Falling (5 page)

“Gabe,” I say to get his attention. Some additional
weirdness is definitely happening to me. My skin tingles, and my hands peel
back and grow hot. I turn them over and watch the veiny pink orbs lift to the
surface of my palms. Out in the distance, the sun has just cleared the horizon.
Sunlight crawls up my knees and flows across my hands.

“What’s happening?” I ask. The song quiets, and I feel the
deep fog of exhaustion begin to lift from my mind. My senses sharpen. I gaze
through the tinted windows of a squat building three streets down. A woman runs
a vacuum roughly over the carpet, and I can make out gaudy rings on her fingers
and large silver hoop earrings swaying from each earlobe.

I can hear an old man’s wavering voice order an Egg McMuffin
at the McDonald’s drive thru. The song has grown softer, and when I turn to
Gabe and see again the glow of energy about him, I feel more confident that I
will not give in and snatch away his life.

“You’re taking energy from the sun, just like Cook
theorized. It’s feeding you,” Gabe says. He holds his hand out into the light.

“But I’m still…I mean, it’s still inside me.”

“The hunger?” Gabe drops his hand. “Yeah, I know. Cook got
close, but fuck, not close enough. Guy was a distinguished university
professor. He got his own lab and did a lot of legit stuff that the university
knew about. Published papers, gave lectures, that sort of thing, but his true
obsession was creating angels. For decades he worked on his project in secret.
Eventually, he got funding from a very powerful man named Robert Thane.”

“Thane? That sounds familiar.”

“He owned casinos in Vegas a couple of decades ago,” Gabe
replies. “He was a very wealthy and very brutal man. One bad hombre.”

“Oh yeah.” I say. “He was assassinated. His flat was torn
up. They still don’t know who did it. It’s, like, a huge unsolved mystery.”

A bright streak of orange flowers and dies in Gabe’s aura.
The quick change in color rivets my eyes, sets little shivers vibrating down my
spine.

Gabe isn’t looking at me. He pulls at a thread on his
shirtsleeve. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Thane didn’t fund Dr. Cook alone. He
gathered together a group of high rollers, business magnates, politicians, mob
bosses and the like. These were powerful men and women who thrived on success
and competition. They wanted to rule the world.”

“Okay, stop.” I lean back on my hands, because those bulbs
just need to go away for a while. “You’re talking secret society with cowls and
skull goblets and stuff?” I feel my chest tightening up, and I push back, hard.
No more tears. No more anything until I figure something out. This whole thing
is already beginning to feel somehow unwinnable.

“You don’t have to believe me Maya. I shouldn’t even be
telling you all this. I think you should just relax today and…”

“No. Keep going.”

Gabe sighs and squints into the sun. Below, the smell of
coffee curdles my stomach. I usually drink it every morning.

“Okay, so we’ve got the super evil club,” Gabe continues.
“Not exactly everyone sitting around a table petting fat white cats and
planning dastardly deeds, but close enough. These guys were basically arrogant
pricks. Rich as hell and bored of buying all the shit they could ever want.
They decided to search for a way to become even more powerful. What they found
was Dr. Cook. He was the key.”

“How did you even learn all of this?” I break in. “What
exactly is it that you and your brother do?”

“Hold on, I’ll get there,” Gabe grins at me.

I hear a door opening and closing below us, feel a familiar
energy.

“What is it?” Gabe notices my frown.

“Tarren is coming,” I say. I can feel his energy rushing up
the stairs. My muscles clench.  “He’s angry.”

“He’s always angry,” Gabe sighs. He squares his shoulders as
the door to the roof bursts open.

Tarren has his gun drawn, and the breath tears in and out of
his body. I am fascinated by the energy — sky blue, almost white — leaping off
his body like flames devouring dust dry kindling.

“Get away from him,” Tarren growls. My body responds to the
bright, dancing light, and I am drawn toward him even as I fight against the
instinct.

“I said move!”

His words finally penetrate, and I quickly scoot away from
Gabe.

“More,” Tarren orders, “out of arm’s reach.”

“Come on,” Gabe says.

“Shut up.” Tarren lowers his gun. His heart is jumping so
quick, I can see the veins pulsing at his temples. I have to turn away and wrap
my arms around my waist.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Tarren starts. “The room
was empty. The cuffs were on the floor. I thought…”

“I wanted to take her out into the sun.” Gabe stands up and
thrusts back his shoulders. “Everything is fine. I can take care of myself.
Honest. Even changed my own diaper this morning.”

“She’s infected Gabe. You’re too blind to recognize what she
is. Dear little sis could have latched onto you and killed you. She’s in the
cuffs until we figure this thing out.”

“Her wrists are all torn up. She was in pain.”

“I don’t give a damn about her wrists.”

“I didn’t hurt him,” I say.

Tarren looks at me. His eyes have turned gunmetal gray just
like mine do when I’m furious.

“Not yet,” he says quietly, “but you can’t help what you
are.”

Gabe’s aura rears up. “For fuck’s sake!” he yells. “In case
you’ve been too busy worrying about every known thing in the universe, the
girl’s just had her entire life destroyed. How about we stop waving guns in her
face and treating her like…well, she’s not an angel. She’s not!”

The hunger is flooding my mind, and I strain to hold onto my
senses. Hot hands. I keep the skin down over my palms, but I can feel those
bulbs pushing against the seams. My nails dig into my wrists, and the pain
keeps me anchored. Blood drips between my fingers.

“We need to think about this.” Tarren’s voice is careful.
“You can’t let your emotions…”

“I’m so sick of…” Gabe bites back his next words. “Forget
it.”

Somehow this is funny. My mind is little jagged puzzle
pieces all falling apart. The pull of energy makes words hard to string
together. Tarren is mad and Gabe is mad, and monster Maya is mad, mad, mad and
hungry too. She thinks the sun is playing a trick on her and a swan dive might
be fun and maybe Ryan is somewhere waiting in a place with no songs, no sounds.

The boys glower at each other. Their jaws are set almost
identically. Tarren is half a head taller, packed with wiry muscle. His face is
all sharp bones, strong chin and cruel smiling scar. Gabe’s cheeks are flushed,
and his blunt dashes of eyebrows tilt toward each other sharing secrets.

“Gloves,” I say.

They both turn to me.

“I’ll wear gloves. That way you’ll have some warning if I
decide to kill you both.”

Silence, then Gabe’s eyebrows part ways.

“Ah!” he cries, “she’s got a sense of humor. Thank god! I
need all the fucking help I can get.”

He smiles at me, and I smile back. Tarren’s frown furrows
deeper into the corners of his mouth. This is the moment I decide that I will
run away. Tonight. No matter what.

Gabe tells me that we’re going home. Home is Farewell,
Colorado, just outside of Pueblo. We sit in Tarren’s silver Murano and wait for
him to finish wiping down the motel room.

Gabe is in the passenger seat, scrolling through police
blotters on his laptop. In the backseat, I tug against my handcuffs and enjoy
the sparks of pain that alight as the plastic presses against the open wounds.
In an unspoken compromise, Tarren cuffed my hands in front of me. I bring my
knees to my chest, loop my arms over them. I like this position, feeling that I
am as small and unobtrusive as I can be.

My mind is starting to go crazy again. I see Ryan fall, hear
the last pained hiccups dry on his lips. Chapped lips. Warm lips filled with
electricity.

“You didn’t finish your story,” I say to Gabe.

He looks up, clicks off his window. His computer wallpaper
features Keira Knightley dressed in a strange leather halter top and leggings
with a sword strapped to her thin waist.

“I want to hear the rest,” I say.

He sighs, closes the lid of his computer. “Yeah. Sure. Where
was I?”

“The super evil club,” I say and then effortlessly pluck his
exact words from my memory. “Rich as hell and bored of buying all the shit they
could ever want. They decided to search for a way to become even more powerful.
What they found was Dr. Cook. He was the key.”

The smile drops off of Gabe’s face. There’s some sort of
conflict going on in his mind. I see it in the shifting ribbons of color in his
aura.

“Good memory,” he says at last and reaches forward to switch
the air on high. “Thane and his group financed Dr. Cook’s work. You have to
understand that to Cook the whole thing was about advancing the human race and
stamping out hunger. He was your average oblivious scientist. He didn’t realize
Thane’s motives. Not until it was too late.”

“Of course,” I say.

“Yeah,” Gabe goes on. “For a long time, Cook came up with
nada. All he had to show for years of work were violent lab rats with serious
cases of radiation poisoning. I mean, he spent a lifetime on this thing.
Dabbled in biology, chemistry, radiation and mutations, even genetics, which
was still a very new frontier back then. Eventually, he made a breakthrough.
This was twenty-five years ago. Dr. Cook was growing old, and Thane was getting
impatient. He didn’t want to wait for all the proper testing and convinced Dr.
Cook to hand over the formula. Thane’s son, Grand, was the first angel. Once
Thane saw the results, he infected himself and his two other children. The
other financial backers were next.”

Gabe stops. His energy begins to churn faster around his
body. I’m not sure what this means. I press my palms harder into my knee caps.

“Keep going,” I tell him.

He takes a deep breath and then continues. “The formula
worked. The people who took it changed. They couldn’t digest real food anymore;
could only drink purified water. Their hearing got better. So did their sight
and sense of smell. They ran faster. Lifted more weight. Became incredibly
agile. Could memorize whole books in an afternoon.” Gabe’s voice wavers, but he
catches himself, picks it back up. “It was all Dr. Cook had dreamed of, except
for one thing.”

“The hunger.”

“The hunger,” Gabe nods. “The angels were able to absorb
energy from the sun just like you’re doing now, but it wasn’t enough. They
needed more, and the hunger was overwhelming. They soon learned that they could
absorb concentrated amounts of energy directly from living creatures: puppies,
kittens, ferrets, elephants even. They needed to feed constantly, and the more
they fed, the stronger they became. Many of the angels even developed
incredible abilities just like Dr. Cook predicated, including flight. But it
all demanded a constant supply of energy. The angels all eventually turned to
feeding on humans.”

“But why?” I whisper.

Gabe takes off his cap, massages the inside rim with his
thumbs. The air from the vents catches in his hair and sends the smell of his
sweat and shampoo throughout the car.

“Humans offer huge caches of energy, and they’re easy to
obtain.”

“Wait. If these are really rich guys, can’t they develop
secret puppy mills or buy elephants or something?”

“They can, but there’s something else.” Gabe lays his head
back against the headrest. “Control. The hunger is overwhelming, and humans are
the easiest targets. Some angels have learned to control the hunger better than
others. A lot of them don’t care. But even the ones who try to control
themselves will slip occasionally. They can’t fight it forever, and with your
food walking all around you every day, you’re bound to snap…well, I mean, not
you
you
. I meant the others. The full angels. You’re
different.”

“You hope,” I say quietly.

“It’s not fair.” Gabe turns his face toward me. I’m
beginning to understand his aura, how it reveals his psyche, like now when
little red streaks of pain spiral through. “This shouldn’t have happened,” he
says. “Not to you.” More red.

“Tarren’s coming,” I say.

The front door of the motel swings open, and Tarren strides
out. Striding fits his long, lean figure and the
don’t fuck
with me
expression he seems intent on permanently attaching to his face.

“He won’t hurt you,” Gabe whispers. “I won’t let him.”

Tarren gets into the driver’s seat, and Gabe turns his face
forward. We all sit there in this awkward silence for a while. Tarren’s aura is
choppy, unnerving, tinged with red.

“You sure you feel up to driving?” Gabe asks him.

Tarren’s eyes lock on mine in the rearview mirror. “Don’t
make any sudden moves,” he says. “If you need anything, just ask.”

In the resulting silence, I realize that I am meant to
answer. It crosses my mind that no matter how nice Gabe seems to be, I’m
sitting in a car with two very dangerous psychopaths. I can remember in perfect
detail all the blood soaking Tarren’s shirt last night.

“Alright,” I say and try to keep my voice steady.

“Seatbelts,” Gabe says.

Tarren turns the key, and the Murano wakes with a smooth
hum. As soon as we get onto the highway, Gabe continues his story without
prompting.

“Cook was devastated when he realized what his formula did.
He sought the betterment of mankind, but created monsters instead. Had he read
his comic books, he would’ve realized that this kind of backfire was
practically inevitable.”

Tarren looks at his brother.

“She wanted to know,” Gabe shrugs.

“Careful.”

“I’m right here,” I say to him. Those artic eyes peer at me
through the rearview mirror again. The silence is so heavy I could almost choke
on it. Gabe clears his throat.

“Thane and the others didn’t care about the hunger and
killing. They enjoyed it actually. Thane convinced them that angels were
destined to become a superior race, the highest evolution of mankind.”

“The Exalted,” Tarren says quietly.

In the passenger side mirror, I see Gabe roll his eyes.
“Thane demanded that Dr. Cook give him more of the formula so he could infect
select members of the elite. Dr. Cook recognized what was happening and knew he
had to destroy the thing he had dedicated his entire life to. Quite a kick in
the balls, right?” Gabe offers a little smile, but it doesn’t get too far.

I look out the window, watch the road streaming beneath our
wheels, carrying me farther and farther away from…well, everything.

“Dr. Cook needed help, and there was only one person he
trusted,” Gabe says.

Tarren’s aura jolts. Long fingers of red reach all the way
through his energy. My body responds, those bulbs pushing through my palms to
lift up from my kneecaps. I tug against my cuffs and concentrate on the pain
that runs hot laps around my wrists. The sunlight falls across me in bands, and
this helps a little.

“Enter the handsome, young protégé,” Gabe is saying. “Dr.
Cook confessed everything to an up-and-coming science professor at the
university; a man he considered to be like a son. That man’s name was Canton
Fox. He was our father. I mean, Tarren’s and mine.”

Tarren’s hands tighten on the wheel, and he stares straight
ahead out the windshield. His body—back, arms, neck—is composed entirely of
straight lines, like he was welded into position with no hinges. 

Gabe shrugs. “Together, they destroyed all of Cook’s
research. Burned his notes, smashed his equipment and set fire to his lab. But
there was one more thing. Dr. Cook knew Thane would come for him, for the
formula. Thane always had a way of getting what he wanted. Before Cook shot
himself in the head, he extracted a promise from my father. Cook had no one
else to turn to.”

Gabe’s eyes go far away. His words are soft. “I think about
what it must have been like for my dad; how he must have felt. Mom always told
us that he was a good man, very brave, and funny. I don’t remember him. Tarren
does.”

“Only a little,” Tarren whispers. His knuckles are turning
white on the steering wheel. He says, “Our father promised Dr. Cook that he
would kill all those who had taken the formula. It is a promise he gave his
life for. A promise my brother and I carry forward.”

“That’s what we do,” Gabe says.

I think I finally understand. “You hunt angels.”

In the mirror, Gabe smiles. “Yeah,” he says and looks at his
brother. It’s a sad smile, heavy with purpose and pain.  I don’t like the way
it pulls all the warmth from his face; how tired it makes him look.

Tarren turns his head, and I am amazed to watch their auras
swell up in unison as if they were unconsciously reaching out to share each
other’s burden.