Broken Angels (2 page)

Blessed are the stingy, for they know how to preserve time and money as well as energy—all precious resources in these damnable times.

Darryl Ridley still remembered the first time he’d heard the bad joke: on late-night television, nine years ago. It was harder to figure when the dumb joke morphed into an actual creed. Hell, for all he knew, it had been around for millennia. Maybe it was humankind’s first Big Belief.

Big or small, the woman in front of him had somehow managed to live by it for the greater part of her thirty-four years. It was just one of many terrible beliefs she held. Darryl was sure he could change her mind about all of them, here and now.

It was just the two of them, standing in the middle of the three-bedroom house she used to share with roommates. Just Darryl and the woman he affectionately called “T,” the first initial of her first name. The reason she’d called in to work sick and invited him over on a Friday afternoon was clear, but he’d accepted the invitation for a very different one.

She was wearing a pale pink chemise and nothing else. She could’ve been wearing a burqa for all he cared. What he wanted from her, he could only find by looking deep into her naked eyes.

He took off his shirt.

T. started to say something but stopped to stare. She was evidently taken by the sight of his bare stomach, chest, and arms. Darryl knew the faint lavenderish skin-tint she’d seen during all their previous intimate moments was deepening, darkening, and becoming more conspicuous. She was speechless, watching his skin modify its tone.

It was all a matter of skillful concentration. Whatever else they were doing inside of him, Darryl had long ago figured out how to make the parasites work for him. He didn’t give a damn about whatever the government’s propagandists said. At a certain point in a relationship, Darryl wanted the woman, or man—whatever the case—to know there was something different about him, something beyond rational explanations, something that could change lives.

“I’m not your lover,” Darryl said as the woman’s eyes slowly rose from his chest to meet his. His irises faded from their usual shade of violet and gradually brightened, approaching the color of wisteria. “I’m more like an angel.”

His corneas twinkled, and the air around his body filled with suspended particles, looking like not-quite-clear raindrops, each of them smaller than a thumbtack.

The drops multiplied. After an uncertain number of them had appeared, they moved, scurrying until gathered into two crescent shapes that hovered just above and behind his shoulders. Before T. could say anything, the crescents unfolded, cascading down and down in waves of intangible watery light. When it was all over, two large, radiant wings featuring various shades of violet extended from Darryl’s back.

The wings burned with a chilled glow. The skin on Darryl’s bare arms, chest, and stomach sparkled with pinpricks of silver.

His would-be lover looked at everything and everywhere except at Darryl’s smiling face. In order to finish the process he started, though, he had to get her to focus on the right target.

“Like all angels,” he said, “I am essentially a messenger.” He extended his hand to her. “I can give you something better than sex, something that can erase all false notions of love from your pretty-pretty head.”

Perhaps entranced more by the sight than the words, the woman stepped forward and placed her hand in his. Darryl drew her closer. With his other hand, he raised her chin until their eyes met; he then twinkled his eyes twice more to establish a psychic link that would make their two minds temporarily one. With confidence, he could now shut his eyelids and finish sharing his message with her through a kiss.

There was a faint buzzing sound when they touched lips. When they separated moments later, viscid strings of saliva kept them connected until Darryl stuck out his tongue, wound the nectarous strings around it, and swallowed them all with a smile.

T. opened her eyes. Darryl knew if everything had gone as intended, she wouldn’t see his smiling face for several seconds. She’d see nothing but a mélange of beautifully strange colors, beyond violet, all of them dancing with, around, and into one another, maybe communicating an otherworldly message to her with their movements.

“Next time you see a clear blue sky,” he said, “don’t think of displaced seas. See it as a symbol of the haven for those escaping Love for Peace.”

Darryl kept his smile as he backed away from her and turned toward the front door; it wasn’t until after he’d turned the knob that he traded it for a different expression.

He bent the light around his body.

It was the last time he’d see the woman. He had nothing more to say to her. There was nothing more he could do for her. It was time for her to move on, live the rest of her celibate life spreading the word, and the word only—pay the act of charity forward. If the loving acts of his teenage years resulted in him contracting the White Fire Virus, the least he could do was use his parasite-given talents to keep others from falling into love’s careless traps.

He was just one man, but it was clear as day he was doing a much better job at curtailing the spread than those who got paid for it.

The consensus among US government officials and other interested parties was that there was no need for the general public to know the skin of Virus-carriers was not only hypersensitive to the properties of light but many of the infected could also, within a very limited range of their bodies, manipulate the properties of light, bending it and other forms of electromagnetic radiation to their will. They weren’t gods; they were humans. Very sick humans. Most chose seclusion over attention-grabbing antics. Regardless, government researchers and doctors and the officials they advised all figured general ignorance was the best policy until they themselves could figure out just how all these electromagnetic tricks were being performed. So what if the more vocal and flamboyant carriers of the Virus made no secret of their true condition and what they could do? They were sick, in body and in mind. Incurable. Not to be believed or trusted. And most often, such types ended up being shot, or “disappeared.”

Even more amazing than some of the beyond-belief abilities many of the carriers displayed was the fact most people seemed to buy into the Heartland Security Agency’s propaganda campaign: what credulous witnesses saw was nothing more than random acts of generic magic. The success of the campaign had the related-but-inverse effect of people not heeding the warnings about contracting and spreading the Virus. After all, it affected less than .002% of the people on the planet, so it was really nothing to worry about. But those who worried least were those most at risk. As a clever Heartland Security official once described them, the biggest risk-takers were “those young men and women unwise enough to make promises of undying love to one another, and dumb enough to make haste to seal those promises with quick moments of nude stupidity.”

Some carriers spread it before realizing they even had it, before experiencing the seizures that could send their broken minds to a place worse than Hell. The White Fire Virus wasn’t the deadliest sexually transmitted disease, but it was the most worrisome. Those who knew all about it knew to be concerned. And some turned their concerns into creativity.

Darryl didn’t believe himself to be a literal angel, but thanks to the Virus, he could pretend well enough and long enough in order to drive his special message home.

He and T. had dated for about five weeks. When he first saw her in the nightclub, she was chatting happily with girlfriends about her engagement to someone Darryl knew to be an unrepentant philanderer. Darryl had a low opinion of the man, and he had an even lower opinion of the wonderful idea T. had conjured to make sure her husband-to-be stayed loyal and settled: she’d have him get her pregnant, before the wedding. The husband would just have to stay loyal with a baby on the way. It was an idea Darryl had overheard T. express to friends over the third round of appletinis. Sitting halfway across the room, he hadn’t been able to tell if she was serious. It was such an atrocious idea, but it had been spoken by someone Darryl had figured to be a desperate thirty-something; there was a fifty-fifty chance she’d make a serious attempt to carry out the plan. So Darryl had introduced himself, right then, using every talent available to him to charm her. Soon the engagement was broken.

Since that first night in a crowded watering hole, the two of them had dined at some of the area’s most intimate restaurants. They’d been on several private boat rides. They’d gone horseback riding. They’d been to the aquarium and even the zoo. They had done everything but what most American lovers say is the highest expression of love. Darryl knew T. had wanted to since day one. Today she thought she’d finally have her way.

Darryl hated having to do it. Even though he did it to prevent the world from dipping deeper into an abyss filled with tainted relationships, deranged parents, and unwanted, unhappy children, he hated it. Making the very thought of lovemaking repulsive in the minds of those who otherwise wouldn’t act responsibly, knowing he was stealing from their lives all future moments of joy that were experienced during sex, none of it was easy for Darryl. Adhering to the second half of the Diamond Rule—“Spare None”—was the nastiest part of the business. But he accepted it. After all, he deserved to live the life that a former life of recklessness had created for him. Golden Rules were for a golden age. This time and place demanded a new philosophy.

Darryl wouldn’t put his shirt back on until he’d gotten a few more blocks away, closer to where he’d parked his Miata. He did, however, refasten his watches to his wrists. He’d almost forgotten about them, stuffed in his pants pockets. It was against IAI regulations for Watcher agents to remove them for any extended period of time. “Only when showering” was the actual instruction. But in Darryl’s mind, charity work trumped these regulations. The work was delicate, requiring his complete attention. He couldn’t let an incoming message snap his concentration and ruin the process. And it seemed the messages were more and more frequent these days.

Sure enough, he felt a sensation on the pulse of his right wrist before he could even open the driver’s side door. Someone at the Isaac-Abraham Institution was signaling him. Darryl touched his index and middle fingers to the watch’s face. After a few seconds, he intuited the message: He was to meet his partner in Arlington; Robert might have found a missing girl, and he needed help with the recovery.

Darryl made himself visible, slid into his car, and sped off. It would take him fifteen to twenty-five minutes to get there, depending on traffic—and the message was a Level 4, second highest priority—so he figured he didn’t have time to make a detour to his apartment to arm himself. He hoped his usual accessories wouldn’t be necessary.

When he got within a good walking distance of the target site, he parked his car on an adjoining street and strolled toward the general spot where he was to meet his partner. Since he wasn’t exactly sure where Robert was, he wanted Robert to see him, but to all others he wanted to appear nonchalant, as if he was just out for some exercise or fresh air.

“Up here.”

Darryl didn’t look up. He instead looked all around him to ensure no one was watching before he made himself invisible. He then looked and saw Robert a few dozen feet above him, sitting on the stout branch of a tree.

Him and trees…With his brown skin, the nappy black hair flecked with rusty-red hairs, and his penchant for dressing in dark jeans and never-bright T-shirts, Robert barely had to put much effort into twisting the light around his body to blend in. Darryl could tell that his T-shirt today was actually a red-wine color even though Robert was making it appear more like a black coffee. His ever-present black windbreaker hung on a branch, patches of it invisible, the rest appearing as leaves. Nice trick, for a show-off.

Darryl concentrated, twisting the electromagnetic radiation around his own body, and climbed up to the branch liked a winged cat.

“Glad you could make it,” Robert said as Darryl crouched down beside him. “Thought I’d have to go treasure-hunting alone.”

“I had an appointment.” Darryl exchanged his invisibility for tree-leaf camouflage.

“Not with a therapist, I’m guessing,” Robert said, “unless maybe it was a massage therapist?”

Darryl narrowed his eyes.

“Sorry,” Robert said. “I know how much your oh-so-great charity work means to you, and how much you think it means to the world, but—”

“Just shut up, Goldner. Tell me what we’ve got.”

“That blue house over there. See it?”

“I can see fine.”

“Adam thinks there’s a strong possibility the girl we’re looking for is somewhere inside.”

“Which girl?” Darryl asked. “There’re about twenty on our list now.”

Robert crooked an eyebrow. “Marie-Lydia McGillis.”

Darryl gave him a blank look.

“From Spencer, Virginia,” Robert said. “The redhead on all those videos.”

It took a few seconds for it to come together for him—but only a few. “The high school.”

“Yeah.”

Darryl thought about the lost opportunity of making that detour on the way over. “Shit.”

“Adam says not to hurt her,” Robert said.

“Uh-huh.”

“But it looks like maybe you got the message ahead of time, showing up without your bow. And your
corresq,
too, I assume.”

Darryl thought about the accessories he usually carried on special recoveries, those situations where there was a strong possibility the lost child might be held captive by a few dangerous types who didn’t want the child to be found.

“I came here straight from where I was,” he said. “I didn’t have time to pick them up.”

Robert laughed. “You wear two watches and still can’t manage your time.”

“I can manage just fine with my bare hands.”

“Sure hope so.”

“Did you case the place?”

“I got into the yard, tried to peek inside. I couldn’t x-ray the walls. Looks like the window blinds are turned just a bit, letting in a small amount of light, but I couldn’t see through them either.”