Page 29

“Fucking hell, we’re going down!” Vinny shouts over the intercom in our headsets. I make eyes at Margerie sitting across from me next to Charlie, who’s already standing up, reaching for some scary-looking yellow pouch affixed to the roof of the helicopter. I have a suspicion, which I don’t want confirmed, of exactly what’s inside it.

I look at Margerie and see that her gaze has followed mine to Charlie. “Fuck,” she mouths, though I can’t hear her over the angry blast of the helicopter’s propellers—wings? I should have paid more attention when Vinny explained this shit to me.

I’m strapped into my helicopter seat, clutching it with all the force in my arms, wondering what in the high heavens I was thinking when I bitched long and loudly enough that my brothers consented to let me onto Vinny’s chopper. I’m even wearing his sweatshirt with a helicopter on the front and the slogan, “I’m a psyc Hot ic helicopter pilot.”

Vinny’s adrenaline junkie buddies Arnold and Meron are flying the other two helicopters. When they found out why Vinny needed to borrow a couple choppers for the day, they bulldozed their way into this plan, and the worst part is, it’s not even a plan!

We agreed that we’d scope out the airport and only touch down on the empty tarmac if it was safe. Our plan didn’t involve us staging a full siege of the damn Old Sundale Airport, but when the hangar opened roof-first and a dirt and sand tornado engulfed Meron’s helicopter and our helicopter started to drop from the sky, Arnold, a gun nut in possession of a machine gun—because Amurkah —opened fire.

We regained altitude, but only for a second. “The main rotor is jammed!” Vinny yells. “Everybody grab a chute! And a gun!”

“A chute? You mean a parachute ?” I screech.

But Vinny’s abandoned his seat. My stomach is up in my throat. He’s charging at me, pulling me out of my seat belt while the helicopter does a funny dance that I’m pretty sure is reserved for drunken prom dates and cowboys shooting at each other’s feet.

“I’ve got my gun!” Margerie shouts, brandishing the tiniest gun I’ve ever seen as Charlie pushes her right up to the helicopter’s dangerous edge and shoves her arms into the straps of a parachute before taking one for himself.

“Should I jump?” Margerie shouts.

Vinny grabs two parachutes for us, and as I pull my parachute over my shoulders and yank on the straps to tighten the apparatus to my back, I scream, “Where did you get that gun?”

But before I can hear her response, Vinny’s grabbing me and throwing the group of us out of the side of the helicopter.

I scream. I scream my head off. I scream louder than I’ve ever screamed in my life. My body falls and then jerks as Vinny kicks me in the stomach and pulls down on the latch for my parachute at the same time. The brutality makes sense when I see the helicopter cut between us like the blade of a guillotine. The jerking in my back and shoulders is painful as I glance around, panic in my chest making my heart thud like a drum, only to find Charlie and Vinny and Margerie happily floating thirty feet away from me, Margerie wildly waiving her gun. Every time it passes in his direction, Charlie winces back and holds up his arms.

I shout across the empty space, the tarmac looking appallingly far away even though we must be only a hundred or so feet up at this point. “Margerie! Put that thing down! That’s dangerous!”

Margerie scoffs. “ This is dangerous? Have you seen the ground?”

She’s waving her gun, gesturing wildly at the world below as we slowly float toward the airport. Through the open roof doors of the hangar, I see that the entire place is ablaze.

“Your boyfriend must be down there!” Vinny shouts. “Use your handholds to steer yourself away from the hangar, Vanny! Head toward the tarmac!”

I glance at the holds hovering by my shoulders, reach up, and grab them. I mimic the motions Vinny makes and wonkily manage to steer myself away from the flames. Roland’s here . I can’t believe it. The last functioning helicopter of the trio is still flying in slow circles above the open door to hell. There’s something chaotic happening within the building because I can hear things catching on fire, loud banging, things exploding.

A huge piece of metal flies out of the building. I can’t see what it is, only that it’s sharp and headed straight toward me. I yank hard on my left handhold, and my parachute drops down. I avoid getting impaled, but my parachute does not. I open my mouth to scream, but wind rushes into my mouth as the ground plummets up to meet me.

I hit the asphalt hard, and I swear I break all my fucking teeth. My forearms hit the ground before I crash onto my side. I hear someone shouting my name, and I know it’s Roland, even through the haze of voices clamoring for my attention.

I open my eyes.

I’m lying on my side coughing into my fists when my torso jerks over the hard ground as my parachute catches wind. I clutch desperately at the buckle between my breasts and slap it open. My shoulders release, and I can breathe again as my parachute takes off without me. I cough, choke, gag on smoke fumes wafting from the building, but as if commanded by the weight of my gaze, they clear.

“Nessa, get out of here!” Roland’s voice sounds so far away—too far. Which doesn’t at all make sense when Roland suddenly runs from the building, his beautiful brown skin glowing with sweat. His dark hair rippling in the breeze. His eyes the brightest, prettiest pink.

“Vanessa,” his voice calls much louder this time. “I’m here. Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. I love you, sweetheart.” He’s almost on me, and I register three wrong things at once.

He called me Vanessa , he called me sweetheart , and he’s sweating . He fucked me for hours last night, and he didn’t so much as glisten; meanwhile, I was drenched in every possible sense. I was so shocked that, somewhere in the melee, I had enough presence of mind to ask him about it. He told me he never sweats, something about his body burning it off. So unless he was lying and my eyes deceived me last night, my eyes are deceiving me now.

I haul my ass up off the ground, kicking with my feet, getting tangled up in the cords of my parachute and going back down again. “Vanessa—Vanessa, are you there?” Without my headset on, I can hear Margerie’s shouted voice close by, but I can’t see her. I can only see this fake Roland apparition stomping toward me, looking all wrong ... and I can’t even see the building past him. It’s just a hazy blur. Occasionally a tuft of smoke wafts from it, but I can’t grab ahold. I feel like I’m going crazy .

“I’m here, Margerie! Can you see?” I don’t even bother asking if she can see me because that’s already one step too far removed.

“I can’t see you! I can see the building on fucking fire, but I can’t find you! Are you in the fire?!”

“No, she’s not there,” I hear a more distant voice say. It sounds like Charlie. “But what the ... holy fuck is that!” His voice devolves into Spanish slurs and curses. “We need to get clear ... There’s a ... There’s something coming. It looks like a goddamn sandstorm!”

“I’m not leaving without Vanessa!”

“I’m here,” I shout, but the creature ... person ... mirage ... is almost on me. I kick at it, but the fake Roland lunges at me, drops down onto my body, and wraps his fingers around my throat.

“Holy fuck, I can see Roland, and what is he—Roland’s attacking Vanessa!”

“Don’t worry,” Margerie shouts back to Vinny. “I got it.”

“Margerie, no!” A multitude of my brothers’ overlapping voices call out, Charlie’s loudest of all. “You can’t shoot Roland!” But Margerie’s smarter than that.

“That isn’t Roland! He would never touch Nessa like that!” she says, and I adore her for it. A high-pitched pop goes off in the next second, and fake Roland’s mouth opens on a scream—a female’s scream.

Her fingers loosen from around my throat, and when I tilt my hips to the left, she falls off me and slumps onto the ground, fully disrobed of her terrifying Roland suit and back to being a brunette wearing jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. She looks like anybody as she lies beside me, her face scrunching in pain.

I reach out hesitantly but quickly snatch my hand away from her face when I realize I’d been about to touch her. “I’m so sorry. You’re gonna be okay.”

“You fucking bitch! That idiot shot me!”

I’d say that I don’t know which one of my idiots she’s talking about, but the first thing I see when I look up is Margerie pointing her gun in my direction. “Did I get him? Her? Whatever the shit it is?” she shouts.

“You got her!” I give her a thumbs-up and a smile, ambling back onto my feet. “Thanks, Margerie!”

“Anytime, boss!” She gives me a salute.

“You stupid bitch, you’re ruining everything.” Stupid, stupid ... I grin. The voice in my head is mine. The voice out of my head is hers. And thanks to my peaking adrenaline, I may be losing my mind, but I know I’m not stupid.

“No, I’m not,” I tell her pointedly, brushing off my jeans. “But you aren’t a very nice person.”

She rolls onto her back, her gray sweatshirt charred around the collar and the left sleeve. She barely looks older than me, and when her face twists in pain, she looks almost fragile. Like somebody I could have been friends with. And then the expression ebbs from pain to rage, and she screams, “I’m not a person, and what—what is wrong with you?”

What is wrong with you? I laugh, remembering that Roland once asked me the very same thing. “Nothing is wrong with me,” I say, nearly giddy. “I’m a nice person! And you are very rude!”

“You tell her, Vanny!” Luca shouts, laughing.

“Yeah, after we get the fuck out of here!” David adds.

“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers!” The voice is Arnold’s, and it successfully snaps my focus back to what’s happening across the rest of the tarmac. Because the front doors to the hangar have been thrown open, and a wall of sand barrels out of it.

“Arnold, what the fuck?” Vinny yells. “?Cabrón! Everybody get the fuck down! David, get her!”

I look to my left only to see Arnold wielding a gun—I don’t know guns, but it looks like a fucking cannon—and he’s pointing it at the hangar as the sand is advancing on us, a single being striding out of the hangar just before it. A creature I recognize.

“Careful of that one! That’s Three!”

“Don’t worry! I’ve got more bullets!” Margerie starts firing.

“Margerie, put the goddamn gun down!” Charlie tackles Margerie at the same time that Three disappears and Arnold starts firing.

“Vanny, get down!” David launches himself toward the concrete.

“I have to go!” I yell, taking a wide arc as I try to run as fast as my wobbly ankle will carry me toward the hangar. I can’t feel the residual pain in my ankle. My adrenaline is roaring as loud as the clanging going on inside the old airport. I have the most uncanny feeling that that’s where I need to be. Right in the thick of the carnage.

“Vanny! Fuck!” David is shouting, but I’m on a mission. A suicide mission? Perhaps. But a mission nonetheless.

I am not a sporty person, and my lungs are on fire. The smoke is thick, and even though my brain reminds me that Rollo will be fine with smoke and heat, that doesn’t assuage my panic when a pained roar echoes from within the historic airport. I run faster.

The sand wall moves out away from the entrance at the same time that a figure appears on the other side of the tarmac, right next to Arnold. “Arnold, look out!” I try, but Arnold is screaming bloody murder. I clap my hands on either side of my head, terrified ...

Arnold is there one minute, gone the next. And then I hear a scream in the helicopter overhead. It’s coming down. “Everybody, move!” I scream at the top of my lungs, but Charlie and Vinny, Margerie and Luca—who are closest to the falling helicopter—seem to have noticed it at the same time I did. They’re running across the tarmac toward me, David hauling ass with them. I feel relief, and then I feel it again when I see four parachutes dotting the sky. And then panic moves to overshadow all that precious relief when I see Three standing near Arnold’s abandoned gun. They’re moving behind the cannon, preparing to do something terrible. I’ve got to do something first.

“Hey!” I shout. “Three!”

Three’s head jerks as their gaze struggles to find me in the chaos, and when it does, they smile. “Oh fuck!” I take off at a sprint toward the hangar, only to realize it’s being blocked by a sand wall.

“She needs cover!” Luca shouts. Suddenly a gun pops off, and then another, and then a higher-pitched sound that has to be Margerie’s insane weapon, and then the sand wall surges forward toward one of my family members, and in the gap it leaves behind, I’ve got no other choice but to take the opening my people sacrificed to give me and try for it.

I sprint toward the hangar, but I’ve barely got a foot off the ground when hands close around my elbows, tightening them to my sides. “This time,” a familiar voice hisses in my ear, “I’m not going to be nice. I’m going to drop you off the edge of this miserable fucking planet ...”

I hear it ... the growl. It’s coming from inside the hangar, and it’s a pained sound. “Rollo ...” I gasp.

“In due time. Right now one of my friends is having some fun with your boyfriend. This might take a while.”

Rage comes for me, and I jerk in Three’s hold. It wouldn’t have had any effect if, at the same time, I hadn’t heard the loud pop of a gun going off, followed by Three’s shocked grunt. Three buckles, their hold loosening from around my limbs. I turn around, and without any idea what I’m doing, I hurl a punch at them.

My fist cracks against their nose, blood pouring over their lips. “You’re a dick!” I shout, and Three staggers back, collapsing onto their knees and shooting me the most bewildered look.

“Vanny, go!” Vinny shouts at the same time David says, “We got this!”

I look up and, for the briefest moment, allow myself to absorb the scene before me. One I will never forget. My five brothers, most of my C-suite, and my best friend standing on the tarmac in front of the gaping, blazing mouth of the hangar, squaring off against two wounded aliens and a wall made out of rock, debris, and sand, the Sundale skyline looking gloriously unaffected behind them.

Vinny and David are working to get Arnold’s dropped gun propped back up. Margerie’s waving her little pistol around at the brunette who’s gotten back up and is doing something that seems to have Meron, Mani, Jeremy, and Dan wandering in circles and shouting like they’re lost in a corn maze.

Luca wields a broken helicopter blade like a spear as he charges the sand wall. Charlie uses a shield made from broken helicopter hull and follows him. The smoke and fire from three destroyed helicopters make up the backdrop behind them, all framed by large banners that fall from the ruined hangar and say, Welcome, Forty-Eight! And thanks for your service!

Three grabs for my leg when I take a step toward the hangar. A gun goes off, and Three turns back to face Vinny, vanishing without a trace. “Vanny, go!” And so I go, disappearing into the smoke to find my alien boyfriend.

Darkness washes over me the moment I step inside, despite the fact that the roof doors are still open. It’s hotter than hell in here, too, and the smoke is thick but clearing as I move forward. “Rollo!” I shout at the top of my lungs, trying to beat the smoke out of my eyes. The farther I wade into the dark hangar, the more it clears, until I’m finally able to make shapes out of the carnage. I don’t like what I see.

A youthful-looking male stands at the hangar’s entrance with his hands up, sand swirling around him, lifting his black hair. He isn’t looking at me but is focused on his task as wind and bits of helicopter crash through the air and then smash their way out of the hangar.

“You traitor!” a second male shouts. He’s got white hair and dark skin and wild, angry eyes that are turned toward something I can’t see behind a huge pile of wrecked airplane parts.

Rollo ...

Panic and determination fueling me, I reach for the first thing I see lying on the ground: a long, thin helicopter part that has a huge flat blade with notches cut into one side and a terribly precise point. It weighs almost nothing. “Leave Rollo alone!” I shout, drawing the attention of the two males.

I lift the weapon like a baseball bat. As a kid, I played softball for six days before Elena took pity on me and pulled me from that team, and every other team my sports-loving family had signed me up for, so I know I’m not much of a threat. Yet the look the males give me now makes me think otherwise.

“She can lift it,” the younger male says, shocked.

The older male roars, face pointed down. “How is that possible?”

“Because she’s ... the key,” Rollo’s low, gravelly voice says from somewhere behind the pile of wrecked planes. He must be lying at the white-haired male’s feet. “And if you touch her ... I will—augh!” He roars in pain.

“Leave my boyfriend alone!” I shout, storming forward, weapon raised. Only ... I’m slowed by the pile of airplane bits blocking me from Rollo and the one hurting him. I try to climb, but the metal pieces cut into my skin and crumple beneath the balls of my feet.

“Oh shoot! I’m sorry, airplanes,” I whisper to them.

The younger boy says loudly, “Is she serious? She is the key? She caused his reversion? How?”

“It doesn’t matter. The effect has been undesirable. We’ll need to get rid of him. Her, we’ll keep. Perhaps she can activate other weapons. We’ll have to try everything ...”

“No, you won’t!” I shout, and I topple over the other side of the pile, my weapon tumbling from my grip. I reach for it, and when I pick it up from the cold concrete ground this time, it turns to flame .

I scream, but the weapon doesn’t fall out of my hand even though I try to release it. Instead it gleams with a vibrant orange light that floods the darkness and scares the ever-loving shit out of me. I stumble forward, tripping over something massive and red. It can’t be an airplane part because it moves when my toes bump into it. I stumble forward, fiery helicopter piece leading the charge, though now that I think about it ... it looks suspiciously like a sword. Or maybe it only looks that way because, as I fall, I meet the eyes of the white-haired male, and we share the same look of utter shock as my flame-laced épée slides cleanly into his belly button ... and then out the other side.

Oops.

I open my mouth with every intent of apologizing, only to recognize that this dude was just talking about killing Roland and abducting me. So instead, as he and I fall together onto the floor, my sword impaling him straight through the stomach, I scream, “You are not a very nice alien, but I didn’t mean to do this!”

I scrabble up onto my knees and try to staunch the blood flow unsuccessfully with my hands. “ I Will Fix It !” Maybe. There’s a lot of blood, and the alien looks like he’s in a lot of pain. I try to use his shirt to soak up the blood, but as I press around the blade, a sudden, horrible pressure slices sideways through my temples.

I scream, dropping over the older male’s crotch, which isn’t exactly where I want to die—though, make no mistake, I do feel like dying. I cry out and distantly hear a low rumble before the pain I’d been feeling comes to an abrupt end. I open my eyes and look over my right shoulder. Spread over the floor is the body of the male I stabbed ... but the space where his head once was is now a puddle.

I gag in the back of my throat and hurl myself away from his body up into a seat. My back hits broken bits of the airplane junk pile, and I cry out, rubbing a painful spot on my side. I need to find Rollo and get the hell out of here. “Rol—” I go very, very still and completely and utterly quiet, forgetting instantly about the headless corpse when, lying there right beside it, a huge monster rises from the ground, hand dipped in blood that’s just as red as its flesh.

Crouched on one knee, the monster looks at me briefly before turning away and launching itself over the ground, over the barrier of broken airplanes. I move into a crouch, tracking it with my eyes, not wanting to let it out of my sight—a mistake. Because I see then in full clarity as the younger male turns, his hands raised. The wall of sand that had been keeping my not-so-official extraction team outside suddenly falls. Sand blasts into the space, and I duck, but not before I see the monster retaliate. The monster’s horns catch fire. It lunges. Lifting one enormous arm to block the sand, it arrives within arm’s distance of the smaller male, and then it removes the male’s head with one swipe of its massive claws.

Familiar claws.

The sand falls, and in the quiet of its absence, my squeak is loud . I cover my mouth with both hands as the creature with red skin and massive horns who stands eight feet tall and has clawed feet and black ... talons and ... is wearing ... the sweatpants I gave him ... turns toward me. He moves so slowly that time bends away from me, and I have to use both hands to reel it back in. Because then he’s facing me, and I drop to my ass behind the wall of airplane bits because I can’t unsee what I just saw.

A whoosh sounds. The monster is in flight. I see it move over my head, landing on the finished concrete between me and the headless alien who’d been hurting me. My hands are clasped over my mouth, and I look up, admiring familiar inky-black hair feathering around fresh horns gracefully, a chunk falling across his forehead like a Highland cow. It’s cute, if anything so terrifying could be.

His mouth and nose and eyes are the same shape, just bigger to match his new proportions. His skin is covered in runes that glow very subtly when he first sees me and then die down to a shade just darker than the rest of his skin. And it isn’t red, by the way. It isn’t red. It only looks that way in the light of all the flames glowing around the building. Flames that are slowly dying away. The smoke too.

He’s pink.

Roland, the giant pink monster, takes a step toward me, his sweatpants tight around his massive thighs and slung low around his hips so that I can see all his fancy new muscles. I swallow hard.