“What are you doing?”
“Finding out where Henry went,” she said, plugging an antenna into the computer.
“How?”
“Medical facilities keep digital records of everything these days. I just have to get access to their system.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she typed, “They haven’t updated their passkey since the last time I cracked them, but it looks like the last person I used the profile of quit so I’ll have to find a new one. Ah, here we go, someone on maternity leave who they didn’t bother to temporarily lock. Let’s see, login with administrator privileges, password reset, elevate profile, and here we go.”
Terra read for a moment, her hands began to grip her laptop harder until her knuckles turned white.
“Terra?” I said, “What’s wrong?
“Henry was transferred to Saint Mercy’s hospital a few days ago via ambulance when he reportedly slipped and fell while being visited by two people.” She said, clicking the tiny laptop shut. “No one visits him but the cast. Let’s get back to the others.”
“It’s a trap,” Daniel said when we returned. “It’s entirely too convenient that something happened to Henry around the same time you came to visit him.”
“Which is why we should all go,” Seth said.
“Seth is right, if it really is a trap we have a better chance of getting out alive if we’re together, but I have to make sure he’s okay. I have a little money so we’ll get some lunch first and then go to Saint Mercy’s.”
We stopped at a place called Surf’s Up Pizza Shack that boasted a surfboard sized pizza. Although it looked like miles and miles of pepperoni and cheese we finished it in only twenty minutes to the astonishment of everyone working there. There was a wall of fame for people who had managed to finish it and, while the employees had offered to take our picture, the whole cast declined.
“I don’t photograph well,” Terra said.
“We don’t want to steal that guy’s thunder,” Daniel added, pointing to the one picture on the wall.
“We’re fugitives on the run,” Seth winked at them.
“We’re vampires and won’t show up at all,” Rumor said with a soft smile and tilt to her head.
When they began to insist, our server even heading into the back to grab an instant camera, Terra tossed a wad of money on the table and we made ourselves scarce.
Saint Mercy’s Hospital was big. I tried counting the exact number of floors but after five stories the stacks of windows began to blend together. The receptionist at the desk was older, her brown dyed hair curled to the point of becoming one big poof. Thick-framed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose and her face was set in an uncaring near-frown.
“We’re here to visit a patient named Henry Rodriguez.”
Her face was now frowning completely as the receptionist pulled down her glasses, looking at us in a scrutinizing manner.
“He’s Jessica’s uncle,” Daniel interjected, motioning to me. “We came to drop off some pies for him and the rest of the folks at the care center but the woman there said he came here because of some kind of injury I think? We were hoping to check in and make sure he’s okay.”
Daniel rattled off a date of birth that must have been accurate because the woman’s frown turned into a smile as she quickly typed in some information on her computer. “Of course, he’s on the sixth floor. Ask the nurse at the desk and she should be able to direct you to which room. The elevator is behind you and on the left.”
“Why did you pick me as the relative?” I asked Daniel once we were far enough away.
Daniel shrugged, “You have one of those faces that looks like you could be related to anyone.”
Somehow, that didn’t feel like a compliment.
We all crammed into the elevator and began our ascent to the sixth floor.
Chapter 11
“Wait here,” Terra said, motioning to some chairs. “Daniel, you’re with me.”
I sat down. The padding was so worn it made me feel like a hard chair would somehow have more cushioning. I decided hospitals had managed to engineer the most uncomfortable chairs possible, no matter what they looked like.
I kept a close eye on Rumor as she thumbed through a two year old magazine on living with diabetes. It would be bad if she panicked here, with all of these people around.
Which is why I didn’t expect to hear the shaky inhale and seat shifting to my right.
I looked at Seth, seeing his usual smile was gone. Instead his expression was strained. His eyes were wide, the whites visible all around, and his pupils were dilated. The fake wood of the chair’s armrests were held in a death grip.
“Are you alright?” I asked. “You look a little green around the gills.”
“’M okay,” he mumbled, leaning forward like he was about to hurl. “Not fond of hospitals.”
I remembered seeing directions for a cafe back on the first floor. I briefly considered going by myself and bringing something back but I didn’t like the thought of leaving him here. I turned to Rumor, “Seth needs something to drink. Are you okay by yourself for a minute?”
She nodded, saying, “Take care of him.”
When we entered the elevator Seth pressed himself into a corner, his eyes closed and his knees bent slightly. A woman entered on the next floor, looking at him funny the entire time. If I didn’t find him somewhere to sit again he was going to drop.
“Hang in there, Seth. What’s that thing Daniel did for Rumor? Would that help?”
“It’s a coping technique,” Seth forced out through pale lips. “The five senses. Grounds her in the here and now. That doesn’t really work for me since the here and now is the exact problem.”
The elevator reached the ground floor with a lurch that tossed my own stomach around, I couldn’t imagine how Seth felt. I took his arm and led him down a hall, following signs that pointed to the cafe. He followed silently, his gaze focused on the floor.
There were only a few stragglers in the cafe trying to stretch their lunch hour to its limits. I seated Seth at a table as far away from people as I could and bought him some juice and a granola bar with the literal blood money I still had in my pocket. The cashier didn’t even bat an eye.
“Thank you,” he said.
“So Henry Rodriguez is Terra’s dad? The guy who rescued her?” I said. I needed to find a way to distract him, and I was burning with questions.
“Yeah. Her experiences in the lab were a lot different than mine, she doesn’t talk about it much, but I know it wasn’t a good place for her. Henry took her when she was little and raised her as his own. He knew everything, about angels and Grace and what Terra was. He taught her the skills she would need to survive on her own. Her computer skills, everything she learned was from him. Eventually, like all nephil, she was found by the angels.
“She told me a bit, but I thought he was dead.”
Seth shook his head. “No, they didn’t kill him, but they did something to his head. He doesn’t remember Terra, or angels, or anything really. The people at the care center think he has some form of dementia, which is about as close as it gets. Trust me, Jess, angels can do much worse things than murder your parents.”
I thought about my mom, unsure if he was right. All I wanted right now was to see her and tell her she was right about the Suits. I wanted to hold her and say I was sorry and thank her for protecting me the only way she knew how.
But I could never have that.
I could see some color returning to Daniel’s cheeks and knew it was time to go.
“Let me know when you’re ready to go back upstairs,” I said.
“I really don’t want to, but we need to.”
“Maybe I could grab Rumor and we can hang out here instead?”
He rose from his chair, much steadier than before. “No, this was okay for a minute but we have to get back to the others. I’ll be fine.”
I made him finish his juice first before I would let him leave. He po
cketed the granola bar. On the way back up Seth took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. He was steadier on his feet so I knew not to worry too much.
When we got to the seats Rumor was gone. I whipped my head around, seeing her down the opposite hall talking to two people, a man and a woman. Somehow their clothes managed to be dirtier than ours. While Rumor usually looked distant her eyes looked sad now. The woman said something to her. Rumor looked right at me before turning back to the woman and nodding.
I saw the man discreetly pull a gun and press it into Rumor’s back, slowly leading her further away from us.
“Someone’s kidnapping Rumor,” I said to Seth. “Get Terra and Daniel.”
They were trying to do things quietly, so I decided to change that. I burst into a run, shouting as loud as I possibly could. “Stop!”
The couple pushed Rumor faster, heading for the stairs. I made it to the doorway when Daniel caught up to me.
“They’re heading higher up!” I said to him.
“You can’t let them take her,” he said as we pounded up each step.
“Who are they? Suits?”
“No, I think they’re SOAR: Seekers of Angel Rumor. Rumor sorta inspired a cult,” he said.
I almost tripped on the next step. A cult? Just when I thought I’d had everything figured out the cast throws something new at me. Not to mention they’d obviously come up with the acronym before the words. Ugh.
They burst through the exit of the stairwell on the ninth floor and we weren’t far behind. The man had Rumor over one shoulder in a fireman carry and she didn’t look like she was fighting him off at all. He turned the pistol around to us and fired. There was a pop and I felt it hit my shin. The round didn’t hurt more than a small, sharp sting followed by a slow burn. I poured on the speed, ramming him in a tackle. The kidnapper, Rumor, and I all went down in a heap.
“Through the window!” I heard Terra scream behind me.
Daniel scooped up Rumor and ran to the end of the hall, slamming his body against the floor-to-ceiling window at the end and shattering the glass, his wings spreading out once he’d cleared the building. He threw Rumor into the air and she did the same. I shot through in a dive with Seth and Terra right behind me.
Except my wings didn’t open.
I tried to force them but found the new limbs too heavy to move properly. The slow burn in my leg had turned to numbness, and dizziness that I had attributed to adrenaline increased tenfold as I realized it wasn’t an ordinary bullet that had hit me. I heard the others screaming at me as I began to plummet.
I felt strangely calm knowing I would be unconscious before my body hit the concrete below.
Chapter 12
My insides were rolling and my brain was packed with fuzz.
I was dimly aware of people around me, and the metallic tang of blood fought with acidic vomit as the primary smell trapped in my nose. When I tried to move my arms I found they were bound together with a plastic zip tie, it was loose enough that I might be able to get free with some work though. The constant muffled hum of an engine, coupled with the jostling of movement, told me we were in a vehicle on the road.
My movement caused a stir in the cabin of the vehicle, and in the corner of my eye I saw Rumor kneel down. Where are we going? I wanted to ask, but my tongue felt thick and my mouth only translated my words into mumbles.
Rumor ran a hand through my hair, saying, “Shhhhh, they won’t hurt us.”
I had a hard time believing her considering she was absolutely saturated, head to toe, in blood.
The longer I was awake the sharper everything became. The same man and woman were with us, sitting opposite Rumor in a bench setup that sat against the side walls of the vehicle, which looked to be a van. I, meanwhile, lay on the flat itchy carpeting. All of this sounded eerily familiar to how the cast described finding Rumor in the first place.
The man looked over to Rumor, saying, “Uhm, may I?” When she nodded he knelt down and pressed two clammy fingers against my neck, checking my pulse. I would have shuddered at his touch if I’d had the motor skills for it. He was short, thin man with round glasses and a weirdly-shaped head like a light bulb, big on the top with a pointy chin. In any other situation he would have looked more like a dentist than a cultist. Bulb Head seemed satisfied with the beat of my heart and withdrew, sitting back down and idly wringing his hands.
I don’t know how long I had been out but it took us an hour of drive time to get there, the road trip was filled with gradual turns and ear-popping elevation changes. The asphalt eventually turned into louder, crunchier gravel. When it turned into a body-slamming dirt road I was helped into a sitting position. It was then I saw I must have puked at some point because it had soaked into my shirt and the carpet where my left shoulder had been. Gross.
The back of the van opened and we were taken outside. I was expecting a creepy, rusty old warehouse but the cultist compound was a series of multiple small buildings surrounded by tall pines. Children ran barefoot in the sunshine and chickens wandered far and wide, their feet having stamped the ground down into hard-panned dirt. There was a constant buzz of activity, laughter, talking, and running water. Somewhere nearby I could hear someone strumming a guitar.
I would have considered it serene if I weren’t their prisoner.
Only a few people saw us at first but word carried fast, and soon we were surrounded. They parted for us as we made our way across. I had expected everyone to be wearing the same outfit, but nothing was quite the same as they were dressed in natural, loose-fitting outfits in crazy riots of colorful patterns and accessorized with bits of beads, feathers, bone, lacy scarves, flower crowns, and long strings of fiber. Very hippy chic.
The cultists’ hands reached out as we walked by, their fingers brushing against Rumor. Hair, clothing, wings, they touched anything they could. Whispers of awe followed her like she was a celebrity.
I meanwhile, was met with ugly stares of revulsion. The hands that touched Rumor immediately withdrew when I passed by.
Less than five minutes here and I’d already become a pariah.
We were led to a structure that looked like it had been cobbled together over the course of thirty years from the harvested remains of other buildings. Half a dozen young women ooh and awed when we entered. They looked a little more like how I had pictured cultists. Four of them wore honest-to-goodness white robes with feathery wings painted on the backs. The other two wore plain gray robes. They began murmuring happily to Rumor, unperturbed by the fact that she looked like a walking murder scene.
“Hey!” I shouted as the white robes began to lead her away.
I was immediately restrained by the woman from the van.
“Silence!” one of the gray robes hissed. It was hard to take her seriously with such a high-pitched voice, seriously it belonged to a cartoon mouse. “She will be cleaned up and brought to us again after dinner. We will do the same for you.”
“Aw,” I said in a mockingly sweet tone. “What did you do to be punished by putting up with me?”
The second gray robe, a girl only a few years younger than me, with red hair and freckles, said, “We’re only second-tier ladies-in-waiting so we were assigned to you.”
“Boy do I feel special,” I muttered.
The woman gave me a harder push than necessary toward the girls. “Don’t talk to her,” she said. “She may resemble Rumor, but she is dangerous. We’re keeping her confined until further notice.”
I was taken to a bathroom that looked like it belonged in a cheap motel that hadn’t been cleaned in a year. The plastic keeping my hands together was snipped with a pair of small scissors and the girls left without another word. As soon as I was alone I tried the door, locked of course. There was no way I could squeeze myself through the tiny window, even without my wings.
The shower was scummy, and stepping into it made me feel like I was going to end up with some new, undiscovered species of fungus growing on my feet, but I smelle
d like campfire smoke and was generally grimy from the last few days being on the run, not to mention the vomit. As I looked at myself in the cracked mirror I saw that, like Rumor, I was covered in a lot of blood.
They had a single new bar of soap in the shower waiting for me that smelled like lavender. I tried to hate it. I showered, my thoughts spinning. What had happened after I blacked out? Neither Rumor nor I looked hurt, yet we both looked like victims in a slasher film.
When I was done I saw someone had taken my clothes and replaced them with, ugh, a cultist robe, this one solid black. The robe was a little short, reaching only halfway down my shins, but it was my only option right now unless I wanted a bunch of crazy people to see me in my birthday suit. When I put the robe on I saw that slits hadn’t been simply cut in the back to expose my wings, it had been intentionally sewn and designed to accommodate them. I thought about keeping my wings tucked in and hidden instead, but if an opportunity to escape presented itself I didn’t want to ruin it because I was tangled up in fabric. I found the holes in the back were a little too small when I tried the robe on though. I had to tear them open more, ruining the neat little stylized stitching, and it made me wonder if this outfit had originally been designed for Rumor.
I knocked on the door when I was finished and, sure enough, both of the gray robes had been standing vigil, Squeaky and Red. The one who had yelled at me, Squeaky, had her hands on a tranquilizer gun like the one Bulb Head possessed. Squeaky stared at my wings, blinking rapidly, before seeming to remember herself. She pressed the barrel of the gun to my back and led me out.
“That stuff doesn’t work right away,” I said. “Not like in the movies. I was able to knock Bulb Head’s block off and jump out of a window before it took me out.”
“Bulb Head?” the freckled girl, Red, said.
“Yeah, the guy who brought us here. His head looks like a light bulb. I bet he keeps the pull chain hidden up his nose, probably got tired of people clicking it on and off all the time.”
Jessica Swift These Wings Were Made to Fly Page 5