26
I wake up blinking in the sunlight in the back of a classic Rolls-Royce. Everything is sleek and shiny and polished. Big band music plays with glorious fidelity. The driver wears a black suit complete with a chauffeur’s hat. He watches me through the rearview mirror as I groggily come to.
My head feels foggy, and my nose is still full of a chemical scent. What happened?
Oh, yeah, the cult . . . I put my hand up and touch my hair to make sure it’s still there. You never know.
My hair is still on me, but my sword is not. Only my empty teddy bear hangs on my shoulder strap. I stroke the soft fur, wondering what they did with my sword. It’s too valuable for them to have left it and too heavy for them to have taken it far. I can only hope they hefted it into the trunk or somewhere nearby as proof that they got the right girl for the bounty.
My car seems to be part of a matching caravan of classic cars – one in front of us and one behind.
‘Where are we going?’ My throat feels lined with sand.
The driver doesn’t answer. His silence gives me the creeps.
‘Hello?’ I ask. ‘You don’t need to worry about anyone hearing us. Angels don’t like Man’s technology. They won’t have a bug in here or anything.’
Silence.
‘Can you hear me? Are you deaf?’ The driver doesn’t respond.
Maybe the angels have figured out that we are not as perfectly formed as they are. Maybe they’ve realized the value of some of our flaws and hired a deaf driver so that he can’t hear me enough to be persuaded.
I lean forward to tap his shoulder. As I do, I glimpse the rest of his face in the rearview mirror.
The red meat of his gums and cheeks is clearly visible. It’s like half of his face has been skinned off of him. His teeth sit exposed like he’s a living skeleton. His eyes stare straight at me in the mirror. He’s watching my reaction.
I freeze. I want to jerk back, but he’s watching me. His eyes are not those of a monster. They are the eyes of a man who expects yet another person to cringe and pull away from him.
I bite my lip to keep from making a sound. My hand still hovers above his shoulder. I hesitate for two breaths, then gently put my hand on his shoulder to tap him.
‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Can you hear me?’ I continue to look at him in the mirror to let him know that I saw his face.
His shoulder feels solid, the way a shoulder should feel. That’s a relief, both for me and for him. He’s probably not some new ghoul that the angels have created, but a regular man they injured.
At first, I think he’ll continue to ignore me. But then he nods, slightly.
I hesitate, wondering if I should ignore the elephant in the car or if I should ask him what happened to his face. From spending time with my sister’s friends, I know that people with disabilities sometimes wish others would simply ask and get it over with, while other times, they want to be treated normally and not have their disability define them. I choose to get on with business.
‘Where are we going?’ I keep my voice as friendly and casual as I can.
He says nothing.
‘You’ve got the wrong girl, you know. Lots of people have weapons. Just because I had a sword doesn’t mean I’m the girl the angels are looking for.’
He continues to drive.
‘Okay, I get it. But do you really believe the angels will give you safe passage? Even if they don’t kill you today, how will you know they won’t kill you next week? It’s not like every angel will get a notification with your picture that says you’ve captured the girl they wanted.’
The big band music continues to fill the car, and he keeps on driving.
‘What’s your name?’
No response.
‘Do you think you could slow down a little? Maybe a lot? Maybe even stop for just a teensy second and let me out? There’s been a mistake. I don’t belong here. Come to think of it, neither do you.’
‘Where do I belong then?’ His voice is harsh and full of anger.
It’s hard to understand him. I guess it’s not easy to talk when your lips have been ripped off. It takes me a minute to translate what I heard.
I have more experience than most in figuring out what someone with a speech impediment is saying. Paige had a couple of friends with disabilities that kept them from communicating easily. It was her patience with her friends and her translations that finally allowed me to start understanding them. Now it’s second nature.
‘You belong with us,’ I say. ‘The human race.’
Isn’t this what Raffe’s been saying all along? That I belong with the human race and he doesn’t? I push that thought away.
The driver glances up at the mirror in surprise. He didn’t expect me to understand him. He probably spoke just to scare me off with his otherness. His eyes narrow as though he’s wondering if I’m playing a trick on him.
‘The human race doesn’t want me anymore.’ He watches me as if suspecting that I just got lucky in understanding him last time.
He eerily says the things that Raffe won’t say about himself and his own situation. Does Raffe think of himself as this deformed in the eyes of angels?
‘You look human to me.’
‘Then you must be blind,’ he says angrily. ‘Everyone else screams when they see me. If I drove off, where would I go? Who would I call my own? Even my own mother would run from me now.’ There’s a world of sadness behind his angry voice.
‘No, she wouldn’t.’ Mine wouldn’t. ‘Besides, if you think you’re the ugliest thing I’ve seen this week, boy, do you have a lot to learn about what’s going on out there.’
He gives me a glance in the mirror.
‘Sorry. You’re not even in the league, frankly. You’ll just have to settle for being classified as perfectly human like the rest of us.’
‘You’ve seen people more horrible than me?’
‘Oh, heck yeah. I’ve seen people that would make you run and scream. And one of them is a friend of mine. She’s sweet and kind, and I miss her. But Clara’s back with her family, and that’s the best I can wish for her these days.’
‘Her people took her back in?’ There’s disbelief in his voice but hope in his eyes.
‘It took a little coaxing, but not much. They love her, and that goes beyond what’s on the outside. Anyway, where are we going?’
‘Why should I tell you? You’re just pretending to be friendly to get me to do what you want. Then you’ll run off to your friends and tell them what a freak I was. That I actually believed you might not be repulsed by me.’
‘Get over yourself. We’re all in danger. We all need to work together and help each other if we can.’ That sounded a little too much like Obi. Maybe the twins are right and we do have something in common. ‘Besides, I haven’t asked you to do anything yet. I’m only asking for information.’
He assesses me through the mirror. ‘We’re going to the new aerie in Half Moon Bay.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then we hand you over to the angels. The New Dawn members can collect their bounty – assuming the angels are in a generous mood – and I get to continue living.’
‘All at the mercy of our invaders.’
‘Do you want to know what happened to my face?’
I don’t. It doesn’t seem like a story I want to hear.
‘They ripped it off for fun. Half my face. Skinned alive, I guess. It was the most excruciating thing I could ever have imagined. In fact, I couldn’t even imagine it before. You know what it’s like to have your life changed like that? One moment, you’re normal, the next, you’re a monster freak? Do you know that I used to be an actor?’ He snorts. ‘Yeah, I made my living off my charming smile. Now I don’t even have lips to smile with.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I can’t think of anything else to say. ‘Look, I know it’s been hard.’
‘You have no idea.’
‘You’d be surprised. Just because I don’t have a problem on the outside visible for the world to see doesn’t mean I’m not messed up on the inside. That can be just as hard to deal with.’
‘Spare me your self-centered teen angst. What you feel is nothing compared to what I feel.’
‘Gee, okay,’ I say. ‘You’re not at all wallowing in self-centeredness. I see that now.’
‘Listen, kid. I haven’t talked to anyone in weeks. I thought I missed it, but now you’ve reminded me that I really don’t.’
The music fills the car with old-world style before he speaks again. ‘Why should I help you when no one bothers to help me?’
‘Because you’re a decent human being.’
‘Yeah, one that wants to live. If I let you go, they’ll come down and kill me.’
‘If you don’t let me go, you won’t feel quite so human anymore. Being human isn’t about whether you fit in or look like the rest of us. It’s about who you are and what you’re willing to do or not do.’
‘Humans kill all the time.’
‘Not decent ones.’
Outside, the deserted world slides by. I guess no one wants to go near the new aerie. Word must have gotten around about that apocalypse party.
‘Did you really kill an angel?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’ I’ve killed two.
‘You’re the only one I’ve met who has. What happens if I let you go?’
‘I return to my family and try to keep us all alive.’
‘Everybody? You’d try to keep all of us alive?’
‘I meant my family. That’s hard enough. How would I even begin to keep everyone alive?’
‘If the only one who can kill an angel can’t do it, then who can?’
It’s a good question, one that takes me a minute to come up with an answer. ‘Obadiah West can. Him and his freedom fighters. I’m just a teenager.’
‘History is filled with teenagers who lead the fight. Joan of Arc. Okita Soji, the samurai. Alexander the Great. They were all teenagers when they began leading their armies. I think we’re back to those times again, kid.’