by Lola StVil
“Worst. Angels. Ever!”
“Yeah!” Bex shouts to the heavens above. We just lie on the snowy ground and laugh like crazy lunatics.
Soon, night falls and we fly to a different mountain a few miles away. We land on the peak of frozen ground overlooking a small town called Tula. It’s a town overflowing with angels. Above us billions of stars spread themselves out on the night-colored canvas.
“Are you sure you don’t want to head back? Aren’t you cold?” he asks.
“Yes, I am, but I came prepared,” I reply as I take out a blanket from my backpack. I also pull out a small orb the size of a tennis ball. I smash it on the ground, and a contained fire is ignited in midair. I spread the blanket on the ground, and we sit a few feet away from the brilliant orange and blue flames.
“Wow, anything else in there?” he asks as he sits beside me.
“Just this…” I reply as I take out two bottles of Coy and hand one to him.
“I’m truly impressed.”
“Thank you,” I reply as we snuggle close and look into the fire hovering a few inches off the ground.
“I can’t believe we just spent hours playing a game, my favorite game. And I can’t believe you remembered how much I loved it,” he says.
“It’s hard to forget. When it was game day, you’d push past us and run into the city first.”
“Yeah, that’s why I kept dying the first few times. You know who took me aside and gave me advice?”
“Who?” I ask.
“Silver.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, we were still friends back then. He took me aside and said, ‘Don’t be a dick. Slow down. Think. Then react.’”
“Sounds like him.”
“He was right. I slowed down and took the city. I’m sorry he saw us together on the beach,” he admits.
“You are?”
“Yeah. Look, Silver and I don’t agree on much, but I didn’t want him to see that. It had to suck to watch that on screen. I mean, if Key were alive, I’d hate to see her with another guy. And if she was having sex with him…I’d lose it. It’s crazy, but once you’ve been with someone…I’m just sorry he witnessed that.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Did you talk to him about it?” he asks.
“He wasn’t in a ‘sharing’ mood.”
“I get that. For the record, that night on the beach was the second greatest night of my life.”
“Second? I’m offended! What was the first?” I push.
“Right now, with you,” he replies, kissing me tenderly. I place my head on his chest. And for a while we fall silent.
“Do you ever think about giving it up?” he asks.
“Being a leader?”
“Not just that but all of it. Walking away from the team and just going somewhere to do something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. We could become YouTube bloggers or buy a Starbucks or join a traveling circus,” he replies.
“You hate YouTube. I don’t drink coffee anymore. And we have no talent. So I think I’m screwed,” I tease.
“We’d find something, some other life that we could live. Doesn’t even matter what.”
“I got it! You and I could open a lemonade stand. We’d buy a mansion by the beach and retire there.”
“Wow, those better be some amazing lemons.”
“They are. That’s why they cost a hundred bucks a cup.”
“Nice! We should have that house within a year or so,” Bex concludes.
“Exactly.”
“Is it enough money to raise the kid?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t in my right mind that night. It wasn’t until later I remembered about the Tam. I’m sorry. I’ve never done anything without one before and—”
“It wasn’t just you. It was my fault too. I should have remembered. But what’s done is done,” I reply.
“Unless…”
“Don’t worry, there won’t be a bird coming for me.”
“And if there is a bird, how would you feel about that?”
“Shock. And more shock. You?” I reply.
“Sad.”
“Why?”
“Because we’d be giving this kid a kingdom. And that may turn out to be more of a curse than a gift.”
“The one thing I wouldn’t worry about is you; you’d be a great dad.”
“Well, all I would have to do is avoid what my dad couldn’t: death.”
“You miss him?” I ask.
“Every day.”
“I know what you mean. I say good night to Sam in my head every night.”
“I’ll tell you what, as soon as this whole mess is done, you and I will go look for the perfect place to start a lemonade stand.”
“Deal,” I reply as I lean in and kiss him. When we pull apart, he looks deeply into my eyes.
“Thank you for today. It meant a lot to me,” he says as he brushes the hair away from my face.
“Well, your surprise is not over yet. What time is it?” I ask.
“9:58,” he says.
“Great. Look over there at the city below,” I reply.
“At Tula? Why?”
“I put an ad out on Facebook. I said that any angel who lives in the area and wants their Kon to know that they support and believe in you, they are to turn a blue light on in the house. They are supposed to do it at 10 p.m. exactly.”
“Pry, you didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to. You are a great leader. You have managed to rule with a firm hand but keep your humanity. It’s hard not to turn to stone and become some uncaring asshole. Yet you manage to do it. You’re their leader for a reason. And they appreciate you.”
“It’s two minutes after ten, Pry,” he says gently.
“When have you ever known an angel to be on time?” I tease.
I smile brightly, but inside, I’m a little afraid. I hope this wasn’t a mistake. If no one turns a blue light on, it will crush Bex. He acts all strong and everything, but at the end of the day, even leaders need reassurance. I look at my cell; it’s 10:07.
C’mon, c’mon…
“Pry, it’s okay. Let’s just go,” he says.
“Wait! Look!” I reply, pointing to a blue light beaming from the town below. A few seconds later, another blue light comes on. Soon the town is full of blue lights. Bex watches in amazement as his Paras bathe the town in blue lights. Finally Bex gets to see what I see when I look at him: a courageous leader and a righteous angel whose powers are only surpassed by his heart.
When Bex drops me off at home, he’s almost a completely different angel. He’s happy and lighthearted for the first time in months. My joy is short-lived as I open the door and find Randy waiting for me, looking cross.
“Hey, what’s up?” I ask.
“I overheard you talking to East earlier, and I wanted to ask you something.”
“How could I be that stupid?” I reply.
“Well, sleeping with Bex and not using a Tam wasn’t your smartest decision…”
“It wasn’t a decision. It was an oversight. Otherwise known as a huge mistake.”
“That’s not what I wanted to ask you,” he says.
“Oh, okay. What is it, then?”
“How come you went to him and not to me? I thought we were good?”
“Randy, we are.”
“Then why didn’t you come to me?”
“I was going to, but I bumped into—”
“Pry, are we still best friends?”
“Yes, we are. That won’t change. Ever.”
“Then can we go back to you confiding in me?”
“Yes! I want to. I promise, next time—” Before I can finish, Randy’s cell rings.
“Hello…Yeah…What?…Um, yeah, yeah. Okay,” he says, and hangs up the phone.
He looks back at me with his mouth open and his eyes wide in shock.
“Randy, are
you okay? Who was that?” I push.
“My dad. Someone is at the house, waiting to see me.”
“Who?”
“My mom.”
Chapter Ten:
Fame
Randy’s mom has been gone for over seven years. She has never visited or called in all the time that I have known him. The last he heard, she was off singing in various nightclubs. She was determined to become a famous singer, and motherhood was in the way of that, so she left.
This is a moment Randy has been waiting years for, yet his eyes are clouded over in doubt and pain. He stares at his phone as if it’s the first time he’s seeing it. I place my hand on his shoulder and call his name, but he seems very far away. Swoop walks him over to the nearest chair.
“Hey, talk to me,” I plead as I sit next to him.
“I…I don’t know what to…”
“You can take your time, Randy. You don’t have to go see her right this minute,” East replies.
“See her? I’m not seeing her.”
“The truth is we will need to vet her and make sure she’s not the butterfly, but that should only take an hour or two. Then you can go and talk to her,” I offer.
“I don’t have anything to say to her.”
“You’ve been wanting to see her all this time, and now she’s here. Are you sure you want to waste this opportunity?” Swoop asks.
Randy starts laughing. We exchange worried glances. Randy shakes his head, still very amused.
“Swoop, walking into my house to find the woman that abandoned me isn’t an opportunity. It’s a joke, a very bad, very cruel joke that Omnis is playing on me.”
“I’m sure you have questions; she may be able to answer them,” I suggest.
“Unless she was locked up in the Center, there is nothing to justify leaving your only child. My mother is a selfish, self-serving flake. I would rather die than give her a chance.”
“I know what it’s like to have issues with a parent. But the fact is you don’t know what her side of the story is,” Aaden reminds him.
“I don’t care about her side of the story.”
“Randy, ever since I’ve met you, you’ve wanted to see her, to talk to her. I know you’re angry. I would be too. But maybe you should look past that anger and find out what she wants,” I reply.
“I can’t imagine not caring about your own child. I’m sure your mom loves you. Give her a chance to explain,” Diana says.
“Do you know the last thing she said to me before she walked out of my life forever? She said, ‘I’ll be right back.’ Who says that knowing they will never ever return?”
“Randy—”
“I believed her when she said it because, well, what kid wouldn’t? Even weeks later, I looked for her. Every time I heard keys in the door. Every time someone called my name. Or when I saw someone her height and hair color approaching me. I searched for her in places I knew she couldn’t be. I searched for years. Years,” he says as tears fill his eyes. He looks off into the distance; when he speaks again, his voice is small and barely gets past his lips.
“Pryor, when you and I became best friends, you were one of my first thoughts in the morning. When I first met Key, she was my only thought. And a day has never gone by when I didn’t contact my dad or at least think of him. That’s what you do with people you love. You find a way to check on them. The same way that Swoop finds a way to look in on RJ no matter what’s happening with the team.
“I could forgive her for leaving, but I can’t forgive her never once calling or even sending me a text. How do you do that? How do you give birth to someone and not give a damn if they’re hungry or cold or breathing for that matter? What did I do that was so bad that she left? What did I do to make her go? Why…why didn’t she love me?”
“Oh, Randy, it’s okay. I promise it’s going to be okay,” I say as I embrace him tightly.
“What can we do? How can we help?” East asks.
Randy pulls away, wipes his eyes, and looks back at us with newfound resolve. “Pry, you can call my dad and tell him I won’t be seeing her. She lost the right to summon me.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Yeah, I am. Any woman who could walk away from her child isn’t a woman I want to meet.”
“What exactly should I say to your dad?” I ask as he hands me the phone.
“Tell him the truth: Randy’s not coming home to meet his mother because Randy doesn’t have one.”
I make the call and find a nicer way to tell Randy’s dad that he won’t see his mom. It’s awkward as hell, but I do it. I enter Randy’s room to update him, but he’s too deep into his phone to hear me. Or so he’d like me to believe. I’ve seen him like this before; he will retreat into the make-believe land of orcs and dragons to escape the real world. So I kiss his forehead and tell him that I will be downstairs when he’s ready to talk.
“Am I the only one thinking it may be a good thing that he doesn’t want to see his mom?” East asks.
“You’re afraid that she might be the butterfly?” Swoop asks.
“Am I alone in this?” East replies.
“No, I was thinking the same thing too,” I confess.
“If she is the butterfly that we’re supposed to keep Randy away from, then mission complete,” Diana says.
“It’s not that simple. We need to know for sure if his mom has any tattoos or markings on her that are shaped like a butterfly,” I reply.
“How would we go about finding that out? I mean, it’s not like she’s gonna strip naked for us,” Swoop says.
“No, but there are a few mixtures that can help us determine if her body has any markings at all,” Diana offers.
“Okay, go see what you can find,” I instruct.
“I will, but first I have an errand to run—personal. But as soon as I’m done, I’ll be all over helping Randy, promise,” she says as she runs out the door.
“What is it?” Aaden asks, reading the concern on my face as I watch Diana exit.
“I know she’s a part of the team now; I just don’t know if it’s good for her to be keeping secrets from us,” I admit.
“Are you saying we don’t have secrets from each other?” Swoop asks.
“I’m saying no one here has a history of killing angels left and right,” I remind her.
“So you think she’s planning to hurt someone?” East asks.
“I…I heard something or rather overheard something…she says that everything is okay and that I shouldn’t worry, but I can’t help but remember what she’s done in the past.”
“It would help if you tried,” Aaden mumbles.
“What do you mean by that?” I ask.
“Look, we all do things that we’re sorry about. Things that we wish we could take back but can’t. You can’t keep condemning someone because of their past. If you are taking Diana in as one of us, then treat her like that. And stop lording her past over her.”
“That’s not what I’m doing!”
“The hell it isn’t. Someone makes one mistake, they hurt you one time and you are forever closed off to them!”
“One time? Seriously? Is that the way you remember it?”
“What I remember is me telling you that I was wrong and that I made a mistake. And you standing there saying you forgive me but continuing to punish the hell out of me.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I snap.
“What the hell do you call being with the Kon?”
“Me being with Bex has nothing to do with you.”
“Really? I hurt you and you get together with the guy who signed off on me being tortured. The same guy whose brother helped kill my child! The guy whose family also helped kill my mom. But it has nothing to do with me?”
“That’s not fair! Bex isn’t responsible for any of that.”
“That’s the great thing about being the king—you can always find someone to defend you, even when your actions are reprehensible.”
“Yo
u’re just putting up a smoke screen; I know exactly what this is about. You’re just pissed off that I had sex with Bex.”
“I don’t give a damn who you fuck, but yeah, I am pissed that you were with Bex because you were making love to him. And I don’t know how you can make love to one guy while you’re still in love with another.”
“Well, let me help you understand: I am not in love with you. So making love to Bex was no problem at all. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” he says with white-hot anger as he storms out of the house.
It’s a few hours later, and Aaden hasn’t returned. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was on the other side of the world by now. To make matters worse, the image of Bex and me has gone viral. The clip of us on the beach has over two million hits. It’s playing on a loop on every social media outlet. There is an audio of us having sex, and it’s been turned into a ringtone available for purchase on iTunes.
I would go to Randy to talk, but he’s got a lot on his mind with his mother’s return. Uncle Rage says he’s checking out a lead, but I suspect a large part of him is avoiding the house because Winter is here. She stays in her room and rarely comes out. Swoop is checking the monitor every few minutes to make sure RJ is okay. The only one who is having a pretty good day is East. Or so I thought as I watched them kissing from the second-floor landing. But suddenly East pulls back and breaks away from her hold.
“Kissing usually works when both parties join in,” Melody teases.
“Sorry, have a lot on my mind,” East replies.
“Given the state of things, I can see why. Still no way to take out Pry’s brother?” she asks.
“We don’t really call him that,” he informs her.
“But that’s what he is, right?”
“Yes, but only by blood. Malakaro is a sick bastard who hurts people every chance he gets. I understand why Pry would not want people to consider him part of her family,” East says.
“It’s ironic, but isn’t that how this whole thing got started?” she asks.
“What are you talking about?” East replies.
“If Marcus had just stepped up and claimed his son, maybe you and the team would be sitting on a beach right now, sipping umbrella drinks. Or at least Joy-flavored Coy.”