Read Coping for Free Online Page A

all sharp edges and angry
reds.
    Tarren presses his lips together so
tight that the blood runs out of them. “No,” he says evenly.
    “The hell we won’t…” Gabe starts.
    “We don’t know how many angels are
in that house, or what abilities they have,” Tarren cuts him off. “We’d be
going in totally blind with only two guns each.”
    “I’ve got thirteen rounds per mag.
That’s fucking plenty as far as I’m concerned.” Gabe jumps out of the tree.
“Tarren, they’ve got humans in there.”
    “If it’s like the other farms we’ve
found, they’ll snack on the humans. Keep them alive as long as possible.”
    “You don’t know how this one works,
plus, those angels could slip up, drain the humans dry. You know as well as I
that as soon as they start feeding it’s nearly impossible for them to stop.”
Gabe’s aura is getting more and more out of control, dancing off him like a
well-fueled fire.
    “We’re not prepared,” Tarren says.
    “Moot point. Innocent people.
Danger.  That means I go in. With or without you.” Gabe steps in front of his
brother, feet planted wide, eyes zeroed in on Tarren’s face. It’s the same way
he stood the night of my rescue from Grand’s clutches. The night Tarren pointed
a gun in my face and would have been more than happy to pull the trigger if
Gabe hadn’t put himself in front of the barrel.
    Tarren stares at his brother, his
pale eyes have gone gray.
    “We’re wasting time,” Gabe says. He
turns toward the house, pulls out one of his pieces and switches off the
safety.
    Tarren puts a restraining hand on
Gabe’s shoulder. “The humans should draw all the angels down to the same room.
They’ll be distracted. We find where they are, block off the room. Put them
down as fast and as quickly as possible and get the humans out.”
    Gabe looks back at his brother and
nods. They share one of those looks, all steel and lava and I’d die for you but never say it out loud brotherhood.
    Good thing I’m too deranged with
fear to take much of my usual amount of offense at being left out. Instead, my
mind is running a familiar loop of cresting panic. We’re storming the house,
and it’s going to be bloody. I’ll finally kill my first angel.
    “I’ll need a gun,” I say, and shit,
my voice wavers like a palm tree in a hurricane.
    “She’s not going in,” Gabe says
immediately.
    Tarren looks at me. Can he tell how
pathetically I’m holding myself together? Yep, definitely. Those flint eyes
miss nothing.
    “You’ll stay out here and guard the
barn,” he says. “We don’t know how many angels are in the house. If any of them
escape, we can’t let them get to the barn, to those innocent people.
Understand?”
    We both know he’s planting me
solidly on the bench, and even though it’s the right move, I feel my eyes
stinging with chagrin. I swallow. Nod.
    “And how am I going to stop any
escaped angels?” I ask.
    “With this.” Gabe hands me one of
his Barretas. His face is dreadful serious, which makes him look older than his
twenty three years. “Safety’s off. You’ve got thirteen rounds to hit the
fucker. Aim for the chest. It’s a bigger target than the head.”
    The gun is weighty in my palm.
Solid.
    “You good?” Tarren asks. He’s so
calm. Like he was made to storm castles and carry out the beautiful princess.
    My tongue has suddenly decided to
stick to the bridge of my mouth, so I just nod. Oh
shit. This is real. I have a gun and I might have to shoot somebody.
    “Be careful Sis,” Gabe says,
pegging me with those big regretting eyes of his. “If things get hot, you can
run. This is our job, not yours.”
    I appreciate the sentiment. Gabe
still thinks there might be a way of getting through to me, but there isn’t.
I’m in this war now. Solider Maya marching to the beat no matter how Jell-O my
knees feel at this particular moment.
    “We go in quiet, we go in fast,”
Tarren says to Gabe. “Put them down.”
    “Done, done and