Leaping (5 page)

The Angels of Mercy are Gem’s
people, and Gem warned me loud and clear that his club is off limits to our
little vigilante hunter parties. In the nine months since that conversation, I still
haven’t found a good way to tell my brothers, “Hey, guess what, I actually have
another half-brother named Gem from the evil angel side of my family. He
happens to know every single thing about us since he kind of invaded my mind
earlier this year. But don’t worry, he also saved my life and used his eerie
mind powers to help Tarren with his nightmares while Tarren was unconscious.
That was when Tarren was healing from the severe burns he received while rescuing
me from a building…that Gem set on fire. Yeah, family Thanksgiving is going to
be soooo interesting this year, don’t you think?”

“…been staking out nursing homes on
a rotating basis,” Chain is finishing up when I zone back into the conversation.

“And where was Rain…Penguin
patrolling today?” I cut in.

“Enterprise,” Rattlesnake speaks
up. “We each picked a town around Las Vegas and staked out a different nursing
home each night.”

Why the hell didn’t they work in
teams? Gabe and I drilled that into their heads when we took the Totem under
our wing and gave them some vigilante education. Gabe dubbed the conference
calls we held in the months following Peoria, “How Not to Get Your Ass Killed
101.” Teams, we said. Always pairs or teams.

 “Which nursing home was he at
tonight?” I ask and try not to grit out the words. Rattlesnake must hear my
impatience. Her hip cocks out an extra degree, and her lips press together. Something
tells me that she doesn’t have a lot of female friends.

“Don’t know.”

Of course they don’t. Why in the
world should team members know where the others are on a dangerous mission? Would
it be too cliché to slap my forehead? I can’t even look at Tarren. I know that
he’ll have his unreadable poker face firmly affixed, but I’ll catch a glimpse
of the frustration in his aura. I can almost hear the words that must be
running through his mind,
We shouldn’t even be here.

I get the sense that Chain
understands the magnitude of their fuck up. He grips his chain belt tightly and
looks down at his laced black boots, the same brand Tarren wears, I note. The
scarlet hues ride higher in his aura.

“No point in crying over spilled whiskey
now,” Gabe pipes up. “Let’s focus on a plan. Easiest thing to do is plot out
all the nursing homes in the city and drive by each one.”

“Spilled whiskey?” Rattlesnake
questions.

“Who’s going to cry over spilled
milk?” Gabe shoots back and gets a small smile out of her. Gabe magic, in a
nutshell.

“We’ve already checked around all
the nursing homes in the area. There weren’t that many,” Chain says. His gaze
briefly darts to Tarren as if asking for approval.

Before Tarren can calmly lay out what
I know will be an entirely practical, safe, and slow plan, I jump in. “Okay, we
split up, each pick a nursing home, and walk widening circles on foot. Maybe he
followed the angel somewhere, or there was some kind of chase,” I say.

“We’re not splitting up. No way,”
Gabe says immediately. “Rule One of How Not To Get Your Ass Killed 101.”

Yep, I had that one coming. I was
just fuming at Rain for doing the same thing. Splitting up isn’t just against
our Totem lesson plan. It was taken from Diana’s code. Gabe is pretty bendy on
most of his mother’s rules, but not that one. Not after what happened to Tarren
a few years ago in…Las Vegas.

My brain does a double take. Las
Vegas. Just a stone’s throw from here.  

I remember the story just as Gabe
told it to me. About three years before I made my grand entrance on the
vigilante stage, he noticed a trail of dead drug dealers and other baddies in
Las Vegas, all with super low body temps at death.

Something clicks in my mind:
Dead
drug dealers. Another calling card of the Angels of Mercy.

Gabe and Tarren split up to cover
more area on the patrol. A week into the patrol, Tarren didn’t respond to check
in. Gabe found him unconscious but alive in an alley. An angel had apparently
attacked but stopped mid-Tarren snack and just left. This is the strangest part
of the story as far as I’m concerned. Angels don’t just stop in the middle of
feeding; most of them
can’t
stop mid-feed unless someone or something
pries them off. The hunger is too strong. Tarren claimed that he didn’t
remember what happened that night in Las Vegas, but I’ve always wondered…

“We go as one team, grid out the
search area,” Gabe is saying.

My mind snaps back to the present,
back to Rain, back to those painful roots in my chest.

 “He could be dying!” My words are so
loud that they echo faintly in the nearly empty parking lot. I know that I should
at least try to maintain a semblance of self-control. My feelings for Rain are
too obvious, and they only prove that Tarren is right to be disappointed in me.
Disappointment is one of his strongest, sharpest weapons. He can cut me to
ribbons with the softest words of reproach.

 “What if the angel is still alive
and uses him as bait, knowing that we’ll come looking for him?” Gabe’s question
is a good one, and I don’t have an answer.

“We have to find him.” My words are
a pathetic whimper.

The annoyed shades of bronze in Gabe’s
aura begin to cave. That’s the thing about Gabe, he’s all heart and loyalty
underneath that Batman costume. All it takes is a few tears from someone he
loves, and he’ll jump off the cliff right behind them. To hell with whatever’s
waiting at the bottom.

“We’ll each be careful, stay in
contact the whole time. If we come across a set of wings, we won’t engage,” I
blabber on. “This is just rescue.”

Gabe and I both turn to Tarren.

“Fine by me,” Rattlesnake pipes up.
She doesn’t realize that she and Chain are just along for the ride now. It’s
all about Tarren. If he’s on board, Gabe will fall into line.

Too bad I already know how Tarren
will answer. He follows Diana’s rules like they were chiseled in stone right
alongside the Ten Commandments. He’ll never let us split up, never let us go
careening off like…well, like cowboys.

“We’ll go in pairs,” Tarren decides.
An obvious and intelligent compromise that somehow still manages to surprise me.
“Keep in contact the whole time.”

Chain immediately glances at
Tarren, and I can just imagine how every single fiber of his angry soul is
begging to be partnered with my tall, handsome, and heroic brother. His aura is
filled with fireworks, and I turn away from him, distracted by the colors…the
music of his need.

“Rattlesnake and Gabe,” Tarren
says.

He looks at me. “Maya and Chain.”

Beside me, my new safety buddy
deflates like someone stuck a pin in him. I don’t bother to hide my
disappointment either. Why do I get stuck with anger management poster boy?

“What about you?” Gabe asks.

“Odd numbers,” Tarren responds,
like of course if one of us should go heroically gallivanting off on their own
it would be him. This is Tarren, always looking out for everyone’s safety…except
his own. “I’ll take the jeep,” he adds.

“You could…” I start, meaning to graciously
offer him my partner as a trade, but Gabe interrupts.

“No, I don’t like this. Tarren, you
can come with us.”

 “I can take care of myself,” Tarren
replies with utter cool confidence.

“Doesn’t matter,” Gabe shoots right
back, both hands on his hips. “You’ve gotta’ have someone watching your back.”

“You can go with us.” Chain’s voice
is flat, emotionless, but his aura vibrates.

“We don’t have time for this,” I
say. Tarren
can
take care of himself, probably better than any of us
here. He can also cover a lot of extra ground if he’s on his own with the jeep rather
than stuck in one of our groups.

“Don’t like it,” Gabe says again,
but the tone of his voice lets me know that he’s losing steam.

“Let’s go,” I say to Chain and give
Tarren a look. “Be safe.”

Tarren nods. I almost expect him to
jump onto the back of a gallant steed before galloping away into the night.

***

Chain and I start our search for
Rain just outside the Mayflower Senior Care Village. The “village” consists of
a single large building dotted by darkened windows. I close my eyes, take a
deep breath, and let the angel part of me explore.

I feel Chain next to me, his aura
in flames of impatience and anger. Beyond him, I catch faint pulses of other
lives inside the building. Some are so weak they feel like echoes. I know the
feel of Rain’s busy aura, and I search, search, search, pushing my mind to go
farther.
Be here,
I wish as if he were just conveniently hiding in some
bushes.

“Come on,” Chain growls next to me.

His voice snaps the tenuous chords
of my concentration, dragging me back into my body. That growl of his is so
fake, so obviously practiced. Everything about Chain screams danger, from his
tight black clothing and the holsters under his arms, to the rusted chain on
his hips and the quiet, blank face that hides his rage. But my abilities let me
see more. Chain is a fake. His black clothing is a costume, his mask a poor
copy of Tarren’s. I wonder if the day will come when he totally loses himself to
the part he’s trying to play.

Without a word, I start walking.
Chain matches my pace, and his belt clinks with each step. We make a slow
circuit around the “village” and then move out 200 yards to make another lap. I
try to open my mind, doing a mental sweep for Rain’s energy, but Chain’s aura
distracts me. It jumps up and down, crackling with barely contained emotions.

I know the emotion inside of him isn’t
all anger. He’s worried too, maybe even as worried as I am. He and Rain shared
a crucible together – Poughkeepsie – and that horror-fest bonded them like
soldiers trapped together behind enemy lines. Red, red, red in his aura
accompanied by big, bright swirls of orange. Worry and anger fueling each
other.

“We’ll find him,” I say, more to
just project something positive into the universe than any real belief.

“This is the risk we take,” Chain
responds in a flat voice that he might think is stoic. If I couldn’t see his
aura practically burning him from the inside, I might think that he didn’t
care.

“You’re full of bullshit,” I inform
him. “Rain practically considers you a brother.”
An unstable, worrying
brother,
I don’t say out loud.

Chain’s flashlight sweeps the
sidewalk in front of us. I don’t need the light. My eyes are just fine in the
dark with the glow of the swollen moon overhead.

“It’s dangerous to get attached,”
Chain says. I don’t think he even notices that his fingers grip the belt around
his hips. I used to mercilessly mock the belt and Chain’s badass persona when
Rain and I were together until he finally told me what the belt meant. It’s the
chain the angels used to hold them and 18 other captives in a fetid barn on an
isolated farm in Poughkeepsie, New York. I can’t decide if the belt serves Chain
as a reminder of why the angels must die, or if it means something else, like how
even the worst nightmares must come to an end.

I glance sideways at Chain again.
Damn, he’s so young. Eighteen years old, Rain told me. Maybe the outer cool
covering the inner rage is what he needs, a part to play so he doesn’t have to
be that scared boy trapped in hell anymore.

I sigh. “It’s not your fault,” I
tell him.

“What’s not my fault?” He sounds
angry already.

“I know Rain is your friend. I
know…”

“Don’t do that,” Chain cuts me off.
“Don’t feel sorry for me. This is part of the mission. Today was probably just
his day.”

All the worry washes over me again,
and my hand goes to my phone. I know Rain hasn’t texted or called – I would
have felt the vibration – but I look at my phone anyway praying for some
magical silent message to be on my screen. I press redial and strain my ears. I
know Rain has his phone on vibrate, but if we’re close enough, I might still be
able to hear it.

Pick up, pick up, pick up.
I
listen to the rings. A lone car drives past, its headlights punching holes in
the night. The automated voicemail picks up.

I’ve already left a dozen messages,
but I have to leave one more for him. “Rain, you have to be okay. I’ll buy you
a thousand milkshakes if you just call me back.”

I hang up and look at Chain,
challenging him to say something.

“It’ll be all of us in the end,” he
says, trying for gravity.

I wonder how far he’d fly if I
punched him as hard as I could. I realize that breaking Chain’s face won’t
change the fact that he’s probably right. The clear impossibility of us ever
winning this insane war against the angels is something my brothers and I never
discuss. It’s always with us though, sitting just below the surface, like a
pool of molten lava waiting for our resolve to crack just a little.

Gem and I spoke of this once. He
told me, “For every angel you and your brothers take down, three more rise up.”
He also warned me that there would be consequences if we ever killed one of his
Angels of Mercy. I have no doubt that my blood ties to him won’t save me or my
other brothers if that day should ever come. Which makes me wonder what will
happen if we come across one of his Angels of Mercy tonight.

Easy. If she hurt Rain, then she’s
going down. Gem can crush me like an empty beer can with his telepathy for all
I care. No one hurts my bumbling, inept, adorable, honest, handsome…boyfriend.

Chain and I make our third loop in
silence. We cross dark roads, walk through nearly empty parking lots, and stay
out of the street lights. Chain tries to hide his shivering in the cool
temperatures. I keep glancing at my phone, hoping, praying to a God who has
never listened before.