The things she said have haunted my dreams, might just follow me all the way past Judgment Day into the great beyond. Might bring torment with me, like shackles, into God’s kingdom, whether he likes it or not.
“I can’t…I can’t break free,” she said, still staring up at the concourse of pipes and ducts that traversed the warehouse ceiling. “I’m tangled in something. It feels like a web.” Tears streaked her face. Slow, glycerin-like streams. “They’ve been chasing me and I’m so tired of running, of trying to hide. Oh, please get me out of here! I don’t know where I am. There’s no light, just a dark glowing horizon, like fire in the distance. And these creatures—” She moaned, a heartbreaking cry, long and low and inhuman. I found myself wondering if we were really listening to a woman or if some spirit from beyond had commanded an audience. “They’re like spiders, but much bigger. I saw one of them eat a man. It ripped his head right off.” Her eyes closed.
Meanwhile, my father ran around the room, fiddling with dials, gesturing to the other workers to try and save her.
“It’s so dark. So cold,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “And I’m so alone.”
Most of them stood frozen, like me. Listening.
Then she turned toward one of them, looked right at him. Allen was his name. She reached one arm out, then shrieked. And she was gone.
To this day I still imagine her trapped in a twilight world, waiting for someone to rescue her. But I know now that no one ever will. God wouldn’t have left her there if she were one of His. Even if we had messed with His plan, with His order laid down from the beginning, He still wouldn’t have abandoned one of His chosen.
That’s the only way I can rationalize all of it.
CHAPTER NINE
Chaz:
Pete Laskin leaned over his laptop, thick bangs tousled on his forehead, his pale skin blue from the monitor’s glow. He cleared his throat, typed in a few more keys, long fingers looking almost ghostly as they flew in a blur. He glanced over at me, dark circles beneath haunted eyes.
“Where’d ya gets this?” he asked.
We both focused on the marker, still inside the plastic bag.
I shrugged.
He shook his head, then leaned back. “No, man. You gots ta tell me. I gots—I mean, this here—we’s in way too deep here.”
I peered over his narrow shoulders, tried to figure out what all the numbers on his screen meant.
“Look, Chaz. I promises I won’t tells nobody, but you gots to be honest with me.”
“I took it off one of the Stringers,” I said finally.
“It was your Newbie, wasn’t it?”
I just stared at him. The less he knew, the safer he was.
“This here’s a government job, boss.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? Since when does the government put markers in Stringers?”
“Is she in there?” he asked, gesturing toward Angelique’s room. The door was closed.
Outside, New Orleans fought against the inevitable. Fringes of black clung to the horizon, stale fluorescent light sputtered from spindly streetlights, and a steamy haze hung over the broken skyline. Somewhere in the invisible distance daylight crouched, like a golden panther ready to leap across the heavens.
Angelique would be waking up soon.
I nodded. I didn’t say anything but I couldn’t help wondering how he knew my Newbie was a woman.
Pete’s mouth slid into a short-lived, sardonic grin. “Okay, so you don’t wants to talk about your current assignment, but it seems likes somebody is pretty interested in her. Or him. Or whoever they was before they jumped.”
“We were followed last night.” I took a sip of coffee, glanced at Pete from the corner of my eye. We’d been best friends since we were nine, but I still wasn’t sure how much I should tell him.
I could almost see the gears shifting in his blue eyes, thoughts processing through the motherboard in his brain. “Has you been tailed before?”
I shook my head.
Just then I realized that Pete wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring at something behind me. I turned and saw Angelique standing in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt that barely covered her thighs. Her long hair hung in a Rapunzel tangle, a glittering mass of gold and silver. Somehow she was even more beautiful without makeup. She yawned.
“Do I smell coffee?” she asked.
“In the kitchen.” I pointed toward a short hallway.
She ambled away on long sinuous legs. Poetry in slow motion.