Leaping (10 page)

It’s fine. Totally fine. I don’t
own Rain. He needs someone to tongue tango with, and it can’t be me anyway. I
walk behind the motel, where large dumpsters exhale the stench of rotting food,
used diapers, and the other detritus of humanity. I can feel the call of auras
within the motel. My sensitive ears pick up the laugh-track from a television
set, soft words murmured into a phone, the clang of swords from a video game,
and hundreds of other sounds from within the building, all merging together
into a clamoring cacophony. I push it all away and focus again on Tarren.

He would lie to protect Gabe. He
would lie to protect me.
My thoughts are spinning, overlapping. There’s one
other person I’m sure Tarren would lie to protect. A person who is supposed to
be dead. Beyond all lies.
Tammy.

I find a small ladder between the
dumpsters and climb three stories up to the roof of the motel.  When I swing my
leg over the edge, my foot sinks into a layer of crunchy leaves. I like the
smell up here. The earthy decay of the leaves almost covers the stench of the
dumpsters, and it beats the stale, moldy smell of the motel room and my
memories of that perfume.

The perfume.

Rain doesn’t remember killing
the angel. No one saw her body…except Tarren.
I bite my lip, welcoming the
sting of pain. Gabe thought Tarren was acting sloppy in Enterprise when we left
him with all those bodies.
But Tarren is never sloppy.
He was hiding
something…or someone.

The backpack slides from my shoulders,
and I gently let it down as I turn my face to the sky. The sun falls across my
cheeks, and my skin absorbs its weak energy. The sun is a sustenance of sorts,
but it was never enough before. All it did was dampen the hunger. That is, until
the Prism.

The Prism makes all the difference.

 I unzip the backpack and pull out
the carefully wrapped glass mirrors and the metal-hinged holding pods. Tarren
created the Prism for me with Lo’s help. I know that in spite of his distance,
Tarren cares about me. He saved my body from the fire in Peoria, but he saved
my life with the Prism.

 But I also know that my brother
has many faces. Beyond the hero’s mask and the loyal brother’s mask are masks
hidden in shadow.

I unwrap each mirror from its
padded pouch. My hands work automatically as I click the mirrors into their
swiveling pods. Tarren explained the mathematics to me, and I calculate the
sun’s position overhead and adjust the tilt of the mirrors.

My hands throb in anticipation, and
for a moment I long for all the luscious energy I can feel in the rooms below
my feet. Sunlight is different than animal energy. There’s something hollow
about it; filling, but not satisfying. Animal energy rushes through my veins,
supercharging me in a way the sunlight never can.

And then there’s human energy. The
ultimate well of power. As much as I try to forget, I still remember how it
revved through my body, how the universe seemed to knit together into one
cohesive pattern of sound, color, and taste. My mind was so clear I almost felt
like a demigod. And that’s why I can never let myself partake again. Not only
do I risk killing the person I latch onto, but human energy intoxicates me with
feelings of power, invincibility, and dulls my emotions. An army of well-fed angels
could easily decimate the human population without shedding a tear about it.
They’d laugh as they walked over bodies.

Out of nowhere, I think of Abe, the
energetic six-year-old we met in Peoria who lost his sister. Raven was turned
into an angel against her will, and she did the right thing, breaking all her
bonds with her family. We’ve still never found a trace of her, and I’m almost
glad of it. I hate the idea of my brothers putting her in their crosshairs,
throwing her wrapped-up corpse into an anonymous grave in the middle of
nowhere.

This is why I fight. So that little
kids like Abe will never lose their big sisters, and scared teenagers like
Raven are never turned into monsters, into killers, against their will. The
human race might have a lot of big problems, but there is a lot of good out
there too. If the angels took over, it would be a slaughter until every human
was an energy-drained corpse, or an angel.

And on that happy note…
I
tilt the mirrors, and the sunlight hits their glass faces, bouncing from one
layer to the next, focusing down into a single concentrated beam of light. I
hold out for a second, watching that beam pierce through the empty air, and
then I sit down in its path and let the beam of light envelop me. I close my
eyes as the energy streams into my body, filling the void within me, nourishing
me.

I throw my head back and smile.
Faintly, I hear the scrapes of leaves blowing around me. When I lower my head
and open my eyes, I see a moat of empty concrete around me that had been
covered by a thick blanket of leaves just a few moments ago. It looks almost
like I’m sitting inside my own leaf crop circle.

Whoopsy-daisy.
This isn’t
the first time my latent telekinetic power has rematerialized when I’ve fed
through the mirrors. I hold out my hand, focus, and watch a single leaf shiver
and spin up into the air.
The Amazing Maya, everybody!
I pull in another
sharp breath. The leaf is heavy, but I use my power to hold it up so that it
hovers and spins just above my palm. Maybe if we ever finish up saving the
world from our secret battle against the angels, I can get a job with a B-rate
freak show. Do those even still exist? With a sigh, I let go, and the leaf
drifts down to my knee.  

“Okay, is the pilot’s wife still
possessed, or did the snot monster take over someone else’s body?” Rain asks.

I lean back against the pillows,
propped up against the headboard and turn to look at Rain’s aura. Crimson
strands wriggle through his energy field.

“It’s a swamp monster, not a snot monster,
and the pilot’s wife is still possessed. See? Her eyes are glowing. That means the
swamp monster’s pulling the levers. Time for more Vicodin.”

The light from the television
flickers across Rain’s pale face. “How does a swamp monster have psychic powers?
Shouldn’t he shoot snot at people or smother them in his body?”

“Actually, I think he has the
ability to generate horrible screenplays,” I say as I grab the medicine bottle
from the nightstand. These last hours have felt good, watching terrible television,
talking about nothing, skipping past all the channels still going crazy over
the bloody disappearance of Tucker Cartwright. I wish I could just wrap us up
in a blanket of normalcy and hide in our little cocoon forever. My eyes catch
the bulky shape of Rain’s cast under the blankets, and my heart constricts. Not
normal. Never normal. And forever may only be this night if Rain goes back out
into the field.

The clock on the nightstand ticks
to four a.m. “You need to sleep,” I tell Rain. “The Vicodin will help with
that. Bear is going to be here in the morning to look after you.”

Rain scowls.
Quantum Queen of
Tact.
I want to snatch my words back. “What I meant was…”

“…that I’m a total screw-up who
needs babysitting,” Rain sighs and gazes at his cast.

I lift the remote and turn down the
cheesy horror flick. I should be diplomatic here. I should find something
positive to say, some way to support him.

“You really do suck at being a
vigilante,” I respond.

His head whips in my direction. Here
we go, our first fight, right in this motel room, an hour after I practically
carried him to the toilet to his utter humiliation.  

“Okay, so yes,” Rain sputters, “but
I just need to practice more. I’ll get better.”

“You could have died last night!” I
cry before I can help myself. All the worries that have been simmering just
below the surface are suddenly boiling over. And I shouldn’t do this…can’t do
this, not in front of Rain. I can’t show him how much I really care, or it will
make things so, so much worse between us.

“But I didn’t.” Rain’s face takes
on a stubborn set. I know that look. He’s thinking of Sunshine, the older
sister who practically raised him. The sister who died at the hands of an
angel. “I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. Really,” he adds.

He is so earnest that he might as
well plunge a screwdriver through my chest. “You’re clumsy. You’re so damn
clumsy,” I say. I have to look somewhere else. My eyes scour the room and land
on that photo of the woman, on her dress full of buttons. “You can’t go back
out in the field.”

I feel the weight of Rain’s gaze,
but I can’t meet it. There are so many things I like about him, his
self-deprecating humor, his total acceptance of my weirdness, his compassion.
But he almost never gets angry, and that’s his true weakness. More than the
clumsiness, more than the lack of experience, this is why I can’t let Rain be a
vigilante anymore. He isn’t cold enough, isn’t broken enough.

 “You can’t stop me, Maya,” he
says, and his voice is soft, almost sad in the face of my lashing anger. His
aura shines with purpose, but it looks like martyrdom to me.

I don’t mean to say the words out
loud, but they come right through me. “I can’t keep waiting for you to get
killed.”

We shouldn’t be having this
conversation, not now when he’s still recovering from a concussion, still
floating on waves of Vicodin. It’s utterly unfair. But we must have it now.  I
have to force him to be reasonable. I have to save his life.

“It’s my choice, and I choose to
fight,” Rain finally says. That’s it. No defense. No anger. Just this simple,
unbearable statement.

I have only one ounce of leverage
against him, weak and pathetic, but I use it anyway. I’ll try anything. “Then…then…we’re
over.”

There isn’t even any “us” to speak
of. My threat is weak as a wet paper bag trying to hold an anvil.

 “So, you’re actually admitting
we’re together?” A tiny smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, and it makes the
fire rage inside of me.

“This isn’t a joke!” I scream. “You
think I want to get cryptic texts from you and worry that you’re dead somewhere
in a gutter with your neck snapped?”

“I worry about you too. All the
time.”

Mother. Fucker. Is he really doing
this? Being all caring and sensitive when I’m acting like a complete harpy?
Can’t he just get angry? Can’t he threaten and yell and be a total ass like me?

Rain stares at me. “You’re right. I’ll
probably die. It’s okay if you want to bail on this…on us. I wouldn’t want to
date me either.”

This is Rain. This is what he does
to me. This weird understanding, thoughtfulness that is its own kind of
strength. It drives me crazy. I can see his path unfurling in front of him,
dark, violent, and short. He’ll keep slipping and tripping along it until that
one day when he won’t get back up again.

And it will break my stupid heart.

 “Gabe’s back,” I huff as I quickly
flick the tears out of my eyes. “Here.” I grab the bottle of Vicodin from the
nightstand, shake out two pills, and hold them out for him.

Rain’s dark brown eyes still rest
on my face. Those sleepy, hooded eyes make him look relaxed even now as his
aura pitches with emotion. He lifts the pills from my gloved palm.

The lever on the door starts
turning.

“Brace yourself,” I tell Rain. He
gives me a raised eyebrow just as the loud knocking starts.

“Openseesame!” Gabe cries from the
other side of the door. Sir Hopsalot scurries out of his hay bin and wiggles
under the bed. Smart rabbit.

I’m off the bed and at the door in three
quick steps. I swing it open, and my brother staggers in, smelling of perfume,
cigarettes, and sex.

“Good night?” I ask. The hickeys on
his neck tell me he either got some action or ran into a menacing gang of
octopi on his way to the bar. I glance at the My Little Pony sticker on his
forehead.

“Oh yeah. S’was a good party. Hey
man. Hey! How’s the leg?” Gabe swivels unsteadily to Rain and points a finger
at him.

“Kinda broken,” Rain replies, “but
Maya just drugged me up, so it should be getting a little better.”

“Yes!” Gabe grins. “Can I have
some?”

“No,” I tell him, “seems like
you’ve had plenty already.” I watch the blotchy colors in Gabe’s aura lurch and
blend into each other. I hate this side of him, this seed of self-destruction
that seems planted deep in his psyche, but I think he needs it. Alcohol, drugs,
sex, and apparently My Little Pony stickers are his safety valve, letting out
all the grayness that messes up his black and white world.

“Hey, hey, hey, I wannda tell you
something,” Gabe says. “But I dink I’ve gotta…um yeah, puke first.”

I point him to the open bathroom door,
and he takes unsteady steps toward it. “Toilet,” I remind him.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Gabe says, but I
saw him eyeing the sink. He kneels down, and Rain and I get the pleasure of
listening to him empty out his stomach.

When Gabe leaves the bathroom, he
says, “Invisibility cloak,” or tries to say it. The word “invisibility” sounds
like “invisbitty.”

“Got it,” I say with a nod and hand
him a bottle of water. “Sleep it off. There’s room on the bed.”

“Nope, not sleeping in bed with a
dude, even you Bird Brain. No offense,” Gabe says to Rain.

“None taken,” Rain says, watching
the proceedings with a grin. “Wouldn’t want you getting all handsy anyway.”

“Fuck off,” Gabe laughs as he plops
on the ground and focuses on unscrewing the lid to the water bottle. I decide not
to remind him that he slept a whole night in bed with an injured and drugged Tarren
earlier this year.

Gabe takes a swig of water and sets
the bottle aside. I bend and catch it before it falls over. Apparently this is
my new party trick.

“Fast, fast, fast,” Gabe mutters.
He looks over at Rain. “She’s got powers. Super speed!”

I turn to Rain and mouth,
Sorry,
before I remember that we’re in the middle of a fight, and I don’t have to
apologize for my hammered family members to him.

“Oh!” Gabe looks at me. “I have a
uh, Chuck Norris thing…thing for you.”

“Joke?”

“Yesh! Okay, so this one time, this
guy he said to Chuck Norris, he said…” Gabe shrugs out of his coat and throws
his hat across the room. “He said, I bet you can’t kick me…no wait, he said,
what happens if you think of roundhouse kicking me…hold on. Then Chuck Norris’s
beard did something. And the guy’s head exploded.” Gabe kicks off one shoe and
starts pulling his shirt up over his head.

“That’s hilarious,” I tell him.
“Remember our rule.”

“Rule?”

“What’s you’re drunk rule?”

Gabe thinks a moment as he
struggles with his shirt. “Oh yeah!” he says through the fabric wrapped across
his face. “Underwear stays on.”

“Yep, underwear stays on. Good.” I
refuse to look at Rain. For reasons I really, really don’t want to explore,
Gabe always has the urge to strip butt-naked when he gets wasted. I think it’s
just some inherent part of his DNA. Dr. Lee told me that Diana couldn’t keep a
stitch of clothing on him until he was five years old.

Gabe finally extricates himself from
his t-shirt and reveals a pale chest filled with wrinkled My Little Pony
stickers.

“What the hell happened to you?” I
ask.

“April and Teresa did that,” he
laughs. “I’m a Bronie now.”

“A Bronie?”

“It’s this thing where men like My
Little Pony,” Rain chimes in from the bed.

“Yes!” Gabe points a finger at
Rain. “Cause I’m a sensitive guy who doesn’t care what the wuuurld thinks. Okay,
so this is…where is it…this one is my favorite…” he points to an upside down
pink pony slapped across his left nipple. “What’s ‘er name. What the fuck is
her fucking name?”

“Would it happen to be Pinkie Pie?”
I ask.

“Yes!” His face lights up. “How’da
know that?”

“Someone wrote it under the
sticker.” I point to the sloppy red letters that overlap with a drawing that
might be a butterfly or possibly a mushroom.

“So Pinkie Pie, she’s the shit. She
makes people laugh,” Gabe says. He feels around his arm and peels off a
sticker. He looks at me, his eyes glazed and serious. “Maya, this one is for
you.” He holds out his hand. Half a horse sticker dangles off his finger. “This
one is Cracker Jack or Apple Jack or Apple Juice or something.”

“Really, that’s okay.”

“I want you to have it. Cause
you’re my sister.” Gabe gets to his feet, one shoe still on.

“Um…”

“Here.” Gabe swipes me with the
sticker, endowing me with an orange pony’s ass on my right arm.

“Thanks Gabe.”

He grins at me. “YOU are welcome.”

I can’t help it. I smile back at
him.

“And YOU, holy fucking Pluto’s
gonads,” Gabe swivels to Rain. “THIS guy. Look at him. Wounded in battle.”

“I fell out of a tree.”

“Fucking trees. I hate trees. Not
all trees. But I hated this one tree. It’s gone now.” Gabe staggers to the bed
and lowers his voice. “I took care of it. You know, permanently. If you want, I
can…can take care of your tree too. I’d do that for you, man.”

Rain grins at him. “You’re pretty
awesome when you’re shit-faced.”

“I’m always awesome,” Gabe
announces, and the white pony sticker on his forehead bunches as he looks down
his stomach. “You have to have one too. You get…you get….” He spins in a
circle. “Oh, Princess Twilight Sparkle. She’s the leader. Okay, here we go. Shit.”
The leg tears off as he peels the sticker from over his belly button. “Hope
that’s not a premium or something.”

“Premonition?” I offer.

“Here.” Gabe holds out the purple
pony sticker to Rain. “This is for your valor. Your courage. You may be a total
fuck up, but you tried. And I love you for that. I really, really do.”

Rain reaches for the sticker.

“Let me,” Gabe says and leans over
his cast. The sticker on his forehead bunches up again as he carefully presses
the purple pony sideways on Rain’s cast. “I, Gabriel Fox, honor you with this
beautiful sticker of Princess Twilight Sparkle for your sacri…sacrifice. The
world cannot know what we do, but we know…what we do…and we do it…and you have
good hair.”

“Bravo!” I clap.

“That was beautiful,” Rain says and
pretends to wipe away a tear. “I’ll keep Princess Sparkle Moonlight Bubbles
with me for always…or as long as this thing is on my leg.”

Gabe grins and makes a little bow
to each of us. After another, briefer puking session in the toilet, he flops on
the floor in only his Superman boxer briefs and one shoe.

“Lay on your side,” I tell him. “I’m
not CPRing you if you start choking on your own vomit.”

“You would so CPR me,” Gabe sings
back as he turns on his side. “I could be pro…project vomiting…”

“Projectile vomiting,” Rain offers.

“Yesh! I could be project vomiting,
and you would CPR me. You know why? Know why? Know why?”

I open my mouth to respond.

“Cause I’m your brodther and you
luuuuuuuuv me! Chuck Norris!”  Gabe lays his head down and is snoring into the
carpet ten seconds later.

“Pretty sure that was the best exit
ever, and he didn’t even leave the room,” Rain chuckles.

I sigh. Life is never dull with
Gabe Fox in the family. He’s right though. I would do anything to protect him.
I pull the top blanket off the bed.

“What do you think is on his back?”
I ask Rain.