CHAPTER 8
In the office kitchen, I collect instant noodles, energy bars, duct tape, and half the candy bars. I put the bag into the corner office. The noise doesn’t bother the angel who seems to be enjoying the sleep of the dead again.
I run back to the kitchen just as the sound of the shower stops. I run several bottles of water to the office as fast as I can. Despite being relieved that she has found me, I don’t want to see my mother. It’s good enough that she’s safe and in the building. I need to focus on finding Paige. I can’t do that very well if I’m constantly worried about what my mother is up to.
Trying not to look at the corpse in the foyer, I remind myself that Mom can take care of herself. I slip into the corner office, close the door and bolt it with the door lock. Whoever had this office must have enjoyed his privacy. It works for me.
I was confident of my safety when the angel was unconscious, but now that he’s awake, him being wounded and weak is not enough to guarantee my safety. I don’t actually know how strong angels are. Like everyone else, I know close to nothing about them.
I duct tape his wrists and ankles together behind his back so that he’s hogtied in the most uncomfortable-looking position. It’s the best I can do. I consider using twine to reinforce the duct tape, but the tape is strong and I figure if he can get past that, the twine isn’t really going to add much to it. I’m pretty sure he barely has enough energy to lift his head, but you never know. In my nervousness, I use almost the entire roll of tape.
It’s not until I’m done and looking at him that I notice that he is looking back at me. All that hogtying must have woken him up. His eyes are a deep blue, so deep they’re almost black. I take a step back and swallow the absurd guilt that surfaces. I feel like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t be doing. But there’s no question the angels are our enemies. No question that they’re my enemy, so long as they have Paige.
He looks at me with accusation in his eyes. I swallow an apology because I don’t owe him one. While he watches, I unfurl one of his wings. I pick up scissors from the desk drawer and bring it close to the feathers.
“Where did they take my sister?”
The briefest emotion flickers in his eyes, gone so fast that I can’t identify it. “How the hell should I know?”
“Because you’re one of the stinking bastards.”
“Ooh. You cut me to the bone with that one.” He sounds bored, and I’m almost embarrassed by my lack of a stronger insult. “Didn’t you notice I wasn’t exactly chummy with the other fellas?”
“They’re not ‘fellas.’ They’re not anywhere near human. They’re nothing but leaking sacks of mutated maggots, just like you.” Lookswise, he and the other angels I’d seen were closer to living Adonises, complete with god-like faces and presence. But inside, they were maggots for sure.
“Leaking sacks of mutated maggots?” He raises his perfectly arched eyebrow as though I’d just failed my verbal insult exam.
In response, I cut through several feathers of his wing with a cruel snap of my scissors. Snowy down floats gently onto my boots. Instead of satisfaction, I feel a wave of uneasiness at the expression on his face. His fierce expression reminds me that he had been outnumbered five to one by his enemies, and he had nearly won. Even hogtied and wingless, he sure could give an intimidating look.
“Try doing that again, and I’ll snap you in half before you know it.”
“Big words from a guy who’s trussed up like a turkey. What are you going to do, wobble over here like an upside-down turtle to snap me in half?”
“The logistics of breaking you are easy. The only question is when.”
“Right. If you could do it, you would have done it already.”
“Maybe you entertain me.” He says with supreme confidence as if he’s in control of the situation. “Like a monkey with an attitude and a pair of scissors.” He relaxes and rests his chin on the couch.
A flush of anger heats my cheeks. “You think this is a game? You think you wouldn’t be dead already if it wasn’t for my sister?” I practically yell this last part. I viciously chop through more of the feathers. The once exquisite perfection of the wing is now tattered and jagged at the edges.
His head pops back up from the couch, the tendons on his neck straining so hard that I wonder just how weak he really is. The muscles in his arms flex, and I start worrying about the strength of the bindings around his limbs.
“Penryn?” My mother’s voice floats through the door. “Are you all right?”
I look to make sure the door is locked.
When I look back at the couch, the angel is gone, with only shreds of duct tape where he should be.
I feel a breath on my neck as the scissors are snatched out of my hand.
“I’m fine, Mom,” I say with a surprising degree of calm. Having her nearby will only endanger her. Telling her to run will probably make her freak in panic. The only sure thing is that her response will be unpredictable.
A well-muscled arm slides around my throat from behind and begins to squeeze.
Grabbing his arm around my neck, I tuck my chin down hard, trying to transfer the pressure of his arm onto my chin rather than my throat. I have about twenty seconds to get out of this before either my brain shuts off or my windpipe collapses.
I crouch as low as I can. Then I spring backward, slamming us both into the wall. The impact is harder than if he’d weighed as much as a normal man.
I hear an “Oof” and the clattering of photo frames, and I know those gashes on his back must be screaming from the sharp frame edges.
“What’s that noise?” my mother demands.
The arm squeezes viciously around my throat, and I decide the term, “angel of mercy,” is an oxymoron. Not wasting my energy on fighting the choke, I gather all my energy for another slam into the wall. The least I can do is cause a lot of pain while he takes me out.
This time, his groan of pain is sharper. I would get a lot of satisfaction out of that, except that my head is feeling light and spotty.
One more slam and dark spots bloom all over my vision.
Just as I realize my vision is going out, he loosens his grip. I fall to my knees, gasping for air through my raw throat. My head feels too heavy on my neck, and it’s all I can do to not fall flat on the floor.
“Penryn Young, you open this door right now!” The doorknob jiggles. My mother must have been calling out all this time, but it hadn’t really registered.
The angel groans like he’s in real pain. He crawls past me and I see why. His back bleeds through the bandages in spots that look like puncture wounds. I glance behind me at the wall. Two oversized nails that used to hold up the framed Yosemite poster stick out from the wall, their heads dripping with blood.
The angel is not the only one in bad shape. I can’t seem to take a breath without doubling over in a coughing fit.
“Penryn? Are you okay?” My mom sounds worried. What she imagines is happening in here, I can’t begin to guess.
“Yeah,” I croak. “It’s okay.”
The angel crawls onto the couch and lies on his stomach with another groan. I flash him an evil grin.
“You,” he says, with a dirty look, “don’t deserve salvation.”
“As if you could give it to me,” I croak. “Why would I want to go to Heaven anyway when it’s crammed full of murderers and kidnappers like you and your buddies?”
“Who says I belong in Heaven?” It’s true that the nasty snarl he’s giving me belongs more to a hellion than to a heavenly being. He mars the fiendish image with a wince of pain.
“Penryn? Who are you talking to?” My mother sounds almost frantic now.
“Just my own personal demon, Mom. Don’t worry. He’s just a little weakling.”
Weak or not, we both know he could have killed me if that’s what he wanted. I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing I was scared, though.
“Oh.” She sounds calm suddenly, as if that explained everything. “Okay. Don’t underestimate them. And don’t make them promises you can’t keep.” I can tell by her fading voice as she says this that she’s reassured and walking away.
The baffled look the angel shoots at the door makes me chuckle. He glances my way, giving me a you’re-weirder-than-your-mom look.
“Here.” I toss him a roll of bandages from my stash. “You probably want to put pressure on that.”
He catches it neatly even as he closes his eyes. “How am I supposed to reach my back?”
“Not my problem.”
He relaxes his hand with a sigh, and the bandage rolls onto the floor, leaving a ribbon on the carpet as it rolls.
“You’re not sleeping again, are you?”
His only response is a muffled, “Mmm,” as his breathing turns heavy and regular like a man in deep sleep.
Damn.
I stand there, watching him. This is obviously some kind of healing sleep by the look of his previously repaired injuries. If he wasn’t so gravely injured and exhausted, there’s no doubt he would have kicked my ass to kingdom come and back, even if he chose not to kill me. But it still irks me that he sees me as such a small threat as to actually fall asleep in my presence.
Duct tape was a bad idea that only made sense when I thought he was weak as wet paper. Now that I know better, what are my options?
I dig around the office kitchen drawers and supply room and come up with nothing. It’s not until I go through someone’s gym bag under a desk that I find an old-fashioned bike lock, the kind with heavy chains wrapped in plastic, with a key in the lock. There’s something to be said for an old-school chaining.
There’s nothing in the office to chain him to, so I use a metal cart sitting next to the copier. I sweep the stacks of paper off it and roll it into the corner office. My mother is nowhere to be seen, and I can only assume she is giving me the professional courtesy of letting me deal with my “personal demon” in private.
I roll the cart next to the sleeping man—angel, I mean angel. Careful not to wake him, I loop the chain tightly around each of his wrists, then wrap it several times around one of the metal legs of the cart so that it takes up all the slack. Then I snap the lock shut with a satisfying click.
The chain can slide up and down the cart leg but can’t escape it. This is an even better idea than I first realized because I can now move him around without him being able to run off. Wherever he’s going, the cart will go with him.
I roll up his wings in the blanket and stow them away in one of the large metal filing cabinets beside the kitchen. I almost feel like a grave robber as I pull the files out of the drawer and stack them on top of the cabinet. I run my fingers along the stack. Each of these files used to mean something. A home, a patent, a business. Someone’s dream left to collect dust in an abandoned office.
As an afterthought, I drop the key to the chain lock in the drawer where I stored the angel sword on the first night.
I trot back through the lobby and slip into the corner office. The angel is still asleep or comatose, I’m not sure which. I lock the door and curl up on the executive chair.
His beautiful face blurs as my eyelids get heavier. I haven’t slept in two days, afraid to miss the one chance I might have if the angel woke, only to die on me. Asleep, he looks like a bleeding Prince Charming chained in the dungeon. When I was little, I always thought I’d be Cinderella, but I guess this makes me the wicked witch.
But then again, Cinderella didn’t live in a post-apocalyptic world invaded by avenging angels.
~
I know something is wrong before I wake. In the twilight between waking and sleeping, I hear glass breaking. I’m wired and alert before the sound fades.
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.