Coping (4 page)

“That’s Hendricks,” Tarren says.
“The shorter one.”

The two men stroll toward the barn.
Hendricks has something clutched in his right fist. It can’t be…leashes? My
skin breaks out in goose bumps.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Gabe whispers.
His aura starts to jump, but he takes a deep breath and it soothes back down.

The bigger of the two angles pulls
open the door of the barn. Hendricks saunters into the doorway and barks out a
laugh. Even from this distance, his loud, arrogant voice carries to my
sensitive ears.

“How are we all doing today? No,
don’t get up. It’s fine.”

“Tarren…” my voice trembles.

“Quiet,” he hisses.

“Who wants to join us for brunch?”
Hendricks says. “No volunteers? Again?” He laughs. “How ‘bout you hero boy? You
wanna save your new friends? Step on up.”

There are scuffling noises. A weak
scream. The angels emerge from the barn, dragging two young men behind them on
leashes. The humans have their hands bound in front of them and collars around
their necks. The angels tug on the leashes. The tall, lanky boy in my field of
vision manages to keep his feet, but the other one stumbles and falls.
Hendricks laughs and kicks the fallen human. He then starts walking again,
dragging the whimpering boy across the ground. The other human, the one who
managed to keep his footing, bends down and pulls his companion up.

He supports the boy’s weight, and
his face is set with grim determination. He is filthy, brown hair matted to his
head, deep cuts and gouges marring his pale face. He limps with abuse unseen
beneath a stained t-shirt and jeans.  But it isn’t just their bodies. Their
auras are battered, leeched of color, hugging close to their bodies. Weak as
the wavering flames of a dying candle.

“What is this?” I can hardly get
the words out of my mouth.

Tarren’s face is grim, set in
steel, but I can tell that he’s angry. Furious.

“A farm,” he says. “It’s a human
farm.”

Part Two

“We’re killing them now right?”
Gabe hisses as soon as the angels have dragged their human captives into the
house. His aura flicks dangerously out of his grip, all sharp edges and angry
reds.

Tarren presses his lips together so
tight that the blood runs out of them. “No,” he says evenly.

“The hell we won’t…” Gabe starts.

“We don’t know how many angels are
in that house, or what abilities they have,” Tarren cuts him off. “We’d be
going in totally blind with only two guns each.”

“I’ve got thirteen rounds per mag.
That’s fucking plenty as far as I’m concerned.” Gabe jumps out of the tree.
“Tarren, they’ve got humans in there.”

“If it’s like the other farms we’ve
found, they’ll snack on the humans. Keep them alive as long as possible.”

“You don’t know how this one works,
plus, those angels could slip up, drain the humans dry. You know as well as I
that as soon as they start feeding it’s nearly impossible for them to stop.”
Gabe’s aura is getting more and more out of control, dancing off him like a
well-fueled fire.

“We’re not prepared,” Tarren says.

“Moot point. Innocent people.
Danger.  That means I go in. With or without you.” Gabe steps in front of his
brother, feet planted wide, eyes zeroed in on Tarren’s face. It’s the same way
he stood the night of my rescue from Grand’s clutches. The night Tarren pointed
a gun in my face and would have been more than happy to pull the trigger if
Gabe hadn’t put himself in front of the barrel.

Tarren stares at his brother, his
pale eyes have gone gray.

“We’re wasting time,” Gabe says. He
turns toward the house, pulls out one of his pieces and switches off the
safety.

Tarren puts a restraining hand on
Gabe’s shoulder. “The humans should draw all the angels down to the same room.
They’ll be distracted. We find where they are, block off the room. Put them
down as fast and as quickly as possible and get the humans out.”

Gabe looks back at his brother and
nods. They share one of those looks, all steel and lava and
I’d die for you but never say it out loud
brotherhood.

Good thing I’m too deranged with
fear to take much of my usual amount of offense at being left out. Instead, my
mind is running a familiar loop of cresting panic. We’re storming the house,
and it’s going to be bloody. I’ll finally kill my first angel.

“I’ll need a gun,” I say, and shit,
my voice wavers like a palm tree in a hurricane.

“She’s not going in,” Gabe says
immediately.

Tarren looks at me. Can he tell how
pathetically I’m holding myself together? Yep, definitely. Those flint eyes
miss nothing.

“You’ll stay out here and guard the
barn,” he says. “We don’t know how many angels are in the house. If any of them
escape, we can’t let them get to the barn, to those innocent people.
Understand?”

We both know he’s planting me
solidly on the bench, and even though it’s the right move, I feel my eyes
stinging with chagrin. I swallow. Nod.

“And how am I going to stop any
escaped angels?” I ask.

“With this.” Gabe hands me one of
his Barretas. His face is dreadful serious, which makes him look older than his
twenty three years. “Safety’s off. You’ve got thirteen rounds to hit the
fucker. Aim for the chest. It’s a bigger target than the head.”

The gun is weighty in my palm.
Solid.

“You good?” Tarren asks. He’s so
calm. Like he was made to storm castles and carry out the beautiful princess.

My tongue has suddenly decided to
stick to the bridge of my mouth, so I just nod.
Oh
shit. This is real. I have a gun and I might have to shoot somebody.

“Be careful Sis,” Gabe says,
pegging me with those big regretting eyes of his. “If things get hot, you can
run. This is our job, not yours.”

I appreciate the sentiment. Gabe
still thinks there might be a way of getting through to me, but there isn’t.
I’m in this war now. Solider Maya marching to the beat no matter how Jell-O my
knees feel at this particular moment.

“We go in quiet, we go in fast,”
Tarren says to Gabe. “Put them down.”

“Done, done and done,” Gabe says.

They share another intense look. 
Their energies are so even keeled. Almost identical in color and speed.

“Don’t get hurt,” I tell them. And
I mean it. Even Tarren.

“Let’s go,” Tarren whispers, and
the three of us make our way toward the house.

There is no dramatic music. No
bolts of lightning. Not even a nice gust of wind to blow back our hair and
press our clothes tight against our bodies. It’s still hot and sticky as hell,
and our boots scuff beneath the long grass. Tarren nods at me, and I break off,
making my way to the barn.

I position myself on the left side
of the structure with a clear view of the front and side door of the adjacent
house. Tarren and Gabe keep just inside the woods, then dash and crouch behind
the SUV closest to the house. Their heads bend together for a quick whispered
conference, and then a second dash brings them to the side door. Gabe tries the
knob and nods to Tarren.

My vision gets a little bendy, and
I realize it’s because I haven’t been breathing in…hell, maybe since I first
felt those auras in the barn. Now that I’m closer, I can distinguish different,
unique flavors of energy from within; each a bare wisp of life. The putrid
smell of decay that assaults my sensitive nose tells me exactly what these
walls hide from me. The dying. The dead.

Someone is whimpering softly
within. I know they can’t hear me from the outside, but I put my hand on the
barn and whisper “We’ve come to rescue you…Oh shit!”

The metal is molten hot from the
sun, and my bare fingertips scream with pain.

Sucking on my fingertips, I watch
Gabe and Tarren slip into the house. I force myself to breathe, counting each
breath in my head loud and clear. I take singed fingers out of my mouth and
wrap both hands around the gun, holding it out and down.

The sudden explosion of gunfire
scares the living shit out of me even though I was expecting it. Somehow it
never seemed so loud before when the boys practiced at their makeshift firing
range in the backyard. The firing starts and stops with singular, precise shots
ringing out, now joined by a woman’s perfect horror movie scream. Something
crashes. A running blur of limbs and bright clothes passes by the window.

Another shot. The scream cuts off.

I keep my eyes on the door, aware
that the gun is swaying in my grip, a mini-pendulum, propelled by the deep,
full body shivers that have taken over my limbs. The sudden quiet is unnerving.
Then I see smoke drifting from one of the open windows. Thick, black smoke
followed by the rancid odor of flames devouring fabric and rubber and perhaps
skin.

The front door of the house bursts
open and a figure stumbles out from the smoke. He is short and hairy.
Hendricks. That arrogant smirk is wiped clean off his face, and he is heaving
in large, terrified breaths. He stands for a moment, head swinging between the
barn and the line of vehicles parked along the driveway.

I press myself against the searing
metal of the barn, raise my gun, though it’s rattling in my hand, and fixate on
Hendricks’s thick, bull moose chest. My finger finds the trigger, and I…can’t
fire.

Coward. Coward. Coward.

Here he is, right in my crosshairs,
a despicable killer, and my trigger finger is frozen. All of me is frozen. Fear
coiled so tight around me that I can’t breathe. Can’t even blink.

Hendricks sees me, and bounds for
the line of cars.

Another figure bursts through the
smoke-filled doorway, his body swathed in a cloud of aural colors—all violent
oranges and bloody reds. Gabe. He pauses a moment, sees the fleeing angel and
raises his gun.

His shot hits Hendricks in the
chest. The angel kicks forward with a pained cry, but then stumbles up and
keeps moving for the cars. Gabe squeezes off another round, but his gun replies
with an impotent click. It must have jammed, and I have his other gun in my
frozen hand.

With a curse, Gabe drops his gun
and pulls a long, serrated blade from his belt.

Hendricks is at the jeep. He yanks
at the driver’s side door so hard that it bends outward and breaks right off
its hinges. Hendricks drops the door. As he scrambles into the driver’s seat,
Gabe grabs his shirt and throws him roughly to the ground.

The angel bounces back up,
snarling.

“Like toying with humans? Try me,”
Gabe says, his voice filled with a menace that I cannot square with the
sweet-as-sugar, videogame-loving brother I am coming to know.

Hendricks swings a fist that could
probably take Gabe’s head clean off if it connected. Gabe ducks and slashes
with his blade. Hendricks howls, and blood spills across his pressed white
shirt. The angel lunges at Gabe. His palms are split wide open, a glowing
feeding bulb at the center of each ready to connect. Ready to drain. Gabe
whirls out of Hendricks’s deadly reach then dashes in again. Another slice
across Hendricks’s chest. Another howl. The angel turns and runs.

“No you don’t,” Gabe says.

Based on his little beer gut and
wheezing breaths, it’s obvious that Hendricks has not taken advantage of the
incredible physical potential that angels inherit as part of the change. Gabe
sprints after the struggling angel, catches up and takes him down with a simple
leg sweep.  Hendricks sprawls onto his face. Before the angel can rise, Gabe
pounces on him, grips a handful of hair and pulls his blade across Hendricks’s
neck.

Hendricks flails, and Gabe jumps
back out of the way of his glowing hands. Blood. Lots of blood pouring out of
Hendricks. Gabe pants, but his face is calm.

“There you go motherfucker,” he
mutters.

Hendricks gurgles, bloody red
bubbles slipping out of his lips, and then he is still. I cautiously approach,
my stomach roller-coaster steady. Gabe sees me.

“Did you hear what I said?” His
face breaks into a proud smirk. “I said ‘you like messing with humans you fat
fuck? Try this one on for size!’ and then umph!” Gabe makes a jabbing motion
with his bloody knife. The boastful expression slides off his face, probably in
response to the look of sheer horror on mine.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Sometimes I
forget that it hasn’t been so long with you here.” Then he glances over my
shoulder and frowns. I follow his gaze.  Smoke gushes out of the windows of the
house, and I can hear a dull roar inside.

“One of ‘em was a fire starter.”
Gabe mops the sweat off his face. “Is Tarren out?”

I shake my head.

“Shit.” Gabe’s aura ratchets up, a
bouquet of yellows and whites. “I’m going in.”

“Wait,” I call. “He’s coming.”

Tarren breaks through the smoke.
He’s got the collar of his shirt pulled up over his nose and mouth, and he’s
carrying a body over his shoulders fireman style. When he gets far enough away
from the house, he lets down the tall, lanky human—the one who helped his
companion to his feet. The young man doesn’t move, and his aura is noticeably
weaker than when he was dragged into the house. Tarren crouches down and checks
his pulse.

“He okay?” Gabe says as we
approach.

Tarren sits back and nods. Sweat
runs free flow down his ash-covered face. “Breathing. Steady pulse. He’s the
one they were feeding on.” He looks around. “Where’s the other one? Did you
bring him out?” he asks Gabe.

“No. Hendricks escaped. I had to
chase him down.” Gabe indicates the body lying a few yards away.

Tarren springs to his feet. “They
hadn’t started on him yet. I saw him crawling out of the room during the
firefight. He could be anywhere inside.”

Tarren looks at the house, and I
recognize that expression of pure determination on his face. Funny thing about
Tarren, whenever Gabe’s involved he’ll be as safe, as cautious as can be, but
give the boy an opportunity for a reckless, heroic sacrifice that he can
shoulder all by his lonesome, and Tarren will plunge in with zeal every time.

“Tarren, you can’t,” Gabe says,
because he also knows exactly what that expression means. “The whole place is
in flames.”

“I have to try,” Tarren says
simply. He looks back at us. “Don’t go in after me.”

Guy needs a heroic theme song, he
really does.

“I’ll go in,” Gabe says.

“Absolutely not,” Tarren moves in
front of Gabe, planting his feet wide.

“Try and stop me then.” Gabe juts
out his chin and tightens his hands into fists. By the time they duke it out,
the house will already be reduced to ash.

“I can find him,” I speak up. My
heart is pounding hard.

“Maya, no,” Gabe says. “Just—“

“I’m fast. I’m strong. I can sense
humans, so I don’t need eyes,” I talk over his objections even as I approach
the house. “And…and…”
I need to do this to prove
that I’m part of this team too.
“And this’ll give Tarren a chance to
study if I’m fireproof.”

Gabe opens his mouth to let loose
another objection, but Tarren puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Let her try.” He says. “Come over
here.”

This last is to me. I follow him to
the side of the house. Ah, hose. Tarren uncoils the bunched rubber tubing and
turns on the faucet. He walks up to me and holds the gushing hose over my head.
Our bodies are so close, almost touching, and through the sheet of water
pouring over my face, the dimmed colors of his controlled aura break into
rainbow shards.

He looks…otherworldly. Our eyes
meet. I wonder what thoughts are playing across Tarren’s mind. If he even
thinks of me like a sister at all.

“Alright,” he says, when he deems
me acceptably soaked. “When you go in, keep low. Don’t touch anything with your
bare skin.”

I nod and walk right up next to the
house, so close I can actually feel the heat of the flames devouring everything
from within. I’m not actually sure what I’m thinking, which is maybe a good
thing. I cast my senses out like a net, opening myself up to the onslaught of
stimuli that my enhanced faculties bring to me. I smell a thousand scents
within the smoke, parse the dull roar and pop of the flames, feel the heat in
every pore of my skin, and,
there
, I catch a
hint of energy. Low and weak.

“I know where he is,” I look back
at my brothers.

“Maya, you don’t have to,” Gabe
says, and his aura is jumping high again.

“I’m going,” I say and manage not
to squeak with fear. I march over to the door and square my shoulders.

“Maya,” Tarren says behind me. His
voice has a weird hitch to it.

I look back at him. Rivulets of
water are still running down my face from my hair.

“If you can’t get to him, turn
back,” he says quietly.

I nod, pull in a lungful of fresh
air and dash through the open doorway.