Leaping (6 page)

My phone lights up, and I nearly
launch the thing skyward.

“H…hello…I mean, yes?” I stammer,
bringing it to my ear without even looking at the number.

Tarren’s voice is brusque on the
other end. “I have him.”

Is he…
The words clatter in
my brain, but my lips are fused shut unwilling to ask the question that could
bring an answer that will shatter me. I look down and notice a fingernail, one
of those cheap plastic glue-ons, lying next to my shoe on the sidewalk.

Will this be one of those
stupid, pointless things I’ll forever associate with this moment?

Tarren must hear the unasked
question trying to tear out of me. “He has a bad fracture, left leg, and a
concussion. Looks like he fell out of a tree.”

“He’s alive?” I mean this as a
statement, but it comes out as a small, whimpering question. I just keep staring
at that blood-red nail. Chain’s aura dances next to me.

“Yes, he’s alive.” Tarren should
pause to let that sink in, to allow my heart to finally unclench, but he keeps
on speaking in his rapid mission voice. “He was barely conscious and in a lot
of pain, so I put him under with a tranquilizer.”

“Thank you.”  I close my eyes and
breathe. Just breathe. Oh, thank the Lord, or stupid luck, or low tree
branches, or just Tarren who could probably pluck a soul from the gates of Hell
if he put his mind to it. Rain is alive. I let that thought run through my mind
in a loop. I let it be real.
He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive.

Even with my eyes closed, I feel
Chain’s aura pulsing. The seams in my palms begin to tug, trying to open. Even
now, in this moment of pure relief, the hunger is here, probing for a moment of
weakness.

“He’s alive,” I tell my patrol
companion and ready myself. All Chain’s careful armor of I-don’t-care-bad-assery
melts in a moment, and blue relief washes through his aura. I watch his narrow
shoulders descend and his eyes close as he lets out the same breath I was
holding ever since I received Rain’s text.

“He fell out of a tree and broke
his leg,” I explain. This, of course, is hardly a surprise to either of us.
Considering that Rain is about as graceful as a brain dead cow on ice skates,
the shocking thing is that he hasn’t fallen off something sooner.

Tarren is saying something into my
ear. I had forgotten that I was still on the phone with him.

“…found a body nearby. Confirmed
angel. Female. Two gunshot wounds. He must have killed her before falling.”

That’s Rain’s fifth kill,
I
think, and no part of me is happy by that growing stat. This particular belt
notch was clearly an Angel of Mercy. I will have to answer to Gem for her
death, and the price might be fatally high. I push those thoughts away. Gem
will have to wait.

“How bad is the break?” I try to
corral my voice, force it into some semblance of professional calm.

“From what I can feel, it’s not a
clean set and wrap. He’ll need medical attention,” Tarren says.

“Is he in any immediate danger?”

I can almost hear the shrug in
Tarren’s voice. “If he was going into shock it would have happened by now.”

I stare at Chain. His hands must be
freezing, but he won’t put them in his pockets. Won’t show any weakness. “It’s
too risky to bring him to a hospital,” I decide. Chain opens his mouth to
protest, but I hold up my hand. “Can we take him to Lo?”

The potty-mouthed Boy Wonder’s
mansion is less than an hour away.

“He won’t have the medical supplies
we need or the expertise,” Tarren replies.

That’s right. Lo’s specialty is
slicing and dicing the bodies we bring him for his research, not putting them
back together.

“Then we need to call Dr. Lee.”

“He won’t be happy,” Tarren says,
but his tone tells me that this is already the conclusion he’s reached.

“He’s never happy.” I close my eyes
again and pull up a detailed map of the country in my head. My pristine memory
is one of the advantages of the angel transformation that I find particularly
useful.  “We can meet in Grand Junction, Colorado. That’s about halfway. We can
make it in under seven hours if we push it.”

“Seven hours?” Chain says, inching
close behind me as if trying to eavesdrop on our conversation. “You said he
broke his leg. You can’t wait seven more hours.”

“Do you think the wait would do him
a lot of harm?” I ask Tarren. My mind whirls. What if he goes into shock on the
way there? What if the critical window to full recovery is slamming shut right
now?

“A seven-hour car ride isn’t going
to help anything,” Tarren admits, “but Dr. Lee is the safest bet for a good
outcome. We can’t bring him to a hospital, especially not with fentanyl in his
system and GSR all over his hands and clothes. He could say anything when he comes
out of anesthesia.”  

I chew on my cheek. “We leave now.”

“Head back to the nursing home, and
I’ll meet you there,” Tarren says.

I click off the phone and realize
only a moment later how in sync I’ve become with Tarren. Sometimes it feels
like we can almost read each other’s minds. Good for the mission, but kind of
creepy on the personal front. Is Tarren becoming more human, or am I slowly
crossing over into robo-vigilante territory? 

As we walk back to the Mayflower
Senior Care Village, Chain peppers me with questions, and I have to explain in
detail why we can’t take Rain to the hospital. I watch his aura grow bigger,
the lighter shades of red turning crimson.

“You just made the decision. Didn’t
even ask,” he snaps.

“We know what we’re doing,” I shoot
back. It’s the wrong thing to say.

“You all are fucking assholes!”
Chain grips his belt in both hands like it was some kind of life raft. I wonder
for a moment if we’re going to have it out right here, right now. A wave of
hunger rolls over me, and I step back, turning away from Chain.

“Keep your voice down,” I say,
satisfied that no tremors catch in my words. I dial Gabe’s number, relay the
good news to my brother, and ask him to contact Dr. Lee. We make it to the edge
of the nursing home parking lot, and then it’s just waiting, waiting, waiting
for Tarren.

I bob on my feet and begin planning
all the ways that I will kill Rain as soon as he’s fixed up. That’s assuming
Gem doesn’t eviscerate me first. Headlights cut around the corner. The jeep. My
heart clobbers hard. I know Tarren would never lie about Rain being alive, but
I just have to see him for myself. The jeep pulls into the back corner of the
parking lot. When the headlights extinguish, the jeep is almost invisible in
the darkness. Tarren is a menacing shadow as he steps out of the driver’s side.

“He’s in the back,” my brother
says, but I’m already jerking open the back door, drawn by the faint feel of that
well-known energy.

I breathe in a thick whiff of piss
when I push my head through the door, but I could hardly care. Rain is propped
up against the other door and belted in place. His slack face tilts forward,
chin resting on his chest. His long legs stretch across the back seat, and I
notice that his left pant leg is cut open to the knee. His shin is mottled in
big, dark bruises, and the limb is already noticeably swollen. He looks
disheveled, his hair flat on one side of his head, his face pale. But he’s
clearly alive. His pale blue aura drifts around his lanky frame, quiet with no
dreams or thoughts.

“Oh, baby,” I murmur. A part of me
still wants to pummel him even in his vulnerable state, but the rest of me
wants to hug him and kiss him and then hide him away forever in a place with no
trees or stairs or sharp edges.

“Let me see him,” Chain demands
behind me. Speaking of pummeling someone, Chain is a much more deserving
candidate. But I know beneath his bluster and his stupid superhero fantasy, he
cares about Rain. I step back. Chain leans into the car, and I watch blue
relief ripple through his aura.

Tarren comes around the other side
of the jeep and pauses a few feet away from me. Always that gap of space
between us. I think Tarren does it instinctually now. He knows that space makes
things easier for me, helps keep the hunger from flaring.

There are so many things I want to
say to my brother right now. Not say. I want to close that gap between us and
throw my arms around him. Maybe even drop a few tears onto his tin sheriff’s
badge.

“I’ll take care of the body and the
ones in the back,” he says finally.

Digging a grave for just one is
hard enough. He’ll be at it for half a day to bury the four we brought along
plus the angel Rain took out.

“Gabe can stay and help,” I tell
him.

“No, I can handle it.” Tarren’s
voice inches a shade softer. “He hasn’t seen Francesca in a while.”

Tarren is secretive about his
thoughtfulness, almost like he doesn’t want to get caught showing his heart.
But it’s there, beating big and loud inside of him no matter how many walls he
puts up around it. He knows all about Gabe’s massive crush on Dr. Lee’s
assistant.

 “You sure?” I ask him. “Maybe one
of the Totem can pitch in.”

 On the outside you wouldn’t be
able to tell that Tarren has only cobbled together a few catnaps in the jeep
over the last few days. He stands just as tall and steady as ever, but I see the
long hours of wakefulness in his aura. The colors are darker, and the glow hugs
closer to his body.

“I can help.” Chain closes the door
of the jeep. His aura shivers with purple. I get the impression that digging a
grave and disposing of angel bodies with Tarren is Chain’s personal version of
winning the lottery, going to Disneyland, and being elected Emperor of the
Universe on the same day.  

Tarren turns to Chain, and I wonder
how much my brother intuits. “Thank you, but it’s safer if we limit exposure to
burial sites and disposal techniques across teams.”

Tarren knows. He’s being extra
careful with his words. Taking as much sting out of his, “Fuck off, I don’t
need you,” as possible. Chain’s face flickers.

“It’d also be better,” Tarren says,
still in that soft, careful voice, “if we limit contact between our allies.”

All the growl is gone from Chain’s
voice when he says, “You don’t want us to come with Penguin when your doctor
works on him.”

“Every new connection is an
additional risk to our contacts,” Tarren says.

“For when we get captured and
tortured for information…oh wait, that was YOU!” Chain’s fierce gaze is on me.

I suck in a breath. Touché. But I’m
still heavily tempted to see if I could kick him in the balls before Tarren
restrained me.

“It’s safer for us and for you,”
Tarren says.

“You think we’re such fuck-ups,”
Chain spits out. He levels his gaze at me. “But we captured you. Us, the
fuck-ups.” His gaze swings to Tarren, “And we saved your life, killing all
those angels in Peoria.”

We don’t have time for this. I open my mouth, but I catch a
look from Tarren.

“You’re right,” he says to Chain. “And if we fuck up again
and our allies get captured, we don’t want them to be able to identify you.”

For one long, terrifying moment I worry that Chain is going
to burst into tears. Then his face shifts back into an angry snarl. “Fine!” he
growls. “Bury that bitch and the others yourself.”

He turns and begins to stomp off, just as Gabe and
Rattlesnake approach. Her round cheeks are flushed with cold and laughter, and
I can see my brother has already firmly installed himself on her best friend
list.

“We’re out,” Chain hollers at Rattlesnake.

“What? Ain’t we gonna’ –” she starts.

“No. Come ‘on.”

Her mood shifts from happy blues to poison yellow. “I wanna’
go with Gabe.”

“They’re taking care of him,” Chain says. “They don’t want
us or need us.”

Rattlesnake looks to Gabe who looks to me and then to
Tarren, before the jovial expression slips off his face. “Probably better,
hon,” he says. “Can’t go mixing our people with your people too much. Ain’t
safe for anyone.”

I don’t miss the burgeoning Texas drawl in his voice. Gabe
can put on accents like he was trying on hats.

“Alright, darling,” Rattlesnake says. “Kiss me goodbye.” She
proffers her cheek, and Gabe gives her a big one with a perfect “Mwah!” sound
effect.

Her smile practically reaches her earlobes as she saunters
away behind Chain. Tarren opens up the hatch and lifts the first body out. I
follow his lead, grabbing a human log and laying it in the grass on the edge of
the parking lot. I glance around, suddenly weary of cameras, but don’t see any.
A few lights are on in the senior home, but all the blinds are closed. Tarren
probably already checked before opening up the hatch.

“Alright, what’s the sitch?” Gabe asks as he grabs a body from
the back of the jeep and almost drops it.

“Tarren’s staying to take care of the bodies. You and I are
going to leave now to meet up with Dr. Lee,” I say as I pick up the cheetah-print
log. “Oh, and Tarren cussed. He said fuck. I heard him.”

“No shit.” Gabe whistles. “You said fuck?”

“It was to make a point,” Tarren says as he tucks a shovel
and a roll of tarp under his arm.

“He’s tired,” I tell Gabe.

“That’s no excuse. Shame on you, Tarren. What kind of
example are you setting for your poor, impressionable baby sister?”

“Fuck off,” I grumble as I drop the last body. I see Tucker
Cartwright’s white feet sticking out of the cheetah print comforter and look
away.

“See! See! Look what you’ve done,” Gabe admonishes. “She’s
got the mouth of a sailor.” He grins at me. “How’s our boy?”

Worry ripples through me again. “Broken leg. Concussion. And
he kind of…peed himself.”

“Course he did,” Gabe groans. “See, this is the point of the
pre-mission piss. Didn’t I tell him about the pre-mission piss?”

“He got a concussion,” I snap. “It happens. At least he
didn’t shit himself.”

“Small favors,” Gabe sighs. “Guess we’ll keep the windows
down.”

Tarren shoulders his duffle bag and closes the hatch. I
realize that he and Gabe are still in their costumes. It’s kind of acid trippy
to imagine Tarren digging five graves dressed as a cowboy. He and I share a
look as I pull open the passenger side door.