Angeli (6 page)

Gregori clipped the tool around his arm. “Had to adjust the wings. Up you go.” He hefted her in his arms like a baby. “Let’s try this again.”

“Faster.” Adelita could feel the temperature increase as the shades crept closer. Hissing and hissing, like air escaping from ten thousand tires at once. Or was the temperature dropping? She was shaking so hard she couldn’t tell and could hardly see through the blur of tears.

With several huge flaps of his wings, Gregori sprang into the air as the mass of shades lunged for his heels.

This time, he didn’t crash onto a motor home. He didn’t falter and didn’t complain. They rose until the cars looked like toys and the landscape blurred into gray-green swells and the shades seemed like nothing so much as a patch of starless night sky, transplanted onto the earth.

Chapter Five

Another close call one shade-touch away from a leviathan, and it wasn’t his fault. Instead, Gregori could lay the blame solely on the bundle of joy currently jabbering in his arms.

Not that she knew anything about the leviathan. All she knew were the lies she’d been told.

She also seemed to know how to talk without taking a breath between sentences.

He had no idea why it wasn’t annoying. It seemed as if it ought to be. Instead he held her close and grunted answers and tried not to do everything she wanted, just to see her smile.

“Stop there. Set down. Set down!” Adelita took a fist to his shoulder when he didn’t oblige her. “It’s the Grand Canyon. Finally.”

“You can see it from here.” He caught a downdraft and angled their flight path closer to the deep, wide gorge, its multilayered sides touched by the setting sun. Buttes and crests wrinkled through the canyon’s vast width.

“I want to see it from down there. That’s Bright Angel Point. You should see that yourself. It’s named for you.”

“There’s not enough distance between us and the horde.” One of his arms supported her between her back and knapsack, and the other supported her legs. “We need to be out of their sensing range.”

The stress of their narrow escape had sobered Gregori, fast. He couldn’t travel at top speed without the force field. His body could take the battering, but Adelita’s unenhanced one could not.

Still, he needed a buffer between them and the horde before he could attempt repairs. Without the array, he’d have to rely on his senses, his experience, and old-fashioned guesswork to find a safe place. And he needed to decide how he was going to explain it to Adelita when he shucked his wings. She wouldn’t be pleased to discover that the whole angeli thing was a sham.

“Only for a minute?” she asked sweetly. “I won’t even get out my camera.”

He opened his mouth to agree.
No, Gregori. Tell her no.

“Can’t.”

“You’re not being fair. This is my only chance.” She twisted away from him, whether to see the canyon or to sulk he didn’t know.

“I’m being cautious.” He considered ways to hide his less-than-heavenly origins and discarded them. Why go to the trouble? Thinking he was her deity’s representative hadn’t made her cooperative. Soon he’d fly her to a refugee camp and never see her again. She could tell the other Terrans anything she wanted, and they’d never believe her.

Even if they did, he’d hardly get in more trouble with Ship than he was already in. If the Ship-lickers realized how much of a chance he’d taken to save Adelita…

But they wouldn’t. And he’d do it again.

So when he found a place to land, he’d be the one with the confession. In a weird way, he was looking forward to it. Spilling his guts. Finding out what she thought. Being…himself. He started flying faster.

Adelita pressed close to him and sniffled. Was she crying again? She’d cried when the shades had surrounded the large vehicle, and it had made him anxious to get her to safety. Tears were pretty damn rare on a military Ship full of men.

“This wind is brisk.” Her hat brim flipped over her face and muffled her voice. “It’s making my eyes water. I can’t see anything.”

Right, no force field. He had to keep his speed down. Not to mention, some Terrans got airsick.

After he slowed, he asked, “Is that better?”

“Yes, thank you.” She adjusted herself in his arms, her fingers nudging aside his queue to brush his nape.

At her touch, a shiver went through him. “Ah. Do heights bother you?”

She smiled. Her hands were warm, a contrast to the chilly wind. “A little late to ask that, isn’t it?”

Good point.

“Your hair is silky, do you know?” She threaded several fingers into it. “It makes up for your wings.”

He didn’t know, and didn’t know how to respond, so he grunted.

The lower they flew, the more he could feel warmer air surge out of the canyon’s depths. Adelita’s hat flapped in the wind as she leaned down. “Where’s the river? This canyon is beyond beautiful.”

Her arms remained firmly around his neck. She continued in the other language, but it didn’t sound like she was angry. Her fingers caressed his hair and nape, petting him like a small animal. When he headed away from the plateau and into the canyon itself, she sighed.

“I suppose this has its advantages,” she said in English.

“What does?”

“You being my private helicopter.”

“For now.”

“Now is all I need.”

It might be all she got. If he couldn’t patch the force field in the wing pack, he’d have to leave her somewhere. He couldn’t take days out of his schedule of killing and spying to fly her to a refugee camp on the East Coast. It was hard enough to keep himself safe from the shades, much less a Terran.

He’d gather her a vehicle and food. Ammo. She wouldn’t be helpless. But it scorched his hull to consider it. Terra’s people were his responsibility. He’d relocated the others to refugee camps in under an hour, and this much time with the same woman was making him feel more protective than usual.

“Oh, look at that.” She clapped a hand to her fluttering hat as she inspected the terrain. They were flying toward a large mountain in the canyon itself, likely a ridge that had fallen victim to erosion millions of years ago. “I wonder which butte that is, Brahma Temple?”

She seemed to expect a response. “I don’t know.”

The pointed mountain boasted layers of colorful rock like the canyon walls. Beiges, reds, grays, and blacks painted the landscape.

“If that’s Brahma, that makes the other one Zoroaster.” Adelita continued to talk about geography while he tried to keep his mind on the mission and not his libido. Being dirtside so long, around all these females and Terra’s sexualized culture, must have finally gotten to him as it had the other handlers.

If this was how they’d felt the past couple of months, no wonder they’d behaved like hedonists.

His keen eyes spotted buildings across the canyon on the southern rim. The last time he’d scanned with his array, he hadn’t pinged on any shades in this area besides the blotch they’d escaped. Should take the creatures a day or two to cross the canyon. If no daemons or Ship-lickers popped up, that gave him thirty-six hours to fix his tech and…

His companion wriggled in his arms. Scratch the
and
. She’d turned him down.

“The Colorado River,” she said. “There it is. Can we?”

“Can we what?”

“Go down there.” The setting sun shone on her hair, burnishing it with red.

“No.”

She turned her attention to him. “Please?”

If he gave a centimeter… “No.”

“The shades won’t catch us if we don’t stay long. You should take a moment to admire one of our Lord’s most beautiful creations. He worked hard on the Grand Canyon.” She waved her hand. “Just look at it.”

“It’s impressive.” The dark swash of river curved through the valley like a living creature. He could understand why this was a favorite Terran destination. On the many worlds he’d traveled, it was still a remarkable sight.

“Are you tempted?” she asked, then laughed. “I suppose it’s not good to tempt angeli.”

She was going to be finding out some version of the truth soon enough. He was no angeli. But he was tempted. “Adelita Louisa Eleanor—”

“You sound like my aunt. Call me Adelita.” She smiled, her teeth white and healthy. “Five minutes, angeli. That’s all I ask. You don’t have to enjoy it.”

He was having enough trouble keeping his enjoyment to himself—holding her, smelling her skin, listening to her talk. It was hard to deny her. In Ship culture, the competition for female attention among humans had grown fierce, and most men rarely denied women much of anything.

Luckily, he’d had some practice denying women since he’d come to Terra.

“I have duties to fulfill,” he told her.

“Like what?”

“Defending the people of this planet.”

“You can defend me while we’re beside the river.”

He wanted to say, with what? He hadn’t solved the issues with his tech yet, not to mention the blaster. He could kill daemons without it, but he hadn’t found anything on this planet that affected shades. Terrans had limited understanding of dimensional antimatter. Even if he completely bucked code and shared everything he knew with the Terrans, he was no scientist. There wasn’t time for their scientists to figure out what he meant and implement proper weaponry from a starting point this primitive.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “It’s not safe to dally close to the horde.”

Her brown eyes studied him. “You didn’t seem to mind the idea of dallying before.”

“We agreed that was a test.” A test to see how brainless he was, letting himself get distracted.

“If you say so.” Her gaze unsettled him. Was she suspicious? She had good reason to be. “Did I pass your test, angeli?”

“Sure.”

They flew to the south rim. It was a tourist area where they should be able to find food and shelter. Some of the buildings seemed to be peering over the brink of the canyon.

Adelita was still watching him. “Are you being tested too?”

“Why would you ask that?” That wasn’t something anyone had wanted to know—and Terrans asked a lot of questions.

“Everyone left, and you stayed. I don’t think you were supposed to stay, were you? You said you were out of favor.”

“That’s true.” Gregori could answer that without lying. “I stayed because your kind is worth saving.”

“Sounds like a test to me.” She pressed her head against his shoulder and tightened her arms around his neck. “It sounds like a test the other angeli failed.”

If only it were that simple. “I doubt that.”

“You did the honorable thing. The godly thing. How can you say they were right to leave us?”

“I’m not saying that.”

“What are you saying?”

When Terrans wanted to talk theology, Gregori had, as had all handlers, stepped carefully. They were trained to interact with native populations, but training only got you so far. It had been difficult to walk the thin line between presumed divinity and blowing their cover.

Terran cultural differences were tricky. Terrans were tricky.

Adelita was proving to be tricky, too.

“We’ll talk after we land,” he promised. She might not like what she heard, but they’d talk. He’d let her decide where he should leave her if he couldn’t fix his force field. Perhaps then, deserting her wouldn’t curdle his insides with guilt.

“All right.” She craned her neck to see the canyon better, and her hat flew off her head. “My hat!” The pale headgear spiraled down, down, past striations of red, crumbling limestone.

“We’ll find you another one,” he told her. Gregori slowed his pace, following the streets of the village and looking for signs of entities. The town appeared to be deserted. He landed in a courtyard near a general store. A breeze kicked around them, blowing into their faces from the canyon. He concentrated with all his senses, and nothing suspicious leaped out at him.

This should do. Should. His senses were insufficient and could be deceived. Damn, he wished he’d protected the array. He’d work on fixing it first.

When he set Adelita on her feet, she stumbled. He caught her before she fell.

She laughed a little breathlessly. “I lost my land legs somewhere in the Grand Canyon.”

“Your legs?” He cocked his head. Her legs looked fine to him. Better than fine, even with the dried blood. She had lovely skin.

Adelita patted his cheek, the gesture bringing her almost flush against him. “It’s just a phrase, angeli. It means I have weak knees. Which also means something else. What I’m really saying is thank you.”

He’d been supporting her in his arms for hours, but the feel of her against him now was different. She was touching him because she wanted to. She lowered her hand to his shoulder and licked her lips.

Heat rose between them like a thick blanket. Gregori was taken aback until he realized the warmth was coming from the pavement, burning through his soles and up his legs.

“It’s hot.” His force field couldn’t be repaired soon enough. Environmental controls and protection, it had it all.

“It’s Arizona in July.” Adelita stroked his neck with two fingers as though she was taking his pulse. “Interesting. I didn’t know angeli had so many human characteristics. Your heart rate is fast as a rabbit, and you’re perspiring.”

“It keeps us humble.”

She patted his cheek a second time. “You’re not humble. And you need a shave.”

He wasn’t used to being touched so casually. The Shipborn valued personal space because they had such limited room to stretch out.

Nevertheless, he liked having her near. A droplet of sweat formed at her temple and trickled down her dusty skin. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair a shining tumble. The way she grabbed his wings, his arms, his face, without asking made him feel like grabbing her back.

Her lips were so rosy, he could almost taste them.

“It’s hot,” he repeated, and felt stupider the minute he said it.

Her lashes half lowered. “I think it’s getting hotter.”

“It’s one hundred degrees Fahrenheit,” he guessed. Without the array, he had to guess a lot of things. “That can’t be healthy for you.”

“I’m Latina, angeli. I can take the heat.”

He put her away from him, ignoring her tiny smile. He could withstand hotter temperatures too, but he wasn’t sure he could withstand Adelita.