Broken Angels (3 page)

“Losing your touch?” Darryl asked.

“I almost lost my patience and went in without you.”

“But Adam told you to wait.”

“Adam didn’t have to tell me a damn thing,” Robert said. “There’s something strange about this. It looks suburban-normal on the outside, but I can’t see through the façade, at any range. The place seems designed like a clubhouse for The Infinite Definite. I’m not stupid enough to go into something like that alone, not if I don’t have to. One foot inside and I could be lost in a box of melted crayons.”

“Nice metaphor.” Darryl squinted at the house, trying hard as he could to see through the walls and windows. He was within range to use his ability, but it just wasn’t working for him. Most interesting thing he saw was a scrawl on the front door, in the center of the wreath: a clumsy-looking “W” and two dots, written in blood with a finger. Some kind of gang tag, probably. Unfamiliar. He assumed very dangerous.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Darryl said. “It’s best we do this together.”

If it were a clubhouse for the Virus-infected terrorists known as The Infinite Definite, Darryl knew if either he or Robert went in alone, there’d be no chance of making it back out alive. He again regretted coming unarmed.

“No assistance from the badges or feds, huh?”

“Nah,” Robert said. “Better things to do at the moment. Besides, you know the boys in blue-n-black wouldn’t do anything but bust in with voices blarin’ and guns blazin’, putting the girl in even more danger. That’s why we’re getting first crack, to get in unseen and unheard. See what we can see, do what we can do.”

“Search warrant?”

“Don’t worry about that. Peter’s got us covered.” Robert flexed the muscles in his arms. “Ready?”

“To get lost in a box of melted wax and colors?” Darryl said with a grin. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

The two turned themselves invisible and left the tree. Darryl adjusted his vision so he could still see Robert as they approached the house. They walked slowly, trying to detect any signs of life or movement inside. Darryl also kept a lookout for passersby, but only as an afterthought. The streets and yards had been empty of cars and people since his arrival.

As they walked up the driveway, Darryl used his hands to signal he was going to circle around to the backyard and Robert should stay up front; they’d communicate via their left-wristwatches until they were ready to make their presence known to others. Most important, once they made themselves visible, they were to keep their facial features blurred, for misidentification purposes.

Robert waved at Darryl and positioned himself at the edge of the front yard so he’d have a full view of the front of the house. Darryl went to find a similar position in the back.

Rounding the side corner and scaling the fence, Darryl took in the small backyard’s beautiful landscaping. He’d seen a fraction of it from his vantage point in the tree, but now, standing in the freshly cut grass and steps away from the well-tended flower garden, he was even more impressed. One would think that it was late June rather than the eve of autumn. All of the flowers were in full bloom. Darryl wondered at all of the work put into it, and at all the work put into erecting the eight-foot-high vertical fence, a custom-designed structure marking the boundaries between neighbors’ properties, a wooden obstruction preventing anyone from entering or seeing the pretty, well-kept yard without an invitation. Pity. He agreed the careless shouldn’t be allowed to trample upon a beautiful scene, but he also believed everyone had a fundamental right to bear witness to pure beauty.

He looked at the house. He still wasn’t able to see past the walls, or even through the vertical blinds on the other side of the patio’s glass door, but he could now hear sounds. Nothing distinct, but he at least knew the house wasn’t empty. He touched the screen on his left-wristwatch, communicating the information to his partner. Robert signaled back that something was about to come out of the garage.

Darryl itched to circle back around and meet the threat with him head-on, but he couldn’t risk leaving the back unguarded. He didn’t want to risk having something escape with the treasure.

He touched his watch and sent Robert a message that he should neutralize whatever threat emerged from the garage then use it as an entry point into the house; as long as the garage remained closed, however, he should maintain his position. Darryl would find a quiet way in from the back.

He wasn’t sure if Robert had gotten the entire message. Before he finished sending it, Darryl heard voices from the front of the house: Robert’s and the voices of two others. It wasn’t friendly conversation or innocuous banter. They were fighting.

Darryl muttered a curse as he dropped his invisibility and picked up two of the larger bricks edging the flower garden. One after the other, he threw them at the patio’s door. The glass shattered, and he rushed on through, parting the door’s blinds with his eyes wide open, looking for the girl, and ready to attack anything that made a move against her or him.

He’d burst into the kitchen. Empty. Darryl didn’t move three steps, though, before someone came in from the next room.

The man began to yell something in a foreign language; Darryl didn’t want to wait for the translation. He squinted, concentrating a large amount of infrared radiation in the area of the man’s face. The man screamed and ducked down. Darryl hopped onto the kitchen table, stepped, and jumped again, kicking the burned man in the head on his way down to the floor. He punched and kicked him again before moving into the next room.

Darryl paused and surveyed the room’s furniture. He spotted all the closed and open entrances, saw a bright wide-screen television displaying hardcore pornography, and counted up to three agitated men before the one closest to him took a swing. Darryl grabbed the fist, caught the elbow, and swung the man into the wall. He then swung the man back the other way and released his hold, hoping he’d collide with the other two.

One of the men stopped to shove his oncoming pal out of his way. Darryl pointed two fingers at the other one and flicked his wrist, snapping his fingers. A bright flash of light appeared, momentarily blinding and stopping the man. Darryl rushed forward and punched him on both sides of his jaw before repositioning his body to kick the next man closest to him in the stomach.

A door slammed in another part of the house. Darryl figured there’d been at least one other person in the room who’d escaped through the open entranceway before he had a chance to spot him, and now that person had escaped…Outside, through the front door? Inside, holed up in the room with the lost girl Darryl and Robert had come for? Wherever, Darryl had to get to him quickly.

He ignored the man coming from the kitchen behind him, the man he first attacked. He pushed aside the others who were still standing in front of him and rushed for the open entrance. He couldn’t get out.

Darryl felt an intense burning sensation on the back of his neck and stumbled. He realized what had hit him—a taste of his own infrared medicine—before a fist hit him in the back of the head. He went down to a knee and translated himself into invisibility. No luck. His attackers could still see him. They surrounded him, burning, punching, scratching, and kicking him. After delivering a few swift kicks, one of them ran into the kitchen.

An Infinite-Definite clubhouse, Darryl thought as he withstood it all. Spot on. He hated it when Robert’s instincts were correct. He hated it even more when his junior partner saved him.

Darryl didn’t see it, but he heard the hollers and screams of his attackers. He opened his eyes to find Robert standing in front of him, reaching down with an open hand.

“Bet you wish you’d brought your corresq now,” Robert said.

Darryl thought of the flat, six-inch circle composed of hard metal and designed so that a talented Virus-carrier could use it like a short-range boomerang. He knew the corresq would’ve been helpful but only said, “I would’ve gotten them. Just another second.” He got back to his feet without assistance.

“Can’t afford to waste any seconds,” Robert said. “We’ve got a whole house to search.”

Darryl looked at the other men in the room. All were lying prostrate on the floor or leaning against furniture, holding their eyes.

“What about the guys you met outside?”

“Dealt with,” Robert said. “Come on.” He rushed out of the room.

Darryl began to follow, but the man who’d run into the kitchen ran back out, shouting in an incomprehensible language, brandishing a knife and a brick. Darryl couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.

He grunted when the jagged, heavy object hit him in the shoulder. Darryl winced and instinctually brought his free hand up to cover the area of impact. He’d no time to think to defend himself before the man lunged at him—but there was time for Robert to direct a beam of light from the television into the knife wielder’s eyes. In mid-lunge, the man tripped and stabbed himself in the arm.

“C’mon!” Robert said as he rushed out of the room again. “There’re more in here—find ’em, blind ’em!”

Darryl hated it when Robert shouted instructions at him. That wasn’t the junior partner’s role. But Darryl knew telling him that would do no good; he’d have to reassert his authority by bold actions alone.

Darryl hurried out of the room and stopped behind his partner. They stood in front of the next big obstacle.

A pool table sat in the middle of the room, overlaid with a strange-textured cloth. Scattered billiards resembling giant marbles were on top of it. On the right-hand side of the room was a large mirror, covering more than half of the wall. On the left-hand side were the front door, another door that presumably led to a coat closet, and a halfway open door that led to the laundry room and the garage. On the other side of the pool table, directly opposite them, was a darkened hallway containing the doors to the rest of the house’s rooms.

Darryl knew Robert had hesitated not because of the pool table, but to adjust his sight so he could peer down the blackened corridor with utmost clarity after counting all corners, intuitionally measuring all angles. Robert, the mathematically gifted genius; it was his habit. Darryl didn’t know how Robert did it, but he knew now wasn’t the time to ask. He instead put his vision to use finding the answer to a minor puzzle.

He soon solved it. The walls were lined with a foil-like material, which was what had prevented him and Robert from seeing through from outside. The window blinds were lined with it, too. Yes, it was definitely an Infinite-Definite clubhouse. The foil-like material probably also explained how, despite the low level of light in the house, he, Robert, and the Virus-infected kidnappers were able to manipulate light almost as skillfully as they would’ve been able to if they were outside in the sun.

“I count four doors,” Robert said. “Can’t see beyond them.”

“Of course,” Darryl responded. “Foiled.”

The two began to make their way around either side of the pool table.

“Careful,” Darryl said. “Assume each room has at least three hostiles. You know how they like to pack up a house with too many.”

Robert grimaced. “You smell that?”

Darryl started to reply, but the room suddenly lit up.

He looked toward the ceiling above the table and, before flinching and averting his sight, saw that what at first glance appeared to be an out-of-place disco ball was now a bright, checkered globe. Half of the sphere’s squares were mirrors, while the other half were multicolored windows allowing light from the high intensity bulbs inside to shine through. The pool table’s surface material and the mirror on the wall helped create the thin-air appearance of amorphous, undulating blobs of light, widespread throughout the room.

Darryl and Robert both cursed at the onslaught of heat and lights—the fulfillment of the half-serious prophecy spoken back up in the tree. It wasn’t quite melted wax, but there were plenty of colors, and the experience was hellish.

Both agents screamed when the intangible blobs touched their bare arms, necks, and faces. On impact, Darryl felt and saw patches of his skin burning, bubbling, peeling off, detaching from his body to float off into the air and evaporate. It was no less painful for being an illusion.

Notwithstanding all the confusion, they were too well trained to stay still and succumb to it.

Robert ducked under the pool table.

Darryl clenched his teeth and withstood the searing radiation as he made his way through the colorful storm, searching for a switch that would shut off the globe. He made it to the opening of the dark hallway, only to fall back again when one of the doors opened and—almost in a blur—a teenage girl spun out and into the hall, bounced off the walls, and kicked him in the face and stomach.

Darryl was forced back against the edge of the pool table. He was preparing to push himself forward when the girl smacked him, twirled, kicked him in the knee, and whirled away, out of his reach, while he grunted and snatched at her.

The girl grabbed a pool cue from the rack in the corner of the room as Darryl saw someone else coming out of the same hallway door. No time to determine the age, gender, or danger before he saw the more immediate threat—the girl swinging her cue down at his head.

Darryl couldn’t duck. He could only try to catch the cue with his hand. He grunted when the wood smacked his palm. He made a much louder sound when the boy who’d emerged from the hallway’s door planted the tip of his steel-toed boot into Darryl’s chest with a swift kick.

The boy and the girl shouted as if they were at a sporting event. Darryl suppressed a mild urge to shout for Robert’s help. Not today. And definitely not for two little brats.

The boy drew his foot back for another kick. Darryl released the pool cue and lunged at him. Caught off-balance on one leg, the boy did little as Darryl pushed him, forcing his back against the corner where the room met the hallway. The boy screeched in pain. Darryl wanted to make him screech again, but he spent the next moment spinning to the left, out of the way of the stick-swinging girl.

He stopped in the darkened, narrow hallway and stood facing the grimacing, sloe-eyed teenager who guarded its entrance. Over the girl’s shoulder, he saw the four punks from the TV room entering the poolroom. Apparently they’d all recovered at the same time, or maybe they’d waited until they were all rested and ready to jump their quarry at once. Whichever, he had to get back out there to help his partner. And he had to do something about this girl in front of him. As usual, time was not an ally.