A hand clamps onto my mouth.
The angel shushes me with a whisper lighter than air. The first thing I see in the dim moonlight is the metal cart. He must have jumped off the couch and rolled it over here in the split second it took for the glass to break.
It dawns on me that if, for the moment, the angel and I are on the same side, then someone else is a threat to us both.
CHAPTER 9
Below the door, light plays back and forth in the semi-darkness.
The fluorescent lights were on when I fell asleep but now it’s dark with only the moonlight streaming in through the windows. The light moving in the crack beneath the door looks like a flashlight jerking back and forth. Either an intruder came in with flashlights, or my mother turned one on when the lights went off. A sure sign of habitation.
It’s not that she’s unaware of the risks. She’s far from stupid. It’s just that her brand of paranoia makes her fear supernatural predators more than natural ones. So sometimes, lighting the dark to ward off evil is more important to her than avoiding detection by mere mortals. Lucky me.
Even chained and pulling a metal cart, the angel moves like a cat to the door.
Dark stains seep through his white bandages like Rorschach patterns on his back. He may be strong enough to break a roll of duct tape, but he is still wounded and bleeding. Just how strong is he? Strong enough to fight off half a dozen street thugs desperate enough to roam at night?
I suddenly wish I hadn’t chained him. It’s a good bet that whoever the intruder is, he’s not alone, not at night.
“Hell-ooo,” a man’s voice calls out playfully through the dark. “Anybody home?”
The lobby is carpeted, and I can’t tell how many of them there are until things start to crash from different directions. It sounds like there are at least three of them.
Where’s Mom? Did she have time to run and hide?
I gauge the window. It won’t be easy to break, but if the gang members could do it, I should be able to too. It is certainly large enough for me to hop through. Thank whatever goodness is left in the world that we’re on the ground floor.
I push at the glass, testing the sturdiness of it. It would take time to break this. Plus, the noise would echo throughout the building as I bang repeatedly on the window.
Outside, the gang calls to each other. They hoot and holler, smash and crash. They’re performing for us, making sure we’re good and scared by the time they find us. By the sound of things, there are at least six of them now.
I glance again at the angel. He’s listening, probably figuring out his odds. Being wounded and chained to a metal cart, his chance of outrunning a street gang is about zero.
On the other hand, if the gang is drawn by the noise of the window breaking, they would be fully occupied as soon as they saw the angel. The angel is like the proverbial gold mine and they the lucky miners. Mom and I could get away during the chaos. But then what? The angel can’t tell me where to find Paige if he’s dead.
Maybe the gang will just break a few things, raid the food in the kitchen, and leave.
A woman’s scream pierces the night.
My mother.
Men’s voices shout and tease. They sound entertained, the way a pack of dogs might sound if they’d cornered a cat.
I grab a chair and smash it against the window. It makes a huge bang and flexes, but doesn’t break. I want to make as much of a distraction as I can, hoping the noise will make them forget about my mother. I bang it again. And again. Frantically trying to break the window.
She screams again. Shouts come my way.
The angel grabs his cart and hurls it at the window. Glass explodes in every direction. I cringe but a distant part of my mind is aware that the angel has shifted, using his body to block the shards from hitting me.
Something thumps hard against the locked door of our office. The door rattles but the locks hold.
I grab the cart and pull it up to the window sill, trying to help the angel get out.
The door crashes open, bouncing off the wall with broken hinges.
The angel spares me a quick, hard glance and says, “Run.”
I vault out the window.
I land running. I dash around the building, looking for the back entrance or a broken window to jump through. My mind is crowded with what might be happening to my mother, to the angel, to Paige. I have an almost irresistible urge to hide under a bush and curl up in a ball. To shut off my eyes, ears, and brain, and just lie there until nothing exists anymore.
I shove the horrible, screaming images in my head into the dark, silent place in my mind that is getting deeper and more crowded each day. One day soon, the things I stuff in there will burst out and infect the rest of me. Maybe that will be the day the daughter becomes like the mother. Until then, I am still in control.
I don’t have to go far to find a broken window. Considering how many times I banged at my window and still failed to break it, I hate to think about how amped up the guy who broke this one must be. That doesn’t make me feel any better about sneaking back into the building.
I run from office to office, cubicle to cubicle, whisper-shouting for my mother.
I find a man lying in the hallway leading to the kitchen. His chest is bare, his shirt torn away. Six butter knives stick out of his flesh in a circular pattern. Someone has drawn a powder-pink lipstick pentagram with the knives at the end of the points. Blood bubbles up from each of the knives. The man is all eyes and shock as he stares at the ruin of his chest as though unable to believe it has anything to do with him.
My mother is safe.
Seeing what she did to this man, I can’t help but wonder if that’s a good thing. She has purposely missed his heart, and he will slowly bleed to death.
If we had been back in the old world, in the World Before, I would have called an ambulance despite the fact that he had attacked my mother. The doctors would have fixed him up, and he would have had all the time he needed to recover in jail. But unfortunately for all of us, this is the World After.
I step around him and leave him to his slow death.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a woman-shaped shadow slipping out through a side door. She stops before the door closes and looks back at me. My mother frantically waves her hand at me to come with her. I should join her. I take two steps in her direction, but I can’t ignore the grunting and crashing of the colossal fight at the far end of the building.
The angel is surrounded by a gang of scruffy but deadly-looking men.
There must be at least ten of them. Three are strewn about at odd angles beyond the circle of the fight, unconscious or dead. Two more are taking a beating from the angel as he swings the cart like a giant mace. But even from here, even in the thin moonlight streaming in through the glass doors, I can see the crimson stains seeping through his bandages. That cart must weigh a hundred pounds. He is visibly exhausted and the others are moving in for the kill.
I’ve sparred with multiple opponents in the dojo, and last summer, I was one of the assistant instructors of an advanced self defense course entitled “Multiple Assailants.” Still, I’ve never fought more than three at a time. And none of my opponents have ever wanted to actually kill me. I’m not stupid enough to think that I can take on seven desperate guys with the help of a crippled angel. My heart tries to gallop out of my chest just thinking about it.
My mother waves at me again, beckoning me toward freedom.
Something smashes on the far side of the lobby and a grunt of pain blots out the other sounds for a moment. With every hit to the angel, I feel Paige slipping away from me.
I wave my mother away, mouthing the word, “Go.”