Angeli (5 page)

“Obviously you haven’t seen any 3-D movies.” She marched behind him and inspected his shoulders. He allowed it, even as her gaze made him self-conscious. As though he should flex his muscles and stand straighter.

She brushed past him. “I can’t see through your armor.”

If she could, she’d see the wings piercing his skin. They were endo-organic like his headpiece. He tucked the broken array into a storage compartment on his breastplate and eyed her shapely legs. She was finely formed, this Terran woman. As she picked up her hat and gun, he appreciated her rounded buttocks.

She stuck her hat on her head, her gun in her waistband, snapped her knife holster, and gave him a long, assessing stare. “You see something you like, angeli?”

He lifted one shoulder. “All mortals look the same to me.”

She crossed her arms. “Well,
you
look taller on television.”

“I’m tall enough.” On Ship he was ninetieth percentile for height. “Taller than you.”

She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Ay, who’s not taller than me?”

He thought about the Terrans he’d met. This woman was petite, though she’d be average on Ship. “Children?”

She gestured in a way he recognized as rude. “You act more and more like a regular man the longer I talk to you. Not to mention the other thing.” She tugged her hat farther down on her head. “My Jeep is on the road. Or are you going to fly off now?”

“I can’t leave you here alone.” He didn’t want to frighten her, but the horde was closer than she seemed to realize. With his array out of commission, his surveillance abilities were limited. It was time to relocate.

“Then come.” She strode off without looking back, so he folded his wings and followed her, several paces behind.

The view was exceptional. Her thighs and calves working, her buttocks clenching, her hair bouncing on her back. They left the trees and entered a wide meadow.

“What do I call you, woman?” He could fly her to the East Coast or Australia if his wings were still working. Shades traversed oceans slower than land. The sentient life there avoided them, so they had minimal fuel.

She cast a glance over her shoulder. “You don’t know my name?”

“I don’t know every mortal,” he said gruffly. The headpiece had helped him seem omniscient, identifying DNA and cross-referencing with Terran databases. He’d suspected his blaster was done for, but losing the rest of his tech, shoddy as it was, sucked harder than a black hole. If the damage wasn’t repairable, how the hell was he going to kill daemons, avoid Niko and the other gutless Ship-lickers trying to stop him, and spy on Ship’s base?

Now he had a civilian woman to protect. Void be damned, as if things weren’t complicated enough.

“I’m called Adelita Louisa Eleanor Martinez.”

Even her name was complicated. “Adelita Louisa Eleanor Martinez.”

“Martinez,” she said, trilling the
r.

“I can’t do that with my tongue.”

“No? What a shame.” They reached the road, where a small red transport was parked behind a bunch of larger vehicles. The wind contained a hiss of corruption. Wrongness. That meant the horde was closing in.

Chapter Four

If Gregori was an angel, Adelita was the devil. Contrary to the opinion of her most recent ex-boyfriend, she was not the devil, she was a strong woman. Why men resented strength in a woman, she had no idea, but they did.

Their loss.

She didn’t know who Gregori was, but it seemed more and more likely he was an imposter. Trust a man to pretend to be angeli to get attention. It wasn’t as if she’d seen him fly or do anything divine. She’d heard a crash. Seen a dead daemon. Those could have been faked.

As soon as her suspicious mind raced one direction, it boomeranged back to a low simmer. She was being ridiculous. The wings, the daemon, the location—it was too fancy a charade. She had to cast her doubt aside and cling to faith.

And also, later, she would ask to see him fly.

When they reached the road, she looked at Gregori and then her Jeep. “Where will you put the wings?”

“What do you mean?” He seemed more interested in staring at the scenery than deciding what to do next.

“To ride in the passenger’s seat.” He might be angeli, emphasis on might, but he was not driving her car.

“I’m not riding in that.”

“What’s wrong with my Jeep? She’s a good girl.” She slid into the driver’s seat and caressed the leather-wrapped steering wheel. She and her lady Wrangler had been to hell and back the past three weeks. Well, not hell, considering it was hell she was running from.

“It’s too slow.”

“It does one hundred miles per hour.”

He lifted his chin as his nostrils flared. “I don’t think you realize how much danger you’re in.”

There was no one here but the two of them. “From you?”

“From the horde.”

She waved a hand. She hadn’t seen a blotch since Salt Lake City. “The whole world is in danger, angeli. I mean to see the Grand Canyon.”

“The geological formation south of our position?” He turned to her as if surprised he wasn’t alone. “You’re sightseeing at a time like this?”

“I wouldn’t call it sightseeing.” Her cheeks flushed. Her friends in law school had expressed the same amazement when she’d shared her plan to duck the US military’s relocation of the populace. What with the earthquakes and the devils and the newscasts, everyone was frightened, and crazy, and behaving like banditos half the time, protesting the martial law. But her friends didn’t believe, didn’t agree this was the end of days, so they didn’t understand her need to live Earth’s last hours to the fullest. Law students, what could you say to them? Good-bye is what she’d said, and I love you to
Tía
Rosa and
Tío
Pepi.

Gregori twisted one of the metallic bands on his arm. “I don’t care what you call it. We’re flying.”

“You have a plane?” She’d never heard of angeli carrying people. The white light took people to heaven, not the angeli. The angeli didn’t seem to stoop to such direct intervention.

“I don’t need a plane. I have wings. Get out of the vehicle.”

He thought he could tell
her
what to do? Adelita’s fingers itched to shake some sense into him. Ay, always with her temper! She was not the meek who’d be inheriting this earth. “You can’t order me around.”

“Yes, I can. I am Archangel Gregori, you…foolish mortal.”

It sounded so pompous, Adelita flashed him the palm of her hand. Was there nothing about him that was properly saintly?

“I mean it. Do as I say.” His wings, which had been folded behind him, expanded. When she’d touched them, they hadn’t been downy and soft. They’d been stiff, almost rubbery.

“I won’t.” She slammed the Jeep door, which would have been more effective if her window hadn’t been rolled down. “You don’t understand. I have to finish this quest.” How long had she put off her bucket list, vacations, indulgences, figuring a law degree and excellent placement in a firm afterward was more important? Now it was push coming to shove.

The angeli didn’t care. “You can pack one bag. One light bag.”

“One single bag? But I have
Tía
Rosa’s…”

Gregori’s wingspread blocked the sun, and Adelita trailed off. Amazing. They were as wide as double mattresses. He might look taller on TV, but the wings—the wings were incredible.

“They’re so big,” she breathed.

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “You’re not packing.”

Adelita cranked the motor to life and revved it. “Why should I? Everything I need is in the backseat.”

“This isn’t a joke, Adelita Louisa Eleanor Martinez.” He peered up the road. “My best guess? We have three minutes.”

His ominous tones flopped around in her stomach like bad chicken. This little burro could easily outrun shades, but not if she let herself get cornered. “Then I’ll lay some tracks. See if you can keep up.”

She shifted into gear and hit the gas. In a split second, Gregori blocked her vehicle, lifting the front off the ground as though it was no heavier than a rug. The back tires squealed, and she smelled the awful singed rubber.

“What are you doing?” Her heart raced. How could he lift a car?

Because he was angeli, not some man wearing movie props and dragging around a daemon corpse to impress refugees.

On the bright side, she’d marked another item off her bucket list without even trying. Touch an angeli’s wings. On the less bright side, she’d just told Archangel Gregori off.

“Do you want to come with me or do you want die?” he snapped.

Adelita smacked her hands on the steering wheel. Either Gregori was hissing at her or air was escaping her tires. “I think it’s ‘come with me if you want to live.’”

Gregori jounced the Wrangler, which clacked her teeth together. Her nose wrinkled as the burned-tire smell was supplanted by daemon odor. She hoped it was the dead daemon and not Gregori’s deodorant, if he was going to be flying her somewhere.

He cast her an aggrieved glare. “What in the void is wrong with you, woman?” The rest of his rant was drowned out when the hiss increased in pitch.

“What?” Adelita mouthed. His angelic shit fit had better not have busted all her tires. She was down to a single spare.

“Let’s go!” he bellowed, his face red.

Oh dear. Could angeli have heart attacks? She didn’t want to find out.

“All right, all right.” She turned off the Jeep and waved her backpack in the air to indicate surrender. “I’ll go with you.”

Her vehicle
thunk
ed to the ground with a bone-jarring bump.

“Shit down the void!” Gregori was beside her before she registered movement, wrenching her door off its hinges. He threw it high, arcing behind her Jeep. She turned to watch it clatter to the ground—ten yards away from a solid wall of black shades coming out of the trees.

Black shades covered the landscape to the crest of the hill and over. A wedge of undulating evil cut off any escape one direction and pushed her forward.

Adelita screamed and leaped out of the Jeep, barreling into Gregori. She wrapped herself around him like a tortilla. “Shoot ’em, shoot ’em!”

“Blaster’s dead. Force field, too.”

“Seriously?” How did an angeli run out of holy might?

“Hold on.” With a single flap, they were on top of the Jeep. Adelita squealed. His arms tightened around her. “This might get bumpy.”

“Are there daemons?”

“Don’t know yet.” Two flaps. They buoyed up, back down on the Jeep. “Damn. How much do you weigh?”

“Not that much.” Adelita glanced over Gregori’s shoulder. The shades had almost reached the Jeep. The noxious odor was making her dizzy. “One hundred and twenty? Angeli, if you can’t fly, let me down so we can drive. Or run.”

“I can fly. I will fly.” Gregori grunted, flapped faster. The shades had no faces, no eyes, no limbs, almost no form. Chest-high blobs was all they were, sniffing her bumper, sniffing for her soul.

Gregori jumped. Was he giving up? No, wind stirred her hair and they were aloft! She closed her eyes and tried not to freak, or smell the bad smell, or think about how far above the ground they were and what would happen if she slipped.

They slammed onto the roof of a cream-colored Winnebago. Adelita nearly jolted out of his arms, and Gregori cursed again.

“You cuss a lot for one of the Lord’s soldiers.”

“One-twenty?” he growled. Beads of sweat had sprung up on his face as if he were human or something.

“Okay, more like one-forty.” Ten less than she’d weighed three weeks ago. She’d gotten a great deal of exercise lately.

The shades engulfed her Jeep. Adelita swallowed, unable to look away. “One of these cars will have keys in it. Gas, too. We can drive that.” It wouldn’t have her aunt’s crucifix—that was currently being eaten by devils—and it wouldn’t have her clothes or her food or her ammunition or her camping gear, but it would have better mileage than her legs.

“This is not happening.” Gregori put her down and unsnapped an armband. It morphed into a long, hooked tool. He reached behind him and started scratching beneath his armor.

“Seriously? You scratch an itch right now?” Oh, he was such a man.

“I’m fine-tuning the… Just be quiet.” His handsome face twisted with concentration, and she heard a click. “Ah.”

“Are you paying attention? They’re nearly on us. Let’s make a run for it.
Vamos
.” Tears burned Adelita’s eyelids the way the stench of hell burned her nose. Now that it seemed her time had come, she wasn’t willing to let the shades take her. She couldn’t make herself jump.

She wanted to live. She really, really wanted to live.

The air sizzled as the wave of black closed on the vehicles. The hissing grew in intensity until it was the only thing she could hear. Adelita stared ahead, counting roofs. Her stomach cramped, her heart raced. Adrenaline shook her like an earthquake. They could power jump to that roof, then that one, and buy themselves enough time to check that truck for keys. It had big wheels and what looked like camping gear in the bed.

The motor home quivered as the shades oozed around it. So many, and the smell! Tendrils of black extended from their edges as they inched up the sides. Gregori was messing with his back, glaring at the world. Adelita peeked over the front and considered sliding down the windshield and running. Nothing could stop the foul devils but the angeli, and he…

A strong arm clasped her before she could clamber over the edge. “What are you doing? Don’t go down there.”

Adelita raised her voice above the hissing shades. And also because she was terrified. “We have to get out of here.”

“I’m on it, I’m on it.”

“Now, angeli.” She grabbed him, her fingers digging into his arm beside the silver bands. It was all she could do not to snatch his chin like Tía Rosa used to do when she was little and not paying attention. But when the first shade oozed onto the roof of the Winnebago, Adelita started to cry.

Despite her vow, she found herself praying.
Please, Lord, hear me. Hear me and let me live. I promise not to kill anyone else, not even a rapist, if I live through this.