Sister Angel by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online Page A

reached down to her mid thighs. She was crying the way a child cries, like a three-year-old, open-mouthed, her eyes tightly closed, screaming.
    She had to make the child hear her, had to say the right words, make her hear… . Her words were drowned in screams. An end table flew across the room, hit Amos on the leg. She said the words again and could not even hear them herself. The entire room was alive, moving, crashing. She would kill them all, Constance thought distantly.
    “I’m coming!” Charlie whispered. “Hold on, baby. I’m coming!” He tried to move, tripped over the chess table and felt it jerk out from under his body, saw it fly across the room, crash into the wall. He pulled himself on the carpet, clutching it, trying to drag himself to her. I’m coming. Honey, don’t scream! Stop screaming! I won’t let him send you back, Angel! I swear it!
    Amos was dragging one leg, holding on to the back of a chair, unable to stand upright, yelling hoarsely to her, calling her name over and over. The chair tilted and he crashed to the floor again. The gun was shaken from his pocket to the floor. Angel kept screaming.
    Amos flung up his hand to ward off something; he rolled and doubled up in pain and his hand closed on the gun. He was moaning. “Stop it, Angel! My God, Angel—” He convulsed with pain again, and this time he lifted the gun and fired.
    “Angel!” he screamed. He dragged himself to the steps, and she fell down on top of him. Her eyes had opened; she stared unblinking at the ceiling; her long white hair swung when he lifted her. “Angel!” he cried out again, and pressed her body to him, cradled her like an infant, rocking back and forth with her, crying out her name over and over.
    Constance buried her face in her hands and shook with weeping. She felt Charlie’s arms around her and leaned against him blindly.
    His eyes were closed tight, his face against her neck. He stirred first. Wanda, he thought. Someone had to see how badly Wanda was injured. He lifted his head. “I’ll be damned! Constance, look!”
    Nothing in the room was disturbed, nothing broken, nothing out of place. Constance raised her head, reached up to feel her temple, expecting a lump, a cut, blood. There was nothing. Amos rocked back and forth, sobbing, holding Angel in his arms. Wanda was starting to move.
    The police had come and gone, and now the sky was light ening. Charlie and Constance stood before the wide ex panse of glass and looked at the lake, unbroken by a ripple. He had told the police that Amos had come for his daugh ter, then shot her when she appeared on the top step. Constance and Wanda had repeated the story, adding nothing at all to it.
    “That poor kid,” one of the policemen had said over and over. Poor kid, Constance echoed in her mind. She never had a chance. She remembered the toy cat, how it had thrown Angel into a panic as she equated herself with it—soulless, will-less, an automaton, taking orders, never free. And with powers that never would be studied, never under stood, never used for something other than deception and destruction. Powers that finally killed her, after making her life hellish. “She never had a chance,” she whispered.
    Charlie tightened his grip on her hand. And Amos, he never had a chance, either, he thought, but did not say it. He would have had to kill father figures for an awfully long time. Constance had not asked what Angel had made him feel, what she had made him see. She never would ask, and he never would bring it up, either.
    “I wish we were home,” he murmured, yearning for their comfortable living room, the three raunchy cats, the quiet fire, the silent snow accumulating under the windows. She leaned against him and sighed. “Let’s not go anywhere again for a long, long time.” They went upstairs then, and when they got to their room, they shared one of the twin beds, just to hold each other, just to be close.