Angel Burn (20 page)

“OK,” I said after a pause. “What about the texts?”

The toned muscles of his arms flexed as he lay back on his pillows, propping them up under him. “Well, after the Invasion, the CIA took things over and we each had to work alone, without any contact with the others. Angel spotters sent us the details, and we just went after them.”

“You mean you’ve been by yourself since the Invasion? But — you said that was almost two years ago.”

“Yeah,” he said shortly.

I felt my heart chill. I couldn’t even imagine it. Maybe I wasn’t the most sociable person in the world, but being alone for that long in awful motel rooms like this, with only my own stupid thoughts for company? I’d go insane. “So you got a text with my address on it,” I said finally, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

He nodded, staring up at the TV like he wasn’t really seeing it. “I was in Colorado. It took me about a day and a half to get to Pawtucket, and then I went and checked you out.”

“Broke into my house and followed me, you mean.”

Alex gave me a sideways glance. “Well, the orders I got were just to shoot you. Following you for a while seemed like a better idea.”

“I’m not complaining,” I said. I studied the firm lines of his face. “You’re in danger, too, aren’t you?” I realized suddenly. “I mean, the angels want to kill me, but you can’t be very popular with them, either. You rescued me from the church — and you know that they’ve infiltrated Project Angel.”

He shrugged, folding his hands under his head. “Yeah, I’m probably not their favorite person,” he said mildly.

How could he sound so laid back about it? For a moment I didn’t know what to say. “You really did rescue me, you know,” I said at last. “I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for you. Thank you.”

Alex looked quickly at me, his eyes surprised. I smiled, and after a beat he smiled back. “That’s OK,” he said.

The rest of the day passed. An old movie came on, something called
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,
then a couple of game shows and sitcoms. We watched sometimes and talked sometimes — mostly just about what was on TV, but it felt nice. Relaxed. Around nine or so that night, Alex got up and stretched, yawning.

“I think I’m TV-ed out for now,” I said, yawning, too. “Much more of this, and my eyes are going to fall out.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” Reaching for the remote, Alex turned the TV off. “Hey, do you know how to play quarters?”

I shook my head. “What’s that?”

“We just need a glass.” He got a plastic cup from the bathroom and then sat down at the round table, moving his bag to the floor. I swung my legs off the bed and took the chair next to him.

“OK, it’s usually a drinking game, but it doesn’t have to be,” he said, digging in his jeans pocket. He took out a quarter. “All you do is throw it flat against the table, like this —” He tossed the quarter sharply against the wood, his forearm flexing. It jumped up in the air, kissing at the plastic lip of the cup and then spinning back onto the table. “Almost,” he said. “You’re supposed to get it in the glass.”

“OK, let me try.” I reached for the quarter. It was tougher than it looked; on my first attempt, the quarter hardly even bounced at all. After a few tries, I got the hang of it and sent the coin flying up into the air and into the cup, almost knocking it over.

“Good one,” said Alex with a grin.

We started keeping score, using a GoodRest pen and a sheet of stationery. Alex wrote both of our names at the top; his handwriting was quick and spiky. After an hour or so, he was ahead seventy-two to fifty-seven, but then I started to have a run of luck and leaped ahead of him.

“Are you sure you’re not cheating?” he asked, marking down my latest goal.

“How could I cheat?” I snapped the quarter against the table again, and it went straight in. “Yes!” I cried, lifting my fist.

He cocked a dark eyebrow at me. “Maybe you’re psychically making me think that you’re winning when you’re really not.”

I burst out laughing. “Yes, I have psychic mind control, you’re right  . . .  Look, dude, I don’t need to cheat; this game is easy.” I tossed the quarter again, and missed this time. I slid it across the table to him. “See? Not cheating.”

“Hmm,” he said, picking up the quarter.

I propped my chin on my hands, watching him. “Do you think that the psychic stuff is really weird?”

“Stop trying to distract me,” he said. “Just because you’re in the lead.” His blue-gray eyes were narrowed as he aimed, bouncing his forearm slightly as he prepared to throw the quarter.

“Sorry.” I sat back in my seat with a smile as he threw; the quarter went in.

“No, I don’t think it’s weird,” he said, adding it to his score. He glanced up at me. “We trained in all kinds of strange things at the camp. Not that, exactly, but things most people would think was just as strange — auras, chakra points, all kinds of stuff.”

I pulled a knee up to my chest. “So even though being psychic is an angel thing, you don’t think it’s weird?”

He shrugged. “Well, the angels would never use it to help anyone,” he said, getting ready to aim again. “So I don’t think you have much in common with them there.”

Warmth flowered within me. “That’s  . . .  a nice thing to say. Thank you.”

Without answering, Alex snapped his arm and threw. He missed and rolled his eyes, pushing the quarter back at me. “That’s what I get for talking to you.”

He won in the end, anyway, a hundred to ninety-four. “Best two out of three?” he suggested, jiggling the quarter in his hand.

“You have
got
to be kidding,” I said. “I’ll be seeing quarters in my sleep.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I’m kidding.” He tossed the quarter into the cup. “I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.”

I got up from the chair and dropped onto Alex’s bed. There were a couple of pieces of pizza left. “Do you want one of these?” I asked, opening up the box.

“Thanks.” He reached across from the table, and I handed him one. I wasn’t even hungry, really; there’s just something about cold pizza.

For the rest of the night, we watched a movie that was on. Halfway through it, Alex moved to the bed, stretching out on his stomach a few feet away from me. It was an action film, and he kept rolling his eyes, muttering things like, “Man, you would
never
do that  . . .  Is this guy trying to get killed, or what?”

I was sitting cross-legged, with my elbows on my knees. “Would you be quiet, please? I’m trying to watch this.”

Shaking his dark head, Alex fell silent as the hero got ready to confront the bad guys, sliding his gun straight into the waistband of his jeans. “Hey, he’s not using a holster,” I said, glancing at Alex’s on the dresser.

He laughed out loud. “Yeah, I guess he must want to shoot something off. It’d be so great if these things were true to life — the next scene would show him at the hospital, like, clutching himself in agony.”

I laughed, too, imagining it. “OK, it’s a pretty crappy movie. But we’ve still got to see how it ends.”

When it was finally over, Alex yawned, reaching for the remote. “Good, the world’s been saved and the guy’s still in one piece somehow. Maybe we should go to bed; it’s after midnight.”

I started yawning, too. “Stop that — you’re setting me off.” I stood up; my legs felt stiff and creaky.

“Sorry, I guess it’s contagious.” He snapped the TV off and looked down again, fiddling with the remote. “You know, it sounds stupid, but this has been a good day,” he said. His cheeks reddened. “I’m usually in these places on my own. It’s sort of nice to have someone to hang out with.”

My heart tightened. It sounded as if his life had been so incredibly lonely these last two years. “It’s been nice for me, too,” I said shyly.

And the weird thing was, it was true. Even though I’d been sitting in a motel room in Tennessee, today had felt — well, not normal, obviously, but a welcome reprieve from everything that had been going on. Like I’d been able to just put my thoughts on hold for a day. And I knew a lot of it had simply been being with Alex. I’d never really been alone with a boy like this before; I’d never dreamed that it could feel so natural.

“I’m, um  . . .  I’m really glad that we’re talking now,” I said.

Alex didn’t look up for a moment. When he did, he smiled at me, and I saw that same faintly troubled look in his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

That night the dream came back.

“You got my back, bro?”

“Got your back.”

He’d just turned sixteen and was on a hunt with Jake and a couple of the other AKs in Los Angeles, City of Angels. The jokes always abounded when they were in this place, and, in fact, angels did seem to like it there — on this latest trip, they’d spent over a week getting fixes on angels and hunting them down, killing ten so far. It was a lot, even for Los Angeles  . . .  because, although no one had realized it yet, the Invasion had occurred. Everything in Alex’s life was about to change, like a spinning coin.

At the time, though, it had just seemed like an unusually busy hunt. The tenth angel they’d brought down had been right outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre; the angel had been about to feed on a tourist taking a photo of Marilyn Monroe’s famous prints in the cement. Even with a silencer, Alex would have balked at pulling his weapon on the crowded street, but Juan, who’d taken over as lead when Cully had his accident, had a genius for somehow not being spotted in plain view. In a matter of seconds, the angel was fragments of light, gently drifting away on the air. The tourist, unsuspecting, snapped his shot and then moved on to Charlton Heston.

“Now,
that
was just pure class,” said Jake as the four of them moved away through the crowd. He slapped Juan on the shoulder, winking at Alex and Rita. “So that’s ten — time to celebrate, right?”

Juan gave him a sideways look. He was short, but solid muscle, with brown eyes and thick black hair. “What’s this? Celebrate how? You mean miniature golf or something, right?”

Alex laughed out loud. “Miniature golf? Come on, Juan.
Se realista.
”

“You’re both underage,” said Juan, shaking his head. Unlike Cully, he actually seemed to care about this.

Alex and Jake rolled their eyes at each other. Alex hadn’t been seriously challenged in a bar in almost a year, and Jake was hardly ever questioned. It wasn’t only their fake IDs; the two brothers just looked older than they were. They were both hard with muscle from working out all the time back at the camp, but apart from that, Alex knew that years spent on the hunt had given them a look that simply didn’t belong to teenagers.

“Underage, right,” he said, shouldering his way through the crowded sidewalk. “But not too underage to give us guns.”

“Yeah, seriously,” said Jake. “You mean we get to put our lives on the line and we don’t even get a beer for it?
Eso no está bien,
man
.
I mean it.”

“Oh, why not, Juan?” said Rita. She was in her thirties, tall and lanky with a no-nonsense ponytail. “We’re heading back tomorrow, anyway. And you know what it’ll be like then — no fun for a hundred miles.”

Finally Juan blew out a breath and shrugged. “What can I do with you all twisting my arm? But if you two are arrested, I am just leaving you in the jail to rot.
Los zopilotes podrían limpiar tus huesos. ¿Entiendes?
”

“Sí, sí,”
said Alex with a grin.

“Now, that’s more
like
it,” said Jake. The two brothers gave each other a high five, clenching hands briefly. Though Alex wasn’t as into bars as Jake was, the thought of a night out on the town was still a welcome one. Things had felt pretty grim since their father’s death five months before; this would be the first time since then that either of them had really relaxed.

As it turned out, the night was a good one, though the next morning Alex felt like death as Rita nudged him awake. “Hey. Move it,” she said, shoving him with her foot. They had only gotten one motel room to save money; he and Jake were both sprawled out on the floor in sleeping bags.

“What?” Alex peered blearily up at her. She was dressed, her hair damp. A few feet away, Jake was snoring, still wearing the clothes he’d had on the night before.

“Juan’s just been out doing a final scan. He thinks there’s some more activity up in the hills, where the canyons are — we’re going to go check it out before we leave.” Rita shook her head with a slight smile as she glanced at Jake and then back to Alex. “You two look terrible, you know that?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Alex yawned.

After a shower and some coffee, he felt better. He and Jake sat in the backseat of the truck as Juan drove them up through the winding hills above Los Angeles. Jake stretched his legs out. “Hey, did you see that girl last night? The blonde in the pink T-shirt?”

Alex’s head was leaned back against the seat, his eyes half closed. “Hard to miss her, the way she was stuck to your mouth all night.”

“Yeah, she totally wanted me. I told her I was a marine on leave. I wanted to go outside with her or something, but she wouldn’t leave her friends.”

“Wow, sounds like she could hardly control herself,” said Alex, holding back another yawn. Through the window, Los Angeles was spread out below them in a sea of houses and buildings, fading off into the distance.

Jake laughed. One of his bent legs fell sideways, his knee tapping against Alex’s own. “Yeah, you’re just jealous — didn’t notice you getting any.”

After half an hour or so, Juan pulled over to the side of the road. They were up in the canyon-studded hills above the city now, in a quiet, wooded area. They climbed out of the truck; Alex checked his pistol briefly before tucking it into the holster under his waistband. Around him, the others were doing the same.

“OK, I think there are at least two up here, maybe more,” said Juan, glancing around them. “Jake, you and Alex make a team; so will Rita and I. Check in with me every thirty minutes till we’re done.”

“Got it,” said Jake, pulling out his cell phone to check the time. As Juan and Rita headed off down a wooded path, he looked at Alex. “You scanning, bro?”

“I’m on it,” said Alex, closing his eyes. Lifting his consciousness up through his chakra points, he explored the area around them, feeling the various energies nearby. There weren’t many. A lone walker in the woods, a dog, Juan and Rita. He felt the chill of angel energy heading toward the walker but disregarded it — Juan and Rita would take care of that one. Scanning farther out, he picked up another.