They walk toward me from all sides.
‘We’re not here for them,’ one of them says. The top of his head is more tanned than the others’ like he’s been shaving his for some time. ‘The masters like to do their business in private. We understand that.’
‘The masters?’
The group keeps closing in on me, and I start to feel trapped. But these are cult members, not street gangs. They don’t exactly have a reputation for attacking people. Still, I put my hand on my teddy bear hanging at my hip.
‘No, we’re not here for them,’ I hear a woman’s voice say. ‘No one has a bounty on your angel friend.’ Then I see her – the woman who offered herself up to Paige.
‘I guess I should have let her eat you.’
The woman glares at me as though I humiliated her by saving her life.
I pull off the bear and wrap my hand around the sword handle. It’s cold and hard and ready for battle. But I’m hesitant to use it on them. We all have more than enough enemies trying to kill us already without going after each other.
I back away from Tan Head. The circle tightens. ‘Are you really going to harm the sister of the Great One?’ Hopefully, they believe in their own story.
‘No, we mean you no harm,’ says Tan Head. He reaches for me.
I step away and pull out my sword.
A hand holding a damp cloth reaches around me from behind and clamps down over my mouth and nose. The cloth reeks of something awful that shoots straight into my head and makes the world fuzzy.
I try to struggle.
I knew it was a trap. I just hadn’t realized the trap was for me.
My thoughts turn into a jumbled mess.
The sharp scent of chemicals, the burning of the fumes going down my throat – these are the last things I remember as the world fades into darkness.
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.