Angeli (20 page)

“He’s out for now. I checked his vitals. He’s fighting the sedative and might not be unconscious much longer. We need to hurry.” Nikolas zipped the rugged pack with the bomb in it. His lesson in its use had been fast, furious, and hard to forget. He’d had her inject herself with a compound to help her remember as well as reduce panic attacks and other hindrances an untrained person might experience in a combat situation. It should also enhance her chances of firing the blasters on her wrists, which she really needed to master before they reached their destination.

So much for Gregori’s claim she needed longer before she acclimated. She’d used Nikolas’s tiny cylinder without hesitation. What did it matter? She was dead anyway. And she had to admit, she did feel less inclined to weep.

Nikolas, dressed in black, set the pack on the bed. That’s when she realized he wasn’t wearing the omnipresent angeli breastplate. The sheeny material of his clothes clung to his body almost like a leotard.

“Where’s your regular armor?” she asked.

“Somebody borrowed it.” With a grimace, he stalked to the door. “Put the backpack on and let’s go.”

She hefted it off the bed. Surprisingly light, considering it held the fate of the world inside it. Donning the pack, she trotted after him, her flashlight playing off the snow-white wings furled against his back. Her suit’s long sleeves bunched at her wrists, over the bands. The legs slopped around her feet, and the crotch drooped like a teenage boy’s jeans.

When they exited the building, it wasn’t yet dawn. If this went quickly, she wouldn’t live to see that sun rise.

Grief zinged through her at the reminder. Damn! She had to quit dwelling on her doom so she could do what needed to be done. Wrenching sobs were a hindrance. But as quickly as the crippling sadness had risen, a lucid coolness washed it out again. The wonder drug?

Nikolas, a pinched expression on his shadowy face, tossed her a contraption from a pile of supplies in the Old Faithful courtyard. Maybe he needed some wonder drug, too, so he would quit scowling at her as if she were made of shit.

“Put that on,” he said gruffly.

She held it up, a dubious-looking snarl of metallic straps. “What is it?”

“It’s a harness. I’m going to carry you beneath me.”

Adelita inspected it with narrow eyes. It practically screamed cobbled together. “Why can’t you hold me when we fly? Gregori does.”

Nikolas’s halo brightened and dimmed before he focused his attention on her. “I’m not Gregori.”

“Are you not strong enough? Gregori held me for hours and didn’t break a sweat.”

“I need my arms free in case we’re attacked,” he claimed, but he glanced away when he said it.

“You don’t want to touch me,” she guessed. He’d tossed the harness, mesh armor, and wristband at her, he’d made her inject herself with the serum, and he’d put the backpack on the bed instead of handing it to her. Now he wanted to transport her like a basket beneath a hot air balloon. “What happens if you touch me?”

He looked like he wanted to throw rocks at her. “The more you talk, the more time we waste. They could inspect the armory off-schedule, since Ship is so close to departure.”

Not that she wanted to be cradled in his arms, but this guy was not right. He was a soldier, a driven, experienced soldier, and it was incredibly stupid of him to have been seduced by her breasts when he’d caught her and Gregori spying on Ship’s base.

Hollywood villain stupid. Adam Alsing movie stupid.

Despite her poor opinion of Nikolas, perhaps it was too stupid, and her suspicion was correct.

“Are you in heat?” She tight-rolled her sleeves, the mesh supple enough to tuck under itself. “You can’t seem to control yourself around women.”

He growled. He literally growled, like some kind of dog. “As I said yesterday, it’s none of your business. Put on the damn harness.”

Odd man. Unfortunately, there was no time to figure him out. If he tried anything, she’d test a blaster on him. As long as they weren’t in midair.

She shrugged into the harness contraption, slipping her legs and arms where she assumed they were meant to go. It fit like what she assumed a parachute sling would. It wasn’t as roomy as the mesh suit and belted the armor neatly to her body. In fact, it fit well, as if it had been tested before.

She supposed this was a bucket list item she’d never expected to tick off. Parachuting and skydiving. Sort of.

She secured the fasteners. With a practiced click, Nikolas linked the long end to another harness around his waist.

“You ready?” he asked. Before she could respond, he leaped into the air.

The sling whooshed wildly as he rose, torpedo-quick. His giant wings buffeted her with gusts.

“Madre de Dios!” Her stomach rolled like a beach ball in the surf. So much for the wonder drug. The ground shrank beneath them at an alarming rate. A lash of the sling jerked her neck faster than was healthy. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Not yet,” he answered, peering down at her with a sinister grin.

Her stomach lurched in a way that had nothing to do with height. Uh-oh. She was going to hurl. “Shut up.”

Her ponytail slapped her face. She was too busy clinging to the yoke to slip the mesh hood over her head. After a few more seconds, her stomach settled, despite the fact that Nikolas seemed to be slingshotting her around on purpose.

Too bad her body couldn’t settle. Her head and legs snapped like a dog tussling a rope toy. Wind abraded her exposed skin and brought tears to her squinting eyes. Breathing became difficult; the air seemed to be moving too fast for her to inhale it. The draft leached the warmth from her extremities.

She gripped the straps that linked her to Nikolas like the lifeline they were.

“Cut it out,
culo
. You’re going to break my neck,” she yelled.

He laughed. She could hear it loud and clear through the earbud. Above the rush of air, above his laughter, she heard an electronic beep. The mesh armor pulsed white like the angelis’ halos.

The harsh airflow ceased instantly. A shield.

Adelita blinked enough to dry the tears, afraid to release the harness and wipe her eyes. Warmth returned to her face and fingers. Once her vision cleared, she stared around her and down, trying to get her bearings.

Gregori had never flown this fast, through a night this dark. The moonlit smoke from geysers in the Yellowstone caldera blurred as they hurtled through the air.

Soon there were too many clouds to make out much. Occasional glimpses of mountains and snowcapped peaks. No civilization, no people, no twinkles, no lights. Most of the ground, or what she could see through the clouds, was black, while the stars shone coldly and dispassionately.

Yellowstone to San Francisco, which she’d discussed with Gregori when planning their fake stratagem, was almost a thousand miles. Thirty minutes to figure out her blasters. Thirty minutes until she had to, somehow, avoid who-knew-how-many daemons and a horde of soul-sucking entities to locate the nexus. Arm the bomb. Toss it into the hole. And hypothetically escape the blast radius before the bomb ticked down to zero.

That part wasn’t going to happen without wings. She’d be lucky to reach the nexus, much less escape it.

The nexus was in the center of a ring of the egg-shaped begetter drones. It would be the blackest thing she’d ever seen, Nikolas said, and she could not touch it. But she had to get near enough to toss the bomb in. Smack-dab into it, like a photon torpedo into an exhaust hatch.

What would be in her way were shades. Few daemons, but hundreds or thousands of shades. The density of the horde depended on how many Nikolas could draw off, using methods he refused to discuss, and how many had been sent out to absorb the sentients that fueled the horde—and most especially the begetters. The begetters’ job was to birth more shades, though Nikolas said their output had been slow due to the fuel shortage.

Slow in comparison to other planets, which Nikolas also refused to discuss.

“I don’t hear any blaster fire down there,” Nikolas commented through her earbud.

“I’m on it.” Thirty minutes to learn. Twenty-five now. Hopefully the wonder drug had done its work.

She concentrated on the bands, both the one Gregori had given her and the one Nikolas had given her. She’d have to let go of the harness to do this. Taking a deep breath, she did.

Nothing bad happened except a bit more swing as Nikolas flapped along.

She loosened her sleeves so she could touch the weapons. The bracelets were cool and not especially malleable, but they weren’t uncomfortable. Taking into account the sway of the harness, she stuck her arms toward the unseen ground.

Fire!
she thought.

Nothing happened.

Shoot!

Nikolas had run her through the steps to activate the guns. The drugs were supposed to alter her enough to use the bands, but not enough to wake a leviathan should—when—her body got eaten.

He’d promised her it wouldn’t hurt. The getting eaten part, not the blaster bands. Those, he said, sometimes did hurt. She needed to be careful not to overheat them. She didn’t have the angelis’ healing powers.

This time she made fists and thought angry thoughts.
Burn!

The band on the left heated several degrees.

“Dammit. Fire!” she yelled at them, shaking her arms. Her body wobbled as the harness reacted to her movement.

“Verbalizing won’t help,” Nikolas said through the earbud.

“I like to verbalize, okay? I’m a verbal person.” She closed her eyes and envisioned a beam of white lightning crackling from her hand. When she opened her eyes, the beam didn’t exist. “Is this shield interfering?”

“It only deflects from the outside and doesn’t bother with things that aren’t identified as threats.”

“What about these baggy sleeves?” If the material lapped over her hand far enough to block the laser, would she fry off her arm?

“You have short arms,” he said, which wasn’t an answer, but was, just the same.

She pushed the sleeves back and concentrated, pointing her fingers like pistols. “Bang.”

Nothing happened.

She’d gotten the best results with fists. She clenched a hand, holding that arm in the other hand like a rifle. She poured her hate and fear and anger and rage down her limbs.

The bands heated up like curling irons and scorched her. And still, no lethal white lasers shot out of either hand. Adelita cursed and flipped her wrists to lessen the pain. Again she wobbled in the harness, increasing her heart rate.

“I smell something burning,” Nikolas snarked in her earbud.

If she could reach him, she’d touch him, all right. Her foot, his cojones. “Your drugs didn’t work. I can’t shoot.”

“The serum does work, and you don’t have time to play around,” he said. “We’re nearly there.”

“What?” She quit jiggling her arms and stared up at him. He soared slightly ahead of her, since the connecting strap dangled her behind him like a kite string. “I had thirty minutes.”

“I made improvements to my wing pack.” The sling twisted as Nikolas decreased his speed. “I’m faster than His Holiness.”

He could have warned her of the time change. “You’re also more of an asshole.”

“I know. He’s perfect.”

“Jealous bastard,” she muttered, knowing he could hear it.

Nikolas grunted. “The important thing is, he can’t catch us.”

When Gregori woke, he’d fly straight to the nexus, Adelita knew, and the bomb needed to have gone off before he arrived. This needed to be over before he could intervene.

With some force, she smacked her mesh-covered arms. “Work, you stupid lasers.”

Her puny blows were absorbed by the material. Interesting to feel the armor in action, but it did nothing to distract her from the discomfort of the burns on her wrists.

She pictured the black devils crawling out of Salt Lake while she was napping. She pictured herself and Gregori on the roof of the Winnebago when they’d first met. The entities had surrounded them. Hissing and stinking and climbing the sides. She pictured the daemon fighting Gregori in the small grocery store, its evil, fanged face screeching and vicious.

She pictured Gregori losing.

Her whole arm turned hot, and a violent flow of energy burst from her hand. The release was like nothing she’d ever felt—pain and anger pouring out of her. The bones in her arm ached as though the marrow had turned to lava.

Adelita shrieked and recoiled. The intense beam danced in a light show, sizzling down and sideways and up with a distinctive odor that reminded her of cleaning supplies. Above her, Nikolas dodged, jerking her harness along with him. The laser sliced through the sky in wild patterns.

“The fuck?” he yelled, so loudly she flinched. “You said you could shoot.”

The bone-deep ache intensified, and Adelita gritted her teeth. She forced her arm down. The beam pulsed toward the earth. She could control this. She had to.

Far below, something exploded in a bloom of orange.

“Hell.” She shook her arm. “Turn off.”

It ended as abruptly as it had started.

“You clipped my fucking wing,” Nikolas spat at her.

“We’re still aloft.” Her heart raced like a jet airplane. The ache in her arm subsided, and she was pleased to note there didn’t seem to be new burns. “Hey, I made the gun work.”

“You also alerted some sentries, you idiot.”

“Idiot? You’re the one who told me to—” That was all she had time to say. She was wrenched sideways in the harness so fast her teeth clacked, and suddenly Nikolas was firing his own lasers.

“What’s going on?” Adelita held on for dear life as she stared into the darkness where Nikolas had aimed. After a moment, her weak, human eyes fell on the pair of approaching daemons, emerging from a skein of moonlit clouds.

Chapter Fifteen

Gregori woke like an alarm buzzer—a sudden jolt of unwelcome urgency. He was on his feet and halfway to the door before his brain caught up to his body.

“Adelita!” he bellowed as he scanned. No answer, and no sentient life signs.

With a surge of rage, he slapped the wing pack onto his shoulders. The pain of implantation was nothing—nothing—compared to the pain of her duplicity. As his back screamed, he sealed himself into the armor. Finally he cranked up his force field and crashed through the window, hurling himself into the courtyard below.