Angeli

by Jody Wallace

  “This wind is brisk.” Her hat brim flipped over her face and muffled her voice. “It’s making my eyes water. I can’t see anything.”

  Right, no force field. He had to keep his speed down. Not to mention, some Terrans got airsick.

  After he slowed, he asked, “Is that better?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She adjusted herself in his arms, her fingers nudging aside his queue to brush his nape.

  At her touch, a shiver went through him. “Ah. Do heights bother you?”

  She smiled. Her hands were warm, a contrast to the chilly wind. “A little late to ask that, isn’t it?”

  Good point.

  “Your hair is silky, do you know?” She threaded several fingers into it. “It makes up for your wings.”

  He didn’t know, and didn’t know how to respond, so he grunted.

  The lower they flew, the more he could feel warmer air surge out of the canyon’s depths. Adelita’s hat flapped in the wind as she leaned down. “Where’s the river? This canyon is beyond beautiful.”

  Her arms remained firmly around his neck. She continued in the other language, but it didn’t sound like she was angry. Her fingers caressed his hair and nape, petting him like a small animal. When he headed away from the plateau and into the canyon itself, she sighed.

  “I suppose this has its advantages,” she said in English.

  “What does?”

  “You being my private helicopter.”

  “For now.”

  “Now is all I need.”

  It might be all she got. If he couldn’t patch the force field in the wing pack, he’d have to leave her somewhere. He couldn’t take days out of his schedule of killing and spying to fly her to a refugee camp on the East Coast. It was hard enough to keep himself safe from the shades, much less a Terran.

  He’d gather her a vehicle and food. Ammo. She wouldn’t be helpless. But it scorched his hull to consider it. Terra’s people were his responsibility. He’d relocated the others to refugee camps in under an hour, and this much time with the same woman was making him feel more protective than usual.

  “Oh, look at that.” She clapped a hand to her fluttering hat as she inspected the terrain. They were flying toward a large mountain in the canyon itself, likely a ridge that had fallen victim to erosion millions of years ago. “I wonder which butte that is, Brahma Temple?”

  She seemed to expect a response. “I don’t know.”

  The pointed mountain boasted layers of colorful rock like the canyon walls. Beiges, reds, grays, and blacks painted the landscape.

  “If that’s Brahma, that makes the other one Zoroaster.” Adelita continued to talk about geography while he tried to keep his mind on the mission and not his libido. Being dirtside so long, around all these females and Terra’s sexualized culture, must have finally gotten to him as it had the other handlers.

  If this was how they’d felt the past couple of months, no wonder they’d behaved like hedonists.

  His keen eyes spotted buildings across the canyon on the southern rim. The last time he’d scanned with his array, he hadn’t pinged on any shades in this area besides the blotch they’d escaped. Should take the creatures a day or two to cross the canyon. If no daemons or Ship-lickers popped up, that gave him thirty-six hours to fix his tech and…

  His companion wriggled in his arms. Scratch the and. She’d turned him down.

  “The Colorado River,” she said. “There it is. Can we?”

  “Can we what?”

  “Go down there.” The setting sun shone on her hair, burnishing it with red.

  “No.”

  She turned her attention to him. “Please?”

  If he gave a centimeter… “No.”

  “The shades won’t catch us if we don’t stay long. You should take a moment to admire one of our Lord’s most beautiful creations. He worked hard on the Grand Canyon.” She waved her hand. “Just look at it.”

  “It’s impressive.” The dark swash of river curved through the valley like a living creature. He could understand why this was a favorite Terran destination. On the many worlds he’d traveled, it was still a remarkable sight.

  “Are you tempted?” she asked, then laughed. “I suppose it’s not good to tempt angeli.”

  She was going to be finding out some version of the truth soon enough. He was no angeli. But he was tempted. “Adelita Louisa Eleanor—”

  “You sound like my aunt. Call me Adelita.” She smiled, her teeth white and healthy. “Five minutes, angeli. That’s all I ask. You don’t have to enjoy it.”

  He was having enough trouble keeping his enjoyment to himself—holding her, smelling her skin, listening to her talk. It was hard to deny her. In Ship culture, the competition for female attention among humans had grown fierce, and most men rarely denied women much of anything.

  Luckily, he’d had some practice denying women since he’d come to Terra.

  “I have duties to fulfill,” he told her.

  “Like what?”

  “Defending the people of this planet.”

  “You can defend me while we’re beside the river.”

  He wanted to say, with what? He hadn’t solved the issues with his tech yet, not to mention the blaster. He could kill daemons without it, but he hadn’t found anything on this planet that affected shades. Terrans had limited understanding of dimensional antimatter. Even if he completely bucked code and shared everything he knew with the Terrans, he was no scientist. There wasn’t time for their scientists to figure out what he meant and implement proper weaponry from a starting point this primitive.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “It’s not safe to dally close to the horde.”

  Her brown eyes studied him. “You didn’t seem to mind the idea of dallying before.”

  “We agreed that was a test.” A test to see how brainless he was, letting himself get distracted.

  “If you say so.” Her gaze unsettled him. Was she suspicious? She had good reason to be. “Did I pass your test, angeli?”

  “Sure.”

  They flew to the south rim. It was a tourist area where they should be able to find food and shelter. Some of the buildings seemed to be peering over the brink of the canyon.

  Adelita was still watching him. “Are you being tested too?”

  “Why would you ask that?” That wasn’t something anyone had wanted to know—and Terrans asked a lot of questions.

  “Everyone left, and you stayed. I don’t think you were supposed to stay, were you? You said you were out of favor.”

  “That’s true.” Gregori could answer that without lying. “I stayed because your kind is worth saving.”

  “Sounds like a test to me.” She pressed her head against his shoulder and tightened her arms around his neck. “It sounds like a test the other angeli failed.”

  If only it were that simple. “I doubt that.”

  “You did the honorable thing. The godly thing. How can you say they were right to leave us?”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  When Terrans wanted to talk theology, Gregori had, as had all handlers, stepped carefully. They were trained to interact with native populations, but training only got you so far. It had been difficult to walk the thin line between presumed divinity and blowing their cover.

  Terran cultural differences were tricky. Terrans were tricky.

  Adelita was proving to be tricky, too.

  “We’ll talk after we land,” he promised. She might not like what she heard, but they’d talk. He’d let her decide where he should leave her if he couldn’t fix his force field. Perhaps then, deserting her wouldn’t curdle his insides with guilt.

  “All right.” She craned her neck to see the canyon better, and her hat flew off her head. “My hat!” The pale headgear spiraled down, down, past striations of red, crumbling limestone.

  “We’ll find you another one,” he told her. Gregori slowed his pace, following the streets of the vi
llage and looking for signs of entities. The town appeared to be deserted. He landed in a courtyard near a general store. A breeze kicked around them, blowing into their faces from the canyon. He concentrated with all his senses, and nothing suspicious leaped out at him.

  This should do. Should. His senses were insufficient and could be deceived. Damn, he wished he’d protected the array. He’d work on fixing it first.

  When he set Adelita on her feet, she stumbled. He caught her before she fell.

  She laughed a little breathlessly. “I lost my land legs somewhere in the Grand Canyon.”

  “Your legs?” He cocked his head. Her legs looked fine to him. Better than fine, even with the dried blood. She had lovely skin.

  Adelita patted his cheek, the gesture bringing her almost flush against him. “It’s just a phrase, angeli. It means I have weak knees. Which also means something else. What I’m really saying is thank you.”

  He’d been supporting her in his arms for hours, but the feel of her against him now was different. She was touching him because she wanted to. She lowered her hand to his shoulder and licked her lips.

  Heat rose between them like a thick blanket. Gregori was taken aback until he realized the warmth was coming from the pavement, burning through his soles and up his legs.

  “It’s hot.” His force field couldn’t be repaired soon enough. Environmental controls and protection, it had it all.

  “It’s Arizona in July.” Adelita stroked his neck with two fingers as though she was taking his pulse. “Interesting. I didn’t know angeli had so many human characteristics. Your heart rate is fast as a rabbit, and you’re perspiring.”

  “It keeps us humble.”

  She patted his cheek a second time. “You’re not humble. And you need a shave.”

  He wasn’t used to being touched so casually. The Shipborn valued personal space because they had such limited room to stretch out.

  Nevertheless, he liked having her near. A droplet of sweat formed at her temple and trickled down her dusty skin. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair a shining tumble. The way she grabbed his wings, his arms, his face, without asking made him feel like grabbing her back.

  Her lips were so rosy, he could almost taste them.

  “It’s hot,” he repeated, and felt stupider the minute he said it.

  Her lashes half lowered. “I think it’s getting hotter.”

  “It’s one hundred degrees Fahrenheit,” he guessed. Without the array, he had to guess a lot of things. “That can’t be healthy for you.”

  “I’m Latina, angeli. I can take the heat.”

  He put her away from him, ignoring her tiny smile. He could withstand hotter temperatures too, but he wasn’t sure he could withstand Adelita.

  She slid her backpack off, dangling it by a strap. Her eyes squinted against the strong breeze. “So what now? We talk?”

  “We go inside, out of this wind.” He mounted the steps to the store, checking the building. The broken sign, hanging from a chain, banged against a post. Several windows had been smashed, and the doorknob hung halfway off. He heard no noise besides the rattle of the sign. “There may be water. I’m sure you’d like to get cleaned up.”

  “You’re saying I’m dirty?”

  He couldn’t—wouldn’t—glance at her face, but it sounded like she was smiling. “You’re wounded.”

  “That, too. Dios. These buildings have been vandalized.” The smile left her voice. Her boots crunched on broken glass. “Why would people do this?”

  “To get inside.” The Terrans who’d ransacked the place wouldn’t have taken everything—he needed cleaning supplies and a few tools he’d learned to reconfigure. The endo-organic connections of the wing pack and sensor array needed to be sterilized, for starters.

  “I’ve broken into a lot of stores the past three weeks. You don’t have to bust all the windows.” Adelita followed him into the building and its welcome shadows. The ceiling rose to a vaulted peak, fans hanging the length of a beam. “Hello? Anybody here? I’ve got the angeli with me.”

  There was no answer except the clatter of the broken sign.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Adelita said. “There was a fight here. People have gone mad. They argue over nothing because they’re scared.”

  “Possibly,” he agreed. “But I don’t see any evidence of gunfire.” There at the end, when the military had been herding humans out of the bad zone west of the Rockies, there had been riots, killings, and general chaos.

  The US and Canadian governments were barely keeping a lid on the eastern half of the continent, and the Mexican government had fled south, as far from the mouth of hell as they could get. The rest of the world, dealing with its own pandemonium, didn’t want American refugees on its soil without a payout.

  Gregori didn’t stay long enough in populated areas to hear more news than that. He’d deal with the other nations if—he hated thinking about it as when—the entities swallowed this one. For now he remained on the front, killing daemons, avoiding Ship-lickers, rescuing Terrans, and trying to figure out a way into Ship’s hidden dirtside base to steal munitions.

  “I suppose people needed food and water for the trip east.” Adelita rattled a box she’d found on a shelf. “My aunt and uncle drove to Florida to stay with my cousin Eduardo.”

  “And you stayed behind because?”

  “I told you already.” She unsealed the box, checked the contents, and stuck it in her backpack. “I wanted to see the Grand Canyon.”

  “Against the express orders of your government?”

  “Yep.” As they talked she pawed through the aisles, tossing empty containers onto the bottom shelf.

  His team had worked with suicidal cultures before, people who’d thrown themselves at the shades in sacrificial fervor, but Terrans clung to life as ferociously as the Shipborn. “Do you have a death wish, Adelita?”

  She screwed the cap back on a bottle before she answered. “That’s a long story. Do you want to hear it or do you want me to tell you I’m fine?”

  “I want to hear it,” he said, but before she could respond the wind shifted, billowing dust through the open door. Gregori had two seconds to register the scent of daemon before it struck.

  Chapter Six

  The dense missile of Gregori’s attacker bowled him into a display case. Glass exploded around them, and their combined weight ripped the unit to pieces. They didn’t stop until they hit the wall with a bone-jarring thud.

  Adelita screamed so loud he could hear it over his own curses.

  Shit! No time to prepare. Gregori slapped open his wings, hoping to wrench the daemon off him, but it clung like a leech. If he couldn’t kill it, it would take him to the shades, which would taste his essence.

  And then the leviathan would come.

  Its wicked claws scrabbled off his armor. One hand snaked past the top of his wing to burrow into his upper arm. Its claws grated on bone.

  No protective force field. No blaster. He’d have to do this the gory way. Ignoring the pain, he reached behind him and grabbed the monster’s head.

  Twisted as sharp and hard as he could.

  It wasn’t hard enough. The daemon sank needle teeth into his hand. If he weren’t careful, it would bite off his thumb. Couldn’t regrow that bastard in a day. Another set of claws fastened into his opposite arm. The daemon’s wings flailed as it tried to drag him backward, out of the building.

  Gregori struggled for a handhold, for ballast, against the daemon on his back. It would be easier to kill the daemon inside the building, where it had less room to operate or go for help. Daemons never quit hunting prey once they located it, but that didn’t mean they were stupid.

  A loud retort cracked through the room. Gregori smelled gunpowder and felt the daemon flinch. Another shot. Another flinch.

  The daemon quit tugging him as it considered Adelita and her gun. Gregori tried to free his hand from the daemon’s mouth. His flesh burned from the daemon’s corrosive saliva. He s
queezed the monster’s jaw as hard as he could, his fingers not quite breaking through the warty flesh.

  “Get out of here!” he yelled at Adelita. “Go inside another building and hide.”

  Her response was to shoot the daemon several times. Mostly the bullets glanced off the daemon’s tough skin, but a few burrowed in. She stood behind the store’s counter and squinted through the gun’s scope as though she knew what she was doing.

  When a sixth bullet caught the daemon in the eye, splattering Gregori with poisonous ichor, he realized Adelita did know what she was doing.

  Too bad bullets were only going to piss the creature off.

  One set of daemon claws unhooked from Gregori as it prepared to attack Adelita. In a practiced, one-handed maneuver, Gregori shook a multipurp off his arm and flicked it into a blade. In seconds, the daemon was minus a hand.

  The daemon, screeching, finally released Gregori’s thumb. He promptly tried to chop off more daemons limbs. Challenging when the monster was on his back, but a good strategy. If it had no arms, it would be easier to kill. He couldn’t let it escape.

  But the daemon was wary now and avoided the blade, raking Gregori’s forearm in the process. Blood spurted between his bands. Disgusted, Gregori shoved the multipurp over his shoulder into the creature’s head. A sickening crunch was his reward.

  Its keen shattered what remained of the glass in display cases all around them. Now it wasn’t just pissed off. It was extremely pissed off. He hoped Adelita had ducked.

  Furious, the daemon renewed its effort to haul Gregori out of the building. Its tough, thin wings batted up swirls of glass shards. Rubbish scudded across the ground.

  Blood slicking his arms, Gregori let himself be hauled to the open space near the door. He yanked the multipurp out of the daemon’s head. Black goo dripped off the blade. Shit, this was going to be painful and unhygienic. He shoved the tool under his armor to his wing pack to activate one of his defense mechanisms manually, since it wasn’t responding to mental commands. Another victim of his dead sensor array.

  Ichor scorched his skin until… Click.

  The resultant pings all around him sounded like thousands of needles hitting the floor. The daemon tried to tear out his throat. He grabbed two of its wrists. Its ichor and his blood made it as slimy as snot.