A Slither of Hope (21 page)

The church.

I grabbed the handrail and climbed the four cracked, uneven stairs. With my hand on the brass door knob, I said, “I feel like a little variety tonight.”

Slim and Shorty grinned as I pulled the door open. The scent of incense, candle wax, and old wood mixed inside. It had been so long since I’d been in a church, the old familiar smell made me sneeze. In the old days, long before cell phones, cars, and electricity, I spent my nights in whatever church I could find, laid out in the pews, talking to my brothers about very different things than people talk about now.

“There are enough for all of us,” Shorty said.

The smell had brought me further back into my past than I'd been in years. Further back than it was safe to remember. Further away than I should have been with these two at my back. “Grab whoever you want and bring them back here, just don't cause a scene. Let's keep this neat and quiet.”

“If we can,” Slim added with a horrid smile that I wanted to hit off his face so badly. The amount of teeth in Slim's mouth had to be double what normal people get, either that or his mouth was too wide, showing all his teeth at once. Either way, I wanted them bloody.

The two flared their wings out and took to the back of the church.

Since there were no services tonight, so the pews were sparsely populated. I counted seven women and one man, all over the age of forty, the majority of them with seventy percent or more gray hair. I'd always wondered what it would be like to have gray hair, or experience any aging at all. A deep wrinkle, crow's-feet, arthritis. It didn't appeal to most humans, but those were the kinds of badges of honor that angels aren't allowed.

I was doing it again. Getting lost. I needed to stay focused. Killing Sorath might have lessened the Fallen's hold on my leash, but it was still choking me, and my mind was overcompensating by taking a few liberties of its own when I needed it here, now.

I snatched up the closest human and silenced her with one look at my eyes. “Ssshhh. Everything is all right.” With any luck she'd live through this. When I saw Slim and Shorty towing their meals behind them, I brought the older woman in my arms behind the altar wall. “No matter what happens, don't scream,” I told the woman, hoping she wouldn't die from a heart attack in the next two minutes.

Slim had the old man with him. Interesting taste in appetite considering women outnumbered men seven to one. He wasted no time holding the man's mouth open and taking the red-tinged essence into his own, his wings reflecting countless silver pinpricks of light.

Shorty slammed his woman against the back wall, shaking several pictures of the priests currently serving at the church above him. He coaxed the woman's mouth open, almost sensually, and kissed her before turning to me. “Not hungry?” he asked, his eyes narrowing in his brother’s starlight.

I threw on a hasty grin and pinned the old lady to the wall. When her life force started to trickle in, a haze filled my brain, clouding my vision. When things were this good, I understood the need humans had for drugs. The parts of the woman I could taste were candy. Pure, honey-coated, sin-free emotion. I drank her in, unable to stop. The thump of her heart against my chest began to slow, the irregular beats telling me if I held on much longer I would drain her dry.

That couldn't happen. I turned my head away, waiting for the pounding desire, the absolute need, to die down. With my palm flat against her face, I turned her head to the side, trying to focus my vision. Clouds of black parted, changing to red smoke. Shorty feeding. I pushed my lady off and released my knife, pulling it free and flicking it open, though it was sticky with Sorath’s blood.

With one quick glance at Shorty, still preoccupied, I positioned myself behind him and drove the blade in, through the wings, and hopefully into his heart. For good measure, I yanked the knife out and snapped his neck. If he wasn't dead, he'd be incapacitated while I—

The man Slim was feeding on pitched out a hysterical scream. His cries carried in a deep echo that resonated through the church. Slim glanced over from his meal. By the time his brain registered what was happening I was already closing in on him. Slim threw the old man at me. I had just enough time to move the knife so I didn't stab the innocent man.

“Get out,” I told him, not needing black eyes to make him obey.

Slim took to the air. “You're a traitor!” he screeched, circling above Shorty's body.

“I've been getting a lot of that today.”

He dove into me, knocking the knife from my hand. A fist fired into my still-sore nose. I recovered quickly and kicked out, flinging him back into the wall. The plaster behind him crumbled on impact, sending him soaring straight through it. Plaster dust coated him like a reject ghost. He rolled onto the altar. The remaining churchgoers screamed and rushed toward the door. Slim flapped his wings, dusting the area around him in white powder. Before he could take off, I dove through the hole in the wall and tackled him. The slippery bastard squirmed out of my grip before I could lock my hold on him.

There was no way for him to know I couldn't fly. What he
did
know was that he wouldn't be walking away alive if he faced me on the ground. What
I
knew was if he never came down I'd be screwed.

Slim flapped his wings again and left the ground, hovering a few feet off the ground. I saw an opportunity and ran for the mosaic column beside him. I jumped, kicked off it, and hooked an arm around his waist.

“You can't fly!” he said.

I reached up, grabbed a massive handful of feathers, and yanked until his wing snapped. His cry almost made me smile. We sank. The floor came up on us fast, slamming into my back. The hard marble altar cracked under our weight, sending up more dust. We both rolled off in separate directions. “Now. Neither. Can. You,” I breathed out around failing lungs.

Despite his newly broken wing, Slim climbed to his feet first. He rounded the altar, pulling a real knife off his from his ankle. A way bigger knife than the one I just lost. Faster than I would have guessed he could move, Slim lunged at me. I managed to roll out of the way, the polished steel barely missing my head. He followed through with his strike. The blade speared into my left wing and pinned me to the floor. I bit my lip and grunted through the pain.

He stood in front of me, hunched forward, catching his breath. I saw my opportunity and took it. I kicked the front of his knee with all my strength. The crunch of bone on bone and the pitch of his scream told me I'd done exactly what I'd set out to. He crumpled to the floor at an awkward angle, his kneecap shattered. I crawled forward, reaching for him. The knife tacking me to the floor ripped into my wing with every movement. Pain burned the closer I inched. Stretching my fingers, I grabbed a handful of his jeans and dragged him toward me.

I slammed the back of my calf down on his knee again and again until he passed out. It didn't take much. Then I tugged Slim beside me. I wrapped my hands around his head. Just like I did with Shorty, I pulled his neck in one direction, the release needed for the next step to truly break the neck, and then snapped it back the opposite way. Incapacitated.

Now to get unstuck. I wriggled right and left, tearing more of my wing until I could get a hold of the knife's handle. Then, I yanked it out. Blood and relief rushed to my head. I used the cracked altar table to help me climb to my feet. Standing over Slim, I plunged his own knife into his chest, twice, for the fight he put up. Unlike with Sorath, I felt nothing for these two. We had no past, and now they'd never have a future.

I limped behind the crumbling wall to where I left Shorty, and punctured a few more holes in his heart with Slim’s knife. There wasn’t enough time to search for my own knife, so I left it behind and headed out the side door toward the church basement.

Being covered in blood and holding Slim's big-ass knife wasn't going to help me take Other Guy by surprise. There was nothing I could do about my clothes. Maybe I could use this to my advantage, too, since I barely had enough energy to stand let alone take on anyone head-to-head.

Only one remained.

I burst through the basement’s back door, running toward the main room. “We're being attacked!” I yelled ahead of me.

“Where? How many?” His voice carried through the hallway.

“Not sure,” I rasped. When I breached the room, I pretended to trip and stumbled right in front of the untrusting Fallen.

“Where?” He quickly moved to help me.

A fatal mistake. I drove Slim's knife through his heart. “Right here.” With a quarter twist, I removed the blade and wiped it on his shirt before he collapsed to the ground.

I backed into the closest wall, trying to keep all the pain at bay long enough to mentally prepare myself for the long walk back to my car. I couldn't stay here long, though it would be something to be caught by the cops for a triple murder. Until they discovered we all shared a single fingerprint—the only thing we still had in common with the angels. The one thing they didn't take from us when we Fell.

Pulling myself to my feet again, I checked Other Guy's phone. A text from Lucien an hour and a half ago.

“I almost had the girl. She's on the move. Find her.”

I couldn't forget how frantic Ray looked when she turned that corner and found me with Sorath. No wonder. Lucien had found her. She’d probably run from him to me—and Sorath.

On my way to the car, I called Ray's cell. Voicemail. Further proof she was on her way out of town. Not good. That would only make her harder to find.

Once I made it to the car, I drove to the nearest storage facility where I had an emergency bag. There, I changed and wrapped my wounds so I wouldn't bleed all over these, too.

Now, if I were Ray, where would I go?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Rayna

The bus ride took almost twenty-four hours with one transfer, a two-hour layover in L.A. Thankfully, I didn't see a single set of wings. When I stepped off the last bus, Arizona was dark and cold—so cold I could see my breath and feel a layer of frost deep inside me. I zipped my jacket up as far as it would go and slept in the bus station until they kicked me out sometime around one. After finally getting almost warm, the night chilled everything more than before.

I walked down the street to keep warm and found a motel a mile or two later. I managed to check in without a credit card or ID. All I had to do was put down a three-hundred-dollar cash deposit.

The next morning, I took a much-needed shower and headed to the only address I found for Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital for the Mentally Ill. The crumbling building hid behind a chain-link fence. Faded graffiti in a rainbow of colors and ages mauled the outer plaster and most of the plywood nailed over the doors and windows had jagged, weather-beaten edges. I screamed and banged my palms into the fence. When the frustration finally drained out of me, I hung my head and focused on my breath. I'd never know what happened to Mom.

Being back in town was strange. So many different emotions burrowed beneath my skin. Apprehension, longing, fear, regret. What I couldn’t get out of my head: I needed to be closer to her. The ache tore into me with renewed claws.

On burning, throbbing feet, I found my way back home. The house I grew up in. I parked myself on the curb across the street and watched the family living there now. Mother, father, and young son. I watched them for hours; I felt every emotion, twice. When the sun started to dip behind the tree in the front yard, I knew it was time to move on. I hadn't gotten any closer to Mom here than I had in San Francisco.

I needed to see her.

As the sun faded and the cold began to take hold again, I trekked several more miles to find my mother. The cemetery looked the same it had all those years ago. It took a lot of watering to keep grass green during an Arizona summer, so the cemetery was mostly dirt and rocks with the dry desert mountains in the backdrop. Eight rows back, thirty-seven headstones down. I remembered. But two rows back I caught sight of a man—with a set of wings.

Of course. Of course one of them would be waiting here in case I came back.

But I wouldn't run. Whoever he was, he could fly. He'd catch me in no time. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He would either try to kill me or take me. And this time, I was prepared for a fight. This time I wouldn't go willingly.

The closer I got, the more familiar his stance became. When I made it to the eighth row and turned in, I knew it was Kade. What I didn't know was whether I'd be fighting him or not. The bruising beneath his eyes reminded me of the hit I finally landed. My first. And it was a good one. I could do that again if I had to.

When I reached Mom's grave, I turned my back to him. No matter what was going to happen next, I needed this now. I set my hand on the top of the marble headstone. I remembered tears. So many tears. Dad pulling me and Laylah into a hug. Right in this very spot, after her funeral, but I didn't want a hug. I wanted… I wanted my mom back. I wanted answers. I wanted life to make sense again.

My fingers slipped off the cold headstone one at a time. “What are you doing here?” I finally asked Kade, without turning around.

“When you left, I knew there were only a handful of places you could've gone.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“It wasn't what you think with Sorath.”

“You mean the Fallen angel I caught you with?”

Kade exhaled. Not quite a sigh, not quite readable. “I was getting close to them. Trying to throw them off your trail. It sounds like somebody got close enough to find you, though.”

“Yeah, you.”

“Someone else.”

Somehow…he knew. Surprise made the words tumble out. “I still don't know if that was real or not. He looked like Cam. He felt like Cam. And then suddenly… he didn't sound like Cam. Didn’t act like him. When he tried to grab me, I ran.” I looked at him, fresh tears rimming my vision. “How am I supposed to trust you now? Did you think you could just bat your pretty brown eyes, give me that awful crooked smile and we would just, what, go back to San Francisco, and pretend nothing ever happened? Pretend we didn't…” I didn't know how to finish, so I didn't.