Death Takes Wing (18 page)

“A few years?”

She shook her head.  “Just over a year and a half.”

“Are you worried that you can’t follow through?” he asked, curiously.  He really hoped that she’d be able to follow his lead.

She gave a dry, brittle laugh.  “Oh, I can follow through.”  She reached in her coat and touched the butt of the Glock that was safely holstered.  “I just hope I don’t have to.”

“You’ve never shot anyone before?”

“I’ve shot
at
people, but no, I’ve never actually hit anyone.”

“Your aim was that bad?”

“No,” she snarled, “My aim was
not
that bad.”

“Ah,” he murmured.  Judging by the frown on her face, and the nasty tone in her voice, that was a sore spot.  Better not touch that with a ten-foot pole.

“Are we almost there?” she said impatiently, staring out the window again.

“Almost,” he replied as he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.  She wasn’t just bouncing in her seat, he thought, he could feel the nervous energy that surrounded her.

“So you recognize the address, I’m assuming?”  She asked as she stared out the window, catching her own gaze in the reflection.  The frizz-machine was
still going strong.  She heaved a defeated sigh as she attempted to tame the mass of hair.

He glanced at her, slight surprise on his face.  “No, I thought you did.”

When she glared at him, he gave her a sheepish smile.  “All right, yes, I know where it is.”

“Good.  How much longer?” she asked, staring down her phone as she responded to a text Morgan had fired her, asking her what she was doing today.

“In a hurry to go to your doom?”  He asked with a slight smirk.

Worry danced behind her green eyes.  “It’s not my doom,” she snarled, not wanting to think that he might be right.  “I’m only asking because my behind is tired of being under me in a moving car.”

“Oh?  And where else would it be, if not under you, in a moving car?”  He could think of a couple places he wouldn’t mind it being, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to mention those options to her.

She smirked at him, as if she could read his mind.  “Seeing as it’s my day off, or supposed to be,” she inserted with a mutter, “I would be at home, on my couch, Lucy next to me, Kohl behind me, playing the RPG du jour.”

“That would be which one, now?  There’s so many, you know,” he asked lazily.

“Skyrim, of course,” she shot back, refraining from adding ‘duh’ to the end.

“Of course, how didn’t I guess that?”  He replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes for good measure.

“Because you don’t play video games?”  She asked, wondering if the angelus did play, since she wasn’t sure just what angelus actually did when they were alone with time to kill.

He laughed, “Oh, I play them.  Actually, I prefer first-person shooters, but I do like a good role-playing game.  Mass Effect, Fallout, WOW, Elder Scrolls,” he listed, “love them all.”

“So, I’m guessing that’s why you’re single,” she jibed, “The only reason that you aren’t fat and living in your mother’s basement is because you have to have a job to buy the games.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, dark lashes framing the light eyes.

She’d noticed that his eyes seemed to go from light gray to dark gray from moment to moment, mood to mood.

With a smirk, he replied, “I haven’t lived in my mother’s basement for at least ten years.  Give me
some
credit.  And as for me being fat?  Well, be glad you didn’t see me then,” he shot back, “Because I put Jared to shame.”

She started giggling, unable to stop herself from picturing him as an overweigh, pimply nerd.  “Oh, I’m
sure
you did.  Your poor mother.”

“Yep.  She practically had to roll me up the stairs,” he said blithely.

The giggles turned into a laugh at
that
image.  “You really play games?”

He looked at her, a smile covering his face.  “Yes, m’lady.  I really do play the games I told you.  I’ve never been fat, but the angelus all have high metabolisms, especially compared to most humans, so it’s harder for us to get that out of shape.  Though some seriously try their best.  I knew one who had an obsession with Twinkies and pixie sticks.  I don’t think I need to say anything else on that.”

Huh, she thought to herself.  So he wasn’t just smart and well-read.  He also played video games.  If only she’d had that much in common with Eric.  If she had, the relationship might not have ended.  Although, with as much as he loved sex, especially with everyone but her, it probably still would have.  Just probably not as dramatically.

Breaking her thoughts away from her straying ex, she moved on to questioning him about his living quarters.  “Did you really live in her basement?”

“Nope.  She wouldn’t let me.  It was my brother’s,” he replied. 

She wasn’t sure if he was still teasing her, so she just grinned and shook her head.

“So what do you play?  A supremely good character?  Always does the right thing?”

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head.  “I’m like that in real life-“

She snorted, cutting him off.  “Yeah.  A regular angel.”  She mockingly put her hands together in prayer and mimed a halo above her head.

For
that
dig, he gave her the stink eye, but didn’t respond.  “I prefer a chaotic neutral.  Makes the game interesting, and I get to play how I feel without the real-world consequences.”

She nodded, guessing, “So, you’re a thief?”

He grinned, “That obvious, huh?  What about you?  I’m guessing a mage.  Women are always mages,” he said as he turned down a damaged but still paved driveway.  Abandoned looking, she decided.  She wondered if it actually was.

She gave him a look of disgust and snapped, “No, an assassin-thief-fighter-type person.  Mages are for people who don’t like to get into the thick of battle, and my person always likes a good, bloody fight.  Especially if I can rob the body after I’m done killing it.”

He suppressed a grin, but she saw the corners of his mouth twitching.  “Remind me not to piss you off, then.  But, just so you know, I don’t carry cash or cards on me.”

“Then how do you pay for gas?  And, where’d you pull that twenty out of yesterday?”

“You don’t want to know,” he shot back with a grin.

She grinned at him, laughing a bit. “Yeah, well, I think you’re so full of it that your eyes should be brown!  You’re just telling me that so I won’t rob your body if you die while we’re together.”

He sneered, “As if.  I’m a bit harder to kill than you think darlin’.”

“Only a bit?  Can we test that theory?” she asked sweetly, her smile fading as he parked the car in front of a decrepit mansion.  Large oak trees loomed overhead, branches full of dead, brown leaves that waited for the harsh wind to strip them of their safe attachments.  She looked all around, taking in the overgrown driveway. 

Dead weeds clustered in the cracks of the chipped and broken cement.  Wooden posts held up the sagging balcony, the gingerbread trim half missing or falling off.  Windows in the upstairs were boarded up haphazardly, giving her a glimpse of a darkened interior. 

With a grimace, he said, “This house has just fallen apart in the last few years.”

“What do you mean?”  She wondered aloud, hoping that he thought it was supposed to be slightly more normal, and a lot less scary.

“Well, for one it used to be habitable, and it didn’t look like I was going to fall down around my ears,” he replied, carefully making his way to the front door.  “Last I saw it, it wasn’t nearly this bad.  I
didn’t think the architecture could decline so much in only a few years.”

“You know, even an old hospital wouldn’t be as creepy as this place.  It’s probably haunted, and I know I should be staying out in the car.  Away from the ghosts and goblins and weeping angels,” she said as she cautiously trailed behind him.  She pointed.  “See?  There’s one, right now.”

A weeping angel statue sat in the middle of an intact, but mossy fountain that graced the center of the circle drive.  She shuddered, just thinking about it coming to life creeped her out.

He gave her an odd look before making his way across the broad porch, complete with a broken swing.  “Weeping angels?  You watch entirely too much TV; you do realize that, right?”

She snorted, “I don’t watch nearly enough if you ask some of my friends, and according to others, I watch just enough.”  She paused as he peered through the windows.  He walked through the overgrown flower beds as he peeked in the dirty windows.  What he was looking for, Amalia couldn’t begin to know.  “Are the weeping angels offensive?”

He glanced at her again as a question played on his lips.  “Are zombies offensive to you?” 

She favored him with a saucy grin.  “If I say yes, what will you say then?”

He returned the grin with a nod of acknowledgment but ignored the question and
continued, “I’m going to guess that, based on that poorly executed act of avoidance, that they’re not offensive to you.  That’s pretty much how they are to us.  But they are a wicked prank to pull on humans,” he finished with a wicked laugh.

She play-frowned at him, hoping that he’d tell her that story.  “You mean to tell me that you pulled that on some poor, unsuspecting human?”

A smirk covered his face as he left the windows and started towards the large porch.  “I had a human that kept snooping around my house.  Nothing I tried made that
human
leave me alone,” he spat out human as if it was a dirty word as he remembered the girl who’d spied on him.  “So, with Matt and Aimee’s help, and a bunch of makeup that was damn hard to get out of the feathers, we made ourselves up as two weeping angel statues.  Matt hung around with the video camera.  She came around that night, with a friend, that time.  So we acted the part.”

“Scared the shit out of her?”  Amalia asked, curious.

“Definitely.  Luckily for us, she was with a friend who’d seen every Doctor Who episode, including the ones with the weeping angels.  The stalker still flipped her lid, afraid to turn around and run, but her friend finally convinced her that we were just messing with her.  Matt, uh,
unconvinced
her, and somehow convinced her friend that the weeping
angels were real.  That the Doctor Who episode was based on reality.  They both ran out, screaming bloody murder, and she hasn’t been back.  On the upside, now there are rumors that my house is haunted,” he said, a satisfied tone in his deep voice.

She shook her head and laughed at the thought of the poor, scared girls.

“So what do you think we’ll find here?” she asked, changing the subject as she tried the door.

“Judging by the lack of recent tracks, whatever it is, it’s not recent.  From out this way, there’s no sign of anyone coming in these doors,” he said as he tried the door himself, and finding the lock sticking.

“But there are other doors,” she replied as she watched Gabriel manipulate the rusted handle.

He nodded and finally shouldered the door open before looking at her with a smirk.  “It was like that when we got here.”

She grinned before walking into the house.  “Kind of a creepy place to do anything except have black masses.  And I’m pretty sure those are myth.”  She ran a hand down the doorframe, hand coming away nearly black with dust and grime.

“True, but kids who like to mess around with the dangerous and abandoned aren’t hard to find,” he reasoned, “and with as far as this place is off the beaten track, I doubt there’s many neighbors who watch it religiously.  They’re more likely paying attention to their Jeopardy and The Price is Right.”

“You’re probably right…I
am
surprised that there isn’t graffiti every-oh, here it is!”  She exclaimed in false surprise as she entered the living room, which was tagged in dim paint, “Although, it’s old,” she
finished as she touched it, noting the way the paint rubbed off on her hands in chalky remembrance.

She looked at him.  His wings were drawn tight to his body, several inches off the floor.  The dark colors blended in with the shadows and gloom, almost turning him into a piece of art long forgotten in the house.  “This isn’t right,” she said softly.

He looked at her, a questioning look in his eyes.

She gestured around, “letting a house like this look like this.  Can you imagine what it looked like before they let it fall to ruin?”

He gave an understanding smile before he pulled arms tight around his body as if fending off unwanted memories.  “I remember what it looked like at its prime, and I remember what it looked like when there was no house here.”

““So, just where
do
you live?” she asked, wondering how such a grand house could have fallen to this state of disrepair.  It wasn’t that common in their area of Michigan.  Most older houses were quickly snatched up and refinished, to be turned into living histories of an era long forgotten.

“My house?”  He followed her into the dining room that adjoined a large kitchen.  She fingered the door to the kitchen.