Angel Town Read Online Free Page A

shivered. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but it gave him some trouble. Maybe it was the mismatched eyes, one blue, one brown, that I’d found staring at me in the diner’s restroom mirror. Maybe it was the gunk smeared all over me.
    Maybe it was even the gun.
    “Go home,” I rasped. My voice didn’t want to work quite right. “Go to school. Get a job and stop hanging out in alleys.”
    His head bobbed, lank hair falling forward in strings. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t say just who . Someone with a flat, dark stare, someone I knew because…
    …it was gone. Just for a second, I had it. Then it retreated, maddeningly.
    He turned tail and ran, his sneakers whispering over concrete and kicking aside random bits of trash.
    I spun, slowly, in a complete circle, marking every fallen body. The gun swept like a searchlight, tracking by itself to cover possible hiding places before I even thought of it. An easy instinctive movement, just like breathing. Whoever I was, I’d spent a lot of time doing this.
    Training, milaya . A gruff, harsh voice, the words freighted with a foreign accent and cut off short and sharp. It gets into bones. Run all the way deep.
    Who was that? My right hand jerked a little, as if the gem set on the inside of my wrist was twitching, pulling me.
    He’d trained me well. The guys were down and moaning, except for the first one—the one I’d punched, his cheekbone shattered and bits of white tooth flecking the wet hole of his twisted-open mouth. He lay utterly still, with his head at an odd angle.
    Oh, Christ, did I kill someone?
    The sudden certainty that it wasn’t the first time poured down my back, ice cubes trickling. Nobody who handled a gun like this could be innocent.
    I backed up two steps, bare feet on cold concrete. At least I wasn’t bleeding anymore. Maybe I was toughening up.
    You clawed your way up out of a grave. I’d say that’s pretty damn tough. The question is, what do you do now?
    I had a full belly. But I needed shelter, and some more clothes wouldn’t be amiss.
    A quick search of the two moaning men produced rolls of cash as thick as my forearm. Plus little plastic baggies full of illegal smokable stuff, switchblades, and two guns—a .38 and a 9mm. I tossed them down the alley so the boys didn’t get any ideas, and considered the guy I’d punched. After a second or two of thought, I found another roll of cash as well as more baggies on him. He was still breathing, the air bubbling through the bloody mess of his mouth. I’d broken his cheekbone and quite a few of his teeth. My hand didn’t hurt at all, and how had I blinked across space to take out Chain Boy?
    The gem on my right wrist glittered, colorless, a hard dart of light as dawn strengthened and spilled more illumination through the crack serving as the alley’s ceiling.
    You don’t know your own strength, girl.
    “I guess not,” I muttered. “Jesus.”
    I got the hell out of there.

4
     
    T he crackling plastic bags on the tiny room’s colorless bed gave up a black V-neck T-shirt and a pair of jeans that were a little too big, but I hadn’t been able to try them on. It was bad enough waiting in the shadows for the gigantic Walmart a mile away to open. By 9 a.m. when the doors whooshed wide, I was a bundle of exposed, dirty, and vulnerable nerves.
    I shouldn’t have worried. Those employees don’t bat an eye. I guess no matter what I looked like, they’d seen worse. After getting an eyeful of the crowd waiting to scramble on in and get their cheap shit even cheaper, I won’t exactly say I was heartened—but I was feeling a little more anonymous.
    I remembered my shoe size, at least, but the sneakers felt weird, too light and flexible. The holster for the .45—I’d stuck it in the waistband of my ruined leather pants while shopping, just like a good American—didn’t quite do it, but a little duct tape fixed that right up. The .45 ammunition had been reasonably cheap, and as