Death Takes Wing (21 page)

“No,” the girl sobbed, pushing herself further into the wall.  “Go away!”  The girl tried to push her away, but Amalia easily dodged the slow movement.

“Who are you?” Amalia repeated softly.

“Lindsay,” Gabriel said.

Amalia looked up at him and saw horror stark on his face. 

“Lindsay?  Are you Lindsay?” he repeated, emotions flooding his voice as he recalled the picture of the carefree girl he’d seen not a day ago.

She saw the bowed head nod, and the girl started to uncurl.

Lindsay looked up at Amalia.  Her youthful face was thin and dirty.  Matted blonde hair surrounded it.

“Lindsay?” Amalia questioned, glancing back at Gabriel.

“Patricia’s sister,” he said softly, voice almost wavering with pent-up emotion.  “She went missing just after Patricia.”

“What happened?” Amalia asked, brow furrowing in confusion.  She stared at Lindsay, at the dirty wings that were drawn tight to her body.

Gabriel shook his head, not certain what had happened.  Last he knew she was immune to the virus, and yet, here she was.  Angelus.  He reached down and grabbed Lindsay by the arm, carefully drawing her to her feet.  “What happened?” he said, repeated Amalia’s question.

She let out a frightened yelp as she pulled away, her back hitting the side of the side of the garage with a loud thud.

“Gabriel,” Amalia warned, “she may look like one of you, but mentally, she’s still human.”

He let out a controlled breath and stepped away from her.  She’d been the one that had shoved him down the stairs.  Right now, despite his worry for her, she was damn lucky he wasn’t hurt more than a few bruises and pulled muscles.

“What happened, Lindsay?” Amalia asked softly.  “We need to know.  Your sister is in danger.  We need to know what happened to find out.”

“Make him leave,” Lindsay snarled.  “
They
did this to me.”

“Leave, Gabriel,” Amalia persuaded, shooing him away as she stared at Lindsay’s gaunt face.  “I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll be right outside,” he stated with a perfunctory nod.  “Scream if you need anything.”

The women watched him leave before looking at each other.

“What happened?” Amalia said again.  “I thought you were immune to the renati?”

Lindsay gave her a disgusted look.  “So did I.”

“So tell me what happened,” she cajoled, carefully sitting down next to the thin girl.

Lindsay swallowed and wrapped her arms around her body.  “He didn’t really take the time to explain when they injected me with the shit that did this,” she said bitterly.

“You don’t remember anything?” Amalia asked.

“Pain.  There was so much pain,” she whispered, her thin frame starting to shake as the memories overwhelmed the body.

“Who did it?” Amalia asked, the question burning in her mind.

“And angelus.”

“You said that, but who?”

Lindsay shook her head, matted, greasy hair barely moving with the gesture.  “I don’t know.  He didn’t tell me.”

“Do you remember anything about him?  Had you met him before?” Amalia said, slowly asking the questions as Lindsay stared blankly at her.

“He was tall.  Dark wings.  They looked like swirled chocolate – like those really expensive chocolate bars you can buy that have dark and light chocolate all swirled together.  Every time he walked past, it always made me hungry.”

“Shit,” Amalia muttered, green eyes widening at the realization.

“What?” Lindsay asked, her own blue eyes wide at the memory of the pain that had wracked her body just a few days before.

“I know who it is,” Amalia said slowly, starting to stand.

“Who?  Who the hell did this to me?” Lindsay said, voice hoarse with unrelenting memories.

Amalia shook her head, recalling the recent conversation between her and Gabriel.  “One of the good guys.”

Lindsay shook her head, “he’s not a good guy.  Good guys don’t do that.”

“No, they don’t,” Amalia agreed.  Taking a deep breath, she looked Lindsay over.  She saw restraint marks around her wrists.  “How did you get out?”

“My sister helped me,” Lindsay said, tears filling her wide eyes, brimming over to stream down filthy cheeks.

“She didn’t get out?”  In her gut, she knew the answer, but she needed to hear it from Lindsay.  Lindsay wouldn’t be here alone if Patricia had made it out alive.

Lindsay shook her head again, “No, she didn’t.  They got her before she could get through the window.  I didn’t want to leave her, but she made me.”

Amalia’s breath caught in her throat, and she reached out to lay a comforting hand on Lindsay’s hunched shoulders.  “I’m so sorry.”

“Why did you find me?” she whispered, eyes closed and cheeks sparkling with tears.  “I’m safe here.  I’m not bothering anyone…Jeremy will be back soon. He said he wouldn’t leave me until I felt safe.”

Amalia stood up the rest of the way.  She didn’t know, Amalia thought, anger flashing through her.  She didn’t know about Jeremy.  “Lindsay,” she said quietly, “Jeremy’s not coming back.”

“He is!” the girl insisted, standing quicker than Amalia’s eyes could see.  “He promised!”

Amalia shook her head.  “I’m sorry, but he’s gone.”

“Gone?” the girl dully echoed Amalia’s word before sinking back down on the floor.  “But he was supposed to take care of me.”

“Gabriel?” Amalia called softly, looking at the door before fastening her eyes back on Lindsay.

Gabriel walked in, seemingly casual.  “What do you need?”

“Someone to take care of Lindsay.  She was waiting for Jeremy to come back.”

“Ah.”  The syllable spoke multitudes, and he walked outside to make the call.

“Why were you looking for me?”

Amalia pulled back and closed her eyes briefly.  “We’re investigating missing humans.  Your sister is one of them.”

“No you’re not,” Lindsay replied.  “There’s something more.  That you’re not telling me.”

“My best friend was kidnapped.  I need to find her.  If I find Patricia, I’ll find Sam,” Amalia said blandly, in her best cop voice.

Lindsay nodded slowly, but her fingers dug into her arms, turning the skin white under the pressure.  “You’re going to find Patty, right?”

Amalia nodded, “yeah, I’m going to find her.”

There was an awkward silence as the two women stared at each other, unsure of what platitudes were required in such a situation.

“I need to know where you escaped from,” Amalia said as she started towards the door.

Lindsay turned around from the wall she’d huddled up against.  “It was a low, gray building.  In the middle of a farm.  I think it was some kind of military bunker.”

Amalia cocked her head in confusion.  “Then how’d you get out?”

Lindsay offered her a feral smile.  “We impersonated two of the orderlies.  Grabbed some badges.  Got out.  They got Patty when she was walking out the door.”

“Does she have wings?”

“Yeah.  There were a bunch of humans there, but a lot of them had already started to change.”

Amalia let out a breath and glanced at the door, hearing Gabriel’s voice, tight and restrained, still on the phone.  “We need to leave.  To –“

“To find Sam and Patty,” Lindsay finished, offering her a slight smile, “I know. Go.  I’ll be fine.  Really, I will.”

Amalia nodded and followed Lindsay out the door.  She watched Lindsay walk towards the house.  Probably to get the things in the kitchen before someone picked her up, Amalia thought.  She looked around for Gabriel and found him staring at a withered tree, the dead branches looking like something out of a horror movie.

Gabriel stood and stretched, spreading his wings.  “What did you find out?”

Amalia shook her head as the unpleasant conversation replayed.  “Something that you’re not going to like.”

He cocked his head.  “And that is?”

“It’s Aleks,” Amalia said slowly, starting to walk towards the Aston.

“Excuse me?” he said, easily catching up to her.

“It’s Aleks,” she repeated.  “Aleks is what happened to Lindsay.”

“No, he’s not,” Gabriel proclaimed with a grimace.

Amalia pursed her lips.  “According to Lindsay, he’s the one that changed her from human to angelus.”

“Not possible,” Gabriel stated as he stopped outside the car.

“Because no enforcer goes bad?” she said, mocking his earlier remark.

“Not just that,” he said, “but I know Aleks.  Aleks won’t do something like that.  Aleks can’t do something like that.”

She shook her head. “So you won’t believe it her.”

“No,” he said, running a hand through his hair in frustration, sure that the girl wasn’t right.  That she’d been mistaken.  “Did she actually say it was Aleks?”

“No,” Amalia admitted, “but she described his wings to a t.”

“That doesn’t mean much,” Gabriel said with a relieved smile as he dismissed Amalia’s proclamation.

“So, I thought no two angelus had identical wings?”

“They don’t, but many can share colors or patterns.  It’s more likely that there’s another angelus that shares his wing colors.”

Amalia shook her head, “no, I don’t think so.  Gabriel - ”  She meant to tell him about her suspicions concerning Aleks, that he’d always felt ‘off’ to her, but he cut her off with a sharp shake of his head.

“Think what you will.  But it’s not Aleks,” Gabriel said finally.

After making it almost to the car without another sign from Lindsay, Amalia glanced up, and saw a dark figure watching them from a second story window.  With a shudder, she quickened her step, catching up with Gabriel, who hadn’t seen the figure due his distraction by the foulness that covered his wings.

Gabriel reached behind him and mournfully picked off the cobwebs that had collected on the previously pristine feathers while in the attic and mystery room.  With a look of revolt, he grabbed a dead spider off of a particularly large web that had gotten wound around a feather.  With a depraved glance at Amalia, he threw the dead arachnid at her.

She screamed, batted at it, and missed.  The spider, still dead, landed in her hair, near her face.  With a shriek, she plucked at her hair, trying to get the desiccated thing away from her.

Gabriel found himself laughing hard for the second time that day, his arms wrapped around his stomach, trying not to unbalance himself with the laugher that was aimed at Amalia’s insane outburst.  As she realized where the spider had come from, and that it was no more among the living, she grabbed it and proceeded to fling it back at the perpetrator, who only ducked.  Her face was red with anger and fright,
while his was red with an attempt to quell the laughter that continued around the car.

“You feathery SON OF A BITCH,” she yelled as she came at him, swinging, “you KNOW I’m afraid of spiders!”

Trying to choke down the laughter, but not succeeding, he replied with a snort of laughter, “I know; that’s why it’s so funny!  You should have seen the look on your face!”  He raised his arms and easily blocked her feeble attempts at pummeling him.  Now, if she’d had a Pepsi bottle, he would have been more afraid, he surmised with a grin.

She glared at him, considered her next option, and then settled on punching him in the arm.  He barely felt it through the haze of laughter, but the connection broke the feeling of jocularity.

“Hey,” he reached out to her, and she pulled away.  He felt the grin slip away as he realized just how upset she was.

She rounded on him and spat “you are such an ass.  I hope you know what you’ve started, because let me tell you something, I’m going to pay you back.  Completely, and with interest.  Compounded.”

He considered the possibilities as he slid into the car.  “With a dead spider?”

“No, you winged asshole,” she said, opening the door, “I’m going to find whatever
you’re
afraid of, and then you’ll be sorry.”

“I get the feeling that what I did was a nasty thing, but it was asking for it,” he cajoled, the hint of a smile creeping back across his face.

“Oh,” she gave him a mocking frown.  “I’m sure the spider was just asking to be thrown at me,” she said sarcastically.

“Hey, don’t be angry,” he pleaded as he started the car, not sure if he wanted to be in the same car as a pissed off woman, but between that and staying at the creepy house, he was fairly sure which was one the lesser of two evils.  The house, of course, he thought with a chuckle that drew her frosty glare.

After a period of silence, Amalia spoke up abruptly.  “Owen married her because she survived.  He didn’t marry her just
in case
she survived.”

Gabriel gazed at her and patiently waited for her to continue. 

“He knew that she’d make it.  Before I got into that a fight with Owen, Vicki told me that he
knew
she would make it, one night, over margaritas.  Vicki married him because she loved him, but he didn’t – doesn’t – love her.  But I want to know how did he know she was going to survive?  That’s what I’m asking myself, because I know that has something to do with everyone that’s gone missing that we know about, and I’m guessing, many, many more that we don’t know are missing,” she finished with a frown on her face.  “And I bet Owen knows something.  Or
maybe it’s just because he’s an ass and I don’t like him, but I think he knows something.”