Rising (8 page)

My nose itches. I scrunch it up. Wiggle
it. Turn my head side to side. It still itches. I lift my wrists from the
armrests of the chair, testing each cuff again. Still solid.

I’ve played out this scenario in my mind
before – well, not
this
scenario, exactly – but I’ve always known
capture was a possibility. Tucked safe in my bed with my brothers near, I’d somehow
convinced myself that, should kidnapping occur, I could be calm and clear-headed.
Even under rough questioning, I would never break, never show fear, as
brilliant lies rolled of my tongue and my mind concocted some sort of
MacGyver-brilliant escape plan.

I was wrong, as I am always wrong when I
think that I can be brave or calm or somehow like my brothers. Panic drapes icy
fingers down my back, and I feel like a tiny mouse caught in a big black hole.

I lick my chapped lips again, rock in
the metal chair, and feel its solid weight. They really should have bolted the chair
to the floor, or at least cuffed my ankles to its legs. I could flip myself
backwards or sideways, even stand with the chair, but what good would that do?
How far would I get with a solid chair hanging off me?

It’s going to be okay,
I tell myself.
Because….just because.

Mousey Maya is useless in this
situation, but I know how to fix this. I can’t be Maya. I need to be Tarren, who
isn’t afraid of anything, especially not dying. I turn my trembling jaw to
steel, gaze around me with his flint eyes, and draw the cold, calculating
thoughts from his mind.

You’re alive, that’s important,
he whispers. They must have used tranq
guns.

It means they’re going to hurt me,
Mousey Maya cries.

It means you have time,
Tarren responds, and I can almost hear
the even keeled tone of his voice when he’s in full-on mission mode.
Take
inventory,
he prods.

Right. I look down at myself. My coat
and scarf are gone, as are both my guns, the dagger I keep in a sheath on my
thigh, and my fake ID and credit card.

“Shit,” I mutter. Without my weapons and
especially without my gloves, I feel exposed, almost naked.

You do have weapons,
Tarren says. He’s right, of course. The
Totem can’t strip me of the training my brothers have instilled over the past
months. I push back the growing waves of fear. Time to come up with a plan – an
awesome, excellent, foolproof plan that will culminate in open handcuffs, a
return of guns, and, of course, a big group hug.

I groan at my pathetic brain.
Group
hug, Maya, that’s the plan?
All I really need to do is convince Rain and
his team that we’re fighting on the same side. But how? I don’t know them,
don’t know what they want.

You do know them,
Tarren’s calm voice chides me.

I remember the poor quality YouTube
video Gabe found several months back; how he’d laughed at the group of four
wearing animal masks and calling themselves The Totem. I line them up in my
mind’s eye: a puma, a tiger, a bird, and a penguin. Was another member holding the
camera? There’d been four in the alley, but someone must have been on the roof
directing them.

Amateurs,
Tarren whispers to me. It takes one look
around the room to know he’s right. I’m obviously in someone’s basement. I
study the worn brown carpeting at my feet, and when I twist my head to the
left, I can see large rubber bins stacked neatly against the wall, all labeled
with a cheerful curly cursive:
Christmas decorations, Fall place settings,
Gardening supplies, Church potluck.
Nails protrude from the blue walls
where pictures and décor have been removed.

Church potluck
?
What, do they all get together
to go hunt angels after choir practice and Bible study?

Use your senses,
Tarren’s voice urges.

Yes, super senses, right. I’ve got
those. I pull in a long breath and analyze the scents: old perfume, mothballs,
Rain Bailey’s woodsy deodorant. I hear footsteps above me, and the soft murmur
of voices. I feel auras too.

 Five,
I tell Tarren.
Five auras upstairs.

I wonder where the real Tarren is; what
he’s doing. Did he accept the last command I gave him?

Just before Tarren was taken by Grand, he
used the same code word, Styx. We were supposed to leave him behind and save
ourselves. Yeah, not exactly an option as far as Gabe was concerned. Not when
we had guns, fingers to pull triggers, and a good guess as to where Grand took
Tarren. That rescue almost cost Gabe his life.

Would Tarren die for me? I think of his
cold eyes, the way he always watches me, waiting for me to break, waiting for
an excuse to…

You won’t come for me,
I think to Tarren.
You’ll follow
protocol.

He knows that if I broke under torture I
could put everything and everyone at risk: Lo, Dr. Lee, Francesca, Gabe. Tarren
won’t let that happen. Even while I’m cuffed to this chair talking to myself so
I don’t melt into a puddle of fear, Tarren’s probably already severed all lines
of communication, cleaned out the hotel room, and abandoned the jeep. He’ll be
working now to move all of our allies to secure locations even as he puts
Peoria in his rearview mirror.

It’s what I told you to do,
I think,
but are you even a little
sad, or just relieved that I’m gone?

The panic comes again. Those icy
fingers, and now a helping of vertigo for good measure.

My nose itches.

I lash out against the cuffs, pulling,
straining, as a fluttering whimper crawls out of my throat. The chair rocks,
and for a moment it teeters up on one side. I brace for the fall, but the chair
tilts back down and lands solid and jarring.

You don’t have to break the cuffs,
Tarren whispers.

It comes to me, like a train of
obviousness steaming through my panic and the last vestiges of the drugs. The
lock picks! The beautiful, wonderful, fantastic locks picks that Tarren
commanded I sew into every piece of clothing I own. I’d sewn a basic double
ball pick into the right sleeve cuff of this gray, long-sleeved Under Armour shirt
on our trip back from Detroit.

I curl my fingers around the hem of my
right sleeve and feel the reassuring hardness of the pick nestled within the
cuff. My breath whooshes out in a loud sob of relief. Just as I begin to work
away the first loose stitches, the door above the stairs slams open, and heavy
steps descend.

***

They come for me, and the room fills
with the music of their energy. The instant ache in my chest tells me that it’s
been too long since I’ve fed.

I study my captors.
The Puma, the
Tiger, and the Penguin.
Oh my!
I think absurdly.

Puma is tall and broad. His open leather
jacket shows well-defined muscles beneath a conspicuously tight t-shirt, and
his skin is the smooth bronze of a fake tan. With his carefully-cropped sandy
hair and strong jaw, he’s perfected the bland handsomeness of a Ken doll except
for the arrogant smirk on his lips, which isn’t handsome at all.

He steps forward, his aura riding on green
tides of adrenaline. I’m introduced to a cloud of musky cologne and cinnamon
breath.

“You scared little girl?” he says and
giggles in a very disconcerting way.

I’m Tarren, Tarren, Tarren
, so of course I’m not scared. Emotion of
any kind repulses me. I keep my fingers wrapped around the lock pick hidden in
each sleeve of my shirt.

I look past Puma Mask and focus on the
Tiger. A heavy chain hangs from his thin waist beneath a long leather jacket. I
recognize the contours of his round, Asian face. His black hair is shorter than
the last time I saw him, and beneath his mask, his dark eyes simmer with hatred.
Murky, rotten colors fill his aura. I remember how close he’d come to dying in
Poughkeepsie. Milo, he’d said his name was Milo. I almost didn’t get us out of
that burning farmhouse, and even when I did he wasn’t breathing. If Tarren
hadn’t—

A fist crashes hard against my cheek. Pain
shatters my concentration, and the chair rocks sideways, before slamming back
down.

“Don’t look at him,” Puma Mask says.
“It’s just you and me down here, freak. Just you and me gonna have a little
fun.” He giggles again, blasting heavy clouds of cinnamon at me.

“You’re…supposed to ask questions first,
then beat me,” I inform him as tentacles of heat reach out across my face, all
the way to my neck and ear. My voice is shaky, weak, but it still doesn’t come
close to sounding as terrified as I actually am.

“That was just a welcoming present,”
Puma Mask says, that smirk never leaving his lips. I see hues of pleasure in
his aura, but not the bright shades of green I see in a little girl’s aura when
her mother hands her an ice cream cone or the waves of intense emerald when Gabe
beats a hard level on
Zombie Hordes VII.
This is a rotted shade of
green, sickness wrapped around his pleasure. He is the snot-nosed boy who plucks
the wings off living butterflies.
Only, he’s graduated from butterflies.
I
press myself deeper into the chair, as if that will make any difference.

Stay calm,
Tarren warns me as my vertigo kick up a
notch and my throat constricts.

“I already told Rain….Penguin, we’re on
the same side. I fight against the—”

“I’ll ask the questions here,” Puma Mask
snaps. “How many creatures are in your pack?”

“I have no pack. I’m alone.”

Another fist sails at me, but this time
I’m ready. The moment before impact, I push against the floor, tipping my chair
onto its back legs. Puma’s knuckles whiff through the empty air an inch from my
nose, and his momentum almost takes him a full 180 degrees. He’s off balance
and standing too close to me. I come back down and hook his ankle with my left
foot. A gentle tug is all it takes to hear the satisfying impact of his butt on
the floor.

Milo chuckles as he readjusts his tiger
mask. “You can’t even hit a girl cuffed to a chair, you idiot. Back off, I can
do this.”

“I got it!” Puma Mask growls. He performs
an awkward roll thing away from me that must have looked way better when he saw
it on TV. He scrambles to his feet, chest heaving with anger.

That was a mistake,
Tarren informs me, always the lord of
understatement even when I’m making him up in my head.

Puma’s fists pinwheel at me, and all I
can do is tuck my chin down and let the blows rain. They land on my jaw, my
right ear, my shoulder. I hear the crack of cartilage and feel a rush of warm
liquid down my lips moments before pain spreads across the bridge of my nose.

“Stop, stop!”

My eyes are shut, and because my head
pounds and my heart clobbers, it takes me a moment to realize the outward blows
have ceased.
Never this.
On all those nights I imagined what capture
would be like, I never conjured this much fear, never this much naked
helplessness.

“What the fuck!” Puma Mask exclaims.

I crack open my lids and see Rain
standing in front of me with a fistful of Puma’s leather jacket in his hand.

“Got a weak stomach
Penguin
?” Puma
spits out the name in derision. “Go upstairs, suck down some Ginger Ale, and
eat some fucking crackers.” Puma smirks, obviously proud of this line.

“This is how it’s got to be done,” Milo
says quietly to Rain, the hues of hatred in his aura lightening for a moment.
“They didn’t show us mercy.” He fingers the rusted chain at his hips and eyes
me with so much hostility I think he could start bottling it for mass
production.

But I did show you mercy,
I think. I dragged his unconscious body
out that burning farmhouse in Poughkeepsie after my brothers killed the angels
feeding on him. Even as I’d gagged on the smoke in my lungs, I’d begged Tarren
to keep performing CPR on Milo though it seemed like he was gone. Milo had only
regained consciousness long enough to tell Tarren his name.

Explain it to them.
This is Gabe’s voice in my head; Gabe
with the golden tongue who could talk his way past Cerberus if he had a mind
to.
Make them understand.

“I…the fire…Poughkeepsie,” I begin. The
words can’t seem to make it up my dry, dry throat. “I went in…and—”

Milo’s aura rages,
bright, bright,
bright.
The power of it intoxicates me, and my words sputter out.

“See, she’s talking.” Puma pulls his
jacket from Rain’s grip and shoves him aside. He readjusts the lapels as he
stares down at me. “Looks like we got a little nose bleed going on.” That
high-pitched giggle again. “You’re not gonna cwy now are you?”

His words barely register.

“Watch out. Her hands,” Rain whispers.

“Damn, that’s so sick.” Puma almost
sounds impressed. “I’m really getting to her.”