Rising (9 page)

“You were in Poughkeepsie?” Milo
presses. “You were one of them.” The accusation is a growl – a perpetrator, not
possibly a rescuer. “You fed on us like…like, animals.”

I turn away from him, forcing my eyes
closed to protect me from the spell of his aura. The throb of pain in my face
helps me reestablish control. Blood seeps into my mouth and drips off my chin. I’m
not calm and hard like Tarren. I’m not witty and fluent like Gabe. I’m just
Maya and Monster Maya and Mousey Maya and Stupid Pixie Girl.

I look up at Rain, hold onto the brown
eyes beneath his mask.

“I didn’t kill Sunshine,” I whimper.

“What the hell does that mean?” Puma Mask
sneers. “We talking in code now?” That arrogant smirk is back and so are those
sick greens in his aura. More butterfly wings to pluck. He takes a step toward
me, his fingers folding into a fist.

“I want her,” Milo says, reeking of
damage and revenge.

“Wait,” Rain speaks above the others,
his voice rough and uncertain. “Let’s just…”

The door opens above.

“We’re busy,” Puma Mask shouts up.
“She’s cracking.”

“Bear’s got a lead. He says it’s strong.”
The female voice is so soft that it sounds like a dove’s coo.

Puma Mask grimaces and points a finger
at my face. “Stay here,” he says and giggles at his own joke. “We’ve still got
a lot of catching up to do.” He turns and walks up the stairs.

“You guys go. I’m gonna stay here,” Milo
says. His hand never seems to leave the chain around his waist. Rain sees it
too.

“We need everyone,” he says to Milo,
“for safety.”

Milo gives him a vicious stare, but Rain
doesn’t back down. I see it again, the quick fluctuation in Milo’s aura from
bloody reds to softer hues and then back again.

“We’ll have time later,” Rain says.

Milo gives me a long, hate-filled stare.
“I thought he killed you all in Poughkeepsie,” he says and then follows Puma
Mask up the stairs.

“The man with the scar,” Rain speaks. “Tiger
says he saved us all; thinks he’s some kind of superhero.”

Yeah, Tarren has that effect on people.

Another drop of blood trembles on my
chin and splashes onto my thigh. They have no idea what they’re doing. If it
were just Puma and Milo, I would let them screw themselves to hell…but Rain…he
shouldn’t be here. I swallow and force my voice to work. “Rain...”

“Penguin, and don’t you dare thank me,”
he snaps.

“You can’t bring any other angels down
here, not like this,” I pull on my cuffs. “This isn’t enough.”

Rain crosses his arms. “They seem to be
holding you just fine.”

“I’m not a full angel, I already told
you.”

“Whatever.” He uncrosses his arms.

“Angels are too dangerous to
interrogate,” I plunge on desperately. “They have abilities, they can—”

“Penguin,” Milo calls down.

Rain gives me a long look. His aura is a
swirl of colors, and god damn me, just the thought of his energy has my palms
splitting open again. The chambers within release an ambient glow and waves of
heat.

“Not a full angel, huh?” Rain’s voice is
barely audible beneath the chemical chaos his aura is causing in my brain. “You
sure as hell look like one to me.”

Then he’s gone, tromping up the stairs,
leaving me to my dry eyes, my bleeding nose, and the reassuring feel of the
lock pick in my sleeve.

A door opens somewhere above me in the
house, and I feel the auras leave together. All but one.

My fingernails dig into the hem of my
sleeve, pulling against the stitches that I made big and loose so they’d be
easy to break. My face is a single large pile of pain. The waterfall of blood
from my nose slackens to a drip. Those icy fingers of dread are back, wrapping
around me, squeezing me to pulp.

Tarren, I have to be Tarren again. I try
to find him within me. Slow. Careful. Plodding. But I can’t stop my heart from
clamoring like it wants out of my ribcage and this whole terrible nightmare.

The door to the basement opens just as
the first stitch snaps. I tug two more away, opening up a small hole in my cuff.
Light footsteps descend the stairs and stop halfway. I hear a long pull of
breath. My fingers dig, and I slide the lock pick out from my cuff, gripping it
in my palm as if it were the Holy Grail. My eyes run lovingly down its silver
body and the small bent heads on each end.

From the stairwell, the breath comes out
in a tight rush. The steps continue until a figure stands on the last stair. An
aura flairs, and the girl steps out of the stairwell. She is short and round
with brown skin and straight black hair pulled into a crooked ponytail. Her
thick blue jacket hides all traces of breasts, and I wonder how old she is.
Maybe my age, or even a little younger. She moves away from the stairwell, but
stays pressed against the back wall of the basement, about 12 feet away from
where I’m seated in the center of the room.

“Could I get some water?” I ask. It’s a
long shot, but at least the high emotions charging through her aura seem to be
uncertainty and fear, rather than hatred or those sick green hues that Puma
Mask has taught me to loath.

“Oh, um, I don’t…” For a moment she
honestly considers the request. Her hand flutters up, patting the yellow bird
mask that covers the top half of her face.

She chose Big Bird for her Totem thing?

“No,” she decides.

“But I’m really thirsty.” I soften my
voice and go for my most innocent expression, the one that could twist Gabe
around my finger before he got hurt.

“No talking,” the girl snaps. Her naturally
high voice severely undercuts her attempt at a forceful command. She fiddles
with her jacket and produces a gun, which she holds out awkwardly in two hands.
I study the barrel. It’s a tranq gun…I think.

“Okay,” I say, and we lapse into silence.
I study my cuffs and find them to be a standard Smith and Wesson 100 model with
double locks engaged.
Good, good, good.
We have a pair of these at the
house. Gabe declined to tell me how they were acquired, but he did train me on
them. The double locks will slow me down, but not by much. I just need a small
window of time with no eyes on me, and I can be out of these cuffs, out of this
house, and then….I’ll think of something after that.  .  

Five minutes alone, just five measly
minutes is all I need.

Time drips by, and Birdie doesn’t do me
the favor of going to play hide and seek by herself. I sit. She stares. I feel
my face throb with every heart beat. She keeps staring. The pick practically
burns the skin on my palm. Still staring.
Shit, Team Crazy Knuckles is going
to come back before she even blinks.

 Maybe I should just start screaming
hysterically and flailing in the chair. Birdie might get flustered enough that
I could at least unlock the first cuff.
Or she could decorate your face with
a dozen tranq darts,
Gabe’s voice whispers to me in ironic tones.
Patience,
Tarren tells me, even as Birdie’s aura teases at the predator part of me.
The hunger grows, and my control is starting waver.

Birdie switches the gun to one hand and
wipes her palm on her jeans. She glances up the stairs, probably wishing the
rest of the group would return. I’m guessing guard duty isn’t exactly her
chosen line of work.

Cookies, you want to bake cookies so bad
right now,
I think at
her.
The boys would love some warm, gooey cookies when they get back from
trying to kidnap people.

A half hour drags by and then another.
Go
up and dust,
I think to her.
No one likes a dusty house. Wouldn’t the
boys be so pleased if the house was sparkling when they came back? You could
probably give the carpets a good shampooing while you’re at it. No time like
the present.

Birdie seems immune to my thought
projections, and I give up and slump back in the chair. I almost here Tarren
barking at me to do something useful with my kidnap time, so I try to stitch
together what I know about The Totem. It amounts to basically nothing except
that they are clearly amateurs. Rain had never heard the term “angel” before,
and these guys clearly don’t appreciate the strength level of full angels or
apparently know about the different ability each full angels possesses.

Not complete amateurs,
Tarren corrects me. He’s right. The way
the team boxed me into the alley; the fact that they could even discover an
angel when Tarren and I came up empty for three days tells me that at least
some part of their operation isn’t completely reckless and sad.
Tranq guns
aren’t easy to get,
Gabe confirms to me. It’s all so confusing.
How
in the hell did Rain and Milo get from Poughkeepsie to this? Where did
sociopathic Puma Mask and his nasty knuckle sandwiches come from? What about little
Birdie with the crooked ponytail? She looks like she should be at marching band
practice on some community college campus.

After another half hour, Birdie unzips
her big, blue jacket, revealing a white Hello Kitty sweatshirt beneath. As if I
wasn’t unterrified enough of her. She looks up and gives me a suspicious stare.

“It’s a good look for you,” I tell her
solemnly.

“No talking,” she says. I notice pink jags
ticking through her aura with growing urgency. I know exactly what this means,
and now I’m sending her thoughts of waterfalls, rushing rivers, tap water gushing
out of a sink.
Drip, drip, drip,
I think to her.

She lasts another fifteen minutes,
rocking forward and back on the balls of her feet. I hunch my shoulders,
looking as sad, innocent, and non-escapy as possible.

“I have to go to the….” she starts and
then stops. We stare at each other. She frowns, puts her gun down on the floor,
and climbs the stairs. Did she just seriously put her gun on the floor? I can’t
wait to tell Tarren that someone in the world is more inept at vigilantism than
I am.

Look who’s chained to a chair by the Zoo
Pals,
Gabe’s voice
sneaks in.

Shut up!
I think back as I pull the pick from my right
sleeve.

Gabe’s face breaks into my thoughts, and
a familiar rush of guilt stills my fingers.
Tarren will keep him safe
,
I think and reapply myself to the task. I’ll need to disengage the double
lock first and then release the single lock to get out of the cuffs. No
problem. The picking process is almost the same; it’s just the direction of the
rotation that changes.

I slide the hooked edge of the pick into
the small hole of the lock.
Easy, easy,
I hear Tarren whisper to me.
Take
your time. Do it right.
I move the pick gently, setting it against the
inner pins. I twist the pick counter-clockwise. My hands shake, and the pick
loses its perch as I swear and reapply. The positioning of the cuffs is so
awkward, but that’s no excuse for my clumsiness. Fear changes everything. I’ve
picked this cuff upside down, blindfolded, behind my back – anything Gabe could
think of when he trained me. But right here, in this moment when it really,
really counts, my hands are sloppy and unsure.

I press again, and this time I hear the soft
click of the double lock disengaging. My breath whistles out over my chapped
lips. Now I just have to disengage the single lock on the cuff. My fingers feel
stiff. My brain is interfering too much. I reverse the turn of the pick,
pressing clockwise.

A toilet flushes upstairs.

No, No, No!
Has it really been that long? A faucet
turns on.

Click.
A heavenly choir couldn’t sing a more
beautiful tune as the single lock releases, and the cuff practically jumps off
my right wrist. I lift my arm up and rotate my wrist, feeling so, so, so much
better about life.

The door to the basement opens, and Birdie’s
soft footsteps trot down. I quickly switch the pick to my left hand and put my
right wrist back in the cuff, setting it so that if no one looks too closely
they wouldn’t notice the cuff is loose.

When Birdie retrieves her gun, and
recommences pointing it in my general direction, I’m the picture of a helpless
prisoner. This is it; I can’t wait for her to turn a blind eye again. Team
Animal Farm could be back any second; and god help me if Puma Mask decides to
start getting creative.

I move my left hand, just a little,
inserting the pick into the lock.

“What are you doing?” Birdie waves the
gun erratically at me. The safety is still on.

“Just stretching my wrists,” I tell her,
keeping the pick tucked into my palm so she can’t see it. I make big eyes at
her even as every muscle in my body clenches with adrenaline.

“Stop it. Stop doing that.” Her voice
shakes.

“They’re really sore,” I say
apologetically as I twist the pick and hear the first lock disengage.

“I said stop!” Her aura flushes with
ruby hues of fear, and now my muscles clench for an entirely different reason.

I push against the hunger, struggle to
keep my attention on the lock pick. Just the single lock left and the cuff will
be off. As soon as my wrist is free, I can swing the chair around and block any
shots Birdie might get off. I’ll be able to get by her easily, probably without
even hurting her that much.

I feel the faint flicker of auras
approaching.

“No!” I gasp out loud.

The front door upstairs crashes open,
and their auras flood into the house.
Energy. Food. Hungry.
My body shudders
involuntarily with need, and the pick slips through my fingers. I watch
helplessly as it clangs against the chair and dive bombs into the carpet.

“What was that?” the girl stammers.

“What was what?” I ask.
Damn, damn,
damn, damn
!

“I heard—”

The basement door opens. The girl
squeaks in fear and pulls the trigger. The safety keeps the tranq dart firmly
ensconced, but she wouldn’t have even come close to hitting me anyway.

“Finch, everything good down here?” a new
voice calls down.

“Uh, yeah,” she responds, “no
incidents.”

While her head is turned, I put the sole
of my boot over the pick and roll it back toward me.
Damn, damn, damn.

Heavy steps creak on the stairs. I
recognize Puma Mask’s aura even before he makes his appearance, that arrogant grin
affixed to his face. He nods at Finch, and deep, wine-colored purples respond
in her aura.

Puma Mask’s biceps strain as he carries
a thick metal chair across the basement. He drops it down with a heavy clatter
next to me. Where do you even buy big metal chairs like that? They wouldn’t
exactly show up in a Pier 1 catalog.

“I’ve got some good news for you Buffy,”
he says with obvious malice. “You’re going to get some company.”

I watch as Milo and Rain struggle down
the stairs, carrying an unconscious figure between them.

“We’ve found your partner.”