Rising (28 page)

A smile briefly lifts Gem’s lips, and I
wonder if he heard my thoughts. “When the formula used to make the Exalted was
lost, our father was determined to recreate it. He tried everything.”

Now the shudders run down my spine for a
different reason. Gabe has told me of the “labs” they stumbled across, the sick
experiments Grand carried out in his search for a new formula. He even raped
human women, including my mother, Diana, curious to see if angels could be
born. Apparently not.

“He was so proud when he finally
discovered that bone marrow could induce the change,” Gem continues. The color
is creeping back into his face. “It was proof that he was destined to create an
army, to rule.”

I look away, trying to parse the touches
of emotion I feel through our connection – fear, disgust, sadness. More fear,
and an odd sense of longing.

“It didn’t take him long to realize that
each injection of bone marrow transferred more strength, more agility, and additional
abilities.” Gem pauses.

“Then why just three bone marrow
injections?” I ask the obvious question. “Why not give someone five or six or
twenty injections?”

“He tried,” Gem says. He holds out his
index finger, and a flame dances on the tip. “But there are consequences.”

“How sick are you?”

“My father wasn’t a patient man. He saw
the initial results – more bone marrow equals more power. He didn’t wait long
enough to see how his test subjects fared over months or years. He wanted me to
be strong.”

I’ve noticed that Gem’s eyes constantly
jump around from one point to another as if he’s hearing and seeing a much
bigger, wider, and busier world. I feel it too, in his mind, multiple strands
of concentration following the whistle of a dust particle falling from the
curtains, the dance of a snowflake outside the window, the movement of auras
throughout our motel, and the whisper of a thousand different thoughts.  

“He gave me five injections. It was all
I could take,” Gem continues. Ghostly pain rings in my mind through our
connection. “He thought me weak. The others – the ones who took six, seven,
even ten injections, they became almost like gods.” Gem’s lips twitch into
another short smile. “And then they died, quite quickly. That’s when the
protocol became three injections.”

“But Grand wasn’t sick, neither was
Diamond,” I say and then realize my error. I answer my own question. “They were
the Exalted, the ones changed with the original formula, not bone marrow.”

Gem nods.

“How sick?” I ask again. I probe our
connection, sift through the web of other peoples’ thoughts that slip in and
out of his mind. Gem doesn’t recoil, doesn’t try to hide his mind.

“You’re dying,” I say, and wonder why I
want to crawl across the floor and throw my arms around this person I’ve only
just met.

Because he helped me save Tarren.

I glance behind me. Tarren sleeps
heavily, his aura shining and smooth. One arm dangles off the side of the bed.

“The cancer has been killing me for a
long time,” Gem says. When I look back, he’s watching me with an amused
expression on my face. “My healing ability slows it down, but eventually the
cancer will win.”

I’m not sure what to say. I have to keep
reminding myself that he’s a stranger, a dangerous stranger, even though I’ve
touched his soul.
And he’s my brother, even if he dresses like a
seven-year-old.

“I like turtles,” Gem says. “No crime in
that.”

I stare at the turtles on his chest.
“Can you turn it off?” I point to my head, “or do you hear everything?”

Gem’s eyes wander again. “Someone
ambushed an ambulance.”

A few seconds later, I hear the
approaching wail of a police siren. It passes a few blocks away.

“It takes effort.” Gem returns to my
question. “Like a door I have to hold shut while someone pulls from the other
side.” He leans his head back against the wall. “You stop being surprised after
a while, about the things in people’s hearts.”

I wonder what it would be like, to hear
the whisper of people’s thoughts all day and night. All those secrets, lusts,
insecurities. It would be a curse, but at least I could find out what Tarren is
hiding. I’d know the truth about Tammy.

 “Some things are hidden for a reason,”
Gem says.

“Thanks Buddha.”

A quiet falls upon us. Gem’s lips tug up
again, but his eyes are far away, and I think he might be listening to the
South Park episode downstairs again. My own mind is far from quiet. The
questions come rushing in like a dam has broken. I want to understand why Gem
is so different from our father, how old he is, where he fits into all of
Grand’s crazy scheming, why he lit that match for me at the warehouse in Texas.

“Which one do you want me to answer
first?” Gem’s eyes are focused back on me. Kind eyes. Tired eyes.

I chew on the inside of my cheek.
“God…what was it like growing up with…him?”

“Lonely. Not overly unpleasant,” Gem
says. “My mother was awarded with Ascension after my birth, but she didn’t
survive the process. Clue one that I was inherently weak as our father would
eventually conclude.”

Gem smiles at that. He seems to smile at
everything whether it’s good or bad or tragic. He seems so…so lost. I push
myself off the bed and sit down next to Gem. I put my hand on top of his. Such
a simple thing, touch, but I’ve been starved of it for so long, that even this
little bit sends electricity through me.

“We must speak,” Gem says, watching my
hand on his.

“We are speaking.”

“Of the coming war.” He smiles, and I
follow his gaze to Sir Hopsalot who has cautiously emerged from beneath the
bed, his nose wriggling with the new scent.

Gem holds out his hand, and Sir Hopsalot
takes cautious steps forward, craning his neck to sniff. Gem stretches out his
legs, and Sir Hopsalot climbs into his lap, head down on his paws, ready for
petting. The animal’s aura is smooth, harmonious.

I stare at Gem. “Did you just…did you
just use The Force on the rabbit?”

Gem runs his fingers over the rabbit’s
head and down his gray back. “I let him know that I wasn’t his enemy.”

“Are you my enemy?” I ask.

Gem’s eyes find mine for a moment, and
then off they go again. “Your brother is back.”

I hear the engine of the jeep growl into
the parking lot below. Gem slides his hand from beneath mine, and Sir Hopsalot
jumps out of his lap.

“What did Tarren mean? He said you had a
deal,” I blurt, a touch desperately, as Gem stands and walks to the window. He
opens it, and a cold wind immediately punctures the warmth generated by the
noisy heater.

“We’re not done yet,” Gem says and nods
upward. “I’ll wait on the roof.”

I feel Gabe’s energy slowly coming up
the steps.

“What deal?” I say again.

Gem turns to the bed. Through the
connection of our minds I feel waves of guilt.

“I was terrified of our father,” Gem
says in a soft voice. “Terrified of his disappointment and his punishments.”
His face is tilted down, half in shadow, half in light. It’s almost too
metaphoric to be amusing.

Behind me, I hear Gabe struggle up the
final step. I open the door to let him in. When I turn, Gem is gone.

Gabe kicks the door closed. In one hand
he clutches a professional-grade medical kit so big that it could pass for a gym
bag. In the other hand, he holds a small cardboard box. I immediately feel
them, three small auras within.

Gabe drops the medical kit and slides
down the wall like he suddenly lost all of his bones. Blood dribbles from several
deep gashes in his knee. The stiff, darkened stain around the wound tells me that
the bleeding has been going on for a while. His palms are raw and torn, and he
trembles, though with cold, fever, or exhaustion I’m not sure.

His aura jumps and twists, bright colors
wriggling through…I don’t know what the hell his aura is doing.

“Are you hurt?” I kneel down next to
him, but I’m not sure how close I should come. Gabe opens his eyes and looks at
the bloody mess of his knee as if noticing the injury for the first time.

“Probably not.”

“What happened?”

His brow crinkles. “That was Plan A.
Plan A didn’t go so well. Plan C, now that was the ticket.”

“Lie down.” I pick up the medical kit. “I’ll
take care of…”

“No.” A frost coats Gabe’s voice. He’s
stolen that tone directly from the Tarren collection. “I’ll do it.”

Pressing his back against the wall, he
stands. He takes a moment, catching his breath, and I watch his aura reel in
unfamiliar patterns.

“Did you take something?” I ask.

A smirk flowers and dies. Then he walks
by me like I don’t even exist.

“Tarren?” Gabe puts his hand on his
brother’s shoulder and squeezes.

Tarren’s eyes flutter open. Consciousness
brings heavy waves of red into his aura. “Picnic,” he murmurs.

The hard expression melts right off of
Gabe’s face as if it were an ill fitted mask. “Hey big brother,” he says, and lilac
hues express in his aura.

Something nags at my brain as I watch
the scene. It’s not just the flair of jealously at the obvious hero worship in
Gabe’s aura. My eyes settle on the column of four white circular burns on
Tarren’s arm. Among the long threads of his other scars, they’re hardly
noticeable, but when Gabe’s hand moves down Tarren’s arm, his fingers almost align
with the burns. My brain churns. This means something. I try to focus on it,
but the auras in that cardboard box call to me.

“Maya.”

I snap my gaze to the bed, to Gabe’s unfriendly
eyes. “I need some time to take care of him,” he says. “Food, water, bathroom.”

I wish he’d scream and pelt me with
expletives, maybe even threaten me with a brandished gun like Tarren has done
on occasion. But all I see on Gabe’s face is exhaustion and distance, like he
can’t even be bothered to waste emotion on me.

“Alone,” Gabe clarifies.

“Oh.” I pick up the cardboard box and
try not to let my aching hunger show. “Thank you.” My voice is just a creak. I
want to order Gabe to wash off his knee and douse it in Neosporin, but I just
trudge to the window, open it, and climb onto the roof where Gem waits.

It’s foolish to try and face him with
any semblance of dignity and control. He heard everything below and can take a
stroll through my mind to observe how deeply, how thoroughly, Gabe demolished me
with his indifference.

“Why did you come here?” I ask.

“You don’t need to feel embarrassed,” Gem
says. “Not in front of me.”

And of course he can see how much I
don’t want him to watch me drain these pathetic little rats and then writhe in
the grip of addiction. A sad smile touches Gem’s lips. Whenever he smiles, he
looks so different from Grand.

“Feed,” he says.

I sigh even as my fingers fumble to undo
the latches of the case. As soon as the cardboard flaps come undone and my gaze
lands on those small golden auras within, I lose all my pride. I feed.

After the animals are dead, I wrap my
arms around my body, shivering, barely aware that I’m on my knees in the snow and
that Gem looms above me. Through our mental connection, he gives me gentle
waves of calmness and strength that douse my frantic fires.

Fire.

The pieces click into place. I see a flame
kindling on the edge of Gem’s finger. Those scars on Tarren’s arms, a column of
four circles on each bicep. Gabe’s fingers lining up.

I stare up at Gem, feel guilt replacing
his calm. Tragedy echoes through our connection.

“That’s what you meant.” My voice is
shaky. “When you said you helped damage him. You hurt him that night. You tortured
him.”

Snow drifts down from the clouds, and
the sun pierces through in sharp rays of light. I wait for Gem to gather his
thoughts.

“Our father was obsessed with finding
your mother, Diana,” Gem says finally. “It wounded his pride that she had escaped
him all of those years ago, a mere human.”

Even as Gem speaks, my hands are
absently at work, gathering up the dead mice and placing them back into the
cardboard container. I pull the glove back onto my left hand, though I have
trouble lining up the fingers.

“The knives, the cutting, that was a
punishment for Tammy,” Gem continues. “She killed our uncle, Grand’s brother,
and he wanted to make her watch her own brother’s life drain away.”

I hear a sobbing voice in my mind, faint
and far away.
“Stop
it, Stop it, STOP IT!”
This
is Tammy’s voice, echoing through time, her heart breaking all over again in
Gem’s memory.

“The torture was just pleasure for our
father, not for information extraction,” Gem continues. “That was my job.”

I close my eyes, but this is a bad idea.
I see Tarren’s scars open and weeping blood. I see him chained, arms over his
head. My wrists, though nearly healed, ache with the remembered pressure of the
shackles.

“My powers weren’t as refined as they
are now.” Gem’s voice loses volume. “He fought against me. Even wounded, his
mind was formidable. I couldn’t break through.”

“Those burn marks on his arms,” I prompt
Gem.

“Contact makes it easier,” he replies.
“I didn’t have as much control over my abilities as I do today.” His fingertips
glow red hot for a pulse and then normalize.

For so many months I’ve wanted to know
what really happened that night, and now that Gem is filling in all the blanks,
I just want him to stop.

“What deal did you make?” I force myself
to ask.

“We fought, in here.” Gem taps his head.
“He was weakening from the blood loss, the pain. It was only a matter of time
before I would break through, but I was growing weak as well. At last, he offered
a deal, and I took it.”

Gem waits as if he expects me to leap to
the next stepping stone of the story on my own. But I have no idea what…
oh.

I let out a puff of air and watch it
dissipate in front of my face. “Me. He gave up me.”

“Persephone, the infant sister with the
birthmark on her back. A child of Grand’s blood,” Gem says. “Persephone for the
safety of the rest of his thoughts.”

I turn my face away from the sun. “It
wasn’t Diana he was protecting. She’d been dead from cancer for years,” I hear
myself say. I almost choke on the next words. “He was protecting Gabe. He
didn’t want you to find Gabe.”

I remember all the times I’ve been mean,
selfish, and unfair to Tarren, how I despised his coldness and distance. He let
me think he gave me up in exchange for his own freedom, but it would have never
been that. I should have known. I should have broken through all his ice with a
sledgehammer.

Gem’s focus wanders to the parking lot,
where Raven’s mom pulls into a space. Abe blasts out of the van like a rocket
ship, clutching his Batman action figure. His mother emerges more slowly.

“I guess I should make a deal with you
then too, huh?” I manage.

“That’s why I’m here.” Gem reaches out
his hand, and for a moment I don’t understand until I realize that I’m still on
my knees. I put my gloved palm into his, and he pulls me gently to my feet.

“You and your brothers provide a vital
service,” he says.

Those weren’t exactly the words I was
expecting. I let my eyebrows go up. No point in playing poker face with a mind
reader.

“I’m sure my brothers will be glad to
know their life’s work hasn’t gone un-noticed.”

Gem doesn’t let go of my hand, and I
don’t mind. “The average angel feeds every two to four days. Over 120 humans die
every year to keep a single angel alive.”

If these numbers are meant to shock me,
they don’t. Tarren has already made a similar calculation. But I think I can
see where Gem is trying to lead me.

“You’re worried about supply and
demand.”

“I’m worried about discovery. If the
world finds out about angels, half the public will demand that we be rounded up
and shot. The other half will beg to be Ascended. It won’t take much to tilt
the balance.”

I try to figure out where exactly my
angel extermination team fits into the equation but come up empty.

“A few thousand angels could devastate
the human population supply…that’s if the humans don’t launch a full-scale
eradication campaign first,” Gem says.

He looks at me expectantly, and I think
I understand.
Fuck a rhinoceros, is he saying what I think he’s—

“I want you to keep doing what you’re
doing, picking off the novices, hemming our growth,” Gem interrupts my thought.
“Most of the ones you find are Cherubs who haven’t been trained properly.”

“You’re here to tell us good job?” I
laugh even though this conversation isn’t even on the same map as funny. “It’s nice
to be appreciated, I guess.”

Gem isn’t laughing. “It will delay the
inevitable.”

The laughter dries up in my throat.
“Yeah, we kind of figured out that one too.”

Gem looks at me, and I see an apology in
his eyes. “We’ve lost control of the population. The rules put in place to
check their growth are gone. It won’t stop. For every angel you and your brothers
take down, three more rise up.”

Tarren has made this calculation too. We
all know what we’re facing.

“No, you don’t,” Gem says, shaking his
head. “Not anymore.” I feel a dark shroud weighing over his thoughts.

“So what, it’s hopeless?”

Gem’s face is grim, all those little
smiles gone away. “I believe that the only way our kind can survive is to stay
hidden, to not antagonize the humans.”

“You eat humans,” I point out.

“I’ve devised a safer way. I never meant
to be...a leader of anything, but there are others who have adopted my ways. I
teach those who want to learn.” Gem sighs, and I feel the reluctance in his
mind with the mantel of angel self-help guru.

“Some call us the Angels of Mercy,” he
continues. “We feed off the dying, the elderly, the homeless, and criminals,
the ones people either expect to die or are happy to give up to the reaper. It
requires a certain restraint, but it keeps us safe.”

“Diamond was building an army. What
happens now that she’s dead?”

Gem bows his head. “Yes.”

This single word doesn’t touch the
conflicting emotions that flow through our connection. I get the overwhelming
sense that Gem did not have a simple relationship with any of his family
members. Well, look at us.

“Warren is still alive,” Gem continues. “He
will regroup, and then in all likelihood do something profoundly stupid.”

“War is coming,” I say but can’t manage
to laugh at my own lame attempt at cleverness.

We look at each other. “Do you
understand what I’m saying?” Gem asks softly.

I lay my head against his shoulder,
suddenly tired. “You came here to tell me that we’re bailing out a sinking boat
with a sieve.”

“There are always choices. Always hope,”
Gem says. His voice enters my mind.
When
it feels like too much, think of 121
–
the number of lives you save per year for every angel you stop.

“You suck at pep talks.’

 “You’re so lucky, you know that? To
grow up the way you did, to have what you have now.” Gem’s voice is soft again.
Not angry, but weary.

“What I have?” I straighten up and pull
away from him. “This is what I have!” I hold out my gloved hands to him. “And
the song. Always the song in my head.”

“You have brothers,” Gem says.

“Brothers I hurt.”

“Brothers who love you.”

“How would you know?” I spit back before
realizing how stupid that sounds.

Gem just smiles and then bows his head.
“You and your brothers can continue your mission, and I will not stop you, with
one exception. Do not go after my people.”

“How will I know the difference?”

“You’ll know. My Angels of Mercy only
feed on the dying or the damned. Everyone else is fair game, but if you ever
kill any peaceful angels again, I will have to act against you.” Something
flickers between our connection. Something cold.