by Ee, Susan
Raffe snorts. “They got a lot friendlier once you showed up. They haven’t offered me food all day.”
“Are they just skittish, or are they really bad guys?”
“Anybody who ties you to a chair at gunpoint is a bad guy. Do I really need to explain this?”
I feel like a little girl who did something stupid.
“So what are you doing here?” he asks. “I risk getting chewed to pieces by a pack of dogs so you can escape, and then you run back here? Your sense of judgment could use a dash of common sense.”
“Sorry, I’ll be sure and never do that again.” I’m beginning to wish they had gagged us.
“That’s the sanest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“So who are these guys?” Raffe’s super hearing has no doubt gained him a lot of information on what they’re up to.
“Why? You planning on enlisting?”
“I’m not much of a joiner.”
Despite his usual handsome features, he looks rather grotesque in the moonlight with all those streaks of dried blood running down his face. For a moment, I envision him as the classic fallen angel out to damn your soul.
But then he asks, “You all right?” His voice is surprisingly gentle.
“I’m fine. You know we need to get out of here by morning, right? They’ll be able to tell by then.” All that blood with no wound. No human heals that fast.
The door opens and the smell of stew almost drives me mad. I haven’t starved since the attacks, but I haven’t exactly been gaining weight either.
The leader pulls up a chair next to mine and lifts the bowl under my nose. My stomach grumbles as soon as the scent of meat and vegetables hits me.
He lifts a heaping spoonful and stops halfway between the bowl and my mouth. I have to suppress a groan of pleasure at the anticipation for decorum’s sake. A pimply-faced soldier pulls up a chair next to Raffe and does the same with his stew.
“What’s your name?” asks the leader. There something intimate about the way he asks me this question as he is about to feed me.
“My friends call me Wrath,” says Raffe. “My enemies call me Please Have Mercy. What’s your name, soldier boy?” Raffe’s mocking tone brings a flush to my cheeks for no reason.
But the leader isn’t flustered. “Obadiah West. You can call me Obi.” The spoon moves away from me just a fraction.
“Obadiah. How biblical.” says Raffe. “Obadiah hid the prophets from persecution.” Raffe stares at his own suspended spoon of stew.
“A Bible expert,” says Obi. “Too bad we already have one.” He looks at me. “And what’s your name?”
“Penryn,” I say quickly before Raffe can open his mouth to say something sarcastic. “Penryn Young.” I’d rather not antagonize our captors, especially if they’re about to feed us.
“Penryn.” He whispers it as though making it his own. I’m somehow embarrassed to have Raffe witness this moment, though I’m not sure why.
“When was the last time you had a real meal, Penryn?” asks Obi. He holds the spoon just out of reach of my mouth. I swallow the saliva before answering.
“It’s been awhile.” I give him an encouraging smile, wondering if he’ll let me have that bite. He moves the spoon to his own mouth and I watch him eat it. My stomach grumbles in protest.
“Tell me, Obi,” says Raffe. “Just what kind of meat is this?”
I look back and forth between the soldiers, suddenly unsure if I’m hungry.
“You’d have to catch a lot of animals to feed this many people,” says Raffe.
“I was just about to ask you what kind of animals you’ve been hunting,” says Obi. “A guy your size must need a lot of protein to maintain your muscle mass.”
“What are you implying?” I ask. “We’re not the ones attacking people, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Obi looks sharply at me. “How do you know about that? I didn’t say anything about attacking people.”
“Oh, don’t give me that look.” I give him my best grossed-out-teenager expression. “You couldn’t possibly imagine that I’d want to eat a person, could you? That’s totally disgusting.”
“We saw a family,” says Raffe. “Half-eaten on the road.”
“Where?” asks Obi. He seems surprised.
“Not too far from here. You’re sure it wasn’t you or one of your men?” Raffe shifts in his chair as though to remind Obi he and his men are not exactly the friendly sort.
“None of mine would do it. They don’t need to. We have sufficient supplies and firepower to support everyone here. Besides, they got two of our men last week. Trained men with rifles. Why do you think we hunted you? We don’t normally go after strangers. We’d like to know who did it.”
“It wasn’t us,” I say.
“No, I don’t suppose it was you.”
“He didn’t do it either, Obi,” I say. His name tastes foreign in my mouth. Different, but not bad.
“How do I know that?”
“We have to prove our innocence now?”
“It’s a new world.”
“What are you, the sheriff of the New Order? Arrest first, then ask questions later?” I ask.
“What would you do if you caught them?” asks Raffe.
“We could use people who are, shall we say, a little less civilized than the rest of us? Precautions would have to be taken, of course.” Obi sighs. It’s clear he doesn’t like the idea but seems resigned to do what needs to be done.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “What would you do with a bunch of cannibals?”
“Sic them on the angels, of course.”
“That’s crazy,” I say.
“In case you hadn’t noticed. The whole world has gone crazy. It’s time to adapt or die.”
“By throwing crazy at crazy?”
“By throwing whatever we have that might confuse or distract, or maybe even repulse them, if that’s even possible. Anything to keep their attention from the rest of us while we organize,” says Obi.
“Organize into what?” asks Raffe.
“Into an army strong enough to launch them off our world.”
All the heat drains out of my body. “You’re gathering a resistance army?” I try desperately not to look at Raffe. I’ve been casually trying to collect information on the angels just in case it might come in handy. The hope of an organized resistance, though, went up in smoke along with D.C. and New York.
And here is Raffe, in the middle of a rebel camp that is desperately trying to keep itself a secret from the angels. If the angels knew about this, they would crush it in its infancy, and who knows how long it could take for another resistance to organize.
“We prefer to think of ourselves as simply a human army, but yes, I suppose we are considered the resistance since we are the underdog by a long shot. Right now, we’re gathering forces, recruiting and organizing. But we have something big planned. Something the angels won’t soon forget.”
“You’re striking back?” The thought boggles my mind.
“We’re striking back.”
CHAPTER 17
“How much damage can you do?” asks Raffe. My stomach turns cold knowing that I’m the only human in the room who knows that Raffe is one of the enemy.
“Enough damage to make a point,” says the resistance leader. “Not to the angels. We don’t care what they think. But to the people. Let them know that we are here, that we exist, and together, we will not be pushed aside.”
“You’re attacking the angels as a recruiting campaign?”
“They think they’ve won already. More importantly, our own people feel like that too. We need to let them know the war has just begun. This is our home. Our land. Nobody gets to waltz in and take over.”
My mind swirls with conflicting emotions. Who is the enemy in this room? Whose side am I on? I stare carefully at the floor, desperately trying to avoid looking at either Raffe or Obi.
If Obi senses something, then he might start t
o suspect Raffe. If Raffe senses something then I can’t really expect him to trust me. Oh, God, if I piss off Raffe, he might renege on our deal and disappear to the aerie without me.
“My head hurts,” I whimper.
There’s a long pause where I’m convinced Obi is working things out. I’m almost positive that he’s about to shout, “My God, he’s an angel!”
But he doesn’t. Instead, he gets up and puts my bowl of stew on his chair. “We’ll talk more in the morning,” says Obi. He guides me up and over a couple of steps to a cot in the shadows I hadn’t noticed before. Raffe’s guard does the same across the room.
I lie down awkwardly on my side with my wrists tied behind my back. Obi sits on the cot and ties my ankles together. I’m tempted to make a quip about requiring dinner and a movie before getting so kinky, but I don’t. The last thing I need is to start making sex jokes while I’m being held prisoner in a camp full of armed men in a world where there are no laws.
He puts a pillow under my head. As he’s doing this, he brushes hair out of my face and sweeps it behind my ear. His touch is warm and smooth. I should be scared, but I’m not. “You’ll be all right,” he says. “The men will have strict orders to be gentlemanly toward you.”
I guess it doesn’t take a mind reader to know that I might be worried about that. “Thank you,” I say.
Obi and his man collect the bowls of stew and leave. The lock clicks behind them.
“Thank you?” asks Raffe.
“Shut up. I’m exhausted. I really need to get some sleep.”
“What you need is to decide who’s on your side and who’s not.”
“Will you tell them?” I don’t want to get specific in case someone’s listening. I hope he understands what I mean. If Raffe and I make it to the aerie, he’ll have intel on the infant resistance movement. If he tells the other angels and they kill off the movement, I’ll be the Judas of my kind.
There’s a long pause.
If he doesn’t tell, will he be the Judas of his kind?
“Why did you come here?” he asks, blatantly changing the subject. “Why didn’t you run away like we both know you should have?”
“Stupid, huh?”
“Very.”
“I just…couldn’t.”
I want to ask him why he risked his life to save mine when his people kill us every day. But I can’t. Not here, not now. Not while someone may be listening.
We lie in silence, listening to the crickets.
After a long time, as I drift away to a numb place, he whispers in the dark. “They’re all asleep except for the guards.”
I’m instantly alert. “You have a plan?”
“Sure. Don’t you? You’re the rescuer.” The moon has moved, and the light coming through the window is dimmer now. But it’s still enough for me to see the darker shadow of his form getting up from his cot. He comes over to me and starts untying me.
“How the hell did you do that?”
“When you’re storming the aerie, remember that ropes won’t hold angels.” He whispers the last word.
I’d forgotten how much stronger he is than a man.
“You mean you could have gotten out all that time? You don’t even need me. Why didn’t you do it already?”
“What, and miss the fun of rattling their tiny little brains wondering what happened?” He swiftly unties me and pulls me to my feet.
His evasive maneuver doesn’t escape me. “Ah, I get it. You can escape at night, but not during the day. You can’t outrun bullets, can you?”
Like most people, my first introduction to angels was through the looping footage of the Archangel Gabriel being shot. I can’t help but wonder if the angels would have been less hostile if we hadn’t immediately killed their leader. At least, they think he was killed. No one knows for sure because the body wasn’t recovered, or so they said. The legion of winged men floating behind him dispersed with the panicked crowd, quickly disappearing into the smoky sky. I wonder if Raffe was part of that legion.
He arches his brow at me, clearly refusing to discuss the effect of bullets on angels.
I give him a smug smile. You’re not as perfect as you look.
I walk over to the door and put my ear to it. “Is there anyone else in the building?”
“No.”
I try to turn the knob but it’s locked.
Raffe sighs. “I was hoping not to show excessive strength and raise suspicion.” He reaches for the knob, but I stop him.
“Well then, good thing I got us covered.” I pull a slim lockpick and tension wrench out of my back pocket. The soldier who searched me before tying me up did a fast job. He was looking for guns or bulky knives, not skinny little picks.
“What’s that?”
I get to work on the lock. It feels good to surprise him with a talent that angels don’t have.
Click.
“Voila.”
“Talkative, but talented. Who would have thought?”
I open my mouth to make a smartass comeback, then realize I’d only be proving his point, so I stay quiet, just to prove that I can.
We sneak out into the hallway and stop at the back door.
“Can you hear the guards?”
He listens for a moment. He points to eleven o’clock and five o’clock. We wait.
“What’s in here?” I ask, pointing at the closed doors.
“Who knows? Supplies maybe?”
I start for one of the doors, thinking of venison or even guns.
He grabs my arm and shakes his head. “Don’t get greedy. If we raid them on our way out, they’re less likely to just forget about us. We don’t want trouble if we can avoid it.”
He’s right, of course. Besides, who’d be stupid enough to store guns in the same place as their prisoners? But the thought of venison makes my mouth water. Oh, I should have bargained for that stew while I had the chance.
After a few moments, Raffe nods and we slip out into the night.
~
We make a run for it, Raffe and me. My heart flip-flops in my chest as I pump my legs as fast as they will go. The air frosts from my mouth. The smell of soil and trees beckons us toward the forest. The trees rustling in the wind masks the sound of our pounding feet.
Raffe could run much faster, but he stays close.
The moon disappears behind clouds, and the forest turns dark. I slow to a walk once we’re inside the canopy, not wanting to smash into a tree.
My breathing is so heavy, I’m afraid the guards will hear it. The adrenaline rush of a run for freedom drains, and I’m back to being scared and tired. I pause, bending over to catch my breath. Raffe puts his hand on my back, urging me to keep going with gentle pressure. He’s not even out of breath.
He points deeper into the forest. I shake my head and point to the other side of the camp. We need to go around to retrieve his wings. My pack is replaceable; the wings and sword are not. He pauses, then nods. I don’t know if he knows what I’m after, but I know that his wings are never far from his mind, the way little Paige is never far from mine.
We skirt around the camp, going as deep into the forest as we can without losing sight of the camp. This gets tricky several times since the moonlight is so dim now, and the camp itself is mostly under canopy. I have to rely more heavily on Raffe’s night vision than I like.
Even knowing he can see, I can only go so fast without walking into a branch or losing my footing. It takes a long time to navigate the forest in the dark, and even longer to find my stash.
Just when I see the tree hiding our goods, I hear the distinctive click of a gun’s safety latch behind me.
My hands are up in the air before the guy can say, “Freeze.”
CHAPTER 18
“Just for interrupting my night, you’re getting latrine duty.” Obi is clearly not an early morning guy, and he doesn’t bother to hide that he’d much rather be sleeping than dealing with us.
“What do you want with us?” I ask. “I to
ld you we didn’t kill those people.”
We’re right back where we started—Raffe and I sit tied to our chairs in what I’m starting to think of as our room.
“It’s now more about what we don’t want. We don’t want you telling others our numbers, our location, our arsenal. Now that you’ve seen our camp, we can’t let you go until we move.”
“How long will that be?”
“A while.” Obi shrugs noncommittally. “Won’t be too long.”
“We don’t have a while.”
“You’ll have as long as we say you have,” says Boden, the guard who caught us. Or at least that’s what the name on his uniform says. It could, of course, just be a uniform that he took from a dead soldier that already had that name on it. “You’ll do everything the resistance movement says. Because without it, we’d all be doomed to the hell those angelic motherfu—.”
“Enough, Jim,” says Obi. There’s enough weariness in his voice that I’m guessing that good ol’ Jim and maybe several of the other soldiers have repeated these exact same lines a million times over with the zeal of the newly converted.
“It’s true,” says Obi. “The resistance founders warned us this time would come, told us where to go to survive, galvanized us while the rest of the world was falling apart. We owe the resistance everything. It’s our greatest hope of surviving this massacre.”
“There’s more than just this camp?” I ask.
“It’s a network that’s all over the world in pockets. We’re just becoming aware of the others, trying to organize, trying to coordinate.”
“Great,” says Raffe. “Does this mean we have to stay until we forget we ever heard of this resistance movement?”
“That’s the one thing you should spread,” says Obi. “Knowing about the resistance brings hope and community. We can all use as much of that as possible.”
“Aren’t you worried that if word gets out, that the angels will just destroy it?” I ask.
“Those pigeons couldn’t take us out if they sent their entire chirping flock,” Boden scoffs. His face is red and he looks ready for a fight. “Just let ‘em try.” The white-knuckled grip on his rifle is making me nervous.
“We’ve had to detain a fair number of people here since the cannibal attacks started,” says Obi. “You’re the only ones who managed to make it out. There could be a place for the two of you here. A place with meals and friends, a life with meaning and purpose. Right now, we’re fractured. They have us eating each other, for God’s sake. We can’t make a stand if we’re bashing each other over the head and killing each other for cans of dog food.”