where the new burn of pain is coming from. Blood. I see lots of blood
dampening my coat, stretching like willowy branches across my jeans, and
smearing my hands. It changes color, from black, to brown, to startlingly red
as oncoming headlights wash through our windshield.

The glass on the floor from the broken window bounces and makes
small chimes of sound as Tarren takes a sharp turn into a parking lot.

I got hit,
I think numbly,
by a bullet. It’s
somewhere inside of me.

Somehow Tarren has managed to find a quiet parking lot in
front of a hiking trail. The perfect hiding spot. Tarren can do magical things
like this.

 “Out of the car.” Tarren is already stepping out on his
side.

“Cops are everywhere,” Gabe’s voice whispers in my ear. “I’m
in some old couple’s attic. It’s hot as Satan’s colon up here.”

Tarren unmutes his phone. “Check. Stay dark until they wrap
up the searches and meet us at the rendezvous.” He mutes it again.

“Alright,” Gabe replies. “This is bad.”

“Check,” I murmur faintly.

The door next to me opens.

“Out,” Tarren says. His eyes are a simmering gray, the color
of clouds right before they unleash lightning and thunder.

As soon as I slide out, Tarren circles around me. “Right
upper chest.” I notice faint colors piercing the cobalt blue of his aura. Its
normally smooth edges are jumping, making it look ragged. This is big, those
tiny little jumps in his aura, those pale oranges and whites, but I can’t think
of why.

Tarren studies me. “Is your com on? Turn it off.”

Just at this moment, the thing, the bullet, becomes real,
and the pain crashes over me like an immense wave. I stare at the passenger
seat, at the pools of dark blood collecting along the seams. Tarren is saying
something, but his words sound fuzzy like he’s got cotton balls in his mouth. The
pain is a vortex, sucking in his voice, my thoughts, everything except the warm
snake of wetness sliding down my arm, dripping off the tips of my fingers into
the dirt. The dust eats my blood.

“Did your mom ever bring you to the dentist when you were
kids?” I ask Tarren. “Did you get your vaccines and your teeth cleaned? Where
did she even get the money?”

This is important. At first I don’t know why, but then I do.
I need to make sure Diana was a good mother to them. That my brothers were
loved. Taken care of.

“Uh, what’s happening right now?” Gabe whispers.

Tarren’s brow creases. He touches the screen on his phone. “Maya
was hit,” he says matter-of-factly.

“How bad?” Gabe’s voice is sharp.

“Did she ever take you trick-or-treating when you were
kids?” I ask. 

 “Maya, I need to touch your arm.” Tarren’s voice is floating
in front of his face. “Ready?”

“How bad is it Tarren?” This is Gabe.

Tarren’s aura approaches. I wobble a little. The pain is
washing over me again and again, ceaseless waves. “And birthday parties. Did she
throw you birthday parties? Did you have any friends? Did anyone know you
existed?”

Tarren’s fingers touch my arm.
ENERGY, ENERGY.
I
snatch my arm away and turn my back to him.

“Maya, I need to…”

I grit my teeth and close my eyes. Tarren takes my arm. Maybe
he’s trying to be gentle, but his touch raises a deep ache in my arm that seems
to be coming from the center of the bone. And his aura.
ENERGY.
The
pales shades within his aura are growing darker. My control is a fraying rope.

“Did she take you to the dentist?” I gasp out.

Tarren stands in front of me, and his deft fingers unbutton
my coat. “Before our father died, he would take us trick-or-treating,” Tarren
responds as he pulls the coat off my good arm. I groan, as he tugs it down my
bad arm and drops it to the ground.

“Well, my sister and I,” Tarren continues. “The first year
he tried to bring Gabe with us, he kept taking his costume off. I think the
bullet missed your lung.” I hear the
snick
of his pocketknife flip open
and feel tugging against my sleeve as he cuts it open.

“We stopped going after our father was killed,” Tarren says.
His words are a whisper beneath the growing music of my hunger. “Our mother
took us to the dentist every year. Dr. Lee paid for it.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realize that Tarren has
actually acknowledged Tammy’s existence, a rare moment indeed.

 “She forgot sometimes,” Gabe says, his ghostly voice coming
from the sky, “but Tarren would always remind her.”

“It’s a through and through,” Tarren says. “Looks like the
bullet hit some bone in back.”

His aura. It’s too much. Too close. The instinct inside me
is faster than my wavering awareness. I rip my arm from his grasp and tuck it
into my body like a wounded animal. Tarren steps back, his eyes resting on my
face. Tarren understands the hunger. The danger of it. Not like Gabe.

Gabe!

“Where’s Gabe?” I ask. A poisoned certainty settles over me.
I killed him. All those months ago in Grand’s warehouse in Texas, I killed him,
and everything else has been a fantasy.

“Here,” Gabe says, but he’s not here.  His voice echoes
inside my mind like a ghost. I can’t feel his aura. If he were here, I’d feel
his aura. “What’s going on? She sounds weird.”

“She’s losing a lot of blood,” Tarren says. The lines of his
body are dissolving into the throbbing color of his energy. Luscious energy.
Energy that could make me strong. Powerful. Warm. I have to get warm.

 I stand up.

“I just need…” I say, the words thick on my lips. I take a
step forward.

I don’t even see the gun, just hear the shot, feel the pain
spike and fade in my left shoulder. I leap, a snarl coming from my throat. The
energy moves fast, fast, fast, sliding out of the way as I land. My right arm
buckles under my weight.

“What the fuck is going on?” a voice yells in my head. “Was
that Maya?”

“I’ve got the situation under control.”

I recover and run at the energy. It moves again. So fast. My
legs and arms are slow, heavy. Hands grip me, wrenching my left wrist behind my
back. A foot kicks into the back of my knee. I fall to my knees. A heavy weight
presses me down.

ENERGY. Everywhere. Cloaking me.

Both of my wrists are clamped behind me. I wrench against the
hold snarling as spit runs down my chin. I buck and push against the weight,
desperate to rise.
ENERGY, ENERGY. I need it!

My toes scrabble against the ground for perch, but the music
is fading. My arms feel heavier and heavier. My movements slow, my growls
turning into slurring grunts.

A voice screams in my ear, but the words have no meaning.
“Don’t you fucking hurt her, Tarren!”

My head is too heavy to hold up and drops to my chest. Far
away, I feel the hands release my wrists. I would fall, but strong arms catch
me. I want to say that I’m sorry. For what? I don’t remember, and I don’t think
I get the words out anyway before darkness comes.