Rising (5 page)

“No,” Tarren says without the slightest
pause. “Just bring some extra clips, and check the tire pressure.”

“Oh, and I would love so very much to
speak to my dear brother now,” Gabe says in his best Tarren impersonation. “I
want to tell him how much I love and miss him, because real men embrace their
emotions.”

“See you soon then,” I tell Tarren.

“Okay.” He hangs up.

“Bet he didn’t say ‘goodbye’,” Gabe
says.

I put the phone in my pocket, step up to
Gabe, and snatch the blunt out of his mouth.

“What the fuck?” he cries. “That’s for
medicinal purposes!”

“Don’t be mean about Tarren!” I yell at
him.

“Yeah?” Gabe gives me such a bitter,
ugly look. “Why not? He doesn’t even act human.” Angry yellows and pained reds
swirl in his aura. I lower my eyes, but I can still hear the rapid kicking of
his heart.

“You have no idea how much he cares,” I
whisper. “What he was like when you got hurt.” I close my eyes as the stream of
memories gush to the front of my mind.

Tarren faces me in the grove, a mile out
from the house. The graves of Canton, Diana, and Tammy Fox surround us. Tarren
holds a gun in his shaking hand. His aura is a black shell of despair. I wait
for him to shoot me or himself, or maybe us both.

“Why couldn’t I protect him?” Tarren whispers
on that swollen, bloody night.

His words were thorns. Are thorns. That
was when I’d vowed to save him, to pick up the pieces of this family and
somehow glue them back together.

But how can I fix something so broken?

Gabe studies my face. The anger
collapses out of his aura. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he says softly.

But you did,
I think to myself. Silence. Terrible,
engulfing silence between us. I walk up the stairs to prepare for the mission.

Up in my room, I watch myself in the
mirror as I pack and wonder again at the girl I’ve become over the last six
months. Ryan used to call me Pixie Girl. I’m still slight of stature. I’ve got
the same pointy chin and wide blue-gray eyes that give my face a slightly fae
complexion, but the mirror shows the promise power in my limbs. My long blonde
locks now hang to my chin in auburn waves, a necessary change when my missing
person story was all over the news. I turn and gaze fully at my reflection. The
eyes; the eyes are different now, throbbing with an intensity, a hunger I still
haven’t learned how to hide.

Monster eyes,
I think.

Mirror fun time over. I fold the last
long-sleeve shirt I own and tuck it into my abused duffle bag. The need to look
up tickles the back of my neck, almost as if the poster on the ceiling were
radiating heat. I really, really don’t want to look up, but I do. The poster is
the only decoration I’ve put in the room that once belonged to Dianna Fox.

Ryan.

The poster depicts our co-created dream,
Avalon, that Ryan drew with such a sure hand. The penciled city spreads above
me, its tranquil streets, its happy citizens, its churning energy grid built
totally on renewable resources. It was a perfect place, where Ryan and I would
benignly establish a peaceful and productive community driven by humanistic
values.

Could I have possibly ever been that
naïve? It’s laughable, maybe even a little sickening, but I haven’t taken the
poster down. I can’t. It’s proof that I was human once, that the dreamlike blur
in my memories really happened. I need to remember Avalon. I need to remember
Ryan, and the guilt I bear for his death.

I zip up my bag, heft it on my shoulder,
and flick off the lights as I leave the room. The cargo space in the jeep isn’t
as big as the Murano SUV Tarren used to drive, but I’m not complaining. When Tarren
returned from wherever he fled after Gabe’s coma, he took the SUV out one day
and came back with the black 08 Jeep Cherokee. I’m glad he did. Too many
memories in that Murano, too much of Tarren’s blood in the passenger seat, too
many haunting echoes of Gabe’s fluttering heartbeats

“Turn off,” I mutter to my brain, like
that ever works.

In the closed garage, I study the
contents of the cargo hold. Are we missing anything? This is the part Tarren
always does, reviewing our supplies and making sure the vehicle is prepped. I’ve
seen him do it over a dozen times, but I still feel uncertain as I check the
tire pressure for the second time and add enough ammo clips to take down a
small army. Tarp. We definitely need more tarp. I’m proud of myself for
thinking of this, as I cut off some extra sheets from the mammoth supply we
keep on a shelf in the garage.

I still feel like I’m forgetting
something, though what could my angel-enhanced memory ever forget? The cargo
space holds knives, ropes, the two sniper rifles, an impressive variety of
costumes and uniforms, fake IDs, binoculars, everything but the med kit, which
Tarren took. I close the hatch and expect to feel the flutters of nervousness in
my stomach that used to overtake me before a mission.

But it’s not nervousness I feel now,
it’s relief. I kinda hate myself for it, especially because Gabe’s been
standing behind me shivering and watching my preparations for the last five
minutes. I hold in my sigh as I turn around and face him.

A battered duffle bag sits at his feet.
He clutches Sir Hopsalot’s carrying case in one hand and the keys to the jeep
in the other.

The sigh I’m holding back comes
whooshing out of my lungs, loud and obvious. Gabe grins, not a true carefree
Gabe grin. This is a new, mean smile he’s perfected in my absence over the last
two weeks.

“I could just hotwire the jeep,” I tell
him.

“Yeah, and Tarren would be really happy
about that.” His caramel-colored eyes find mine. “I want to go this time. I can
handle it, I swear.”

“No.”

The pleading expression in his eyes instantly
turns to anger. Yellow flames kick up at the edges of his weak aura.

“Why not?”

Because you have to sleep twelve hours a
day,
I think.
You
get winded walking up a flight of stairs. When your migraines get bad you can
barely string two sentences together. You’d be nothing but a huge liability.

I don’t put any of these thoughts into
words. What I do instead is hit the garage door opener. As the door rumbles
open, I walk past Gabe and lift the roll of duct tape from the workbench.

“What, you gonna duct tape me to a chair
or something?” Gabe holds his ground as I walk toward him.

I snag the lucky hat off his head.

“Dammit Maya.” He grabs for it, way too
slow.

Gabe’s lucky hat is a pitiful thing. It’s
been washed so many times, it now boasts a turgid gray hue. The emblem on the
front long ago gave up hope of being anything recognizable. Clutching the hat, I
run for the huge, naked maple tree in the front yard.

“Oh come on!” Gabe calls after me.

I ignore him, swing up onto the first
branch, and climb the icy branches with ease. In moments, I’m halfway up the
tree, about forty feet off the ground. I thread Gabe’s hat through a thin
offshoot, pull off a length of the tape, and mummy that fucker to the branch. Then
I leap out of the tree, back-tucking in a graceful arc, and land crouched on
the snowy ground. All I need to complete the effect is a trench coat to settle
dramatically around me.

“Cute,” Gabe says and runs a hand
through his bristly hair. He’d hated the obvious bald spot where Dr. Lee put
staples into his skull, so he’d sheared off his brown locks the day after I
brought him back to the house. For weeks he’d look like someone on the losing
end of bone cancer, and even now, almost three months later, he’s working with
little more than peach fuzz. Where his skull cracked, the hair grows back
silver.

 “You think I won’t go just cause I
don’t have my hat?” Gabe says.

I stand up and nod toward the hat. “If
you can get it, I’ll let you come on the mission. Not a day sooner.”

“Really?” Gabe arches an eyebrow.

“No cheating.”

Gabe looks at the tree, measuring the
distance. His features set in concentration.

“Fine,” he says.

I realize with a sinking heart that he
actually thinks he has a chance. This is going to be a cruel lesson, and I hate
that it’s necessary.

Gabe sets down Sir Hopsalot’s cage in
the garage, tucks the keys to the jeep in his back pocket, and takes off the
long brown duster I bought him last year. The sight of his wasted frame puts a
vice around my heart.

It squeezes.

And squeezes some more. My brother looks
so vulnerable, so breakable.

The maple tree offers no low branches.
Gabe backs up, energy churning. His hands curl into fists, and the cold air
drifts white out of his mouth. His face is so serious you’d think his life was
on the line or something.

Maybe it is.

My muscles tense.

Gabe sprints for the tree, his boots
plowing through the crusty snow. He leaps. I position myself, ready to catch
him if he misses. He grasps the lowest branch and grunts in pain as his aura
lights up in bright, bloody reds – his ribs. He clutches the lowest branch in a
bear hug and wraps his legs around it. He tries to pull himself up and over.

Only he can’t.

He struggles, his face pinched in total
concentration, his aura throwing off waves of red and fluttering with
exhaustion. That vice around my heart squeezes so hard there must be nothing
but bloody pulp left. Gabe is out of momentum, out of everything, but he just
keeps hugging that branch, trying to get up, and screaming wretched curses.

I keep silent, hiding all my emotions
behind the stony exterior I’ve learned from Tarren. Gabe can’t know how close I
am to breaking, how I’d give just about anything to wrap him up in blankets and
let him come with me.

Finally, Gabe’s hands slip, and he
drops. I steady him so he doesn’t fall.

“Get away,” he growls and shoves at me
with a weak hand. His face is flushed with effort, and he heaves in heavy breaths.
I want to fall to my knees, clutch at his legs, and blubber apologies until my
voice runs out.

I hold out my hand. “Give me the keys.”

Gabe pulls them from his pocket and
heaves them into the woods. They don’t go very far, and I follow them with my
eyes so I know exactly where they land.

“Classy,” I tell him.

“Have fun. Don’t get dead,” he says,
scooping up his duster and his bags. He trudges back to the house.

“Gabe, wait.”

He turns around, still breathing heavily.
Those honeyed eyes used to be the strongest harbor no matter how terrible the
storms of my life. Now they gaze at me, hard and unwelcoming.

“It’s because we care, because we love you,”
I tell him.

“No, it’s not love,” Gabe says. “I know
what it really is. I see it in your face.”

“What,” I ask softly. “What do you see?”

“Pity.” Gabe turns and walks into the
house, slamming the door behind him.

I retrieve the keys.

After a quick stop at Target, I drive
through Colorado and into the heart of the flat, snow-covered Midwest. Nothing
to see, nothing to do, except pull over for gas every couple of hours and try
not to let my memories sneak up on me. I drive around the edge of the storm,
close enough to encounter harsh sleet and heavy piles of snow on either side of
the highway. Fading sunlight illuminates a battered landscape. The cars around
me all bear the stains of ice and snow, while the ground rolls by in white and
gray-tinted hues. The sun goes to bed, but I keep driving.

My destination, Peoria, Illinois, is waking
up when I arrive at the end of nineteen straight hours on the road. The
approaching dawn shows me a sleepy, gray town filled with a familiar
configuration of Targets, WalMarts, and Arbys’. Looking more carefully, I find
something pleasant about the wide openness and modest houses of the suburbs. The
outline of tall buildings in the distant paints the horizon. I haven’t often
encountered a mix of small town and city like this in the Midwest.

Tracking down a motel with rooms
available turns out to be a quest of the epic variety. The storm will be upon
us tonight, and Peoria girds itself. Apparently all afternoon flights have been
canceled at the airport, and the authorities are urging people to stay off the
roads unless absolutely necessary.

When I’m offered the last room available
at a rundown local inn, comically named Bluebell Estates, my victory feels akin
to slaying a hydra. I don’t care that my prize is a single king bed in the
smoking section on the second floor. I happily slap down my fake ID, a prepaid
Visa card, and scribble my alias on the line.

The scarecrow woman behind the counter
looks like she’d step on any bluebells she came across. She squints at my ID
and says, “I ain’t never heard of anyone named Buffy for real.”

“I don’t slay vampires,” I say with a
big smile as she passes the key cards.

***

The motel room is clean enough,
dominated by the king bed and the cloying odor of cigarette smoke. A small
round table sits in the corner, helpfully holding a used plastic ashtray.

A
white and green striped border sags along the walls. My hands immediately itch
to pull it down. I expect a tacky framed print of bluebells hanging crookedly
on the wall, but I’m disappointed, if you can call that disappointment. An
ancient heating system hacks to life, and I know this is going to annoy the
hell out of me during our entire stay here. I text the address to Tarren and
then immediately stick the Do Not Disturb tag on the door.

I sit on the corner of the bed and then
let gravity take over. As I flop down, my sensitive ears hone in on the sound
of mattress springs chirping in the room below.

“Mom said no jumping,” a bored girl’s
voice speaks up.

“Don’t…be…a….tattle-tale,” comes a
high-pitched reply as the jumping continues.

“Whatever. Just don’t fall and break
your neck. I’d be grounded for life.”

“Okay!”

Sprawled on the bed, I let down my
defenses just a little and allow the surrounding stimuli to wash over me. All
around I feel auras calling to the monster part of me that stalks just below
the surface of my control. Slowly, I peel the left glove from my hand. I hold
my hand above my face and watch with a sad fascination as the skin scrolls back
from my palm in an X pattern. A purplish, vein-covered bulb lifts out from the
center cavity, throbbing with heat and casting a pale glow.

“Freak,” I murmur to myself.

When my brothers are with me, I hide the
feeding as best I can, because it makes us all uncomfortable to acknowledge
what I am. But here, alone, I don’t hunch in the corner while Tarren’s in the
shower or while Gabe sleeps. The song of my hunger hums through my bones as I stand
up from the bed. It unravels my thoughts as I kneel down and dip my hand into
the carrying case of rats. I snatch my first victim. The rest is all instinct.
The feeding bulb in my palm latches onto the animal’s bright aura, and for a
few short moments I feel its life force charging through my veins, quieting the
cacophony around me. Blessed silence.

Then the noise returns in a discordant
rush, bringing back all the need that jack hammers through my body.

More, More, More,
the monster part of me demands. I have a
second rat in my hand, then a third. Even after, my body cries for more. I know
what it wants.

Human energy. The ultimate well of
power.

In the midst of my shivering recovery, a
knock on the door sends me to my feet, muscles clenching, mind poised and ready
for the kill. A human aura pulses between the insubstantial wall that separates
us. I take one step forward.

Ready.
Another step.

The realization of what I’m doing
descends.

No,
I think.
No, no, no.

I grapple with the monster.
So easy
to give in.
I push her back. My steps slow. She fights.

Sharp teeth, insidious whispers.
I stop, bones creaking from all the
strain of my momentum.

No, no, no.
I force her back into the darkness where
she growls and fumes. I’m left shivering, trying to pull the glove back over my
glowing, resisting hand, even as the knock sounds again, louder. The energy on
the other side of the door beats against my consciousness, louder than any
knock. So close. So vulnerable.

What if he had knocked thirty seconds
earlier when I was feeding?

I can’t think about that.

I quickly sweep the dead rat carcasses
under the bed and swing the door open. In tromps a middle-aged, overweight man
with the same beady eyes as the scarecrow desk clerk. He drags in the cot I
requested, gives me a particularly lecherous look, and then repeats the grimy
elevator eyes routine when he returns with sheets and blankets. That bare
breasted mermaid tattoo on his neck is such a class act.

I ignore the blotchy stains of purple
lust that arise in his aura and hustle him out with a two dollar tip.
Sorry,
creepy just isn’t my type.
After a big sigh, I pack away the cold rat
corpses and then set up water and food for the survivors. It’s the weakest
apology ever.
Apologies for killing your brother and sister, but look,
here’s a salt lick!

I text Gabe a Chuck Norris joke to let
him know I made it. It’s our own stupid little code.
Automatic doors open
instantly for Chuck Norris. So do regular ones.

No response. I try to convince myself
that Gabe will come around. He just needs more time. Yeah, and while I’m
thinking la la happy thoughts, I might as well imagine Tarren will arrive full
of apologies and explanations. He’ll open up about his innermost feelings, and
we’ll hug it out as we promise never to keep secrets again.

Tarren.
Where the hell did he go?
My
mind churns again with a random assortment of perilous, violent, and bloody
situations he could have heedlessly thrown himself into without any backup. A
lot of times I feel sorry for Tarren, but sometimes I just plain hate him and
all his stubbornness. This is one of those hating times. He can’t push us away.
We’re family, his only refuge from himself.

A sudden suspicion grips my mind like a
flash storm ready to unleash a fury of lightning and icy rain.

Tammy.

I force the thought away, set up the
cot, and place my duffle bag on top of it.

A door opens and closes in the room
below.

“We’re back,” a man bellows.

“Yipee,” the teen girl says in a laconic
voice.

“On the radio they’re saying that
everyone should stay off the road for the next three days,” a woman’s voice
joins the conversation.

“THREE DAYS?” the girl cries like this
is the absolute end of the world.

“Raven, it’ll be fine,” the man assures
her. “We bought Monopoly.”

“I hate Monopoly,” Raven immediately
retorts. “And Abe’s too young to play.”

“Am not!” chirps the voice of the ardent
bed jumper. “I can play! I can play!”

“Can you just drop me off at the mall and
pick me up in three days?” the girl says.

Someone sighs. I think it’s the mother.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” I
murmur to Raven. I’d give all the donateable organs in my body to see my
adoptive parents, Karen and Henry again – to let them know that I am alive and
mostly safe. I’d probably withhold the whole genetic modification thing and my
budding career as a vigilante. Honestly, parents don’t need to know everything.

I feel the pull of Tarren’s aura as he
approaches the motel from the back. I hover awkwardly near the door as my ears
pick up the sound of his steps on the stairs. I open the door just before he
gets to it. He steps over the threshold, and as I push the door closed, I
assess his aura, searching for any reds that would indicate pain and injuries.

Nothing. His aura is on complete
lockdown, all flat muddy blues. I do a quick scan of his body. Both legs
attached. All fingers accounted for. Melting snowflakes speckled in his dark
hair. The only new injury I find is a small cut underneath his left eye. It
doesn’t look deep.

When he passes by me, I catch a bare
whiff of peppermint, though the scent is so faint he must have made some effort
to wash it off.

Tarren takes in the room with a glance.
“Should have found something on the first floor,” he says and drops his bag
next to the cot.

“I called the cot,” I say and point to
the insurmountable proof of my bag sitting on top of the blankets.

A scowl brews on his lips. “No, you take
the bed.”

“I was here first. I called dibs on the
cot.”

Tarren turns to me, meaning to argue,
but he realizes that I’m just doing this to piss him off. The hard, purposeful
expression on his face buckles. His aura gives just a little, and I see the
faint glow of yellows throbbing beneath his control. Tarren is so hard to read,
but I think I know the meaning of this shade. He’s anxious and something
else…sad, I think.

Tarren is sad. And exhausted.

If I were being kind, I would say that
he looks like death warmed over. I’m not kind. He looks like shit, like he
hasn’t slept a single wink since we parted ways, and we’d already been going 30
plus hours then. His face is pale, a broken blood vessel paints a red ribbon
through one eye, and his energy flags.

This is what’s so frustrating about
Tarren, this essential Tarreness that causes him to push himself right to the
edge and then to keep on pushing. He sees me staring, and the scowl digs
deeper. He picks up his bag and places it next to the bed.

“Are you okay?” I ask, all my concern
wrapped up in three inadequate words.

“I’m fine,” Tarren lies. “Did Gabe put
together a report?”

“He did, but you’re not seeing it until
you get some sleep.” I cross my arms and try to give off a vibe that says,
even
your meanest scowls bounce off me like bullets ping off Superman’s lusciously
muscled chest.

“We don’t have time,” Tarren says, his
voice going all growly.

“The storm hits tonight.”
Growly
voice doesn’t work either,
I think to him.
I am completely immune to all
your weapons of mega-grouchiness.

“Which is why we need to plan.”

“Which is why we both need to be fresh,”
I say. I have weapons too now, and this is the most powerful one against
Tarren. “You won’t be any good out there if you can’t think straight,
especially if we run into trouble.” I leave the rest unsaid, but it goes a
little something like this,
What if an adorable little girl with pig tails
and a big lollipop is set upon by evil, snarling angels? How can you heroically
save her and then angrily shrug off all praise if you’re tired and weak?

Before Tarren can object again, I add,
“Take two hours. I’ll get all the information ready, and we’ll jump right into
planning.”

Tarren glances at the bed. His aura
flickers. The nightmares.

“Only two hours,” he says.

“Two hours,” I confirm.

Tarren sits on the bed, and takes off
his jacket and wet boots. He’s shivering, and I realize that he must have
ditched whatever ride he stole at least a couple of blocks away from the motel
before covering the rest of the distance on foot. I watch out of the corner of
my eye as he carefully folds his jacket and lines his boots up next to the bed.
He sets the alarm on his watch, lays it on the nightstand, and slides his Glock
under his pillow.

It usually takes Tarren at least an hour
to fall asleep, but today he stretches his long body on top of the covers and
is lights out within moments, his aura shifting immediately into softer blues
that twitch and jump.

As soon as his soft snores fill the
room, I come around the bed and turn the alarm off on his watch.

He’s getting worse,
I think, and I don’t know what to do
about it. Him or Gabe or fucking Peoria.