Hence the name, Swans.
Previously bent, misunderstood, ugly ducklings that became beautiful. Perfect.
Bluejean and his friends had played a huge role in making Salt Lake City one of the only places in the country, and likely the world, where Angels outnumbered Fallen. Of course, this afternoon’s events were proof that nowhere was completely safe yet, but the Valley was a stronghold, a safe haven.
Hell, we are outsourcing Angels.
Aaron could hardly believe it himself.
Months ago, when it all started, there were fires in the streets, riots. Every day a new feud over bottled water and gasoline and who knew what else. Now the curfew had been pushed back to “full dark”, meaning folks could be outside until both the sun and its light were gone from the sky. Rail lines between Ogden to the north and Provo to the south had even re-opened, escorted of course. Not so much against the threat of Heaters but against opportunistic and desperate civilians. News came to Aaron and the others almost daily of civilian “warlords” teaming up with cells of Fallen to claim supplies and property as their own.
Today’s attack was a horrific example of the parasitic effect of these toxic alliances. Increasingly, the Fallen found aid in misguided men. The pattern disturbed Aaron more than it did many of his KC allies and superiors. But they had been fighting this battle in the shadows for centuries, so it made sense that they struggled to adjust to new modalities.
As he stood on the grass and watched the failure of a planned holiday trickle out, Aaron was reminded of the first time he encountered the Possessed and their civilian help…
----------------------------------------------------
He’d spent that night on Capitol Hill, the same steps where months before he had watched a man assassinated and felt the wormy stirrings of trouble.
The building had been commandeered by Bishop, despite impotent protest from the Governor. The beautiful Ionic domes and pillars housed a bomb shelter -which Aaron thought unnecessary, at least for this purpose- a direct line to the White House and Pentagon, meaning now Bishop had two, and enough open space to create makeshift barracks for the exhausted Angels.
Aaron’s reputation and closeness to both Serena and Scott granted him a sort of elevated status even in the tight-knit culture of the Sleepless Nights, so he and the three men he stepped in to command were often found here on “the Hill” alternately helping coordinate hunting parties and guarding over the Angels as they caught up on much-needed sleep or waited while grievous wounds healed.
Officially, they were an Angel support team, but Aaron was increasingly called into tactical meetings with Bishop and the endless cycle of his officers that rotated through Salt Lake City. They all wore the same black uniforms and the same grim expressions.
One night Aaron had responded, alone, to a distress call from a team that had lost sight of their Angel not far from home on the North side of the city. In the tangle of pipes and steel that not so long before were operating refineries. He found them, and the Angel, a girl named June, pinned down by a pair of Fallen. One shaggy haired man and the other a slick looking young blonde who looked vaguely familiar through the scope of Aaron’s rifle.
At least until the bullet had torn most of the face away.
Worse, the Hellions had been accompanied by their own support team, a group of toughs carrying handguns and hunting rifles. These men and women -desperate and scared- aligned themselves with the wrong side for the promise of money and supplies.
Survivalist, raw and simple.
In this one particular case though, the plan had failed for six of the eight.
The other two surrendered and would be sent home after a severe beating from the Sleepless Nights. There was nowhere to jail them, and they would at least be able to spread word that joining the wrong team was not a good idea.
One of the men had cried openly and spilled all the information that he knew. Hoping maybe to receive a pardon. A burly man in a jean jacket. Not a genius, but at least he knew something.
According to his telling, the opposing effort was becoming fairly organized. Through tears and snot, he‘d given Aaron his own story.
“A man named Harkness was recruiting mercenaries in the hardest-hit neighborhoods. We have nothing man. I’m sorry! I know you think you guys are helping. But where is the help for us out in Granger, and Cyprus, and Magna? Have you seen what Magna looks like? We have fucking nothing I’m telling you! Nuh-thing! This Harkness guy came rolling up in a big black Mercedes. At night! Can you believe that shit? Nobody moves at night. He took cases of beer out of his trunk and held a meeting for about eighty of us. Explaining how we would all be rewarded for helping the Heaters. That once this shit blows over there will be a new order for things and that we’ll have cash in our pockets as long as we pick the right team.”
Aaron, after his own custom, stood uncomfortably close to the man and pointed at June. For several minutes she had been seated with her back against a processing tank, breathing hard and pushing the wet snakes of her small intestine back inside of her abdomen through a huge gash. It was gruesome, but she seemed to be handling it well, looking more pissed off than panicked.
“Look at this gir,l idiot! She can’t be more than twenty years old and your new friends tried to kill her.” Aaron pressed
“Hey, I’ve seen plenty of killing done by both kinds of these flying people.” the man argued “How the hell am I supposed to pick a side? I had to go with what was gonna feed my kids. Two of my brothers got the wings, and the fevers. One of your white-winged friends killed both of them.” Thin gray mucus crawled down through his mustache as he blubbered. “Harkness told us that he works for Hunter Valdez, the Vegas guy. That guy has more money than anybody in the world! He can give us ten, twenty thousand a month for our work and not even feel it. But that’ll go a long way once this all blows over right?” He was jittery, still unsure if he would be killed or not.
“You know that’s the stupidest damn thing I’ve ever heard?” Aaron jabbed him with a finger in the collarbone. Not the chest. The clavicle, where it would hurt more.
Jean Jacket had nothing left to say, and returned to his original strategy of semi-bitter sobbing. June’s gut-wound had knitted itself closed to a point sufficient for her to speak. She spoke not to Aaron, but to their prisoner.
“Who’s going to spend their share of tonight’s pay, asshole?” She jutted her chin toward the place where the Monks had piled six of the man’s companions onto a flatbed trailer.
“Is this Harkness going to pay somebody to collect their bodies too? Because the Monks don’t do burials, and that trailer keeps them off the ground, but the scavengers will still find them in a couple of days.”
Intimidated, his blubbering had quieted to mere sniffles. June continued, rising and patting the newly-closed flesh of her abdomen as if to test its consistency. It held.
“Listen, I know it’s confusing because in all the movies the good guys don’t dress in black.” The Monks shook their heads and rolled their eyes, apparently accustomed to this sort of patronizing banter from her.
Aaron, had he been capable at this point of being shocked, might have been.
Most of the Angels possessed a maddeningly level demeanors after their transformation.
In fact he was almost certain that besides Fallen, he was the only person who could make Serena angry…
“And I know that the nice man with the fancy car and the beer promised you that it would all be okay. But you are living in the only place on the planet right now that your kids can even go outside! The only reason for that is us. She gestured with her wings for effect. For the first time Aaron noticed her plumage was asymmetrical. One ivory wing was crowned with dark feathers that threw off turquoise highlights in the glare of the Monk’s muzzle torches. The effect on the other side was less pronounced, with a color harder to place in the dark, but definitively lighter in shade than its counterpart.
Her hair was jet black, caramel ski
n.
Mexican ?
June was lithe and hard. With a heavily muscled buttocks and arms just a touch too thick to be ladylike. She didn’t move with the same heavenly grace as the other Angels. Her steps were somehow more predatory. To Aaron, she seemed high-strung, maybe worse.
She asked the man, or rather, told him, to help them track down this Harkness character.
Hours of searching later, she had yanked Harkness bodily through the broken windshield of his own sleek Mercedes while his dying bodyguard tried to no avail to keep the blood inside of a slashed jugular. June carried him off for questioning that night…
-----------------------------------------------
Aaron wasn’t sure where Harkness was now…
These and a thousand other thoughts ran through his head in the space of a few heartbeats.
Just as quickly, he concluded that the reckless and aggressive Angel was just who he needed for the current situation.
He switched the headset frequency to lucky number seven, the Angel frequency.
“June. Do you read?”
Silence. Most of the Angels hated wearing communicators. June more than most.
“Anybody near June Olcontra Angel, give her a tap for me. This is Redskin.”
Redskin was Aaron’s special call-sign, a nod to his former service, meant to be a badge of honor that would grant him more credibility within the Sleepless Knights. The relic wasn’t his favorite, but it was easy to remember for the erstwhile civilians now central to the KC effort.
After a moment, she crackled back.
“I hear you Dayne.” Always Dayne, never Aaron, never Mr. Dayne, Captain, Sir, Monk, or any of the other tags associated with his ranks, past or present. Just Dayne
“What’s your twenty?” He was hoping that she would be nearby, and that he could catch a “ride”. Most of the Knights didn’t like being carried by their Angel counterparts, because it was a bit undignified for both parties.
Aaron, never one for keeping up appearances, didn’t mind at all, especially in emergencies. He was physically larger than most of the Angels, and probably weighed more than ninety percent of them, but they could all heft and transport him with ease, so it was fast. As the crow flies.
“I’m coming down the canyon now. Headed downtown.” Unlike most of her Angel counterparts, June sounded perpetually annoyed.
“Big Cottonwood or Little Cottonwood?” The neighboring canyons were both often addressed as simply “the canyon” and both had become important to the Knights of the Clergy for strategic reasons because they housed cave systems. The caves, former records depots for the Mormon church, were now armories. Traditional bases such as Camp Williams, Hill AFB, Fort Douglas and the like were overrun with refugee civilians. Housing guns and munitions in hard-to-find and harder-to-infiltrate caves made sense. The military was not renowned for embracing change, but the Afghan and Iraq wars a half-century gone had been clear lessons that sometimes guerilla systems worked.
June had likely been assigned to guard the Snowbird Armory. An assignment that was much too quiet for her taste. Had he been in a better mood, Aaron would have smiled at the thought.
“LC Dayne, and I am in a hurry, what do you want?”
“We’re headed the same place, care to give me a ride?”
“Yeah, I heard your picnic got rained on. But I’m already loaded down. I’m set to rendezvous with your convoy any minute.”
“Loaded down?”
“You’ll see. Out.”
Just as she signed off, a hush fell over the park. The last busload of families and escort jeeps roared out of sight. Only six Clergy cells remained, dragging dead rebels off of the big green truck to lay in rows and disassembling the weapons of their attackers. Five Angels in the air, one on the ground. Osborne.
With a Halo.
The ring of light glowed a soft white, fighting sunlight for dominance. The surrounding Monks all stopped what they were doing to cross themselves or look skyward in prayer. One Monk handed his rifle to a companion and stepped forward. He touched two fingers to his eyes, then his neck, then his heart. His lips moved and he stared hard at the Angel all the while. Then the Monk crossed himself again and reached for his rifle. His companion offered his own weapon and repeated the gesture. They all did it. All of the Sleepless Knights.
Eyes.
Throat,
Heart.
Never while holding their weapons.
It wasn’t the first time Aaron had seen it. Except in cases of intense combat, where dropping a firearm might mean the loss of life, the Monks always acknowledged a Halo this way. He had asked once what the gesture meant, but the query was ignored.
Osborne was moving his limbs carefully. His wings had “folded”, disappearing into whatever space they occupied when not visible.
With damning persistence, the Halo burned like white neon over his brow.
As a person, this Angel was typically chipper and funny. As an Angel, he was selfless and protective. In combat, he was brave to a fault. Now that bravery had killed him.
With a grunt, he stood and peeled away the ruinous scabs that had formed on his chest. Burnt flesh writhed as it tried to heal itself. Osborne looked at each of the twenty-four men standing around the park before his eyes settled on Aaron. He spoke quietly, but was heard.
“Redskin, tell my wife and boys that I love them. Tell them to be proud.” There were no theatric gulps or desperate gasps for air. He just said the words, choking back tears in the way that prideful old men did.
The next moment he flexed something and his wings unfurled out of nowhere. Aaron wondered if the bold reds, yellows and blues on his wingtips were reflections of his heart. The colors of boyish childhood. He was a father to three rowdy boys. They too had been here today. They had probably seen their daddy blown up before the bus took off.
“I’ll tell them.” Aaron promised. “Don’t you worry about them.”
All around, the Monks raised their voices in agreement. Most of these rough men lacked families themselves, living almost as warrior priests. Instead they attached their loyalties to the wives and children of their Angels.
Osborne nodded and leaped into the air. His flight was off kilter, but he headed North, to where the battles were still raging over the city. The way he wing-limped, Aaron doubted that he would make it. Had he still been capable of grief, Aaron would have shed tears for the man, as one or two of the newer Monks did now.
Moments later June glided into view.
Loaded down.
In each of her small brown hands, she carried a massive chain cannon. Aaron recognized them as some variation of the Gatling weapons mounted in most of the KC choppers. The long black cylinders were each easily as long as she was. Yet she handled them with apparent ease. Around her neck she wore a yoke of coiled ammunition. Yards of it, piled so thickly her head was barely visible.
She looked like some sort of amalgamated bird-robot. Tucking her mismatched wings, she dropped down hard onto the grass, bare feet leaving inch-deep footprints under the weight of her cargo.
Always bare feet.
June whipped her jet-black hair and flashed the kind of smile that World War II pinups used to keep the troops fighting.
Except she was one of the troops.
Veins stood out on her arms and hands until she dropped the massive guns unceremoniously onto the charred dirt.
Ridiculously large bandoliers of ammunition slithered off of her neck, making sounds like hail on a tin roof. Noting the somber look on most of the Monks, she addressed the nearest one.
“Who died?” The Angel didn’t mince words. Ever.
Monks were notorious for not speaking much, but one answered.
“Osborne found his Halo.” he poked his rifle in the direction of the blackened wedge of grass that marked the blast radius. “Took an RPG in the gut to save a busload of kids.”
“Shit.”
“Shit is right. He just left, headed to the Hill is my
best guess.”
June spat onto the grass and shook her head, staring off at something Aaron couldn’t see. Then she gestured toward the pile of firepower at her feet.
“Load these toys in the trucks and let’s go then.” She sounded angry. Angels rarely did.
Salt Lake City, Utah
Moments later a six piece convoy of matte black vehicles roared northward along Wasatch Boulevard. Aaron rode atop the foremost vehicle, manning the turret with its new chain gun, an M64 Vulcan. This was an evolution of the old 6-barrelled M62 Aaron’s unit had used in Argentina. Two Monks had taken a considerable amount of sweating to carry and fix the weapon atop the Humvee while a third strained to carry half of the heavy ammunition. Yet the diminutive June had been able to handle the whole load herself.
While airborne.
The other gun nested atop the last of the trucks.
June herself perched behind Aaron, looking intensely at the Northern sky where brown smudges of smoke chased the clouds. She was wingless for the moment, having decided to hitch a ride with the screaming Hummers until traffic or some other obstacle slowed their progress. So far, the convoy moved without incident on streets that hadn’t seen real traffic since The Changes. Below, inside the cab of the truck, Aaron could hear the squawk of radio chatter as Monks relayed the news about Osborne and apprised themselves of the situation they would soon encounter. Aaron listened disbelievingly to the news issued forth from the headset dangling around his own neck.
“… Largest force we’ve encountered in the valley.”
“…heavy casualties.”
“…immediate need of assistance.”
“…codename Wicked. Repeat. Codename Wicked.”
After fifteen minutes of fast driving, they were nearing the Capitol building. True to Emmanuel Tyson’s advice, the circuitous path through the Avenues and past Memory Grove had been clear, if a little slow. Even from a mile out they could see angelic shapes silhouetted against the sky. Some light. Some dark.
To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1) Page 39