Landing (15 page)

“As soon as I saw the first light
on the horizon, I went down and untied him. He’d gotten eaten alive by
mosquitoes, and his skin was all burned from struggling against the ropes. When
Mom got home, she took Gabe to Dr. Lee. Turns out, he’d dislocated his shoulder
when Tammy tackled him. Mom was furious. She demanded to know what happened.”

“But Gabe didn’t tell on you, did
he?”

“No. He said that he’d fallen out
of a tree. He was only seven years old and already looking out for us. Of
course, Mom didn’t believe him. She sat us all down and she told us…” Tarren
stops.

“What?”

Tarren looks up at the gray clouds
lumbering overhead. “She was so tired that day,” he says, “and limping from
whatever happened on the mission. She tried to hide it, but I could tell. She
told us that no one in the world will ever love you as much as your family.
That it’s up to us to protect and care for each other.”

I think this is Tarren’s apology, a
reckoning between us. It feels powerful and unsettling.

“Tammy decided that Gabe had
acquitted himself nobly, and we officially inducted him into the club next time
Mom left. We never made him wear dresses or stand out in the snow again.”
Tarren lapses into silence, and I realize the story is over.

I’m afraid of spooking him back
behind his shields, so I just say, “thank you,” and we sit there watching
people pull in and out of the parking lot for a while.

It doesn’t last. Tarren breaks our
peaceful little bubble by standing up and saying, “I need to start the watch.”

“Tarren, wait.”

He turns back to me, and since he’s
still got just a tiny bit of softness in his eyes, I just say it. “We need to
go after Grand; we need to kill him for what he’s done to us.”

Tarren’s aura ticks, a short,
sudden burst of violent colors that quickly fades as he schools his emotions.
He wants Grand’s head as badly as I do, I know it, but he says evenly, “Grand
is too powerful. He possesses abilities we don’t even know about yet. His
senses are so keen that he would hear us, feel us coming a mile away.”

“Then we need to catch him when
he’s distracted, when he’s weak.” I stand up. “Like when…”

Ochre twined with amber.

A single pulse of it, echoing through
Tarren’s aura before he wrestles his energy under control.

But it’s too late. A domino
trembles in my mind. I was going to say,
like when he was turning me
.

Ochre for shame.

Amber for guilt.

The domino in my head falls,
triggering a cascade of realizations.

I tighten my hands into fists and
look up at Tarren. “Grand’s laptop was a trick. He used you to find me.” I
watch his face, his aura, very carefully. “But you knew that already, didn’t
you?”

The softness is gone from Tarren’s
eyes, if it was ever really there at all.

Ochre pulses in his aura.

“That’s why you put the tracker in
my purse. You wanted Grand to snatch me, to turn me. You knew the process would
distract him, weaken him.”

“No,” Tarren says, but so softly
that it falls between us like tissue paper.

I’m on my feet, though I don’t
remember standing. My whole body is trembling like a jackhammer started up in
the pit of my stomach.

“I was your bait. Ryan’s life was
collateral damage. Anything for your revenge.” The darkness that’s always brewing
inside of me expands, seeping into my neurons and crackling across my
brainwaves. My thoughts lose their short-lived coherency. A mucusy moan bubbles
out of my throat.

“You knew!” I cry. “WELL?”

Tarren gathers himself. “I
considered the possibility.”

I launch myself at him, hands
extended.

Chapter 20

Tarren dives to the ground.

“Wait, wait!” he barks.

I twist around in the air and
attack again. All those moves he patiently drilled into me come back at him
supercharged with my venom.

I am speed. I am ferocity.

Tarren quickly adapts and dons his
mask of impenetrability.

I’ll rip that calm right out of
him.

The coward, he doesn’t hit back.
Blocks my kicks. Ducks my punches. Dances out of arm’s reach whenever he can. I
hit his shins and forearms hard enough to wake blooms of red in his aura, but
it’s not enough.

I want to hear his bones crack.

We’re moving fast. So fast. No
thoughts. Just a riptide of emotion.

I know that I can keep this up as
long as it takes to wear him down. Every punch he ducks only fuels my
frustration and pushes me harder against him.

“You…Destroyed…My…Life!” I screech
as my kick whistles centimeters from his chin. “You…
Murdered…The…Only…Person…I…Ever Loved!”

“Maya,” Tarren pants. He moves to
block my next punch, but he’s a second too slow, and my knuckles glance his
shoulder. He stumbles back and slips down to his knee.

I dive at him.

Telltale tick in his aura.

I recognize the trap too late. It’s
the same way he beat Gabe back at the gym.

Lightening quick, Tarren absorbs my
momentum and twists to slam me into the ground. My breath punches out of my
lungs, and the world rattles. I roll over, trying to recover, but with smooth,
precise movements, Tarren pulls me to my knees and locks my arms behind my
back.

I twist violently against his hold.

“Maya, please,” Tarren pants in my
ear, “let me—”

The rain falls harder, puddleing
around us.

“You really don’t want to be so
close to my hands right now,” I hiss, because the angel part of my biology is
automatically responding to the cloak of his energy.

Tarren’s hands are on my wrists, so
I know that he can feel the heat blasting out of my palms and see the movement
beneath my gloves as my skin rips open.

Tarren flinches. This single beat
of distraction is all I need. I break free of his grip and elbow him hard in
the stomach. Tarren doubles over with a groan. I grab his head and flip him
over my shoulder. Tarren lands hard on his back. Before he can recover, I
spring to my feet and kick him in the chest hard enough to send him skidding
across the rain-slick roof toward the ledge in a plume of red energy.

Tarren’s head hangs over the edge
of the roof, and before he can struggle up, I put my foot onto his sternum and
press down.

“Don’t get up,” I snarl at him.

Tarren gasps for breath and moves
his hands like he’s going to try to snatch my ankle.

“Eh!” I push him forward so that
his shoulders now hang over the roof’s edge.

Tarren drops his hands and stares
up at me with flint-colored eyes. His face is strangely passive, like he
doesn’t care whether or not I choose to kill him.

Personally, I have a very strong
preference. The monster’s got me, and the monster wants to kick him off the
roof or maybe drink up his flagging energy first. Ironic how we were sitting
together in this very spot just moments ago; how I almost felt for the first
time like we were truly brother and sister.

This sad little thought pierces
through the veil of my rage. Like a whisper, Maya limps into my mind through
this opening, plugs my frontal lobe back in, and lays her small, cold hands on
the reins of my control.

My shoulders slump. My glowing
hands uncurl.

Words slosh around in my mind,
disparate and disconnected from each other. There are things I want to say to
Tarren, need to say. Grandiose curses, dramatic accusations, poetic
eviscerations. All I come up with are stale crumbs.

“I won’t ever forgive you,” I say.

“I know,” Tarren manages, and then
quickly adds, “Gabe didn’t know…He would never—”

I leap off the roof. The shock of
the concrete landing splits through my shins and into my knees and thighs. I
take a few ginger steps forward, and then I run with no purpose, no
destination.

Chapter 21

I don’t know where I’m going until
I’m there. After several miles of rushing through near-empty streets, I see the
big circus tent peaking in the distance. I tear through the park, past the
trailers where only a growling mutt is brave enough to face this cold, blustery
weather, and into the trees. The rain has stopped somewhere along the way, but
the leaves are still beaded with water, and the temperature keeps dropping.
This is the place where Jane combed her fingers through the long grasses; where
Kyle died. I search for the stain of his blood, but the leaves have shifted,
and the rain has taken the rest away

I don’t know what to do now, so I
lie down in the wet leaves and come to an important conclusion.

I’m done. Just fucking done with
everything.

Gabe was always good to me. Hell, I
love him, I really do, but he thinks that I’m a human with cool powers and a
minor addiction issue. Tarren thinks I’m an angel—a threat that he must study
and protect against. The truth is I’m something in between. Not entirely angel,
not entirely human. Not anything.

And I have Tarren to thank for
allowing Grand to demolish my life and turn me into this dangerous, unholy
freak.

And the craziest thing of all?

It almost makes sense. Mine and
Ryan’s lives in exchange for a shot at Grand; to stop a mass murderer; to
avenge a father, a mother, and a sister. I know exactly how this logic must
have looked inside Tarren’s cold, calculating, emotionless landscape of a
brain.

No contest.

The damp leaves soak my t-shirt and
jeans. I close my eyes.

I hear a faint sound; a
squish
of
wet leaves pressed together beneath a heavy weight. I open my eyes and watch a
tall figure approach through the trees. I sit up.

Jane’s eyelids are swollen and
red-rimmed. That beautiful black hair is wild around her head. Her hands are
balled into tight fists. We look at each other, and surely some words are
clanging around in my head, some excuse, some pathetic apology, but none of
them make it through the knotted corridors of my brain down to my mouth.

“I didn’t think you would be stupid
enough to come back here.” The smooth, throaty voice I remember is now a hoarse
whisper. “Though, I suppose you could say the same for me.”

I scramble up, bring my arms in
front of me, and shift my weight into a fighting stance.

“We had a plan if the Vigils ever
tracked us down,” Jane continues as she moves toward me. “A way for one of us
to start over. Armageddon. Except…” Jane opens her right fist, and a flickering
blue light snaps from finger to finger. This is when I realize, much too late
of course, that I never asked Kyle what an “Elemental” was.

Jane whispers, “How can you start
over when the only thing worth living for is gone?”

We stare at each other, and I must
have this complete
Oh Shit
expression on my face, because a slow, mean
smile slithers onto Jane’s mouth.

“So I decided not to start over,”
she says.

She extends her hand. That blue
light gathers strength and streaks from her palm toward me. I dive out of the
way, and it explodes against the tree behind me. A wave of power and heat plow
me into the ground.

My eyes are burning and streaming
tears. I turn my head and stare like an idiot at where the tree used to be.
What remains is a charred stump issuing thick plumes of ashy smoke. The air is
saturated with the smells of ozone, burnt wood, and my fear

I leap to my feet and resume my
defensive stance. It’s not out of bravery, or some sort of calm fortitude, it’s
because this is what Tarren trained me to do during practice.

But Jane has already closed the
distance between us. One touch of her hand, and my legs buckle.

Need to get up. Fight.

Jane pins me down. Her palm is an
anvil.

Electricity. Pouring out of her.
Into me. Thoughts breaking apart. Every muscle seizing. No breath. I can’t even
scream.

“At first I thought it was another
trap. You, out here alone, crying.” Jane’s voice is tinny and far away. “Too
obvious. But your humans aren’t here to back you up. I would have felt them now
that I know to look.”

She takes her hand away. My body
keeps humming, keeps twitching. I gasp in a loud, struggling breath. I’m trying
to sob and breathe at the same time, knowing somewhere deep that I’m not
getting out of this.

Jane kneels next to me. Blue
electrical currents wrap around her forearms.

“I thought about just killing
myself,” Jane whispers. Her face is a blur, but I feel it when her tear hits my
arm. “Going all Juliet for my Romeo, but I want revenge. I want to hurt you. I
didn’t think I was that kind of person. Kyle would be disappointed.”

I can’t think of what to do. Can’t
think at all. It’s so hard to breathe.

Jane sweeps that hideous hand
slowly over my body.

Puppet Maya bounces on her strings.
Muscles locking so hard my body arches up off the ground. Weak little sound.
Me. Whimpering.

Jane leans in close. I try to
shrink away. Her lips almost brush my ear. “We’re going to keep this up for a
long time. I hope that you’ll tell me all about yourself and about those other
two.”

I manage to shake my head.

“They’ll come looking for you
eventually anyway,” she says. “I’m going to make you watch while I kill them. I
want you to know what it’s like, what you did to me.”

I open my mouth to try and tell her
that I already know what it feels like to watch someone I love die. In fact, I
know all about vengeance and anger and the way they can tumor inside you until
there’s absolutely nothing left untainted. I manage one strangled syllable of
sound, but then Jane touches my right shoulder. The muscle locks so hard I
think my arm is going to pop out of the socket.

“We’ll start with an easy question.
Is my husband dead?”

I concentrate.
Kyle.
I nod.

“Okay.” Her voice trembles. Another
tear dive bombs onto my shoulder. “Next question, where is his body?”

My brain is crashing, the words
slipping from my grasp.
Think.

“He’s…He’s…” I pant.

Jane lets up on her attack.

“We buried…him…in…” My voice
squeaks like a tire rotating on a rusty axel. Jane leans closer. Her pupils are
pinpricks of black.

I kick, not sure if my leg will
even work. It’s a sloppy attack, but Jane’s not expecting it. My foot connects
to her wrist, and she falls back. Little snakes of lightening wreath from her
hands into the wet leaves. They burst into flames that quickly sputter.

I’m up and stumbling away in some
direction.

Run,
I think, because this
will help.
Run. Run. Run. Anywhere.

Messy steps propel me forward
accompanied by a sad little keen that is coming out of my own mouth.

Muscles twitching, ears ringing,
vision jumping in and out of focus. I can’t actually feel my legs.

My knee buckles under my weight,
sending me hard into the ground. I hear Jane’s footsteps coming up behind me.
She’s taking her time just like any B movie villain, allowing me to try a
desperate and hopeless escape before she pounces once again. I know this, but I
crawl like hell anyway. Apparently I have an interest in living after all.

Something drops into my path, and I
stop short.

Shoes.

Not Jane’s black leather boots.
These are tailored loafers tied in perfect, punctuated bows. I look up and
recognize that round forehead, the widow’s peak of blond hair, those blue eyes
that seem glassy as a doll’s.

Grand looks down at me with a
critical stare.

“You are weak, my daughter.”