Angeli

by Jody Wallace

  Adelita’s arms tightened around his neck as they increased velocity. “That one knows more than he’s telling. I guarantee it. Dios, you’re fast with these new wings. I can hardly see the ground.”

  They reached the hotel in minutes. “I want you near the big springs up the road.” It was possible the mineral content of that area would confuse the arrays of anyone searching for Adelita.

  “Motel,” she insisted. “I want to see Old Faithful. It’s on my bucket list.”

  They argued. She won. He let her.

  He’d only be gone an hour. That part was true. He needed a real-time assessment of the kill zone, the radius of the shade zone that surrounded the kill zone, and the number of shades, daemons, and begetters in the area. He needed to calculate the best flight path to get him to the nexus so he could reasonably expect to hit it with the bomb. The entities would sense him no matter what he did. Detection was bound to happen. The question was whether he could deliver the payload before he got swarmed—and whether the bomb could neutralize the nexus before the swarm analyzed his DNA.

  The part that wasn’t true was how Adelita’s job would be to lure entities away from the kill zone long enough for him to burst through the defenses. A lone sentient wouldn’t sidetrack enough of the horde to make a difference. A lone sentient who wasn’t trained, enhanced, and raised to kill entities would never survive either way.

  Adelita was going to have a chance if it was the last thing he did. And it would be.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On the bench near Old Faithful, Adelitawatched Gregori desert her without shedding a tear.

  She watched Nikolas arrive within minutes, and it was harder, then, not to cry. It made what she suspected about Nikolas, and about Gregori’s chances, all the more real.

  He landed as gracefully as Gregori, his wings just as wide, his glow bright. The resemblance ended there. His skin was the darkest of the angeli, his hair the blackest, and his reputation the pits. “I’ve been watching you.”

  “Sounds like something you’d do, creeper.” She wondered what he’d witnessed at the springs and decided she didn’t care. “Nice wing pack.”

  He shrugged. The feathers rippled, glinting at the tips like diamonds. “I have spares.”

  Adelita crossed her arms and stretched out her legs. “Are you here to convince me one Ship is more important than my entire planet? Take me hostage? Bring me jewelry?”

  “None of the above. I want to talk.”

  She noticed he didn’t get close to her, even taking into consideration the aliens’ generous definition of personal space. “How thoughtful. I love to talk. When are you getting the bomb?”

  “Tomorrow about four a.m. your time.” His glow faded and his wings retracted until he looked almost like a normal man. Normal except for the knee-length white tunic and silver breastplate. The geyser spluttered behind him briefly. “I’ve run Gregori’s scenario all the ways I can think of. It’s not going to work.”

  She didn’t think it would, either, which was why she’d been expecting Nikolas.

  “It might,” she said anyway. “It’s better than giving up.”

  “You’re willing to kill Ship and everyone on it?”

  She tilted her hat brim. “You’re willing to kill my planet and everyone on it.”

  He studied her. The sun beat down on them both, and he was not sweating. Adelita removed her hat and fanned her face, trying to appear unmoved.

  “You’re a surprise, Miss Martinez,” he conceded. “I did not expect Gregori to pick up a sidekick.”

  “He’s my sidekick.” Adelita wished Nikolas would get to the point. He was here to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and that was her favorite type to decline. “You’re the invading aliens. I’m the hero. I’m the one with a sidekick.”

  “Could be.” He tapped one of the bands on his wrist. He must have had spares of those, too, and a spare tunic and armor, because he showed no signs of his and Gregori’s bloody skirmish. “We have forty-eight minutes before he returns. I have to be out of his sensor range by then.”

  “His sensor range. Is it not the same as yours?”

  He smirked.

  Gregori had mentioned Nikolas was the IT guy for their team. He could have cobbled something together, like the signal he claimed he could send them undetected by Ship. “If you’re such a great spy, why did it take you weeks to find him?”

  “It didn’t suit me to until today.”

  “Uh-huh.” That wasn’t the whole story. “What changed?”

  He didn’t answer immediately—probably deciding what lie to tell her.

  “You,” he finally said. It didn’t feel dishonest, but again, it didn’t feel like the whole story, either. “I saw you with him and knew he’d become weak. Because of you, he could screw things up instead of being so insufferably perfect.”

  She recognized a guilt trip when she heard one. She also recognized envy and some other deadly sins. “You’re jealous of him.”

  When he glared at her, she continued. “You wish you’d done what he’d done and fought for what was right.”

  “You think I’m not fighting?” He took two steps toward her before stopping himself. His hands fisted. “You think I’m happy about what’s happening to this planet and the people on it?”

  She didn’t, but this was a man longing to confess, a master plotter who wanted someone to appreciate his scheme. All he needed was goading. “What have you done beside fail?”

  His teeth flashed in an angry sneer. “Let’s just say I’ve had a frag of a time explaining why Gregori keeps evading me and how he can be in so many places at once, killing daemons and keeping the shades from advancing across the continent.”

  “He works hard, unlike some people I could name.” Adelita pretended to buff her nails and watched Nikolas through her eyelashes. “He’s tough and smart and determined.”

  “He also had help.” Nikolas smiled. “Don’t tell him.”

  Adelita put her hat back on her head, shading her face. The geyser spurted and hissed. “You. I thought so.”

  “You did?” His eyes widened briefly. “Never mind. Your presence still changes things.”

  “How so?”

  “Because of you, he’s going to kill us all.”

  “Enough with the blaming.” She jumped up and stomped across the concrete. He backed away immediately. “He’s going to die trying. Unlike you. You’d die running and screaming.”

  “It’s not my intention to die at all.”

  Her anger blasted through the lump in her throat that appeared whenever she thought about Gregori dying. She swatted at Nikolas, and he dodged. “I should punch out your lights.”

  “Get away from me,” he said. “Just stay back.”

  “What are you scared of? A teeny thing like me?” She held up the wrist with Gregori’s silver band, feeling like Wonder Woman. “I don’t know how to use this yet, and I don’t have my binoculars handy to knock you out.”

  “Miss Martinez, please.” His expression pained, he held up both hands. “This will go a lot more smoothly if you stay over there and I stay over here.”

  “You can’t possibly have a thing for me.” She stuck her hands on her hips. “I’m fantastic, but I’m not interested, you got that?”

  “Trust me, I’m not interested, either. But I can’t stop myself from—” He swiped his mouth but failed to conceal a groan of frustration. “I don’t want to talk about this. It has nothing to do with anything that matters right now.”

  “Okay, okay.” She quit provoking him. Maybe alien humans had mating cycles and he was in his. As she understood it, the angeli weren’t supposed to screw around with Terrans, yet Nikolas had. Perhaps the other angeli had, too. Gregori had waited until he’d rebelled from his Ship and met her. “I’m guessing you’re here to do something behind Gregori’s back. Otherwise we could have talked anytime between when we met you and now.”

  He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I didn’t w
ant to interrupt your earlier activities.”

  “Whatever.” If he was trying to embarrass her for having sex with Gregori, it wouldn’t work. As far as she was concerned, the only embarrassing thing was that she hadn’t taken her angeli to bed their first night together. She’d missed several days’ worth of the last sex she might ever have. “What is it you don’t want Gregori to know? I suspect he realizes the other thing, about him dying. He’s got martyr shining out his butt.”

  “I know how to increase the odds of success,” Nikolas said.

  “Me, too.” She raised her voice as the geyser rumbled and began to fume louder than she’d expected. “Get your buddies to help, and your Ship, and your advanced technology. Quit lying to my people and hammer the monsters and their doorhole into pulp.”

  “Ship won’t take that detection risk. Plus it goes against code. Ship has been bending code enough with the retrieval lasting so long, and that’s only because of…other factors.”

  “Ship’s stupid,” she said.

  He didn’t deny it or confirm it. “Gregori can’t be the one to approach the nexus.”

  “Can you?”

  “No. Even if we evaded all shades, the begetters can sense Shipborn DNA in the kill zone. Gregori’s idea to fling the munitions into the nexus from outside the zone is ludicrous. There’s no way, even if he’s lucky enough to get in range. The area is swarmed.”

  “Go as a team,” she said stubbornly. “Kill the begetters and help each other.”

  “Too risky. Multiple sentients near the kill zone would definitely attract a swarm. And even if we managed to get the device to the nexus, a leviathan can hypothetically be woken after it has been shut,” Nikolas said. “All it would take is for someone from Ship to get identified. If we all end up dead, what’s the point?”

  “Then you’d have to escape. Although if the bomb affects a large area, well…” Her voice trailed off as she thought of Gregori caught in the blast radius, sacrificing himself for nothing. Was there no way for Gregori to get out of this alive?

  “The explosives for nexus closure are different from what you understand of bombs. They’re broad-dimensional. Otherwise they wouldn’t affect the entities or the nexus. Because of that, they don’t explode anything. They negate life,” he said grimly. “Our bodies would remain and our Shipborn genome could still be detected.”

  He stared at her. She stared back and realized she was right. His gruesome explanation had driven it home. She knew why he’d come to see her. A person with native DNA, should she get eaten on a suicide mission or discovered dead after it, wouldn’t wake this leviathan.

  “I can’t fly,” she said, ticking the hard facts off on her fingers. “I can’t shoot this blaster thing, I don’t understand your technology, and I’m not a very fast runner. Let’s enlist our military instead of an out-of-shape…”

  He was shaking his head, slowly. “Ship monitors your governments, your militaries, all your communications, and your population movement. Ship would know if we tried that. Your people could never keep it quiet enough to hide it from Ship.”

  Adelita sat down on another bench, Old Faithful erupting in full not twenty yards away. She’d waited twenty-six years to see it, and she couldn’t bring herself to get out her camera. “It doesn’t have to be a full military operation. Find someone able-bodied and athletic. Don’t you know anyone else?”

  “Of the people I trust, you’re the best candidate.” He rubbed his forehead with a sigh that sounded a lot like disgust. “We don’t have time to acquire someone else. Unless I’m reading things wrong, Ship is leaving in a few days. You already know the truth. You’re committed. You know what’s at stake. And you’re not…with child. That part is essential.”

  “Of course I’m not.” Gregori was magnificent, but she didn’t think he had super sperm. There was no chance she was pregnant.

  His expression lightened, as if she’d told him something he’d needed to hear. “Then you’ll do it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not that I’m scared.” She was terrified. Her knees would be knocking if she were standing up. “It’s not that I’m unwilling to make the sacrifice. It’s that…” She paused for a breath. Another. Her vision blurred in and out. “What will I have to do? Athletically and otherwise.”

  “First you have to convince him nothing has changed. Be aware that with a full sensor array he can parse dishonesty if he thinks to look for it.”

  “I’m an excellent liar.”

  “I bet you are.” He tapped the breastplate on his armor and pulled out a tiny, transparent packet, which he offered with an outstretched arm. “After you act like you believe everything he tells you, put him to sleep so he can’t stop us. Don’t let him feed you anything. Nothing, Adelita, in case he intends to put you to sleep, too. He has fresh supplies in the armor he stole from me.”

  Adelita considered what Gregori might be expecting tonight and how very much she planned to give it to him. “Can I kiss him?”

  Nikolas nodded. “I don’t see how he could hide the tranq in his mouth without being affected by it.”

  She accepted the packet. He backed away hastily. It contained a dot so small she had to squint to see it. “This is only a tranquilizer, correct? It won’t hurt him?”

  Nikolas shot her a dirty look. “Six hours of sound sleep for him, twenty-four for you.”

  “How fast will it act?”

  “Don’t use it while he’s flying you somewhere.” He sat on the long, curved bench, several yards away from her. The geyser subsided to a frustrated burble.

  She’d intended her last night with Gregori to contain a lot of oral things, but she’d find a way around it. This was no-man’s-land. She had to get creative. “After I get him to take this, what then?”

  “Then,” he said in a dark voice, “it gets complicated.”

  Adelita got out her pencil and paper and flipped past her Hal chart. If it was going to get more complicated than deceiving and drugging the man she’d fallen in love with, as well as refusing any offers of food, she was going to have to take notes.

  Gregori might be the one with the sensors, but Adelita could tell he was lying about the scenario in California.

  “If I take that route, I can get in and out as long as I fly at top speed,” he concluded, holding her gaze, “and scoop you off the tower before the shades climb it. You can stay ahead of them if you push yourself.”

  “What about the daemons? I can’t outrun them,” she said, her voice rough from her sob-fest. As they perched on a bed in the Old Faithful Inn, she nibbled a PB&J sandwich despite Nikolas’s warning. She’d made it herself, for one. For two, Gregori wouldn’t dose her yet. After the way she’d kissed him as soon as he’d returned, despite the fact that she was crying at the time, he had to realize he had certain things to look forward to this evening.

  “There weren’t that many daemons.” His eyebrows flickered briefly as he said it, and she figured that part, at least, was true-ish. However, his definition of “many” and her definition of “many” were probably not the same.

  Candles burned in several locations around the room, providing a warm, guttering light. Gregori had placed sensors around the inn and assured her that all entities, Terrans and Shipborn were far, far away.

  She wasn’t so sure about Nikolas, but she and Gregori would have a facsimile of privacy in the top level of the hotel for what would come after the meal. She simply had to rise above her despair, fatalism, rage, and terror long enough to grow amorous.

  Even as tempting as Gregori was, even as strongly as she felt about him, she wasn’t positive she could feel sexy. All she wanted to do was cry.

  She handed him a sandwich, proud to offer it without accompanying tears. “Why do you think there weren’t many daemons?”

  He shrugged. “We don’t have extensive experience with post-infestation planets. I suspect the fact that I’ve been picking them off for weeks has something to do with it. Daemon populations seem to be limited
. Not like shades. Once the begetter drones show up, the supply of those is endless, as long as the begetters stay fed.”

  “Fed by souls.” She concentrated on Gregori instead of the fears screaming in her head. “If it’s so easy to stop more monsters from coming, why have you never done it before?”

  “It’s not easy.” His gaze flickered to the side, his pupils small, as if he were tabulating numbers on a mental calculator. For all she knew, he was. He’d removed his wings but not the bands or the halo with the computer in it. “There are a lot of variables in this plan.”

  “But you can pull this off without getting yourself killed.” Her throat tightened, again. “Not even by the bomb.”

  He nodded, inspecting the sandwich instead of meeting her eyes.

  She sighed. Why did he try to lie to her? On the other hand, his dishonesty did make her own course of action easier to justify. “I hope you’re right.”

  “I generally am.” He pulled the slices of bread apart and sniffed the contents. “What is this?”

  “It’s a PB&J.” This achy lump in her throat was going nowhere and made swallowing a challenge. “Peanuts, fruit, and lots and lots of sugar. Stop playing with it.”

  He carefully licked the peanut butter, and then the jelly, his pupils still tiny. She wondered if his throat ached, too, or if, as a career soldier, he’d accepted the inevitable already. “The nutritional value is limited.”

  “Who cares? It tastes good.” When it didn’t taste like sawdust because she was too busy feeling sorry for herself to enjoy her food.

  He finally stuck his sandwich together and bit into it, which meant he didn’t suspect Nikolas had given her a tranq. Or if he did, he figured she wouldn’t use it until they’d had sex, either. Perhaps he’d had any number of PB&Js during his time on Earth and his taste-test had been an attempt to see if she’d poisoned it.

  Well, he was safe. She wasn’t about to tranq him until they made love any more than he was. That being said, once the afterglow faded, she suspected it was going to be a contest to see who could tranq who faster.