Angel

Page 5

 

  “Coffee?” asked the waitress. She was plump and bored looking.

  He nodded. “Yeah, and orange juice. ”

  The waitress moved off, and Alex put his menu back in the holder and stretched. After he left Spurs, he’d cruised around until he found an all-night gym downtown. He’d bought a pass and worked out for hours, pumping the weight machines as if they were the enemy, doing reps until the sweat poured down his face and shoulders. And slowly, he’d felt the adrenaline that was shrieking through him begin to fade, giving way to a welcome, trembling tiredness.

  Finally he’d stopped, his head slumped against the crossbar of the abs machine. “Good workout?” asked an attendant. It was almost six in the morning by then, and the place was starting to fill up. All around Alex were the clatter of the free-weight machines and the sound of grunts, of feet pounding on treadmills.

  He had lifted his head and stared at the guy, hardly knowing where he was for a second. Then he nodded and managed a smile. “Yeah, great. ”

  Mopping his face with his towel, he stood up. His muscles felt like water. He used to go running after an angel encounter, but it was never enough; it didn’t exhaust him. This was good. He might actually manage to get some sleep sometime in the next day or two now.

  “Man, I was watching you attack those machines,” the man said cheerfully, squirting disinfectant on the seat of a stationary bike. He wiped it down. “You were like something possessed. ”

  Alex had grinned suddenly. “No, that’s everyone else,” he said. “You know — the ones I don’t get to in time. ” And leaving the bewildered assistant staring after him, he’d draped the towel around his neck and gone to take a shower.

  Now he took a gulp of dishwater-tasting coffee and gazed out the plate-glass window at the Rocky Mountains. The pancake house was humming with people — laid-back-looking moms and dads wearing jeans and happy smiles, and little kids bouncing on their seats as they scribbled on their Mr. Pancake coloring place mats.

  He had been to Aspen several times, even before the Invasion. Angels seemed to like it here. Who knew why — maybe it was the fresh mountain air. Alex propped his chin on his hand as he stared out at the snow-covered peaks in the distance. In a strange way, Aspen reminded him of Albuquerque, though Albuquerque was all desert and slanting light; golden stone instead of soaring mountains. It was something about the air — the way you felt so clean and reborn just by smelling it.

  His first solo kill had been in Albuquerque.

  Alex’s coffee cup slowed on its way to his lips as he remembered. He put it down again without drinking.

  He’d been twelve years old. Out on a hunt with Cully and Jake. Martin, his father, had already started getting sort of weird by then — he spent his time stalking around the camp muttering to himself, working his jaw as if he had marbles in his mouth, and when he wasn’t shouting at everyone, he was obsessively cleaning the guns at all hours of the day and night. Though there’d been a time when Alex could hardly imagine anything better than being allowed to go out on a hunt with his father, now he’d felt relieved when he hadn’t come along. And then he’d felt guilty for his relief. His father was a great man — everyone knew that. At least, everyone who counted.

  Even so, the mood was jubilant that day as their Jeep roared out of camp, sending up clouds of dust ten feet high. Cully, who was from Alabama, had let out a ringing rebel yell, and Jake had punched Alex in the arm, saying, “Hey, little bro, think you can take me? Think you can take me?” Suddenly Alex knew that they both felt the same way he did, and the guilt left him in a happy rush.

  “Yeah, I can take you,” he’d said, and lunged at Jake, getting him in a half nelson. Gratifyingly — his brother was two years older — it had taken Jake a few seconds to break free, and then he’d launched himself across the seat at Alex with a shout. The two of them fell into the back on top of the mountain of camping gear, scuffling and laughing.

  Back then, before the CIA had taken over with their angel spotters and coldly efficient texts, a hunt might take weeks. As well as their camping supplies, there were a couple of crates of canned food in the Jeep and boxes of cartridges. Their guns lay tucked out of sight for now: dependable deer rifles that weren’t very flashy but did the job. Cully even had his crossbow with him. He claimed it gave a cleaner shot, but Alex thought he was just showing off. It was a pain, anyway; they always had to go and find his bolt after a kill.

  “If either of you little dipshits breaks that stove, I’ll kill you,” Cully called back in his southern drawl. He spun the wheel, and the Jeep skidded around a curve in a shower of sand and pebbles, sending Alex and Jake banging against its side like rag dolls. Alex knew that once they got into civilization, Cully would drive like a model citizen, but out here it was the end of the world, with only dirt and yucca plants and lizards for company. You could do whatever the hell you liked.

  “Up yours. ” Jake glanced at Alex with a grin. Taller and stockier than Alex, he had the same dark hair, the same blue-gray eyes. You could tell they were brothers just by looking at them.

  They both looked like their mom.

  The thought had brought a hard edge to the day. Alex remembered a woman who loved to sing, who used to kick off her shoes and dance along with the radio while she was cooking. When he was little, he used to tug on her jeans to get her attention, and sometimes she’d stop what she was doing and lean down to catch his hands. “Dance with me, lover boy,” she’d say with a laugh, spinning him around.

  Alex knew that Mom was the reason they were doing this. She always had been. She was also the reason that his father was — maybe — going insane.

  The Jeep bumped and rattled over the rocky soil. Driving with one hand, Cully bit off the end of a cigar, spat it over the side, and lit up. He was wearing a black sleeveless shirt, and his shoulders and arms were statue-hard, rippling with muscle. He shook his head as he took a deep puff and glanced at Alex and Jake in the rearview mirror.

  “The Angel Killers . . . hope of the free world,” he muttered. “God help us all. ”

  The drive to Albuquerque took almost four hours, so that Alex had felt dull with boredom long before they got there. He perked up as they entered the city limits. Living out in the desert like a bunch of pack rats, it was easy to forget that there was a real world out there, but now it all beckoned to him in a sparkling rush — fast food, shopping malls, movies. A billboard with someone named Will Smith on it caught his eye: a tough-looking black guy carrying a gun.

  “Hey, Cull, can we go see a movie?” he asked, hanging over the front seat.

  “You and Jake can,” said Cully. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he smoothed his blond hair back with his palm and grinned. “I got me some other ideas, if you boys catch my drift. ”

  Women. Alex and Jake grimaced at each other. There were several female AKs back at the camp, but Cully said he liked his girls sweet, not dressed in combat gear and going out for target practice. Women who could shoot as well as he could were a touch off-putting.

  The plan was to stop off in the city for one night in comfort before they started roughing it on the long drive up to Vancouver, where Martin had heard rumors of angel activity. But as they pulled into a motel, Cully stiffened. “You know what?” he murmured, getting out of the Jeep. “I think there’s something goin’ on here. ”