Angel Burn (18 page)

She’d dropped my hand as if she’d been holding a snake. She must have said something before she hurried away, but I don’t remember what. I just remember the expression on her face; it had been burned into my brain. A look of absolute horror; of disgust almost, as if —

As if I wasn’t even human.

My chest went tight at the memory. What do you know? The woman had been right.

Alex looked back at the TV. “Yeah  . . .  finding out that other people weren’t must have been tough. Like you were the only person in the world.”

“That was exactly how I felt,” I admitted. “But then I got to be a teenager, and it stopped bothering me so much. I guess I’d gotten used to being different. Besides, I like helping people, if I can.” I stopped in confusion, realizing that we were actually having a conversation — one that wasn’t about what kind of sandwich I wanted.

Alex nodded. “I could tell that back at the diner. What you did for that waitress, that was really  . . . ” He stopped, seemed to be searching for words. “Really good,” he finished at last.

He meant it. I gazed sideways at him, wondering why he was talking to me now  . . .  and whether he still thought that part of me was just like the angels. God, why did I even care? The memory of how the energy from his shirt had felt flashed through my mind, and my cheeks flushed.

“Thanks,” I said, looking away from him. On the TV, another court case was coming on: as the dramatic music played, a woman strode toward the defendant’s podium, wearing a power suit and lots of gold jewelry.

“So will she get her restaurant in Atlanta?” asked Alex.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was the nicest of her likely futures, so I hope so, now that I’ve told her about it.”

He propped himself on his elbow, watching me. “Can you read yourself?”

“No. I’ve tried, but I never get anything. It’s always just gray.”

“Probably just as well. That would be weird, to see your own future.”

“Just being psychic is pretty weird,” I said. “Or at least, most people think so.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Well, you’re talking to someone who kills angels for a living. That’s not exactly normal.”

I glanced at him, suddenly wondering what his life was like. He was so young to be on his own the way he was, and it seemed like he’d been doing it for years. I pushed the thought away. I wasn’t about to ask him any questions, not after last time.

Alex sat playing with the remote, turning it over in his hand. A long moment passed, and then he cleared his throat. “Look  . . .  I’m sorry,” he said.

My head turned sharply as I stared at him.

“What I said that first night —” He stopped and sighed, tossing the remote onto the bed. Scraping his hand through his hair, he said, “When I first found out, it just threw me, OK? For a lot of reasons. I don’t — I don’t think you’re like the angels. And I’ve been acting like a jerk. I’m sorry.”

A smile grew slowly across my face. “Yes, you have,” I said. “But apology accepted.”

“Good.” He smiled back at me. His eyes looked slightly troubled, but it was a genuine smile. It changed his whole face.

Warmth filled me; embarrassed, I turned to the TV again. The woman in the power suit was showing close-up photos of a scratch on her car, her voice trembling with anger. After a pause, I said, “So, can I ask questions now?”

Alex’s dark eyebrows rose. “You could have asked me questions before.”

“I guess. It didn’t really feel like it.”

He thought about this; a corner of his mouth quirked. “No, I guess it didn’t. Yeah, go on, fire away.”

I sat up, crossing my legs. “What’s this place that we’re going to, exactly?”

Alex shifted, pulling one of his pillows out and sitting up a little. “It’s a camp in southern New Mexico, out in the desert. It’s where I was trained. I think Cully will probably be there now, training new AKs.”

Angel Killers,
I remembered. “And who’s Cully, exactly?”

I could practically see the memories flickering across his face. “He used to be an AK, until he lost a leg on a hunt. He knows more about all of this stuff than anyone alive.”

Lost a leg. My eyes went to the dresser, where Alex had put his pile of clothes. His gun lay on top, in a holster. Obviously I had known already that what he did must be dangerous, but now it hit me just
how
dangerous. “Does that sort of thing happen often?” I asked.

Alex’s expression didn’t change. I could feel the tension forming inside him, though, like a coiled wire. “He was lucky,” he said shortly. “The unlucky ones either die or end up with angel burn.”

Had something like that happened to his brother? Looking back at the TV, I changed the subject in a hurry. “So, you lived at this place in New Mexico?”

“Yeah.” Alex hesitated and then added, “My father was the one who started it.”

Him and his father and his brother, all out at this camp in the desert together. I remembered the glimpse I’d gotten from his hand: the barbed wire, the bright, hard blue of the sky. “What about your mother?” I asked.

He gazed at the screen without moving. At first I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “It’s a long story,” he said eventually.

“Sure, OK.” I wished I hadn’t asked. The subject of his family seemed to be a minefield. We watched TV in silence for a while. I twisted a strand of still-damp hair around my finger. “Listen, the whole  . . .  angel problem,” I said at last. “It’s gotten worse recently, hasn’t it? I mean, I don’t remember even hearing about them until a couple of years ago, and now it’s like — they’re everywhere. On TV. In the papers.”

Alex seemed to relax. “It was the Invasion,” he said, plumping up one of his pillows and settling back down on it. “They’ve always been here, but then almost two years ago their numbers just exploded. We don’t know why — if something happened in their own world, or what.”

I watched him, taking in his dark eyebrows; the smooth line of his neck as it disappeared into the collar of his T-shirt. “Where
is
their world?”

“We’re not sure,” said Alex. I noted his casual use of the word “we,” suggesting a team that had been fighting together for a long time. “Another dimension, probably. They seem to be able to cross over into this one.”

Another dimension. I always thought those only existed in science fiction — made-up stories. Like angels. “So they just — live here? The same as humans?”

He drew a knee to his chest, looping his forearm over it. Even when he was at ease, there was a sense of strength somehow, like a big cat. “Yeah. They have houses, drive cars  . . .  They just sort of blend right in, without anyone really noticing them.”

I shook my head, trying to comprehend it all. “What happens if you can’t stop them?”

Alex shrugged as he glanced at me. “Humanity will die,” he said. “Maybe in a few decades  . . .  fifty years. The AKs are losing, you know — slowly but surely. We need something big to stop them, or we haven’t got a chance.”

My mouth went dry. Was I supposed to be the something big, then? I thought of the hospital beds that had lined the corridor in the news program, and didn’t know what to say. “This is just  . . .  I can’t believe that no one knows about this,” I whispered. “Why doesn’t the government do something? Why don’t they
tell
everyone?”

With eerie timing, the Church of Angels commercial came on again. Alex gazed up at the screen, his mouth twisting wryly. “It’s not that easy. Most people can only see angels for what they really are when they’re being fed from, and by then they’ve got angel burn; they wouldn’t try to get away if you paid them.”

I saw what he meant. I imagined what would have happened if I’d tried to drag Beth away while that thing was draining her; I think she would have physically attacked me.

Alex was still looking at the commercial. “Plus, the angels seem to make a point of targeting the police and the government. Quite a few higher-ups have gotten angel burn since the Invasion — that’s what first tipped off the CIA that something weird was going on.”

“Really?”
I stared at him, my blood chilling. “Who? Do you mean the president?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, exactly. People who you wouldn’t want to have it, definitely.”

As the commercial ended, the final image of an angel gazed out at us with a serene smile, its halo and wings a pure, radiant white. “They’re so beautiful,” I admitted softly.

“Yeah, they are.”

I picked at a loose seam in the nylon bedspread. I didn’t really want to ask, but I had to know. “So  . . .  when someone has angel burn, what happens?”

Alex’s dark hair fell over his forehead as he looked at me, his expression reluctant. “When an angel feeds off someone, the effect is toxic,” he said. “The person perceives the angel as wonderful and kind, but meanwhile it’s damaging them in some way — causing some sort of disease or mental illness. MS, cancer, whatever. The more the person’s energy is drained, the more severe the burn.”

I thought of Mom, with her vacant, dreamy gaze  . . .  and of the being who’d made her that way. My father. This was a
part
of me; it was inside of me. No wonder Alex hadn’t wanted anything to do with me at first; I could hardly blame him. I stared down at the seam, trying not to hate myself and failing.

From the other bed, I could feel Alex’s gaze still on me. He cleared his throat. “You know, from what I could tell, your mother’s one of the lucky ones. I mean, when I checked out her energy, it didn’t feel distressed or anything. She seems content.”

I nodded. Suddenly my eyes were leaking; I wiped them with the flat of my hand. “Yeah  . . .  it’s always sucked for
me,
not having a mom, but at least I know she’s happy off in her dreamworld.” I glanced at him and managed a smile. “Thanks.”

A late-night talk show came on; we watched in silence as the host stood in front of the audience, making jokes for the intro. I hesitated as I thought of everything Alex had just told me.

“So, my angel — the one you saw over me — it doesn’t feed, right?”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Alex.

I looked up at him, biting my lip. “You’re sure?”

He kept his voice matter-of-fact, but his eyes told me he understood how I was feeling. “I’m positive. Your angel doesn’t have a halo, and that’s an angel’s heart; it’s where the energy is distributed from as they feed. Plus your aura doesn’t show any signs of feeding — an angel’s aura always does.”

“So I don’t  . . .  hurt people when I touch them, or anything?”

“I don’t think so,” said Alex. “I mean, a half angel is something new, but I don’t see any reason why you would, Willow. Angels in their human form don’t hurt people; it’s only when they feed. And, you know, if you haven’t noticed anything in sixteen years, then I’d say you’re probably safe.”

I let out a breath. Thank God for that. This was already nightmarish enough, without the thought that maybe I was somehow damaging people the way angels did.

On the TV, the talk show host was sitting behind his desk with a miniature skyline of New York City behind him, interviewing an actress in a tight red dress. It felt so unreal, that angels were here in our world, hurting people, and that everyone was just going about their business, oblivious. Alex must feel like this all the time, I realized.

“Can I ask you something, now?” he said.

A wariness came over me, but I nodded.

“Your, um  . . .  your angel,” he said. He picked up the remote, turning it over in his hand. “I know you weren’t aware of it before a few days ago. But now that you are, can you feel it there?”

I stiffened. “No,” I said flatly.

Alex nodded, looking down at his knee as he tapped the remote against it. “I just  . . .  wondered whether you could make contact with it, if you tried.”

My muscles were rigid. “I have no idea, and I’m not going to try. I wish it would just go away.”

A commercial came on; when it ended and the show came back, the actress was gone and a comedian came onto the stage. I could feel Alex’s gaze on me. “I don’t know if ignoring it is going to work,” he said after a pause. “I mean it’s there, protecting you. It’s a part of you somehow.”

“Well, I don’t want it to be,” I said. My voice was shaking. “God, Alex — one of those things destroyed my mother’s mind; one’s ruined Beth’s life. I
hate
it that I have something like that inside of me. So, no, I’m not about to contact it or make friends with it, or whatever. No way.”

“OK,” he said. “Sorry.”

I didn’t say anything. I stared at the screen, listening to the audience laugh at jokes that didn’t seem remotely funny to me.

Alex glanced at me, his blue-gray eyes concerned. “Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you or anything. This all must be —” He shook his head. “I can’t even imagine what this must be like for you.”

And it helped, somehow, just knowing that he had thought about it, that he realized how hard it was. I sighed. “The thing is  . . .  I feel so completely human. I know I’m not; I
know
that. But inside, I just feel normal. I mean, OK, maybe I’m sort of weird, but still normal.”

He gave a slight smile. “You’re not weird.”

“Oh, please.” I rolled onto my side to face him. “Listen, when you saw the — the angel hovering over me  . . . ” I trailed off, not even really sure what I wanted to ask.

“What?” he asked. His dark hair was almost dry now, looking soft and tousled.

I shook my head quickly. “Nothing.”

Alex hesitated, studying me. “Look, do you want to change the subject?”

“To what?”

“I don’t know.” He motioned toward the TV. “We could talk about this comedian; he’s supposed to be getting his own sitcom soon.”

I snorted and rolled onto my back again, propping myself up onto the pillows. “Yeah, if anyone’s left to see it. Alex, doesn’t it drive you insane, knowing all of this when the rest of the world doesn’t?”

He shrugged as he leaned back against his own pillows, resting an elbow behind his head. “Sure. But, you know — it’s just how it is. If I thought about it too much, I’d go crazy, so I don’t.”

That sounded like pretty good advice, to be honest. As the comedian went on with his routine, I felt the tension inside me loosen a notch. “What’s his sitcom supposed to be about? Do you know?” I asked finally.