Angel Fever

10

AT THE NAME OF HIS old mentor, Alex straightened slowly. Cully had been the best Angel Killer he’d ever known – practically a father to him. The news that Cully’s angel burn had finally killed him was almost a relief; Cull would have hated what he’d become.

“What do you mean, ‘he knew something’?” Alex asked.

Kara fumbled in her jeans pocket and produced a cellphone. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “I managed to hide it. Have you got a charger?”

The phone was identical to Alex’s – he’d bought them both the previous December. “Yeah, I’ve got one,” he said, staring down at the silver case. “What’s on it? A video?”

Kara nodded, her gaze sorrowful. She knew what Cully had meant to him. “He was ranting pretty badly, and he kept mentioning you. Alex, he was worried – he kept saying, ‘We can’t let him figure it out’.”

Alex tucked the phone into his own pocket. Obviously, Cully had realized the deaths of a few angels could destroy them all. Don’t worry, Cull; I screwed that one up good, he thought. The angels are totally safe now, for ever.

“You think you know what it is,” Kara said, watching him.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “And it’s all over.” He told her what had happened. The words tasted bitter.

Kara swallowed but thankfully didn’t comment. “I don’t know, Al…what Cully was saying didn’t seem related to the angels being linked or not. He kept talking about Martin too.”

Alex frowned. “Dad?”

“Yeah. Something about an idea that Martin had had… I couldn’t make head or tail of it. Just watch. Maybe it’ll help, somehow.” Her eyes fluttered closed then, her bruised face gaunt.

Frankly, Alex doubted it – his dad had been pretty out of it those last few years before he died. He sat studying Kara for a long moment, his emotions jumbled.

“Listen to me,” he said finally. “If you’re staying, then I don’t want to hear a single word about Willow and Seb. They’re part of the team – end of story.”

Her good eye reluctantly opened. “I know,” she said after a pause. “It’s just a gut reaction; I can’t help it. But I’ll keep it to myself.”

Alex realized that was probably the best he was going to get from her. Maybe when what she’d been through had faded a little, she’d come around. Unfortunately, she had all the time in the world to do so now, with no end to any of this in sight.

He rose. “Get some sleep, okay?”

Kara lay watching him, her muscles tense. “You’ll watch the video?”

“Yeah, I’ll watch it.” At the door, Alex paused. “Hey – I’m really glad you made it,” he said.

Kara’s smile was a ghost of smiles he remembered. “Me too.”

The temptation to go crawl into bed beside Willow, forgetting the whole world as he drew her into his arms, was almost overwhelming. The weight of the phone in his jeans pocket wouldn’t let him do it.

Alex headed for the comms room instead, where he’d stowed all their old phones in a cabinet. After he’d plugged in Kara’s cell, he sat with his thumb hesitating over the buttons. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing Cully near death. At least the last time he’d encountered Cull, the man had looked in perfect health, even if he was feverishly devoted to the angels.

Finally Alex started the video. The quality was grainy; Cully was lying on a cot in what looked like a crowded warehouse, packed with other sick people.

Alex grimaced, unsurprised that this was how the angels treated their followers when they neared death. He wouldn’t have recognized the spindly man on the cot – until he saw Cully’s eyes: the vivid blue of a Georgia sky.

Kara’s voice was just audible. “Hey, I didn’t catch all that, Cull. Can you tell me again, straight from the top?”

Cully was turning his head restlessly. His voice was still deep, with a southern resonance. “You’ve got to stop Alex from doing it – you’ve got to. He’s smart; he’ll figure it out…”

And then Alex stopped noticing anything except the words Cully was saying. The video was just over a minute long. When it finished, he slumped back against the office chair. His heart clubbed against his ribs as he stared down at the phone.

Jesus. No way. This could not be true; there was just no way.

Finally, in a daze, he reached for the phone and hit the Play button once more. As Cully’s monologue filled the small room again, Alex wasn’t surprised that Kara hadn’t understood what he was talking about – it was all half-finished phrases, allusions to things that only Alex and his brother, Jake, had known. Along with their dad, whose insane idea it had been to start with.

But if what Cully had said was true…maybe it wasn’t so insane after all.

Alex listened tautly. Cull’s voice was clear, despite the background noise of groans and people talking. “It can be done, like Martin always said. I took over where he left off, back at the camp. I had to. Couldn’t help myself; I didn’t care what might happen. Took me so long, and I got so close – then I got sick and ended up here.”

It all made perfect sense to Alex…and the part that had made the hairs at the back of his neck prickle had even more effect this time. Cully, his head rolling feverishly, said: “I just left it there. You’ve got to tell the angels, Kara; they’ve got to go fix it so it’s not there any more. If Alex finds it, he could do what Martin was planning – it’s really possible, I’m sure of it now. He was always better with the energy work than anyone else. We gotta keep him away or it could all be over – the angels gone for ever…”

Alex stared at the now-still screen; an image of Cully’s face, slightly blurred, gazed back. A memory came: himself and Jake having dinner with their father. Martin was pointing his fork at them.

“Mark my words – this will be what finally defeats them. Nothing we’re doing here will do any good.”

Jake had winked at Alex out of their father’s vision. “Yeah, but, Dad, even if you ever finish this thing, won’t the burst of energy just kill you the second you try to go through? Kinda like, I dunno…a giant bug zapper?” His voice was innocent.

Alex had been fourteen; black humour when dealing with their father had become standard operating procedure. He’d snorted, trying unsuccessfully to turn it into a cough. Their father’s latest idea was deranged on so many levels that you had to either laugh or go crazy yourself.

Fortunately, Martin had been too busy glaring at Jake to notice. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he’d snapped. “I’m telling you, I just need to be in their world for a few minutes, and I can defeat them! What I sensed was definite—”

It had been more than Alex could take. “Dad, come on,” he’d protested, putting down his fork. “It doesn’t matter what you sensed; there’s no way you could get over there in the first place! The angels can change to their ethereal forms when they cross. If we tried to go through, it would just kill us. You know that! You’re the one who told me that.”

His words were a spark setting off a powder keg. When Martin finally released them, Jake had been seething.

“Next time you start arguing with him, I’m going to strangle you both,” he’d grumbled on their way back to the dorm. “Why do you bother? He’ll never listen.”

Their footsteps were steady on the cement. Alex shrugged testily. “Because it would just be suicide. Can you imagine the burst of energy if he tried it? This whole place would blow sky-high.”

Jake had given him a look of exaggerated patience.“No it wouldn’t, because – listen carefully, little brother – the idea that he could ever make his own gate is a complete freaking delusion.”

Now his brother’s words seemed to reach across time and space to find Alex again.

“Maybe it wasn’t a delusion after all, Jake,” he murmured, touching the phone’s smooth casing. Because, unbelievably, it sounded as if Cully had nearly finished what Martin had started.

The thought brought a chill. Of course, there was always the chance that Cully had gone crazy with angel burn; maybe nothing he’d said could be trusted. Yet somehow Alex doubted it. The last time he’d seen Cull, the man had been as sane as anyone, apart from his devotion to the angels.

Alex massaged his suddenly pounding temples and tried to recall a time when Cully had been wrong. He couldn’t. John Cullpepper had been a slow-talking southerner with a quick, sharp mind; when it came to angels especially, no one in the world had known more than Cull.

And he’d thought Martin’s plan to defeat them was really possible.

On the screen, Cully’s blue eyes seemed locked on Alex’s. As Alex gazed down at his old mentor, he knew that the plan’s feasibility was only part of it – because what he’d told his father was true. Cully had known, too: I didn’t care what might happen.

If Alex tried this, the attempt to get there would probably kill him.

He sat motionless for a long time.

He wasn’t afraid of death – he’d been raised knowing he could lose his life every time he went on a hunt. If anything, he was surprised to still be alive at nineteen. This, though – to deliberately take odds that he knew were likely to kill him – Alex let out a breath. Yeah, this felt pretty different.

He touched the bracelet Willow had given him, unconsciously tracing its strands. He wanted to live – and to actually do this thing would be insanity. Yet underneath everything was a lake of deep, pure relief. Finally, there was something he could try that might fix what he’d broken in the world – some action he could take, instead of just training other people to go out and die.

If Cully was right, this was their only hope.

Alex knew then that he’d decided. It was worth any odds. I don’t have a choice, Cull, do I? he thought grimly. Ironic, that Cully had shown him a possible solution when he’d been trying his best not to.

At long last, Alex straightened. His muscles felt heavy. A glance at the clock showed it was three thirty in the morning – he’d been in here over an hour. He started to return Kara’s phone to his pocket, then stopped mid-motion. No. Bad idea. He stowed the phone in the cabinet and locked the door.

As Alex shut up the comms room, he knew that the sooner he left for New Mexico, the better. If this thing was possible, then he wanted to move fast, before the angels did any more damage. And more than that…the longer he hung around here thinking about the probable outcome, the harder it would be to go. The only thing he’d ever wanted for himself was a life with Willow.

Willow. He went still as the promise he’d made came back: that he wouldn’t put himself into danger without telling her. Dread touched him, and he swallowed. Danger – yeah, this probably qualified. Oh, Christ, how could he tell her this and then make himself walk away from her? Imagining the look on her face, he knew that dying would be easier.

Slowly, Alex started back to their bedroom. His footsteps echoed in the empty corridor. I have to tell her the truth, he thought. I promised her.

But with every step, he was aware of Kara’s phone locked in the cabinet, becoming further away by the second…and deep down, he realized he’d left it there for a reason.