Errant Angel Read online

She felt a soul-deep, heart-wrenching jolt. The shield wobbled for a moment, letting a deadly finger of smoke in before she managed to shut it off.

  Dalton.

  Oh, God, Dalton. He was here.

  It took her a moment to find the balance, to determine how much energy she could spare from the shield to seek him out. And then she heard him, calling for Jimmy. And saw him, heading toward the engulfed building in a limping run. She voiced a split-second prayer that the connection between them was still there, and then reached out.

  As it always seemed to be with him, she got a burst of images; she now knew how long he’d wrestled with the incredible story she’d told him, how he’d matched it up to everything that had happened, how he’d remembered every moment of their time together, everything she’d ever said to him, and the way she’d touched him...and how he’d felt when she’d told him she loved him.

  What she didn’t know was if he would hear her. But she knew she had to try.

  Dalton, no! Stop!

  She sent it with every bit of her strength, risking the momentary loss of the shield, because he was at the door, reaching for it. Then she had to rechannel her energy to the shield, able only to spare enough to see him.

  He stopped, his head coming up sharply, and she knew she’d gotten through. Angie? God, not you, too!

  And then, like a horrifying film played against her eyelids, she saw him charge into the flames.

  Dalton, no!

  Keep talking, Angie. I’ll find you.

  Get out! We’ll be all right, get out!

  Angie—

  The message stopped abruptly, and Angie’s heightened hearing heard the racking cough as he tried to breathe and got nothing but choking smoke. He had dodged the first wall of fire that was eating away toward the roof, but another was in his path, consuming one of the huge lab tables. Yet he kept coming.

  God, Dalton, please! Believe me, we’ll be all right! Get out while you can!

  Can’t...leave you here.

  He tried to dodge a downed shelf, but his foot came down on a slippery piece of broken glass and his injured ankle gave way. He went to his knees, and she felt the slicing pain of more glass as if it were her own hands being slashed. But he staggered to his feet and kept coming.

  The smoke was thicker now, so thick he was merely a shape moving through it. Even as she thought it, Angie heard him coughing again, steadily, unrelentingly now. Her head began to swim, and it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t from the strain of keeping the shield intact, that it was his dizziness she was feeling. He was taking in too much smoke, that awful, thick, noxious smoke....

  Turn around, she begged. God, Dalton, go back.

  He went down again, this time coughing so fiercely she wrapped her own arms around her ribs in reaction.

  Angie...

  Agony clawed at her, talons digging deep and twisting. She couldn’t extend the shield; it was taking everything she had to keep it going in this small space. She couldn’t even spare the energy to call for help from the bosses. She flicked a glance at the boys huddled on the floor, heard Jimmy trying to keep them calm as if he were the oldest instead of the youngest.

  She had no choice. If she tried to help Dalton, they would die.

  So instead, he would die.

  No! She couldn’t let it happen.

  She sent him the strongest message she could manage, letting the shield go dangerously thin.

  Dalton, get up! Crawl if you have to. I’ll tell you which way.

  Angie, I—

  Just do it!

  She saw his shape change through the smoke, then move, and realized he was doing exactly what she’d said. The miracle of it, that he trusted her, that he obviously believed her now, was something she would treasure forever. But later, when he was safe. She put her fingers to her temples to sharpen the smoky picture.

  To your left...there! Now straight ahead. No, you’re veering right...that’s it.

  He was going to make it. She wouldn’t let it be any other way.

  Keep going...watch out for the lab table on your right, it’s about to— Dalton!

  He went down hard when the blazing table caught his shoulder as it collapsed. She heard his hoarse gasps, and her own lungs burned as he drew in nothing but smoke. He tried to move, but she sensed his grasp on consciousness slipping.

  Don’t give up!

  Can’t breathe....

  Keep fighting—

  She broke off as she realized she was coughing on her own; the shield was slipping. She was spread too thin, she couldn’t do both. She had to shut down one or the other.

  She shuddered violently, the choice ripping at her, tearing her up in a way she knew would never heal, because it was really no choice at all.

  On some other level, her mind went about the business of shoring up the shield. The rest of her mind was numb, shutting down in its inability to face what she had to do.

  And then she heard it, weak and faint, but unmistakable.

  Love you...Ange.

  And then she felt nothing except a sudden yawning blackness as Dalton MacKay’s valiant spirit gave up the fight.

  * * *

  “I still can’t believe it.”

  The soot-stained fireman who had chopped through the outer wall for a reason he still didn’t understand, stared at the little group in awe. They were outside now, the boys still gulping in the fresh air as if they would never get enough, even though the fire had been out for nearly ten minutes. Angie just stared at the smoldering pile of debris.

  “It’s an absolute miracle,” the paramedic who had checked them over agreed.

  “Like hell it was.”

  Both men looked at Angie as she spoke her first words since she’d led the boys through the gaping hole and out into the cool night air. They quickly decided she was referring literally to the flames, and she didn’t dispute it; no one would understand bleak, despairing bitterness from someone who had just survived a fire that indeed could have rivaled hell.

  Allen and the other two boys, after a last, wondering look at Angie, went off with one of the volunteer fire fighters who was going to watch them until the sheriff got here. She wondered idly if this would have any effect on them, then decided she didn’t really care. She stood silently, watching, waiting.

  Jimmy lingered, insisting on staying with Angie. He seemed to be in a state of shock, but Angie couldn’t find it in her to care about that, either. Her gaze was fastened on the ruins of the classroom.

  When two men in yellow slickers at last came out, a stained blanket covering their grim burden, the last flicker of feeling inside her died. She felt more numb, more incapable of emotion than the bosses had ever been able to make her.

  “Damn,” Jimmy exclaimed, coming out of his daze, staring at the stretcher. “Did somebody die?”

  Angie turned on him then.

  “Yes, Jimmy, somebody did,” she said, her voice making the chill night air seem warm. “He saw your bike outside, knew you were in trouble.... He must have known he didn’t have a chance, but he tried. And he died trying to save you.”

  “But who would do a crazy thing like that? Besides you, I mean....”

  His voice trailed away as the other possibility occurred to him. Angie just looked at him. She’d run out of caring, run out of mercy for this boy. Jimmy glanced to where the men were carrying the blanket-covered stretcher toward the back of the parked ambulance that served the coroner. Then he looked back at Angie, his eyes wide with horror, his face pale.

  “Not... God, not Dalton?”

  Her expression gave him his answer.

  “No!” Jimmy yelled, backing away from her as if that would make it not true. She just looked at him, until he knew she wasn’t lying.

  Jimmy moaned. She didn’t care. It meant nothing to her. Nothing did. Nothing except the man they were putting in the back of that ambulance. The man who had shown her what she’d never understood about life, love...and now death. The man who had ripped her
heart out and taken it with him when he’d died with a simple declaration of love that had come with his last breath.

  She reached into her pocket and dug out the keys to the Chevy. She tossed them at Jimmy, but he was too bewildered to react.

  “The car is yours. I don’t ever want to see it again.” She couldn’t bear to. Not with the memories it held.

  She heard the slamming of the doors of the ambulance. She didn’t look. Jimmy just stared at her in shocked disbelief.

  “Dalton died for you, Jimmy Sawyer. He thought you were worth dying for, and I don’t want you to ever forget that.”

  She had no idea how the boy would live with it. Or how she would; she knew deep in her soul that she was the reason Dalton hadn’t stopped, hadn’t escaped when he could have. He’d been trying to save her. In spite of everything, he had loved her. And died for her.

  “You’d damned well better make something out of your life, Jimmy. You owe it to him.”

  She supposed he would. She could feel the beginnings stirring in him even now. But she didn’t care.

  She walked back to look one last time at the smoldering ruin. Her eyes searched out the spot where Dalton had collapsed for the last time.

  Slowly she reached up and yanked on the pendant, so fiercely, the chain snapped. It thrummed urgently in her hand, as it had been doing ever since she had led the four boys to safety. She ignored it.

  With a single, violent motion, she threw the little piece of gold into the ashes.

  And then she walked away into the darkness.

  Twelve

  Angie didn’t notice the warmth as the sun cleared the mountains, any more than she had noticed the cold during the hours before dawn. She simply sat, enduring, waiting, on this rock overlooking the little town where her understanding of life had begun and ended.

  The gently rolling hills, green from the recent rain and dotted here and there with the solitary oak trees that made the grouped three of the town plaza stand out, should have been soothing. They would have been, had she been capable of being soothed.

  She didn’t even jump when the figure appeared on the hill above her, silhouetted by the slanting rays of the morning sun. She’d been waiting for something like this.

  He walked down until he was in front of her, then sat on a boulder barely a foot away. She barely glanced at him. And she couldn’t even find it in herself to be amused at the fact that he was dressed as she’d first seen him all those years ago, in the clothes of a Mississippi riverboat gambler—felt hat, brocade vest and all. She supposed it was to remind her of what they’d done for her on the day her family had died. She also supposed she should feel honored; the big boss didn’t often leave their equivalent of the ivory tower.

  He cleared his throat. And cleared it again. And again. Angie suddenly realized he was having trouble remembering how to talk; the physical act had been unnecessary for them for centuries.

  “Ye— Ahem, uh... You’ve shut us out, Evangeline.”

  Yes, she had. She’d sensed them trying to contact her, but without the pendant, she’d been able to block them out. I learned about walls from an expert, she thought.

  “You must talk to us, you know.”

  “Must I?” She looked at him then, wondering that she had ever been intimidated by him.

  “Evangeline—”

  “You want me to talk? All right, I will. Long enough to ask one question. Why did you let it happen? You’re supposed to help, not hurt.”

  He cleared his throat yet again. And when he spoke, she noticed with a vague sense of surprise—the strongest emotion she’d felt in all the hours since Dalton’s death—that he seemed almost embarrassed.

  “We must admit,” he said, “we haven’t quite learned everything about human emotions yet. But you’ve expanded our knowledge greatly, Evangeline. Although we don’t quite understand this odd connection that seemed to develop between you and Mr. MacKay. That was most unusual. And we are sorry you had to experience pain. However, it has—”

  “Me?”

  Every bit of her agony, her anger, her grief, came roaring back to life in an instant. She rocketed to her feet.

  “Do you really think I give a damn about me? You’re supposed to do good, isn’t that the idea? The generous, all-knowing, benevolent benefactors, isn’t that how you see yourselves? Then explain to me why Dalton is just as dead as if you were the devil incarnate, and cruelty your intent from the beginning!”

  “Evang—”

  “Angie!” she shouted. “My name is Angie. Not that I care what you call me. All I want from you is for you to put me right back where you found me and go away.”

  “You don’t mean that. You would—”

  “Die? Yes. But I wouldn’t ever have to have anything to do with any of you, ever again. And that would be worth it.” She turned her head and stared down the hill into town, thankful the school wasn’t visible from here.

  He adopted what she assumed was supposed to be a soothing tone. “Don’t be hasty, dear. There is much left to be done, and now that you have learned more of people, you should be more efficient. And we have learned, as well, thanks to you. Although this thing humans call love still has us quite amazed.”

  Her head snapped around. She stared at him for a long moment.

  “You let it happen,” she whispered in stunned realization. “That’s why you stalled about an adjustment. You let me fall in love with Dalton so that you could study us! Like a couple of lab rats.”

  “It wasn’t quite that...calculating. You were already responding oddly to the man, in spite of our instructions to the contrary. As usual,” he added in a mildly censorious tone.

  Her eyes widened as another thought occurred to her. “Is that why you ordered me to stay away from him? Because you figured I’d do the opposite?”

  “Well, you do have a certain knack for being contrary, my dear. And we truly were not certain how to correct the problem you were having. So we simply took advantage of the situation as a...learning opportunity. For you as well as for us.”

  She felt a pervasive weakness in her knees, and dropped down to sit on the rock again.

  “Us,” she echoed sarcastically. “Will you drop that absurd royal ‘we’? You can’t tell me that anyone other than you would make that kind of decision.”

  “All right, I did, then. Evangeline, he was—”

  “I told you, it’s Angie.”

  “Very well, although I don’t see why. You’ve always hated the name.”

  “Not...” Her anger wavered at the memory of the sweet sound. “Not when Dalton said it.”

  When he spoke again, the boss’s voice was as gentle as she’d ever heard it. “He was already doomed, he’d chosen his path. He would have succumbed eventually, so I didn’t think it would do any harm.”

  “Harm?” Fury rose in her again. “My God, he’s dead! How much more harm can there be?”

  “No, Angie. He was beyond our help, but at least he’s at peace now.”

  “Your arrogance is boundless, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Boss. You’ve made one large error in your calculations. There’s one thing you still haven’t learned about love. You can’t turn it off after the experiment is over. And I will love Dalton MacKay for the rest of my life, be it sixty seconds or sixty years.”

  “Don’t worry, dear, we’ll suppress those feelings, even the memories, if you like. That’s one more thing we’ve been working on recently—”

  “The hell you will! They’re all I have of him, and I won’t let you take them away. And you were wrong about that, too! He wasn’t beyond help. He was trying, he’d begun to heal, to feel again. To care again. He died trying to save Jimmy, you bastards.”

  And he told me he loved me.

  “Angie—”

  “You still don’t get it, do you? He could have saved Jimmy by himself, don’t you see? And he would have. It was me who wasn’t needed here. It’s your fault he’s dead, because you just don’t under
stand.” Her voice broke. “You had no right...to let him start to have hope again, and then let his life be snuffed out as if it meant nothing.”

  Her barriers crumbled then. And Angie, the ever-sassy, ever-argumentative Angie, for the first time in over a hundred years, broke down and sobbed. Violently, helplessly, all of her proud, determined strength gone. And her boss stared at her in shock, in the manner of one who is only now realizing the enormity of his mistake.

  Angie sensed him leave, although she didn’t look up. She couldn’t bear to take even one more look at the world that no longer held the man she loved. She waited, for what seemed like hours, each moment expecting to be flung back in time to where they’d found her, to be back on that side-wheeler deck with the muddy river rising around her, the screams of the dead and dying echoing in her ears, and the pain...

  She would welcome the pain. Perhaps it would distract her from this soul-deep agony that was so much worse. And it wouldn’t be long, she’d been close to death when they’d come to her, but now she would have no reason to fight. She would welcome that, too; if joining him in death was as close as she could get to Dalton, she would accept it gladly.

  Her wrenching sobs had subsided to quiet weeping when she felt the soft touch of fingers on her face. Odd, she thought. They’d never touched her, not even when she’d been in training. She’d gotten the idea they were unable to, even when they took on human form. Perhaps they were saying goodbye or—

  The fingers had tilted her head back, and she felt the press of warm, gentle lips on her cheeks, kissing away the tears. Startled, her eyes flew open and she rapidly blinked, staring at the man in front of her.

  “This is a rotten joke,” she snapped. “If you think just because you can manage to look like him—”

  “Ange, it’s me.”

  Ange. She’d never told them that. Only Angie.

  “Dalton?” she whispered, not daring to believe.

  “They pulled me out of...whatever limbo I was in. After the fire. They explained it all. That everything you’d said was true. And that they’d made a big mistake, and were about to lose you...over me.”