I tighten the grip on my gun and slip out the door, away from their view.

  Please don’t let any civvies come into the parking lot right now, I pray. One set of eyes from an innocent bystander, and I’m going to have a huge problem. It’s worth the risk though – Maya’s worth the risk.

  After a whole frickin minute, both doors to the truck open, and two figures drop out.

  Two. Damn. Change of plans. I’ll have to head shot the first and then proceed with my original plan on the second, assuming he doesn’t have time to unleash some weird power like jet streams of volcanic lava at me.

  The two angels are wrapped in heavy jackets, and I can see the puffs of their breaths as they come together and murmur. I wait for them to start making their way across the snow covered field just to be sure. Once they start moving in that direction, I’ll trail at a distance and hit them as soon as they’re out of sight of the parking lot.

  The two angels pull on plastic animal masks.

  In that instant, everything goes to shit. Total shit.

  Not angels at all.

  Chapter 12

  I watch the two guys slink off across the field, their flashlights turning the snow golden as they sink ankle deep with each step.

  What….the…fuuuucccckkkkk?

  I’d know those tarded masks anywhere. I’m dealing with the douches from the video I took down. But…but…my mind sputters. How the hell did they get Maya’s phone? Are they the ones who grabbed her?

  No way. It’d be like losing a fight to a Smurf. Maya is trained. She’s got angel speed and reflexes. These guys…they look like they read too many comic books and raided a zoo gift shop.

  I let the reality of the situation sink in. Ohhhh, ho, ho, when I rescue the shit out of Maya, she and I are having a serious conversation about getting abducted by proper bad guys.

  And now I’m stuck. The humans have gone off to set up their grand ambush of me, and it’s not exactly like I can go tromping out there and shoot them in the face. Not only are humans off limits in general, but these bumbling idiots are actually on our side. Maybe I could talk to them…except the fields are too empty. Nowhere to hide. I might as well wear a huge target on my ass if I took one step out of the parking lot. Which means I wait and think of a new plan.

  My phone purrs in my pocket.

  Oh thank Captain Picard’s glorious bald head. Tarren is finally getting with the program. I could so use his scowly self right now.

  “Bout damn time,” I say into the phone.

  “Hello?” The reedy voice on the other end is uncertain.

  Don’t tell me Tarren got his ass kidnapped by a malicious AV club.

  “Who is this? I don’t have time for games,” I snap into the phone.

  “Uh…dude, I’m just calling about the truck.”

  Truck?

  “The one for sale on Taylor Street,” the guy clarifies. Holy Special Olympics Batman! Did I seriously write my real phone number down on the sign? Worst. Vigilante. Ever. I think the spirit of James Bond just hung himself in despair.

  “Yeah, yeah, course,” I say as I tuck myself back into the Bug and close the door. No reason to freeze my dick off outside.

  “How much…”

  “Twenty grand.”

  “What? No way.”

  “That’s a steal for a talking truck,” I assure him.

  “A….”

  “Yeah, she talks. You know, all Magnum P.I.”

  “Uh…”

  “You’re probably wondering why I want to sell. Thing is, we’ve just grown apart these last few months. We used to be best friends, singing songs together as we drove the highways, occasionally fighting crime, but then, well, probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but full disclosure and all, I kind of…” I sigh dramatically, “I fell in love with her.”

  “Look, uh…”

  “I know, it’s crazy!” I cry. “You don’t have to tell me. But the heart wants what the heart wants. I told Jennifer, that’s her name. I got wasted one night, sat in the driver’s seat, and just poured my heart out while I stroked her steering wheel. Told her I wanted to take our relationship to the next level, but she just…” I let my voice waver. “She just didn’t feel comfortable with that. And so what am I going to do man? When I put my hand on her stick now, I just…things are so awkward. Even a drive to the gas station is torture.” I sniffle. “So we talked it over and…and we both agreed….Hello?”

  The dial tone greets my ear. He actually held on longer than I would’ve guessed. I don’t even know I’m shivering until I hear my teeth chattering against each other. Probably should have grabbed an actual coat from home while I was getting my lucky hat. I love this duster to death, but Mandy was right. It doesn’t do anything against sub-zero temperatures. I turn on the engine, crank the heat, and start channel surfing the radio for some good figure-out-how-to-get-stubborn-human-dickheads-to-talk-without-shooting-them music. Every radio announcer seems to be talking non-stop about the storm and the growing body count. Apparently a cop died this morning. Heart attack they say.

  Yeah, and I own a talking truck. Angels are here. Angels, us, and this new band of posers. What a combo. Hmmmm. Something starts to click in my brain. Did Zoo Friends think Maya was an angel? Did they see her toss a car over her shoulder, and then go after her? And what did they do to her? My heart does this weird squirming thing. If they’re wannabe vigilantes, what’s the chance that they abducted my sister instead of just putting a bullet through her head?

  Maybe they needed information, I tell myself, but it’s a long shot. We don’t keep angels alive for questioning – never have. It was Mom’s number one rule. We take them out, Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma’am. What if these guys are the same? What if they…. I press my forehead against the wheel, wishing my brain would just shut off, that I didn’t feel sweaty and freezing at the same time.

  I assume the Zoo Pals will man the ambush for at least two hours, but an hour later I see them trudging back, masks shoved up, noses red. Sad, sad, sad. Tarren and I would have staked the holy hell out of that playground. We would have been there all night, taping our fingers back on when they froze off.

  I watch the guys come closer. The tall, pale one with the penguin mask resting on his forehead hunches over, hands plunged into the pockets of his parka. The shorter, Asian guy next to him looks pissed.

  Lucky for them, I’m going to get their spirits up. I move into position, leaning casually against their Chevy truck. The wetness of the snow seeps into my jeans, and I shiver. My legs feel weak, but I keep a bored expression on my face.

  Penguin seems to grow taller as he approaches. He might even have an inch or two on Tarren but only half the muscle mass. An ugly red welt stands out on the side of his head. The Asian guy looks young, maybe not even out of his teens yet. His long face is twisted into a snarl. His tiger mask reminds me that he was my favorite in that pathetic video that they made. He’d bungled the script, shouting about how he was going to kill all the angels they found.

  I smile at the memory, but God help them if they’ve hurt my sister.

  They spot me and their steps slow. The tall one looks confused, and the short one just gets angrier.

  “Oh, I get it,” I call out to them. “The masks are like some kind of living artistic statement. Something about the animal trapped within. Very deep.”

  The tall one frowns and stops. They haven’t put two and two together, and I don’t blame them. They came here looking for a roided out angel. I don’t exactly fit the bill.

  “That’s our truck,” the tall one says. He moves to do something – maybe just open the driver’s side door, maybe try to shove me back. I take one swift step toward him, grab his arm, and throw my shoulder into his sternum. The beauty of this little trick is that I use his own momentum to flip him over my shoulder. He lands hard, the breeze whooshing out of his lungs.

  “Guess they don’t teach you that in art class,” I say.

  Tiger has smartly reassessed the situation. He steps back and quickly struggles out of his big jacket. When he moves into a basic defense pose I’m almost glad for it. This shouldn’t be so easy. A large chain hangs around his waist like some kind of retro belt.

  “Heavy pants, huh?” I say.

  “You wanna fight, asshole?” he spits out in this deep, low voice that’s all show. “Try me out.”

  “Okey-dokey.” This is going to be fun. Sure, I may be at the end of my strength, and maybe every bone in my body aches with fever, but I’ve been training in martial arts my entire life – judo, karate, tai chi, krav magna, MMA. You name it, and I’ve practically imprinted it on my DNA. And, unlike the majority of chain-belt-wearing ass hats I might mention, I don’t spend two nights a week sparring at a dojo in the local strip mall. I get plenty of real world practice against guys who are a hellauve lot faster and stronger than me.

  Tiger wants to take the first punch, so I let him have it. He edges closer and tries to go high with an elbow strike. He’s terrible about broadcasting his moves and not nearly as fast as he thinks.

  Not fast like me.

  I twist away from the incoming blow, spin behind him, and give him a little push to get him off balance. He stumbles forward, and I laugh. He’s so pissed, I expect to see steam coming out of his ears. He grits his teeth and comes at me again. This time he feints a round house but drops low to try and sweep my feet from under me. I duck the arm, grab his leg, and pull. He goes down on his back and rolls. Not a terrible recovery. He might be salvageable.

  Just as Tiger makes it to his hands and knees, I give him a knee to the ribs – not that hard, but it doesn’t take much. He goes down with a grunt.

  “Stay,” I tell him and try really hard not to grin so much. Probably not great for his ego.

  I turn to Penguin, who’s managed to pull himself into a sitting position against the tire. He wheezes like an 80-year-old pack-a-day smoker. Something tells me that he’s my best bet for information. Just as I open my mouth to start my first round of questioning, I hear Tiger’s feet scramble against the ground behind me, the warning clink of his chain. I wait, allowing him to ready his attack. Just as he takes his first step, I turn, duck the wild swing, and give him an upper cut to the jaw. My knuckles explode with pain, but he staggers back and blood spurts out of his mouth. I strike again, a swift punch across his face. My knuckles are begging for mercy, but Chainy goes down with a gushing nose.

  “Stay,” I tell him again and shake out my hand.

  Bird Brain watches me cautiously. I reach inside my duster and pull out the Berretta with silencer affixed. Smart of me to cut those holes in the pockets of my jacket to accommodate the silencer. The guy’s eyes widen for a moment, but then he takes a long, slow breath and meets my gaze.

  Color me a tiny bit impressed.

  “I don’t like that one,” I say motioning to Chainy, who tries to catch the blood waterfall in his hands. “He called me an asshole. Point of fact, I’m actually a pretty nice guy when you get to know me.”

  Bird Brain’s face is pale. “Are you one of…of…them. An angel?” His voice is soft but steady. I keep both guys in my line of sight and the gun tucked in front of my body, shielding it from view of the other cars in the parking lot. I’m pressing my luck, and I know it. Every second I stay out here is another second someone could walk out of the Rec center or pull into the parking lot.

  “I’ve got the talking stick,” I tell Penguin and give my gun a little wave. “So, I’m going to ask you a question. You’re going to answer me, or you’ll be shelling out for a pine box for your fashion disaster friend over there, capiche?”

  Bird Brain nods slowly. Chainy looks like he wants to take another run at me. “Don’t even think about it,” I tell him and try to put menace in my voice. Hard to play the badass when my teeth are audibly chattering, but I do my best. “I’ve got a real itchy trigger finger. You even fart over there, and it might be the last thing you ever do.”

  Chainy eases back down, but he doesn’t look scared. Not good. You find a man who isn’t afraid to die, and you’ve got one dangerous motherfucker on your hands. Luckily, Bird Brain looks scared enough for the both of them.

  “You texted me on a phone that belongs to my sister,” I tell Bird Brain. “I’m rather fond of my sister. The first thing you’re going to tell me is whether she’s alive. The second thing you’re going to tell me is where she is.”

  Bird Brains stares.

  “Start talking,” I bark. Lame, lame, lame, but my heart is jackhammering waiting for his answer. Please, please, for every drop of blood in my body, let her be…

  “She…she’s alive,” the guy stutters.

  I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding. I couldn’t dip those words in gold to make them any more precious.

  “But….she….” Bird Brain winces, “…she escaped.”

  Chapter 13

  My new friends introduce themselves as Penguin and Chain, and the three of us take a little walk across the parking lot, my gun keeping things pleasant as can be. I invite my captives to take the front seats of the Bug, while I slide in back. As soon as the doors close, I immediately feel less conspicuous, and it’s a hell of a lot warmer in here too. I keep my Berretta tucked in close to my side and trained on the dumbass with the chain belt.

  I order Chainy to hand me Sir Hopsalot’s carrying case, and once I place it securely next to me on the seat, we’re ready to begin. Bird Brain and I do a bit of conversating about my sister. Apparently Zoo Pals was on the trail of a different angel. They crossed paths with Maya and decided to abduct her instead. When he mentions cuffing her to a chair for interrogation, my trigger finger gets itchy.

  “Skip ahead,” I growl for their own safety.

  Whatever Bird Brain hears in my voice makes him swallow and stutter on his next words. They cut Maya’s questioning short when one of their team members – Bear or Beard or Burt, whatever – got a hit on another angel. I immediately have a million and one questions about their angel detection system, but I stay on track with Maya. I’m proud when Bird Brain glumly explains that Maya pulled off an impressive-sounding escape, bagging the angel the team brought back in the process and basically saving the lives of all of these jokers. Not that they’re willing to admit it.

  “Okay, she coffins the wings, and then what does she do?” I say, mostly to myself. Answer: Find Tarren, except my brother has apparently checked into the Fortress of Solitude and is completely unreachable.

  The peanut gallery pipes up. “Bear doesn’t think she killed the other a…angel,” Bird Brain says, like his mouth has a hard time pronouncing the word “angel.”

  “Course she killed him,” I snort at him. “Only a slobbering lummox keeps angels alive and tries to question them.”

  Chainy mutters something under his breath.

  “What?” I snap at him.

  He sighs as if this were the most pointless conversation in the world, like he wants to talk opera but we’re just sitting here trading dick jokes instead.

  “She didn’t kill him,” he says.

  “Look, I know my own damn sister and…”

  “Bear’s cameras have caught at least four of those soul sucking monsters around the city in the last two days. There’s a big group of them here dropping people like flies. He told your sister, or whoever she is, about it, told her to find the nest and take it out. She tranqed our captive; didn’t kill him. Finch saw the whole thing go down.”

  “She’s not that stupid,” I tell him, but a knot is twisting in my stomach. None of it even makes sense. How could the Bad News Bears here have tripped over four sets of wings in the same town? The only time we’ve come across a group of wings that big was in Poughkeepsie. The magnitude of this shit storm begins to rain all over me. Those four angels could only be the tip of the iceberg, or, for a better comparison, only the cockroaches who didn’t scurry fast enough out of the light. Would Maya risk keeping the angel alive to try and discover their home base?

  I know what Tarren would do. He’d run right into the fire and take as many of them down with him as possible. Probably look totally awesome doing it too until he bled out and they put his head on a pike, all Ned Stark style.

  The knot in my stomach tightens. If I can’t get in contact with Tarren, then Maya can’t either. She’s out there alone. What next Maya? How far would you go?

  The fact that I can’t answer these questions makes me want to retch all over the worn vinyl of this Pinto wannabe. I notice that both guys are turned in their seats, looking back at me. Great. Have we just been sitting in silence while I realize I hardly know my own sister anymore?

  “So, who the hell are you guys anyway?” I manage.

  “We’re the Totem,” Bird Brain answers right away.

  I remember the name from their so-horrible-it’s-actually-good video. I should probably do the right thing and stifle my laughter. I don’t do the right thing.

  The Asian kid’s face bunches up with anger. “These monsters, they’re just killing people, and no one’s doing anything about it!”

  “There are people doing something,” I correct him. “And you’re getting in our way.”

  “Are you human?” Bird Brain cuts off whatever the Chainy was going to throw out. His big brown eyes are serious, and somehow that cuts through my panic giggles.

  “Through and through.” I hold up my left hand and show them my palm. No angel seams of doom Xing through my skin.

  “But your….sister….” He seems to have trouble with that word.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” I tell him. “She was changed against her will.” Guilt slugs me in the gut as I remember that night. If only I’d kept a closer tail on Maya. I’d thought the campus was safe, that Grand would never be so bold.