Guardian Angel (7 page)

“What’s going to happen to us?”
Alia asked anxiously.

What indeed? Was I right in assuming that the Angels now had control over the Wolves? How powerful had Randal’s kingdom become? I had originally feared that the Wolves were taking us to another research prison, but this was far worse.

“Addy?”

“I don’t know, Alia,” I whispered back. “Just stay with me.”

As the plane leveled out, I heard boot-wearing footsteps approach, and suddenly the bag was removed from my head. I squinted a little in the cabin light, but it wasn’t very bright here and my eyes adjusted quickly.

I found myself looking up into a familiar face. It was Jodie Decker, ex-cop, ex-Raven. She was dressed in a Wolf’s uniform, complete with the wolf-head patch on her upper right sleeve, but she was armed only with a pistol at her side.

“Hello, Adrian,” she said pleasantly.

I glared at her, but she calmly reached over and undid Alia’s head bag next.

Against the other side wall sat another head-bagged figure: Ed Regis. His handcuffs had been removed. He wasn’t moving but I could tell he was conscious, listening.

There were four other Wolf soldiers in the otherwise empty cargo hold, all dressed in military uniforms, carrying assault rifles strapped over their shoulders and sporting fragmentation grenades on their vests. To my left, I could see the entrance to the cockpit, which was open, but from this angle the pilots were out of sight.

“Would you like something to drink, dear?” Ms. Decker asked Alia.

Alia didn’t reply, staring defiantly up at her.

Ms. Decker fingered the unicorn-shaped bloodstone pendant around Alia’s neck. “This is really pretty,” she said warmly.

Still Alia kept her eyes on Ms. Decker, refusing to even twitch.

“I’m so sorry we scared you like that,” said Ms. Decker, “but it was for your own safety.”

“What is this?” I asked quietly. “What’s going on here?”

“This is the future,” said Ms. Decker, turning to me. “The bright future of our world, unfolding before our eyes. Would you like something to drink?”

I had to know for certain. “Do the Wolves work for the Angels now?”

“The Wolves work for the government,” replied Ms. Decker.

I narrowed my eyes. “So who does the government work for?”

Ms. Decker smiled broadly.

I glanced around at the four uniformed soldiers. I couldn’t tell which of them were Wolves and which were Seraphim, if there was even a difference anymore. I didn’t sense any destroyer powers, but the way they were armed, it hardly mattered.

“Accept it, Adrian,” Ms. Decker said in a cheerful tone. “Soon this country will be but one in the grand alliance we are creating. The day is fast coming when King Divine will bring peace to all of humanity. That is our destiny, our great and noble work which you now have the privilege of sharing.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Listen to yourself, Ms. Decker. You’re talking about things like
destiny
and you think you’re still sane?”

Ms. Decker merely nodded. “You will soon be a believer yourself.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“You don’t know how fortunate you are, Adrian. The king has asked for you personally, alive and unharmed. This is truly a great honor. And I might also add that, thanks to your VIP status, you and your friends have been spared a most painful interrogation today.”

Under the circumstances, that was very small consolation. We were being shipped directly to Randal Divine, and to Catherine, so that we could be converted into Angels. So that we could mindlessly serve them for the rest of our lives. I had promised Alia that we would be reunited with Cindy. But not like this.

Ms. Decker noticed me eyeing the cargo loading ramp at the rear of the plane. “Please don’t get up,” she said. “You are a top-level VIP, but don’t think my boys won’t kill you if you try anything at all.”

My control bands’ rods were still extended, but draining no longer affected my physical strength so much that I couldn’t move when I really needed to. “Fine,” I said, swiftly unbuckling my seatbelt and jumping clear of Ms. Decker’s reach. “Kill me.”

I instantly had the attention of four assault rifles, but as I suspected, nobody fired.

“You can’t kill me!” I shouted furiously. “King Divine’s orders!”

Ms. Decker recovered quickly from her surprise. As an ex-cop, she was quick on the draw too, and suddenly the barrel of her pistol was pressed against Alia’s forehead.

“I like a boy who knows how to call a bluff, Adrian,” she said, “but do consider that the king’s order is just for you.”

Though Ms. Decker had her pistol on Alia’s head, her eyes were fixed on me, so she didn’t notice it when Alia reached forward and carefully plucked a little white remote control out from one of Ms. Decker’s pockets. Miraculously, the other soldiers missed it too.

“Come on,” said Ms. Decker. “Don’t play with your life like this. You are much too important.” Then she added in a mischievous tone, “I can make you sit down if I have to.” She reached into her pocket with her free hand, searching for something that was no longer there.

My control bands snapped open, falling to the floor.

“No! No!” cried Ms. Decker as she saw a grenade pop off of one of her soldiers’ vests and fly into my right hand.

There was a sudden, short burst of gunfire, and I felt a searing pain tear through my lower right side. In his surprise, the soldier I had taken the grenade from had accidentally fired several rounds from his rifle, and one of the bullets had nicked me. The force of the impact made me lose my balance, and I fell onto my knees, but I kept a tight grip on the grenade.

“Don’t shoot him!” shouted Ms. Decker.

It hurt like hell, but it was just a flesh wound, probably less than half an inch deep. Besides, my telekinetic power had already drained the instant I touched the grenade so I hardly noticed the difference as my blood seeped into my clothes. Pressing down on the wound with my left hand, I forced myself to stand back up. Then I brought the grenade in my right hand up to my mouth and pulled out the pin with my teeth.

I noticed Ed Regis had removed his head bag.

“Ed Regis,” I said, spitting out the grenade pin, “get up and lower the ramp.”

“Major Regis,” Ms. Decker said warningly, “if you stand up, you’ll die.”

“He dies, I drop this,” I said, holding up the grenade and trying not to let my pain show. “We all die.”

Ms. Decker smiled. “I’d die for my king any day.”

“This could be the day, then,” I replied evenly.

Ed Regis decided to chance it, cautiously standing up and walking over to the ramp control. The soldiers seemed to be at a loss as to what to do. Perhaps these four weren’t converted, but merely stumbling along under Ms. Decker’s fanatical command. The ramp slowly opened, revealing a pitch-black night sky. I desperately looked around for parachutes, but saw none.

“I can’t let you go, Adrian!” shouted Ms. Decker. “Come on, you had your chance. You’re bleeding. You can’t fly. Give it up!”

The pain was getting to me, and I couldn’t help wincing a little.

Ms. Decker said in a calming tone, “Come on, kid. Just hand me the grenade and let this little girl heal you. You don’t want to die here.”

Kid? Little girl?

My eyes met Alia’s for a brief moment, and then I looked at Ms. Decker again. “Do you know why Alia and I are still alive, Ms. Decker?” I said slowly through clenched teeth. “It’s because people like you keep underestimating us.”

I tossed the grenade into the cockpit.

Once you release its lever, a grenade explodes in about four seconds. Alia used a quarter of that time to knock the pistol out of Ms. Decker’s hand. The soldiers, distracted by panicked shouts from the cockpit, didn’t notice Ed Regis bash Ms. Decker’s head against a wall or see him pull Alia out of her seat. By the time we heard the explosion, we were in freefall.

“Addy! Addy, where are you?!”
Alia yelled into my head.

“Here!” I shouted hysterically over the howling wind. “Alia! Close it! Close it! Close it!”

But I couldn’t see her anywhere. Nor could I see Ed Regis. I was alone, and I wasn’t even sure which direction was up. All I knew was that I was falling, drained by my blood and unable to fly.

I felt Ed Regis’s firm hand on my right arm. He pulled hard, and I found myself next to Alia. Ed Regis kept the three of us close together as my sister, hair whipping about her face, healed the gash in my right side. How she managed to focus her power as we wildly spun around and around in midair is something only she would know, but soon I felt the pain in my side disappear.

I was still being drained by the blood on my body. I tore off my sweatshirt and used the clean part of it to wipe myself until I felt my power return. The freezing night air was biting into my skin, but the pain helped me focus my telekinesis as I saw a sea of lights below, rapidly approaching.

We were over a city! There were buildings below us!

“Hang on!” I screamed, grabbing Alia and Ed Regis by their shirts.

They didn’t need telling.

For a fleeting instant, I had a wild, insane image of us splashing down into some expensive hotel’s rooftop pool, but that didn’t happen. We instead smashed into an open dumpster in a back alley. I did all I could to telekinetically break our fall, but add Ed Regis’s weight to Alia’s and my own, plus the fact that I had just recently been shot and was still being slightly drained by some dried blood left on my skin…

“You both alive?” moaned Ed Regis. “Alia? Adrian?”

“Addy?”

“I think so,” I mumbled feebly.

We took our time in the dumpster. I had completely exhausted my psionic power in our semi-controlled crash, and for a while, I felt so faint and dizzy that I couldn’t even sit up. Fortunately, the plastic garbage bags we had landed on had been filled mostly with kitchen leftovers, probably from a nearby restaurant. Several of the bags tore open when we hit them, which was disgusting, but at least the food scraps were soft and yielding enough to keep our bones intact. We had a few odd bruises and Ed Regis had twisted his right ankle pretty badly, but we were otherwise alive, which wasn’t so bad considering that we had just fallen out of an airplane.

Once Alia healed his ankle, Ed Regis got out from the dumpster and then carefully lifted Alia and me out, setting us on the cold, damp concrete in the dumpster’s shadow. Ed Regis sat down beside us, removed his jacket and put it around my shoulders. I had lost my sweatshirt somewhere in midair. I could tell Ed Regis was impatient to put some distance between us and our crash site, but I still felt too weak to stand.

“I hope that plane didn’t fall in the city,” I breathed.

“There’s no telling,” said Ed Regis, glancing up at the dark sky, “but it had a fair amount of altitude. Lucky for us. And lucky we landed in the garbage.”

That wasn’t entirely luck. I had guided us into the dumpster at the last second, but I didn’t feel like bragging. Alia was gingerly picking spaghetti noodles out of her hair.

“You need a bath,” I said to her mildly.

Alia glared at me. “That’s not funny, Addy!” she said dryly. “That’s not funny at all! And could you please, please,
please
stop getting shot?!”

“I’m working on it, Alia,” I said apologetically, “but no promises.”

Alia quietly drew herself closer to me and I put an arm around her shoulders. I noticed that she was still shivering a little as her adrenaline slowly ebbed away. Mine had instantly dissipated along with my power, leaving me spent but calmer. It was never easy reorienting your emotions after something like this. Even Ed Regis still looked a little shaken. We sat silently, listening to the distant sounds of people and cars on the busy road at the end of the alley. Alia eventually stopped shivering.

Ed Regis asked me if I was ready to try standing up. I still felt lightheaded and my legs were a bit wobbly, but I found that I could walk without falling over.

“You need to drink something and replenish your fluids,” said Ed Regis. “I think you lost a fair amount of blood there.”

“I’m fine,” I said as I buttoned up Ed Regis’s jacket, which was much too big for me but better than being shirtless on a cold night. “Let’s get moving.”

“Here,” Ed Regis said to Alia, “let’s get these things off you first.”

Alia still had her control bands clamped onto her wrists, and although the draining rods were retracted, the bracelets looked heavy and uncomfortable on her. They would also be a dead giveaway to anyone on the lookout for us.

Ed Regis looked around for something hard to break the plastic casings with. Alia reached into her pocket and pulled out Ms. Decker’s remote control. Studying it for a second, she pressed a few buttons, and her control bands snapped open.

I asked Alia in wonder, “How did you know where Decker was hiding that remote? How did you even know she had it?”

“She used it on me once,” replied Alia. “To shock me. It really hurt, but I saw where she put it afterwards.”

Never underestimate my little sister. I had learned that lesson more times than I cared to count. Tough luck for Decker.

Ed Regis was staring at me. “If you didn’t know that Alia was going to get your control bands off on the plane, what was your original plan?”

“I didn’t have one,” I admitted embarrassedly. “I just figured that we didn’t have much to lose anyway.”

Ed Regis laughed. “Terry’s right. You really are crazy.”

By the way my sister was eyeing me, I could tell that she agreed.

“Hey,” I said to her softly, “if we can survive something like this, Alia, we just might live to be old.”

Alia looked like she was about to say something, but then just let out a resigned little sigh and smiled.

We soon discovered that we were in the same city as Wood-claw. Apparently the Wolves’ helicopters had taken us away from the city once, but then the plane had flown us back over it. If only we knew which direction it had been flying when its cockpit exploded, we might have gained a clue as to Randal Divine’s whereabouts, but no such luck.