Rising, p.1
Rising, page 1
part #3 of Girl With Broken Wings Series
Rising
Girl With Broken Wings, Book Three
By J Bennett
Copyright © 2014 by J Bennett
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-9840048-8-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content
Part One
Chapter 1
My heels clack, clack, clack, across the uneven parking lot. I touch my blonde wig to make sure a stray wisp of my real hair hasn’t fallen down. Clack, clack, clack. The shoes are uncomfortable, strappy little things, but at least it only takes a moment to kick them off in case I need to run, jump, kill someone, or all of the above.
A girl’s got to be prepared.
As I step across a frozen puddle reflecting colored smudges from the blinking neon lights ahead of us, I set my teeth together hard. The hunger roils within me. It mixes with the heavy base beats emanating from the strip club. My palms are already heating up, but I can handle this now. I’m well fed – four rats before we started patrolling tonight – and I’m getting better every day at holding in my darker, hungry self.
“Ready?” Tarren asks by my side. His long strides eat up the distance to the strip club, but I have no trouble keeping up.
“That beard’s a good look for you,” I respond, because I know he hates wearing it.
A sign plastered on the front door of the club proclaims, EVERY NIGHT IS LADIES NIGHT! Some budding Picasso has drawn a large penis over the sign. Classy. Tarren pushes open the door, and we enter a front room area with a slimy linoleum floor. A bouncer, who smells like showers are wishful thinking, squats on a stool in front of us.
I’m twenty years old, but that’s not what my fake ID says. I hand it over, and the bouncer harumps at the name on the card. Buffy. It’s a dumb joke that wasn’t funny the first time Gabe thought of it and nowhere near hilarious when he proudly handed me this ID. My chest tightens. Gabe. He should be here, sauntering into this strip club by my side. He’s so natural at this undercover thing, pulling on different personas like they were a second skin.
Tarren, on the other hand, is a terrible actor. He would’ve gotten cast as Non-Speaking Shrub or Person Two On Bus in the school play if Diana hadn’t homeschooled her children between missions. Even when he tries to play at being a natural person-like person, Tarren is stiff and intimidating. On these assignments, I feel like I have to carry the burden of a decent subterfuge for both of us, which is why I laugh shrilly like the dumb blonde I’m trying to be.
“It’s a late birthday present for him,” I gush to the bouncer, leaning momentarily into Tarren.
The bouncer grunts once, hands back our IDs, and we enter into the fray through a second set of doors. Even if I didn’t possess superhuman senses, the place would be way over the top. My acute hearing, vision, and smell just make the tragedy of this run-down stripper nightmare all the more unpleasant.
Whoever is in charge seems to have theorized that the louder the music and the more frantic the onstage lasers and fog machine, the less likely the patrons are to notice that half the strippers look like middle-aged meth addicts.
As we move past the door, I steel myself against the onslaught of stimuli, letting my hypersensitive body adjust. It’s a real treat – all that music banging into my ear drums, the laser lights flashing across my retinas, and the feel of so much greasy lust spilling through the auras of the patrons.
“Anything?” Tarren whispers. He doesn’t bother leaning down. He knows I can hear him in spite of the skull-shattering music.
I give the room a quick once over, my eyes settling on each figure leaning over the stage or hunched at one of the shadowed tables. I register the clear glow of a colorful aura around each body. I shake my head and catch a small shiver in Tarren’s aura. This is our second strip club of the night, the twelfth since we arrived in Detroit two days ago. Still no angel. It’s looking more and more likely that our target moved on; that we missed him.
Tarren must be thinking the same thing. He commandeers the table closest to the door, and his mouth sets tight with disappointment. If the angel jumped town, we’ll have to wait until we find his pattern again. More dead strippers. We already missed him in St. Louis last week, and, four dead girls later, he’s slipping through our fingers in Detroit.
Angels – I hate that term. The things we’re hunting are anything but the dew-eyed Precious Moments figurines my grandmother loved to collect. Our “angels” are actually just plain o’ humans who accepted a little DNA scrambling in exchange for some big physical and mental upgrades and a wicked appetite that I understand all too well.
I drop down into the chair next to Tarren, lean on my elbows, and keep all the shivering pieces of my brain carefully stitched together. This is what the hunger does to me – chips away the pieces of my control like the shell of a hardboiled egg until…until something bad emerges. Only ten minutes, I tell myself. No problemo. My fingernails tap across the table’s surface.
It would be too noticeable if we left right away, so Tarren insists that we wait exactly ten minutes. When I get the nod from him, I’ll loudly proclaim that I’m disgusted and demand that we leave. Tarren, for his part, will sigh like I’m such a drag, and we’ll shuffle out. Onto the next strip joint. More neon. More dumb lasers and fog machines. More hunger to keep at bay.
At least there’s not a bachelor party in this club, I console myself.
We wait. I spend about five seconds wondering at the solid, high-quality oak tables they’ve got in this place – maybe they were left over from the previous establishment – and then realize that I don’t care, because I’m so done with soaking in this heavy music, this sticky floor, the outpouring of emotion around me that only I can see.
I turn my head and study Tarren under my lashes. My half-brother has rugged-guy brooding down to an art. The nice cheekbones, chiseled jaw, and wide blue-gray eyes are built right in. He’s also managed to perfect that weary, Oh the things I’ve seen look that ages him far past his twenty-six years. I’ve been trying to wipe that look off his face for the past two months, but it’s like a permanent fixture.
His gaze sweeps across the stage where three women are developing very special connections with the respective poles they writhe against. His gaze lingers on the third woman, young and pretty with long black tresses that lap across large breasts. Most of the other men in the place crowd around her section of the stage, sticking their grubby dollars in her scarlet thong.
Tarren’s aura is a cloud of muddy blues held tightly around his body. He’s pinning it down, hiding his true emotions, as usual. But as he watches the woman gyrate on stage, I catch faint hues of purple lust seeping through his control. He’s trying to hide it, trying to repress as always, but I’m actually relieved. Lust is emotion. Lust means he isn’t irrevocably broken.
Because I have to save Tarren. It’s a promise I made to myself three months ago the night I almost destroyed him…destroyed everything. I haven’t actually figured out how to save Tarren, but I have a feeling even Hercules would wet his loincloth if given this labor.
We’ve got another five minutes to kill, and I’m already starting to lose it a little. My forearms shake, and if I took off my tight, fingerless gloves, it’s a good bet that a soft glow would pulse from beneath my palms.
A stripper weaves her way around the tables. Her face hides behind several heavy layers of makeup, but I can still see the bags under her eyes. The black ruffled bra-thing she’s wearing struggles to hitch up her large breasts as they sag over the cups. The lasers momentarily highlight a C-section scar across her abdomen, thick and ropey like it didn’t heal right.
Despite the lack of attention she receives from the patrons, the stripper keeps her chin up as she determinedly saunters around the tables in her impossibly high go-go boots. Her heavy thighs jiggling as she sways her wide hips and shakes a pink feathered boa that seems to be molting. Her aura is pale and sluggish, filled with threads of rusty orange.
The more time I spend studying the ethereal, glowing auras of my brothers and the ordinary people we encounter on the road, the more I’m learning that each one is unique. Certain colors have broad emotional connotations that are the same for most, but the colors can split into so many different shades, weave and saturate in a million distinct combinations and patterns. I focus on the particular hues in the stripper’s aura. While oranges usually equate to shame or embarrassment, I think that for this stripper those colors signify resignation. I also notice pale reds – discomfort – emanating from her aura around her lower back and feet.
I make a decision and wave her over. After all, it’s been Tarren’s birthday every day for two weeks now, and I still haven’t gotten him a present.
The stripper slinks our way.
“Hi handsome,” she purrs at Tarren.
Tarren opens his mouth, intent on shooing her away.
“How much for a lap dance?” I holler over the music.
“Twenty,” she yells back.
“Done.” I pull off some fives from the slim roll in my pocket and lay them on the table.
“For you or him?” she asks.
“It’s his birthday,” I nod toward Tarren, and give him a wide grin as the stripper clomps over to him. “Happy birthday,
Tarren can’t actually risk shooting me in a public setting, but that’s not to say the thought isn’t crossing his mind right now. Instead, he settles for giving me the mother of all scowls. Then, he quickly plasters on a tight smile as the woman, who introduces herself as Ambrosia, starts swaying her hips at him.
“I like your beard,” Ambrosia says in a high, childlike voice as she grinds against him.
“Thanks,” Tarren coughs out.
I hoot and cheer her on. Yeah, this isn’t nice of me at all – raining all over Tarren’s little brood session, trying to force his walls down via stripper. But I’ll use any weapon at my disposal if it will get him to relax even a little.
“Happy biiiirrrtttthday…Mr. President,” Ambrosia moans as she presses her breasts together in front of Tarren’s face.
Nice touch.
Tarren, for his part, tries to stoically last through the experience. He doesn’t actually flinch at those huge knockers drowning out his line of sight, but he grips the edge of our table so hard that his knuckles are going white.
Ambrosia notices his reticence and – God bless this woman – she doubles up, sucking on her finger and straddling Tarren as she thrusts her pelvis forward. I check the club touching polices listed in stern, all-caps letters on a big sign next to the door, and yep, Ambrosia’s broken about half of them already.
“Oh!” she yells as she spanks herself.
If only Gabe could see this. I’m struck again by the familiar ache of regret and loss.
The lap dance sputters fast. Tarren isn’t giving Ambrosia anything to work with, and I can’t keep up my false bravado. Finally, Ambrosia leans forward and reaches to stroke Tarren’s beard.
“Looks like there’s a scar under there, big boy. How’d you get—”
Tarren snatches her hand and thrusts it away from his face.
“Hey!” Ambrosia stumbles back, her aura flashing bright reds. “You can’t touch me!”
The table tilts, and I realize that I’m pushing down hard as I grip the edges and try to calm the hunger that Ambrosia’s wild aura stokes inside me.
Tarren holds up his hands. “I…uh, we’re leaving. Here.” He digs into his pocket and adds a crisp twenty on top of my wrinkled fives. He gives me a piercing look. I gently let the table down and nod that I’m okay.
Ambrosia looks at me funny. “That table is really heavy,” she says.
“Ambrosia is a Greek word,” Tarren says quickly to distract her from my freakish strength. “It was the food of the gods, the essence of their immortality.”
Ambrosia’s gaze swings to him, and her eyes sharpen. “That’s the worst come on I’ve heard all day,” she spits back, husky tones replacing the fake girlish trill. She snatches the money off the table. The bills go into her bra, and off she saunters in those loud white go-go boots.
“We’re leaving,” Tarren says, his voice a low, rolling growl.
Oh boy. I’m in for it.
We stand up together. I can’t get distance from this wreckage of humanity fast enough. Just as I turn toward the door, a new figure enters, bringing in a bluster of cold with him. The man is short, bald, and definitely an angel.
Easy enough for me to tell. He possesses no aura – no brilliant shimmer of colors outlining his body.
And if he happens to look over here, he’s going to catch a whole lot of the same nothing on my end. Technically I have an aura – or at least I’ve been told I do – but it’s pale and weak, and even if the angel doesn’t realize I’m a hybrid, he’ll definitely figure out that I’m not totally human.
I tap the outside of my wrist, and Tarren is instantly on alert. He follows my gaze to the figure at the door. The guy still stands in front of the door leering toward the stage. Even in the darkness, I can see his swarthy, pock-marked skin and the bitter cut to his mouth.
Tarren and I are both on our feet, clearly on our way out. We’ll have to pass the angel to get to the door. He’ll notice me, unless… Tarren comes around the table and stands just behind me. I feel the dampened throb of his energy and close my eyes for a moment, gathering myself.
“Ready?” he hisses under his breath.
I quickly throw my arms through the sleeves of my coat, but leave the buttons undone. “Do it,” I say, balling my hands into fists and plunging them into my coat pockets.
Tarren wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me into his big body.
Humans can’t see their own auras. Don’t even know they exist, which means they let their energy run free, always soaked with the shifting colors of their emotions. Tarren is different. He knows about the auras – knows that I can read a personal’s entire emotional map in an instant. Over the last six months, since this whole crazy thing started for me, he’s become especially adept at holding his emotions at bay, hiding his true feelings from this second sight of mine.
He can also let them go, which is what he does now, relaxing his mental grip, allowing his aura to bloom with all his repressed emotions.
The song.
Not the heavy techno-shit booming out of the speakers. My hunger is a song that only I can hear; that only I can feel gripping every neuron in my brain as Tarren’s energy laps over me. His aura cloaks me from the eyes of the angel, but I pay a high price for our subterfuge. Control, control, control, I chant to myself as my muscles lock and every part of me wants to pounce on Tarren, hurt Tarren, drain every last drop of energy from his body.
My brother’s grip is tight around my waist, and he steers me towards the door. Forward, forward. We pass the angel. I’m on Tarren’s right side, away from the angel, hiding in the shadow of his energy. Just a little longer. Hold, I think. Hold. Hold. Bold. Sold. Cold.
Door opening. Closing. Grumble from the smelly bouncer.
We’re out. I rip myself from Tarren’s arm and stagger forward on wobbly legs. Distance. Need distance. My hands are pouring heat, probably glowing up a storm, but my brain is worse. The monster part of me purrs, wanting release.
Tarren gives me my space. His hyper-vigilance is sometimes mildly threatening and more often just a huge drag, but it has its uses. He’s really good about knowing what I need to maintain control.
I take a deep breath of the cold air, sucking in a myriad of scents dominated by car exhaust and fried food. Then I look behind me to Tarren. He pulls in his aura, tucking away all those emotions into the huge vault he keeps inside his heart. Before he gets all of it completely locked away, I see thick, heavy browns splashed across his aura like a tumor. I’ve noticed hints of it before – ever since he came home after Gabe got hurt – but I never realized it was this bad.
Brown for worry, for anxiety.
Tarren worries a lot; about everything, actually, but this rotting hue is different. This is something big.
“He won’t try anything while he’s in the club,” Tarren says, all business. “He always follows his victims home.”
“Looks like we’ve got some strippers to save,” I say lamely, trying to iron out the shakes in my voice. I quickly slip out of my heels and hook them with my index finger. The cold concrete chills my feet and sharpens my focus. My muscles unlock with each step forward. Tarren peels off his beard as we hurry back to the jeep and the sniper rifles in the trunk.
Chapter 2
Experience makes us efficient. While Tarren raises the back door of the jeep and prepares the rifles, I lie across the backseat and switch out my jeans for black Lycra pants. The wig comes off, and by the time Tarren’s ready, I’m lacing up my black boots.
“Three exits,” he says, his words punctuated with white mist.
“Front, back, and a side door into the alley,” I answer as I cinch the laces. “Won’t be coming out the front.”
“Unless he follows a patron.”
“Nope, he’ll go after one of the strippers. That’s his pattern. It’ll be back door,” I challenge him.
“I’ll cover it. You handle the side door.”
I roll my eyes. Tarren always gives himself the prime locations, which means he’ll get the kill tonight, just like always. He still doesn’t trust me, not fully. Sure, at the start of my career shift into vigilantism I’d had a few performance issues when it came to pulling the trigger, but that was months ago. Ancient past.
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