by CC Bridges
Trixie turned instead of hopping into the truck, the hair on the back of her neck rising as a low growl emerged from her belly. Kayla backed up toward the truck, staying behind her dog.
Shadows took the form of people, and they seemed to detach from the walls. For a moment Gabriel thought they were demons, but he didn’t see the telltale glowing eyes or physical mods on any of them. The figures looked young and human, dressed in torn clothing, all of them too thin.
“Get away from the truck, man,” one of them shouted. He had a metal pole in his hands. It looked heavy and old, ringed with rust.
Four others came out of the shadows, holding clubs or knives. They were no comparison to the projectile weapons the demons used. If he’d had his spear and two working wings, they’d hardly be a match for him. He slid out of the seat, hands tightening into fists. Gabriel still had his ability to fight, and he’d defend Jeff and his family as if they were his charges.
Jeff made a move for the truck, and one of the shadow men went for him, diving across the alley. Before he could make contact, Trixie leaped to Jeff’s defense, clamping her jaw around the man’s wrist, causing him to drop the sharp-looking knife in his hand.
“Get this damn thing off me,” the man snarled.
Another dashed forward with a club raised high to strike across Trixie’s back. “No!” Kayla shouted, running toward her dog. She kicked up with one leg, jolting the club before it could make contact.
Gabriel winced as he ran for another of the attackers. By the sound the impact made, she’d have a broken leg to deal with if they survived this. But he had to make sure they did survive. He dodged the knife swiped at him, grabbing the hand of the attacker, and knocked his legs out from under him.
Jeff had reached whatever he’d gone to the truck for, a small sphere-shaped device that he held out and set off. A high-pitched whine filled the night, and two of the attackers ran, grasping their ears. The one Gabriel had knocked to the floor pushed himself up, and the other two backed away from the truck.
“Get inside,” Jeff hissed at him.
Gabriel whirled, mouth open.
“Hurry!” Jeff gestured toward the open door.
Kayla grabbed his hand and pulled him to the safety of the truck, Trixie at their heels. He didn’t know how she managed to run. But he didn’t have time to worry about her leg once he saw the demons swoop in from the sky. They blotted out the light from the streetlamps, wings wide as they dropped like a scene from one of Gabriel’s nightmares.
Tall, misshapen, with claws for hands and shining yellow eyes, the demons menaced the bandits. “You were told.” A raspy voice emerged from one of them. “This is Luca’s territory now.” It took hold of one of the bandits by the neck and held him aloft.
“No!” he managed to choke out.
One of the demons turned to Jeff and nodded. “Go.”
Jeff hopped into the truck, slammed the door shut, and backed out of the alleyway so fast Gabriel’s head bumped against the seat in front of him.
“Demons,” he gasped, unable to say anything more coherent.
“Yes.” Jeff looked back at Gabriel, his eyes heavy, before returning his attention to the crumbling and cracked road.
Gabriel shifted over to Kayla, who was sitting next to him instead of in the front. Trixie sat between them, her large body sprawled over the bench and into the well at their feet. “Are you all right? That club….”
“I’m fine.” She looked away for a moment, then, suddenly determined, pulled up the fabric of her pants, revealing her leg, which shimmered in the light from the streetlamps.
Gabriel had one hand out to touch before he thought better of it. He knew he wouldn’t appreciate anyone touching his wings without permission. How had she lost her leg? And who’d created this cybernetic replacement?
“I see,” he said. “You used it to quite the advantage back there.”
Kayla grinned up at him, pleased with his praise.
Jeff all but growled from the front. “She should have stayed in the truck. You should have too. Trixie’s job is to protect Kayla, not the other way around.”
“I’d never let her get hurt,” Kayla protested. “She’s my best friend.”
“Dammit, Kayla,” Jeff snapped.
“Does that happen often?” Gabriel interrupted, wanting to stop the harsh words. He didn’t like it when Jeff fought with his daughter. It seemed wrong. “The bandits, I mean?”
Jeff took a deep breath, sounding calmer when he spoke again. “Old Trent used to be a bunch of roving gangs. People banded together to be strong enough to fight ’em off. Then the demons came.”
Gabriel didn’t know what to think about demons doing the work of angels, being the protectors of these people. No, what he knew of demons, they’d never do that without a price. But without paying that price, the people were damning themselves to a worse fate.
Why did this horrible place exist? Why hadn’t Heaven taken everyone up to live in the circles above the scarred earth? How could the God AI let this happen when all he needed was for Metatron to send out his angels in force?
“I don’t understand.” Gabriel let his head rest against the seat in front of him. It had begun to throb again.
Soft fingers carded through his hair, and he looked up in surprise to see Kayla touching him gently. He almost laughed as she patted him just like Trixie. But her touch soothed the pain.
“Try to sleep,” she said. “We’ll be home soon.”
Home. If only.
Chapter Six
BY THE time morning arrived, Jeff had decided he had to talk to Nazaro. He had to convince them to stop whatever they were doing to bring angelic attention to Old Trent. Last night only solidified it for him. He might not like Luca calling in the favor, but the demons had done too much good for the city. He remembered how things were before, and Jeff refused to go back to that. His daughter would not starve like he had.
First, he had to find his own wayward angel. Jeff left Kayla in his workshop working on her lessons for the day. Trixie paced for a moment before settling down in the doorway. She knew her place. Jeff smiled as he made his way through the junkyard. That dog would do anything for Kayla, and he should know. He’d trained her.
Towers of junk made the place a maze, but Jeff could navigate the paths and passages without thinking about it. He didn’t know where Gabriel had gotten to. The angel hadn’t been in his bedroom when Jeff had gone looking up there, armed with the excuse that he might need to oil that golden wing again.
He shivered. What would it be like to see the angel in full flight, both wings extended and capturing the air? His hands remembered what it felt like to stroke that warm metal, so finely made that it was hardly different from scales or skin. They were capable of amazing things uplevel, and Gabriel was one of them.
Just as he was about to head back to the workshop and check his cameras, Jeff caught sight of the angel standing shirtless on top of a large pile of scrap metal, nearly fifteen feet high, single wing extended. He sped up, unsettled at the way Gabriel stood there, his arms out to either side, head leaning back to catch sunlight that would never make it down here.
“Gabriel,” he called, not knowing why he used the angel’s full name, just that it was right somehow.
For a moment he worried that he’d startled the angel. Instead, Gabe looked down at him, his lips curving in a smile. He retracted his wing, pulling it back like it had never been, the nub of metal and wires from his other shoulder blade looking even more obscene compared to that smooth flush limb. Gabe crouched, then jumped to another pile of junk a few feet below, making his way down the mountain like some large cat instead of a bird. He moved with an odd grace, almost alien, his limbs too stiff.
Gabe picked up his shirt and threw it on before coming toward Jeff, that odd smile still on his face. As Jeff opened his mouth to speak, Gabe brushed his fingers against the stubble on Jeff’s chin. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, so he was a little shy of a full
beard.
“I’m sorry.” Gabe pulled away, holding his hand to his chest. “It took me by surprise. I wanted to know how it felt.”
“Itchy,” Jeff grumbled, skimming his hand over the beard. Gabe didn’t have a single hair on his jaw. Was that due to being an angel or a hazard of being blond? Jeff didn’t know. “What were you doing up there?”
Gabe looked up at the mound of junk. “Trying to get up high. Back home….” He took a moment before he continued. “Every morning we’d meet for the sunrise salutation. We’d fly together off the highest spire. Every single angel was connected. I could feel them all in my head, that joining with Metatron….” Gabe lifted his arm, reaching up toward the sky. “I can’t feel them. I tried so hard.”
His hand finally made contact with his forehead, which he rubbed as if it pained him. “I keep reaching out, but nothing. Why can’t I touch them?”
“I don’t know.” Jeff wished he could help. It would certainly take the burden from his shoulders if Gabe managed to take off on his own. Jeff could tell Luca he did his best, but the demon certainly couldn’t expect Jeff to go against a flock of angels, could he?
Gabe stepped backward, stumbling. He wiped at his face and came away with a streak of blood from his nose. “Jeff,” he said, green eyes wide with panic.
“Easy.” Jeff stepped forward, just in time to catch Gabe as he collapsed to his knees.
Demon’s balls, what now?
THEY HAD the news on the screens in the student center. Almost everyone had gathered to watch, unable to believe the scenes of devastation. If you’d asked Gabriel, he never would have guessed that one little volcano could do so much damage. Mt. Rainier had blown, triggering the big one, the earthquake that didn’t knock California off the edge of the country but did put it underwater.
“How are they even getting this footage?” Kevin complained, oblivious to his girlfriend, who wiped her eyes at the images projected on every wall.
“You’re an asshole, Kev.” Rocco slid his arm around Gabriel’s waist, as if the physical closeness would make it better somehow.
Too many people were dying, had died, and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. Gabriel shivered, suddenly cold, even in Rocco’s embrace. “This is fucked-up.” He didn’t want to show he was just as affected as Monica, who finally hid her face against Kevin’s chest.
“This,” Kevin said, with one of the wide sweeping gestures he always made, “is ours. This is our freakin’ Pearl Harbor, man. Our shot heard round the world. What we do with this? Makes us.”
Rocco punched Kevin in the shoulder, and he didn’t pull the blow. “Yeah, except that who’s the enemy we’re fighting, Mister History Major? Mother nature?”
“It’s the last thing to conquer, the last thing man cannot control.” Kevin shook his fist.
Gabriel’s head pounded. He couldn’t get those images out of his head, the way those people had died, smothered by the volcano. “Shut up, just shut up.”
“Gabriel, you all right? Gabriel?” Rocco asked, but once again, the name he said didn’t match the one formed on his lips.
He stumbled away, the room pulsating in his vision. Gabriel saw eyes in the large screens around him. They stared at him no matter where he looked. “Stop it. Stop watching me!”
The walls began to crumble, slipping away into pixelated bricks. Gabriel fell through the abyss, slipping out of this world…
…and opened his eyes to find Jeff and Kayla staring down at him.
Gabriel struggled to sit up. How did he get on the floor of Jeff’s workshop anyway? Something fell across his face and he reached up to touch it, surprised to find a black cord dangling from his forehead. He pulled it out of one of the ports along his brow, his hand shaking as he threw it from him.
“What the fuck is this?”
Jeff blinked at the profanity. Kayla winced. Gabriel felt bad about that, but he couldn’t stop the anger that coiled in his belly. How dare Jeff plug into him?
“You wouldn’t wake up,” Kayla said.
“We got Chase to take a look at you.” Jeff nodded toward the large screen hung on the wall of his workshop.
A man’s face peered back at Gabriel, looking very young and earnest. So much so that Gabriel knew it for an illusion.
“I trust Chase.” Jeff’s voice had a slight undercurrent to it that Gabriel couldn’t place.
He snorted. “Of course you do. I just have to take your word on that. Like I have with everything so far.” The anger burned its way up through his chest. Gabriel didn’t understand it. He wasn’t angry with Jeff, not really.
“Look,” the image on the screen finally spoke. “Before you start bitching at Werth, you gotta know something. Someone put a memory block in your brain, and it’s falling apart.”
Gabriel’s hand went to his forehead. “What do you mean, a memory block?”
“I mean a chipset that connects straight to those little ports on your head, boy. Hardwired right into your brain. There is shit you know that someone don’t want you to remember.” Chase seemed to lean forward, his head growing larger on the screen. Gabriel recognized the eyes watching him and realized Chase’s presence had torn him out of the vision.
“But why is it breaking now?” Jeff asked, still not looking at Gabriel.
The empty ports seemed ominous when Gabriel ran his fingers over them. The halo must have been holding the memory block in place. Without it, he couldn’t contact the other angels, and his bond with Metatron had been severed. Its lack had kept him trapped down here, unable to call for help. But what if the halo was doing more than just connecting him to the rest of the Host? Why would Metatron want to hide knowledge from Gabriel?
“Am I going to keep passing out?” The anger had deflated, the emotion gone as if it had never been. He couldn’t fight it, powerless as he was.
“Probably, till it’s gone for good. Real memories will keep sneaking past the fake ones.”
“Real?” Gabriel shook his head. They couldn’t possibly be real. He couldn’t remember the Collapse. That happened nearly two hundred years ago. It had been only the first in a series of disasters that had split the country, leaving it ripe for picking when Heaven and the other corporations rose.
No, Gabriel could not have lived that long. He didn’t remember how he’d become an angel—that thought still brought him to the empty void in his mind—but he must have chosen this. Gabriel couldn’t imagine anything else. But neither could he explain these strange memories that lingered somehow.
An alarm sounded and they all looked up. Kayla pointed to yet another screen, a tiny one near Jeff’s worktable, one of the few places free of clutter in the room. “Customers.”
“You stay here,” Jeff told her. “Both of you. I’ll take care of this. Thanks for the help, Chase.”
And then he was gone, not even sparing a look for Gabriel, who still sat on the floor. Gabriel didn’t understand why that left a metaphorical hole in his chest that mirrored the real ones in his head, aching to be filled with something he couldn’t have.
DAMMIT ALL. Jeff hopped on a hover bike to take him to the junkyard entrance. He should have known Nazaro taking that halo could mean nothing good. Removing it was turning Gabe’s head into swiss cheese.
And he couldn’t do anything to fix it. Jeff clenched his jaw, remembering how it felt to jack in and ride the information waves of the net. Without the limitations of a body, he could soar through the gusts of code, slip into any mind hooked up. It had been like flying, swimming, and falling all at once. Nothing came close to that high, and right now he envied Chase the ability to see inside Gabe’s head.
Of course Gabe wouldn’t want Jeff there, especially if he knew Jeff was responsible for that memory block coming apart. He’d been the one to disconnect the damn thing. He should have known to look for that shit. If he’d jacked in, he’d have seen it. He wanted to right now, the need making his fingers twitch as if already encased in their control gloves.
Stop it. Never again, he’d sworn. Jeff dealt in the here and now, not in a virtual world like Chase.
Right now he had customers standing outside his gate. A group of demons, scavengers who came round every so often when they had goods to trade, and from the look of the number of carts behind them, they might have plenty of shit. He brought his hover bike down to the ground, stepping off before he touched the panel on his side of the wire gate, dropping the forceshield and electric defenses.
“You’d think you didn’t want to do business, Werth, the way you make a demon feel welcome.”
“Shut up, Dario.” Jeff actually gave him a smile. This group didn’t work for Luca, being the independent sort. That made them dangerous, but they knew better than to cause trouble in Luca’s territory. Besides, Jeff always took whatever junk they found out in the ruins of Old Trent. Somebody might want it. “What you got for me?”
Dario nodded to his group, who took the tarp off the cart behind him. Unlike Luca’s demons, they didn’t hide their wings and claws when in polite company. “Usual collection of crap. Good news is we found some places all sealed up under the rubble. No air got down there.”
Never mind the water from the river that had destroyed plenty of homes along its banks. Some of the houses were just now drying out. Jeff peered at the contents of the crates on the cart, his fingers twitching at the sight of the ancient technology held within.
“Are those…?”
Dario laughed. “Old books, yeah. When was the last time you seen paper?”
Been too long, Jeff thought, sorting through the stack in the crate. They’d had a few when he was a kid that got passed around the group. Everything was shared, everything. ’Course they’d had to burn them for warmth during the winter. That was before the demons. Dario had brought him a nice collection, an assortment of hardcovers and soft, all in decent condition, not the ratty ones he’d seen before.