Landing (2 page)

“Your face is lame,” Gabe says
back. He smiles at me, and I give him a half-hearted replica in return. I know
why Gabe does it—the jokes, this total nonsense even as we dig an impromptu
grave. Things would be unbearable if he didn’t, but still. The corpse isn’t
even buried yet, and things got so close to being utterly fucked, and I’m still
lulling in waves of nausea each time I think back to that ice cream rooftop.

The grave opens up before us. My strength
makes me a canny digger—another impressive new skill to add to the growing
list, which includes acrobatic tree jumper, soup can executioner, pushup master
(two hundred in a row the last time Tarren tested me), and rat exterminator. I
suppose that list could also include “quickly improving reader of auras”. Not
that my brothers are aware of this last skill. They know I can see energy—and
perhaps Tarren suspects something more—but I haven’t told them about the
colors; the feelings and emotions I read in their auras like an open broadcast.

When Gabe approves the grave’s
width and depth, we drop in the body and top it with the additional sheets of
bloody tarp from the trunk. The Fox brothers have not come up with any words to
say over their conquered foes. Ryan always accused me of being overly dramatic,
but I need to say something. Or at least think something.

Gabe knows to wait and, thankfully,
to be quiet. I kneel down next to the hole.

You embraced the change and
chose to feed off the lives of innocents. Your death was merited,
and I
do not regret it. But I know how loudly the hunger calls. I know we all have
some measure of darkness in our hearts. May you be at peace.

It’s not much, and I don’t believe
in heaven or hell or anything that simple, but it just seems right that these
creatures should get some sort of sendoff, even if it must be given by the ones
who sheared their thread of life. I’m sure it doesn’t do a wit of good except
to cull my own rutted conscience. But still.

We pile on the dirt. The angel is
gone. We—Fox brothers and hybrid angel half-sister girl—are weary. The night
has grown pale along the horizon. We throw the shovels into the back of the SUV
and find our seats. Gabe takes the wheel.

“Seatbelts,” he calls out, because
this is just something he always does. I sneak a rat out of the trunk, and the
boys pretend not to notice when I hunch over to drain it and then toss the cold
corpse out the window. Tarren plugs into the police scanner, and I have some of
Diana’s books in the back that I’ve already read on the way here. Gabe never
brings up the frat party.

We get back on the highway and head
for home.

Chapter 3

At night Farewell, Colorado takes
to the cold and holds it close, even in early October. The afternoon, however,
is still freakishly warm, so I take the bike for a spin. It’s only ever sat
forlornly in the garage since I came to live with my half-brothers almost three
months ago.

I’ve never actually ridden a
motorcycle before, but this is not a problem. My body adjusts intuitively to
the bike, relaxing into the turns over the rutted concrete, tensing and
loosening to maintain balance. My hair—still making its way to my
shoulders—dances around my face. The growl of the motorcycle beats against my
sensitive eardrums but my thoughts need a little jarring. I still think of Ryan
every morning when I wake up without his arm draped over me. Funny how an arm
can be such a precious thing.

Pine and fir trees blur together in
my peripheral vision, turning the forest around me into a matted green
backdrop. How odd—how outright wrong—to see so many trees still stubbornly
clinging to their greens. In Connecticut, where I was from until I wasn’t, the
trees will all be shrugging off their greens for something a little more
dangerous: bloody reds, citrusy oranges, heavy, buttery yellows.

Karen will have to hire the
neighbor’s kid to rake up all the brittle brown corpses in the yard unless he’s
gone off to college. I push the thought away, but there is another behind it:
the
Find Maya
t-shirt my adoptive mother was wearing at the press
conference when she and my adoptive father, Henry, begged for my safe return.

It’s still better this way
,
I think to myself, because what other choice do I have? I can’t go back. Not
now. Not ever. Well…there was a secret jaunt to Ryan’s grave last month, but
that was a one-time deal prompted by Gabe who can be compelled to willful
recklessness when his emotions get the better of him.

When I return to the old, well-worn
house that is now my home, Tarren is outside, waiting and angry. This anger is
actually a compilation of three angers in one—the usual, everyday anger that he
wears like a second skin, the disappointment about the mission yesterday, and
now me on the bike.

I decide to make a grand entrance
for the hell of it. I rev the engine loud, speed up the driveway, and cut a
turn so deep that my knee almost touches the ground. Gravel sprays around me.

Tarren, of course, is not amused.
With his firm jaw, well-etched cheekbones, and long-lashed eyes, he would be
handsome if he didn’t try so damn hard to look unpleasant all the time. Even
his aura is spiky—shivering up and down all day unless he’s running, shooting,
or dampening it to hide his emotions from me. Tarren’s got a lot reasons for
his anger, but I don’t feel sorry for him at all. Not for the long scar that
traces his jaw or the many others he so fervently hides.

“That’s not yours,” he says when I
cut the engine.

Right, this was Tammy’s bike. I’m
about to launch into a peevish defense until I see the vapors of pained red
ringing Tarren’s aura even though he’s trying to keep himself in check.
Memories of his dead twin sister always puts red into Tarren’s aura.

Quantum Queen of Tact
.

We look at each other. I try to
muster an apology and fail. Not for Tarren.

“Can we practice some more
fighting?” I offer instead.

***

In the backyard, beneath crab
grass, dead pine needles, and old shell casings, we start achingly slow. I
follow Tarren’s body, pantomiming his kicks as he demonstrates the movements
over and over. He harps on my foot placement, heel turn, the bend of my elbow,
and every other little thing. Then we turn face to face and, again in slow
motion, mimic the moves against each other. Tarren has great patience for this
sort of thing. He seems to find some form of religious bliss in adhering to
each exact detail of the taekwondo movements.

I would rather train with Gabe, who
fights much looser than his brother, mixing all the arts they have
learned—taekwondo, judo, MMA and Krav Maga—into something entirely his own. But
though Gabe is happy to teach me lock picking, security system disengagement,
and hotwiring cars, fighting and shooting are out of the question with him.
Gabe’s reticence is all about love. He doesn’t want me in this war against the
angels. Doesn’t want to turn me into a killer. But he’ll have to get over it
eventually.

I’m in. There is no reason for my
continued existence unless I can hunt down and kill the one who purposefully
infected me; the one who murdered my boyfriend in front of my eyes; the one who
swept away my entire life in one night.

My biological father, Grand.

Finally, Tarren and I speed things
up. We throw kicks and punches at each other, always taking care to keep a
finger’s width of distance from actually making contact. Tarren barks out
instructions that I mostly tune out, because my body knows what to do. When I
apply myself I can learn almost anything quickly, and this dance is becoming
more and more intuitive.

That’s the angel part of me. When
Grand injected me with his bone marrow, my body was transformed into a
spectacle of human potential. With a little training and practice, I can be
fast as a world class sprinter, strong as those guys who pull cars around for
kicks, and flexible and balanced as an elite gymnast. I’ve also got a
photographic memory to boot. There’s a reason Grand considers this a gift, and
why so many people are willing to be changed into angels. Not the
fluffy-winged, harp-sporting kind of angel, of course. The DNA-scrambled,
energy-sucking, crazy-mad hungering kind.

Tarren catches my arm and pulls me
into his body. I can actually feel his aura humming across my skin, kicking
open all the angel channels inside my brain. I slip out of the choke hold and
throw the heel of my foot at his knee. Tarren spins away from my kick. His body
is fast and graceful despite his size. Now he’s behind me, swiping my feet from
under me. I roll and recover. We face each other. The song crests and breaks
over me again and again.

I am always outnumbered in these
practices with Tarren, battered and forced to defend myself against two far
superior opponents. The hunger always takes precedence, which is how Tarren
finds an opening.

He throws a knee up. I brace myself
for the hit, get my palms up and deflect, but he’s already pulling left,
striking out with his elbow fast as a snake. I scramble to lean away, but the
blow would have landed, probably breaking my jaw, if Tarren hadn’t pulled it at
the last moment.

Tarren steps back and mops his
brow. He’s saying something that I don’t hear, because my hands are growing
hot, boiling. The skin rolls back, and the bulbs lift to the surface, budding
against the thick shield of tape that I always apply with great care before our
sparring matches.

When the song of hunger begins to rise
into a cacophony of chaos, I’ve learned that it helps to look at things and
think their names.
Shoes. Grass. Ragwood. Porch railing. Window to Gabe's
room. Tarren's eyes.

Tarren eyes change colors.
Sometimes they are such a pale blue as to be almost colorless. Other times,
they turn gray like shale or like clouds threatening rain. Things are always
happening in Tarren's eyes. His thoughts move behind his pupils, so quick, so
precise, always cloaked with mystery and a pain that he refuses to show any other
way.

“Let me know when you’re ready,”
Tarren says, reading the tension in my body. He is a keen observer, always on
his guard, always ready—almost waiting—for me to break.

Tarren’s nose. Tarren’s scar.
Tarren’s suspicion.

I take a breath and let the need
break over me. We haven’t had a scare in a while. At least the sun is out,
dappling my shoulders and feeding me a thin stream of energy that my body
drinks in. It dulls my hunger, but sunlight itself is never enough. I need the
energy of living creatures to survive; I need to feed off of auras.

I nod and pull my arms up in the
correct defensive posture. Soon, our limbs are whirling again.

***

That night I lie on the roof and
count the stars as far as I can see them. The numbers dial up rapidly in my mind,
and I watch them, the stars, the numbers, and feel very far away.

I’m thinking about, of all things,
sex — whether I’ll ever have it again. If there will ever be another man who is
not Ryan who will touch me and kiss me and fill me, and if there is any
possible way I won’t accidentally lose control and kill him.

The image of Rain Bailey appears in
my mind. Rain and Ryan. Go figure.

Rain Bailey. This is annoying. He’s
been popping up in my head like a malicious gopher ever since Poughkeepsie. My
photographic memory starts digging around in my brain, throwing images in front
of my eyes.

I see Rain staring at me as I stand
over the body of a preacher in Marymoor Park. Our first meeting—if you can call
it a meeting. I can still see his long face perfectly; that weird goatee that
he probably thought was stylish; his sleepy brown eyes registering shock, then
suspicion, then fury. The connection was obvious—at least to him. He was out in
those woods searching for his missing sister, Sunshine, and here I was, glowing
hands, leaning over a new corpse.

He chased. I ran. Then, a month
later, he somehow ended up across the country chained up in Poughkeepsie. I
think it must have had something to do with me. My brothers rescued Rain and
the rest of the humans who were shackled in that hellish barn. They also took
care of the angels who were holding them there, but I never got to tell Rain
that I didn’t kill his sister; that I’m one of the good guys, sorta.

I wonder how mentally-damaged he is
after all this. I wonder if he’s searching for me the same way I wish I could
be searching for Grand. Does he fantasize about all the different ways he’ll
kill me when we face off against each other? Is his imagination even more
brutal, more gruesome than mine? I doubt it. My head is a torture pit for
Grand, a private hell where Grand clones are beaten, cut, burned, and broken
while I watch with pleasure.

I cut off my thoughts. I don’t want
to think about Grand, and I especially don’t want to think about Rain Bailey. I
need to concentrate on Ryan, pay penance to my guilt, and then slowly
transition into feeling incredibly sorry for myself. This works. I go back to
thinking about sex and then about babies.

I’ve always wanted a few babies in
an abstract way that involves lots of cooing and family pictures but not
diapers and vomit and sleepless nights. But now, tonight, I have an intuitive
fear that no babies can grow within this destructive body of mine. Grand was
fertile. His little swimmers did not curdle Diana’s egg too badly when he raped
her. But what about female angels or hybrid angels? How can any little seed
grow inside a body that feeds on life’s energy?

Gabe to the rescue. He scrambles up
onto the roof, and says in greeting, “Long ago Chuck Norris visited a foreign
city. A small child pointed at Chuck’s cowboy hat and laughed. Chuck Norris
swiftly got his revenge on Pompeii.”

He lies down on his back and folds
his arms behind his head. He’s wearing the university hoodie I washed this
afternoon. Half a bottle of stain remover took care of all the blood. I notice
the word
alumni
scrawled in fancy cursive across the front.

“What degree did you get?” I ask.

Gabe looks down at his hoodie.
“Bobsled.”

“You can’t get a degree in
bobsled.”

“Synchronized diving.”

“Do you ever forget that you’re
lying and accidentally believe your own bullshit?”

“I never lie. I swear it.”

We are silent for a long while,
looking at the stars. Our breath curls out of our mouths and noses. The cold
has brought an end to the cricket harmonies and the lazy dip of fireflies
below. I miss them, but more especially the squirrels, raccoons, and other
little midnight snacks.

“Did you find anything on the guy
from last night?” I finally ask.

“Yeah. Missing person was called
in. Rashad Patel. He had an interesting strategy.”

“Strategy?”

Gabe turns his head toward me. His
aura drifts around him in shades of vibrant blues. “First rule of the game,
angels need to feed. Bodies cause trouble. Most angels are forced to be on the
move one way or another. Patel figured out how to fly under the radar.”

“How?”

“Get it?
Fly
under the
radar.”

“I’m rolling my eyes right now.
Trust me.”

Gabe laughs. “Patel had a steady
job and a wife in Birmingham,” he says. “He didn’t fall off the grid like most
angels do.”

“Then how did he end up in
Illinois?”

“Turns out he was a recruiter for
an engineering firm. His job was to drive around the country and attend college
career fairs. The perfect cover for an angel who wants to keep up appearances.
His kills were so spread out that it took me a while to pick up on the pattern.
It’s lucky for us that he was a dumb shit and took to feeding on drunk college
kids. Frat boys dropping dead of presumed heart attacks wasn’t exactly subtle.”

I picture all the faces of the
victims that Gabe connected to Patel. Their names run in laps around my brain.
This is too close to home. I should have never looked up Ryan’s Facebook page
and read the flood of anguished messages left by his friends and family.

“I need to dig through Patel’s
contacts,” Gabe continues. “Figure out who turned him. No angel is an island.
There’ll be others connected to him.”

My stomach clutches. More
traveling. More crappy motel rooms. More nights spent sprawled on a cold
rooftop trying to steady my hands.

“…which sucks, cause I really need
a break soon,” Gabe is saying.

“A break from what? Life?”