Leaping Read Online Free PDF Page B

around the first door. My right hand is already
cradling my Glock in a strong grip. No human auras within the room, but that
doesn’t mean an angel isn’t waiting to jump out at me like the rubber zombies
in the haunted tunnel. I turn the door handle, and the door opens into an
office. My gun is up, ready, sweeping the parameter. My eyes search the shadows
and find nothing.
    I close the door softly behind me.
My prickling angel sense feels the auras of my brothers up here with me. A
muffled shot rings from one of the other rooms, seemingly so loud, but I know
the pounding music downstairs will drown it out. I wish the silencers they show
in the movies really existed. They don’t. Silencers muffle a shot, but it’s
still loud. Still a risk.
    I move to the second door. The knob
resists my hand. Locked.
    On any other mission I’d have a
lock pick kit squirreled away in an inner pocket, but in this tight,
nothing-there costume, I come up empty. I’m so not asking my brothers for an
assist. I turn the knob harder. My muscles tense. I imagine all my hybrid angel
strength pouring out of me into the knob. Come on, dammit. What’s the point
of having super strength if I can’t… something snaps within the handle and
it turns willingly in my grasp.
    I shake out my throbbing hand.
Point to hybrid angel girl!
    I open the door slowly and move
into a vast room. Damn… I’ve never been across the ocean, but I’m pretty
sure a European castle could fit into this room. Whoa, narcissistic much? My
eyes travel around the room. Tucker Cartwright, Tucker Cartwright, Tucker
Cartwright. He gives me a swarmy grin from the beach, from behind the wheel of
an old Corvette, leaning up against a lamp post in the rain with the Eiffel
Tower behind him. Not phallic at all. His posters and calendars and portraits
compete with each other to fill up every possible inch of space on the walls.
Was this room decorated by a 12-year-old girl? I’m surprised I don’t see
magazine cutouts encircled by huge hearts taped to the walls.
    I catch a figure looming in my
peripheral and spin, almost blowing the head right off a life-sized cardboard
cutout of Tucker Cartwright. The cutout grins at me, his eyes saying, Yeah
I’m hot. Wanna fuck?  
    “Shit!” a voice hollers from a
massive bed sitting in the middle of the room.
    I turn and shoot, but the man is
already rolling out of the bed. My first bullet kicks a hole through his pillow.
He hits the floor with a thud, all bare ass and skinny legs. Tucker Cartwright. So not pleased to meet you. I aim for his chest, but he puts a hand up,
and I’m off my feet flying through the air.
    I take out the cardboard cutout
before I hit the wall hard and slide to the ground. Telekinesis, dammit! The
room is all floaty, a thousand Tucker Cartwrights sloshing up and down the
walls. I shake away the dizziness as I jump to my feet…. and notice the gun is
nowhere near my grip.
    “You wicked cunt!” Tucker Cartwright
hisses, and I hear the door slam behind me. “You’re one of ‘em whatchamacallem?
The…the Vigils?”
    He folds his arms around his chest
like he is madly, truly offended. “And crashing my fucking party. Probably ate
a fuck ton of my shrimp too, didn’t you?” I find my gun firmly couched beneath
the sole of his foot. “God, I can’t believe this.” He looks at me and runs a
hand through his long, tousled hair. “What the hell is wrong with your aura?”
    Bad. This is very bad. I always
knew the vigilante life would put me in a coffin at an early age, but
seriously, Tucker Cartwright? The world’s lamest fake famous person whose
vocabulary consists 50% of the word “Fuck”?
    “Oh wait. Wait. Wait. Wait!” Tucker
says as he leans over and picks up my gun. “You’re that girl, the half angel.”
His eyes are wide, and his mouth turns up into a cruel smile. “War said that
you were dead. Burned to a crisp.”
    “War.” The word is growl out of my
throat as Warren’s ugly face flashes