Landing (4 page)

Chapter 5

Something is wrong. After the boys
get back from their CrossFit class, they retreat into the basement and lock the
door. A sign taped to the door reads in Gabe’ handwriting,
Restricted
Area – Alpha 5 Clearance required. All unauthorized personnel attempting to
access this facility will be roundhouse kicked to death upon capture.

I don’t care at all. Especially not
when I press my ear against the floor in the kitchen and hear boxes opening,
scissors clipping and strange grating noises below.

I go up to the roof, far away from
hushed voices and enigmatic sounds. The sun is already sinking low, leaving me
to the night. An hour later, Gabe sticks his head out the window and tells me
to get ready to go out. His appearance does nothing to ease my suspicion. His
hair is washed and actually combed. He’s wearing a buttoned-up shirt, which I
would have never guessed he owned, along with what must be his only pair of
jeans without holes in the knees.

And then there’s those trickster
green filaments wriggling through the blue in his aura and the smug smile he’s
trying to hold back but can’t because he’s Gabe.

This is bad.

I choose jeans and a loose green
peasant blouse that I bought for $11 at the used clothing store. The clothes
are flexible in case I need to dive or run or punch Gabe in the face for
whatever he’s planning. I also add some smoky eyeliner, because, well, I’m not
really sure why.

Tarren and Gabe are waiting for me
downstairs. Tarren is neat and trim as usual. His mahogany hair is combed back,
and he’s wearing a long sleeve navy blue polo that fits snugly over his broad
shoulders and chest. His energy is less choppy than usual, which means he’s got
a tight grip on it.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

The trip is short, ending in the
driveway of Dr. Lee’s cabin a few miles down the road. In the nearly three
months since I’ve been living this new life here in Farewell I’ve never met the
old man, but Gabe has described him as “wicked smart” and “cranky as hell”.
Apparently, Dr. Lee has been one of the few constants in the boys’ lives and
the only other person besides Lo who knows where their road trips really bring
them.

We shuffle out of the Murano.
Hummingbird wings take flight in Gabe’s aura. Francesca, Dr. Lee’s live-in
housekeeper, resides here as well. We stand on the porch while Gabe rings the
bell. My body is tensing, getting all prickly and too sensitive against the
brush of my clothes. I haven’t done any social visits since the change. Hell,
Tarren hardly ever lets me out of the car; something about me being
unpredictable and dangerous.

The door swings open, and
wine-colored shades of lust infuse Gabe’s aura. Francesca smiles that glowing,
tooth whitener ad smile of hers. Her silky black hair is loose, falling down
her back, and even her aura is beautiful, a drifting blue, pale like the early
morning sky. I curl my hands into fists.

“Bonjourno,” Gabe says.

“Come on in,” Francesca steps out
of the way. The blues in her aura shift to purple as she looks us over, and I
wonder if Gabe is starting to win her affections. 

“Maya, I’m so glad we could finally
have you over.” Her slight accent adds a pleasant trill to her vowels.

“Glad to be here,” I answer
cheerfully enough. This might be a lie.

The cabin is overly warm and spare
in decoration. A couple of rugs lay on the bare wood floor, and a fire leaps
high in the fireplace. No TV. No computer. I sense a new aura at once and turn
toward it.

A figure stands from the armchair
next to the couch accompanied by little pops — knees, I realize. The Asian man
is slight of figure and bowed by the lessons time teaches. The black has run
out of his hair leaving it a peppered mix of white and gray. I study his aura,
that frail, mud-colored glow around his body, and wonder if he is ill or if
it’s just the decline of age.

Dr. Lee’s smile hints at mixed
fragments of story and emotion. Soft purples nudge through the brown in his
aura as he lays a hand on the shoulder of each of my brothers and nods in
greeting.

“Boys,” he says in a smoky, hoarse
voice that must have been something in his youth. Then he takes slow steps
right up to me, within arm’s reach. It makes me uncomfortable even though his
energy hardly registers on my like-to-snack-on-you-O’meter. He stops and looks
me over from head to toe. Those black eyes don’t seem to miss anything.

He holds out his hand.

I hesitate. Gabe clears his throat.
I unwind my arms from around my waist and take the doctor’s hand. Our palms
meet, and he turns my hand over to study the black, fingerless gloves I’m
wearing. A fleeting shadow carves his brow. There is a too-long pause. At last,
Dr. Lee puts his other hand over mine.

“A pleasure,” he says

“It’s good to finally meet you,” I
say.

“Nonsense.” He releases my hand,
and I pull it quickly into my body. “We’ve met before, although the first time
you weren’t exactly happy to see me.” I try to puzzle out his meaning, and the little
secret smile he gives me, but there are other people in the house, and other
people, Gabe specifically, have the attention spans of peanuts.

“Dr. Lee, Chuck Norris was just
elected president of the United States,” Gabe says. “He wrestled the entire
congress into submission to get a day of National Ass Kicking passed. I know
you don’t read the papers, so I thought I should tell you.”

“And here we go,” Francesca laughs.

***

We are an awkward bunch. Tarren is
quiet and moody. Gabe tries way too hard to impress Francesca. She can’t seem
to sit down and is forever trekking back and forth from the kitchen, handing
Gabe another beer, filling Dr. Lee’s wine glass, asking Tarren and me if we’d
like anything else besides water.

I sit on the edge of the fireplace
and try to keep my eyes on the hungry flames. The feel of the heat, the pop and
hiss of the wood, and the bright shimmer help stabilize my thoughts. But I can
feel them, the young and vibrant auras pulsing around me. The song of my hunger
is so loud that it seems to be coming out of the walls.

Gabe steals a seat next to
Francesca on the old, indented couch and valiantly shoulders the conversation.
His mood is infectious. Soon, Francesca’s laugh is bursting out in loud gales.
From the old leather chair, Dr. Lee’s stuttering energy picks up.

Sitting on the other side of the
fireplace, even Tarren chuckles occasionally, though it is a soft noise that he
tries to keep to himself. I watch him out of the corner of my eye and discover
that his steel spine can bend. The fire plays across his face, and when he
smiles, he is strikingly handsome, which I think I can say, because in these
moments he hardly looks like my brother at all.

I am not the only one casting
glances his way. When she thinks no one is looking, Francesca’s gaze lingers on
Tarren, and soft purple hues blush in her aura.
Uh-oh.

The stories are haltingly teased
out of us. Francesca tells us about her classes. She’s in her first year of
nursing school up in Pueblo. I catch myself drifting to the melodies of the
song, and I refocus, grab onto the words being spoken.

“You’re going to be a fantastic
nurse,” Gabe is saying to Francesca. “I’ll break some of Tarren’s bones so you
can practice setting them.”

“Just try,” Tarren says, “and
you’ll end up being her first coma patient.”

“I think a coma would do you good,
Gabe,” I add. “It’d give you time to rest your voice.” I don’t look at anyone
directly, concentrate on the fire, and things are okay.

Francesca laughs and gets up again.
“Another beer?” Gabe nods. “Tarren, Maya, some wine?”

We both decline.

“Dr. Lee, are you warm enough?”

“Everyone is fine dear,” the doctor
tells her.

Francesca returns with Gabe’s beer
and glasses of water for the rest of us. She hands out the drinks, saving
Tarren’s for last. When their fingers meet around the glass, Francesca’s aura
swells, laced with dark shades of lust.

Double uh-oh.

Tarren gives no indication in his
face or aura that he notices Francesca’s lingering eyes, but he does. I know he
does. Tarren misses nothing.

Just as silence raises its fearful
head, Gabe leaps to the rescue, and the great tide of hyperbole begins. Tarren
and I are forever getting ourselves kidnapped or dangling off of cliff edges.
It is our redeeming fortune that Gabe seems to never tire of taking down large
armies of thugs to save us in the nick of time again and again. Occasionally he
also rescues orphans from burning buildings, defeats bank robbers in
hand-to-hand combat, and talks bereft supermodels off of high rise rooftops.

He gets Francesca laughing so hard
that she’s hiccupping and lifting tears away from her eyes with the tips of her
fingers.

“You are nothing but trouble,” she
huffs.

“Tarren was there! He’ll tell you.
The humble town folk even erected a statue in my honor. I begged them not to,
but they insisted.”

“He is incapable of telling the
truth,” Tarren says softly.

I am beginning to slip. The
temperature ratchets up inside the secret chambers of my palms. The song breaks
through the steady stream of Gabe’s words, takes my attention in its grip, and
starts squeezing. I cement my palms to the curves of my kneecaps.

Don’t glow, don’t glow, don’t
glow
, I beg my hands.

“Maya,” Tarren says. I look up.
Tarren’s
eyes. Tarren’s scar. Gray bricks of the fireplace.

“Huh?”

“I asked what crime you committed
to be sent out here with these two,” Francesca says, though her voice is now a
little uncertain.

I take a breath and shuffle my
thoughts into order. “I needed to get away,” I say lamely, “to write.” I look
up at Francesca. No, really I study the deepening blue of her aura. “I’m
writing a book.”

“Oh really? What about? Can I ask
that?”

“I’m writing…uh,” My eyes take a
desperate cruise around the room searching for ideas. Then it comes to me.
“About the amazing adventures of the Fox brothers,” I announce. “I accompany
them as they roam about the countryside and slay dragons. Seeing as I’m always
hanging over a cliff, I thought it’d be interesting to write from the damsel’s
point of view.”

Tarren frowns.

“Yep, saving the world, one project
management software package at a time. And the occasional ninjas, you know,”
Gabe chimes in. The software salesmen cover story is what my brothers use to
explain their long absences. As far as I know, Francesca has never questioned
it.

She stands up again. “Can I get any
snacks for anyone?”

“Don’t even think about it,” Dr.
Lee snaps. “Gabe has the appetite of a horse. He’ll empty the whole fridge if
you let him.”

“Gotta feed these rippling biceps,”
Gabe retorts, flexing one of his thin arms. “Benched 300 the other day. You
should have been there Francesca.”

“Sorry I missed it.”

“Yeah, all these girls were
swooning. Some guys too. Even Tarren almost swooned. He swoons a lot.”

“I’m actually feeling a little
nauseous now that you mention it,” Tarren responds.

In this moment, this exact one,
with Gabe a little sloshed and grinning that full, trickster grin; the fire
sweeping away the lines of worry from Tarren’s face; and Francesca putting a
delicate hand over her mouth that is incapable of damming the loud trill of her
laugh—this I just can’t tolerate at all.

It’s mostly about the hunger, but
there’s something else. Just like under the maple tree this morning. We are
damned, my brothers and I, and even these fleeting embers of happiness are too
much for us. A reminder of what we don’t have. Will never have.

But yeah, it’s mostly the hunger;
the song filling all the corridors in my brain.

So as not to be rude and slip into
a murderous rampage, I stand up, shove my hands deep into my pockets, mutter
“bathroom,” and slink off down the hall.

Chapter 6

The cold water slides down the
curves of my face and tries to break through the seal of my lips. I press my
hands on each side of the sink, trying to force the sensitive bulbs back into
the chambers of my palms, but they are stubborn and keep their perches.

The mirror looms in front of me,
but I don’t dare look to see what plaintive expression is scrawled across my
face. Instead, I leave the bathroom and wander down a long hallway, seeking
refuge from the strong currents of energy and happy noises emanating from the
den. I pass a spare bedroom, a closet filled with towels and sheets, and a
second locked closet. I could probably get it open with a hardy tug, but
instead, I lean against the door and listen to the soft hum of a power current
inside.

At the end of the hall, I find a
small office and go inside. A large oak bookshelf stands against the back wall.
I read through the book titles, whispering the words out loud, because the song
is still tugging wildly at all my puppet strings.

I reach out, shaking hand, glowing
hand, and press my fingertips against the spines of the books. This is
something I used to do long ago to calm myself. I can tell these are real books
by their dulled corners and bent pages. They’ve been opened, imbibed, allowed
to seed and grow their wild tales. My fingers land on a slim volume and linger
there. I pull it out, and cradle it in the crook of my elbow. Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein.

“Do you like monster stories,
Doctor?” I ask softly and turn around to confront Dr. Lee as he crosses the
threshold of the room.

“What?”

“I said, do you, uh…”

“I heard what you said. What the
hell kind of question is that?” Dr. Lee frowns, and I quickly turn around and
replace the book on the shelf.

“Nothing, never mind.”

Dr. Lee studies me as he slowly
makes his way across the room. “Gabe mentioned you were keen on the theatrics.”

“Runs in the family, I suppose.”

“Got that right.” The doctor eases
down into a worn leather chair.

“You know what I am.” I hold up my
hands and spread out my fingers so he can see the glow pulsing around them.
“But you aren’t afraid.”

“I was a trauma surgeon for
twenty-nine years. I don’t scare easily.” Dr. Lee makes a low “mmmm” as he
stretches out his legs. I sink into the leather chair opposite, fold my hands,
and tuck them between my legs.

“I’ve never met you before,” I say.

“Oh?” His energy is dark and slow.
The colors of his emotions recede beneath the layer of decaying brown. I’m not
sure if he’s sick, or this is just the damage of age. I can tell that he’s in
pain, but I don’t know how bad it is or what his thin smile means. “I was the
first person you ever met. I even got to spank you.”

“That’s kind of dirty, old man.”

“You were the one with no clothes
on.”

Now I understand, and my voice
takes its sweet time warbling out of my mouth. “You delivered me.”

“I’ll never forget it. First
delivery since my residency.”

Perhaps this is a line I don’t want
to cross. A story better left untold. But I say anyway, “Tell me.”

Dr. Lee sits perfectly still in his
chair. No tapping fingers or jumping knees. His eyes find my face and zone in.
I look away.

“You’ve been through a lot
already,” he says at last. “I suppose one more bad story won’t be anything
new.” He actually chuckles at this, the bastard, and he doesn’t tell me the
story I want to hear. Not right away.

Instead, he describes another young
woman. She had long black hair and brown eyes glazed with pain. He knew her for
exactly twenty minutes before she died on his operating table twenty-five years
ago. She changed his life forever.

She was a failed angel, one of the
many who do not survive the brutal transformation process. The girl’s X-rays
proved an unreal puzzle, and the autopsy confirmed that Dr. Lee had hit upon a
medical miracle. He sent blood and tissue samples around the country for
analysis.

One of those samples found Canton
Fox, a young genetics researcher at Stanford University. The angels also
inevitably got wind of Dr. Lee’s medical investigation. Even in the early days,
especially the early days, their power players had already gotten good at
squelching suspicious investigations and making angel autopsies disappear
altogether.

Dr. Lee calmly explains how the
angels sent a team to clean up the mess. I watch orange bands of color rise up
through the murky browns of his aura as he ticks off the dead: the coroner, his
team of nurses, and the med students who had been studying the samples from
Jane Doe’s body. It was Dr. Lee’s day off. He was at home while his team was slaughtered.

“Canton knew they would come for
me. He was waiting. He was…” Dr. Lee pauses, “…a terrible shot, but he brought
a lot of ammo.” Dr. Lee laughs, but it is not a happy sound. The old man leans
back into his chair, and his eyes gaze into the past. “I always expected heroes
to be mysterious, to disappear into the night. Not Canton. He wanted to talk.
He was alone, afraid for his family. He needed money. His wife had no idea what
he’d gotten himself into, at that point at least.”

Dr. Lee laughs again, and this time
I join him. Not because it’s funny, but because maybe it’s a relief to learn
that Canton Fox—the very first angel hunter—had his doubts and worries too. I
know intuitively that Dr. Lee has not shared this side of Canton with my
brothers. They both worship their father’s ghost, all the more for never having
known him. But Dr. Lee must see some other need in me, something the truth is
better suited to treat.

“Canton needed a friend, and,
seeing as I was being hunted by supernatural beings, so did I,” Dr. Lee
continues. They emptied Dr. Lee’s bank accounts, burned down his house with one
of the bodies inside, and then Dr. Lee took a secret early retirement in a
backwoods Colorado community called Farewell. He bought two neighboring houses
at a bank auction and gave the second one to Canton so his family would have a
refuge in case it was ever needed.

“And that is my story,” Dr. Lee
says. Though his face does not show it, the rust-colored swirls in his aura
speak of the ones he left behind, the gravestones he could never visit, the
part of himself that he will never get back. We look at each other, and I feel
that a new understanding has grown between us.

Dr. Lee props his chin on his
hands. “And now it is time for your story. Are you ready?”

I nod. I’m breathing way too loud,
but I can’t reign in my lungs. A loud burst of laughter erupts from the font of
the house. Mostly Francesca. She starts coughing. Even this far away, I can
feel their energies rev. I squeeze my legs as hard as I can, pinning my hands.

Dr. Lee waits for the noise to pass
and then begins.

“At first, Canton and I kept in
regular contact, but as time went on, those calls became less and less
frequent. Then they stopped altogether. Almost five years that house was empty.
Then one day Tammy showed up on my doorstep.”

The old man shakes his head. “It
was raining that night, and there she was, all of six years old, soaked to the
bone. Bare feet, that girl. I remember those bare feet and her knees all
scrapped up like she had fallen. Said her mama was in trouble and demanded that
I go and help.”

“Demanded?” I ask.

“She was a spitfire even back then.
Very much like her mother. It’s why they fought like cats all the time.” Dr.
Lee doesn’t chuckle, but his aura flicks. “So, I grabbed my medical kit and
drove over.”

I see that night. Dr. Lee’s words
feed the streaming movie in my head.
Lashing rain. Lightening wounding the
sky and the growl of thunder rolling after so loud you felt it down to your
bones. I see his car bumping along the pitted gravel road. A soaked little girl
shivers in the passenger seat, looking straight ahead, intent on her mission.

“As soon as I walked in the door,
this toddler, not a stitch of clothing on him, runs up and hits me in the shin
with a big wooden spoon. Laughs like it’s just the greatest thing in the world
and then runs away. That’s how I met Gabe, and for the life of me I still can’t
figure out how Diana ever finally convinced that child to put some damn clothes
on. Course, then I heard a scream coming from upstairs...”

Diana is in the master bedroom.
She’s managed to lower herself into the tub in the bathroom. Her swollen belly
rises up out of the shallow water as do her parted knees. She grips the sides
of the tub, knuckles white.
 
Sweat soaked hair sticks to her shoulders,
and ripples of pain tear her open. Fear beats wild in her chest. Not just
because she’s giving birth, but because the thing inside of her half belongs to
the enemy.

“The water was bloody, but
everything was fine,” Dr. Lee is saying. “The baby’s head was already cresting,
so there wasn’t much I could do except catch. Diana was in a daze, so I gave
you a nice smack on your rear, and you let out a yell. As healthy a babe as
I’ve ever seen. Your cries must have come through to Diana, because her eyes
shot open, and she reached out for you. I put you in her arms, and the first
thing she did was turn over your palms and press her thumbs across them. You
were wailing, hungry…”

Her thumbs probe my palms. She
doesn’t know yet if I’m human. For nine months she carried the child of her
husband’s killer—the angel who violently raped her—in her womb. She fed me of
her own body, endured my kicks, the hormone cocktails I mixed up for her…and
she didn’t know for sure what I was. Oh god, how did she do it? Why did she
even bring me to term?

“Whatever she was searching for,”
Dr. Lee continues, “Diana found her answer, because suddenly she was crying,
kissing you all over your face. That was your welcome into the world.” Dr.
Lee’s eyes, the lines etched in his face, everything about him seems tired. He
says, “Best thing she ever did for you was give you up.”

“What about Tarren?” I ask, only
because I have to tame these wild images in my head. “Where was he?”

“Tarren was hiding under his bed,
hands clasped over his ears,” Dr. Lee answers. “I couldn’t get him to come out.
I thought about calling child services on Diana. Giving birth like that was an
insane risk. You could have drowned in that water if she had passed out. There
could have been a complication. She could have orphaned her children.”

“What stopped you?”

“I’ve seen a lot of abused kids in
my day, and Diana was barely holding herself together, but she took care of her
children. I visited her often over the next few days. The kids were clean, well
fed, and well loved. She was always putting Gabe back into his clothes, pulling
the twins into her lap, and helping them read passages out of
The Odyssey.
So
I gave Diana a chance to explain. She told me everything.”

“Oh.”

Dr. Lee’s frown digs deep into his
face. “Don’t get that bleating sheep look.” His aura flicks, and I tense.
“Diana was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a block of stubborn bigger than
the moon. She was the perfect hero, but that made her a lousy mother. Cold.
Driven. A Charybdis that sucked her children down into the depths of her
vendetta.”

“You don’t approve.”

“Of course not. Diana loved those
boys and their sister, but she put them on a path of pain. A path that will
lead them each into an early grave.” Dr. Lee’s gravelly voice is filled with
bitter notes.

“It was their choice,” I object
meekly. “Diana let them choose.”

“No,” Dr. Lee shakes his head. “She
didn’t do it on purpose, but there never was a choice.”

“I thought you were her friend.”

“I was.” His damn eyes won’t
flinch. “Caring about her, caring about her children is…” He stops, and his
eyes drift past me to the locked closet on the other side of the hall, “…the
burden of my life.” He sighs and presses two fingers against his left temple.
“Diana got cancer. Wouldn’t stop for one minute to get the chemo she needed.
Kept fighting the good fight until it killed her. Tammy’s dead, Tarren’s
broken, and Gabe will get there soon enough.”

“Don’t say that.”

“And now you.” Dr. Lee’s voice
softens. “The one who got away didn’t get very far at all.” His energy
brightens along the edges, pale yellows of frustration. “You were born twenty
years ago today. Happy birthday Maya.”

I am getting to my feet, but I sit
back down. I put my face in my hands, close my eyes, and stare into the hazy
black. My birthday is November 23rd, the day when Karen and Henry formally
adopted me. Of course they wouldn’t have known the real date.

“Tarren and Gabe brought you over
here tonight so you could learn who you are. Where you came from.” Tones of
gentleness sneak into Dr. Lee’s voice.

It’s a funny thing for him to say.
How can I ever know who I am when I’m two completely different beings locked in
constant conflict? How can I know where I came from when I spent my whole life
coming from somewhere else? Being someone else? And there’s still Grand’s
burning fingerprints smeared across my DNA. The double helixes of my personhood
zipper up his evil with Diana’s heroism, if she was even a hero at all. It is
all too big, too much, too slippery.

I get up to my feet, shaky. “Let’s,
uh, get back out there.”

The doctor stands up, and I hear
all the little pops and cracks of his joints, the sigh of pain that he keeps
tight lips over. He takes slow steps toward me and slips his arm through my
elbow. I brace myself against the touch of his energy.

“You be good to those boys,
especially Tarren. They have so little left.” Dr. Lee’s voice is rough as
gravel. He leans against me as we start to walk. He weighs almost nothing.

I should look him in the eye and
say, “I will,” all choked with emotion. But I don’t. I gaze down and bite my
lip.