by Brian Fuller
“No,” Trace disagreed. “They are taking her right now. Is there any way you can get backstage and find her?”
“We’ll see what we can do,” she said.
“It’s a Sheid!” Corinth interjected, voice strained. “We’re both dead if we go back there!”
“We have to try, Corinth. You’d better be heading to the safe house, Jarhead!” Cassandra said, voice strict. “Jarhead! Where are you?”
He continued his descent down the winding ramp while she swore at him in the earpiece. As he rounded the last bend and emerged into the packed parking structure, he pulled the earpiece out and shoved it in his pocket. He needed to concentrate.
From somewhere farther in, faint voices echoed among all the cars and concrete. Behind him, a gentle upward slope led out to the street. Unsure how to proceed, he followed the sound of the voices, walking at a quick pace and trying to seem casual at the same time.
As he passed a tall pickup truck, his peripheral vision caught a red aura to his left. He crouched and pulled the compact scope from his pocket, inching upward until he could see through the windows of a red Ford Focus.
A skinny, weasel-faced Dread smoking a cigarette leaned against a gray sedan. A service door closed as whomever he was talking with left. The now-empty SUV that had passed him on the street was parked nearby. The sedan’s engine idled noisily, a squeaky belt shrieking from time to time. The Dread checked his phone and then popped the trunk with a key fob. After a look over his shoulder, he rearranged a couple of duffel bags, shoving them to the back.
This was it.
Trace crouched back down, assessing his options. He had a disassembled sniper rifle in his backpack, but even if he could put it together and take the Dread out without getting caught, the Dread’s companions might off Tela immediately if they thought their plan was busted. A firefight in a parking garage would get ugly fast. But if they did intend to use Tela as bait, he couldn’t let that sedan out of the garage in possession of the Dreads.
He knew what he had to do.
Thankful the garage was devoid of onlookers, Trace continued forward at a crouch, staying out of the Dread’s line of sight and getting as close as he could without inviting notice. The service door banged open as he passed one of the circular concrete pillars, and he stopped, grabbing his scope and peering around the side.
Two Dreads dressed as concert security emerged from the door carrying an unconscious Tela bound with duct tape as the vision had foretold. The driver motioned them over urgently. Another man, darkly complexioned and wearing an expensive suit, held the door open. He was not a Dread.
A normal accomplice? Trace took a picture with the scope’s built-in camera as the Dreads threw Tela unceremoniously into the trunk. They were about to close it when the man in the suit held them up, digging a cell phone out of his pocket and tossing it in.
Closing the trunk, the three Dreads and the man consulted for a moment, the non-Dread, surprisingly seeming in charge of the others. After a few seconds, all four walked inside the door. Now was his chance. Trace started out at a dead run, but as he neared the car, the door to the convention center opened a crack, and he slowed abruptly and changed direction to make it appear as if he were heading parallel to the gray sedan.
The weaselly driver was the only one who emerged, and he walked purposefully toward the car while taking a long drag on his cigarette.
“Got a light?” Trace improvised as he marched within fifteen feet of the driver’s side door. The Dread crossed in front of the car and flipped him off. Jerk. Trace strode at the Dread, pushing blood to his face to color it livid.
“You got a problem, man!” he yelled. The Dread ignored him and went to open the door. Trace boosted his Strength. He grabbed the Dread by the scruff of his jacket and the seat of his pants and hurled him as hard as he could into a nearby pillar. The satisfying crunch of bones snapping rewarded his efforts. Trace hopped in the car.
A cell phone waited on the passenger-side seat, and he threw it out as the slumped Dread rose unsteadily.
Trace whipped the door shut and hit the gas, clipping the Dread and sending him hard into the pillar again. Wheels and loose belt squealing, he navigated out of the parking garage and into the rain. After cranking the defroster to fend the fog off his windshield, he grabbed his own phone out of his pocket. While stalled at a light, he flipped through a map until he found what he wanted. “Navigate here,” he said, pressing the location.
“Calculating route,” the phone said.
The light turned green with no sign of pursuit. It was 8:42 p.m., the time shown in the vision. He pulled the earpiece out of his pocket as he followed the instructions from his phone’s navigation app.
“Cassandra!” he said. “I’ve got her.”
“What! I told you to—”
“Yeah, yeah, listen. The Dreads threw her in the trunk of a car, and I commandeered it. This has been a setup all along. They were baiting us with the phone, knowing we would track it. Look, get with Goldbow and tell him I’m headed to Spring Tree Cemetery, northeast of town.”
“Why?” Cassandra asked. “You need to get her to a safe house! They can probably track the phone or the car.”
“I’m counting on it. We can’t take her to a safe house. This whole mission is compromised. They probably have the safe houses covered. Come as soon as you can.”
Silence. “Okay,” she agreed. “We couldn’t get backstage. The show is about to start back up again. I guess the Sheid’s been practicing.”
A thumping noise in the back startled him. Tela was kicking at the trunk. He pulled off the road and stopped the car. With angelic Strength he reached back and pulled the back seat away, exposing the trunk. Tela looked up, wild-eyed and frightened. Almost immediately her expression turned from fearful to amazed.
“I saw them kidnap you,” he explained calmly. “I hijacked the car from the man who took you. Scoot a little closer.” She wiggled forward enough for him to grab her arm. He pulled her toward the front and ripped the tape from her mouth and wrists. “We’ve got to move. They’ll be after us.”
She was a thin brunette with green eyes and long wavy hair. She wore a form-fitting blue dress, and for someone recently abducted appeared remarkably at ease as she worked at the tape binding her ankles. Trace resumed driving. Moments later she crawled into the front passenger seat and watched him intently for a few minutes.
“Who are you?” she asked, voice strange, excited and awed. Not the reaction he expected.
“Are you okay? Did you see who did this?”
She continued to stare at him. “I was in my dressing room when two . . . men . . . awful men, came in. One held me while the other covered my mouth and nose with something. Who are you?”
Trace had to think. Should he tell her his cover name? She was famous enough to make him a hero for the press, and he didn’t want any attention. Despite all his recent research into the vagaries of Ash Angel protocol, he wasn’t sure how to handle this kind of situation. He settled on a mix of lies, cover story, and truth.
“Call me Helo,” he answered, using one of the Ash Angel names he had considered adopting upon graduation.
“Helo? Is that some kind of military thing?”
“Sort of,” he said. “Look, I know you must be scared to death right now. I promise I’m trying to keep you safe.”
She continued to stare at him as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “I know. I trust you. Did you know my father, Harvey Mirren?”
“Not really.”
She relaxed, turning her gaze back to the road. “You remind me of him.”
Trace nodded, glad she wasn’t trying to claw his eyes out and jump out of the car. She really was an Attuned. He glanced at her. Perhaps dropping her off somewhere would be safer than taking her into what he hoped would turn into a fire zone. But something inside him said to stay with her, to keep her close. He didn’t want to let her out of his sight until he knew the threat was over.
&nb
sp; His phone rang, and he picked it up from the console. Cassandra. “Yeah?”
“Goldbow should be at the cemetery in ten. We’ll be a little longer. Keep your earpiece in. When you hear from Goldbow or me, you’ll know we’re within two miles.”
“Great. Hurry.”
“Who was that?” Tela asked.
Trace’s mind sprinted. Trying to keep Tela in the dark was going to tax his meager creative powers. “It was a friend of mine I called when I saw everything going down. She’s going to bring some help.”
She cocked her head. “Shouldn’t we call the police or something? Where’s my phone? I could call my bodyguard . . .” She covered her mouth in horror. “Did they kill him?”
“I don’t know, Tela. I doubt it,” he reassured her. “Hang in there. Don’t call anyone yet. We’re trying to get the people who did this to you out into the open so we can . . . take care of things so this won’t happen again.”
“So you’re not just some Good Samaritan.” She looked him over again. “Are you some sort of undercover security?”
He smiled. “That would actually be the best description.”
She reached out like she was going to touch his arm and then pulled it back. “Thank you, Helo. Thank you for coming for me.”
The rain softened as they crossed into the suburbs of the city, traffic thinning and walls of trees enclosing the roads. Tela shivered, and Trace fumbled at the controls to lend her a little heat. The splash of the tires on the wet road and the rhythmic cadence of the windshield wipers filled the silence as questions and doubts filled his mind. Another mission someone had betrayed to the Dreads. Another mission with Cassandra. Were Dreads hitting other operations, too?
He turned to Tela, finding her lost in thought, and remembered what he wanted to ask her. “’Angel in Chains.’ Was that song inspired by a dream?”
Her eyes widened. “Yes! How did you know that? Nobody knows that.”
“I didn’t know,” he returned. “That’s why I asked. I suspected. The imagery struck me that way. What did you see? If you don’t mind.”
“I have these really vivid dreams sometimes. Startling, really. This one was more . . . real . . . than most. It was so odd. An angel in shadow, wings and all, stood on a spot of mud in the rain staring at all these picture frames scattered around him. He was sad. And felt guilty. Wherever the rain fell on the pictures, it turned to blood. It was as if the angel felt bad for staring at the pictures, and he kept turning to the sky, scared for when the clouds might clear and the stars find and accuse him. His emotion was so strong I woke up crying. Sounds silly, I know.”
“Not at all, Tela. You have a gift. There’s nothing silly about it.”
“That’s what my dad used to say. Are you sure you didn’t know him?”
“I didn’t.”
She settled into the seat, her face oddly content—even happy—for a kidnap victim. “So where are we going?”
“We’re meeting up at a cemetery.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Lots of places to hide.”
Chapter 16
Trap
“You have arrived at your destination.”
Trace jammed his phone into his jacket pocket. The headlights of the car illuminated the closed iron gate of Spring Tree Cemetery and reflected off the wet pavement. Little droplets from a streetlight rippled the puddles. He could feel Tela’s eyes on him, but her emotion still seemed off. She should have been shaking with terror but instead looked like someone who’d just gotten everything on her Christmas list.
But what to do about the gates. He could blow the lock off with a gun or try to pick it, but he didn’t want to take the time. He gunned the car, Tela clawing the vinyl seats as he rammed the gates. After a loud bang and the shriek of bending metal, they were through. He patted her hand.
“Sorry,” he said.
She smiled and grabbed his hand. “It’s okay, Helo. Helo. Interesting.” She let go of his hand, eyes thoughtful.
A lazy, curving drive wound between large swaths of gravestones. Woods pressed in around the perimeter of a modest lot sparsely dotted with lampposts. He scanned the nearby tombstones and grinned in satisfaction. This particular graveyard serviced rich patrons. The oversized granite slabs and monuments provided excellent cover, and near the center, an actual mausoleum hulked in the shadows. Perfect. He stopped the car and threw it in park, leaving it running with the lights on. “Come on,” he urged, grabbing his backpack and stepping out of the car.
Tela nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. Chastising himself for not thinking of it, he removed his jacket and offered it to her. She took it with a huge smile, like they were heading off on an adventure. Did she not understand the danger? If the Dreads came, she would understand soon enough.
“Follow me,” he said. Together they headed into the damp grass, the rain barely a sprinkle on their faces. They hadn’t gone far when Tela’s spiked heels sunk into the wet ground and tripped her up.
She removed them, and they carefully negotiated the grave markers until they reached the mausoleum he had spotted from the road nearly two hundred feet away. Rain and mold had streaked and stained the stones of the stately Romanesque edifice with its colonnaded entrance. The roof was nearly flat with a slight arc, a lip of stone hanging over the metal door.
“I’m going to jump up. When I’m hanging, grab on to one of my legs, and I’ll pull you up.”
“We’re going on the roof?” she asked, still shivering.
“Yes. Good vantage point.” He boosted his Strength and sprung upward, grabbing the lip with his fingers. “Grab on.” She latched onto his right leg at the ankle. With his increased power, he pulled upward with his arms until he wedged his elbows over the lip. Leaning over, he pushed his body up and then twisted backward to help Tela over the edge.
“How did you do that?” she asked.
He pulled his backpack off. “I work out. It’s not comfortable up here, but lie down flat. If the men who took you come for us, and if something happens to me, stay up here out of sight.”
He assembled his sniper rifle as she prostrated herself on the damp roof and watched him work with curious eyes. A massive tree overspread the rear of the edifice, providing protection for their six, and the front afforded an excellent overview of the road, the car idling in its own pool of light.
A flame for the moths.
The phone rang again. Cassandra. “Talk to me,” he answered.
“Jarhead,” she said, “all the Dreads have pulled out of here. We’re finding a car to steal. Have you heard from Goldbow?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you at the cemetery?”
“We’re in position,” he confirmed. “I’ve set a little trap.”
The growl of an engine pulled his attention from the call. Headlights burned in the cemetery.
“Gotta go. Someone’s here.” He killed the call and set the phone to vibrate, handing it to Tela.
“Take this. If something happens to me and if my friends don’t find us, call the police.”
He affixed the silencer to the rifle and lay on his belly, bringing the scope to his eye. A sedan moved ponderously down the same road he had followed, approaching the abandoned car. He could make out two red auras through the front windshield. As he had expected, the Dreads had been tracking the phone.
Showtime.
The car stopped directly behind the running sedan, and the two Dreads got out, one with a BBG and the other with a regular handgun. The BBG they had no doubt stolen from the Ash Angels who had disappeared in the area. According to Cassandra, the Dreads didn’t have the means to manufacture their own weaponry.
The two Dreads, dressed as convention security, circled the car cautiously. Trace lined the closest Dread up in his sights, crosshairs directly at the base of his skull. Their slow movements aided his aim, and remembering to strengthen his arms, he squeezed the trigger. Tela yelped.
The quietness of the ceme
tery amplified the report from the silenced weapon, but the bullet sped true, slamming the Dread headfirst into the car. He slid downward in a heap and stayed there. In one fluid motion, Trace slid his scope toward the other, who turned to look up. The shot collapsed his face and sent him down.
Trace put the gun down and grabbed the two explosive syringes from his backpack. “Stay here and keep your head down,” he instructed Tela, whose face finally registered a little gravity. She nodded. He lowered himself from the roof and ran toward the car. The rain got a little more serious.
His earpiece crackled. “Trace, you there?” It was Goldbow.
“I’m here,” he said, concentrating on not slipping and draping himself over a gravestone.
“I’m close to the graveyard. What’s your status?” Goldbow asked.
“Two Dreads are down, more probably on the way. Going in to finish the two off. When you pull into the cemetery, turn to the left and drop some weapons for Cassandra and Corinth behind the first gravestone. The Dreads are tracking Tela’s phone, which I’ve left in a car on the drive to the west. After dropping the weapons, drive about halfway down the drive to the east and turn off the car. I’ll guide you to my position.”
“Yes, sir,” Goldbow answered.
Trace pulled his BBG as he neared the cars. The first Dread he’d downed lay faceup near the exhaust pipe of the car, neck nearly severed. The Dread’s body was immobilized, but his malice-filled eyes followed Trace as he approached. The bullet had exited just below his chin and had taken a good portion of the neck and jaw with it, the Dread’s voice silenced. The only epithet he could manage was a defiant glare as Trace jammed the syringe into his chest and injected the explosive liquid. In two seconds the Dread’s chest glowed orange beneath his white shirt, and his body disintegrated into dirt.
Pulling the next syringe, he rounded the back of the car, finding the other Dread facedown and crawling hand over hand in a bid to escape. A good chunk of the back of his head was missing. Trace guessed the Dread couldn’t see, piteously trying to feel his way around the gravestones as he was. Trace jammed the syringe into his back, the chemical igniting and burning his heart to smoke and ash. The clothes collapsed as the body turned to dust.