Landing (11 page)

Chapter 16

My panicked steps slow as I leave
the park and approach the SUV. I feel the auras of my brothers in front of me,
strong and jumpy.

They argue. About me. Of course.

“Just let me try her one more
time,” Gabe says.

“We need to find her.” Tarren’s
voice is that clean, cool timbre that means he’s in hunter mode. “And we need
to be prepared—”

“Don’t even go there.” Writhing reds
shoot through Gabe’s aura. He puts his phone up to his ear. “She was upset. She
went for a walk or something.”

My phone vibrates, but I leave it.
I know where this conversation is going, but I need to hear it anyway.

“You didn’t see the way she was.” Tarren’s
voice keeps its steady keel even as his aura flickers. “How close to the edge…”

“Fuck!” Gabe shoves his phone into
his pocket. He squares off against his brother. “I know her, Tarren. I
know
her,
and she would never ever turn. You don’t believe me. Hell, she doesn’t even
believe it, but I’m right about this, about her. And don’t you ever ask me to
hurt her. That’s not going to happen. Not ever.”

“You said that if she ever turned
you would—”

“Yeah, well, I lied.”

“You’re blind when it comes to
her,” Tarren retorts, and his voice is edging lower, quieter. “We have
radiation spikes all over the park. We don’t know if that’s her, or if —”

I decide it’s best to make my
appearance now, especially since Tarren is pulling the gun from his jacket.
Gabe sees me first. His aura swarms with lilac and bronze streaks.

“Maya, what the fuck? You scared
the living bejesus out of…what’s wrong? What happened?”

Tarren clamps down on his aura,
that muddy blue stabilizing.

“I didn’t,” I say to him. “Look at
me and tell me.”

I stand right in front of Tarren,
head up, shoulders squared. His eyes sweep across my body, searching for the
telltale flush that would indicate that I had fed. When he doesn’t find it, he
gives me a sharp nod.

“I told you to stay in the car.”

“I…I…”

Gabe’s eyes are on me, and blue
rivers of trust running through his aura.

“I found them.”

My brothers speak at the same time.

Gabe: “Who?”

Tarren: “Where?”

“I need to…can we go back to the
motel? There’s more. I know how to find them again.”

“Yeah, course.” Gabe opens the back
door for me.

I look at Tarren, at that hunter’s
mask he wears across his features and the scar that tells all the whys. He
would rather stay and finish the angels off now, but Gabe’s already walking
toward the driver’s side of the car.

“It’s not what I want,” Tarren says
to me. The wind ruffles his dark hair. “But if you did turn, I would stop you.”

“I know,” I say and grope to get
strands of hair out of my face.

***

At the motel, the boys are both
quiet as I summarize my angel discovery. Then Gabe lets out a long,
appreciative whistle. “This is…wow. Maya, you done good, girl!”

“I didn’t have time to shoot. They
had me surrounded,” I insist again, though no one has called me a loathsome
coward.

“You did fine. We know where they
live, where they sleep.” Gabe snaps his fingers. “We got ‘em like…like ducks in
a barrel.”

“Fish,” I say.

“What?”

“In the barrel.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

Tarren stands at the window. He
gazes out into the night, but I know he doesn’t see the ripe moon or its cape
of stars. His mind is churning over the situation.

Gabe loses his haughty grin.
“What’s there to think about? We go back tonight, peg ‘em in their beds. The
only question is where to bury them.”

I’m sitting cross-legged on one of
the beds. I spot a loose thread in the comforter and go for it, working out the
stitches, opening up a hole with my nervous hands. Kyle and Jane are angels.
They kill people. They turn children into gingerbread cookies and gobble them
up.

We’re going to do right by you
Little One.
Kyle’s words are here, sitting on the very top of my brain. So
is his genuine smile.

Yeah, and I’m going to do wrong
by you. Very, very wrong
, I think back.

I hate this. I hate Diana and her
crusade. I hate that I just sit here, not saying anything.

Tarren turns around and looks at
me. “This is an opportunity,” he says carefully.

“Yeah, it is.” The hues in Gabe’s
energy grow darker, and I don’t understand why. Not at first. “Maya’s put a bow
around these wings for us.” He stares at Tarren, and his words are weighted
with intent. “It’ll be the easiest job we’ve had in a long time. We should get
it done tonight.”

Tarren doesn’t take his eyes away
from me, and I suddenly realize what he wants.

“You think we should play this
out,” I say quietly.

“But we’re not,” Gabe insists.
“It’s too dangerous.”

“They want to teach her,” Tarren
responds. “They want to bring her into the fold.”

“No.” Gabe shakes his head. “No,
no, no.” His energy pulses high up off his body. Those eager shades of aqua are
gone, replaced with angry citrus. “Doesn’t matter, Mom always said…”

“None of us have ever had this
chance,” Tarren raises his voice.

“Rule number one: never hesitate.”

“They could lead us to The
Exalted.”

“Stop it!” Gabe shouts.

“Keep your voice down.”

I wrap the comforter around my
hands.

“Fuck you! You’re talking about
putting Maya in danger. Do you realize that? Do you even care? She’s our
sister, and you wanna…wanna pack her a fucking lunch and send her into the
lion’s den.”

Tarren bites back his reply. The
room hums with their conflicting energies, the heavy drumming of our three
hearts. I realize that I should have stepped in a while back, but I don’t know
what to say. I can’t even think with Gabe’s energy blazing with such fierce
emotion.

“She won’t be in danger,” Tarren
replies quietly. “You and I can monitor everything. Gabe, this is the chance
we’ve been waiting for. The Exalted
could lead us to all the originals,
to the core group.” His eyes catch mine and hold them. “It could lead us to
Grand.”

My head snaps up. I forget Kyle’s
smile.

“I’ll do it,” I say. I want this to
sound brave, penetrating, but it comes out as a squeak.

“Maya, don’t.” Gabe’s voice is
hurt.

I look at him, at the betrayal
throbbing in his aura. Red. The same color as pain.

“It’s Grand,” I tell him so he’ll
see that I have no choice. I turn back to Tarren. “Tell me about The Exalted.”

“Fine!” Gabe slams the lid down on
his laptop. “You want to put your life on the line, throw everything we’ve ever
learned out the window, fucking fine and dandy. I’m out.” He jolts up so fast
from the table that his chair falls over.

“Where are you going?” Tarren asks.

“Somewhere that serves lots of
alcohol.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“What? You the king of bad ideas
tonight? I’ll be sober by morning.”

“Gabe,” I say.

“Don’t,” he cuts me off and strides
out of the room and into his own. In two minutes, he’s trudging down the
sidewalk outside. I pick up the chair and sit at the table, all the while
following Gabe’s energy until the angry undulations fade with distance.

Then I nod at Tarren and say, “What
have you been keeping from me?” It comes out pretty damn good. Tarren remains
standing by the window. The shadows grab hold of him, and for anyone else it
would be totally cliché, standing like that, gazing off into the night with
such melancholy. Not Tarren though. He takes moody and owns it.

He considers my question thoroughly
before answering in that deep, smooth voice of his. “Robert Thane’s dream was
to create a truly superior race. That was why he and his backers funded the
research which eventually led to the angel formula.”

“To Grand,” I say. “Gabe told me
the story after I was changed.”

Tarren nods. “Thane infected his
son, Grand, first, then himself and his other two children, and then he started
infecting his associates—business magnets, mobsters, politicians. Powerful men
and women whom he thought were worthy of building up the new race. The
Exalted.”

“Very creative,” I say. “Skull and
Bones with an appetite.”

My laugh is cut short by Tarren’s
grim expression. I unwind my hands from the comforter; wipe them on my pant
legs out of habit. I don’t sweat anymore.

“What was Thane’s end game?”

“We don’t know. He never got to
achieve it.” Tarren turns away from the window and folds his arms over his
chest. His face is drawn and tired. “Dr. Cook and my father destroyed the
formula, and Thane was never able to create another angel.”

“Until Grand discovered another
way,” I say. I keep my eyes open, focused on the smudge of my face in the
polished table’s surface, but that doesn’t keep out the flash of memories.

Grand plunging the two needles
into my spine. Running fire through my bones. Imploding my DNA. Twisting my
organs. Swelling, throbbing pain…and then the song.

Tarren says, “By the time Grand
figured out that three bone marrow injections could stimulate the change,
Thane’s original network was almost extinct thanks to our mother. Grand had to
start all over again, build up a new elite, reignite his father’s dream.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” I say.
“You two keep telling me how organized these angels are. How many strings they
can pull, but then why are they so easy to pick off?”

Tarren considers his words then
says, “Our guess is that a number of angels eventually discovered Grand’s new
method and realized that any one of them could create angels using their own
bone marrow. The knowledge spread, and Grand lost control of the process and of
the group. That’s the growing chaos we’re seeing now. Their burgeoning numbers.
The disorganization. What was left of The Exalted broke apart, dissolved. At
least that’s what our mother speculated.” Tarren pauses.

“But that’s not what you believe,”
I say, and make a point not to notice that, for the first time, he referred to
Diana as “our mother” without even thinking about it.

“We’ve never found any evidence of
The Exalted, but I think they still exist. I think Grand is still planning
something with a core group of powerful angels.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Tarren shakes his head. “It’s
always been too dangerous to interrogate angels. Their differing abilities
create too many unknowns, too many risks. Until now. Maya, if The Exalted
do
exist, that means there’s a central authority. That means they have records and
meetings, lists of names.”

Tarren keeps his voice even, almost
quiet, but I can see the sheen of mania in his eyes, in the taut, bright colors
that lick out from his body. “It means we won’t have to pluck each leaf off the
tree. We can pull the whole thing up by the roots.”

I think about Diana’s number one rule
when it comes to killing angels,
never hesitate.
Evidently even Tarren
is capable of some flexibility. I wonder if this makes him practical or a
hypocrite. I also wonder if there isn’t a whole secret world inside Tarren’s
head. How did he come up with that scented blindfold?

Tarren is gazing at me. I push my
thoughts out of the way. Who the hell cares how he thinks as long as this will
help me find and kill Grand.

“I understand,” I say to him. “I
want to do it.”

Tarren nods with approval. “We’ll
keep you covered Maya.”

A spark of pale orange—the color of
a ripe tangerine—lights up in his aura, and I still haven’t ciphered what this
shade means on the Tarren color scale. I’ve seen hints of it before, mostly
when he gives me those moody stares, but I remember how it swallowed so much of
his aura the time I caught him gazing at his scarred body in his cracked
bedroom mirror.

***

We, Tarren and I, sit across the
table from each other and spend the next three hours sketching out a plan. His
energy is tight, and I keep trying to swallow these growing boulders in my
throat.

I don’t think about Kyle,
We’re
going to do right by you Little One
,
or how Jane’s face softened
when she learned I’d been turned against my will. They are shapeless gray
forms. Targets. Cans of Spaghettios.

Tarren’s voice is confident and
fluid, and I follow along, just like we’re running. Stride for stride. It feels
like we’re actually a team. Like I count, and he really does care about me,
though I know he’s just keeping the bait on board.

When we’ve churned mental miles
running through the plan a dozen times, Tarren finally calls it a night. We
both wait for the other to make the first move. Then we stand up together and
realize that we each have to get to the other side of the room.

“I’m just going to…” I motion
toward the cage of mice in the corner behind Tarren.

“Yeah, that’s....” Tarren steps out
of the way, and I cross in front of him, feeling the tug of his energy.

Tarren doesn’t sing in the shower,
and he finishes up in the bathroom too soon. He comes out while I’m still
draining my second rat, and I kind of hunch my shoulders over so he can’t
see—but he knows and turns and stares at the door until he hears me zipping up
the corpses in the black nylon pouch.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

Tarren doesn’t say anything, and I
go to the bathroom and concentrate way too hard on brushing my teeth. When I
crawl into my bed, Tarren turns off the lamp on the nightstand between us.

“Goodnight,” I say, and, after a
slight pause, he says it softly back to me.

The glow of Tarren’s energy—bumpy
with hiccups as he finally loosens his control—outlines the form of his body,
and I watch as he shifts around, trying to get comfortable. This is torture,
the two of us not saying anything. I try to conjure Ryan’s ghost to distract
myself, but he doesn’t come to me.