Read Leaping for Free Online

across my memory. I haven’t gotten around
to killing that grotesque sack of shit yet, but he’s high up on the priority
list.
    Tucker hefts my gun. He moves a
step closer, and I hold my ground. My muscles are tense. If I were facing a
human I wouldn’t be nervous at all. Slow, fat-fingered humans. But another
angel – a full-fledged angel is another ballgame. Tucker is faster than me,
stronger too. All of my enhanced abilities are shadows compared to what a full
angel can do.   
    Stall, I think. Distract
him. Get out of his shooting path. “How’s my buddy War doing?” I ask and
give Tucker a flashy smile of my own.
    “He’s pushing the angel religion
shit,” Tucker says as he takes another step forward. “They lap it up.”
    Behind Tucker’s naked ass, I
noticed a figure sprawled in the bed on top of the cheetah coverlet. The
long-legged woman is naked and dead, and her thick black hair fans out across
the black satin sheets. Tucker’s body glows with the ethereal energy he soaked
up from the woman.
    Tucker must notice my gaze. He
gives me a smile that almost drips with slime. “It’s ridiculously easy. They’re
so excited, so innocent.” He nods toward the bed and pitches his voice into a
high falsetto. “Ooohhh, Tucker Cartwright, I’ll suck your dick if you give my
headshot to your agent.”
    The asshole laughs. Actually
laughs. And that’s when I decide that Tucker Cartwright definitely won’t be
killing me tonight.
    “And their eyes,” Tucker says.
“They get so big and scared as I drain the life out of them.” He looks at the
bed again. “That one hardly fought at all.”
    He’s brimming with the power of his
recent feed. It’s making him cocky and stupid. I can work with that.
    “How do you get away with it?”
     “Heroine overdose. So tragic,” he
says and tilts his head. I see the spoon and syringe on the nightstand. “All
these young actresses. Hollywood just chews them up and spits them out.”
    I move, dashing right. BOOM !
The gun goes off. Then I’m on top of Tucker. My blade flashes in my hand. I see
the slap of surprise on features as my dagger puts a red smile across his neck,
from ear to ear. His telekinesis explodes, throwing me hard into the ceiling.
The plaster cracks and rains down as I fall. I tuck my body. The landing isn’t
graceful, but I roll and keep all my bones intact as I make it to my feet. In a
distant place, my elbow throbs with muted pain.
    The gunshot. I look down as panic
spreads like ice in my chest. Was I hit? Specks of blood dot my chest like tiny
rubies, but I don’t see a big gaping hole. No rivulets of blood run down my
arms or legs or spread a wet puddle across my costume. The flecks of blood
aren’t mine. 
    Near the foot of the bed, Tucker
spills his blood across the white travertine tiles. I watch the liquid pump
from his wound and slide across the floor in a crimson wave. My stomach
tightens, and the normal college sophomore I used to be screams somewhere far,
far in the back of my mind.
    Tucker grabs his neck as if he
could hold his severed artery together. As if he could save the life I’ve
already taken from him. I stand in front of him, watching, waiting, trying to
remember that he is a very bad person and deserves to die.
    The gunshot was muted by the
silencer, but it was still loud. It could bring Troll One and Two rushing up
the stairs. I know this, but my legs don’t move. I have to watch. No matter how
bad Tucker Cartwright was, I must stand vigil for his last moments. My eyes
keep flicking away from the shuddering body, but everywhere they go, they see Tucker
again and again and again like his ghost is accusing me from every poster.
    Tucker’s hand hits the tile with a
wet thud. His face is ghastly pale, mouth open, eyes half-lidded. The glow is
gone from his ashen skin. A few more tiny bubbles of blood slip down from the
corner of his mouth, and then Tucker Cartwright’s life is over. But his face,
all his thousand faces