Angel Fire (12 page)

He shot.

Leaving the remnants of the angel floating gently behind him, Alex tore back up the alleyway. The whole episode had only taken a minute or two; as he dropped back into the courtyard, he saw Willow’s angel still holding off the larger female. Their wings blurred as they fenced and parried, and he could tell that it was Willow’s vulnerable human form the angel was now trying to reach. A couple of people stood watching with open mouths; the others dashed back and forth, trying to take aim at the angel. Tex was just struggling dazedly to his feet.

Alex tracked the angel, getting her halo in his sights. “I’m on it!” he shouted to Willow. Immediately, her angel twisted away, plunging back towards her human form. The creature started to follow and then wavered, turning towards Alex as it sensed a trap.

It was all the time he needed. The muffled sound of his silenced bullet thudded around them and the last angel vanished into a fountain of light.

Alex let out a breath as he put his pistol away. He looked towards the drive, and saw Willow rising to her feet in the shadows. Their eyes met. She seemed shaken, but gave him a small smile. She was okay; it was over with. Alex felt himself relax a notch as he smiled back, and for a second there was only the two of them. At a slight movement to his left he glanced over, his gaze leaving Willow reluctantly – and his blood froze.

Tex was aiming his gun right at her.

“
No!
” Alex hurtled forward, tackling him just as the pistol went off. They crashed to the ground together, the gun skittering across the pavement.

“
What the hell are you doing?
” he shouted. “She’s on our side!”

The guy writhed under him like a fish out of water, struggling to get free. “Let me up!” he yelled. “She’s not human – her aura is angelic—”

“She’s on our side!” shouted Alex again. Tex’s fists were flailing; Alex held him down, ducking to avoid being hit. “Jesus, will you
listen
to me—”

Tex bucked upwards, half getting away as he scrambled on all fours for his gun. Alex threw himself after him, grabbing him around the waist. The guy twisted and swung, his fist connecting hard with Alex’s cheekbone. The world went red; Alex slammed him back to the ground. Drawing his pistol, he shoved it in the guy’s face. The struggling stopped as Tex stared at it.

“Do. Not. Move,” Alex gritted out.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, still aiming his pistol at Tex. His cheek was throbbing; he hardly noticed. The others stood nearby, staring, not moving a muscle. “All of you – guns on the ground,” he ordered without looking at them. Silence. “
Now
,” he barked.

They must have heard something in his tone that convinced them. There was a brief hesitation, then the clatter of weapons being dropped on concrete.

“Willow, are you okay?” called Alex, not taking his eyes off the muscular blond guy. He held an arm out in her direction, and felt infinite relief as she appeared at his side, slipping under his arm.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “Alex, I’m fine; he didn’t hit me.”

Thank god. “Get behind me,” he muttered, squeezing her shoulders briefly. Tex’s gun was just beside his foot; as Willow moved behind him, Alex kicked it away, sending it spinning into the shadows.

“She’s not human!” insisted Tex from the ground, his drawling voice fierce. “She’s one of them – you must be on their side, too—”

“Yeah, that’s why I just shot three angels, and why she was holding one off until I could get to it,” snapped Alex. He glanced at the others. Four of them, all looking shaken. “What do
you
think?” he demanded of the girl with the sharp face. “You’re the one whose life she just saved. Do you want to take a shot at her, too?”

There was a slight shuffling as they all looked at each other. “Her aura...and there was the angel, with her face...” stammered the girl.

“That’s so great that you know how to see angels,” said Alex coldly. “You might want to work on your interpretations a little. Her angel didn’t have a halo, or didn’t you notice?” With his pistol, he motioned for Tex to get up, sending him to stand with the others. “Now, listen to me:
she’s on our side.
Anyone who doesn’t believe me, you’d better go for your gun and shoot me now – because I’ll kill the next person who tries to hurt her.”

His words hung in the air. Nobody moved. In the sudden silence, the drone of traffic could be heard, along with the fluttering of moths as they battered against the naked light bulb over the doorway.

“Good, I’m glad that’s settled,” said Alex finally.

He took in the tense group, wondering who they were – all the voices he’d heard so far were American. They stared back at him. Apart from Tex and the sharp-faced girl, there was a short guy with wiry rust-coloured hair who looked frozen in place; a curvy brown-haired girl, features tight with worry; a black guy who met his gaze sullenly, arms folded across his chest.

“So who are you all, anyway?” asked Alex. “You’re sure as hell not Angel Killers.”

Tex bristled. “We sure as hell
are.
”

“Yeah? So that’s why you managed to kill, like, none of them, right?”

Tex’s muscles swelled as he glared at Alex, like a quarterback in a barroom brawl. Before the Texan could respond, the brown-haired girl cleared her throat. “We...we were angel spotters,” she offered. “Back in the US.”

Alex’s forehead creased. “What, you mean for Project Angel?”

She nodded. She had an earnest face and blue eyes, her hair drawn back in a ponytail. “Until just a few months ago. And then—” The girl Willow had saved nudged her, giving her a piercing look; she flushed and fell silent.

Angel spotters. Alex nodded slowly. Yeah, that made sense. The angel spotters had worked for the CIA too, the same as he had – their role had been to locate angels and send texts to the AKs with their locations. They were trained to see angels, but wouldn’t have much of a clue about the rest of it.

He scanned the group again. “So what happened – how did you find each other? I thought you guys had to work in isolation too, just like—” He broke off as he felt Willow stiffen behind him. At the same moment, a low female voice came from the drive:

“You want to explain why you’re holding a gun on my group, hotshot? And it’d better be good, or I’ll blow your freaking head off.”

Alex whirled in place, ready to shoot. Instead he just stared.

The dark-skinned girl who stood holding a gun on him was beautiful, and almost as tall as he was, with high, chiselled cheekbones and close-cropped black hair. Her brown eyes widened abruptly as they regarded each other. She wore tan jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt; he could see the slim, hard muscles of her arms, as if she spent half an hour every day doing chin-ups.

On her left bicep was a black
AK
tattoo in gothic lettering.

Time had come to a stop. “Kara,” whispered Alex.

The girl opened her mouth; closed it again. “Jake?” she got out. Her voice sounded ragged.

“No,” he said. “No, I’m—”

“Alex,” she finished for him. “Oh my god, Alex!” The next thing he knew, she had catapulted herself into his arms and they were hugging tightly. “I don’t believe it!” Kara gasped, sounding close to tears. “It’s really you – you’re alive, you’re okay...”

“I thought you were dead,” he said against her neck.
Kara
. His throat felt too small for speech. “I thought everyone was dead, except for me.”

She pulled back and touched his face; her slender hand felt firm and strong. “
Look
at you,” she breathed, her eyes shining. “You look so much like Jake! You’re all grown up—”

Suddenly they were both laughing. “Yeah, all grown up, just like you,” he teased, putting away his gun. Kara was only four years older than him, but when he’d been a love-struck fourteen-year-old, it had seemed more like four decades.

The tension in the courtyard had faded; the AKs stood watching in bemusement. Willow stepped forward. He could see her joy for him that one of his old friends had made it – though the slight tension around her mouth reminded him of when she’d met Cully, back in New Mexico. She’d been worried then that all the AKs would hate her because of what she was.

“Willow, this is Kara Mendez,” he told her. “We were at the camp together.”

“Hi,” said Willow, offering her hand to Kara. She looked almost waiflike in the plaid shirt, her green eyes dominating her face. “I’m Willow Fields.”

Kara’s eyebrows flew up; she gave Willow a cautious handshake. “Willow Fields – as in, the terrorist who’s all over the news?”

Willow shrugged, and tried to smile. “Yeah, something like that. I was trying to stop the Second Wave from coming.”

“And she ain’t human,” put in Tex sullenly. “Check out her aura, Kara; it’s
weird.
Plus there was this angel with her face, and—”

“Shut up, Sam.” From the way Kara said it, it was a phrase that got used often. But her expression turned wary as she glanced at Alex. “You want to explain what he’s talking about?”

Alex started to answer; Willow put her hand on his arm, stopping him. Lifting her chin slightly, she said in a steady voice, “He’s talking about the fact that I’m half-angel.”

Kara took a sharp breath between her teeth; the others recoiled in shock, staring at Willow. “Whoa,” murmured the wiry-haired guy, taking a step backwards. Tex – Sam, apparently – had a mix of validation and stunned horror on his broad face.

“
Half-angel?
” sputtered Kara at last. “That’s supposed to be impossible!”

“I know,” said Willow evenly. “But it’s true. My father—” She stopped, a tautness crossing her features. “My father was an angel,” she finished. “I never knew him, though. I never knew anything about any of this until just recently.”

Alex knew that Kara’s reaction was probably milder than his own had been when he’d first found out about Willow’s parentage, but he still hated it. She was staring at Willow as if she were some kind of unthinkable lab experiment.

“Willow and I are together.” He put his arm around Willow’s shoulders and drew her against his side. “She almost died in Denver, trying to stop the Second Wave.”

Kara didn’t move, but he had the impression she’d just been rocked to the core; that she was even more shocked at this than at the revelation of what Willow was. “Together,” she repeated in a monotone, her chocolate-brown eyes narrowing. “Let me get this straight: you’re telling me that you’ve got a half-angel girlfriend.”

“Yeah,” said Alex. “That’s right.” Their gazes collided; he saw the thrust of Kara’s chin and suddenly remembered how stubborn she could be. She and Cully had once had a stand-off for hours over a game of poker – the two of them bickering until late into the night, with Kara demanding that Cully take it outside with her. It had been funny at the time; he and Jake had taken bets on who would cave first.

It hadn’t been Kara.

Willow cleared her throat. “Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble or anything.”

“You’re not,” said Alex, not taking his eyes off Kara. “Is she, Kara?”

Kara didn’t answer at first; Alex couldn’t tell what she was thinking. With deliberate movements, she put her gun away, tucking it into the holster under her jeans waistband.

“So,” she said coolly. “I guess we should go inside, huh? Seems like we’ve all got a lot to talk about.”

It took Alex a second to get what she meant. He glanced up at the dark house beside them. “Inside – what,
here
? This is your base?” He turned and stared at the other AKs in disbelief. “You mean, you actually led them back
here
. To your base.”

Kara looked sharply at Sam. “Led who back? Was there trouble?”

Alex couldn’t help it; he laughed out loud. “Yeah, let’s go inside,” he said. “You’re right, there’s a lot to talk about.”

K
ARA TOOK THEM THROUGH
the back door and switched on the light. Alex could see cardboard boxes stacked against the wall, and scuffed floor tiles with a blue and white floral pattern. A decorative niche that looked as if it should have a vase in it instead held a flashlight and someone’s change.

“What is this place?” he asked. He was carrying their camping stuff and helmets from the bike; they didn’t have much else.

“Welcome to AK Central,” said Kara. She led the way into a small kitchen. The other AKs hung back in the hallway, watching Willow with distrustful expressions. Sam especially was keeping an eye on her every move, as if she were about to sprout a halo and swoop at him, screeching, to feed. Alex dropped their stuff in a corner and put his hand on Willow’s back as she stood against the counter, stroking lightly between her shoulder blades. The small smile she gave him didn’t touch her eyes.

Kara introduced them all. Sam, Alex already knew better than he wanted to. The sharp-featured girl was Liz, who had long black hair and a pale, goth look. She kept casting appalled sidelong glances at Willow – apparently saving her life wasn’t enough to earn her trust. Trish, the freckled brown-haired girl, didn’t seem any less appalled; she also appeared anxious at the tension, gazing worriedly at the others.