Angel Burn Read online

  I rose to my feet. “Hi, Beth,” I said, gripping my bag. “I — I just wanted to talk to you for a second.”

  “Get away from me.” Her face was white, her lips pinched.

  The church was still filled with the buzz of the other new members receiving hugs and congratulations, but around us it had gone deathly silent. Conscious of everyone nearby watching us, I glanced back at the tall silver doors. “Look, can’t we just step outside and talk?” I started to touch her arm, and she jerked away.

  “My angel told me you’d be gone by now,” she hissed. “That they’d taken care of you, so that you could never hurt them.”

  The church, the pews, the people — all of it seemed to fade away as I stared at her. “Hurt them? What are you talking about?”

  Beth’s face was so full of hatred that something shrank inside of me; her beautiful lips were almost a snarl. “My angel told me, OK? You’re sick and twisted! You hate the angels; that’s why you told me all those terrible things — you’re a danger to them; you want to destroy them!”

  Her voice rose as she went on, until she was almost shouting at me. I shook my head dumbly, unable to speak. A danger to the angels? Was she completely insane?

  Beth’s cheeks had gone paper-pale, with a single spot of color high on each one. “You’re never going to hurt them, Willow,” she said softly. “I’m going to stop you.”

  She turned and ran back up the aisle, her blue robes churning over her slim calves. I stared after her in a daze and slowly became aware of the low murmurs all around me. “A danger to the angels?” “Yes, our angel said so.” “That one, the girl with the long blond hair.” My throat went dry. People were whispering, glaring at me. Not a single face looked friendly. Then up at the front, I saw Beth talking urgently to a man with sandy hair, pointing back at me.

  It was her angel. He was in his human form again. He was here.

  The angel looked sharply at me; I could feel the menace radiating off him even from where I was standing. Trembling, I took an uncertain step backward, and then suddenly I felt a strong hand grab my arm. “Get out. Now,” said a low voice.

  The dark-haired guy. I didn’t need to be told twice. I turned and ran with him beside me, still clutching my arm. Our footsteps echoed briefly on the pink-veined marble; he shoved open a silver door, and we burst out into the sunshine, pounding down the broad white stairs. Behind us, the preacher’s shouts were thundering out through the microphone: “That girl must be stopped! She’s evil; she plans to destroy the angels! On the angels’ orders, she must be stopped now, before she hurts them!”

  “Oh, my God, what’s happening? What’s happening?” I panted.

  As we neared the end of the lawn, I glanced over my shoulder and stifled a scream. The angel was in his angelic form again, flying after us, wings on fire with the sun. The dark-haired guy whirled around; he reached under his T-shirt and pulled out a pistol. The angel let out a furious screech, diving right at me.

  And then . . . and then I don’t know what happened.

  The fear left me. It was as if I’d suddenly grown taller. I was up in the air, and I had wings myself — glorious, shining things that gleamed like frost on snow. I felt the autumn coolness on them as I hovered, shielding my human body with its fragile aura below. I watched the approaching angel, looking it coolly in the eye.

  The creature drew back, startled; at the same moment, I heard the gun go off and saw its halo waver and buckle. And then it just — vanished, erupting into millions of petals of light.

  “Come on!” yelled the dark-haired guy, grabbing my arm again. Before I knew it, I was snapped back to myself, running alongside him as we tore across the parking lot. What had just happened? Behind us, the crowd was starting to pour down the stairs. Angry shouts drifted toward us: “There she is!” “Get her, before she hurts the angels!” Halfway to my car, my steps faltered as I glanced back. Wildly, I thought, Nina, this was a really bad idea. A man built like a football player was far ahead of the rest of the crowd; he was already at the parking lot, racing across to a silver pickup truck. He wrenched open the door.

  The dark-haired guy jerked hard on my arm. “Run, if you want to stay alive!”

  I turned and sprinted as fast as I could, clutching my bag to my chest and barely keeping up with him. We passed my Toyota and I pulled on his arm, gasping, “Wait — this is mine —”

  He ignored me. We got to the black Porsche; he clicked the doors open. “Get in, hurry.”

  “But —” In confusion, I glanced back at my car and saw that the crowd had reached the parking lot; they were surging across, screaming and shouting; I could feel their hatred like a great wave rolling toward me. The man who’d made it to the pickup truck was so close now that I could almost make out his face.

  He was holding a rifle.

  As he saw me staring, he stopped and took aim, sunlight gleaming on the black metal. I couldn’t move. I just stood there, frozen in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. This really, seriously could not be happening.

  “Get in the car!” shouted the dark-haired guy. Opening the passenger door, he shoved me in; as he ran around to the driver’s side, the sharp sound of gunfire echoed. Flinging himself into the driver’s seat, the boy slammed the door and started the engine; a second later we were roaring away from the parking lot. Twisting in my seat, I saw that the man with the rifle had dropped to one knee, still shooting at us.

  “He — he was trying to kill me,” I stammered. We careened onto the main road; the dark-haired guy swung the steering wheel to the left, taking us away from the interstate. “Oh, my God, he really wanted to kill me.” Suddenly I was shaking so hard I could barely speak.

  “They all wanted to kill you,” said the boy shortly.

  We hurtled onto Highway 5; in seconds the speedometer had reached seventy, and it was still climbing. He drove expertly, sending us flying down the highway. For a while, neither of us spoke. I huddled against the soft leather seat, so cold that I could barely think. The boy kept checking the rearview mirror, his eyes flicking back and forth. As soon as he could, he turned off onto a back road and then another and another, flinging us around the tight turns. Finally he’d spiderwebbed his way across to Route 20; he pulled onto it with a screech and floored it.

  Relaxing slightly, he turned and really looked at me for the first time since we’d escaped. “So what are you, anyway?” he said.

  My head jerked up, startled. He was serious. “What do you mean, what am I?”

  “Part angel, part human. How?”

  My jaw dropped. “Part angel? I am not!”

  “Yeah?” His voice was hard. “So what was that thing that appeared above you when the angel attacked?”

  I licked my lips, suddenly terrified. “I — I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “There was an angel above you with your face,” he said, accelerating as he passed a truck. “It looked like it was protecting you.”

  I couldn’t speak. The wings I’d felt, hovering in the air with the coolness of autumn on them. “I . . . I don’t believe you,” I got out. “I was just hallucinating or something.”

  “Then you did feel something,” he said, giving me a sharp glance.

  “No! I mean — it was all confused, I don’t really —” I stopped, pushing the memory away. “Look, I am not part angel, OK? It’s impossible.”

  “Yeah, it should be.” His eyes narrowed. “But you’re part angel, all right, and the only way I can think for that to happen is —” He broke off, almost scowling as he tapped the steering wheel. “No way,” he said in an undertone. “It can’t be.”

  God, he was as crazy as Beth. Sitting up, I shoved my bag down by my feet. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated, grating out the words. “I didn’t even know that there were angels until a couple of days ago.”

  “What about your parents?” he asked abruptly. “Who’s your father? Do you know him?”

  I was star
ting to hate him a little. “Who are you, anyway?” I snapped. “You’re not just some random guy who thought he’d check out the church, are you?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “No, you answer mine.”

  Though the boy didn’t move, I suddenly had an impression of power from him, like a feral cat that might spring at any second. “I was following you,” he said finally. “My name’s Alex. And you’re Willow. Is your last name Fields?”

  I stiffened. “How did you know that?”

  His mouth quirked into something like a smile, except that there was no warmth to it. “Because I was in your house this morning.”

  “You were in my house?”

  The boy — Alex — sped up to pass an eighteen-wheeler. The Porsche moved like silk on glass. “Yeah,” he said, his voice curt. “I was given orders to kill you.”

  Remembering the gun he was carrying, the air froze in my lungs as I stared at him.

  He snorted slightly, catching my look. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to do it. I work for the CIA.” He grimaced. “Or worked, probably. My job was to hunt down and destroy angels. I was told that you’re one. And instead you’re . . . ” He trailed off, his eyebrows lowering. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” he muttered.

  I could hardly speak for a moment. “You’re seriously saying that the CIA ordered you to kill me. And you expect me to believe this.”

  Alex shook his head impatiently. “No, I’m saying that I got an order to kill something I was told was an angel. I thought the order came from the CIA, but now I know it didn’t, that it came from the angels themselves. Anyway, I followed you, to see what was going on.”

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. Alex might be one of the best-looking guys I’d ever seen, but he was also loony-bin delusional. “This is just . . . completely insane.”

  He gave me a scornful glance, his dark hair falling across his forehead. “Really? You saw what that thing did to the new members; I was watching you. Angels have been around for centuries, feeding off humans — causing death, insanity, disease. It’s called angel burn. That’s what they do.”

  The scene in the church flashed back to me: Beth’s energy subsiding into grayness as the angel drained her. Had this really been going on for centuries? My mind reeled; it was too much to take in. Looking away, I rubbed my arms, trying to warm myself. “Uh-huh. And you think that I’m part angel, for some reason.”

  Alex’s gaze raked over me, his blue-gray eyes startling under dark lashes. “Yeah, let’s see. That same angel that appeared above you outside the church? I saw it hovering over you as you slept this morning. It looks almost exactly like a real angel, only without a halo. Your aura is a mix of angel and human; so’s your energy.”

  I remembered again the feeling of flight, of lifting up above my body with wings. No, stop. I was not going to think about this. “OK, so there’s an angel that hovers over me while I sleep,” I said, my voice shaking. “And you saw this when you were in my house, working for the CIA, even though you’re, like, my age. Great, yeah, I think I’ve got it now.”

  The Porsche glided in and out of traffic as Alex changed lanes. “You didn’t answer my question about your parents,” he pointed out coldly. “Do you know both of your birth ones? You don’t, do you? You were raised by a single mother or adopted or something.”

  I drew my knees up to my chest. “That’s — none of your business.”

  “Do you ever cause pain when you touch people? How about being psychic?”

  “Cause pain? Of course not! But —” I hesitated as a small cold drop of dread darted down my spine. “But, yes, I’m psychic. How . . . how did you know that?”

  His lip curled, as if he wasn’t surprised. “It’s an angel trait. How did they find out about you, anyway?”

  I definitely hated him now. When I didn’t answer, he shot me a look. “How? It’s important.”

  I wanted to tell him to bite me, but something in his voice made me answer. I glared at him. “Because . . . I gave Beth a psychic reading. I saw the angel; I saw that it was hurting her. I warned her to stay away from it and she got angry, and then later the angel showed up on my doorstep in its . . . human form, or whatever. It pretended to want a reading, and when I said no, it grabbed my hand . . . ” I stopped, remembering the images that had seethed through me. “And then it left.” My mouth felt dry as I again saw the flying shards of light outside the church. “What — what happened to it? When you shot it, what —?”

  “I killed it,” said Alex. “OK, so it came and read you. And it saw something that scared it. When was this? Thursday? Late afternoon, early evening?”

  He’d killed it. I couldn’t believe how matter-of-fact he sounded, as if he did this every day. I tried to marshal my thoughts. “Yeah, Thursday. Early evening. How . . . ?”

  “That was when I got the order.” His jaw clenched; he slapped the steering wheel with his palm. “Damn it. I knew it. They really have taken it over.”

  I frowned as I watched him. Who had taken what over? Then all at once I realized that we were heading east, away from Pawtucket. “Hey, where are you going? I have to go home!”

  “No way,” he said flatly. “You’d be dead in a day.”

  I felt my eyes widen as I stared at him. He gave me an irritated glance. “Come on, you saw those people. Do you really think they’re going to just forget about this? They’ve been told that you’re an abomination who’s planning to destroy the angels. Christ, they’ll tear you to pieces if they ever see you again. What about that girl? Does she know where you live?”

  My veins turned to ice. “Mom,” I gasped. “Oh, my God, I have to get home — you’ve got to take me home right now!”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m not taking you home.”

  “You have to! My mother needs me; she’s sick —”

  His voice turned harsh. “Yeah? Well, the best way for you to put her in danger is to go back there. Do you really want an angry mob turning up at your door if she’s sick? Maybe deciding to go for the abomination’s mother, too, while they’re at it?”

  “Shut up,” I whispered, feeling nauseous at the thought. “I — I can go to the police, or —”

  “They won’t help you. Half of them are Church of Angels.”

  “OK, well, what do you suggest?” I said, my voice rising. “Are you saying that I’m homeless now? You don’t even know me — just take me home! What do you care what happens to me, anyway?”

  His mouth twisted. “I don’t, except that the angels seem pretty convinced that you’re a danger to them for some reason. So if you think I’m going to let you go get yourself killed, you’re crazy.”

  “You have nothing to say about it!” I shouted. “What, am I like your captive now? Take me home!” Alex didn’t respond, and I shoved his arm. “Hey! Are you listening to me?”

  He slammed on the brakes, spinning the wheel and swerving to the shoulder of the road. The Porsche rumbled over the gravel and stopped with a lurch. “We don’t have time for this,” he said. Again I had an impression of barely sheathed strength, even just in the way his forearm was draped over the steering wheel. Alex’s eyes locked on to mine, his expression fierce. “Listen carefully; I’ll use small words. If I take you home, you will die. Anyone you care about might also get hurt or die. The only way you can keep them safe is to never go back there.”

  Goosebumps chilled my arms; I was almost trembling. I wanted to believe that he was lying or crazy, but I couldn’t. Everything about him — his voice, his tone, his vibes — felt like he was telling me the truth.

  “This can’t be happening,” I whispered. “This just can’t be happening.” That morning when I’d woken up, things had been almost normal. Then I remembered the shiver of dread I’d felt when I kissed Mom earlier, and my throat clenched.

  “It’s happening.” Alex rapped a fist against the steering wheel, glowering out at the passing cars. “I need you to come to New Mexico with me,” he s
aid at last.

  For a second all I could do was gape at him. “As in New Mexico, the state,” I said.

  “Yeah. The only person I can still trust is there.”

  “And what does that have to do with me, exactly?”

  He gave me a look like he couldn’t believe I was really this stupid. “Because if there’s even a chance that the angels are right about you, then I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “Oh, you’re not,” I said, my voice shaking with disbelief. “Well, great. Do I get a choice about this?”

  His leather jacket gave a faint squeak as he shrugged. “Sure. You can go home and get killed, and put everyone you love in danger. Go for it.”

  My chin jerked up as we stared at each other. “I don’t even know you,” I gritted out. “If you think I’m going to drive all the way across the country with you, you’re insane.”

  The only sound was the traffic on the highway. Alex’s dark eyebrows were drawn together, his jaw tense. “How psychic are you?” he demanded. “How do you do it? What do you need?”

  I shrugged, trying to hide my sudden apprehension. “I . . . just need to hold someone’s hand.”

  He thrust his hand at me. “Here. Go on.”

  I shook my head, not moving. “I can’t do it like this. I’m too upset.” Alex kept his hand in the air between us, his blue-gray eyes a challenge. Finally, my mouth tight, I took his hand in my own. It was warm, firm, with calluses on the bases of his fingers. Stupidly, heat flickered through me. Annoyed with myself, I ignored it and closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind.

  Jumbled images started flashing past: A camp in the desert, with barbed wire and a burning sky. His brother, taller and broader than him but with the same eyes. Killing angels — the hard, deadly joy of it. Aunt Jo’s house, with Alex sitting outside it in his car. He really did work for the CIA. I saw him sensing something strange about my energy — something not angelic, but also not human. Then he was inside, watching me as I slept. I caught my breath sharply as I viewed myself through his eyes, lying curled up on the sofa under our old afghan. There was an angel floating peacefully above me with her head bowed — beautiful, radiant, serene. She had no halo; her wings were folded gracefully behind her back. As Alex moved slowly around our coffee table, keeping his gun on her, her face came into view.