Fallen Angel of Mine (28 page)

My eyes locked onto the prize: the tiny
red lever about a foot long. I dove. My fingers touched it.
Slipped. Caught on the edge of the recessed area. Agony shot
through my arm as my tendons, muscles, and bones groaned at the
sudden change of direction. I flung my other hand toward the lever
as wind tore at me, threatening to tear my sweaty hand loose,
tossing me into the roaring maelstrom.

The aircraft lurched. Angled upward.
Left the ground. Gravity yanked my guts downward. The wind clawed,
making my eyes water so fiercely I could hardly see. Something
thudded behind me. I risked a glance back and saw two black-clad
figures gripping the wing.

Seriously?

The air buffeted the aircraft violently
and one Templar banged against the wing, his feet less than a yard
or two from the roaring engines. The other lost his grip on the tip
of the wing and tumbled forty or more feet back to the ground. I
would have gulped except my mouth and throat felt parched as the
desert. I hoped the remaining Templar's hood hid a terrified
expression as well. Or maybe Templars were so badass this was no
worse than using the bathroom to them. My right hand found a
metallic rung inside the recess and clung to it with manic force. I
gripped the red handle and pushed on it. It didn't
budge.

Of course!

Since the handle hadn't moved while
pushing it, I gave it a yank. It moved a fraction but stopped as if
it had hit something. Something told me I was turning it the right
way, but it was definitely locked. I spared a glance back at the
Templar. He shuffled his hands along the edge of the wing and
reached the junction between it and the nacelle. My legs flapped up
and down at the mercy of the wind. He reached for my foot. I tried
to curl up, but my leg muscles had already given up the ghost and
gone on vacation. A gloved hand clenched my calf.

"Are you crazy?" I shouted back. "I can
barely hold on!" The wind and the roar of the jets obliterated my
words the second they left my mouth. I tightened my grip on the
rung and yanked on the door handle again. If I could have braced my
legs, I might have had a chance. The Templar, however, had other
plans. He reached for my other calf.

I alternated between kicking at his
hand and playing keep away but he was too fast for my tired legs
and snagged the other one. This put the full weight of both our
bodies on my right arm, the only thing holding us onto the plane.
Agony lanced through tendons, muscles, and flesh. My shoulder felt
like it might separate from the socket. Using the rung gripped in
my right hand as a brace, I pushed against it while jerking on the
handle. Metal groaned. Popped. The handle swung up with more force
than I'd intended and the hatch popped open. My hand on the door
lost purchase, and the wind slammed the Templar and me against the
nacelle, pounding us like rag dolls. Someone screamed. An armed man
flew out of the hatch, his gun firing wildly as he spun away into
the darkness below. A bullet pinged off the metal. The Templar
jerked, sending a fresh wave of agony into my arm but I couldn't
look back. It was all I could do to reach forward and grab the open
hatch as it bobbed up and down with each jolt of the
plane.

I noticed with alarm, the jet was
straining to stay aloft. Trees loomed close below as the engines
screamed with effort. I gripped the doorsill with my left hand.
Switched my right hand from the open hatch to join it. I craned my
neck back, glancing at my unwelcome hitchhiker.

I looked toward the hatch just in time
to see the glint of a gun muzzle poking around the edge. A man in a
harness leaned out and fired. The only thing saving me from a
bullet in the brain was the air turbulence. It bounced the man like
a frog on a trampoline. Searing pain blazed into my thigh, followed
shortly by the sensation of a hammer pounding into the calf on my
other leg. The Templar's grip on my legs loosened, and I felt his
hands slide until my feet were the only things between him and a
future as fertilizer puree for the rain forest.

Another bout of turbulence jolted the
plane. The gunman bounced up, slammed his head on the doorframe.
His gun spun away. I gripped his harness and, using the rest of my
strength, pulled myself through the raging wind toward the cabin,
one agonizing inch at a time while the man pounded on my hands with
his fists. The Templar lost hold of one of my feet. I briefly
considered letting the idiot fall.

But I didn't need another guilt-ridden
nightmare to keep me up at night. I knew I'd regret it, but my
conscience would gnaw my insides to raw bits if I didn't try to
rescue him. With a secure grip on the harness, I pounded the gunman
in the face and sent him to la-la land. My torso rested on the edge
of the cabin and the hatch, giving me a little extra leverage. I
reached my hand back, groping for the Templar's wrist since his
other hand hung uselessly behind him but I couldn't reach low
enough.

There was only one way this would work.
Mustering a last surge of strength, I pulled up my leg. It was like
doing a leg-lift with a boulder. A roar of pain tore from my throat
as I gave it everything I had. Five inches more. Three. Two.
Somehow, I found the energy to grip his wrist. As I squeezed, his
grip on my ankle tightened. He probably thought I was going to tear
him loose and drop him into the engine. He probably deserved it.
But not today. Nope, not with tenderhearted Justin at the
wheel.

I'd make a terrible bad
guy.

I kneed him in the face with my free
leg. His head snapped back, bounced off the nacelle. The hand on my
ankle went slack. I pulled his body alongside mine until his hand
reached the harness. I almost burst into tears of joy when he
gripped it and the agonizing pressure on my joints subsided. Using
the harness, I pulled myself into the cabin and dragged the Templar
in after me. He rolled aside and lay in a motionless
heap.

Wind tore through the narrow space,
flinging paper and empty cups around like a miniature tornado. Four
cushy chairs rotated aimlessly in the chaos. The unconscious gunman
hung limp in the orange safety harness. I unbuckled him and left
him on the floor before hauling in the harness so I could close the
hatch. But one of the hinges had warped. I tried to force it shut,
but the weld holding the hinge to the nacelle broke loose. When I
tried to force the handle into a locking position, the stupid thing
popped loose, falling open again. The remaining hinge couldn't take
the strain and snapped. Wind snatched the door and it shot back
like a rocket, glancing off the side of the engine. The plane
shuddered. Miraculously, the engine didn't explode and kept right
on going.

Someone screamed what was probably the
mother lode of Spanish obscenities from behind the curtain
separating the cockpit from the cabin. I added a few of my own as
white-hot fear twisted my bowels. I hoped whoever was flying this
thing could hold it together. I wasn't too worried about him
looking back here, not with him barely keeping this bucking bronco
under control.

I noticed blood seeping from wounds
along the Templar's body and realized that the bullets must have
hit him. Supposedly, Templar outfits protected against mundane
stuff like that. This uniform had failed miserably. I counted five
punctures in the material and shuddered.

My own legs felt like knives were
burrowing into them, one in my thigh muscle, and the other in my
calf. Since I was more or less safe from a jet engine turning me
into lobster bisque, my body turned its full attention to the pain.
The sensations of torn muscles and tendons joined forces with the
bullet wounds and turned my body into a theatre of agony. I reached
a hand to my injured thigh and pulled back bloody
fingers.

Movement flashed in the corner of my
eye. The formerly unconscious gunman swung the barrel of an orange
pistol at me. I lashed out lightning-quick with a foot and caught
his hand. His arm snapped back at an awkward angle just as the gun
went off. Brilliant light flooded the compartment as a flare
exploded like a fireball through the cockpit curtain and burst into
cheerful flames. The pilot screamed like a man falling into a tub
of molten lava. The jet rolled hard to the left, sending us
tumbling. The gunman's screams as he rolled out of the hatch joined
the pilot's.

His fingers caught the orange harness
an instant before gravity claimed him. The nylon fabric snapped
tight. The cockpit curtain burst into orange flames and the plane
rocked back to the right, sending the Templar and me bouncing off
the chairs in the cabin. The smoldering pilot burst through the
burning curtain, squealing like a pig, arms flailing. Stop, drop,
and roll apparently hadn't been taught in his elementary school. He
ran headlong into the bulkhead, bounced off, and tumbled out the
door with a fading shriek. Gagging at the awful odor of burnt flesh
and hair, I pushed myself up and staggered as the wind rocked the
jet back and forth.

The gunman, who'd miraculously held on
to the harness lost his grip for an instant and slid farther
outside. His body thudded against the nacelle, cracking three
windows. The harness clip, already weakened, snapped loose. The
gunman's scream lasted a nanosecond before the engine on that side
made a horrific grinding noise and, with a thunderous boom, sent
more cracks racing across the windows on the left. The jet frame
groaned. Lurched sickeningly to the right. I raced into the
cockpit. The flight stick jerked this way and that, wobbling up and
down before deciding gravity had won. Below us stretched an endless
canopy of forest.

I flung myself into the copilot's seat.
Pulled on the control stick. It responded easily—too easily. I
wiggled it and met absolutely no resistance. I tested the stick on
the pilot's side. Same thing.

"Seriously?" I shouted, slamming the
stick back and forth. Hurtling at hundreds of miles per hour into a
forest while a jet exploded around me did not seem survivable, even
with my remarkable healing ability. I considered jumping. The tree
canopy might slow me down, break a few bones—or more likely every
bone in my body—and then, with a lot of luck, I might heal. With
that many broken bones I'd end up looking like a lopsided ostrich
in a yoga class. An exploding jet, on the other hand, would
probably burn my body to crispy bacon.

The floor shifted beneath me. Metal
groaned. The remaining glass cracked and shattered. A pocket of
turbulence slammed the aircraft so hard my head hit the ceiling and
I bounced around like a pinball, biting my tongue hard enough to
draw the metallic taste of blood. I couldn't waste another second.
Pushing my exhausted body to the limit, I dragged the Templar to
the door and prepared to hurl us out into the void.

Instead of black night, a long fall,
and the promise of brutal pain, Lina's brown eyes greeted me across
a span of empty air. Bella stood beside her, staff extended and
glowing with blue radiance. Alejandro, for his part, seemed to be
piloting an aircraft of some sort. And it was no ordinary aircraft
they stood on. It was a flying carpet. A big one.

I could hardly believe my
eyes.

"Hurry, child!" Bella shouted. "I can't
hold this craft upright much longer."

The carpet slid close enough for me to
step across. I braced myself for the onslaught of wind, hoping it
wouldn't fling me right off the carpet. Instead, I found nothing
but calm, as though I were inside a car, sheltered from the
elements. I dragged the Templar along with me, out of the jet and
onto the carpet. Alejandro held his hand atop what looked like a
sphere of polished black stone veined with green and gold, hovering
almost stomach level above the carpet as he rotated it. The carpet
banked gently to the left, away from the jet.

I looked at the fatally crippled
aircraft and gawked at the blackened ruins of the engine the gunman
had fallen into. As we cleared the wings, Bella gave a mighty grunt
and the glow from her staff winked out. The jet plummeted like a
rock, plowing into the trees with horrible screeches, groans, and
the crack of wood. She dropped onto her backside and set the staff
aside to wipe beaded sweat from her forehead. Her violet eyes
regarded me for a moment. They reminded me so much of Elyssa's, I
had to swallow a lump lodged like broken glass in my
throat.

I succumbed to my own weariness and
slumped to the carpet between the injured Templar and Old Bella.
Lina dropped in front of me.

"Oh, Justin! You are so hurt." She
pulled a first-aid kit from a satchel and, after looking from it to
me a couple of times, shrugged and winced. "I don't think this will
help much."

Bella patted her hand. "He's tired,
child. Once he feeds, he'll be good as new."

Lina leaned into me for a hug and
whispered, "You can feed off me again, Justin. I don't
mind."

Bella rolled her eyes. Despite her own,
very youthful appearance said, "Young lust. How
precious."

Overcoming my state of shock, I found
my voice. "How in the world did you find me?"

Bella frowned. "Someone saw men throw
you into a truck and speed away. The only men anywhere near our
town who would do such a thing worked for Franco, a local drug lord
who, until now, has never given us cause for alarm."