Rising (31 page)
Authors: J Bennett
A few feet away, Gabe sits on the
rumpled comforter behind two paper plates, sandwiches, and sweating bottles of
water.
“Here.” Tarren’s voice is soft. He directs
me to sit in the middle of the half circle. The mirrors reflect skewed pieces
of my body. My chin pulls long, a shoulder too wide, my nervous gloved hands
rubbing at my knees. I look up at Tarren and wonder why he even bothers. What
is he even trying to do? Help me? Figure out more information for his notebook?
I just wish he’d give up and leave me alone, but I don’t say this.
“This is our place,” Tarren says. A rare
wind picks up, blowing a gale of dust across the hilltop. Gabe plants his hands
on the paper plates to keep them from dancing away, though the wind snatches a
napkin.
Tarren continues, “If we lose contact
with each other, if we can’t find each other, this is where we’ll come.”
“Maybe you should just not dump your
phone, how ‘bout that?” Gabe asks, but his smile fades when he sees that Tarren
is serious.
“This is where we’ll come,” I say and raise
my eyebrows at Gabe. He gets the hint.
“This is where we’ll come,” he repeats.
I look at the picnic blanket, the
cooler, and then up at Tarren. Yes, I see it now. Something has softened within
him. I don’t know exactly what Gem did for him. It wasn’t some kind of magical
salve that quieted all his personal demons, but it helped. I catch pale shades
of lilac in Tarren’s aura, almost lost in all the red of his pain. The
nightmares don’t haunt him as often.
We made it,
I think.
We’re wounded, we’re weak,
we’re scared, but we’ll rise, and we’ll keep fighting.
These thoughts are kind of freaking me
out, so I shake them away.
“Whatever this is, it’s not working,” I
wave to the glinting mirrors in front of me.
“They’re heavily modified and scaled
compact linear Fresnel reflectors,” Tarren says, “and they’re not working because
I haven’t done this yet.” Carefully, he bends and shifts the position of the
three mirrors, tilting each up just a little.
What happens next is magic. The sun
spills into the mirrors, and somehow they channel it into a powerful beam,
that…that….
Energy.
Pouring into me.
A sweet, thick cascade of it. Filling
that craven, gnawing hunger that is always inside of me. I crack my eyes open,
and see that I am enveloped in sunlight. The mirrors set me aglow, and my body
drinks up the powerful currents.
I close my eyes, feel tears dripping
down my chin, and I laugh. Loud and free. For the first time since my change, I
hear my voice the way it actually sounds without the song of hunger drowning it
out.
>>>
The Adventure Continues! <<<
Ever
wonder what Gabe was
really
doing while Tarren and Maya were hunting
angels in Peoria? You don’t even have to try and guess. Gabe is just bursting
to tell you. Pick up a copy of
RECOVERING
. This hilarious and full-on Gabe
novella will fill in all the missing pieces and give you some great laughs
along the way.
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Works by J Bennett
Girl With Broken Wings Series
Falling
(Book One)
Coping
(Novella, 1.5)
Landing
(Book Two)
Rising
(Book Three)
Recovering
(Novella, 3.5)
<<
Leaping
(Book Four)
The Vampire’s Housekeeper Chronicles
<<
Interview With A Vampire
(Short Story, # 1)
The
Vampire Hunter Comes To Call
(Short Story, # 2)
Duel
With The Werefrog
(Short Story, #3)
When
Vampires And Ninjas Collide
(Short Story, #4)
Death
in the Family
(Short Story, #5)
Apprenticeship
With A Vampire
(Novella, #6)
About
J Bennett
J
Bennett lives and writes in San Diego. Her writing partner is a bunny named
Avalon who contributes to each manuscript by trying to eat it. His adorableness
is his primary strength as a writer.
J
Bennett is a professional copywriter and an author who loves asking that
oh-so-dangerous question – “What if?” She currently writes a paranormal
adventure series,
Girl With Broken Wings,
and a tongue-in-cheek vampire
humor short story series,
The Vampire’s Housekeeper Chronicles.
Contact
J Bennett at
[email protected]
.
<<
A Gabe Fox Novella
Girl with Broken Wings, 3.5
The Bug’s headlights land on a whole
bunch of blaring red taillights as
I hit the dregs of the storm about an
hour outside of Peoria. Huge snow drifts hug each side of the road as if this
little ribbon of life had to be chiseled out of the ice. A half hour closer,
and my wheels crackle over road salt. Snow flurries hit my windshield like
fists. I have to put the wipers on just to keep things visible.
Traffic crawls. I resist the urge to
get out of the car, throw my shoulder into the nearest bumper, and push those
mothers a little faster. Wrecks line the side of the road, and the Bug’s wheels
don’t take a liking to this slick pavement. We slip and slide, and it doesn’t
help anything that I’m jacked on adrenaline and exhausted at the same time.
My headlights glint off a snow topped
sign. I think it’s supposed to say
Welcome to Peoria,
but only the last
line is visible –
Peoria
– like a statement. You are in Peoria now you
stupid bastard. Deal with it.
I inch past the sign to try and get
my first look of the town. The buildings and vast sweeps of flat land are so
covered in snow that I can’t tell a thing about it. I’m sure it’s a nice enough
town six inches deep.
Just for kicks, I check the shared
email account. No messages from my brother. I try his phone again and listen to
the pleasant voice of the operator tell me that the number I have dialed is no
longer in service and I should just go enjoy a nice, healthy glass of paint
thinner. Might have made up that last part.
I don’t like this. One isn’t just the
loneliest number you’ll ever do. It’s also the most vulnerable number. One gets
stabbed in the back. One gets ambushed. One gets introduced to the wrong side
of unfriendly fists.
“Not alone, though right?” I murmur
to Sir Hopsalot who sits patiently in his carrying case. “There’s an extra
carrot in it for you if we survive this thing.”
After swinging into Starbucks for a
bathroom break and the biggest cup of plain hot coffee they make, I head on
over to our designated meeting spot an hour early. My joints howl, and my eyelids
feel like paperweights. As soon as I nudge the Bug into a parking spot, I chug
the coffee and jab another B12 syringe into my arm. Dr. Lee told me to wait 24
hours between injections, but if I’m not alert right now, the game is up.
Alright, time to stop bitchin’ and
start assessing the scene and stuff. I try to be all serious about it like
Tarren would, furrowing my brow as I look around. I’m at some kind of Rec
center. In the poorly lit parking lot, a few American trucks and SUVs sit in
the spaces. To my right, a wide, snow-covered field might hide baseball
diamonds or soccer fields. According to the instructions texted by the angels,
I’m supposed to cross the fields and wait at a small playground on the other
end. I squint into the night, trying to see the playground, but the large field
lights are off, and darkness swallows the landscape just a few feet in. Wow,
creepy much? I’m pretty sure I’d rather eat an entire spoonful of my own toe
fungus than set one foot into that death arena.
I huddle in the Bug, slurp the dregs
of my coffee, and decide on a plan. It’s a good one: figure out who the angel
is, shoot him a couple of times in non-lethal places as soon as he turns his
back to walk into the field, and use every nerve pinch I know until he tells me
where my sister is.
There. Done. Gabe’s recipe for
instant family rescue.
Franklin was kind enough to throw in
a good-customer silencer in his weapons delivery, and I screw it on now to the barrel
of my Beretta. They don’t actually silence a gunshot – none of that dainty
spitting you hear on television – but do dampen the loud crack of gunfire.
That’ll be useful if I end up in a shootout in the parking lot.
I watch an SUV pull up. My fingers
tighten on my gun, and I roll down the window just a little using the ancient
hand crank. Two bundled up kids tumble from the back of the SUV and start
slipping and sliding toward the entrance. A weary mother follows, holding a
thick parka closed around her body and two small hockey sticks under her arm.
My hand relaxes, and I crank the window back up to keep out the cold. As soon
as anyone walks toward the snow logged fields, I’ll know my angel.
As I wait, I think back to my last
target practice…and then I stop thinking about that. Instead, I play every game
Tammy and I ever made up to help keep each other awake on long stakeouts,
including such classics as
Would you do it for $25? Which pinch hurt more?
How many animal noises can we make before Mom/Tarren tells us to shut up?
Half
an hour later, a gray truck rumbles into the parking lot. I tuck myself further
down into the front seat, keeping just my eyes above the window. The truck
slides into a space in the back corner of the lot, close as possible to the
fields.
Bingo, Yahtzee, and Connect Four.
I tighten the grip on my gun and
slip out the door, away from their view.
Please don’t let any civvies come
into the parking lot right now,
I pray. One set of eyes from an innocent
bystander, and I’m going to have a huge problem. It’s worth the risk though –
Maya’s worth the risk.
After a whole frickin minute, both
doors to the truck open, and two figures drop out.
Two. Damn. Change of plans. I’ll
have to head shot the first and then proceed with my original plan on the
second, assuming he doesn’t have time to unleash some weird power like jet
streams of volcanic lava at me.
The two angels are wrapped in heavy
jackets, and I can see the puffs of their breaths as they come together and
murmur. I wait for them to start making their way across the snow covered field
just to be sure. Once they start moving in that direction, I’ll trail at a
distance and hit them as soon as they’re out of sight of the parking lot.
The two angels pull on plastic animal
masks.
In that instant, everything goes to
shit. Total shit.
Not angels at all.
>>> Find
RECOVERING
at Amazon <<<