Leaping (3 page)

“Let ‘em through,” Troll Number One
says.

I give him a big, sloppy grin as he
unhooks the stupid velvet rope and allows us access to the staircase. “You guys
are the best. Oh My God, Tucker Cartwright. This is unbelievable,” I gush as we
head up the stairs. As soon as the goons are behind us, I give Gabe an angry
glare.

“Piss on his face?”

“Batman doesn’t drive the getaway
car,” Gabe says again as we reach the second floor and survey a long hallway
filled with closed doors.

“They’ll be able to give
descriptions of us to law enforcement,” Tarren says. I’m probably imaging the icicles
of unhappiness dripping off his words.

“Gabe’s got his mask, you’ve got
your cowboy hat, and I’m wearing a wig. It’s fine,” I hiss back at him.

Tarren decides to generously withhold any additional
rebukes. “Gloves on. How many humans up here?” he asks. 

As Tarren and Gabe each pull a pair
of thin leather gloves from their pocket and Bat Utility Belt, respectively, I
lower a barrier in my mind and let the angel part of me extend. Heat roils
through my hands, and the seams in my palms pull, asking for release. I feel
the auras of my brothers so close and the mass of energy throbbing downstairs.
I push, focusing my mind on this hallway.

“Multiple humans up here. There and
there,” I point to two rooms in the hallway. Their auras lick against that
sensitive part of my brain. “We have to be careful.”

“Don’t see any cameras,” Gabe says,
scanning up and down the hallway. “Small favors.”

Tarren is quiet for a moment, just
a moment, as his mind calculates. We could be facing two angels up here or a
dozen behind every door. And we’ve got humans in the mix.

Tarren’s lips press tight. The plan
is woven. “We go room by room,” he says. “Use the heat sensor to identify and
then clip all the wings we find. Tranq any humans. Do it quick. Do it clean. No
alarms. I’ll take the first three doors. Gabe the next three. Maya, those two
on the other side.”

“I didn’t bring a tranq gun,” I
admit, “but I don’t sense any humans in my rooms.”

Tarren gives me a look that says,
We’ll
discuss this later.

You try finding a place for two
guns and a phone while wearing ten square inches of clothing,
I think back
at him.

“Exit point?” Gabe’s voice is low,
finally serious. I watch the teasing greens drain from his aura, leaving it a
dark blue, the color of the ocean on a cloudy, unhappy day.

“There.” Tarren points to one of
the doors. “According to the layout, that should be the bathroom. There’ll be a
window that lets out on the side of the house. As soon as your rooms are
cleared, get the bodies out and straight back to the car.”

“Should have bought my Bat
Grappling Hook,” Gabe grumbles.

Tarren’s eyes have shifted from
pale blue to gray and look hard as flint. I study his smooth, controlled aura.
Does
he still get nervous?
I wonder. Especially with a job like this. So many
ways this could melt down. All it would take is a single human letting out a
scream, or an angel with a power we’ve never seen before. I pull in a deep,
long breath and nod my assent.

“Right on,” Gabe says.

“Quick, quiet, clean,” Tarren says.
Our team motto.

We each turn away, moving toward
our assigned doors. Adrenaline sloshes through my veins, and I’ve grown used to
this sick anticipation. Blood and bullets.
Unless it’s one of us tonight,
I
think. That familiar knot of dread is back, sitting heavily in my stomach. I
know that we cannot jump through the fire forever without getting burned
ourselves.

My heels softly plow the thick
carpet as I wrap my gloved hand around the first door. My right hand is already
cradling my Glock in a strong grip. No human auras within the room, but that
doesn’t mean an angel isn’t waiting to jump out at me like the rubber zombies
in the haunted tunnel. I turn the door handle, and the door opens into an
office. My gun is up, ready, sweeping the parameter. My eyes search the shadows
and find nothing.

I close the door softly behind me.
My prickling angel sense feels the auras of my brothers up here with me. A
muffled shot rings from one of the other rooms, seemingly so loud, but I know
the pounding music downstairs will drown it out. I wish the silencers they show
in the movies really existed. They don’t. Silencers muffle a shot, but it’s
still loud. Still a risk.

I move to the second door. The knob
resists my hand.
Locked.

On any other mission I’d have a
lock pick kit squirreled away in an inner pocket, but in this tight,
nothing-there costume, I come up empty. I’m so not asking my brothers for an
assist. I turn the knob harder. My muscles tense. I imagine all my hybrid angel
strength pouring out of me into the knob.
Come on, dammit. What’s the point
of having super strength if I can’t…
something snaps within the handle and
it turns willingly in my grasp.

I shake out my throbbing hand.
Point to hybrid angel girl!

I open the door slowly and move
into a vast room.
Damn…
I’ve never been across the ocean, but I’m pretty
sure a European castle could fit into this room.
Whoa, narcissistic much?
My
eyes travel around the room. Tucker Cartwright, Tucker Cartwright, Tucker
Cartwright. He gives me a swarmy grin from the beach, from behind the wheel of
an old Corvette, leaning up against a lamp post in the rain with the Eiffel
Tower behind him. Not phallic at all. His posters and calendars and portraits
compete with each other to fill up every possible inch of space on the walls.
Was this room decorated by a 12-year-old girl? I’m surprised I don’t see
magazine cutouts encircled by huge hearts taped to the walls.

I catch a figure looming in my
peripheral and spin, almost blowing the head right off a life-sized cardboard
cutout of Tucker Cartwright. The cutout grins at me, his eyes saying,
Yeah
I’m hot. Wanna fuck?
 

“Shit!” a voice hollers from a
massive bed sitting in the middle of the room.

I turn and shoot, but the man is
already rolling out of the bed. My first bullet kicks a hole through his pillow.
He hits the floor with a thud, all bare ass and skinny legs. Tucker Cartwright.
So not pleased to meet you.
I aim for his chest, but he puts a hand up,
and I’m off my feet flying through the air.

I take out the cardboard cutout
before I hit the wall hard and slide to the ground.
Telekinesis, dammit!
The
room is all floaty, a thousand Tucker Cartwrights sloshing up and down the
walls. I shake away the dizziness as I jump to my feet…. and notice the gun is
nowhere near my grip.

“You wicked cunt!” Tucker Cartwright
hisses, and I hear the door slam behind me. “You’re one of ‘em whatchamacallem?
The…the Vigils?”

He folds his arms around his chest
like he is madly, truly offended. “And crashing my fucking party. Probably ate
a fuck ton of my shrimp too, didn’t you?” I find my gun firmly couched beneath
the sole of his foot. “God, I can’t believe this.” He looks at me and runs a
hand through his long, tousled hair. “What the hell is wrong with your aura?”

Bad. This is very bad. I always
knew the vigilante life would put me in a coffin at an early age, but
seriously, Tucker Cartwright? The world’s lamest fake famous person whose
vocabulary consists 50% of the word “Fuck”?

“Oh wait. Wait. Wait. Wait!” Tucker
says as he leans over and picks up my gun. “You’re that girl, the half angel.”
His eyes are wide, and his mouth turns up into a cruel smile. “War said that
you were dead. Burned to a crisp.”

“War.” The word is growl out of my
throat as Warren’s ugly face flashes across my memory. I haven’t gotten around
to killing that grotesque sack of shit yet, but he’s high up on the priority
list.

Tucker hefts my gun. He moves a
step closer, and I hold my ground. My muscles are tense. If I were facing a
human I wouldn’t be nervous at all. Slow, fat-fingered humans. But another
angel – a full-fledged angel is another ballgame. Tucker is faster than me,
stronger too. All of my enhanced abilities are shadows compared to what a full
angel can do.   

Stall,
I think.
Distract
him. Get out of his shooting path.
“How’s my buddy War doing?” I ask and
give Tucker a flashy smile of my own.

“He’s pushing the angel religion
shit,” Tucker says as he takes another step forward. “They lap it up.”

Behind Tucker’s naked ass, I
noticed a figure sprawled in the bed on top of the cheetah coverlet. The
long-legged woman is naked and dead, and her thick black hair fans out across
the black satin sheets. Tucker’s body glows with the ethereal energy he soaked
up from the woman.

Tucker must notice my gaze. He
gives me a smile that almost drips with slime. “It’s ridiculously easy. They’re
so excited, so innocent.” He nods toward the bed and pitches his voice into a
high falsetto. “Ooohhh, Tucker Cartwright, I’ll suck your dick if you give my
headshot to your agent.”

The asshole laughs. Actually
laughs. And that’s when I decide that Tucker Cartwright definitely won’t be
killing me tonight.

“And their eyes,” Tucker says.
“They get so big and scared as I drain the life out of them.” He looks at the
bed again. “That one hardly fought at all.”

He’s brimming with the power of his
recent feed. It’s making him cocky and stupid. I can work with that.

“How do you get away with it?”

 “Heroine overdose. So tragic,” he
says and tilts his head. I see the spoon and syringe on the nightstand. “All
these young actresses. Hollywood just chews them up and spits them out.”

I move, dashing right.
BOOM
!
The gun goes off. Then I’m on top of Tucker. My blade flashes in my hand. I see
the slap of surprise on features as my dagger puts a red smile across his neck,
from ear to ear. His telekinesis explodes, throwing me hard into the ceiling.
The plaster cracks and rains down as I fall. I tuck my body. The landing isn’t
graceful, but I roll and keep all my bones intact as I make it to my feet. In a
distant place, my elbow throbs with muted pain.

The gunshot. I look down as panic
spreads like ice in my chest. Was I hit? Specks of blood dot my chest like tiny
rubies, but I don’t see a big gaping hole. No rivulets of blood run down my
arms or legs or spread a wet puddle across my costume. The flecks of blood
aren’t mine. 

Near the foot of the bed, Tucker
spills his blood across the white travertine tiles. I watch the liquid pump
from his wound and slide across the floor in a crimson wave. My stomach
tightens, and the normal college sophomore I used to be screams somewhere far,
far in the back of my mind.

Tucker grabs his neck as if he
could hold his severed artery together. As if he could save the life I’ve
already taken from him. I stand in front of him, watching, waiting, trying to
remember that he is a very bad person and deserves to die.

The gunshot was muted by the
silencer, but it was still loud. It could bring Troll One and Two rushing up
the stairs. I know this, but my legs don’t move. I have to watch. No matter how
bad Tucker Cartwright was, I must stand vigil for his last moments. My eyes
keep flicking away from the shuddering body, but everywhere they go, they see Tucker
again and again and again like his ghost is accusing me from every poster.

Tucker’s hand hits the tile with a
wet thud. His face is ghastly pale, mouth open, eyes half-lidded. The glow is
gone from his ashen skin. A few more tiny bubbles of blood slip down from the
corner of his mouth, and then Tucker Cartwright’s life is over. But his face,
all his thousand faces will be safe inside my perfect memory forever.

My legs are shaky as I force them
to move toward the bed.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the young
woman who stares at me with unseeing brown eyes. She truly is beautiful. I bet
she was one of those people who everyone described as “full of life.”  Not
anymore. I carefully lift her body with one arm and pull the big cheetah print
comforter off the bed before setting her back down. I don’t have time for this,
but I pull the black silk sheet over her body, covering her nakedness. It’s
pointless. The police will tag and bag her. She’ll be naked on a slab in a
morgue in a few hours, but right now in this quiet moment when her parents and
siblings and all her friends still believe she is alive, she deserves to be
covered.

I toss the comforter on the floor,
keeping it away from the spreading crimson puddle of Tucker’s blood. The liquid
catches in the grout between the tiles and runs down them like a frisky stream.

Trying not to look at his face or
the gaping wound I put into his neck, I lift Tucker’s limp body and drop him
onto the comforter. Blood still dribbles from his wound.

Shit, I killed Tucker
Cartwright.
The thought is almost absurd, but here I am, rolling his body
into a cheetah print log.

Gun.

I turn and find my gun sitting in
the puddle of Tucker’s blood. My blonde wig lies nearby, looking like a mangled
Pomeranian. I’m starting to shake now, and time seems to be pulsing in my veins
instead of blood. Did Tucker scream? Are the goons coming?

I shove the wig on my head,
twisting it the right way and shoving escaped wisps of my hair inside. Then I
reach into the blood and grab the glistening gun and push it awkwardly into my
holster. I feel wetness sliding down my leg. The throbbing in my elbow
intensifies. I look up at the ceiling, at the long crack my body made when
Tucker launched me upwards.  

That’s definitely going to be a
mind fuck for the police.

I look around the room again, at
the pillow with the charred bullet hole in its center, at the pale starlet
wannabe shrouded in the black sheets, and finally at the pool of Tucker’s blood.
It seems darker now, more wet. Should I try to clean up? Did I leave DNA on the
ceiling?