Landing

  Girl With Broken Wings, Book Two

  By J Bennett

  Copyright © 2013 by J Bennett

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-9840048-1-2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Chapter 1

  The cold of this October night seeps through my jacket, finds my joints, and nestles inside. Aches settle into the small of my back and in my elbows as I lean against the edge of the ice cream shop’s roof. Day one of patrol in this small college town was fine. Day two got annoying. Day three just sucks. I’m almost too bored to be nervous anymore.

  A quarter mile down the street, a bar announces final call, and our next great generation stumbles out of the doors, laughing. Idiots. Their energy fields are fogged and giddy with alcohol. Such strong, healthy energy. They practically beg to be snatched and drained.

  My body shivers involuntarily, and I remind myself that I already drained a perfectly good rat before we left on the stakeout. A perfectly good, small, tiny handful of energy that did little but whet my appetite.

  A group of guys lingers outside the bar. They laugh and swing sloppy fists at each other. Their overt good spirits are offensive. I don’t know them, but I can tell that they are enjoying every minute of their dimwit college experience: signing up for useless classes like Latin or Shakespeare II, meeting study groups in the library, pondering the cork boards in the dorms for some obtuse club to join, banging drunk sorority girls at parties, being normal and human and whatever.

  In the midst of the group, I immediately recognize the vibrant blue aura of my brother, Gabe. Technically half-brother, that is. At least we share my good half. He’s already managed to befriend the entire group. He hoots with the rest of the guys and has somehow obtained a university hoodie, which hangs on his thin frame. His energy is as foggy and looping as his compatriots, and I wonder if he actually downed a couple of drinks, or if he’s just that good at acting. I’m learning that Gabe excels at this bait trick. He takes pride in putting on a good performance and usually manages to enjoy himself in the process.

  “See ya losers!” Gabe calls fondly as he breaks away from the group. His voice carries down the empty street.

  “Friday man!” one of the guys yells after him. “’s gonna be epic!”

  “Maybe.” Gabe turns away and continues with slow, plodding steps toward the industrial part of town. He whistles a soft, off-key tune to himself. I watch the other boys stagger back to campus. None of them peels away from the group. Good.

  Our angel likes his victims drunk and alone. In the middle of the week it’s slim pickings even in this college town. We haven’t found a body in two days, which means it has to be tonight. It has to be Gabe. My heart picks up its pace, and I tell it to mind its own goddamn business.

  But it is tonight. It is Gabe. As he makes his way farther from the bar, the voices and giggles fade. This is the kind of town that goes to bed at night, at least during the week. Cars roll by in intervals, but there’s no one else left on the street except for Gabe and a figure trailing behind him. The stranger must have seen his share of horror flicks, because he lurks with some gusto, keeping to the shadows, hands plunged deep into his coat pockets.

  This is our angel. It’s easy enough for me to tell. The space around his body is empty—bereft of the glowing blues and greens and soft violets of a human aura. Angels don’t produce their own energy; they drain it from humans. Gabe doesn’t know it, but he has just about the most beautiful aura I’ve ever seen. Blue as blue, true as true. I’m rambling like I always do when I get nervous.

  “Confirm,” I whisper into my Bluetooth earpiece. “Black coat. By the nail salon.” The angel continues to lurk his heart out.

  A pause. “I see him,” Tarren whispers back. He’s on the roof of a scrapbooking store across the street, dampening his energy to a soft glow that even a hungry angel wouldn’t notice unless he knew where to look. Even though I know he does, I am tempted to glance up, find Tarren, and make sure he’s got his Barrett 82A1 semi-automatic rifle trained on the figure.

  Instead, I dig the cell phone out of my pocket. Stupid shaking hands. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, but I still hate it. Dangling something dear over the abyss.

  I tap into my saved messages, find the right one, and hit send. Down below, Gabe reaches into his pocket, still taking slow, unsteady steps farther from the main drag. A glow of light graces his sharp nose and chin as he wakes up his phone and checks the message, Leprechauns are extinct, because leprechauns piss Chuck Norris off.

  “Awesome,” Gabe says. He picks up his pace and whistles a little louder as he makes his way toward us.

  I track the angel as he keeps to the shadows—still lingering, watching, hungering. A car filled with music blares its way down the street. Its headlights make a wide sweep as it turns down the street Gabe has just crossed.

  For a moment the angel is blocked from view. When the headlights fade, I refocus on the scene below. There’s Gabe still whistling. The angel is…gone.

  Shit on a stick!

  I scan the street. Nothing. Back to Gabe who is a hundred feet away from us and readying himself for the grand finale.

  “Oh sweet tiny baby Jesus,” he moans.

  Wait, wait! I cry inside my mind. But he’s going for it, staggering against the side of a building and pretending to dry heave. There are no cars. No people. The trap is baited.

  “Where?” Tarren hisses through my earpiece. He’s lost the angel too. I hear my heart banging in my chest, and I try desperately to calm it down. Angels are good at hearing heartbeats.

  Gabe crumples to his knees, heaving, swearing colorfully, praying to Keira Knightly for relief, pandering for the Oscar.

  My eyes catch swift movement.

  “Oh, oh, there,” I hiss to Tarren. “I mean, below you. Right under you!”

  Inexplicably, the angel must have turned down the same street as the car, gone behind us, and doubled back so that he is now walking swiftly toward Gabe. He is directly below the scrapbooking store, hidden for a moment beneath its polka dot awning. I know immediately that Tarren has lost his shot, even before he whispers, “I don’t have him,” his voice all tight and boiling into my ear. The angel picks up his pace, moving so fast it’s like he’s gliding on ice. I pull out my gun and press the extra lever to remove the safety.

  Gabe sees the guy. “Just ignore me, I’m fine,” he slurs, slowly getting to his feet, waiting for us.

  “Maya,” Tarren hisses. The Glock 32C is big in my palm. I know how to hold it now. How to aim. I can usually smoke a dozen empty beef ravioli cans without missing. But this isn’t beef ravioli or Spaghettios or any other label that can be dispatched without a hint of moral meltdown.

  “Oh no,” I whisper, because I can’t shoot. The angel is there, reaching out for Gabe. Time slows in order to accommodate the lurching wave of fear that breaks over me. Panic drops black snowflakes across my vision, because I know, just know, Gabe is going to die for my cowardice.

  “Oh fuck,” Gabe says as the angel descends upon him, hands open and glowing.

  Chapter 2

  Tarren pulls out his sidearm, leans over the roof at a crazy angle, and shoots down without aiming. The shot cracks the night with sound, and a red flower blooms on the angel’s thigh. He staggers forward. Gabe ducks the fatal grip, rolls, pulls his Beretta PX4 from the holster inside his jacket, and puts two bullets through the angel’s head. The shots are as loud and concussive as fireworks, and the shell casings clatter to the ground.

  In the silence afterward, I heave in a long, wavering breath.

  “What the fuck?” Gabe calls out, gazing at the rooftops before quickly scooping up his errant shell casings.

  “Maya, the car.” Tarren’s voice in my ear is calm, which doesn’t mean anything. It’s his energy that belies his wrath. Even from across the rooftops, I can see his muddy blue aura jumping high around his figure, growing red and angry at the edges until he tightens his grip again and dampens it back down. Tarren’s energy is the only way to know him, and even that isn’t much good.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve frozen solid just when the moment called for a well-aimed bullet.

  Shit, shit, shit. With shaking hands I tuck my gun into the holster beneath my jacket and then jump off the roof. The landing doesn’t even sting. Tarren’s silver Murano SUV is parked behind the ice cream shop, and I pull it up beside Gabe. He opens the hatch, and I get out to help.

  “Yo,” he says to me as I take the corpse’s other arm.

  “I fucked up.”

  “It happens. But I got on my lucky hat, so no harm can come to me.” Gabe’s dingy white ball cap is in place, as usual, turned backwards to tame his wavy hair.

  The tarp is already spread out across the SUV’s trunk. I shove my small carrying case of rats into the corner. I wouldn’t mind squeezing a couple of them dry right now. We lift, and the body lands heavy.

  “I fucked up,” I say again. “Same as Poughkeepsie.”

  “Nah, it’s Tarren’s fault.”

  “Tarren didn’t have the shot.”

  “Course he didn’t, but he’ll beat himself up over it anyway.” Gabe pushes the l egs all the way in. “Here’s the deal. This dead bastard won’t be killing anymore college kids. I got invited to an awesome frat party, so bonus there, and I don’t hear any sirens yet, so I think we did just fine. Since there was an oh-so-slight mishap, Tarren is automatically going to take full responsibility, be generally unbearable the entire way back, and make himself train even harder than he already does for the next month.”

  “But I didn’t…”

  “Nope, Tarren’s fault. Forgone conclusion,” Gabe interrupts. I swear his eyes can twinkle on command. “Therefore, since he’s already going to take all the blame, just let him do his little self-crucifixion thing, and you and I should go party. They said it was going to be epic.”

  Tarren strides across the street, the rifle bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Let’s go,” he growls, and when Tarren starts growling you better just shut the fuck up and do what he says. Tarren takes the wheel, and I slink into the backseat.

  “ID,” he barks.

  “Yeah, yeah.” As soon as we start moving, I crawl over the backseats into the trunk. It’s not every day that I straddle a dead body, but it’s not exactly unusual anymore either. Life is just peaches and cream.

  The first thing I do, always do, is check the corpse’s hands. Not that there’s any doubt, but still. I run my finger along the dead guy’s palm. The skin overlaps in an X pattern, and if I push through the center of his palm, I’d feel the hard, vein-covered bulb that he uses to feed.

  I stare at the dead angel’s hand, at the hidden X embedded in his palm. He got so close to draining Gabe. My brother could have been just another ice-cold corpse—an icicle—on the sidewalk.

  I drop the angel’s hand and look over his body. He’s thickened with muscles, tall, dark-skinned. Maybe Indian. Hard to tell in the dark, and him losing the structural integrity of his skull. I open his black jacket and feel around for pockets. Next the pants. That’s right; I’m perilously close to sexually groping a corpse. Peaches and fucking cream.

  I don’t think they show this part in the movies. The way blood turns sticky then crusty and somehow always gets in my hair. The piss and shit, and there is usually at least some. The knowledge that this was a person—kind of a person—who was probably loved by some people somewhere who will wait and wonder forever. Like Karen and Henry, but that’s still a bundle of nerve fiber endings that I don’t particularly like jabbing at.

  I find a car key and remote in the angel’s front pocket. They are hooked together on a chain with a plastic Cookie Monster on the end. I stare at Cookie Monster wondering what it means—an inside joke, a bet lost, or perhaps a token of affection given by someone loved.

  I have to remind myself that I hate this angel, because he killed over eleven college kids that we know of people; because he chose to monsterize himself. A familiar feeling prickles up the dark part of my brain. Envy. I shouldn’t be feeling this. Can’t be feeling this. Envy for the freedom to feed. Envy because he got to wake every single morning and actually want to be the thing he was.

  “Anything?” Tarren calls back.

  “He’s smarter than most.” I sit back on my heels, putting a hand down on the tarp as we take a sharp turn.

  “No ID, no phone. Just a car key and remote.” I crawl out of the trunk.

  “Insignia?”

  “No.” I’m already peeling off my long-sleeve black top and fingerless gloves. I feel naked without the gloves, and quickly pull on the extra pair I always keep tucked in the pocket of the passenger seat.

  We drive around this small, sleeping town for the next two hours, and I lean my arm out the window and press the alarm button on the car remote over and over again. We take the main drag three times, pulling into each parking lot and then make wider and wider circles around the town. I welcome the blast of cool air on my face and work to soothe the shaking of my hands

  In the passenger seat, Gabe leans down, opens the door to a small cage between his feet, and pulls out Sir Hopsalot.

  “Hey you,” he says, scratching the rabbit behind its long, floppy ears. I notice the slightest shiver in Tarren’s aura. He and I are both less than amused that Gabe insists on bringing his pet on all our missions. The smell and stray fur irks Tarren to no end — ironic considering how often we cart around bloody corpses in the trunk — and I don’t particularly appreciate having to ignore another tempting aura.

  “It’s not here,” I tell Tarren, still mashing down the alarm button. “If he was smart enough to leave his ID, he probably parked the car miles away.”

  “Motels and hotels,” Tarren says to his brother. Gabe fires up his laptop, switches on his mobile Internet card, and directs us to each of the three hotels in town. Nothing. Tarren’s grip on the wheel keeps tightening.

  “Blood was called in,” Gabe informs us. He’s got a bead on our police scanner. “We’d better get out of Dodge.”

  Tarren doesn’t answer. I close the window.

  “Someone will call in a missing person; we’ll figure out who he is,” Gabe tells his brother.

  “They’ll lock everything up. We need to figure out where he came from, who he’s connected to.”

  “I can still do that,” Gabe says. “Once we know who this guy is, I’ll crack his email, his Facebook page, any other social networking shit he’s got going on. We’ll know everything about him. Hell, I’ll tell you what kind of underwear he buys.”

  “How reassuring,” I say from the backseat.

  “Call Lo,” Tarren tells his brother. He turns onto the highway.

  “I hate that little perv. He’s your geeky sidekick, you call him.”

  “Gabe.” That’s all Tarren has to say.

  With an exaggerated sigh, Gabe pulls out the earpiece connected to the police scanner and replaces it with his Bluetooth set. I think about Lo, his leering black eyes and that voice too deep for his teenage body. Gabe is right. Lo is a pervert, but he’s also a genius and loaded with enough cash to set up a state-of-the-art lab in the guest house of his stepmom’s mansion. As much as I despise his dirty mouth, I know that his lab is the only thing that might produce the cure that will give me back my humanity and end this secret war my half-brothers have been fighting their entire lives. Not that I allow myself too much hope. I’m not an idiot.

  “Hey there sugarplum,” Gabe says after a moment. “Oh, you been practicing that? Could you turn down Dora the Explorer for a second, I have a question.”

  I strain to hear the other end of the conversation, but the ambient noise of the highway drowns it out. Both Gabe and Tarren have taken to using Bluetooth earpieces for all their calls.

  “Whatever. We got some clipped wings here,” Gabe says. “A day or so out from you. In the mood for any slicing and dicing?... No, nothing new….Alright. That’s it…. Huh? Yeah, course she’s here.”

  Green shades swirl into Gabe’s aura.

  “Bad idea,” he says, and then, after a pause, “Alright, hold on.” Gabe unbuckles his seatbelt, turns on the overhead light, and twists around in the seat to stare at me. “Black pants, white tank top, little clips in her hair. Lots of blood. She was on cavity search duty tonight. Oh, she’s giving me the finger. I think you pissed her off.”

  More greens tease into Gabe’s aura as he listens to Lo’s reply. “I’m gonna have to say your chances are, like, zero. She’s got standards. So… What?” Gabe turns back into his seat. “No way. She’s my sister. I’m not asking her that.” He laughs.

  “Hang up the phone,” I say.

  “Dude, she’s already pissed at me, and she’s got super strength….You think I’m going to cheapen my sister’s integrity for $50?” His aura jumps as he listens to Lo’s next offer. “Really? Swear? Don’t lie to me you little punk. Alright. Alright. Hold on. She’s going to kill me.”

  Gabe peeks up over the seat. In the light I can see the gold flakes caught up in his brown eyes. Elf eyes. Trickster grin.

  “Maya, most dearest little sister?”

  “Yes Gabe?” I answer sweetly.

  “Lo would like to inquire as to your cup size. You know, your bra.”

  “Please tell Lo to go shove his microscope up his ass,” I say, still keeping my voice sugar, though really I’m in no mood for these games. I lie down across the backseat and close my eyes for emphasis.

 

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