Authors: SM Reine
“You can do this, dude,” Disturbed muttered to himself. “It’s not that hard. Just some guy. Come on, let’s do this.” He shook his shoulders out. The leather strap of the gun creaked. “Okay. You can do this.”
Anthony clenched his hands together behind his head.
Come on, Elise…
A nearby bush rustled.
He only had time to catch a flash of Elise’s thick braid and her pale skin before she struck Disturbed in the side.
The submachine gun fired. They both hit the ground. Anthony flung himself behind the nearest rock.
There was the meaty sound of fist meeting flesh, and Disturbed grunted. Something big scraped against the ground.
The submachine gun slid to a stop inches from Anthony’s rock.
All his fear fled in a wash of clarity. He grabbed the gun, got to his knees, and spun to face the fight.
But it was already over. Elise crouched over Disturbed’s body, one knee on his throat and the other pinning his arm to the ground. He flailed weakly. She shifted, and he went slack.
Disturbed didn’t move when she stood.
Anthony joined her, holding the submachine gun awkwardly at his side. “Did you kill him?’
Elise wiped sweat off her upper lip with the back of her wrist. “No. And he’s not going to be out for long. Give me your belt.” Anthony hurried to strip it off, and she used the strap to bind the guard’s wrists and ankles.
The semi’s headlights stopped beside the loading bay, and the men began to move.
“Oh man…”
“They can’t leave,” Elise said. “We have time. Relax.”
“They’re going to look for this guy when he doesn’t come back.”
She knotted the belt and stood. “And we’ll be gone before they do.”
“What’s the plan from here, anyway? We have the fuses, but they have the shipment.”
“Could you drive a semi?” Elise asked.
“Yeah, my uncle’s a truck driver, he—”
She didn’t let him finish. “Great. Let’s go.” And then she was running again.
“God damn it,” Anthony muttered before following her. Every thud of his feet against the dirt jolted through the bruise on his ribs.
They slipped behind the semi. He could hear shouting over the idling engine.
“Why the
fuck
aren’t the vans starting?”
“You think I know? They worked on our way out here! Maybe the batteries died…”
“On all twelve of them?”
Anthony peeked around the back end of the truck. The door had been opened to reveal several huge crates stacked in the back, but nothing had been moved yet. Elise climbed onto the side of the cab.
“Fuck this shit,” swore a guard on the other side of the semi. “The boss is going to shoot us!”
She eased the door open and gestured to Anthony. He slid across the bench seat to get behind the large wheel. The cab of the semi smelled like leather and fake pine. The radio was on a Christian station, and a young woman sang cheerily about her wonderful relationship with Jesus to a twanging Country background.
He gingerly set the submachine gun he had stolen from Disturbed atop a rosary.
Anthony had been telling the truth when he said he could drive a semi. But he hadn’t done it in years, and not on a truck so new. He smoothed his hands over the wheel and checked the gearshift.
“Just like any other car,” he muttered as Elise got in and shut the door softly. “Where am I supposed to go?”
“Forward. Preferably very quickly.”
Quickly. No problem. He wasn’t trying to pass any tests—just escape a whole lot of armed guards.
Footsteps approached the side of the truck.
“Maybe we can jump the pickups or something…”
“Go,” she urged. “Now.”
Anthony put the semi into gear and hit the gas.
If anyone shouted at them to stop, he wouldn’t have been able to hear it. They roared into motion, and seconds later, a spray of bullets ripped into the side of the trailer with a sound like hail.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Go, go, keep going—”
They tore across the desert, and the gunshots cut off fast. The truck shuddered on the rough playa.
“The doors are still open! Are we losing the cargo?” Anthony asked.
Elise rolled down the window and leaned outside. “No boxes behind us. And nobody’s chasing. They wouldn’t fire again anyway.”
“Why?”
“They must not want to hit the cargo.” She dropped back into her seat. “Keep going. We need to dump this by the hill for pickup, and we need to do it before they call for reinforcements. Maybe a cliff. See any cliffs?”
Anthony laughed. The idea of going over the side of a mountain was hilariously terrifying.
The windshield suddenly exploded inward with a crash. Elise threw herself to the floor an instant before more pellets erupted through the driver’s side window. Anthony dropped low to the seat. Safety glass showered around him, catching in his hair and collar.
He gripped the wheel tightly, struggling to keep the semi straight. There was nothing in front of him for miles—nothing but the occasional tree—and he could only pray they wouldn’t find one on accident.
The sound of a van roared up beside them and pulled in front of the semi.
He peeked over the dash. The back doors popped open. Two men clung to the back, each holding submachine guns. The man in the passenger seat aimed with a shotgun.
Anthony’s
shotgun.
Elise grabbed their gun and propped it on the dashboard without looking. Aiming wasn’t too important where fully automatics were concerned.
She squeezed the trigger, and it exploded with gunfire. Someone screamed. The van swerved.
“Pull alongside them!” she yelled. “And give me room!”
He squeezed toward the side of the cab without letting go of the wheel. She climbed over him to brace herself against the door. Anthony flanked the van, and the orange needle on the semi’s speedometer bounced at the seventy mark.
Elise suddenly ducked.
Shotgun pellets buzzed through the air over Anthony’s head like a swarm of angry bees and buried into the roof of the cab.
She got up again, hanging halfway out the window, and Anthony swerved to the left. They hit the side of the van. The semi bucked around him, and Elise’s whole body jerked. He grabbed her leg before she was wrenched out of the window.
“Give me that!” she shouted.
Another gunshot.
Elise dove back into the cab with Anthony’s shotgun in her hands. Her elbow smacked into the side of his head, and he lost his grip on the wheel. The semi swerved. He scrambled to get a grip on the wheel again as his vision blurred.
She pumped the shotgun.
“I need a clear shot at the driver!”
No time for pain. He sat up enough to see the ground and swung around hard.
The change in direction made the trailer tip. For a breathless instant, it balanced on two wheels. Anthony braced himself for the trailer to unbalance and throw the cab on its side.
But a moment later, all four wheels connected with the ground.
Elise rose, aimed at the van, and pulled the trigger.
It clicked. Out of ammo.
The driver of the van aimed a handgun at them.
Anthony hit the air brakes. The truck screamed. Elise gripped the dash to keep from getting tossed out the windshield. “He’s coming around!”
He fumbled a couple of shells out of his pocket. Elise flipped the shotgun over to load it, but she dropped the first two. Her fingers weren’t as confident on the gun as they were with a blade.
“Here he comes,” Anthony warned.
She managed to slip one in the chamber.
The van drew level with them. Elise propped herself up on the window and aimed down. The shotgun discharged with a bang.
The van wasn’t next to them anymore.
“Did you shoot him?” Anthony asked, and he sounded shrill, even to his own ears. “Did you shoot the driver?”
“Don’t stop. Get across the playa.”
He made a loop around the sagebrush-filled shore. The bushes scraped and banged against the front of the truck and its bumpers.
“Did we make it?” he asked.
“That won’t be the end of it,” Elise said. “Too easy.”
His pulse beat out a heavy cadence in his chest and throat. “
Easy
? We almost got shot a dozen times!”
She laughed. Elise
laughed
. She sounded as perturbed by the fight as she would have been on a shopping trip with Betty—maybe even less so. “Mr. Black could send an angel as soon as he finds out what happened. If it gets to us before we dump this, you might wish we were facing a whole firing squad.”
He stopped in front of the hill with the Jeep on it and cut the engine. They jumped out to check the cargo.
The crates were strapped in, so they had stayed in place despite his stunt driving. He climbed into the truck bed to investigate the boxes. The moonlight was too dim for him to make out any detail.
“Hang on.” Elise ran back to the Jeep for a flashlight.
“Let’s just go,” Anthony said. “We’ll let your friends get rid of all this.”
“I want to see what’s inside first. Hold the light.”
He turned on the flashlight and shone it over her head as she pried the lid off of one of the crates. “I don’t know much about stuff with demons and angels,” he said, “but I don’t think those are weapons.”
The box was filled by a column of stone. It was the color of ivory, and the end had a slight indent, like it was supposed to fit into another piece. Anthony reached out to caress it. The stone was smooth, almost warm to the touch. It sang against his fingertips.
“What
is
that?” he asked.
“Don’t touch it!”
Her sharp tone made him freeze. “What? Why?”
She replaced the lid. Elise moved to another crate and ripped it open without responding. It also had a piece of stone, and Anthony went to open a third. All the same.
Something tickled at the back of his skull, like snakes writhing on his brain stem. He slapped the back of his neck and turned to see what had touched him.
But there wasn’t anything there.
“Do you feel that?” he asked, scratching the nape of his neck.
A feather drifted past him.
They both looked up at the same time. Wings flared, and a man dropped from the sky.
He appeared young—hardly any older than a teenager—and he glowed like a star. His hair was as white as his flesh. It whipped around him like a cloak.
“Get to the Jeep,” Elise snapped, drawing her blade.
“But the cargo—”
“Now!”
Anthony scrambled up the rocks, hurrying to reach the Jeep.
He was halfway up when Elise screamed.
A gust of wind blasted his bangs over his face. He flattened his body against the rock. Something hurtled past him, just inches away. The angel had thrown her. Elise’s body struck the rocks beside him and bounced off with a crack.
Her fingers dug into a boulder. Anthony yelled, throwing out a hand to grab her by the wrist, but another gust of wind stopped him.
Hands fell on her shoulders. She kicked and shouted as the angel hauled her into the night sky, wheeling toward the stars.
“Elise!”
They ascended so quickly that Anthony soon couldn’t see them. He hauled himself on top of the hill and searched the black sky for motion.
He spotted a black shape against the moon. They plummeted toward the earth, growing bigger rapidly.
They were falling right at him.
Anthony threw himself out of the way just in time. They struck the dirt like a meteor, angel on the bottom with his massive wings stretched wide.
Soil exploded into the air. Anthony shielded his face with his arms.
One wing swept out as the angel struggled to right himself. Each wing was almost as long as a school bus. It clipped Anthony’s legs and knocked him onto his back.
Elise rolled off the angel. “Don’t—stay back—” she gasped. The wind had been knocked out of her by the impact.
The angel stood, wings folded around him like a cloak. Feathers showered around him. Anthony couldn’t breathe. The air had become thick and vibrated with sheer energy. It pinned him to the ground as surely as though one of the boulders had been dropped on his chest.
Light radiated from the angel as he stalked toward Elise.
She got to her knees, ripped off a glove, and held out her hand.
“Stay back,” she said, blood trickling from her nose. Her entire body shook. “You see this? Don’t fucking touch me!”
His wings flared out, catching the wind.
“You!” he hissed.
Air blasted around them as he swept into the sky again.
Elise grabbed Anthony’s arm with her gloved hand. “Run. Run!”
He leaped into the passenger’s seat of the Jeep, but before he could slide over to the driver’s side, she climbed behind the wheel.
“Sit back!”
She punched the gas, and they tore across the desert. He twisted around to see if the angel would follow, but Anthony could barely make out its pale shape circling over the semi. “What was that?” he asked.
Elise held her bare hand out to him. There was a tattoo on her palm, and it was bleeding.
“What is that?”
“A mark.”
Anthony didn’t understand. “Did you know that—that thing?”
“No. Never seen him before.”
“Then why…?”
“Long story.”
“It’s a long drive back to town.”
She shot a look at him from the corner of her eye. “Knowledge can be dangerous. You might change your mind if you knew.”
Anthony laughed harshly. “More dangerous than what we just did? I think I can handle anything you throw at me.”
So Elise told him.
By the time she was done, he wished she hadn’t.
X
S
tephanie was fuming.
“How in the world is Betty supposed to heal like this?” she hissed, cornering James in the kitchenette. The lights were dimmed in the apartment above Motion and Dance so Betty could sleep, but judging by the wheezing James heard from his bedroom, she wasn’t going to get much rest.
“It’s all right. I can help her. I have a ritual—”
She cut him off by stabbing a finger into his chest. “She wouldn’t need rituals if she was sedated at the hospital the way she should have been!”