Pieces of Hope (36 page)

“But
Daniel, are you sure your mother didn’t forget to—?”

“Hope,
she was scared to death of the man. He used to beat her senseless! I told you
that! She wouldn’t have forgotten to take it.” Daniel’s eyes glazed over in
anger. “And she wouldn’t have left me. Ever! I’m certain of it.”

“Couldn’t
you have gone to someone, told them what was happening?”

“Who?”
he shouted, jerking his hands away. “When your father’s the sheriff—the
 
man who’s tough on crime and who everybody
seems to love—who’s going to believe he beats his wife and terrorizes his kid?”

“But
there had to be . . .” I searched for the appropriate words, hoping not to make
it worse for him, “some sort of . . . evidence.”

“Bruises
and such, you mean?”

I
swallowed, nodding at him.

“There
were.” He hung his head in disgust. “Mom was brave enough to tell one of his
deputies once, and he suggested she seek ‘counseling.’ I wanted to pound the
guy, but he did his best to explain that it was her word against his, and since
Hartlein
was the sheriff and people assumed he was
doing the right thing, it would be difficult to prove. I’ll never forget the
guy’s name. It’s the same deputy that was following me the night I”—his face
drained of color—“the night I nearly killed you. Second worst night of my life,”
he added.

I wanted
to tell him he wasn’t to blame, but Daniel was distraught and the depth of his
despair was overwhelming. I flashed back to the moment of the accident. That’s
when I’d first felt it. Despair. But he wasn’t responsible for that night any
more than I was. We were both merely pawns in destiny’s twisted sense of
humor.
    

“The
deputy,” I asked a moment later. “Was it
Washpun
?”

For
once, Daniel looked surprised. “Are you reading my mind?”

I shook
my head, not wanting to get into all the freakish, so-called coincidences.

“That’s
the same cop investigating Mom’s fall.” I said this calmly, as if she were
someone else’s mother. It was easier to do that here. I could sense her around
me, but there was no pain associated with her memories. “Do you know the cops
think someone else was in the house when she fell? They’re not sure it was an
accident.”

Daniel
seemed to forget his own troubles for the moment and inched closer. “
I’m
sure it was an accident. No one
could ever hurt your mother.”

“You say
it like you were there.” I wasn’t being serious, but Daniel stiffened and pulled
away. His reaction was puzzling, but then again, he couldn’t feel Vivienne the
way I could, and he had loved her once, too.
 

“Of
course not,” he insisted, sounding a little upset. “I mean, no way would she
let someone shove her down the stairs. Remember how she fought off breast
cancer? Lost her hair and cracked jokes about painting her head black and
putting a number eight on it?”

“So she
could be a human magic 8-ball?” I laughed. “I’d forgotten she said that.”

“Your
mom was something else. You’re a lot like her,” he said.

“Yeah, I
hear that occasionally,” I said wistfully.

“I’m
sorry I left you to deal with that all by yourself. I knew you needed me back
then. I just got lost in my own head.”

I
shrugged. “We all do stupid things, Daniel. So do I.”
 

“But I
can try to make it right.” He brushed his fingertips across my cheek, and I
wondered what he meant. “Your feel Vivienne around you, don’t you?” Without
waiting for my reply, he hurried on, “I know you do because my mother’s here,
too. I’ve known it since I arrived. Imagine—we could find them together! Here,
we could be or do anything we want. Here, we could be happy. I know we could!”

It was
too easy to get caught up in Daniel’s dream world. He could paint beautiful
pictures, real and imaginary ones. It was one of his talents. And tempting,
yes—too much so. As his emotions meshed with mine, a rush of dizziness engulfed
me.

There
seemed no cause for it, but Daniel’s attention shifted away from me toward a
spot on the horizon. I did a quick search, but saw nothing. Just random clouds
in a sea of blue. Daniel stood. With a single nod, it seemed he’d acknowledged
someone. Pushing my vision, I looked further, possibly more than a mile, and
saw what appeared to be three young guys wrestling. In mid-air! It was nothing
like the WWF that Brody was such a fan of. Way too graceful for that . . . more
like a masculine ballet. These guys were built like chiseled stone, and even
from this distance, I could tell that they were tall—slightly under seven feet.
Even so, that wasn’t the most significant thing about them.

They
were deathly pale, almost grayish in pallor, and shirtless. The only fabric on
their bodies was a flesh-colored piece of fabric draped around their lower
bodies, making them appear, at first glance, to be nude. A small gasp escaped
me before I had stopped it. They had sharply angled features, squared-off jaws,
full lips, and piercing eyes. I gazed at them with a mixture of reverence and
fear.

“Their
wings . . .” I muttered out loud, more to myself than Daniel. “What do you
suppose they’re made of?”

“Nothing
we’re familiar with,” I heard him say. “Some sort of divine substance.” Though
I wasn’t paying much attention, I thought he chuckled.

Jutting
from their muscled upper backs sprang the most magnificent wings of silvery
black. Feathery, yet not. When a random ray of sunlight struck them directly,
they shone like flexibly soft metal. Their wingspan was massive, extending
several feet above their heads, far below their bare feet and—though they
weren’t fully extended—I’d have guessed at least twice that in width.

“What
are they?” I marveled, still awestruck.
   

“Angels.”

“There’s
really such a thing?” I stared openly as they continued to tumble and toss each
other around, my very own angel ballet.

“You are
kidding, right?” He laughed easily. “You’ve been flying around the sky with me
all morning like some vampy super girl. In fact, you’re still wearing the proof
as I speak.” I was distracted slightly when my wings fluttered in response, but
not enough to make me look away. “Since you’ve arrived, I’m guessing you’ve
made friends with at least a half-dozen dead people, and yet you want to know .
. . for real, if there’s such a thing as angels?”

I’d once
mistaken
Creesie
for one of these heavenly creatures,
and seeing them in person—only now did I understand why she’d laughed so hard.
My poor imagination hadn’t done them justice.

“I
hadn’t imagined they’d look so beautiful and ferocious all at once,” I said. My
eyes crossed. I tried to right them.

“Look at
me, Hope. That’s right, look at me!” Daniel ordered. I turned my head in his
direction reluctantly. Dots of silvery light shattered his image. I blinked a few
times.
 
“Don’t worry. The effects will
wear off shortly,” he laughed.

“
Wh
. . .
wh
. . .
whattaya
mean?” I thought my speech sounded slurred.

“These
guys have a way of affecting women.”

“
Fuh
weel
?” My tongue suddenly
felt too big for my mouth.

Daniel waved
one slender finger back and forth in front of my face, the way doctors do on
television when someone hits their head. “Have I ever told you you’re very
observant even when you’re slightly inebriated?” He wiped something from my
chin. Was I drooling? “Beautiful and ferocious, right? I love that about you.”

It was a
delayed reaction to his compliment, but I felt one side of my mouth slide up. I
had, however, intended to raise both sides. I wobbled before him.

“I’d
kill to get them on canvas! Wouldn’t they be something in paint? They’re not
your average angels, you know . . .” He made mock brushstrokes in the air.
“Technically, they’re fighter angels, the elite of the elite, protecting
mankind from evil and all that. At least that’s what they tell me. Part of the
Powers, I think they said.”

“
You’f
thoken
to them?” I mumbled,
forcing my thick tongue to move.

“Technically,
no. But yes, they’ve spoken.”
 

Confused,
I held up one finger. I couldn’t see which one. “Hole on . . .!”

 
Averting my gaze so I didn’t accidentally look
at them again—I thought this was the problem—I knelt beside the water, scarcely
aware of the rocky points digging into my flesh. As best as I could manage (in
my super slinky dress), I dipped my entire head in the ocean. After holding it
under for a good thirty seconds, I yanked it out. Salt water burned, dripping
into my eyes and mouth. I screwed up my face. The water ran down my back in
tiny rivulets, and the chill that came over me sobered me up. I wasn’t entirely
myself yet, but my head was less cobwebby than before. Things were coming
together. I was starting to see where Daniel’s inspiration for flying had
originated from. I’d given him too much credit.

“Better?”
Daniel eyed my wet head.

“Much.”
I wiped the stinging water from my eyes, but when I opened my mouth, a little
dribbled in. Okay, not perfect. “Explain these ‘technicalities.’”

“What
technicalities?” He was doing that smirking thing.

I
flipped a thumb over my shoulder, indicating the angels.

“Oh,
those
technicalities,” he said slyly.
“It’s better if you hear and see them for yourself, you know, straight from the
source.”

“Oh,
right. Like that’s going to happen.” He really was delusional. “Like angels
have nothing better to do than fly over here and have a chat with Hope Valenti.”

“It’s
not as unlikely as you might think,” he chuckled. “But seeing how drunk you got
off the three of them—I can only imagine how you’d react to the fourth one.
He’s the leader, I think, and he definitely seems to be the most powerful.”

My heart
thumped in my stomach and my skin prickled the way that it did when I was being
watched. Suddenly it made sense—that woozy feeling, same as the one I felt at
the Station, Daniel’s newly-acquired talents, the conversation with Mac.

I
scrambled to find my voice. “Daniel, are you sure they’re angels?”

“Don’t
be silly, Hope. Of course, I’m sure.”

The
words came out so fast I wasn’t sure he could follow me. “Mac told me about a
powerful being just after we left that last Station.
Sethos
,
I think he called him. He says he’s evil—worse than you can possibly imagine.”
I was scrambling to remember. Didn’t he also say there was more of his kind? “And
there was more----there was something more—Oh! He can disguise himself as
anything. Literally anything! We should go! NOW!” For the first time in my mad
ramble, I looked right at him. He was smiling, not at all taking me seriously.
So I persisted. “Daniel, if you wanted to fool people, wouldn’t angels be above
reproach? I mean, what if they aren’t what they seem to be, what if they’re—?”
My sentence dropped off sharply. I seemed to be swimming in honey. My tongue
felt swollen, my limbs heavy.

Oh no!
Not again.

I was
slightly aware that my hair was suddenly dry and blowing around my face. The
warmth of the sun bursting from behind a cloud was not the cause of it. Either
Daniel was up to new tricks or someone (or something) else had freshened up my
hair and dress.

Daniel
was squinting over my head, as though the sun was much too near. “They aren’t
evil, Hope. Trust me on this one.”

A
cottony lump had formed in my throat, making it difficult to swallow.

“They’re
right behind me, aren’t they?” I said, terrified.

“Yep.”
His grin was unbearably fuzzy.

I shook
my head vehemently, desperately afraid to look. What if they attacked me as
they had at the Station? Now that there were four of them, and Charlotte wasn’t here to save me, I didn’t
stand a chance. I shook my head hard. If I hadn’t been so incapacitated, flying
seemed the best way to escape. Then again, their wings were four times the size
of mine. How long before they caught me? Three-point-two seconds? Point-two
seconds?
 

Do not be afraid, little one. We are not
here to harm you
, rang a chorus of voices inside my head.

I was
more than certain that I hadn’t moved, that I was still weighing the odds of
running, when the lump of rock on which I was standing
did
move. It rotated one-half of a circle—a full one-hundred and
eighty degrees. The light was so blindingly bright from this side that my eyes
took several seconds to adjust. I blinked hard against it. Eventually, I saw
the outline of four winged forms suspended before me. Even in my honeyed frame
of mind, it seemed odd that their wings made no sound as they undulated. Nor
was there the slightest breeze as they flapped, or any kind of scent coming off
of them. Other than the fact that I was staring—my eyes round as golf
balls—right at them, there seemed to be zero proof that they were really there
at all. That’s when I concluded that Daniel and I were sharing the same hallucination.

Booming
laughter echoed in my head. Though the source of it was obvious, their majestic
faces showed no movement or emotion, and their mouths remained closed. Also,
the sound was different. Unlike voices at the Station—which I heard one at a
time, and at a lower volume—these voices were commanding, impossible to ignore,
and startling in their intensity.

The one
floating just a few feet in front of me had long, dark hair to his chest. His
expression was serene, but not intimidating. Seeing him this close made me more
wobbly than before, and as I gazed into his eyes, my knees buckled. With one
motion of his index finger, my legs and spine straightened as if he had lifted
me up by the top of my head and held me steady. For some strange reason, I
began to feel very much at ease. My heart rate returned to something closer to
normal, and my head started to clear.