Conspiracy of Angels

by Laurence MacNaughton

  Mitch clapped him on the shoulder. “Roll down the tailgate window, so we can get our stuff. There’s probably nothing to find here anyway. Let’s just get to the cabin, look around, and get out.”

  Geneva started to follow him back to the truck when something poked the sole of her boot. She looked down. Sitting in the dead grass was the rusted padlock, the loop of metal bent by Michael’s bullet.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The night she met Michael, the night Jocelyn died, it all started with a cigarette. It was wedged in the wet black rocks along the side of the stream, the one Geneva knew so well, that followed the secret path between the barn and the cabin.

  Jocelyn picked up the cigarette butt and held it out to Geneva. “Check it out. What I wouldn’t give for one of these.”

  Geneva took it. The paper was still clean and new. She sniffed it and made a face. “This is still fresh.”

  “No kidding?” Jocelyn’s eyes got wide. “You think somebody was out here?”

  Geneva threw the butt back into the rocks and looked around at the trees, the open meadow downstream. A squirrelly feeling of fear stirred up inside her. “They might still be here.”

  “Better not be looking for me. Man. I am not going back to any foster home.”

  “I don’t think anybody’s looking for you.” Geneva came around to face her. “But what if someone finds the cabin?”

  Jocelyn made a pssh sound. “Big deal. Your parents are way weird. Okay? And they keep trying to make you just as weird. Don’t take this the wrong way, but there is a whole world out there, off of this mountain. Like it or not, sooner or later, you’re going to have to get out in it. You can’t live in friggin’ mountain goat territory all your life, hiding from the rest of the human race.”

  “I like it here,” Geneva said. “It’s safe.”

  “Yeah. Whatever. Your parents made you think that the rest of the world is too dangerous to live in. Well, guess what? People live in it every day. Like me. It’s not perfect out there, no, but it can be nice.”

  Geneva tried not to look hurt. “If you don’t like it here, you can always leave.”

  “Yeah, I will. But you know what? You’re coming with.”

  “What?”

  “Seriously. Just for a while. I mean, you’re not going to sit up here picking yucca fruits and catching rabbits the rest of your life, are you? Get real. There are cities out there. Nightclubs. Shoe stores. Swimming pools. You know?” She put her hands on Geneva’s shoulders. “And believe it or not, there are places in this world where you can eat dinner without having to kill it and skin it first.” She smiled.

  Slowly, Geneva found herself smiling back. “My dad would kill me if I told him I wanted to go.”

  “No, he’d kill me.”

  Geneva laughed and headed toward home. “Come on. It’ll get dark soon.”

  “Seriously, the first thing we’re going to do when we get to town is get you a latte.”

  “What’s a latte?”

  Jocelyn stopped in her tracks. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, seriously, what’s—” A thin noise carried on the wind from far ahead, and it took Geneva a moment to realize what it was. Her mother’s voice. Screaming.

  She traded looks with Jocelyn, and saw the fear in her eyes as Jocelyn heard it, too.

  Geneva turned and sprinted down the trail toward the house, through tan grass that reached over her head. The dry stalks whipped past her ears, brushed her cheeks. “Mom!” she yelled, “Mom! Where are you?”

  As suddenly as it started, the screaming stopped.

  Geneva ran a few more steps and then froze, breathing hard. She listened.

  The wind made the tall grass whisper. The fading light leached out the color, turned the stalks bone gray. A tight, hard knot formed inside her.

  She wanted to cry. Wanted to call out to Mom and Dad. Find out what was happening. Make sure they were all right.

  But they weren’t. She knew that with a certainty she couldn’t explain. Something was horribly wrong with the silence of the mountainside. No birds, no insects. Every instinct inside her screamed to stay quiet, to hide.

  Slowly, she reached behind her back and drew her knife from the sheath on her belt. It was a buck knife, her dad’s old one, and she used it for everything from cutting snare lines to striking sparks for the dinner fire. She never thought she’d need it as a weapon.

  Something was out there in the grass between her and the cabin. She could sense it, a certain wrongness in the air. It wasn’t a person, wasn’t an animal. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong here.

  Footsteps pounded down the trail behind her, coming closer. Geneva turned, crouched, brought up the knife.

  Jocelyn charged into view, hair flying, and almost crashed into her. She skidded to a halt, face flushed. “Hey, what’s—”

  Geneva held a finger to her lips.

  Jocelyn swallowed. She stared at the knife.

  Geneva motioned her closer. When she leaned close enough, Geneva breathed in her ear, “Something is out there. Feel it?”

  Jocelyn, eyes wide, looked all around. Slowly, she nodded.

  “Stay close,” Geneva breathed. “Quietly.”

  They made it only a few steps before something rushed at them through the dry grass. Geneva sensed it coming, something heavy and incredibly fast. She didn’t have time to do more than pull Jocelyn down toward the ground.

  It hit them in a blur of movement. Geneva felt something hard and sharp slam into her chest, throwing her back. She rolled, tasting dirt. When she came to a stop, she realized her hands were empty. She’d lost the knife.

  A few yards away, Jocelyn started to get to her feet. The thing stood over her, a waver of movement, like heat waves shaped into a hulking form with arms too long and spines splayed out from its back, like the bones of wings.

  It lashed out at Jocelyn, a ripple of movement and a sickening thud. Jocelyn’s body flew though the air and crashed into the grass, flattening it.

  The thing looked at Geneva for a second, rippling and shifting in place. That’s when she knew, without a doubt, her parents were dead.

  Then the thing was gone, and somewhere nearby, a man shouted in wordless pain. White flashes lit the mountainside, like lightning, with a sizzling sound that made the hair on the back of Geneva’s neck stand up.

  A white beam lanced up into the twilight sky, between the first stars of night, and someone else screamed, farther away. Voices shouted, but she couldn’t make out the words.

  There were men hidden all around, in the grass and scrub that covered the mountainside. She didn’t know how many. But that thing, whatever it was, it was killing them. One after another. And whatever strange weapons they had weren’t stopping it.

  She crawled over to Jocelyn, shook her. “Jocelyn? Jocelyn?”

  Jocelyn opened her eyes, but they didn’t focus, as if she wasn’t really awake.

  Geneva grabbed her arm and pulled her up into a sitting position. “Can you hear me? Talk to me!”

  Jocelyn’s head lolled back.

  Geneva pulled. “Come on, get up. You have to. There’s some kind of fight. We have to get out of here.”

  Jocelyn whispered something.

  Geneva bent her head down closer, put her ear to Jocelyn’s lips. “What?”

  “… after me?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know!”

  Another blast echoed across the mountainside. A man’s voice yelled, “Find the girl!”

  Geneva’s breath caught in her throat.

  She got Jocelyn’s arm over her shoulder, got her to her feet. Jocelyn was able to walk, but just barely. They made it to the edge of the grass, where the cabin sat, shaded by trees now black with twilight. No sign of anyone. No sound now, except for her and Jocelyn’s breathing.

  Which meant that thing was still out there, somewhere, waiting for them. But they didn’t have any choice. There was nowhere else to hide.

  Up the front steps, one at
a time, Jocelyn staggering now. In through the front door. The big stone fireplace was set with logs, but not lit. Lumps of bread dough rose on the table, beneath a damp checkered cloth, surrounded by drifts of flour. Everything looked so normal, so ordinary, as if this was just a bad dream.

  They staggered to the handwoven rug in the middle of the cabin, and Geneva kicked it back to reveal the trapdoor beneath. Its hinges squeaked when she pulled it open. She half carried, half dropped Jocelyn down into the waist-deep space. She let go of Jocelyn’s hand and swung the door up and over, then pulled the rug and worked it until it made a tent over the barely open door. As softly as she could, she lowered the trapdoor the rest of the way closed, leaving them hidden in the darkness that smelled like onions and potatoes.

  She held onto Jocelyn, trying to keep her warm. Trying to stay silent.

  Footsteps—human footsteps—crept up the front steps and into the cabin, making the floorboards creak. Flashlights swept through the darkening room, sending little streaks of light combing across her and Jocelyn.

  The footsteps clumped across the room, crept up the ladder to her parents’ bed. Small things crashed and broke. Firewood, stacked by the fireplace, thumped across the floor.

  The footsteps crisscrossed over their heads. Breaking. Shoving. Searching.

  “Where’s the girl’s body?” A young man’s voice. Impatient.

  “I don’t think she’s dead.” An old, gravelly voice. “Not yet. Could be hiding.”

  Geneva held her breath. Her throat went tight, as if a giant hand was squeezing it.

  The old man said, “If she was dead, the thing would have left by now.”

  “Why would it care about the girl? It was her father that headed the project.”

  Geneva looked down at Jocelyn’s unconscious face, lit by streaks of light from above. Brushed the dirt from her cheek and thought, Who’s your father? I thought you said he was in prison.

  “So? If the girl’s still alive, she’s gotta know something.”

  “She’s just a kid.”

  “But she’s gotta know something.”

  Then neither of them said anything else. The silence stretched out. Geneva watched the cracks of light for any clue about what was happening.

  The footsteps came across the floor, quick. The rug shushed back, and the cracks of light got brighter. The iron ring of the trapdoor rattled. The door swung up, letting in the blinding light of flashlights.

  “Bingo,” someone said.

  Geneva wanted to scream. Wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. She held up a hand to ward off the light, blinked up at a mustached man with a deep-seamed face and a young man with hard blue eyes, set close together. Both wore dark ski jackets. Both carried strange black pistols.

  The old one frowned. “Get her out of there.”

  “Which one?”

  The window glass shattered behind them, and little puffs of fabric burst outward from the young man’s jacket. He crumpled to the floor.

  The old man turned and ran for the door. A second later, his body thudded to the floor. The flashlight rolled to a stop, pointing somewhere else, so all Geneva could see through the trapdoor was a square of wood ceiling, lit by a pale glow.

  Everything went silent.

  A tiny squeak came from the front door. Someone crept through the cabin, nearly silent.

  The shape of a young man drifted up into her view. He pulled a strange pair of goggles up onto his forehead. His eyes glittered in the near dark. He held one black-gloved finger to his lips.

  “You’ve got a lot of enemies,” he said. His voice was soft. “There are more of these people outside, looking for you. And then there’s the Archangel. Pretty much everybody on the whole mountain wants a piece of you. Stick with me, and you’ll be okay. Understand? But we have to move fast.”

  Geneva tried to speak, and at first her voice wouldn’t cooperate. When it did, it came out a squeak. “What about my parents?”

  He got down on his knees and reached out to her. “Come on. Every second you stay here, the harder it’ll be for us to get out.”

  She looked at his outstretched hand. Looked up into his face.

  “Come on,” he said again. “It’s all right. I’ll take you somewhere safe, I promise. My name is Michael.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Even Michael’s name had been a lie. That was the part, oddly enough, that bothered her the most.

  “Geneva?” Mitch’s voice.

  They stood in front of the cabin. The moon had risen, shining pure silver light down on the familiar shape of the cabin, the sagging roof and hollow windows, bowed front steps. The rope swing still hung from the tree, motionless.

  “Geneva? Can you hear me?”

  A cold breeze picked up, biting her cheeks, making the bare branches clack against the walls of the cabin. This was the scene she saw in her dreams every night, this place. Home. Empty and dead, like this. It didn’t feel real.

  “Girl’s gone,” Lanny said. “Catatonic. I told you. She grew up in a log cabin, saw her parents get killed, she ain’t gonna be in the mood for conversation. You want my advice? We gotta get her back to civilization, for real. Get ourselves off this cold-ass mountain, get some coffee, reassess the situation.”

  “Just give her a minute.”

  “You still got that laser gun, dog? We got to hole up, wait for that thing to come to us.”

  The stars blazed down from overhead, brighter than she’d seen since she left. She picked out the constellations, the way her mother had shown her. Ursa Major. Orion. Draco.

  “We can’t go yet,” Mitch said.

  “Why not?”

  “Jocelyn. She died here.”

  “Look …”

  “It was the Archangel,” Geneva said. “It attacked us here. But Jocelyn died at the hospital.” The words hung in the air, and she suddenly wished she hadn’t said them. But there was no turning back now. She had to tell Mitch all of it. “I got her and Michael into Brutus. Drove down the mountain into town. To the hospital. She died there, in the emergency room. I don’t remember much. Just cops. This one big black guy, asking questions. Michael told him she got attacked by a mountain lion. Said that I needed to go to the bathroom. Instead, he walked me outside to Brutus. We got in and drove off.” She swallowed. “That was it. Never came back.”

  When she saw the haunted look on Mitch’s face, the way he was focused on every word she said, it made her want to cry. She felt like she was hurting him all over again, bringing back all the grief she knew he had buried inside. It made her want to run to him and hug him, tell him it was okay.

  But it wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Mitch. I wish it had been me.”

  He shook his head and turned away, not saying anything.

  Lanny came up next to her, shivering. “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why this Archangel come after Jocelyn?” Lanny said. “She didn’t know nothing about it.”

  Geneva shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s my point,” Lanny said. “You don’t know, then what the hell we doing here? How we supposed to know what to look for?”

  “I don’t know, okay?” Geneva said, suddenly angry. “Back off.”

  Mitch straightened up. His breath puffed in the air, carried away by the wind. He clicked on his flashlight. “Let’s go inside.”

  Geneva followed him to the bottom of the front steps. He stopped and shined his flashlight up at the cabin.

  The front door was open. A rusty nail stuck up at an angle from the wood, where her mom used to hang flower wreaths. It was bare now, sending out a long finger of shadow from the pale spot of the flashlight beam.

  The light moved down the cracked wood to the floor, where pine needles and bits of branches had gathered in the doorway. It flicked up to the windows, showing the dirt on the glass, the cobwebs inside.

  “Man,” Lanny breathed, “this ain’t good.”

  “This
is where I used to live. It’s not that bad.” Geneva put one foot on the bottom step. It felt weaker, somehow, beneath her weight. Fragile. As if the life had been sucked out of it, leaving just a hollow shell.

  She crept up the last three steps. When she got to the top, she brought up her own flashlight. The beam of light cut through the darkness inside, falling on the overturned table. The mica-flecked stones of the fireplace sparkled in the corner.

  Her chest went tight. She backed down a step. “I can’t do this.”

  Mitch put a hand on her shoulder. She could feel the strength in his grip. “If you don’t go in now, you never will.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him.

  He nodded, once, and that was it.

  She hefted her flashlight. The table was still in there, on its side, legs sticking out straight at her. A gust of wind picked up, carrying the earthy scent of the stream. A branch scraped against the cabin wall.

  She reached inside her jacket and pulled out the pulser. It charged up with the old familiar whine, making her feel just a little safer. The sights lit up green.

  Mitch shrugged off his backpack and got out the long silver Cerenkov. It hummed, a deep high-voltage buzz. A blue glow seeped from the muzzle.

  “What about me, man?” Lanny climbed up the steps after them. He held up the AK-47. “Don’t I get something runs on batteries, too?”

  Mitch motioned him back. “Do me a favor, okay? Don’t try to shoot anything.”

  “Then Mother Nature best keep her distance. Any grizzly bear tries to take a bite out of me, I’m goin’ all Apocalypse Now on his ass.”

  Geneva edged the door open and peered inside. Nothing looked the way she remembered it. Broken plates and fireplace logs littered the floor. Scraps of clothes were bunched up in the corners, hidden behind curtains of spiderwebs and dust. Dry leaves had blown in everywhere, and a half-circle of frozen slush sat under a broken windowpane.

  The trapdoor in the center of the floor was closed. The ladder that had once gone up to her parents’ bed lay across it.

  Geneva’s boots sounded hollow on the floor. It was a strange sound. She’d never had boots when she was a kid, only moccasins. Boots were something she’d picked up in the outside world, under Michael’s wing. Boots, leather jacket, and makeup. God, how she’d changed.