“Is it ready?” I ask again.

  “It’s ready.” Lo pulls in a deep, controlling breath. “All I need are some crazy bastards to help me set it off.”

  Chapter 39 – Tarren

  I sit on the edge of the bed, flip open the laptop, and try to quell the faint ripples of emotion that snake through me as I watch its screen glow to life. My hair is already drying from the shower, and my body feels good. Tired.

  My five mile run in the desert this morning is almost back up to pace. My energy is good. I just need to build back my muscles and stamina. I stepped onto the scale in Danielle’s bathroom yesterday when she wasn’t in the house, and I’m only fifteen pounds under my standard weight. It’s a better result than I would have expected after only three weeks of recovery. I know that I can put on at least ten pounds this month if I stick to the calorie-heavy, high protein diet I’ve devised.

  I type in my password, and the laptop loads. I guard my anticipation as I go online and log into my new Paypal account. It was supposed to come through today, but…

  There it is. A balance of $186.34 sits in my account, and I see the notation of the payment in my activities log. This is not a large amount of money, but it is mine. The first money I’ve ever earned. No stealing. No blood or pain or death behind these dollars. Simple math and science tutoring over video through an online company. It doesn’t pay well, just $12 an hour, but I’ve already been thinking of putting an ad up on Craigslist for in-person tutoring.

  I look at the number again. It’s a start. I owe Danielle $266.21 for the three outfits she bought me at Target, and now $862.39 for this laptop. She called it a gift, but I’ll pay her back for it. I will stay in her home. Eat the food she provides. That’s all part of our deal. But I’m no doll to be clothed and spoiled at her whim.

  It will take a few months to pay her back, but then... I tap the icon in my bookmarks bar and stare again at the home page of the community college that’s just six miles from Danielle’s house. If I took a full course load, I could have my Associates in two years. Another two years for a BA, and two years after that for a Masters in biology or genetics.

  I stare at the huge photo of young students strolling down a sidewalk, big smiles on their ethnically diverse faces. I earned my GED when I was sixteen, before Mom died. Despite all the lies I’ve told, all the crimes I’ve committed, and all the fake IDs I’ve used, my true identity is completely clean. I’ve kept it safe all this time. I could enroll using my real name, my real Social Security number. It’d be easy for someone with Gabe’s skills to find me then, but he’d have no reason to look.

  Stop. I halt the train of my thoughts with a conscious effort. It’s foolish of me to think this way. Dangerous. Danielle’s control will slip and she will drain me. I’ve been pushing her hard whenever she slinks into my bedroom. If death doesn’t come by her hand, something else will happen. Something terrible always happens. I can’t let my guard down.

  I feel again that pull of my old life, the mission, insistent as it tries to tug me back. I glance down at the dusky orange comforter on the bed, feel the cooling blast of the air conditioning from the vents overhead. This new life seems like a fragile dream, always so close to breaking.

  I glance back at the computer screen, at those ignorant, happy faces. Only a few keystrokes would take me to Rain’s Broken Wings network. He could connect me to Gabe and Maya. Three days maximum for them to arrive on Danielle’s doorstep. And then the mission again.

  I made a promise to Danielle. A promise that has been too easy to keep. A promise that I must remind myself is a punishment. A sacrifice for my family.

  “You look like a statue,” Danielle purrs.

  I close the laptop quickly, but don’t turn around. I hope she didn’t see what was on the screen, my stupid little dream. I wait, listening for her. She takes her time, but I have far greater patience than she ever will. I listen to her steps coming closer, the confident plant of her heels, and then her arms drape around me, chin planted on the top of my head.

  “Wear the clothes I bought you,” she says.

  “The ones I have are fine.”

  “You go running today?” She knows I did. I run every morning.

  “Five miles.”

  “That’s good. You’re looking better.”

  “Feeling better.”

  “The hand?”

  I look down at my right hand, still tightly taped. “A little more movement.” Not much though. The nerve damage is likely permanent, and I may never be able to fully bend the last two fingers on that hand again. I’ve already started training my left hand, writing careful letters, throwing and catching a rock I picked up on the trail. I can shoot with my left hand, but I have no firearms to practice with. It’s been strange, not having a gun on my hip.

  “You’re healthy again,” Danielle says. I smell her perfume all around me, feel the waves of her hair spilling down the back of my neck. “It’s time to pick up Tammy. Bring her home.”

  Danielle allows me to break out of her grasp as I stand up and face her. “No.”

  “We’re together now,” Danielle says and leans alluringly against the bed. I think it must be a natural instinct for her to arrange herself provocatively regardless of the circumstance. Red. Today she wears a tight red tank top and a short jean skirt with bright, winking stones around the hem.

  “That wasn’t part of our agreement,” I say.

  “You love her,” Danielle says forcefully, but I catch a tremor of fear in her voice as if she isn’t quite sure. “She deserves to be with us.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” I say. “You could lose control. It only takes one slip. One fraction of a second.”

  “I wouldn’t do that!” Danielle bursts out. “She’s my daughter.”

  “No.” I put finality into my voice. We had this argument on the day Tammy was born, when I held her tiny, wet form against my chest. I broke Danielle’s heart that day, and maybe cracked my own too, but our hearts don’t matter. Not compared to the safety of the nearly weightless life I held in my arms. It was on that night two and a half years ago that I finally understood why my mother gave Maya away; how she could abandon the child of her body.

  A big, round tear slides down Danielle’s face. Tammy is the only thing that makes her vulnerable.

  “This is how we keep her safe,” I say to Danielle. “This is how we show our love.” My words do nothing to comfort her, so I use rough kisses and painful bites instead. It is difficult to despise Danielle with the tears for our impossible daughter still wet on her cheeks, but I do try.

  Chapter 40 – Maya

  Fiona’s little farm is tucked far away from civilization, a few hours outside of Henderson, Nevada. It rises up from the flat horizon, almost like a mirage. It is a foreign plot of green filled with sunshine and the cries of the many animals she and her charges raise.

  I didn’t call ahead, but the cloud of dust from my wheels and the growl of the Mustang’s engine announces me well enough. Fiona waits on the porch, her brown face calm, though I know she must be worried about whether I am friend or foe. I was a foe the first time I came here almost two years ago. Tarren had been so intent on capturing an angel alive…

  For the Cure, I realize. Tarren needed a live angel to test its potency. If Gabe and I hadn’t protected Fiona and the two young people in her care, Tarren would have taken them back to Lo’s lab. He would have infected her, watched her die. All for the greater good?

  I don’t have the energy to explore the mucky philosophy of my brother’s life. That life is over now, anyway because of me, I think. I have to sit behind the wheel of the car for an extra few seconds trying to breathe, trying to push Tarren’s face out of my mind so that I can do what I came here to do. I can still taste his energy, and it almost buckles my nerve.

  Fiona gives me a warm smile as I step out of the car. I take in the cozy front porch that wraps around her home, the flower pots in the windowsill, and the steady throb of auras from the squawking chickens, snorting hogs, and nickering horses. Usually, this place gives me a sense of peace. Today, I feel nothing, but I return Fiona’s smile anyway.

  ***

  We sit, all of us at Fiona’s large, wooden dining room table. I find it ironic that a house full of angels includes a dining room table, and a beautiful one at that. I trace the pattern of flowers carved around the table’s rim. The table is worn with small scrapes and chips that hint at lost stories. This was a real dining room table once, one that held big meals, heard family prayers, stayed steady beneath squabbles. Was it Fiona’s table in her previous human life?

  I look at the tiny woman who sits across from me. Her salt and pepper braid hang down her shoulders, and her deep brown eyes take me in.

  I glance around the table. Raven sits on Fiona’s right, taller and more beautiful than when I last visited four months ago. Like Lo, she is finishing her last growth spurt, but there is no awkwardness in her long limbs. No angel is ever awkward, not even as a 17-year-old. Raven was studying for her GED the last time I was here. I wonder idly if she’s taken the test already. She’d told me about all these different online universities she’d been looking at. Amazing how you can jump through all the normal hoops of life without ever really being in it. Will she leave the farm one day and try to re-enter society, I wonder. Or will she stay here forever, growing old on the outskirts, like Fiona? I trace one of the scratches on the table with my finger. There are worse prisons.

  The angel next to Raven is Benjamin, middle aged and soft-spoken with thin brown hair and small, dark eyes. He came to the farm last year, and that is about all I know of him. Raven tells me that he sings beautifully, but it’s hard to imagine any pure notes coming from such a reticent mouth. Yolanda is the newest addition. This is the first time I’ve met the slight, jittery angel, who curls her hands into her lap and can’t look at me. Even my small aura triggers her appetite.

  Whatever Fiona sees in my weak aura, it is enough. “You bring bad news,” she says simply.

  “What’s the bad news? Tell us. Tell us,” Caleb demands. As usual, his clothes seem to fit him poorly, and he is in constant motion, flicking his thumbs, looking away every time I try to catch those eyes that bounce around the room.

  “Gem is dead,” I say. “War killed him.”

  Fiona bows her head, and Raven looks stricken. I let the silence hold as they absorb the news.

  “What does that mean?” Raven finally manages. “For the movement?”

  I stare at Fiona’s bowed head. I don’t really know much about the Angels of Mercy. That was intentional, given my line of work. From my conversations with Fiona and the scattered thoughts I gathered from Gem’s mind, I am aware that it is a loose coalition. A few live in groups like Fiona’s small collective. Most are tucked neatly into neighborhoods and apartment buildings all over the country, keeping themselves forever in check as they feed on the energy of animals. Some of the less strict adherents will sneak into nursing homes and take the lives from those who are already on death’s doorstep. Others, like a pair of angels I met years ago, Jane and Kyle, considered it their civic duty to feed on drug dealers and criminals. Fiona told me of a few who will even feed on the homeless, though at that point the line between mercy and murder seems clearly crossed to me.

  “Did they hurt him? Was he scared?” Fiona’s words are small.

  “What’s the point of asking that?” Yolanda snaps. “Why would you want to know that?”

  “He was gentle,” Fiona says.

  Raven lets out a little sob. Gem, I remember, guided her to Fiona’s farm and gave her a new life after her old one was torn away by War.

  “There’s something else,” I say. I tell them about the Cure and about the way that I am going to save them.

  Ironically, Tarren has given me the keys to their salvation. Lo’s lips had twitched into that grim smile of his when he’d told me, “Tarren was so insistent on creating an antidote, until he realized something.” The teen had paused, pulling out the tension. “He realized that you didn’t need to survive the virus…you just needed to outlast it.”

  I pass the two electronic key cards to Fiona. The sticky note on the top contains a set of coordinates. I have no idea how in hell Lo found the underground bunker or how he managed to acquire it. “Money,” he had said. “Lots of money.”

  “It’s pressure sealed,” I explain to Fiona who still seems dazed. “Has its own internal air filtration system.”

  “This is crazy,” Yolanda says as if my words have finally settled. “You’re going to kill them? All of them?”

  “Good riddance,” Benjamin mutters. “We don’t even deserve to be in that bunker.”

  “Where is the bunker? How far down is it? Will it have a TV?” Caleb is spilling questions like an overfilled water jug.

  “It’s happening in one week,” I say to Fiona. “Gather everyone in your network. All the Angels of Mercy.”

  “How will we stock enough…food?” Raven whispers. I nod at her. At least she’s thinking logistics. The others are still trying to comprehend the massive rug I’ve just yanked from beneath their feet.

  “It’s not going to be pleasant,” I say, making the understatement of the millennium. As Lo explained it, the bunker is 600 square feet. One main room, one tiny bedroom, and a storage closet. It’s got a water tank and a small generator.

  “Does anyone else realize that this is genocide?” Yolanda’s voice is high-pitched. Her dark curls bounce as she twists her head to look at her companions. Her long, red-lacquered nails press hard into the table. An odd thought strikes me. Who paints their nails out in the middle of nowhere?

  I turn on her, my voice hard, cold. “War is building an army of angels, of religious fanatics, and he’s going to unleash them soon. If we don’t stop him, stop them all, then we’ll face something worse than genocide. It’ll be a worldwide civil war.”

  Yolanda opens her mouth, but I cut her off. “His soldiers will pack humans into massive prisons and feed on them. Every person with a little ambition and no moral compass will come bowing and scraping to join him. With his numbers, he could make hundreds of new angels overnight. Ten thousand in a month.”

  I turn to Fiona. I can’t be kind or soft about this, so there is no mercy in my voice when I say, “One week to plan. And when I text you, close the door and don’t open it for 30 days. I don’t care how hungry you get. How tired. How much you hate the sound of each other’s snoring. 30 days.”

  Lo told me that Compound 731 broke down in 24 days, generally, but the extra six days are an added precaution.

  “Thirty days,” Fiona murmurs. I see her lips set and her eyes snap into focus. She’s starting to accept it. Good. She’ll need to be strong, for the rest of them.

  “You’ll be coming with us.” Raven doesn’t ask it as a question.

  Instead of answering her, I push back my chair and stand up. “When that 30 days is up and you come out of that bunker, you’ll be the last ones left. The only angels. There are those in my network who would want to see you all dead. They think that angels can’t help but lose control. That eventually you’ll kill again.”

  Even Caleb is silent, eyes cast down, lips pursed.

  “Prove them wrong. You have the technology of the Prism now. The sun can give you all the energy you need.” I swallow and look at each and every one of them. “As long as you do not kill, you will be safe, but the Vigils will be watching. If you drain even the worst bastard who sells heroin to kids on the street, your life is forfeit. We will find you and put a bullet in your head.”

  I make my voice cold, offer no approach in my stare. “And don’t make any more angels.”

  Wide, worried eyes stare back at me. Raven’s lower lip trembles. She’s never seen this side of me, the killer. But I have to be cruel, because I’m taking a terrible risk in giving them the keys to the bunker. Any one of them or the faceless strangers in Fiona’s network could start the cycle of violence and death all over again.

  My eyes settle on Fiona. She stands up and walks with me to the door. Outside, her farm is still alive with noise and sunshine. The bright pink geraniums in her window boxes nod with the breeze.

  “One week,” I tell her. I let my voice soften. “You can do it. Make sure you have enough energy sources. That’s the most important thing. Everyone will go stir crazy no matter what you do, but try and build in some sort of routines. Give people jobs and responsibilities while you’re down there. That will be important.”

  “Should I keep a space open for you?” she asks, though I think she already knows the answer.

  “No. I’ve got somewhere else to be,” I tell her. And too many crimes to pay for.

  Her work-roughened hand touches my arm. My bitch routine isn’t fooling her at all.

  “You have to keep them in check after you come out,” I tell her. “Gem was always a reluctant leader. You have to be stronger. Take care of them.”

  She looks at me. Her eyes are deep brown pools of sorrow and worry. “I don’t know everyone in the network, only the ones who came through the farm. We thought it was safer that way in case the Vigils found us. Gem knew all the Angels of Mercy.” She takes a short breath. “Innocent people are going to die. Innocent angels.”

  “Those lives are on my conscience, not yours,” I tell her. I turn to go and then stop. Behind her, I can see the other angels still huddled around the dining room table, their voices rapid and shaky.

  “He wasn’t scared,” I tell her. “Not at the very end. He died dreaming of a girl in a coffee shop.”

  This is a lie. Gem was terrified even as he slipped into that deepening morass of sleep. But the lines of worry soften around Fiona’s eyes, and she puts her hand to her heart in a small gesture of relief. It is a sweet lie, and I don’t regret telling it.

  Chapter 41 – Gabe