Rising (15 page)

Take out War and Nicolas first,
I coach myself.
Then the twins.
And
Raven…
I don’t know what the fuck to do about Raven.
I’ll take her with
me. Give her some rats to feed on. I can watch her, train her.
And when we
find Tarren, then what?
Maybe we can open up a happy, fun, fun angel rehab
facility together. We’ll call it ‘Angels Reborn’.

Shut up,
I think to my brain.

Lazy snowflakes tumble through the air.

“Let’s fucking do this,” War grumbles.
“Move,” he tells me, and I oblige, picking a random direction and walking into
the heavy darkness.

My boots crunch through the icy crust of
snow, sinking ankle deep. My heart will give me away. It pounds, every beat
ringing like a confession in my ears. The others will hear. They’ll know. The
soft groans of snow behind me indicate that War, Nicolas, the twins, and Raven
are following me into this heavy shroud of darkness.

“After we take a look at these bodies,
we’ll go out and have us a nice snack,” War says to Raven who straggles at the
back of this brave expedition to nowhere.

War jogs up to the front, and gives me a
smirk when he reaches me.

“I’m Raven’s Guide,” he says. “You know
what that is?’

I do, but shake my head, feigning
ignorance.

“I granted her Ascension. I made her,
which means she’s my responsibility,” War says with pride. “It’s up to me to
teach her the ways of being an angel. She’s lucky. Some angels don’t take their
responsibility as a Guide seriously, but I do. Right girls?” he calls back to
Rachel and Heather.

“Yeah, sure,” Heather says without
enthusiasm as she plunges her heeled boots into the snow. She gazes around the
park with obvious uncertainty.

I tuck my hands close to my body and
remember how Kyle and Jane offered to be my Guides…how tempting it was. I push
up deeper into the park.

“I don’t see any other sets of tracks,”
Nicolas says behind me, his voice hard as stone, “from when you dropped the
bodies.”

“Came from a different direction,” I
assure him. “And the snow’s probably filed them in anyway.” Hopefully he’ll
contribute the catch in my voice to the cold, but probably not.

“One more thing,” War says. He fishes
beneath his leather jacket and produces a huge silver Colt pistol. “You fuck
with me, you get a kiss from Lila here.”

“You named your gun Lila?”

“She’s a beaut.” War rubs his gun with
quite some passion.

“Alright then,” I say, “it’s just up
here.” Icy slush dribbles into my boots and soaks into my socks. Everywhere the
forest produces groans and whistles and once a sharp crack as a branch snaps
under the weight of snow.

I’m probably going to die here,
I think, and this thought fills my bones
with lead. I weigh thousands of pounds, and each step forward costs nearly all
my strength. I don’t even know what ability each angel possesses. When I make
my move, they could throw anything at me, fireballs, plasma rays, globs of
magma.
Trust in the skills your brothers taught you,
I tell myself, but
then I’m thinking about Gabe and Tarren and how they’re not here. How they
won’t save me this time.

We come to a small ravine. The bottom is
so black that even my enhanced vision can’t cut through.

“Down there,” I say, and somehow the
words make it through my tight throat.

War steps up next to me and peers down.
“Shit,” he murmurs.

This is it, the moment I need, the only
moment I get.

I throw a fist into War’s neck, making a
solid connection. As he drops with an impotent wheeze, I grab his arm, spin,
and take that stupid, big-ass Colt easily from his grip. I sweep it toward
Nicolas and shoot. He’s already in motion, ducking behind a tree.

One of the girls screams.

I side-step, gun held firmly in both
hands, opening up a small window to Nicolas. He turns, and I notice a dark gray
stain erupting from the open chambers in his palms, soaking down past his
wrists.

I shoot again. He holds up his hands in
a hopeless effort to shield himself. The bullet hits his gray palm and
ricochets back at me with a spark. I throw myself to the ground just as the
bullet hisses above me. Shit!

Bulletproof. Of course his ability ends
up being some kind of bulletproof coating. Time for a new plan. Really need my
brain to step in right now, but all it gives me is an endless refrain of,
Shit,
Shit, Shit!

 “The Lord will judge you,” Nicolas
says, and a silver cross swings from the chain around his neck. He moves toward
me, and his steps seem ungainly and loud, like he’s bringing down far too much
weight with each step.

I have no good response, just the hours
and hours of sparring that I’ve done with Tarren. I leap up from the snow, just
in time to duck a heavy swing from Nicolas. I parry his next blow with my left
arm, and pain explodes through my bone at the contact. I cry out, and stumble
away, tucking my injured arm into my body. His skin is hard as stone.

Nicolas comes at me again, the gray
stain creeping up his neck. He reaches for me, and I don’t dare try to block
him again. I duck away, but he grabs my shirt, dragging me forward. I watch the
stain cover his chin, his mouth, his eyes.

Light bulb!

He pulls me close. I only have one
chance. I extend Lila, pressing the barrel to his hairline, just above the gray
stain, and pull the trigger.
BOOM
! The bullet tears through his
forehead. I pull myself from Nicolas’s grip, and he collapses like a puppet
with sheared strings.

I haul in one heavy breath, eardrums
throbbing, and sense rapid movement in my peripheral. The Colt tracks with my
gaze. A shadow descends upon me from above. Swinging blonde braid. I pivot,
shoot.
BOOM
! A red flower spreads across Rachel’s chest, and she crashes
into the snow next to me. She doesn’t get up.

War.

I turn, chambering another round. He’s
only managed to crawl a few feet away from the ravine, and his breaths are weak
sobs. I line up a perfect head shot. My finger strokes the trigger, and then
hands grasp my throat and squeeze. I pull the trigger.
BOOM!
War
screams.

I grab at the hands around my throat,
but my fingers meet nothing – no solid skin or bones to ward off.

“What did you do?” a voice whispers
behind me. The hands around my throat spin me around. Heather stands twenty
feet away, her hands extended from her body. They glow an ethereal white that
sears away the darkness around her.

Somewhere in the background, War lists
off a string of obscenities. Heather squeezes the empty air in front of her,
and I feel the invisible hands crushing my windpipe.

“What did you do?” Her voice ratchets up
to a squeal. I raise the gun and pull the trigger, but my shot goes wild. She
motions and one phantom hand grabs my wrist and squeezes until the gun drops
into the snow at my feet.

Run, run, run,
I think. I break from the grip, stagger
two steps, and feel those phantom fingers wrap around my neck again. Squeezing,
squeezing. I try to clutch at them, but my hands rake the skin of my neck as my
lungs begin to burn.

I sink to my knees still grappling with
the nothingness around me. Desperately, I plunge my hands into the snow. My
fingers close upon something. Without looking, I hurl it at Heather. She
staggers back a step as the small stone hits her thigh, but those phantom hands
never let up.

“WHAT DID YOU DO?” she screeches. She
raises her arms, and I feel my feet lifting off the ground. I kick,
desperately, uselessly, trying to connect with something. Anything. But there
is nothing to kick, nothing to hit, or push, or scratch. Only the empty night
and my buckling lungs.

I’m going to die.

My thoughts are slipping away. I claw at
my throat, feel the spill of blood.

I try to keep my arms up, have to keep
my arms up. They sink down to my sides. I command my legs to kick, but they
just hang below me, twitching. The pale glow of the overhead moon is lost
beneath black waves.

Tarren,
I think.
Tarren will come.

The world drowns.

Crying. Heavy, loud sobs filled with
snot and phlegm and heartbreak.

“Shut up!” coughs a raspy voice. “Just
shut the fuck up!”

The ground is moving under me. Am I
crying? I don’t feel tears on my cheeks, and the noise seems to be coming from somewhere
else. My head is…terrible. Throbbing, my thoughts all loose like escaping
balloons. Shiny and stretched.

The ground jumps, and my head kind of
explodes, but it doesn’t, because it’s still here on my shoulders a minute
later when I drag my eyes open again.

Throat. Ring of fire. I can’t swallow.

“I…want…to kill her!” a ragged voice
rages.

“Diamond said no,” the raspy voice snaps.
“Don’t worry. They’ll torture her, squeeze out every drop of information, and
then I’ll kill her myself. Lying bitch.”

Car,
I think.
I’m in the backseat of a car.
I can smell
the leather upholstery under my nose, feel the smooth surface against my cheek.

After some time this is followed by a
new thought,
I have to get out of the car.

I try to raise myself just a little, but
my head isn’t playing that game, and my arms aren’t working. I look down my
body, and it takes a while to compute the white plastic ties cinched across my
ankles and the fact that my arms are nowhere to be seen. I feel the stretch of
my shoulders and the painful rub of the ties across my wrists, which are pulled
behind me.

The car takes a sharp turn, and my
vision clouds over. A blurry object rolls across the floor from beneath the
seat. I blink, and the gray blur resolves into the cracked Transformer.
Memories flit through my mind,
ice, gun, invisible hands
.

I ignore them, focusing instead on lying
still. I try not to move, or think, or swallow, or do anything that will cause
pain. This is hard. The car keeps jolting, and the plastic tie presses
painfully into my left wrist, which is not fully healed. My entire left forearm
throbs with unyielding pain, though I can’t remember why. More aches bloom into
my consciousness – ribs, hip, left shin.
Why? What happened?
I try to
swallow sending snakes of fire into my throat.

I’m scared, but in a far off kind of way
where I think this might just be a dream.

A wash of bright light tears away the
soothing darkness of the car and makes me wince.

“Is that lightning?” the female voice
asks.

“Yup,” the male responds.

A loud boom of thunder follows so
closely that it shakes the car.

“You’ve made Diamond very unhappy,” the
raspy voice says. “Nick was her favorite.” I turn my face. War looks back at me
from the driver’s seat, his ugly face twisted into a sneer.

The car bumps one more time and slows.

“They’re going to skin you alive,” he
says. His neck is swollen and discolored, and I think I might have done that to
him.

“You’re gonna die,” one of the twins
says. She’s in the passenger seat, her hands clamped so hard on the hand rests
that her nails have punctured the leather. “I’m gonna drain that little aura
right out of you, after they’re done.”

I study her red eyes and the smears of
mascara trailing down her cheeks. The situation is starting to come together.
The fight. The choking. I’m in the SUV. They’ve taken me back.

Tarren didn’t come.

Oh god.

The door next to me is wrenched open,
and I feel hands grip my ankles. I’m pulled from the SUV and crash onto the
snow-covered pavement. The world fades out, and when it comes back, I’m gasping
for breath, trying to pull oxygen through my battered esophagus.  

My body cries in so many different spots
– places I don’t remember being hurt. Did Nicolas get in more hits than I
remember, or did War add a few of his own after I was down?

War grabs the back of my shirt and
roughly drags me. More bruises wake up along my legs. Yes, War definitely laid
down some cheap shots while I was out. I watch the heels of my boots make
trenches in the snow up the driveway, and then I look up overhead at the black
sky. A faint veil of light paints the horizon a ruddy purple.

The sun is coming up,
I think for no reason,
but I’ll never
see it.

As if on command, another spear of
lightening splits the sky, washing the world in an eerie white light. The thunder
follows, loud as a cannon as if it were trying to shatter the heavens.

As War drags me up the long driveway I
notice that he’s limping. I remember pointing Lila at him, pulling the trigger.
I must have at least tagged him. The door to the mansion grows closer. I can’t
let them bring me inside; I’ll never come back out.

Fight,
I think to myself.
Fight you fucking
coward!

But I don’t. There’s too much pain. Too
much exhaustion. And Tarren didn’t come.

 
Then cry. At least cry,
the
small voice of Mousey Maya whispers in my mind.
I can’t do that either. I
haven’t been able to cry since that night in the grove when I thought Tarren
was crazy enough with grief to put a bullet through my heart. All I can do now
is wheeze as my battered body is dragged roughly over the door frame and into
the house. I keep my eyes on purple horizon for as long as I can until the door
slams shut. A group of angels stands in the lobby. The girl with that tattoo
heart on her neck looks scared, and the young man with the unruly mop of red
hair gazes at me with unrestrained hostility.

I feel myself retreating, sinking into a
shroud of numbness.
Let it go,
my mind whispers. A soft, gentle release.
Okay,
I think back at myself. It’s almost nice.

 “Diamond said to put her in the guest
house,” a voice speaks up. War grunts in reply.

More dragging. Pain engulfs my left
forearm, crawling up into my shoulder and neck. The world keeps dimming and
brightening. Sometimes I think I hear Tarren’s voice, or see Gabe out of the
corner of my eye holding Sir Hopsalot in his arms. Once, just for a moment, I’m
in the labyrinth again, and Grand is dragging me with his mind. Then I’m back,
only now we’re outside, my heels again cutting twin ruts through the snow. A
door opens behind me. I am dragged over a new threshold and then dropped to the
floor.

 “Nicolas and Rachel are in the trunk,”
War says in his paper dry voice. “Raven took off. We didn’t have time to find
her.”

“Were you followed?” Diamond’s voice is
monotone. “We have to assume she was in league with the Vigils who took you.”

“I’ll find out,” a new voice speaks up,
soft and chillingly familiar. I turn my neck despite the pain and look into
Grand’s ice blue eyes. I blink, and Grand is gone, replaced by a younger,
thinner version of himself with tousled blond hair.

“I’ll find out everything,” says the
angel named Gem.