Coping (7 page)

I make the shower quick, though I
would prefer to stand under the water for a couple of decades. The cloying,
putrid smell of the barn won’t go away, and I know it’s mostly in my mind.
Those listless eyes peering out from the darkness in the cells. The gnats
converging on the dead. Rain’s battered face and the deep, crusted gouges
around each ankle.

I turn the water to scalding, but
I’m still shivering and feeling angry, helpless, and completely overwhelmed.

I finish up and dress quickly. I
find Gabe in Tarren’s room. I can tell that they’ve just wrapped up one of
their regular squabbles. Gabe’s aura is streaked with petulant orange, and
Tarren’s face is set in granite. I assume the topic of their argument was the
usual—me.

Tarren doesn’t like it when I’m
alone with Gabe. He knows that Gabe is soft on me, not cautious enough, not
ready to pull the trigger and blow my brains out if I present a threat. Gabe,
for his part, hates it when Tarren reminds him that I am anything other than
their sister. Tarren is right to be nervous. Gabe is woefully naïve and
trusting when it comes to me, but I’m not about to point out this glitch in his
system.

Gabe makes life bearable, and his
ignorance of my true nature is the only way it could work, which is why I will
never tell him about that night in Redmond. The night Amber died, when I came
so close to…

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand,”
Gabe says gruffly. He strides out of the room. Tarren pins me with a hard
stare.

“I’ll be good,” I tell him, but I
know he will worry like hell until we get back.

***

When we get in the Murano, I buckle
my seatbelt, tuck my hands under my legs just to be safe and ask, “Where are we
really going?”

Gabe looks at me, surprised and
then dismayed. “You could tell huh?”

“You’re not exactly the master of
lies you think you are.”

“Am so the master of lies,” Gabe
lies.  He backs out of the parking lot and heads us toward the highway. “We’re
going to Connecticut.”

I start. “Why are we going there?”

“Because I never got to say goodbye
to Tammy, and I never will.”

“Tarren said that Grand will expect
me to come back. He’ll have people watching my parents’ house.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Gabe
says. That’s just the way he is. We drive in silence for a while, Gabe drumming
his fingers on the steering wheel, me trying to hold back all the blurry and
lacerating memories of my past.

“It’s only been a month Maya,” Gabe
says, because silence bothers him and because, apparently, he thinks that
repeating this point will somehow change my response. “It’s okay to still be
totally mind fucked. And if you want to talk…”

“No. No talking.” Talking equals
thinking equals feeling equals endless cycles of hyperventilation.

Time for a subject change. If Gabe
is so gung-ho about talking feelings, let’s put his into the spotlight.

“How do you do it?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“Slit someone’s throat and crack
jokes five seconds later?”

“Ah.” Gabe thinks about his answer
for a good two seconds and then shrugs. “It’s kind of like a video game. I have
a mission. There’s a bad guy or bad guys. I do the mission. I kill the bad
guys.”

“You never think of their faces?
The blood?”

Gabe ponders this and says
philosophically, “We’ve killed a lot of angels, and there are a lot more out in
the world that need killing. If I felt bad for each pair of wings we clipped,
life would be a total suck fest. Plus, every one we bury means they won’t be
draining innocent people. I think it would be harder living with the knowledge
that all them angels were sneaking around in the shadows killing people and I
wasn’t doing anything to stop it.”

“Profound.”

“I am a very profound person,” Gabe
nods solemnly. The overhead streetlamps splash across his features as we pass
under them, highlighting his mischief brown eyes, the dingy ball cap taming his
wavy hair and the easy smile quirking on his lips. “Someone in this family has
to be serious sometimes.”

He tips his head to the side and
gives me a grin. We share a moment. This is why I need Gabe in my life exactly
the way he is. No suspicion. No doubt.

“I don’t want to go to my parents’
house,” I say. “I want to go somewhere else.”

“Your wish is my command.”

***

I know where Ryan is buried. I even
know the plot. It was listed on his Facebook page so friends could visit and
pay respects on their own.

Gabe and I arrive at 11 PM and park
in a suburban neighborhood half a mile away from the cemetery. We walk over on
foot. Gabe has armed himself, believing that Grand may have Ryan’s grave
watched as well. He is right. The spy is human, sidled up to a big swaying
willow tree with a direct line of vision to Ryan’s grave. He’s eating a
sandwich, chugging down a thermos of coffee, and he’s got binoculars in his
lap.

I point him out to Gabe. My brother
waits for the man to put down the thermos and then hits him with a powerful
tranq dart. The man tries to stand up, falls, pulls a cell phone out of his
pocket and then passes out before hitting a single number.

“Probably won’t remember anything,”
Gabe says as he walks over to the sprawled figure and pulls out the tranq dart.
“With luck and a little rearrangement of the crime scene, he might even think
he just fell asleep on the job.” Gabe hefts the man into a sitting position and
leans him back against the tree.

“Your spidey sense tell you if we
got any more company?” Gabe asks.

“No.”

“Alright, I’ll look around just to
be sure, and then I’ll see who our new friend was going to call and if he has
anything interesting in his pockets. You do your thing and text me when you’re
ready to go.”

I look at Gabe, my protector in the
backwards baseball cap who is only serious when the situation absolutely
demands it, and even then sometimes not.

“Thank you,” I say to him.

“Go on now.” He makes a shooing
motion.

Ryan joins me as I walk down the
hill. His ghost is silent and patient, and I enjoy his company. The crickets
string out a high chirping melody and frogs add in their throaty calls. The
wind slips across the leaves, and cars and trucks rumble along the highway not
too far in the distance.

Life goes on, even in a graveyard.

Ryan’s is just one plot among many.
His gravestone is glossy black with his name carved in English and Japanese. I
don’t know what to expect, but I am disappointed nonetheless. This isn’t Ryan.
This isn’t his grumbly stomach. This isn’t vanilla and hot bubbles. This is
only a chunk of stone with dying flowers on the ground, a bed of earth that
hides his body.

Blurry images flash across my
mind’s eyes. My hand in Ryan’s back pocket. Our awkward kiss. The way he stood
in front of me when we both realized that Grand was a threat. The choked noises
he made as he died.

I get down on my knees, and yes,
I’ve already played this scene out so many times in my mind that I’ve got the
perfect lines already perched on my lips. “I can’t bring you back,” I say, “but
I can avenge you, and I will.”

It sounded decent in my head, but
now it comes out childish and wrong. If Ryan could actually hear me, he’d give
me one of those indulgent half smiles he always kept on reserve for my dramatic
flourishes. He wouldn’t say anything, but his expression would tell me that I
was laying it on thick. I might punch him in the arm at this point, because I’d
know he was right. And then he’d laugh, and I’d laugh, and he’d run his hand
down the side of my body, fitting it neatly in the shallow curve of my nearly
non-existent hip.

And then I realize what I need to
say to him. Not vow vengeance. Not tangle him in this ugly war he was never a
part of. I just need to apologize. He died because of who I am, because he
tried to protect me from Grand.

I already have the words. I wrote
them last month on the roof of another nameless motel the night I almost killed
Gabe. I don’t have the letter with me, but I don’t need it. The words are here,
imprinted forever on my angel brain. So I whisper it, word for word, my voice
shaking, giving out in the middle.

The tears come. I push on, taking
all the blame that is due to me. Wondering where things would have gone.
Together, we could have dreamed of Avalon. We could have experimented more with
sex. I could have gotten him to smile many, many more times.

And the last thing I do is make a
promise. It’s not a promise for Ryan. He’s too clean, too good. This promise is
for me.  I promise that I will kill Grand. I promise that I will hunt down the
others like him; that I will save as many innocents as I can. I promise myself
that I won’t stop, not until all the angels are dead…or I am.

It feels so weak. So shallow. Ryan
is behind me, watching, listening to me make these grandiose vows in my
shaking, little girl’s voice. I don’t know if he believes me, if he would
forgive me for what has happened.

“You deserve to be alive,” I say
not to the grave, but to the ghost that lingers in my mind. When I look behind
me he is there for a moment.

His translucent face always reminds
me of how very alone I am in this new monster-infested world.

Ryan mouths something to me.

You are not alone.

He’s right. I have two insane,
vigilante brothers who have been fighting, who will keep fighting. Brothers who
each try and take care of me in their own way even if things between Tarren and
me may end bloody.

“I miss you. I love you,” I say to
Ryan, and then I reach for him—stupid me—because whenever I do this, he fades
away. Always out of reach but never far from my heart.

I stand up and text Gabe. Time to
go back to the motel. Back to the fight. My bravery will sputter. My brain will
get all crazy again. Tarren and I will continue our cautious circling. I’ll
fear death by boredom as we drive down the endless roads of the country. I know
all this, but for now, as I trudge past a long line of graves and feel the warm
wind pull the hair off the back of my neck, I am calm and filled with renewed
purpose.

>>>>
Keep Reading
  >>>

Maya’s
adventures continue in
LANDING
,
Book Two in the series
Girl With Broken Wings
. Keep flipping to read the
first chapter.

Friends
Review Friends’ Books

If
you enjoyed
COPING
,
please consider writing a short review. Your reviews
and referrals mean a lot and can help other readers fall into the grip of
Maya’s adventure.

Keep
In Touch

Wait,
don’t go! You just got here. Please come by and say hello if you have time. My
website includes a few special extras for my extra special fans (you are extra
special, aren’t you?). Find me at:

Mailing List

Website

Facebook

Email:
[email protected]

Works by J Bennett

Girl
With Broken Wings Series

Falling
(Book One)

Coping
(Novella, 1.5)

Landing
(Book Two) >>> FREE SAMPLE NEXT <<<

Rising
(Book Three)

Recovering
(Novella, 3.5)

Leaping
(Book Four)

The
Vampire’s Housekeeper Chronicles

<<ON AMAZON >>
Employment Interview With A Vampire
(Short Story, # 1)

The Vampire Hunter Comes To Call
(Short Story, # 2)

Duel With The Werefrog
(Short Story, #3)

When Vampires And Ninjas Collide
(Short Story, #4)

Death
in the Family
(Short Story, #5)

Apprenticeship
With A Vampire
(Novella, #6)

***

About J
Bennett

J Bennett lives and writes in San Diego. Her writing partner
is a bunny named Avalon who contributes to each manuscript by trying to eat it.
His adorableness is his primary strength as a writer.

J Bennett is a professional copywriter and an author who loves
asking that oh-so-dangerous question – “What if?” She currently writes a
paranormal adventure series,
Girl With Broken Wings,
and a
tongue-in-cheek vampire humor short story series,
The Vampire’s Housekeeper
Chronicles.

Contact J Bennett at
[email protected]
.

>>> Turn The Next Page To
Read A Sample Of LANDING <<<

Next in the
Girl With Broken Wings
series:

Landing

Book Two, Girl With Broken
Wings

The cold of this October night
seeps through my jacket, finds my joints and nestles inside. Aches settle into
the small of my back and in my elbows, which I lean against the edge of the ice
cream shop’s roof. Day one of patrol was fine. Day two got annoying. Day three
just sucks. I’m almost too bored to be nervous anymore.

A quarter mile down the street, a
bar announces final call, and our next great generation stumbles out of the
doors, laughing, staggering, pulling each other along. Idiots. Their energy
fields are fogged and giddy with alcohol. They practically beg to be snatched
and drained. Such strong, healthy energy.

My body shivers involuntarily, and
I remind myself that I already fed on a perfectly good rat before we left on
the stakeout. A perfectly good, small, little rat.

A group of guys lingers outside the
bar. They laugh and swing sloppy fists at each other. Their overt good spirits
are offensive. I don’t know them, but I can tell that they are enjoying every
minute of their dimwit college experience: signing up for ridiculous and
useless classes like Latin or Shakespeare II, meeting study groups in the
library, pondering the cork boards in the dorms for some obtuse club to join,
banging drunk sorority girls at parties, being normal and human and whatever.

In the midst of the group, I immediately
recognize the vibrant blue energy of my brother, Gabe. Half-brother, that is.
At least we share my good half.  He’s already managed to befriend the entire
group. He hoots with the rest of the guys and has somehow obtained a university
hoodie, which hangs baggy on his thin frame. His energy is as foggy and looping
as his compatriots, and I wonder if he actually downed a couple, or if he’s
just that good at acting. I’m learning that Gabe is better at this bait trick.
He takes pride in putting on a good performance and usually manages to enjoy
himself in the process.

Gabe breaks apart from the group.

“See ya losers!” he calls fondly
after them. His voice carries down the empty street.

“Friday man!” one of the guys yells
after him. “’s gonna be epic!”

“Maybe.” Gabe turns away and
continues with slow, plodding steps toward the industrial part of town. He
whistles a soft, off-key tune to himself. I watch the other boys stagger back
to campus. None of them peels away from the group. Good.

The night is almost over. Our angel
likes his victims drunk and alone. In the middle of the week it’s slim pickings
even in this college town. It has to be tonight. It has to be Gabe. My heart
starts picking up beats, and I tell it to mind its own god damn business.

But it is tonight. And it is Gabe.
As he makes his way farther from the bar, the voices and giggles fade. This is
the kind of town that goes to bed at night, at least during the week. Cars
rolls by in intervals, but there’s no one else left on the street except for
Gabe and the figure trailing behind him.  The stranger must have seen his share
of horror flicks, because he lurks with some gusto, keeping to the shadows,
hands plunged deep into his coat pockets.

This is our angel. The space around
his body is empty—bereft of the glowing blues and greens and soft violets of a
human aura. Angels don’t produce their own energy; they steal them from humans.
Gabe doesn’t know it, but he has just about the most beautiful aura I’ve ever
seen.
Blue as blue, true as true.
I’m
rambling like I always do when I get nervous.   

“Confirm,” I whisper into my
Bluetooth earpiece. “Black coat. By the nail salon.” The angel continues to
lurk his heart out.

A pause. “I see him,” Tarren
whispers back. He’s on the roof of a scrap booking store opposite me, dampening
his energy to a soft glow that even a hungry angel wouldn’t notice unless he
knew where to look. Even though I know he does, I am tempted to glance up, find
Tarren and make sure he’s got his Barretta 82A1 semi-automatic rifle trained on
the figure.

Instead, I dig the cell phone out
of my pocket. Stupid shaking hands. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this,
but I still hate it. Dangling something dear over the abyss.

I tap into my “saved” messages,
find the right one and hit
send
. Down below,
Gabe reaches into his pocket, still taking slow, unsteady steps farther from
the main drag. A glow of light graces his sharp nose and chin as he flips open
his phone and checks the message,
The quickest way
to a man’s heart is Chuck Norris’s fist.

“Awesome,” Gabe says. He picks up
his pace and whistles a little louder as he makes his way toward us.

I track the angel as he keeps to
the shadows—still lingering, watching, hungering. A car filled with blaring
music bumps and grinds its way down the street. Its headlights make a wide
sweep as it turns down the street Gabe has just crossed.

For a moment, the angel is blocked
from view. When the headlights fade, I refocus on the scene below. There’s Gabe
still whistling. The angel is…gone. Gone?

Holy shit on a stick!

I scan the street. Nothing. Back to
Gabe who is a hundred feet away from us and readying himself for the grand
finale.

“Oh sweet tiny baby Jesus,” he
moans.

Wait,
wait!
I cry inside my mind. But he’s going for it, staggering against
the side of a building and pretending to dry heave. There are no cars. No
people. The trap is baited.

“Where?” Tarren hisses through my
earpiece. He’s lost the angel too. I hear my heart banging in my chest, and I
try desperately to calm it down. Angels are good at hearing heart beats.

Gabe goes for it: crumpling to his
knees, heaving, swearing colorfully, praying to Keira Knightly for relief,
pandering for the Oscar.

My eyes catch swift movement.

“Oh, oh, there,” I hiss to Tarren.
“I mean, below you. Right under you!”

Inexplicably, the angel must have
turned down the same street as the car, gone behind us and doubled back so that
he is now walking swiftly toward Gabe. He is directly below the scrapbooking
store, hidden for a moment beneath its polka dot awning. I know immediately
that Tarren has lost his shot, even before he whispers “I don’t have him” all
tight and boiling into my ear. The angel picks up his pace, moving so fast it’s
like he’s gliding on ice. I pull out my gun, press the extra lever to remove the
safety.

Gabe sees the guy. “Just ignore me,
I’m fine,” he slurs, slowly getting to his feet, waiting for us.

“Maya,” Tarren hisses. The Glock
32C is big in my palm. I know how to hold it now. How to aim. I can usually
smoke a dozen empty beef ravioli cans without missing. But this isn’t beef
ravioli or Spaghettios or any other label that can be dispatched without a hint
of moral meltdown.

“Oh no,” I whisper, because I can’t
shoot. The angel is there, reaching out for Gabe. Time slows in order to
accommodate the lurching wave of fear that breaks over me. Panic drops black
snowflakes across my vision, because I know, just know Gabe is going to die for
my cowardice.

“Oh fuck,” Gabe says when he
finally realizes his rescue isn’t coming. This registers as the angel descends
upon him, hands open and glowing.

***

Find
LANDING
on Amazon