They Who Fell (18 page)

He was staring at her, flicking his wings in irritation. She tried to look away, but whoever he was, he just kept watching her. It only clicked together when she saw who was behind him—and she almost didn’t recognize him, either.

It was Peter, but he looked nothing like he had before. His face was as twisted as the worst of the angels, a mask of scratches and scars and freshly burnt flesh. He hunched over, barely able to keep his head aloft, looking sickly and thin. Beside him stood Ecanus, staring at Jana from behind his mask. He’d remade Peter in his image, the scars a testament to his tortures, a whipping boy for his insecurities. And now his eyes were set on her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“T
ake these. Just two at a time, a couple of times a day. It’ll help, but not if he’s after you, and not if he gets close.” The man stood next to Faye, shining a flashlight into her eyes and peering into her pupils. He was old, stooped over with a permanent hunch, with coke bottle glasses and a gruff bedside manner. He was supposed to have medical training of some kind, though he wouldn’t say what it was. He pressed a bottle of pills into her hands, the label torn off and the cap loose from repeated refills.

They’d found him south of Baltimore, on Dax’s recommendation, a friend of a friend on the Internet. He wouldn’t give them a name, and refused to meet them at his home once he found out what the problem was. But after much cajoling and begging, he’d agreed to meet them far from where he lived, in the parking lot of an old strip mall. He hated the angels, just as much as the rest of them, and was happy to help if he could minimize the potential consequences to himself.

“What is it?” said Faye. She held two of the pills in her palm, looking at them warily, misshapen white clumps that had been pressed together by hand. Medicine wasn’t an exact science these days, and neither was chemistry.

“Thorazine,” said the man. “Homemade. Better take a couple of bottles. You won’t find it again, not easily. I hear there’s still a few pharmaceutical factories up and running in China somewhere, but not much trickles over here.”

“Headache pills?” said Thane.

“Schizophrenia pills,” said the man. “What you’ve got, it’s pretty serious. I’m not going to lie. It’s not so much the tongues that do it, but the angels. The guys you talked to were right. They can track you, follow where you’ve been, and find out where you are. But these’ll keep you in control.”

“Can they track us if she’s taking them?” said Holt. “We need to know she’s safe. We need to know if they’re going to be on our tail.”

“Maybe,” said the man. “Maybe not. Ask one of them if you want to be sure. It’s not exactly a common ailment. All I know is, the pills cut down on the episodes. They won’t happen as often, and they won’t be as severe. I know a guy, he’s lived with this for three years. Nobody ever came for him. He still starts talking funny every now and again, but he doesn’t lose control. He can get to the pills, he can take one himself, and it all stops. It’s as good as you’re going to get, at least as far as I know. But you don’t want to go without ‘em. It just gets worse and worse.”

The man said his goodbyes, and disappeared into an old dollar store. He’d parked around back, and didn’t want them to know what he was driving, where he’d come from, or where he was going. They went back to the bikes, and prepared to get back to the road.

“Holt,” said Faye, pulling him aside from the others. “I can’t stay with you. You know I can’t stay with you.”

“You can’t leave us, either,” said Holt. “Sometimes all you have are shitty choices. You leave, they’re going to find you. You’re a tough girl. I know that. But there’s no way you manage on your own. Not with this.”

“And if I come with you, everyone else gets killed, too,” said Faye. “I can’t do that. Not to you, and not to myself. You know all the time I’m out here, all I can think about is the stuff I’ve lost. And most of it I never even had. My fiancé, he was real. But the rest is just dreams. Kids, a house, a family, a golden retriever. I wanted it all, but I never had it. And I never will have it. And I still can’t give it up. But I do have the three of you. You’re friends. You’re really friends, and I don’t have anything else.”

“And friends wouldn’t let you wander off into the wilderness on your own,” said Holt. “I’m just going to be blunt. We all know what we signed up for. It’s a suicide mission and it always has been. I don’t expect to live through it, and I’ll be surprised if anyone who goes all the way with me does. I’m going to try to keep the rest of you alive. And I’m going to try to stay alive long enough to set off this bomb. You might draw them onto us, but I’m fine with that. I count this as a success if we kill more than one of them, whether we live or not, and if you’re some kind of beacon, we’ll just let them come to us. If you want to leave to find your own happiness, or to keep yourself alive, that’s one thing. If you want to leave for our sake, that’s another. I don’t have a problem dying, but I need to be fine with the way I’ve lived.”

“It’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me,” said Faye. “I’m so, so scared. I can’t even control myself. There’s this pressure, and it just builds at the back of my skull. And then it explodes, and all I can hear inside is chanting. It’s more than one voice, and it gets louder and louder. It’s like a song. And then I can’t help but join in, but it all comes out as a mess.” Tears started streaking down her face, and she looked away. She put on her war face and tried to hold them in, but it wasn’t a very convincing front.

“Can you understand any of it?” said Holt.

“Not a word,” said Faye. “I sing it, but I don’t even know what it is. I don’t know if it’s a language, or a noise, or anything. All I know is I get absorbed inside of it, and it’s just me and the song.”

“You don’t have to decide now,” said Holt. “Come with us, at least for a little longer. If there were an easy choice, I’d be making it. But there’s not. You can’t handle this on your own. If the pills don’t work, or you run out, you need someone around. If one of them tracks us down, we can handle it. If it’s more, we’ll set off the bomb and go out in a blaze of glory. Thane will love it, if nothing else.”

He drew a chuckle from her, and a snort, and she wiped away at her face. Then he led her back to the bikes, rejoining the others. Thane stood cleaning a knife, shining it with a rag so it would look as impressive as possible to anyone he had the opportunity to use it on. Dax was buried in a manual, the only thing they’d found in the briefcase other than a scrap of paper with its detonator code written on it in neat, blocky handwriting. They’d been loath to trust it, but the only way to find out if the Senator had kept his word was to try it out.

“Let’s get going,” said Holt, throwing his leg astride his bike. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and we’ve got a date up north.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

H
e started moving towards her, pushing through the crowd and worming his way closer and closer. He shoved aside one of the servers who tried to cross his path, sending her sprawling and spraying the nearby partygoers with flecks of hors d’oeuvre. They were none too happy about it, but had to settle for berating the server as she dove to her knees to wipe at the floor with her shirt sleeves. Ecanus was already gone, honing in on his target with a miserable Peter in tow.

Jana stood there paralyzed, floating on the edges of the crowd. She hadn’t a clue what to do. Ecanus was between her and the exit, and Nefta had disappeared into the center. She knew if she was caught, he’d kill her then and there. She could see it in the way he moved, filled with fury. Suddenly she felt someone grab her from behind, dragging her into the crowd.

“Go,” said Cassie, speaking into her ear and pulling her into a small gap that had opened up as one of the angels pushed his way out. “Find Rhamiel. He’s in there, in the middle, and he’s the only one who can help you. Nefta might, if she’s in the mood, but I wouldn’t trust in that. Throw yourself on his mercy, and hope he hasn’t found a more interesting distraction yet.”

“I’m not a distraction,” said Jana.

“Don’t talk back,” said Cassie. “Just do what you’re told. You’re supposed to know how to do what you’re told. I swear, I don’t know what’s come over you.”

“I’m tired of this,” said Jana. “I’m tired of living this way. Let him kill me, if he’s going to. At least I’ll have done something. I don’t deserve to be at the bottom.”

“Then do something, and go,” said Cassie. “And take this.” She grabbed Jana’s hand, covering her palm with her own, and slipping her a folded piece of paper in the process. “Remember. One more trip down there. Give it to your friend Sam.”

“I can’t stand you any more than the rest of them,” said Jana. “You’re the same as they are. I don’t want to do anything for you, and once I talk to Rhamiel, I won’t have to. One way or the other.”

“Then do it for Sam,” said Cassie. “He’s expecting it, and he’s expecting you.” Then she gave her a shove forward, knocking her against one of the angels, who flipped around wildly and swatted another with his wings, batting him in the head with the silver baubles that were hanging from his wing covers. The two began arguing over who had wronged whom, and whose costume was the most lacking in taste, ignoring Jana entirely as she slipped around them and into another gap in the whirl of conversations, a few steps closer to the center.

She learned to wait for the wings. That was where they left the most space between them, standing and talking, a crush of bodies bumping against one another as they angled for prime position in whatever conversational group they’d joined. They’d move their wings with the conversation, unconsciously gesturing in the same way a human might with their hands. It created little gaps, just for a second, and just big enough for her to squirm through. It helped that she was small. She could fit into the spaces between them sometimes, and they didn’t see her as a threat to their hard-won spots closer to the center. She was just a nuisance, one of the servants whose urgency and look of panic meant she must have mucked up one task or another. They presumed she’d be punished when she arrived at whichever master was unfortunate enough to have her.

She could see Ecanus at the crowd’s edge, trying to claw his way inside. For the moment, he was meeting with resistance. All of them would have been in the center if they could, and they were only standing where they were in hopes that they’d eventually edge closer in. They saw him as a line jumper, pushing past those who were waiting their turn, and they were none too pleased about it. Finally he forced one of them aside, enduring a tirade of insults to his character but gaining the foothold he needed.

Jana pressed forward, as quickly as she could. She could see glimpses of Rhamiel in between the gaps in the crowd, standing on a raised platform, lifted above the rabble as they crowded onto the stairs leading up to it. They’d set aside tents up there for the most important among them, a place for the elite to segregate themselves and mark themselves apart from those unfortunate enough to be excluded. He stood in front of them, wearing his full armor along with a thin, dark blue mask around his eyes, slapping backs and sharing stories. She was almost there, and she tried waving for his attention, hoping he’d see her among the throng. But he was locked in conversation with the others, laughing and smiling and enjoying the send-off. Then the crowd surged around her as one of them greeted another, and the way forward was blocked.

She turned behind her, looking for Ecanus, but he’d disappeared. A shiver went down her back, and she felt the panic rising inside again. He was somewhere in the crowd, bigger than her but smaller than the rest of them, invisible among all the cloaks and masks. She scanned the distance, trying to find him, but there were so many of them, and so many masks. She let out a quick shriek as a white, hooked beak came into view beside her—and then cut herself off as she realized it was another of them, wearing a similar mask but with lively purple robes. She drew haughty, suspicious looks from a few of the nearby partygoers, and slipped a few feet away to avoid the attention.

Then she saw Peter. He was standing away from the crowd, all alone. She could see what Ecanus had done to him, and it was ghastly. If she hadn’t known him, she’d have thought he was wearing a mask, just like the rest of them. His face was covered in red and black spots, wounds from burns and scratches that were just beginning to heal. There was nothing healthy left. He’d been scarred, over and over, wound layered on top of wound, bits of his hair ripped out at the roots. He looked worse now than any of the angels themselves, a sad, ruined boy who’d tried to leap to manhood and had fallen in the process.

He saw Jana, and started pointing, poking his finger in front of him. He was shouting something, but it was impossible to hear over the raucous roar of the angels around her. Then he started jumping, waving his hands in the air in frustration before pointing again. But by then it was too late.

The angels standing next to her parted, roughly shoved aside from where they’d been. A dark shape lunged through them, grasping at Jana, but all she could focus on was the pale white mask. It looked like a phantom, rushing towards her, peering into her soul with its angry beak and hollow eyes. She tripped backwards, missing his grasp by just inches and falling down among the feet of the angels around her. She saw a tongue of fire flickering above her as Ecanus drew his dagger, and heard him spitting “bitch” at her as he ground his foot into her stomach. Then it was a burst of pain as she went woozy, and she closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look while it happened.

She heard yelling, angry yelling, and when a few seconds had passed without feeling the knife slicing into her, she finally gathered the courage to take a peek. Ecanus was being dragged away, disarmed and pulled into the crowd by an irate mob of nearby revelers. Something about his conduct had been a faux pas, though whether it was interrupting the festivities to murder a servant or cutting ahead of his brethren in the race to the center, Jana couldn’t tell.

She didn’t waste time to ponder. Her insides still screamed of pain, but everyone nearby had turned to watch the commotion, and no one was paying attention to her. She started crawling, dodging footsteps and slipping between legs until she’d made it to the edge of the stairs to the platform. She was just yards away from Rhamiel, and she’d never have made it through the dozens of angels clamoring to speak with him on her own. But he saw her, and gave a word to a nearby lieutenant, a somber looking soldier-type who was part of the preparations for his expedition. The crowd parted, and the soldier escorted her up to the heights of the platform itself.

“Jana,” said Rhamiel. “I’ve been looking for you.” He looked her up and down with a smirk. “I see you’ve been raiding the underwear section of Nefta’s wardrobe.” His lips clamped down, holding in a snicker. Jana looked herself over, completely aghast. She’d forgotten entirely about how she was dressed. The fear and the stress had been too much, and now she was red with embarrassment. She reached down out of instinct to cover herself, but Rhamiel just laughed.

“You wear it well,” he said. “Truthfully, it’s not uncommon to be seen in them publicly when one’s in the field. Armor can be stifling, especially in the heat, as any veteran of Lucifer’s Pit can tell you.”

“I have to talk to you,” said Jana, well aware that everyone around them was hanging intently on every word. “I really have to talk to you.”

“And I you,” said Rhamiel. “Let’s withdraw, shall we, and enjoy some privacy.” He turned, and lifted the flap to one of the tents, inviting her to the sanctuary within. She followed, and was treated to an island of luxury. The insides were lined with plush red couches, the floors covered with oriental rugs, and a table in the center was stocked with refreshments and exotic fruits. It resembled the inner sanctum of some Arabian sultan, and she’d never seen anything so fancy. She hugged him, pulling herself close and resting her head on his chest. She wanted to stay that way forever, nestled in his arms in this enclave away from all the rest of them. He gave her a few minutes of peace, holding her tight. Then he pulled her over to a couch and sat her down, spreading his wings outward behind him.

“You have to help me,” said Jana. “Please. I don’t know what to do. Ecanus is trying to kill me. He’s torturing my friend. And Nefta. I don’t know what’s wrong with Nefta, I really don’t. But I’m scared, I’m so scared.”

“Shush,” said Rhamiel. “He can’t do anything to you up here. And I told you, I’ve plans to protect you.” He put his hand on her shoulder, touching her, comforting her. It helped, a little, but she still had the jitters. She couldn’t get the image of Ecanus out of her mind, even here and even alone with him.

“How can you protect me?” said Jana. “You can’t watch me all the time. He’ll come out of nowhere. He just did, and all he needs is a second. And Nefta. And now Uzziel, too, I think. I can’t live like this, I really can’t.”

“Ecanus will be easy,” said Rhamiel. “You simply have to know what motivates someone.”

“He didn’t stop last time,” said Jana. “He just kept coming.”

“I’ve tried the stick, and now I’ll use the carrot,” said Rhamiel. “He’ll abandon his grudge, I can assure you. And Uzziel is harmless, really he is. He’s been a little obsessive since the Fall, but that’s to be expected. He’s merely a general attempting to rally his army.”

“He’s mad,” said Jana. “He thinks I’m watching him. Spying on him.”

“He becomes easily fixated on things these days, I’ll admit,” said Rhamiel. “But he has a good, stout heart. A warrior’s heart. I’ll have a word with him. His interest in you will pass, as soon as he finds something else to worry him. He’s coming with me, on the Hunt, and I think it will do him good. He needs a real threat to keep him happy, and I’ll give him one.”

“But Nefta,” said Jana. “I don’t know what to do about Nefta.”

“I didn’t, either,” said Rhamiel. “Not for some time. That was a stickier problem. But I’ve thought of a way to address it, a simple one, really. The problem with Nefta is that you live with her. I can’t protect you while you’re there, not all the time. But there’s something you can do if you’d like a change of scenery.”

“Please,” said Jana. “Anything. This is all too much. I wish she’d never brought me up here.”

“But she did, and that can’t be changed,” said Rhamiel.

“I want out of there,” said Jana. “I have to get out of there.”

“Then pledge yourself,” said Rhamiel. “To me.”

It hit her in the gut, and she didn’t know what to think. She hadn’t a clue how to take it. She knew Rhamiel couldn’t simply pull her away from Nefta’s service, even as prominent as he was. Nefta would have priority, as the one who first got her claws into Jana, and she’d have to consent for Jana to leave. But a pledge had to come from the servant, and it was one of the few things about service the angels consistently honored. If a servant voluntarily chose to pledge fealty to one of them for the rest of their days, the angels would respect their choice. It was a holdover from their own service up above, and the only real right of a servant they consistently acknowledged.

Jana pulled away from Rhamiel, edging away on the couch. She tried to read his motives from his eyes, but couldn’t. They were ciphers, staring at her intently, almost obsessively. She worried that he wasn’t sincere, but only for a second. He looked too vulnerable for that, like he’d just exposed a weakness and was waiting for a blow. She tried to collect her thoughts. The problem wasn’t him, so much as it was all of them. How was she to know he’d be any different? None of them had ever treated her particularly well before him. Nefta had said the exact same things—that it was all to protect her, and it was all for her own good. And she might be right, in the end. What if she was a plaything? What if he tired of her? What if he turned out to be just as damaged and cruel as all the rest of them? There’d be no turning back, if she said the words, and she wasn’t sure she had the faith to make that leap.

He seemed to read what she was thinking, and his voiced turned deeper, simultaneously both comforting and firm. “I’m not like the others. I wasn’t like them up there, and I’m not like them down here. I know my faults. I love the status and the fawning. I never got any of it up there, and I can’t deny my enjoyment of it here. But I also know what it’s like to be at the bottom. I came from there, just like you, and I’ve no need to put others in their place to feel more secure in my own. That’s part of what draws me to you, I think. I feel an affinity, a bond of the broken. The others take what they have for granted. I want someone who doesn’t.”

“I just don’t know if I can believe you,” said Jana. “I just don’t know if I can trust you. A pledge is forever. And forever is a long time.”

“Indeed it is,” said Rhamiel. “I know a little something about that. And I know something about submitting to an uncaring master, believe you me. The character of your service depends on the character of the one you serve. I’ve no intention of becoming anything like him, regardless of what the others think justified. Have any of them ever told you? About what happened up there?”

“Only a little,” said Jana. “They don’t seem to want to talk about it.”

“I expect they don’t,” said Rhamiel. “It’s a sore subject, and not one they like to discuss outside the flock. But I think you’d be reassured, knowing I’ve been where you are, and knowing I won’t be the same way.”

“Nefta seemed to like her service,” said Jana. “She seems to miss it. That’s all she ever does, is think about the past and make her masks.”

“It wasn’t so much the service itself that was the problem,” said Rhamiel. “The problem had to do with broken promises. The problem had to do with the Maker’s son. We were told in the beginning that his son would return, and that creation would wind down to nothing, along with the Earth itself. That there would be a Day of Judgment for those who were left, and that all our labors would finally come to an end. That was the promise. The problem was, he called the whole thing off.”