Rising (23 page)

I force the skin back down across my
palms, but I can’t control the heat churning from my hands.
Calm, calm,
calm. Don’t drain your new, incompetent mission buddy,
I think to myself as
I make my way back up to my fork.

The motion of assembling the rifle –
that short melody of
clicks
and
ticks
– usually helps focus my
mind. Not today. Today, I listen to Rain bumble up the tree like a cow. Five
minutes later, he finally makes it to me and settles on a branch to my left.

“Wow,” he says, his breath clouding
around his patchy pink cheeks, “I didn’t think I could actually get up here,
but I did. I can’t even feel my hands.”

“Quiet,” I tell him. “This is a
mission.”

“Yep.” He rustles loudly in his backpack
and pulls out binoculars. “Binoculars,” he points out.

I ignore him and settle across the
branch on my belly and stabilize the rifle on the front tripod as best I can. I
shift the barrel by degrees until I’ve got a direct line of sight on the back
of the mansion. My breath is slow, calm as I exert absolute focus on the task
at…at…

“Can you…,” I turn toward Rain.

“What?” A note of annoyance creeps into
his voice.

It’s his aura; his strong, healthy,
tempting aura. Not only would an angel be able to feel it a mile away, it’s
unplugging all the wires in my brain. Those heavy purple shades when we touched.

“Your energy…it’s loud.”

“My energy is loud?” He raises his
eyebrows. “How exactly am I supposed to quiet it down?”

“You, I don’t know.” I try to think about
how Tarren has explained it in the past. He and Gabe trained themselves using
meditation techniques.
They’ve been doing this their whole lives,
I
remind myself.

“You need to calm down.”

“I am calm.” His aura jumps with his
words.

“No, deeper than that. Center yourself,
feel your energy like a physical force around you. Pull it into yourself.”

“Okay.” He closes his eyes and takes in
a deep breath. “How’s that – nope, just thought about peanuts. Hold on.” He
frowns and inhales. After a minute he says, “How about now? Am I centering?”

“No, it’s the same.”

He opens one eye. “Really? I could have
sworn I was relaxing. Like, I felt it happening.”

“Well, it wasn’t.” This is the point
where I give up entirely on the mission. Raven and all the other angels are long
gone, so what’s the point of continuing with this masquerade?

“Guess I’m not good at that either,” Rain
says with that same good-natured resignation that is beginning to drive me
crazy.
Is this what Tarren felt like on my first mission?

It’s not like I expected Rain to be some
valorous knight or ass kicking kung fu master, but I’d kind of hoped he could
match a fourth grader for climbing skills and not be one Snicker’s bar away
from complete incapacitation.

Rain is not an ally. He’s a liability.

Rain has pulled his hands into the
sleeves of his hoodie and now struggles to steady the binoculars. The sun has
disappeared below the horizon, so I can’t even imagine what he’s looking at. As
if reading my mind, he lowers the binoculars.

“It’s kind of dark,” he admits.

Even Tarren, uber-hunter, fell off a
roof once,
I remind
myself,
and took out a whole cadre of reindeer in the process.

Rain looks at me, and I realize that
I’ve been staring, caught up between annoyance, sympathy, and something else that
really, really shouldn’t be causing my heart to pound harder.
Shit,
I’m
still staring.

“So what are you good at?” I ask him
abruptly, maybe a little desperately.

“Me? Oh, nothing,” he answers
immediately.

“Come on, everyone’s good at something.”

Rain thinks. And shivers. And keeps
thinking.

“Oh, I know.” His face lights up, and
his aura glows brighter. “Mary Ann said I was the best bagger she’s ever seen,
and she’s been a manager at Safeway for six years.”

“Bagger?”

“Groceries. I can bag anything, put it
in all neat, keep the bread from getting squashed. There’s an art to it.” He
says this with pride. Real. Actual. Pride.

I can’t help it. I laugh. And laugh. And
laugh. I have to wrap an arm around my branch to keep myself from falling off.

“Is that…like the good kind of
laughing?” Rain asks uncertainly.

“No,” I huff, “it’s really not.”

“Okay,” Rain says, and then he starts
laughing too. His laugh is deep and warm, and it puts beautiful blues into his
aura.

He can’t climb trees, he can’t shoot, he
can’t even remember to bring fucking gloves when it’s below zero, but he’s
still out here. He’s still trying.

Rain Bailey is actually brave in his own
very stupid way.

I was so much like him in the beginning.
Confused. Scared. Driven by vengeance. Reckless. But I had my brothers to keep
me safe and a body fine-tuned with strength, agility, and healing to help
soften my fuckups. All Rain has is his conviction, which will prove a paper shield
against the bullets, knives, and whatever superpowers the angels will throw at
us.

“What’s going on? Your face just got all
serious,” Rain says.

I look at him, at that red cap on his
head and those sleepy, chocolate eyes. I want to ask him about what happened
after that night he saw me standing over the preacher’s body in Marymoor Park,
how he found those angels all the way in Poughkeepsie, New York and ended up in
that hellish barn, how he and Milo connected with The Totem, and who came up
with those stupid masks.

Instead, different words come out of my
mouth. “Hey, what were you saying in that alley after you shot me? It sounded
like you were…”

“Oh, yeah.” He casts his eyes down.
“Sorry about that. About Garret. How he hurt you. I …I’ve never hit anyone. I
mean, really hit anyone. Not even when I was a kid and especially not a girl. A
woman.”

I decide not to inform him that his
punch had all the wallop of a soggy newspaper. “It’s okay,” I say instead. “You
thought I was the enemy.”

“It’s so weird,” he blurts out. “This.
You. Us here working together. Every time I look at you it still feels like I
swallowed a handful of tacks. I have to remind myself…you really didn’t kill
Sunshine?” His aura is shifting again into heavy oranges and pale reds.

“No,” I say.

“But you did almost kill me today.”

“You were kissing me while I was
unconscious.”

“That was CPR,” he says defensively. We
look at each other and then away. “I’m certified,” he mumbles. I glance back,
just in time to see rich purples fuse his aura again. I know that color; it’s
the same for everyone. Pale, lilac shades speak of trust, care, and platonic
love, like the way I feel about my brothers. But dark, wine-colored purples are
something entirely different.
Lust,
I think, a little stunned.

“I uh…well.” His voice is strangely
deep. “I thought about you a lot. I mean, I kind of became obsessed.”

My heart is suddenly hammering loud in
my chest.

“I dreamed about finding you.” He
swallows again. “As you can see, I kind of bumble everything, so I thought I
should memorize something. You know, to say if I ever killed you.”

It takes me a moment to realize that
he’s picking back up on my earlier question. Of course he is. He didn’t dream
about me. He dreamed of killing me.

“Well, let’s hear it,” I say.

“Nah.” He pulls his bundled hands closer
into his body.

“Come on.”

He swallows. I don’t think he’s going to
do it, but then he starts in a soft, sad voice. “My sister's name was Sunshine
Bailey. You took her life on August 1st of last year, and now I'm going to take
yours. This is for Sunshine. This is for all the other countless victims you've
murdered. This is for the families who loved them.”

The night is quiet and solemn around us;
even the wind has backed off. The moon is out, a pale sliver with pointed edges
that casts only the faintest glow above.

“Wow, you were going to say all that to
me?”

“I tried, but you kind of passed out by
the end of it.” He gives me a sheepish smile. I like watching the different
colors play in his aura. It’s such a complex tapestry.

“I did the same thing,” I finally admit.
“There was someone I wanted to kill once. I practiced what I would say to him,
repeated it every single night. It was like…like an anchor, keeping me
focused.”

“And what happened?” Rain’s voice is hushed
like we’re sharing secrets. I guess we are.

“I killed him, but there were other
things going on so I never got to say the words.”

“Do you regret that you didn’t?”

I think about it. “No, there are so many
other things I regret about that night, but not that.”

Rain seems unsure how to respond. I pray
he doesn’t ask me for details, who I killed, why I had to do it, whom I
sacrificed for my vengeance.

Instead, he says, “Could I…” He stops,
uncertain. “I have so many questions. I’ve been writing….I’ve started this… hold
on, let me get the list.”

In the distance, I hear the soft slurp
of a leg pulling up from snow.
Raven?

I turn toward the sound just in time to
see two shadows dash behind separate trees a hundred yards away.

No auras near me except for Rain, which
means....angels. Two of them. It can’t be Raven, then. For a moment my mind is
at a standstill, trying and failing to understand what’s happening.

A conclusion finally trickles through. They
must be some of the angels who escaped from the mansion this morning.

They would never ever be stupid enough
to come back here
, I
think, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. Then it dawns on my idiot
brain.
They guessed that we’d patrol.

They didn’t come back for the house

They came back for us.
       

Time slows, each moment long and sharp.
The night is a cascade of sounds, the quickening gait of my heart, the brush of
Rain’s jacket against the branch, a zipper unclenching its teeth as he opens
his backpack, the soft
slurp
of another foot pulling up from the snow
behind us. I use the faint glow of the moon overhead to search.

There!

To my right a shadow flits from behind one
tree to the next.

Three
. That makes at least three of them closing on us like a
tightening noose.

“Okay, this first one here, this is just
an opener.” Rain’s voice is as loud as a cannon. He holds a wrinkled sheet of
notebook paper in his hands. “How old are you?”

That bright aural glow around his body is
our doom. We can’t hide. We can’t run. That just leaves fighting.
Me against
three angels. Holy shit storm, Batman.

“Twenty,” I respond, slowly unwrapping
my fingers from the sniper rifle.

“Really?” Rain’s eyebrows jump. “You’re
so…so young.”

I hear quick footsteps behind us as the
second angel darts closer. They’re less than 50 yards now, keeping covered.

What if they’re armed? What if one of
them has some sort of crazy death vision power or spits acid? Please, please
not acid.

“Are you human?”

“What?” I look down at Rain again.
Stupid red hat.

“That’s the second question on my list,”
he clarifies. “We were wondering if you were human, or like, an um…” He lowers
his voice, “…an extraterrestrial.”

I pull in a long, steadying breath. My
body hums with adrenaline. I can feel the cold of the branch seeping through my
clothing, the frozen wetness under my nostrils, the sharp cut of the air in my
lungs.

“No, it’s my turn. You ask a question, I
ask a question.” I try to mimic a casual voice. The angels can hear every word,
and I must sound convincingly unaware of their presence. There are a million
and a half questions I actually want to ask Rain, but those are for another
time, assuming we get another time.

Instead, I spit out something dumb,
unimportant. “So, what’s with the penguin mask? Penguins don’t exactly instill
terror in the hearts of your enemies.”

Rain chuckles. His aura is broad and
bright. “Gabe already gave me shit about that.”

The shadow to my right makes another
dash through the trees, 40 yards. My heart is a jackhammer in my chest. I try
to slow it so the angels won’t hear.

“Why then?” My voice sounds strained to
me, but Rain doesn’t seem to notice.

“Cause, well. It’s kind of a long
story.”

Another flicker of movement, 30 yards.
Tightening noose.

Let them come as close as possible,
I think.
They’ll be easier to shoot
that way.

“I have time. Spill,” I say as I ease my
hand to the Glock strapped to my thigh.

“It’s actually really stupid.” His aura
pulses, momentarily stealing my attention. A soft, sad smile lifts his lips. It
complements the brooding oranges in his aura.

I have to protect him

“
I was eight. I remember, cause it was my birthday the week
before, and I had my party at the zoo. Everyone else wanted to see the lions and
giraffes and polar bears, but I kept going back to watch the penguins…”

More movement from behind. Twenty yards
away now.
Soon, soon, soon.
I slide the Glock out of the holster,
wishing I’d brought a second instead of the tranq gun, and chamber the first
round.

“… Our teacher, Mrs. Synder, she was beautiful.
Every boy in the class had a crush on her. She told us that we had to do a one
page report on an animal…”

I push up from my position and bring my
legs solidly beneath me. My muscles twitch, the icy fear now clashing with the
buildup of red hot adrenaline.

“…I was so excited. So stupidly excited
about the report. Mrs. Synder, she had this old plastic bucket that animal
crackers came in, and we each had to pick a slip of paper with an animal on it.
I remember reaching in that bucket, pulling out that slip of paper, and—”

A shadow rushes for our tree. Two glowing
spots of green emanate from her eyes. She’s powering up for something, and I’m
really sure I don’t want to find out what it is. I whip my gun past Rain. His
words falter. My shot cracks through the night. The shadow crumples backward, those
throbbing green eyes dimming and then dark.

“I thought you were going to shoot me,” Rain
says, white clouds puncturing his panting breaths.

I swing my gun around and throw wild
shots between the points where I last saw the other two shadows.

Rain clumsily pulls a gun from a holster
under his jacket, and his head whips around uncertainly. His eyes are too weak to
penetrate the darkness.

“Get down!” I shout, and he flattens
himself against the tree branch.

A figure to the left makes a dash, snow
plowing around his boots. I fire on him, booming thunder, and he tumbles into
the snow shrieking.

I leap out of the tree, landing on all
fours up to my wrists and ankles in crusted snow. I dive behind a tree just in
case the third angel has a gun or shoots laser beams out of her hair follicles or
whatever. The heat of adrenaline has melted away my fear. I crouch behind my
protection, suck in quick breaths, and try to think.

Not happening with the angel I shot
still screaming ten yards off. His raw cry is brutal on my eardrums and concentration.

Which leaves just one.

I turn and peer from behind the tree.
The only movement is Rain, who slowly, carefully scrambles down from the tree
making almost as much noise as the dying angel. And that aura of his, it blazes
with a heavy palette of fearful reds and anxious oranges.

No, No, No, No!
He’s the easiest target in the entire fucking
universe, which means I need to…

I spin away from my cover and run toward
the tree where I think the last angel is hiding. I shoot as I go, pinning him
or her down. The Glock clicks impotently.
Shit!
I pull the tranq gun
from its holster.
Better than nothing.

Then my feet stop. Just stop, like they
suddenly grew roots. My momentum carries me forward, but my planted feet save
me from the fall. I rock forward and then back, arms swinging for balance. A
figure emerges from the trees. The weak moonlight reveals a stocky, teenage
girl with thin lips and a boy’s haircut. Her wide-set eyes are pools of
blackness in the night.

I train my gun on her chest, ready to load
her up with enough tranqs to take down a buffalo, except that my arm starts to
sink. The girl’s face pinches in concentration. She’s doing something, and that
something is making the gun heavy as solid gold. No, I could lift a solid gold
gun. This is heavier – a hundred bricks of solid gold all compacted into my
palm. I tense my muscles, grab my wrist with my other hand, but still the gun
lowers until my fingers ache with the weight of it, and I have no choice but to
drop it.

I expect a great crash, like a grand
piano tumbling from an upper story window, but the gun lands lightly into the
snow’s embrace. The girl is doing something to my mind, changing my perception
of mass. Tarren would have a field day with this information. I remember how he
filled pages in his notebook when I gave him details about what Kyle and Jane
could do. My brain is being pointless. Tarren won’t ever learn about this new
angel ability.

I’m cemented to the ground.

When the girl takes a step forward, I
bring my arms up in front of my body, prepared to fight. My feet want to shift
sideways, but all I can do is bend my knees a little to put more weight behind
my punches. I might be a sitting duck, but I’ll still go out clawing and
screaming if I can. I owe that to Tarren, to the wounds he took to save my
life. How sadly ironic that he only gained me a single day for all his trouble.

The girl steps out of the tree’s shadow,
and the moon paints lines of silver down her cheeks. Tear tracks. Her chest is
heaving hard; I’d thought it was from the stress of using her power, but it
might be sobs she’s trying to keep down.

The panic is my chest is almost as heavy
and unmovable as my feet. I just keep my arms up, hoping she’ll do something
stupid like come into arm’s reach. Her face pinches, and before I can even
wince in the expectation of something painful, I’m stomach down in the snow.

She’s doing her thing, and it feels like
an entire tower of elephants is standing on my back. Obese elephants. Obese
elephants carrying saddlebags filled with concrete slabs. I can’t breathe. My
ribs are going to splinter. My stomach will rupture, and my organs will come
rushing out, hot and slippery. The panic is gone. Manic desperation is my only
companion. My last companion.

A shot rings out. Rain’s aim is as good
as all his other angel hunting skills. The bullet buries itself into the tree
next to the angel, but she flinches, and the weight crushing my body
dissipates. I roll to my side, wet fingers clasping the handle of the dagger in
my belt – the one Gabe always makes fun of me for carrying. As the angel’s
attention turns back to me, I aim and throw.

The weapon whistles through the air and
sheathes itself in her throat. She falls back, gushing black ink onto the snow.

Cold. Wet.
I’m on my knees in the snow listening
to my own wreaked wheezing. I press my hands under my breasts, testing the integrity
of my ribs. I half expect to feel splintered mush beneath my fingertips, but my
ribs are there, each one strong and solid.
It was all in my head.

The world is still sloshing as I get to
my feet and stagger over toward the angel. Her face is ghastly white, and her
hands clutch the hilt of the dagger. Ruby tides pump out of the wound, pulsing
with the weakening beats of her heart. Her thin lips open and close. No words
come out, just bloody bubbles that dribble down her chin.

I’m used to blood by now. Used to death
and the round holes that our well placed bullets make through the heads and
hearts of the angels we kill. But this is new to me, this slow and messy death,
the girl’s terrified eyes pleading with me for something that I can’t give.

I want to run, find a cave dark and
quiet. I want to curl into a ball and compress these memories so small that
I’ll never see them again. Instead, I kneel down and put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s almost over,” I say to her.

I grab the bloody hilt of my blade and
pull it from the girl’s neck. It makes a wet sucking sound as it comes out, and
now nothing stems the blood but the girl’s shaking hands. A heart tattoo
decorates her right wrist.

She gurgles, and the blood slows, each
pump smaller and smaller. Her lids descend halfway over her eyes, and she
proves me true.

After digging my guns out of the snow, I
turn toward the weak keening that still rings in my ears. Curled beneath the
tree where Rain and I kept our watch, the angel who’d made that suicidal run cradles
his stomach and moans.

Blood slips through his fingers.
Blood
and blood and blood.
So much of it inside of us.

When I get a better look, I recognize the
boy with the curly red hair who poked his head out of the kitchen the first
time I came to the mansion. His face had been so hostile on my second, less
voluntary visit. Now that hostility is gone, replaced by fear and pain.

His legs swivel in the snow as he groans
and weeps. Rain stands next to him staring down. The gun at his side shakes
with the tremors of his hand. He’s lost his bright red hat, and his hair lies
flat on his head.

“Are there others out here?” he asks the
angel in a husky voice.

“I’m dying,” the angel moans. “I feel
it. I’m dying.” Tears slide down his face. His pants ride up his ankles
revealing mismatched socks.

 “How many,” Rain says again. He’s
trying to sound brave, but his teeth clack together, and his aura is a fountain
of wild yellows, whites, and reds.

Is Raven with you?
I don’t voice this question out loud,
but I gaze around, trying to spot any movement. Nothing. Just the night and the
silent dead.

“Three. Just three,” the angel gasps.

“What happened to the others who escaped
the house?” Rain’s voice quakes.

Even as a pained moan escapes his lips,
the angel reaches one hand toward Rain. A glowing hand.

“It wasn’t wrong, what we did,” he
whispers. “Nicolas told us it was God’s plan…God gave us the hunger for a
reason.” The skin of his palm peels back, and the feeding bulb lifts up, ready
to latch onto Rain’s aura.

Rain steps back. “Where are the other
angels from the house?”

The angel’s eyes are glazed and hungry.
He keeps reaching out a bloody hand even though Rain is out of his reach.

“Gone,” he says. “Diamond is dead. Shot
out of the sky. War left, and most of the rest went with him. He wants…to be
the…new leader.”