Landing (10 page)

Chapter 14

Eyes. Tarren’s blue-gray eyes.
Locking onto mine.

His lips are moving.

Focus. Focus.

“I’m going to get you out,” he says
evenly. He says it again, even slower. “I’m. Going. To. Get. You. Out. Look at
me, Maya. Just me.”

Tarren’s face. Straight bridge
of his nose. The scar.
My eyes latch onto it. Body vibrating. Bucking.
Tarren shifting. Something in his hand. Time is choppy. Slipping away from me.
Small black pouch in Tarren’s hand.

Scent of jasmine.

“Close your eyes.”

He says it again, “Close your
eyes.”

And again, “Close your eyes.”

Voices from the stage. Big
thumps
of music. Shifting energy. Gasps and cries of delight.

It hurts.

“Close your eyes,” Tarren orders. I
force my lids closed. Colors beating through the thin shields of my eyelids.
Tarren leans toward me.

No, No, No.
I flinch away.

The notes of music in my head are
catching fire.

“Don’t move.” Tarren leans toward
me again. His energy on me—burning my skin.

I can’t. Can’t.
Beneath my
legs, my hands spasm.

Darkness. Sudden. Cutting off the
spastic wash of colors. I take another hiccupping breath.

Jasmine. Everything….jasmine. Scent
so thick. So cloying. It breaks right through the runaway train of my hunger.

The blindfold tightens as Tarren
knots the fabric at the back of my head.

I take another breath. Stinking,
suffocating clouds of jasmine. The blindfold. It’s coming from the blindfold.

“Put your hands in your pockets and
keep them there.” Tarren’s voice is steady, forged of steel. “Don’t worry about
anything else. Just your hands. I’ll do all the rest.”

He repeats this again and again
until my hands—glowing, spilling out nuclear heat—come out from under my legs
and make their clumsy way into the pockets of my coat.

Tarren stands, threads his arms
through mine, and hauls me up out of my seat. I wobble, and he clasps my
shoulders and holds me up. I almost lose it right there.

Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.
So
dizzy.

Monster Maya laughs while my whole
body seizes with need.

The music from the stage is happy,
playful. The crowd laughs. I feel the ripple of their energies. Then another
breath of jasmine sends my focus spiraling away.

“We’re going to walk now,” Tarren
says. He locks my elbow hard in his.

I take another breath. A floral
cascade of jasmine, jasmine, jasmine.

“Move.”

We do. Slow, shaky steps. The
darkness gives me precious strands of control. I bash knees, step on toes,
almost fall, but Tarren drags me forward.

“Stairs,” he says, and I’m slipping
down them. Tarren steadies me with his other hand. “Keep going. Keep going.”
His voice is deep, calm. I drift on jasmine. Confused. Disoriented. Nauseous
with the smell of it.

Behind us is a thick wall of sound
and gushing energy. My eyes strain against the blackness. Needing the energy
that I feel ringing up my body. Another wave of jasmine short-circuits my
thoughts all over again.

We make it out of the arena and
into the hall. The onslaught of energy and sound dampens. I’m shivering,
stumbling. Hands throbbing claws. Knees buckling. Tarren locks his elbow.

“Stay up,” he growls and pulls
harder. I’m jogging, tripping to keep up with him. Behind us, a voice booms and
cheers rise. The energy ramps up.

I almost fall again.

Tarren yanks me up. All I know is
the feeling of his energy churning fast and smooth, the heavy breaths pulling
in and out of his body, and the fast clip of his heart.

“You need a stamp to get back
in…Sir?” The voice comes and goes. I get stuck in the turnstile. Tarren pulls
on my arm, and I am suddenly released, thrust into the cool night air. I let
out a garbled sob.

“Not yet.” Tarren’s arm is
relentless, dragging me farther and farther from the abyss. I don’t know how
far we go, how long I stagger in this blind, jasmine-scented limbo, before
Tarren finally releases me.

When he does, I crumple to the
ground, not even bothering to try and break my fall. I pull my legs up to my
chest and tuck my head down as far as it will go.

My body writhes—a conflagration of
music, of this howling addiction. I don’t know how long it goes on—this forever
fight between me and me. Maybe it never stops.

“I’m sorry.” Tarren’s voice is
faint, but he knows I can hear it. “I shouldn’t have let you go in there.”

He’s standing several paces away,
breathing hard. I wonder if his hand is hovering near his gun; how deeply he’s
scowling.

“I…I wanted to help,” I wheeze.

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t have held me like
that,” I whisper in a wet, cracking voice. “I could have…hurt you.”

Tarren takes his time answering.
“It was the only thing I could think of.”

“You could have shot me.” I try to
tug off the blindfold. My hands are trembling, molten blocks of uselessness,
and the fabric’s caught up in my hair. I give it a hard yank and barely feel the
pain. The night is a tear-stained blur.

The knotted fabric rests in my
palm. Red satin. Soaked in some kind of scented oil on the front.

How the hell did he figure this
out?

“The hunger is much more powerful
then you’ve been letting on.” Tarren states this as a fact.

Slowly, I unwind myself and look up
toward him.

Because my mind is all crazy and
shattered right now, I have this weird vision of Tarren as Odysseus, sailing
the perilous Greek oceans, losing his men one by one, facing terrible creatures
at every berth, and drifting farther and farther from home. How tiresome that
journey. How utterly exhausting. Enough to burn away a man’s soul. Leave him
hollowed and very, very alone.

When I blink, Tarren is Tarren
again. His eyes are angry gray, and his jaw is set against everything I’ve done
to make his life this much more complicated.

“Come on, get up,” he says. “We’re
getting noticed. You can rest in the car.”

I stay on the ground for a while
longer, blinking in the darkness, re-programming my lungs to do the breathing
thing, and making sure the monster is contained. My muscles are twitching hard,
but they’re unlocking from full flex mode, and the bulbs have sunk back down
into the hollow pits of my palms.

Tarren is not stupid enough to
offer me his hand when I finally make it to my feet. I’m glad he doesn’t say
anything now or while we trudge back to the SUV.

The song echoes within me, fading
so slowly.

I try to unknot the blindfold, but
my fingers are shaky and uncoordinated even now. Instead, I balance the loop of
cloth on one finger and hold it out to Tarren. He takes it in a clean snatch
then re-establishes the large space between us. I don’t ask, and Tarren offers
no explanation.

“Stay in here,” Tarren tells me
when we reach the Murano.

I just want him to leave, but he
leans up against the passenger door and folds his arms across his chest. He
gazes down the road, but his eyes are distant, caught up in the stream of his
thoughts. Pale yellow hues brighten the edges of his aura.

“What?” I finally snap.

“I need to find a way to help you,”
Tarren says, and I can tell from the jump in his energy that he didn’t mean to
say it out loud. It is a rare thing for Tarren’s control to slip, though he
just shrugs and pushes himself off the car.

Something flickers on his face.
Another slip. He turns away from me, and it’s dark so maybe he thinks I can’t
see it. But I do, and it’s intolerable.

Only granite and storm clouds can
find a perch on Tarren’s brow. Not this. Not regret. He’s supposed to be the
strong one.

“Stay in the car,” Tarren says
again and then walks back to the show.

Chapter 15

I curl up in the backseat of the
Murano, snivel big mushy snivels, and have myself a good cry. The tears are
hot, big as spring raindrops, as they roll down my cheeks and get caught in the
corners of my mouth. My muscles are still all twitchy, and I can’t get the
tremor out of my hands.

“Stop,” I whisper to them, “just
stop.”

The song echoes inside me, always,
always.

I gaze out the windshield at the
solidly middle-class houses lining the street. The one we’re parked in front of
is decked out for Halloween. Crude jack-o-lanterns grin on the front porch, big
black spiders hang from polyester webbing, and cardboard gravestones in the
yard boast un-funny puns like “Ima Goner” and “Mort U. Ary”. The whole stupid
show.

I try to remember my old house, but
my life before the change exists in a dream-like fog. I close my eyes and think
about the front door. What color was that door?
Brown?
Yes,
definitely brown.

I dredge for images of the kitchen
cabinets, the pattern around the rim of the plates we used, Henry’s tired face,
the smell of hot laundry when Karen dumped it on the couch to fold. My room:
white curtains, a big oak dresser from which a rogue tank top or pair of jeans
was always in mid-escape, and Raggedy Ann slouched against my books on the
brimming bookshelf. The doll was a gift from my grandmother the year before she
died.

I grab onto this memory,
visualizing Ann’s stitched mouth, her red yarn hair, her loose left button eye,
and the little pucker in her arm that I—Dr. Maya—had sewn up in big, messy
stiches when I was a little girl.

I get out of the car and start
walking. There’s no good reason to defy Tarren’s orders, except that I need
some fresh air and less thinking. I can’t stand those dumb, grinning
jack-o-lanterns and the warm light spilling from the windows of the house.

I walk around the subdivision on my
heavy, twitching legs and pick up faint pulses of energy from the houses I
pass. Delight. Boredom. Pleasure. Illness. A baby. In one house, I can hear
children and parents playing a game together, shouting out answers and then
laughing.

I keep walking, but now I want to
get the hell away from all these different lives. I cross the street and trudge
back to the park. Long breaths of wind keep trying to find a breach in my
jacket. In the distance, I see a faint circle of trucks and trailers

At some point, my cell phone dings
with a message. I look toward the tent and see bodies streaming out. The show
is over. Time to hightail it to the Murano before Tarren and Gabe get back.

I turn away from the woods and
ready myself for a mad dash.

Except then my ears pop.

Static crackles inside my head like
there’s a faulty antenna between my ears. A low hum breaks out from the static.

It grows louder, and a slight
pressure builds in a long band behind my forehead.

I take a few timid steps forward
and turn my head left, then right. The static and the pressure don’t abate. I
shake my head, try to swallow, and plug my ears with my fingers, but the hum
only grows louder. This is definitely not a human thing, which means it’s an
angel thing, which means it’s bad.

Really, really bad.

I stop all my thrashing and just
stand still, waiting for my head to explode or something else informative to
happen. Maybe horns will drill out of my forehead, or scales will lick down my
skin. Instead, words float into my mind beneath the popping static. Words that
are not my own.

Hello Little One

I twist around frantically but see
nothing.

Walk a little farther back,
toward the trailers.

I don’t move. It’s highly possible
that I’ve gone over the deep end. Maybe it was inevitable.

You’re scared, I know, but I
only want to help.

For no reason whatsoever, except
that I
am
scared and I
do
need help, I take cautious steps toward
the circle of trailers. The hum grows louder as the static fades. It vibrates
inside my head, shaking apart all my well-reasoned arguments for not doing
exactly what I’m doing. My feet keep moving forward over the flat land. The
wind pulls up particles of sandy dirt from the grass with each blow and rattles
the tree branches to my left.

The haphazard circle of trailers
and trucks sits a hundred yards behind the big tent. Performers tramp from the
back of the tent through the beaten-down grass, their bright, elegant costumes
almost obscene against the stark utility of the rust-stained trailers.
Un-costumed, thick-armed workers lean against the trucks and smoke, the pungent
tendrils of tobacco taking off with the wind.

I stop outside the circle, keeping
within the dark.

“Hey there Little One,” a voice
calls to my left. I wheel around, muscles clenching, mind scrabbling.

A creature emerges from behind a
trailer and walks toward me.

Yes
, this is a mistake.

Yes
, I am the biggest idiot
of all time.

Yes
, it’s a miracle I can
even cross the street without getting hit by a car.

Yes, yes, yes
to any
criticism that Tarren has and ever will accuse me of.

The creature raises both arms. “I
come in peace.”

I realize that he is not a
creature, but a man dressed in a flowing black robe. His face is painted chalk
white with orange triangles stamped over each eye and on his forehead. A
metallic orange crown sits on his head.

No colorful aura rings his body,
which means I’m wrong again. Not a man. An angel. He takes another step toward
me then pauses. The triangles over each eye hitch up.

“Hmp,” he grunts.

I am intensely aware of the Glock
tucked inside my jacket and just how badly my hands are shaking.

“Jane,” the man says, “check this
out.”

A dark silhouette cuts through the
night, leaping from a trailer roof and landing besides the man. Fabric billows
dramatically around her body as she straightens up. Her face is also painted
white and stamped with bright orange triangles. Unlike the triangles on the
man’s face, hers point downward. The crown upon her head is also different, the
geometric patterns inverse to those on her partner’s headgear.

Standing together, the two of them
are otherworldly, frightening as all hell.

The female angel throws me a
hostile stare then shifts her gaze to the man. They are silent. The hum ramps
up inside my skull again. The woman’s nose wrinkles.

I move my hand toward my jacket,
but the woman’s head snaps forward, and her dark eyes weld me to the ground. The
man gives a short laugh and brushes the woman’s arm with his knuckle.

“Look at her, shaking like a leaf.
Come on, we gotta help.” He gives me a warm smile, though since his lips are
painted black, it’s not exactly reassuring. “Sorry about the costumes. We just
finished with the show. I’m Kyle. This is Jane. Are you all alone?” His voice
is warm and touched with a Boston accent.

“This is suspicious,” Jane whispers
to the man. She is several inches taller than her partner and bends her head
down toward him when she speaks.

“Come on, she’s in bad shape,” Kyle
replies. To me he says, “You’ve got to feed. You’re weak.” His voice reminds me
of honey for some reason.

“I…I…” I stammer uselessly.

“Why weren’t you fully Ascended?”
Jane asks bluntly. “Who was your Guide? How did you find us?”

I stare at her.

“Were you abandoned?” Kyle asks
softly.

“I…escaped,” I manage. A door
squeaks open, and a man exits one of the trailers. He walks behind the two
angels, completely unaware of our presence. The man’s energy is a flare in the
dark night, and the bulbs push against the seams in each of my palms.

The two angels ignore the human as
he saunters behind them, chortling into his phone. They don’t even flinch.

“Were you turned against your
will?” Jane asks. I stare into her alien face and see sharp lines of beauty
beneath the makeup. I nod, and her face softens. She tilts her head down, and
the hum inside my skull cranks up again.

It finally hits me that they’re
talking. Without words or moving lips. Mind talking.

Kyle takes Jane’s hand and brings
it to his lips. “Come on darling, see how scared she is?”

Jane glances at me then back to
Kyle. Her lips purse. “You’re too trusting,” she says, but her voice is soft,
acquiescent.

Kyle squeezes her hand and turns to
me. Words whisper inside my head.
Do you want to know what you are?

Kyle walks toward me, and I’m not
going to try for the gun. I already know this. I just stand there meekly while
he advances with graceful, cat-like steps. Energy pulses beneath his skin from
his last meal.

“You were not initiated correctly,”
he says out loud, “and that is a damn shame. It’s not easy even if you’re
willing.”

He and Jane are so close to me now,
and I’m bolted to the ground.

“I don’t
…
,” I whisper. The
hum is still ringing in my head. I form the words in my mind and timidly push
them out through the line of connection.

I don’t
want to kill
people
.

Kyle nods. “It was difficult for
Jane too in the beginning. She tried to get by on animals, like you do, right?”

I look down at my checkered shoes.

“You’ll always be hungry unless you
feed on humans,” Kyle says gently. “Human energy is the only way to be full, to
get strong.”

“And to express your gift,” Jane
says. She has a low, husky voice that still manages to sound ultra-feminine and
sexy.

I look at the couple, and I know
this is as crazy and ridiculously dumb as it gets, but I forget that I’m
supposed to kill them; that I’m supposed to hate them. I meet Kyle’s brown
eyes, and the open, honest expression beneath the layers of paint on his face,
and I smile. He smiles back and claps a strong hand on my shoulder.

“We’re going to do right by you,
Little One.”

“She’s not a child,” Jane tells
him.

“I know.” Kyle chuckles, and the
sound is clear and warm. “I just can’t help myself.”

My phone vibrates with an incoming
call.
Holy shit on a stick!
Tarren and Gabe must have made it back to
the SUV and, with their keenly-honed powers of observation, noticed that I was
not in it.

Tarren and Gabe.

My brothers.

My angel-hunting brothers.

Friends?
Kyle asks in my
head.

Oh god, did he just hear my
thoughts?
I stare at Kyle’s face, trying to divine if, say, there’s any
shock or murderous intent going on behind all that makeup.

“I…uh,” I take a step back. My
thoughts slosh around inside my skull.

“It has to be your choice,” Jane
says, and the suspicion is mounting in her voice again. “We won’t force you to
do anything.”

My phone vibrates again, and I take
another step back.

“Are you sure?” Kyle asks. I’m
still concentrating on his expression, trying to figure out if he’s picking up
on any of my spastic thoughts. No, just pity on his face.

“I….I can’t,” I mutter. I can’t
accept their help. I can’t kill them either. I most definitely can’t be brave
and heroic like my brothers, and I can’t—just fucking can’t—ever know the right
thing to do.

“Fine,” Jane shrugs, “just don’t
kill anyone around here.”

“Yeah, Little One, that wouldn’t be
so good for us.” Kyle hooks his arm around Jane’s waist. “You’ve got to feed,
though. It’s painful to even look at you. Find someone on the street, someone
old and sick. It’ll be easier on your conscience,” he says and looks up at
Jane. His expression is tender and loving, and I can’t stand it. So I turn, and
I run.

The two angels do not follow me. I
hear Kyle’s voice in my head, fading into static as I tear through the night.

We’re in trailer sixteen. Come
back when you’re ready, Little One.