The Warrior

  Yeah, the kind where I’m avoiding a dude getting anywhere near my wood.

  We’re nearing the end of our self-defense training, which, as Kraven promised, only lasted about a half hour, when I lay Paine out. He pulls himself up, and I can’t help noticing the smirk on his face. In fact, I’ve noticed it every time I’ve shut him down.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  Paine runs a hand over his shorn hair, and that smile of his dies. “Nah, it’s nothing.”

  “If you’ve got something to say, liberator, spit it out.”

  Paine bites the inside of his cheek like he’s debating speaking his mind. Finally, he says, “It’s cool training with you. Before I was assigned, I heard what you did, going into hell and all for the savior.”

  “For Charlie,” I correct him.

  He looks away like what he’s about to say is particularly embarrassing. “I just think it’s awesome, man. And I was looking forward to meeting you.”

  I eyeball the guy for a long time, still thinking about that word—traitor. But I can’t deny that it feels good to have a bro looking forward to meeting me. Max and I are friends, but we became friends out of circumstances, because we started collecting around the same time. But this guy is all I’ve heard about you, and I think you’re bomb.

  It’s nice, I guess.

  Not that I give a crap.

  Paine’s puffing his chest out, trying to squash some of the vulnerability he displayed. I offer my hand. He takes it immediately, and the grin that sweeps across his face is infectious. I laugh and slap him on the back like I did Max. Except when I do it, Paine slaps me back.

  “That was pretty cool how you tumbled with Kraven. And you really don’t have to treat me like I’m some supreme being,” I say. “But you can call me Jesus if you want.”

  “Dante!” Kraven yells.

  Paine laughs.

  I do, too.

  Kraven steps in front of me. He’s so close I can smell what he had for breakfast, which in his defense, smells like shooting stars and summer roses. And glitter. Maybe glitter, too.

  The head liberator is built like a brick wall. He opens his brick wall mouth and says, “You against Neco. No use of wings. This is your final exam for self-defense. Remember what happens if you flunk.”

  If he’s expecting me to panic, he’s off base. “Yeah, I remember. If I fail, I flunk angel school, and you take my cuff. My question is what are these groups? Is Neco in a group higher than I am? If so, that’s not a real fair matchup is it? Also, if there’s a group higher than this one—” I point to the crew behind me, the one that includes Max and Paine, “—then I should be in it.”

  Kraven’s face doesn’t change. He’s stoic as usual, and I decide his nickname should never have wavered from Cyborg.

  Cyborg waves a hand, and Neco comes forward. Everyone else moves back. Blue, in particular, seems excited to see this.

  I roll my shoulders, size up Neco’s solid frame, and say, “Screw it. Let’s dance.”

  10

  Whispers

  Neco doesn’t waste time. He drives across the mat like a bulldozer and takes me down.

  That’s fine.

  I let him do it.

  Right now, this is a game. I’m going to play it like a pro. I fight back some, but I hold back most of what I have and let him imagine I’m an easy victory. Neco takes hold of my left arm and pulls it behind my back. I squeal like a pig, and it might be my imagination, but I think I see the corner of Paine’s mouth twitch across the room. He knows I’m half-assing, and I like him a touch more for realizing this.

  For about five minutes, I let Neco have his fun. But I don’t want to wait too long. After all, what if Kraven calls it before I’ve had my chance to rumble?

  Neco has me pinned on the training mat, his stomach on my back and his hands reaching for my throat. I give Paine a nice, big smile, and then I throw my head back into Neco’s nose. It crunches. His hands jerk away from my neck, and I leap up.

  Even though his nose is gushing, painting his lips red, Neco pummels toward me. I step to the left and then sweep the legs out from beneath him. He’s back up quickly, and this time he waits for me to make the first move. He’ll be waiting a long time if that’s his ploy.

  After tiring of our circling, Neco spins around and throws his leg out in a roundhouse kick. It’s some kung fu shit, and I know just what to do with it. I grab his ankle and spin against his momentum, tearing the muscles in his hip. I drop his leg and bounce back, light on my feet. Look at me, I’m a cat. I got nine lives!

  Neco’s eyes widen, and when I flash him the same smile I did Paine, he realizes I played him. I’ll be honest, I feel conflicted over the physical pain I’ve caused him. Not that he spared me any discomfort when I gave him his turn.

  The liberator laughs like he’s about to show me what he’s really got.

  Then he roars like a chainsaw and barrels forward.

  Neco fakes like he’s going to grab me on the left, but at the last second, he goes for my right arm. He pulls it over his shoulder and—oh, damn!—I’m airborne. My back slams into the ground, and the breath is ripped from my lungs. He pins me, and across the room, I spot Kraven’s mouth move like he’s going to call the match. I struggle against him, trying to recall defense moves that’ll get this dude off me. But he’s got his arm beneath my knee and the other around my neck, pinning my arms beside my ears. I don’t know how this happened, and I don’t know what to do.

  My heart pounds, and my face drips with sweat, and Kraven is going to call it. He’s going to call it! My cuff!

  I’ve passed this test before. It was Blue and me against Neco and two humans. How could I do it then and not now?

  And I realize why at the same moment that Neco whispers her name.

  “Those collectors are going to slaughter your Charlie,” he says into my ear, his Australian accent thicker than I’ve heard it in the past. “And then there will be two girls you’ve let die.”

  I hear what he just said.

  I hear it.

  His words are a bloated corpse floating to the bottom of a swimming pool.

  My entire body pulls in. It’s like every muscle, every tissue, every last tendon that weaves itself together to create me, wants to be as small as possible.

  Then they are bigger than life.

  They are too big, stretching me out until I am swollen version of myself. I take up every last bit of space. It is mine. Everything I’ve ever wanted is mine. It always has been, but now it’s solid, and I can touch it.

  A light flashes behind my eyes, and I erupt like a thousand soldiers cresting a trench. Neco shoots across the room like he’s an iron ball blasting from the throat of a cannon.

  Everything stops.

  Neco lies still.

  I’m on my feet, my arms thrown out by my side. My wings are spread out in a great black sky about my body, but that’s not what helped me. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what that sensation was or where it came from.

  Valery rushes to Neco’s side, and he groans. Within a few seconds, she’s got him to his feet. Neco points a shaky arm at me. “Kraven said no use of wings. Are you deaf?”

  I regain my composure, forget what just happened inside me, and instead remember what he said right before my body turned into a weapon. I cross the space between us and grab him by the jugular. “Want to repeat what you said about Charlie and Aspen?”

  “Dante, let him go,” Valery says.

  Someone pulls me off Neco and attempts to hold me back, but I’m a bull hoofing the dirt, ready to charge. For a moment, I thought Neco might have been dead, and now I’m almost disappointed he isn’t. “I know what you are,” I growl. And my head chants traitor, traitor.

  Neco tears away from Valery. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I heard what you said!” I lunge at him again and another pair of arms pin me in place.

  “Kraven told us to get you guys riled up, to
say and do whatever we needed to in order to push you to your limits.” Neco glances at Kraven, and I follow his gaze. Kraven nods, but he’s hiding something.

  I realize Max and Paine are the ones holding me, and I bark at them to let me go. They exchange glances before doing so. I take a step toward Neco and hold up my hands like I’m not going to do anything to keep Max and Paine from grabbing me again. Then I stare into Neco’s face. His jaw is clenched, and his eyes are storming, but I can’t be certain he’s lying about what he said being for training purposes.

  “Even if Kraven told you to provoke me,” I mutter, my voice low, “what you said was poison. It was disgusting.”

  Everyone is quiet as I stride toward the exit.

  Kraven speaks as I pass him. “Come back after you’ve cooled off. We have more training.” And then he adds quietly, “You and I need to talk about what you did to Neco.”

  He means when Neco flew across the freaking room. To anyone else, it might have seemed like I tossed him with my wings. Kraven and I are the only ones who can call them, so they have no idea what they can do. But this was something much bigger, something I don’t understand at all.

  So I’m relieved Kraven says something about it. It suggests he may have answers.

  My mind whirls as I leave the training room and pace the hallway outside. I can’t stop thinking about what my body did back there and where it came from. I can’t stop thinking about Neco and if he’s the traitor Oswald spoke of. But mostly, I can’t stop thinking about what he said. Not only about Charlie dying, because that’s a fear that’s haunted me for weeks. But about Aspen. What if what Neco said about her is true?

  What if Aspen is already dead?

  11

  Soul Touching

  I return to training a few minutes later, but my brain is stuck on Aspen. Why is it that I’ve always assumed she was alive? Maybe it’s because I could never allow myself to believe the opposite. That she could truly be gone, burning in hell for eternity. I always imagined that Rector and Lucille had a plan for Charlie and Aspen both, that they wanted to collect their bodies and souls and somehow use them for their benefit. But what if that’s not it at all? What if they just want them gone so we can’t use them? Collect the savior and soldier’s souls first—

  Then stop their beating hearts.

  I can barely concentrate as Kraven introduces us to the second sector of training—using shadow in battle. The whole time I practice becoming invisible at key moments, I keep one eye trained on Neco. He doesn’t notice I’m staring, but maybe it’s because he’s avoiding looking in my direction. Any other attention I have is focused on keeping my legs beneath me as I think about Aspen.

  Aspen with blue lips and vacant eyes.

  Aspen, dead.

  The dreams I’ve had don’t help matters. What if somehow, someway, I’m seeing Aspen in death?

  Max pins me for the last time, and finally, as the sun dives into the ocean, Kraven says we’re done for the day. “We’ll begin tomorrow morning at 7:00.”

  Everyone files from the room, and Kraven takes hold of my shoulder. He leans in and says in a low voice. “I’d like to see you tomorrow morning before training. Report to my room at 6:30.”

  I’m too exhausted to argue, which is perhaps the reason he trains us so hard. I nod and leave. Even though I’m too drained to banter with Kraven, I’m never too tired to seek out Charlie. So I head to the basement.

  I hear Annabelle and Charlie talking over each other as I approach the open doorway. As I get closer, I notice Annabelle has a lamp shade on her head, and Oswald is chuckling to himself. Charlie is walking like a zombie and making grunting sounds. I stop and watch them, smiling to myself. My girl appears so happy. I wish there was something I could do to make this moment last longer. But the second they see me, Annabelle removes the lamp shade and walks over. Charlie follows her.

  “How was training?” Annabelle asks. “Can you show us what you learned?”

  Charlie wraps her arms around my neck. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” I whisper against her neck.

  Behind Charlie, I spot Annabelle pouting from being ignored. She cocks a hand on her hip and purses her lips. I pull Charlie closer and say to Annabelle, “I’ll teach you a thing or two tonight before we crash out.”

  Charlie’s friend perks. “More like, you’ll try and teach me, but then…but then I’ll be the one teaching you how to be…a liberator…the awesome skills….”

  “Good one,” I say.

  “They can’t all be winners.” Annabelle sobers. “I just want to help. I want to do something besides take up space. Maybe if I learned how to fight…”

  “Annabelle, you are helping,” Charlie says. “Look at you. You have a smile on your face and a can-do attitude. It’s hard to imagine we can’t win this war when you’re around. You make people believe in goodness and fun and all the stuff that’s worth fighting for.”

  Tears spring to Annabelle’s eyes, and she grins. Then she points a finger at Charlie and me and says, “I am not crying. I don’t cry. I’m hard as steel.”

  “Jaysus, Annabelle,” I groan. “You’ve been hanging around me too long.”

  “Hey,” she says, directing her next question to me. “Did you see Kraven get all wild over me? He’s kind of hot, right? I mean, he’s completely unstable. But he’s unstable in that ‘I want you to kidnap me and take me to the middle of nowhere and show me just how volatile you are’ kind of unstable, am I right?”

  “This again,” Charlie says through a laugh.

  Annabelle can’t stop herself now that she’s on a roll. “Dude’s built like a tank and with that blond hair and crazy eyes? Yes. That.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Everyone knows Kraven has lost his head to her, or that he hates her in his profoundly twisted way, but Annabelle reciprocating the feelings? “So you like him?” I ask.

  “Whaaaat?” Charlie looks like I said a man in woman’s underwear isn’t that strange.

  At the same time, Annabelle says-slash-screeches, “Are you serious? No, I don’t like him. Gross.”

  “But you just said—”

  Annabelle rolls her eyes and punches me in the shoulder on her way out the door. “Dante, sometimes you really are dense.”

  After she’s gone, I hold my palms out in silent plea for Charlie to explain what just happened. She just wraps herself around me again. “Don’t try to understand us. It’s impossible, like staring into the sun.”

  Oswald clears his throat. I glance at him and take in his shamrock green robe. It ends at the knee, which adds insult to injury. I imagine in the department store, all the other robes made fun of this one. There may have been a yellow one that was nice to its face, but that’s the one that was really behind all the name calling.

  “Oswald,” I say. “Your robe is the color of testosterone.”

  The old guy touches his hands to his robe and Charlie elbows me in the ribs. “Be nice.”

  “Did you two work together?” I ask them.

  Charlie practically skips in place, and Oswald shuffles his feet. I narrow my eyes at him. He acts the part of a shy, awkward, old man, but he showed streaks of boldness last night. I don’t forget that.

  “She’s a quick learner,” he says.

  “I felt some tingling in my hands.” Charlie glows like a polished apple. “It’s a start.”

  “That’s amazing.” And it is. I turn to Oswald. “Wait, doesn’t Kraven want you to lie low about this, keep us thinking you don’t know about us?”

  He grins. “I just told the girls. They won’t tell anyone.”

  Charlie shakes her head like the secret is as good as dead. When she leans back, she says, “And that’s not all. We uncovered another part of the scroll.”

  My brows shoot to my hairline. “Tell me.”

  Oswald is smiling so big I notice one of his molars is missing. Might not be such a bad thing since the last time his teeth were white was circa 1
960. “It’s all about utilizing the books in the library to work it out.” Oswald takes a few quiet steps and retrieves a book from one of the two desks. It’s covered in blue cloth and is worn at the edges. A gold clasp cinches the middle. Oswald opens it and points to the introduction. “Read this.”

  I start to read it to myself, but Oswald tells me out loud.

  I begin again.

  “The purpose of this work is to define the relationship between the demon, Mongo, and the angel, Hidalgi. It explores the dynamic the pair shares in an evolving environment in which humans walk alongside demons and angels without seeing. Mongo, the criuttel, is said to be…”

  “Stop.” Oswald holds up a hand and points to the word cruittel. “Now, what do you imagine that means?”

  I think about it. “Demon? That’s what they said he was in the first line.”

  Oswald shows me his old man grill. “Very good. He sets the book down and picks up a notebook overflowing with yellowed paper. “There are common phrases used to unlock ancient documents like your scroll. Unfortunately, we don’t know the translation for all the words. See here? See this one?

  He opens the notebook and points to a short phrase. Charlie looks over my shoulder at it, too.

  Fa windows ri giovunkrol wicked will fall bftello piv.

  “This could very well be the phrase that unlocks the next part of the scroll, but I’m missing the translation for certain words,” Oswald says. “Do you understand?”

  I lean closer to the parchment. “I think so. You want me and Charlie to spend hours of our life digging through books to find a handful of funktified words and use context clues to translate what they mean?”

  Oswald beams. “Yes, yes exactly.” He digs through his notebook and offers me a sheet of paper. “Charlie and I used a few of them here to translate a line today.”

  Charlie comes to stand beside me. “The words suddenly appeared when we read the old language aloud. Look.” She points to the scroll on Oswald’s desk, and sure as hell, there’s a line there even I can read.

  The room unburned holds a sparrow among crows.