Gem’s soothing thoughts overlap my own, almost like hands grasping mine in solidarity. I wove a block on those thoughts in your mind just after Max knocked you out in Nevada. They wouldn’t let me go with you to their doctor. It’s taken me days to convince them I wasn’t the source of the leak. They just invited me back to continue our discussions tonight.

  The panic begins to die down under the waves of Gem’s gentle assurances. I’ll check the blocks again, he thinks. I’m sorry that I couldn’t block everything. Max would have noticed if your entire mind was guarded.

  My brothers can take care of themselves, I respond.

  I remember. He gives me that soft smile again, the one that makes him look nothing like our father. Yes, Gem discovered our Styx protocol in my mind the first time we met…actually not under dissimilar circumstances than these.

  You must stop getting captured, little sister, Gem thinks to me, just the softest nudge of humor trailing the thought.

  That little joke makes me want to dissolve into hopeless tears, so instead, I change the subject. Have you been able to reason with War? I ask, even though I already know the answer.

  A sigh of frustration echoes through our connection. He is becoming more and more convinced by his own lies, Gem reports glumly. I was able to slip into his mind, even with his mentalist present and get an idea of his plans.

  I smile at the touch of pride I feel from him at his mental prowess, but the smile dies when I catch the heavy feelings of concern that he cannot hide from me.

  War has pockets of believers all over the country. He finds them in small towns. People who are angry. Dissatisfied.

  I know, I answer him. We’ve been killing them left and right.

  Not fast enough.

  We’re on the brink of discovery, I agree. It’s the worry that obsesses my brothers and the Totem.

  It’s worse than that, Gem admits. He wants to trigger his followers. Soon. Take Alaska.

  I don’t actually understand his last words. Maybe it’s the hunger constantly pulling my attention away. I stare at him dumbly. Take Alaska? I think at him.

  It’s lightly populated. A lot of space to establish his farms to the hold the humans, Gem thinks to me.

  I just keep on staring at him. Take Alaska? I still can’t understand. He wants to take Alaska?

  He’ll establish his colony and then move down through Canada.

  He can’t take Alaska, I think to him. That’s crazy. The U.S. would bomb the shit out of him. He can’t do that. Plus, there’s no sunlight there for half the year!

  I don’t think he plans on feeding on the sunlight. A small smile touches Gem’s lips. I won’t argue the sanity of the plan to you, but that’s his intention.

  I press the palms of my hands into my eye sockets and try to think this through. There’s no way, I finally conclude. Even if he has thousands of angels, they’ll all be slaughtered. The United States won’t just let them take Alaska. It’s the stupidest, most suicidal plan ever.

  Gem nods in agreement. War and his followers will get what they deserve, but when the public learns that angels live among them, it could trigger a police state. His mind is full of regret. All angels will be hunted. And some humans will seek out the power as they do today. It could be a guerilla war, Maya, one that could quickly span the globe.

  I don’t even remember sitting down, but I feel the pain of the motion searing up my thigh. As I slowly absorb Gem’s words and the foreboding that comes wrapped around them, I feel almost swallowed by the urge to roll into a tiny ball. Humans murder each other for being in different sects of the same religion. What’s going to happen when they have an entirely new species to despise?

  Armageddon, I think to Gem.

  I’m trying to push him for more time. Gem’s voice is soothing in my mind, but I can feel his anxiety, his great weariness.

  And what will that accomplish?

  Gem studies me. I feel the soft massage of his mind searching through my thoughts. Searching for what? I try to pull back, and he stops, retreats. His face doesn’t change.

  “What are you looking for?” I hiss at him. “You can just ask.”

  “You don’t know about…he still hasn’t told you.” Gem stops and carefully thinks out his words. There’s a reason I asked War to meet near Vegas.

  Then his mind pulls back, as if he’s afraid of telling me too much. I push through our connection, following his retreating thoughts. I’m getting better at moving through our mental bridge, at manipulating it. I catch the thought he’s holding back from me. A name. I hear it clearly in his mind. Tarren.

  It startles me. What about Tarren?

  Gem’s mind abruptly shies away.

  I can’t let you go, he thinks. Can’t let War get suspicious.

  What about Tarren? I’m suddenly afraid. I’m here so my brothers can be safe. I push deeper across the bridge trying to understand the quickly retreating thoughts and feelings. You found something…something in Tarren’s mind, in Peoria, when you were taking his nightmares away.

  Then Gem’s mind is cloaking mine, gently pushing me back across the bridge, and I’m too exhausted, too to resist. Gem could have picked anything from Tarren’s brain, some way to predict what he would do, how to find him right now. The sob hits me hard and fast, and suddenly I feel like I’m trying to breathe through a tiny coffee straw. Hot tears plummet out of my eyes and onto my cheeks. They’re supposed to be safe! My thoughts cry out, barreling into Gem. Whatever you found in Tarren’s mind, you can’t tell War. Please, please! This has to mean something!

  This. My starvation. My death.

  It’s all streaming out of my mind into Gem, the abject, endless terror I’ve been trying to hide. The hunger seems to ramp up, the ache of it pulsing outward as if it were tearing through my bones and sinew. How bad will it get? What will it feel like in another day? Two days? What will I become?

  A soft blanket of warmth and tenderness wraps around these thoughts, smothering them.

  You’re tired, Gem’s voice says, sweet as syrup.

  You can’t tell War about Tarren or Gabe, I think back, but my fear is lifting away. The hot coals in my thigh are dying down.

  I won’t, I swear. Lie down.

  I can breathe again. My worries are drifting, far, far away. The hunger fades. My eyes ache to close, and my mind is soft, fuzzy. Rain. It’s like Gem flipped a card over in the front of my mind with Rain’s face on it. The card covers everything else. I count the three freckles on his neck that I know so well, watch the way the lines crease around his eyes when he smiles. The sound of Rain’s laugh drowns out the song of hunger. Rain still exists in the world, and he will keep existing after I am gone. This is good.

  “I know what you’re doing,” I whisper as I curl up on the floor and tuck my arms under my head.

  Do you want me to stop? Gem asks.

  No. Shut down my mind forever. Turn me into a vegetable. Please.

  I can’t do that, but I can do this.

  Love. It wells up inside of me, like a pipe busted in my mind. Gem connects me with the insane deep love I feel for my brothers. The desperate, clumsy love that rushes through me like a drug when I think of Rain. The respect I felt for Dr. Lee. The tender care for my adoptive parents, Karen and Henry. It all wraps around me. The floor feels oddly soft and welcoming. A little worry niggles my brain. Gem is so weak, so sick.

  Is this hard for you? I think sleepily to him.

  Yes, but I don’t mind. He blows my worry away, right out of my mind. Sleep well, little sister.

  With all this love and warmth inside me, I let it echo down the bridge to him. I love you, Gem, I think to him or try to think. I need him to know this, because he is lonely. Because I don’t think anyone has ever said it to him his whole life.

  Sleep.

  My eyes close, and good dreams follow.

  Chapter 27 – Tarren

  I glance at the illuminated clock on the dashboard. Eighteen hours since we left Abigail Peterson’s home. Eighteen more hours lost. We haven’t been idle, but our efforts have gained us little. Two additional bodies now reside with the corpse of Abigail Peterson in the trunk. Gregory Yun wept out everything he knew with Gabe’s first gentle promptings, and six hours ago we learned Eugene Goldstein possessed the common angel ability of fire generation. As soon as he woke up from the tranquilizer, the flames poured off him. Too dangerous. Too uncontrollable. I put a bullet in him, snuffing those flames despite Gabe’s protest.

  We wait. Again. This time in the tiny hamlet of Osseo in Wisconsin. Rain dozes in the backseat, despite his best efforts to stay awake. It’s better that he rest. We can accomplish little until Gina and Paul Miller return to their large home at the end of this short street. Those names were given to us by Gregory Yun between sobs and mucus. In the afternoon light, I watch the elegant curves of a wind spinner hanging from the Millers’ porch flash a dull copper as they weave and twist. The house shows great care, from its fresh coat of green paint, to the lush plants dangling long vines from their hanging baskets on the porch.

  Why would someone put this much effort into a home when they believe the end of the world is coming soon? This thought is pointless, just a meager attempt to ignore the fact that attempting to take down two angels simultaneously is such a foolish risk, especially in our current condition of exhaustion…especially when Maya’s chances of still being alive are so…

  She has been gone for almost three days, assuming that she didn’t die in the initial shootout. All of our efforts hinge on this faint hope. If she was taken, even the clumsiest torturers could succeed with enough time. With STYX in place, Maya had no need to hold out. Our only chance is that War is keeping her alive for his own amusement.

  The wind spinner twists and glints. A terrible hope.

  In the passenger seat beside me, Gabe stares at the screen of his tablet, his gaze focused on yet another social media page. A bead of sweat travels down his neck. I remember how difficult these long waits were for him when Mom first started to take us on missions. She could sit still for an entire day, her focus never deviating, but Gabe would grow restless and bored after two hours. Tammy was the one who invented games for them to play, their voices whispering together in the backseat, the sharp climb of his giggle choked off when my mother snapped her head around and gave them disappointing stares.

  “Waiting and observation are skills,” she would say, “just as important as shooting accuracy and Krav Maga. Waiting can save your life.”

  Gabe still hasn’t fully learned that lesson. His leg drums up and down. His eyes flick up to the house. I know he wants to rush in, even though our targets have not yet returned. He still mistakes action for progress. I repress a sigh. I’d been good at the waiting, even in those early days. Mom was proud, but Tammy and Gabe never played the games with me.

  Though it risks drawing attention, I turn the key in the ignition, and cold air blasts through the vents.

  Gabe closes his eyes and lets out a small sigh. “You sure?” he asks.

  I nod and catch myself glancing in the rearview mirror expecting to see Maya’s pale, intelligent eyes looking back into mine. Instead, I see Rain’s tired face, slack in sleep. His hope is dripping away. I could see it in the slump of his shoulders on the drive here. He won’t speak the words though, won’t suggest calling off our search.

  Gabe’s thumb flicks across his screen, scrolling through colorful pictures of the Millers. His eyes are never still, imbibing every detail, constructing the story of their lives so he can use it against them in the impending interrogation.

  His hope is strong. Too strong. Blind and desperate.

  I won’t let Gabe do this interrogation. If the Millers fail to give us a direct road to Warren, I will say the words that Rain is furiously trying to dismiss, the words Gabe won’t even acknowledge. The words that are ripping me apart as they become more real with every minute we lose.

  She’s gone.

  We will go to Lo’s, because if we can’t save our sister’s life, we can still avenge her. We will keep testing Compound 731. It will take months, maybe years, but once we find the right carrier, I will release the Cure.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket. It could be Lo or Francesca, but it’s not. I know exactly who it is, and Danielle would only call for one reason.

  “Who is it?” Gabe asks.

  I ignore him and step out into the heavy heat of the day. I try to calm myself, slow my breathing. It’s not good. It can’t be good. Get ready.

  I swipe Accept. “Tell me,” I say.

  “You made a promise, Tarren,” Danielle says, her voice flat and serious.

  “Only if she’s alive.”

  “Swear that you’ll keep it.”

  Gabe makes me do this, swear on our mother’s grave when he’s skeptical of my true intentions. Danielle won’t accept a pledge on the grave of a woman she never knew, but I know the words that will ring true to her.

  “On Tammy’s soul, I swear,” I say to her. “Tell me.”

  She wouldn’t make me swear, not unless…

  “War is up in a rickety mansion in Pennsylvania,” she says.

  “And Maya?” My voice is a growl. It’s the only thing I can do keep it from trembling.

  “She’s breathing.”

  I allow three seconds – one, two, three – to process this information, to feel a rush of relief so intense that I wonder if Danielle can actually feel it through the phone.

  Danielle sighs. “But they’re cleansing her, Tarren.”

  “I don’t know—“

  “Starving. They’re starving her. And angels starve a helluva lot faster than humans.”

  But she’s alive. Maya is alive. We can get her. We will get her. I clutch the phone hard, as if it might gallop off if I relax my grip. “Give me the address.”

  Chapter 28 – Maya

  The little puddle of sunlight is my world. I intimately know the slow crawl of its path across the room, the way it fades and flees into night. Always the threat looms of trickster clouds in the distant outside stealing the sunlight from me and then giving it back at its whim.

  I hold the sunlight now, but my chains have little resistance left. It won’t be much longer until I have to carefully lay on my stomach and reach until the light dribbles out of my fingertips.

  I sit, bad leg straight, good leg curled, and cup the bit of sunlight in my shaking hands. The skin of my palms is rough, flakey. The bulbs straining from the open centers in each palm are both a deep, inflamed red. I cradle the weak beam of light and pretend that it will not eventually meander away across the room to where I cannot follow. Because I don’t know what I’ll do then. I don’t know how I can possibly spend another day watching it move farther and farther out of my reach, only to be swallowed by endless night.

  There is only the hunger and the drum of pain in my leg, but mostly the hunger. I try to wrap myself in memories. Fireflies and swing sets and Rain’s stupid voicemail song. But the hunger is too loud. The faces dissolve. The emotions are faint echoes. I scoot forward, following the sunlight. My chains clink behind me.

  I hear a noise coming from below. Loud. Sharp. Then again. And again. Familiar noises. It reminds me of my brothers. A muted blur of voices rise beneath me. I lay my ear on the ground. The voices are angry and then fearful and then quiet.

  “Hey, hey stop! You can’t…can’t…” The words are just beyond the other side of my door. “…Can’t.” The last word is a low, slurring moan. Something heavy hits the ground. My door opens very slowly.

  Tarren, I think wildly. I should stand, need to stand, but I can’t.

  I came to die with you, little sister. The words are a soft, trembling whisper in my mind. I watch a thin figure take slow steps into the room. Each foot plant seems like its own small battle. The figure wobbles, one hand coming out for balance. Bright red drops gather at the edges of long fingers.

  “Gem, you’re leaking,” I inform him.

  A red liquid trail paints his path to me.

  “Unfortunately so,” he says out loud with a small laugh. “I suppose they’ll follow me here soon enough. When their vision returns. I got ‘em good though.” He taps the side of his head with his wet fingers and then clamps his hand back over the stain growing across his stomach. “Probably should have done that before they started shooting.”

  He crosses the white line. The walking seems to pain him. I desperately do not want to lose my precious puddle of sunlight, but I make an effort, forcing my knobby knees under me and crawling toward him.

  Gem sits down hard, mostly falling into it. His body makes a solid impact, and through our mind bridge, I feel the echo of his pain, the burning through his stomach.

  Finally. Finally my thoughts make the connection. “You’ve been shot!” I cry.

  Gem glances down at the well of blood soaking through his cheap dress shirt. “Indeed. It’s ironic, actually. Here I was using every ounce of my mental fortitude to hide my thoughts so they wouldn’t shoot me, and it turns out War planned to shoot me all along.” He grimaces. “If I was stronger, I would have been able to see War’s plan in his mind. I suppose his mentalist was better than I gave him credit for.”

  Blood. Bullet. I’m beginning to remember what that means. I ignore the sunlight behind me and crawl up to Gem, right on top of him, my hands pressing onto his shoulder. “Are you going to die?”

  “Yes, I think so,” he admits reluctantly.

  “No!” My thoughts are so sluggish, but this I know isn’t right. “You’re too strong!”

  Not anymore, Maya. The cancer would have taken me in a few more months anyway. My body can’t heal this gunshot fast enough. I’ll bleed out.

  “You have to escape!”

  My powers are weak. It was all I could do to incapacitate War and his guards when he came to kill me. He’s got men all around the house and at the gate. I can’t take them all down. Especially not now.

  “You have to try,” I tell him, balling my hands into fists and pressing them against his bony shoulder.

 

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