Rising

Rising

Girl With Broken
Wings, Book Three

By J Bennett

Copyright © 2014 by
J Bennett

All
rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-9840048-8-1

This is
a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events
or locales is entirely coincidental.

The
publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility
for third-party websites or their content

Part One

My heels
clack, clack, clack,
across
the uneven parking lot. I touch my blonde wig to make sure a stray wisp of my
real hair hasn’t fallen down.
Clack, clack, clack.
The shoes are
uncomfortable, strappy little things, but at least it only takes a moment to
kick them off in case I need to run, jump, kill someone, or all of the above.

A girl’s got to be prepared.

As I step across a frozen puddle
reflecting colored smudges from the blinking neon lights ahead of us, I set my
teeth together hard. The hunger roils within me. It mixes with the heavy base
beats emanating from the strip club. My palms are already heating up, but I can
handle this now. I’m well fed – four rats before we started patrolling tonight
– and I’m getting better every day at holding in my darker, hungry self.

“Ready?” Tarren asks by my side. His
long strides eat up the distance to the strip club, but I have no trouble
keeping up.

“That beard’s a good look for you,” I
respond, because I know he hates wearing it.

A sign plastered on the front door of
the club proclaims, EVERY NIGHT IS LADIES NIGHT! Some budding Picasso has drawn
a large penis over the sign. Classy. Tarren pushes open the door, and we enter
a front room area with a slimy linoleum floor. A bouncer, who smells like
showers are wishful thinking, squats on a stool in front of us.

I’m twenty years old, but that’s not
what my fake ID says. I hand it over, and the bouncer
harumps
at the
name on the card. Buffy. It’s a dumb joke that wasn’t funny the first time Gabe
thought of it and nowhere near hilarious when he proudly handed me this ID. My
chest tightens.
Gabe.
He should be here, sauntering into this strip club
by my side. He’s so natural at this undercover thing, pulling on different
personas like they were a second skin.

Tarren, on the other hand, is a terrible
actor. He would’ve gotten cast as Non-Speaking Shrub or Person Two On Bus in
the school play if Diana hadn’t homeschooled her children between missions. Even
when he tries to play at being a natural person-like person, Tarren is stiff
and intimidating. On these assignments, I feel like I have to carry the burden
of a decent subterfuge for both of us, which is why I laugh shrilly like the
dumb blonde I’m trying to be.

“It’s a late birthday present for him,”
I gush to the bouncer, leaning momentarily into Tarren.

The bouncer grunts once, hands back our
IDs, and we enter into the fray through a second set of doors. Even if I didn’t
possess superhuman senses, the place would be way over the top. My acute
hearing, vision, and smell just make the tragedy of this run-down stripper
nightmare all the more unpleasant.

Whoever is in charge seems to have theorized
that the louder the music and the more frantic the onstage lasers and fog
machine, the less likely the patrons are to notice that half the strippers look
like middle-aged meth addicts.

As we move past the door, I steel myself
against the onslaught of stimuli, letting my hypersensitive body adjust. It’s a
real treat – all that music banging into my ear drums, the laser lights
flashing across my retinas, and the feel of so much greasy lust spilling through
the auras of the patrons.

“Anything?” Tarren whispers. He doesn’t
bother leaning down. He knows I can hear him in spite of the skull-shattering
music.

I give the room a quick once over, my
eyes settling on each figure leaning over the stage or hunched at one of the
shadowed tables. I register the clear glow of a colorful aura around each body.
I shake my head and catch a small shiver in Tarren’s aura. This is our second
strip club of the night, the twelfth since we arrived in Detroit two days ago.
Still no angel. It’s looking more and more likely that our target moved on;
that we missed him.

Tarren must be thinking the same thing.
He commandeers the table closest to the door, and his mouth sets tight with
disappointment. If the angel jumped town, we’ll have to wait until we find his
pattern again. More dead strippers. We already missed him in St. Louis last
week, and, four dead girls later, he’s slipping through our fingers in Detroit.

Angels – I hate that term. The things
we’re hunting are anything but the dew-eyed Precious Moments figurines my
grandmother loved to collect. Our “angels” are actually just plain o’ humans
who accepted a little DNA scrambling in exchange for some big physical and
mental upgrades and a wicked appetite that I understand all too well.

I drop down into the chair next to
Tarren, lean on my elbows, and keep all the shivering pieces of my brain
carefully stitched together. This is what the hunger does to me – chips away the
pieces of my control like the shell of a hardboiled egg until…until something
bad emerges.
Only ten minutes,
I tell myself.
No problemo.
My
fingernails tap across the table’s surface.

It would be too noticeable if we left
right away, so Tarren insists that we wait exactly ten minutes. When I get the
nod from him, I’ll loudly proclaim that I’m disgusted and demand that we leave.
Tarren, for his part, will sigh like I’m such a drag, and we’ll shuffle out. Onto
the next strip joint. More neon. More dumb lasers and fog machines. More hunger
to keep at bay.

At least there’s not a bachelor party in
this club
, I console
myself.

We wait. I spend about five seconds
wondering at the solid, high-quality oak tables they’ve got in this place – maybe
they were left over from the previous establishment – and then realize that I
don’t care, because I’m so done with soaking in this heavy music, this sticky floor,
the outpouring of emotion around me that only I can see.

I turn my head and study Tarren under my
lashes. My half-brother has rugged-guy brooding down to an art. The nice
cheekbones, chiseled jaw, and wide blue-gray eyes are built right in. He’s also
managed to perfect that weary,
Oh
the things I’ve seen
look that
ages him far past his twenty-six years. I’ve been trying to wipe that look off
his face for the past two months, but it’s like a permanent fixture.

His gaze sweeps across the stage where three
women are developing very special connections with the respective poles they
writhe against. His gaze lingers on the third woman, young and pretty with long
black tresses that lap across large breasts. Most of the other men in the place
crowd around her section of the stage, sticking their grubby dollars in her scarlet
thong.

Tarren’s aura is a cloud of muddy blues held
tightly around his body. He’s pinning it down, hiding his true emotions, as
usual. But as he watches the woman gyrate on stage, I catch faint hues of purple
lust seeping through his control. He’s trying to hide it, trying to repress as
always, but I’m actually relieved. Lust is emotion. Lust means he isn’t
irrevocably broken.

Because I have to save Tarren. It’s a
promise I made to myself three months ago the night I almost destroyed
him…destroyed everything. I haven’t actually figured out how to save Tarren,
but I have a feeling even Hercules would wet his loincloth if given this labor.

We’ve got another five minutes to kill,
and I’m already starting to lose it a little. My forearms shake, and if I took
off my tight, fingerless gloves, it’s a good bet that a soft glow would pulse
from beneath my palms.

A stripper weaves her way around the
tables. Her face hides behind several heavy layers of makeup, but I can still
see the bags under her eyes. The black ruffled bra-thing she’s wearing struggles
to hitch up her large breasts as they sag over the cups. The lasers momentarily
highlight a C-section scar across her abdomen, thick and ropey like it didn’t
heal right.

Despite the lack of attention she
receives from the patrons, the stripper keeps her chin up as she determinedly saunters
around the tables in her impossibly high go-go boots. Her heavy thighs jiggling
as she sways her wide hips and shakes a pink feathered boa that seems to be
molting. Her aura is pale and sluggish, filled with threads of rusty orange.

The more time I spend studying the
ethereal, glowing auras of my brothers and the ordinary people we encounter on
the road, the more I’m learning that each one is unique. Certain colors have
broad emotional connotations that are the same for most, but the colors can
split into so many different shades, weave and saturate in a million distinct
combinations and patterns. I focus on the particular hues in the stripper’s
aura. While oranges usually equate to shame or embarrassment, I think that for
this stripper those colors signify resignation. I also notice pale reds – discomfort
– emanating from her aura around her lower back and feet.

I make a decision and wave her over.
After all, it’s been Tarren’s birthday every day for two weeks now, and I still
haven’t gotten him a present.

The stripper slinks our way.

“Hi handsome,” she purrs at Tarren.

Tarren opens his mouth, intent on
shooing her away.

 “How much for a lap dance?” I holler
over the music.

“Twenty,” she yells back.

“Done.” I pull off some fives from the
slim roll in my pocket and lay them on the table.

“For you or him?” she asks.

“It’s his birthday,” I nod toward Tarren,
and give him a wide grin as the stripper clomps over to him. “Happy birthday,”
I say.

Tarren can’t actually risk shooting me
in a public setting, but that’s not to say the thought isn’t crossing his mind
right now. Instead, he settles for giving me the mother of all scowls. Then, he
quickly plasters on a tight smile as the woman, who introduces herself as Ambrosia,
starts swaying her hips at him.

“I like your beard,” Ambrosia says in a
high, childlike voice as she grinds against him.

“Thanks,” Tarren coughs out.

I hoot and cheer her on. Yeah, this
isn’t nice of me at all – raining all over Tarren’s little brood session, trying
to force his walls down via stripper. But I’ll use any weapon at my disposal if
it will get him to relax even a little.

“Happy biiiirrrtttthday…Mr. President,” Ambrosia
moans as she presses her breasts together in front of Tarren’s face.

Nice touch.

Tarren, for his part, tries to stoically
last through the experience. He doesn’t actually flinch at those huge knockers
drowning out his line of sight, but he grips the edge of our table so hard that
his knuckles are going white.

Ambrosia notices his reticence and – God
bless this woman – she doubles up, sucking on her finger and straddling Tarren
as she thrusts her pelvis forward. I check the club touching polices listed in
stern, all-caps letters on a big sign next to the door, and yep, Ambrosia’s broken
about half of them already.

“Oh!” she yells as she spanks herself.

If only Gabe could see this.
I’m struck again by the familiar ache of
regret and loss.

The lap dance sputters fast. Tarren
isn’t giving Ambrosia anything to work with, and I can’t keep up my false
bravado. Finally, Ambrosia leans forward and reaches to stroke Tarren’s beard.

“Looks like there’s a scar under there,
big boy. How’d you get—”

Tarren snatches her hand and thrusts it
away from his face.

“Hey!” Ambrosia stumbles back, her aura
flashing bright reds. “You can’t touch me!”

The table tilts, and I realize that I’m
pushing down hard as I grip the edges and try to calm the hunger that
Ambrosia’s wild aura stokes inside me.

Tarren holds up his hands. “I…uh, we’re
leaving. Here.” He digs into his pocket and adds a crisp twenty on top of my
wrinkled fives. He gives me a piercing look. I gently let the table down and nod
that I’m okay.

Ambrosia looks at me funny. “That table
is really heavy,” she says.

“Ambrosia is a Greek word,” Tarren says
quickly to distract her from my freakish strength. “It was the food of the
gods, the essence of their immortality.”

Ambrosia’s gaze swings to him, and her
eyes sharpen. “That’s the worst come on I’ve heard all day,” she spits back,
husky tones replacing the fake girlish trill. She snatches the money off the
table. The bills go into her bra, and off she saunters in those loud white
go-go boots.

“We’re leaving,” Tarren says, his voice
a low, rolling growl.

Oh boy. I’m in for it.

We stand up together. I can’t get
distance from this wreckage of humanity fast enough. Just as I turn toward the
door, a new figure enters, bringing in a bluster of cold with him. The man is
short, bald, and definitely an angel.

Easy enough for me to tell. He possesses
no aura – no brilliant shimmer of colors outlining his body.

And if he happens to look over here,
he’s going to catch a whole lot of the same nothing on my end. Technically I
have an aura – or at least I’ve been told I do – but it’s pale and weak, and even
if the angel doesn’t realize I’m a hybrid, he’ll definitely figure out that I’m
not totally human.

I tap the outside of my wrist, and
Tarren is instantly on alert. He follows my gaze to the figure at the door. The
guy still stands in front of the door leering toward the stage. Even in the
darkness, I can see his swarthy, pock-marked skin and the bitter cut to his
mouth.