by J Bennett
I step out of bed. A part of me is fighting this, but her words are papery whispers. Go away Maya, I think, but she insists, so I tiptoe to the rabbit cage instead. My gloves are gone, and my thoughts are all short-circuiting, fingers twitching, senses so keen that I can hear Gabe’s steady heart beat from across the room; can feel Tarren jumping in and out of sleep just beyond the thin wall.
I pull open the cage. I can’t even tell the rabbits apart. All I see is their bright energy hooping around their bodies in golden bands. I grab one of the shapes and tear its life away, hiccupping with pleasure. It’s not enough to slake the hunger. Not even close. I turn to take the last rabbit, but the door hangs open, and the cage is empty. A blur of energy streaks across the room and slips under Gabe’s bed.
“Little fucker!”
“Maya?” Gabe’s voice is heavy, skewed by the pillow.
“Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”
“Was I in a lake?”
“It’s the rain. You’re dreaming.”
“K, thanks,” Gabe sighs. He pulls the blanket up over his shoulders as if this could possibly hide his energy. Hide anything. His breath is even again. Vulnerable.
I crawl to the farthest corner of the room and lean my forehead against the wall. The memories lash against their bonds, the ones I can’t think about.
Grand’s fingers trailing down my back. Finding what they will find. His words carved into my mind so my thick-fingered, un-enhanced memory won’t drop them.
“Maya. I knew they would find you.”
After a while I pull my legs to my chest and rock slowly back and forth. The motion is soothing and lulls me into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 39
I am awake and on my feet instantly. I pull the door open before Tarren even knocks. Whatever sleep he got wasn’t much and didn’t make any improvements on his demeanor. He looks at me, and his face goes hard.
“Where are your gloves?”
“They itched,” I say lamely.
He spots the dead rabbit sprawled on the floor.
“Oh that —” I begin, but Tarren shoves past me into the room.
“Gabe?” Tarren keeps his voice calm, but his energy spikes. He strides to the bed where Gabe is only a mop of wavy hair atop a tangle of covers. When Gabe doesn’t respond, Tarren’s energy explodes out, white-tipped at the edges.
“Gabe?” he chokes and reaches out to touch his brother.
“Uh?” Gabe turns his head and blinks. “Oh, hey. What time is it?”
Tarren snatches his hand back and turns toward me. He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes have those daggers in them again.
“6:00 AM, Jesus,” Gabe groans and throws the blanket over his head. “Snooze. I call snooze. Maya, hit Tarren on the head, and maybe he’ll come back in fifteen minutes.”
“The angel killed a preacher last night. The police have officially opened up an investigation into his death,” Tarren says. “They’re looking to question an unknown female who was seen standing over the body.”
He gives me a nice big scowl for my performance last night. It’s good to know that no matter how small or how stupid I already feel, Tarren is always willing to step in and pile it on just a little bit thicker.
A muffled “fuck.” The blanket comes off, and Gabe sits up. He runs both hands through his tussled hair. “We should have tried to get everyone out of the park last night.”
“The police have sealed off the park,” Tarren says. “They are setting up their own search teams.”
“Which means now they’re in danger. Stupid cops.”
“Which means they’re going to scare the angel off,” Tarren corrects. “We’re running out of time.”
“Yeah,” I say.
Tarren looks at me. I give him my best full-blown western, tumble-weeds-gusting-between-us squint. Damned pink pajamas.
“Put your gloves back on,” Tarren says softly before leaving the room.
* * *
When I get out of the shower, Gabe is wolfing down an Egg McMuffin and staring at his computer screen.
“Protein. The eggs,” he mumbles through a mouthful of food.
“You know, if you can buy a full meal for a dollar, it’s probably not really food,” I tell him.
“Tastes like food,” Gabe swallows and takes a long swig of coffee.
“That’s exactly what the highly-paid chemists want you to think.”
“Alright Ronald McBuzzkill.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up; I’m doing really serious work here.”
“You’re on Facebook! No, you just switched the screen, but I saw it. Since when is your status ‘in a relationship’?”
“I have a girlfriend.” Gabe picks the melted cheese off the wrapper and brings it to his mouth.
“Look, I’m sure Keira Knightly appreciates your daily fan letters, but you can hardly call that a healthy relationship.”
“Ha! I’ve got four girlfriends actually. And they’re real. Got screen names and everything. We go on mind blowing dates all over the world. I even got my own love island.”
“Oh my god, you’re such a nerd!” I roll my eyes. “No one is on Second Life anymore.”
“WildStarz2346 is. We go on roller coasters together. LizKup4U prefers the waterfall jacuzzi. Then there are the nymph twins. Oh, those two are naughty. You can buy some crazy toys in Second Life. Genitalia too.”
“What about…” and here I make my voice all breathy and romantic, “Francesca?”
“Ah, Francesca. My heart of hearts will always belong to her.” Gabe is smiling, trying to play it off as a joke, but his aura is so transparent, picking up speed, beating lavender humming bird wings that grow dark as plums or the edge of the sky just before the sun sets. “But we need to finish the mission first. Things aren’t…they’re not safe yet. So, you know, a guy’s got to get a little nymph love every now and again.”
I laugh, but it sounds forced. I keep forgetting how alone the Fox brothers are, how much the fight costs them.
Gabe scrunches up the wrapper, tosses it toward the wastebasket, misses. “Wind resistance,” he says. “Anyway, I’ve got something you can help me with.”
* * *
I glance at Gabe’s sheet, double checking the phone number out of habit, even though my angel brain automatically memorized the full list of numbers the first time my eyes scrolled through. I hit the dial button on my prepaid cell, and the connection trills four times before going to voicemail.
Man: This is Bob…
Woman: And Kathy McGee. We hope you are having a blessed day.
Man: We can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you right as soon as we can.
Together: May the Lord be with you!
It takes me a second after the beep to gather my bearings. “Uh…hey there, my name is Mercedes. Great message by the way. Super positive. Yeah, so I’m calling about the litter of puppies you advertised on Craigslist last week.” I squint at Gabe’s crowded writing, “Tabs, what, oh Labs. Labs. Great dogs. Just love those little guys. And I was wondering if you have any left. I’m looking to adopt, you know give a puppy a good, uh, Jesus-filled home. I’m great with dogs, by the way. So, yeah, just give me a call back and let me know either way.” I leave my number and hang up.
“This is stupid,” I tell Gabe.
He’s typing into a password field, grimacing each time it rejects his inputs. A second window is plastered with an unreadable block of code.
“No, no, it’s very important,” he says without looking up. “Damn it, I need my lucky hat.” He stands up, stretches his arms up over his head. “It’s all cool to go commando out into the night with guns blazing, or dress up as a sheriff to break into a crime scene, but that’s only a small part of the job. This here, the grueling research, this is where the real breaks come. Tarren? He’s not going to get anything at that park.” Gabe kneels on the floor and rummages through his messy duffle bag.
“No, we’re going to find something here.”
“This is montage stuff. I want a montage.” My voice sounds whiny even to me.
“Ah!” Gabe pulls the cap out of his bag and brushes it off. “No montages in real life. Just hard work and some really awesome hacking. Hey…” he reaches under his bed and pulls something into his arms. A white-splashed face peeks out from the nook of his elbow. Its nose twitches. Gabe laughs and scratches the rabbit behind its long, floppy ear. Looking at my brother’s face, I realize that I’ve just lost my lunch.
* * *
Gabe and I sit in the room all day searching for something that will lead us to the angel’s identity. It’s tedious, mind numbing, incredibly frustrating. If there was any mercy in the universe, I would have been granted my montage and we’d be skimming right over this endless minutia on the hard hitting chords of some appropriate soundtrack addition.
Tarren comes back long enough to drop off food and practice some more scowls. Gabe gets a burger, and I get another bag of fish. Pointless darts of energy. Almost not worth the effort of killing, except I’m hungry enough to start zapping ladybugs at this point.
“Weird dream last night,” Gabe says between bites as we lounge on our separate beds. At first I don’t know which one of us he’s talking about, and then I do and this is worse, because he must have remembered his junkie roommate shivering over a dead animal carcass…again.
“I was in a lake, and I couldn’t swim even though I can in real life. My arms and legs were really heavy. It was storming; we’re talking torrential rains, wicked lightening, humongous waves. Every time I tried to breathe, I kept getting water in my mouth.”
“You were probably trying to eat your pillow,” I suggest as I drop another extinguished fish behind me onto the folded napkin.
“And you were next to me in a little boat ,” Gabe puts down his burger, “reaching out your hand to pull me in, but you didn’t have your gloves on and your hands were all like…” he pauses, and I assume his tact is finally catching up with his mouth. I am mistaken. “…like, glowy, like ahhhh.” He jazzes his hands as if this somehow pantomimes the split skin, the bulbs, the glow, the monstrosity.
“You were saying ‘Gabriel, take my hand. Take my hand,’ which is weird because Mom was the only one who ever called me Gabriel. I knew that if I took your hand you would ice me, so I was screaming at you, ‘where’s Tarren? Go get Tarren,’ and you pointed behind you. Tarren was standing on the shore watching us. I screamed his name, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. I begged you to go get him, but you just kept saying ‘Gabriel, take my hand.’ I wouldn’t and you got mad and started cussing me out.” Gabe picks up his burger and resumes eating. “Wild huh?”
Another note about living a sequestered life — it tends to foster under-developed social discretion. In other words, the inability to realize that if your dream happens to remind your roommate of her darkest, most soul-crippling fear, maybe you should just keep your god damn mouth shut about it.
I don’t really want to know, but in a small voice I ask, “What happened? Did I kill you?” A fish blunders into my hand, and I pull it up out of the water.
“Course not. Francesca dove in and saved me. Turns out she was once a Navy Seal. She pulled me to shore, and I pretended to be unconscious so she would give me mouth-to-mouth…”
“Now you’re lying, I can tell.” And I can. His teases express themselves as little greenish whirls in his aura.
“What really happened?” The writer in me knows that dreams often unmask the unconscious mind. Despite Gabe’s assurances, his easy smiles, the sheer power of his shrugs, some part of him recognizes the threat I pose, the way it could end between us…
A noise erupts behind me, and I almost upturn the bowl of fish. I grab my phone with a dripping hand.
“Hello?” I venture.
“Hello!” a chipper voice replies. “Is this Mercedes?”
“Yes, yes it is,” I say.
“Oh, wonderful! I’m Kathy McGee. You called earlier.” She speaks in a singsong voice that I immediately associate with heart-dotted i’s and no less than five winking emoticons per email.
“Of course, the, uh...”
“I’m so sorry, but we gave all the Labrador puppies away last week. Such precious little things.”
“Oh, right. Well, shucks, that’s too bad. I really love that brand..er, breed. I hope they all found good homes.”
“Oh, they sure did. She seemed like such a wonderful woman.”
“One woman? Did she take them all?” I ask.
“Well, yes, she has quite a large farm and….”
Gabe snags the phone out of my hand. I grasp for it back, but he pushes my arm away and turns around.
“Hello there, this is Agent Adama with Wildlife Protective Services.” His voice is smooth and low. “Oh no, no, you’re not in trouble. Not at all. But we have reason to believe a puppy mill may be operating in the area….oh yes, I know…terrible business….the things I’ve seen. Anyway, I’ve had my assistant looking for suspicious activity.” Gabe turns around and grins at me. I give him my Wild West Squint O’ Death. “Such as one person buying an entire litter of puppies. Classic sign of a puppy mill at work… Well, it may be nothing, but we have to check into it. You understand... Good, good. Anything you can tell me. Anything.”
Gabe sits back down and starts typing into his computer, clucking his tongue and murmuring, “good, good, no, that’s definitely important. You’re doing good. Anything else?” And finally, “I will. No harm will come to those puppies, not while Agent Adama is on the job. And God bless you too.” Gabe hangs up and tosses the phone back at me.
“What’ve you got?” I ask.
“Could be nothing. Hispanic woman, drove an old Corolla. Doesn’t really sound like our usual MO.”
“There’s an MO for angels?”
“Old, white, male and rich. Like any exclusive club, it’s an old boy’s network. The original members were mostly industry magnates, and they were careful about who they let into the clubhouse. That’s changing now. Membership is starting to trickle down. We’ve been to Harlem. An Indian reservation in Nevada. Man, if you ever want to see poverty…wait, wait, wait, I think...” Gabe doesn’t finish. His fingers pound the keyboard.
“Got it,” he murmurs to himself. I tense in response to the flare in his energy. Gabe swings around in his chair, lifts the lounging rabbit off his bed and gives it a big kiss on the forehead. “I am a friggin’ genius!”
Chapter 40
“See if you can keep up,” Gabe says. The rabbit is sprawled on his shoulder, strangely passive in his care. It chews on the ends of his hair, though Tarren brought back a new bag of salad mix.
Tarren stands near Gabe’s bed, arms crossed, hair still wet. He’s changed out of the sheriff’s uniform that fit him tight in the shoulders. Rain taps against the window trying to get in, and the thick banks of clouds are already diminishing the sunlight. I keep my eyes away from the rabbit, away from the boys too. I’m sitting on my bed, hands pressed firmly against the comforter.
“So, we got a lead on a woman who picked up a whole litter of puppies last week,” Gabe tells his brother.
“That was me,” I add. “I mean, not the one who picked up the litter. I found it. Found her.”
“Hispanic female, 30-40 years old. Maria H something. Drives an old, red Corolla. She’s average height, little overweight. Let’s say 150 - 180 pounds. So…”
“DMV,” Tarren says. “Do you always have to do this?”
“Hey, I put in a lot of work here,” Gabe says defensively. “I demand some appreciation. So yeah, DMV. I expanded the search into neighboring counties, and that gave me a good amount of hits to work with. Next up was credit reporting agencies.”
“That’s legal,” I say.
“Totally not. That’s where I got a hit on the list.” Gabe turns to me and explains, “Whenever we have a stationary angel, I use an algorithm to put together a list of
likely suspects in the area based on the angel MO we talked about — old, white, male and rich.”
“You can’t just find all that information about people,” I accuse.
Gabe laughs at the audacity of this statement. “Oh, I certainly can. Big Brother is out to get you Maya! Oooooohhhh. He’s everywhere,” Gabe intones in a spooky voice. “He knows you spend all your time on Robert Pattinson fan sites.”
“Wow, you actually think you’re funny. That’s kind of sad,” I retort.
“Stop it.” Tarren says, because fun is being had. I swear he must have been a mall cop in all of his past lives.
Gabe composes himself. “Alright, so turns out that one of our Marias works for a guy on my list. She’s an administrative assistant to Howard Krugal. Venture capitalist. Box seats. Total high flyer. He would have the money and connections to hook up with the angel network. And best of all, his McMansion is three miles outside the park.”
“It’s compelling,” Tarren says.
“Ms. Secretary bought a whole litter of dogs last week, three days before the homeless guy was iced. Said she had a farm. Unless by farm she meant a two bedroom/one bath condo in the city, then her pants are totally on fire.”
“We need to move now.” Tarren’s voice is all business. “It’s almost sun down. We’ll lose him if he gets to the park. We’ve got to take him at home.”
“Got all his info. Address, house layout, everything,” Gabe says, and his voice is losing its humor. He tugs his hair away from the rabbit and sets the creature down on his bed. My heart is picking up, tuning to the rise in both their energy levels. The shadows have been here the whole time, but now I notice how they cut chunks out of each of us — taking off Gabe’s hand, stealing Tarren’s leg, splicing me in half.
“Alrighty,” I say stupidly as I stand up from my bed.
“You’re not going,” Tarren says to me almost as an afterthought.
“What? No! I’ll do better this time, I swear.”
“This isn’t sitting in the trees with a sniper rifle,” Tarren says. “We’re storming the house. Sometimes bullets fly. You’d get in the way.”