Fallen Angel of Mine (14 page)

Hours later, I realized just how
foolish such hope had been. In fact, it wasn't until late afternoon
I finally stumbled upon a larger road. Sure, the surface was just
as terrible, if not worse than the one I'd just left, but it was
another road. That had to mean something, right? As if in answer to
my prayers, I saw a pickup on the side of the road. Next to it sat
a little old man with wrinkly skin and a complexion darkened by
many hours beneath the sun.

His brown eyes widened as he took me
in.

"
Hola
," I said, coming dangerously
close to exhausting my Spanish skills.

He responded with a rapid-fire
sentence, the words bouncing off my ears without making even the
tiniest bit of sense.

At a complete loss of how I
should respond, I smiled. "
Gracias
," I added, and nodded my
head.

His wrinkled little mouth
lifted into an amused smile. He pointed at the front tire on the
pickup. "
No va
."

I peered closer at the tire
and saw it was flat. Just great.
I finally
find a ride and it's borked
. I looked in
the back of the pickup and saw a spare tire that didn't look much
better than the one already on it. I pulled it out and pointed to
it.

He smiled and shook his
head. "
No bueno
."

I grinned because I knew exactly what
those words meant. But I realized why the spare wouldn't help.
Nowhere in the crowded bed of the pickup could I see a jack to lift
up the truck, or a wrench to loosen the lugs.

I pulled out my phone and looked at it.
It had miraculously found a signal—only one bar—but informed me it
was incompatible. I groaned and pointed at the phone. "You have
phone?"

"No telefono,
senor."

I suspected he was waiting along this
road in the hopes someone would rescue him too. Just as frustration
threatened to drag my wretched mood even lower, I realized we
didn't need no stinking jack or wrench. I crouched next to the
tire, using my body to block the old man's view, gripped a lug, and
twisted it.

It gave with hardly any resistance. I
removed the remaining ones and heard a gasp from the old man as I
removed the last one.

He shot another sentence of gibberish
at me. I smiled and said, "Me make go vroom, vroom!" and slid one
hand quickly along the other like a car taking off to further
demonstrate my complete inability to communicate across cultural
barriers.

He backed away uncertainly, his face
wrinkling even more with consternation.

I hated to scare the little man any
further, but I really needed to get the wheel on. I motioned him
over and he came, albeit a bit reluctantly. I made some vague
motions with my hands, showing him he needed to pull the tire off.
He shrugged, let out a little sigh, and, I supposed, resigned
himself to whatever terrible fate awaited him.

I lifted the corner of the pickup by
the front bumper. It groaned and complained. I hoped the bumper
didn't fall off. The man tugged on the flat tire, giving it his all
until it came off and fell to the ground. Then he stooped down and
levered the spare into place, pushing it on with a little grunt. I
shifted the pickup sideways a foot so the new wheel rested on a
flat surface and then set it down and tightened the
lugs.

The little man made a show of flexing
his bicep and pointed to me while saying something sounding
suspiciously like "muy farta".

I nodded in agreement and pointed to my
bicep. "Farta, my little friend, farta, indeed." I figured it must
be Spanish for "strong" as opposed to indigestion brought on by
baked beans. At least he hadn't had a heart attack.

The little man climbed into the
passenger seat of his truck and motioned for me to drive. I decided
my lack of a Colombian driver's license probably didn't matter out
here in the sticks, so I cranked the old truck to life and drove in
the direction the old man pointed, namely, straight
ahead.

We reached a town about an hour later,
a tiny eye-blink of a place along the seemingly deserted highway.
Several small houses dotted the few streets, each one an identical
shade of white. They appeared to be constructed of adobe, if their
rough-textured exteriors were anything to go by. A few people
walking the streets stopped to stare as the pickup puttered along,
and a group of kids ran in circles as a small dog yapped and chased
them. If this was what passed for entertainment round here, I
pitied the fools. Someone needed to put together a care package
with some video games.

The little man pointed down a side road
leading through a thick copse of trees and into a large clearing
where a two-story abode stood, complete with an old-fashioned pump
well in the front, and clotheslines drooping with
laundry.

I parked next to what looked like a
Toyota straight out of the dark ages and followed the little man
toward the house. A young man, probably in his mid-twenties, a
worried expression on his face, stepped onto the front porch and
spoke to the old man in rapid Spanish. The old man chuckled and
replied, then pointed to me.

At this point, the young man raced into
the house and appeared a moment later with a long wooden staff,
which left no question in my mind as to what he was. His eyes wide
with fright, he spoke a word. A white glow lit the
staff.

And then he pointed it at
me.

Elyssa

A dark figure blurred past Elyssa and
sent two of her guards spinning away. Her training left no
hesitation in her response. She delivered a roundhouse to the guard
on her left, the blur of her leg just missing Jack as he
ducked.

She checked her spin and drove the heel
of her foot down on his head. Momentarily stunned, he reeled back
on his butt. Elyssa had sparred with family members plenty of
times. None of them ever held back, and if not for supernatural
healing, she'd have plenty of bruises to show for it. Maybe even a
few scars. But this wasn't sparring. This felt like a matter of
life or death.

Sprinting down the long driveway, she
risked a glance back. Whoever had initiated her escape hadn't stuck
around and the guards were already on their feet and in full
pursuit. She faced forward and saw the fence over a hundred yards
away. While Elyssa was, without a doubt in her mind, one of the
best at sparring, Jack had always been extremely quick on his feet,
even before the Divinity had upgraded him from a mere mortal. And
the remaining distance gave him plenty of time to catch up. She'd
have to—

"Ungh!" was all she managed to say
before crashing to the earth with a heavy weight on her chest. A
huge silver wolf leered down at her, its tongue lolling in what
might have been amusement, judging by the glimmer in his eyes. She
looked between the massive forepaws at the belly of the beast and
determined, within seconds, it was definitely a "he". The only
lycan she knew of was Ryland. Whoever this person was, it wasn't
him.

"Get off me!" She struggled against the
creature's strength, but lacked the leverage to dislodge
him.

Jack's face appeared behind the wolf's.
"I see you've met Quinn." He slapped the wolf on the back. "Quinn,
this is my little sister, Elyssa."

The great beast howled.

"Son of a bitch," Elyssa growled,
trying to kick him in the goods.

He leapt back, tongue lolling. A crowd
of Templars gripped Elyssa and snatched her off the ground. One of
them punched her in the ribs the moment she was upright.

"Oof!" she said, unable to move her
arms and protect herself.

"You kick me again, and I'll break your
rib next time," said the aggressor in a youthful female
voice.

Elyssa felt her eyebrow rise. "Tasha?"
She was a recruit, one of few females who joined the Templar
ranks.

The girl let the form-fitting mask flow
off her face, revealing a tight bun of black hair and dark skin.
"We're sick of this behavior, Elyssa, even if you are sick in the
head thanks to friggin' spawn boy. But don't expect us to treat you
nicely if you keep trying to punch your way free."

"I don't exactly see anyone offering to
let me go peacefully."

The girl snorted. "And let you spy on
us for the spawn?" She shook her head. "No freaking
way."

"We should've knocked her out with
sleepers," grumbled another Templar, his face still hidden behind
the masked hood.

"Tell me about it," grumbled another.
"Reminds me of the crazy sorcerer chick who set Polinski's hair on
fire."

Several of them chuckled as they
dragged Elyssa along.

"Ha, ha, laugh it up," said Polinski,
his identity betrayed by his short stature and high-pitched
northeastern accent.

The huge silver wolf trotted beside
Jack who remained outside the tight circle of Templars.

"Doesn't it strike you all as
incredibly wrong to do this to me?" Elyssa said. "Polinski, Tasha,
you know me. You both trained with me for the past year. How can
you believe I would ever betray the Templars?"

Tasha looked uncertain. "If anyone
besides Commander Borathen accused you, I'd tell them to go to
hell."

Polinski retracted his hood by pressing
a finger to the neck seam and tilted his head, revealing a round
face and brown eyes set beneath a large brow. "I agree with Tasha.
Your dad wouldn't jerk us around. Besides, you're his daughter.
He'd never do this to anyone, much less a family member, unless he
knew what he was doing."

"What if I told you I've been
investigating Thunder Rock? What if I told you the entire event was
a setup designed to set the Templars against the spawn? If you let
them do this to me, all the evidence in my head will be
lost."

"We'll take a recorded
statement if you want," Jack said. "But I don't see how anything
you think you know will be any more insightful than our father's
records. He was
there
. And he's been doing this for centuries, sis. You're only
eighteen, for god's sake."

"So that's what the spawn woman was
doing with you," Polinski said.

Elyssa nodded. "Exactly! Kassallandra
was—"

"She was using some kind of
spawn trick to make you
think
you knew about Thunder Rock. Then, once you
convinced us it was a setup, we'd lower our guard and the spawn
would wipe us out."

"Say what you want about spawn, that
Kassallandra chick is smoking hot," said one of the masked
men.

"Shut your mouth, Andrews," said the
gravelly voice of Sergeant Oren as he appeared, silent as a ghost
next to the group. Elyssa had heard his voice too many times to
mistake it for anyone else's. "And the rest of you shut it too.
You're not to communicate with the prisoner.
Understood?"

"Sir, yes sir!" the group shouted in
unison.

Tasha gave Elyssa one last look of
uncertainty before touching the neck seam of her outfit. The black
material flowed up her neck, over her head and face, shutting
Elyssa out like a door slamming.

Ten minutes later, they reached the
manor.

"You want to give a statement?" Jack
asked.

"Will you promise to take it
seriously?"

Jack raised an eyebrow.
"Sure."

"Okay, lead the way."

"Leading the way" consisted of the
guards taking her inside the manor, fastening her to a
diamond-fiber chair, and standing guard.

Jack produced a digital recorder and
clicked it on. After naming himself, Elyssa, and the witnesses in
the room, he asked her what she knew.

Elyssa explained the best she could.
Two major spawn families, House Slade and House Assad, had formed a
joint operation to capture Vadaemos Slade and his consort, Orionas
Assad. Thomas Borathen had discovered Vadaemos was hiding out at
Thunder Rock and, unaware of the spawns' operation, executed his
own bag and tag operation. Instead, everyone except for him was
killed in an ambush. He'd assumed the spawn set him up, not knowing
both House Assad and Slade had lost all but one person as well. And
those survivors returned to their own houses and claimed the other
side had betrayed them.

She kept it simple, leaving out the
apocalyptic scenarios depicted by Foreseeance 4311 and the survival
of Kevin Sorenson, aka Underborn. Her father might divert resources
to capturing the notorious assassin instead of tracking Vadaemos,
should he believe her, though she doubted he would.

Instead, she boiled it down to the
essentials, saying Vadaemos wanted spawn and the Templars off his
back for good and sowing distrust among an already fragile trust
had worked better than he could have dreamed.

Though Jack listened patiently and even
asked a few clarifying questions, it looked obvious to Elyssa he
was only going through the motions for his deranged
sister.

"It's certainly quite an interesting
theory," Jack said as he shut off the recorder and gave the data
card to a nearby Templar so the information could be transferred to
their secure network. "But if all sides were ambushed, then why
were the attackers demon spawn?"