Angel Fever (33 page)

“
Mom – no!
” I gasped.

So softly I almost didn’t hear, she said,
You know what you have to do.
As her body slumped, her blonde hair feathered across one cheek. Her aura faded, its grey lights slowly flickering to nothing.

She was gone.

I felt a flash of Raziel’s fury, then the connection vanished. For a second the energy of the angels’ world bucked wildly, but I was immersed in it enough now that it was part of me – I could still control it, even without Mom’s support.

And she was right: suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do. With tears streaming down my face, I got back to my feet. Standing half in the angels’ world and half in my own, I linked the two energies and dived into them.

Raging power. But what had once been chaos could now be tamed. I held onto Alex more tightly, feeling his love for me.

I closed my eyes and began.

The sky was a seething mass of angels.

When they’d first appeared over the square, Seb had started shooting at the nail bombs automatically, trying to ignore the panicked screams. As the bombs went off one after another, nails spewed into the air like glittering fountains; the angels’ wings writhed as they jerked back. In seconds, fragments of perished angels were drifting down like sun-kissed snow.

How many dead?
thought Seb tensely, still shooting. Over a hundred, maybe?

But there were thousands more. As the last of the bombs went off, Seb’s fellow fighters darted out into the square, firing upwards; others raced for the ladders leading to the roofs.

Seb sent his own angel out. A girl slipped and fell; as an angel swarmed in for the kill, Seb dived to block him. He and the snarling angel battled briefly, wings colliding with sparks. There was gunfire, and the angel vanished in a burst of light.

The girl scrambled up and ran, still firing into the sky – and Seb registered her aura. A second ago it had looked normal; now it had shrunk close to her body. It flickered, growing larger and then small again.

Abruptly, Seb’s attention snapped back to the battle – his angelic body darted aside as a spray of bullets tore past, and his human self shot another angel, catching it as it went high.

Alex was firing like a machine, his finger barely pausing on the trigger. Then he glanced across the square and clapped Seb’s arm. “Come on – they’re heading north.”

They broke cover from the diner and ran, firing upwards. Seb caught a glimpse of Jonah up in the town hall tower, talking urgently into a mic – and then a group of angels converged on him in a frenzy. Seb’s heart sank; he slowed down as he shot at them, but Jonah had vanished in a haze of wings.

Seb and Alex plunged into the streets north of the square; all around, Seb could see auras doing that same flickering. He winced as an angel managed to grab hold of one and rip it away – the fighter fell. But nearby, another angel veered off with a furious screech as an aura shrank to nothing.
Willow?
Seb thought, dazed.

Quickly, he checked on her again; the energy roaring through her tingled at his scalp. She’d opened the gate, then.
You can do it,
querida, he thought as he and Alex ran, footsteps pounding as they tried to get ahead of the angels.
Just keep going – you can do it.

The street took them to a residential neighbourhood. Alex paused, scanning the sky. Over the centre of town it was still a churning white, the angels now behind them and heading their way.

“We need to get onto a roof, fast,” Alex said. “
Damn it,
these houses aren’t fortified – how are you at climbing?”

“I was a thief, remember?”

Alex nodded tensely. “Okay, take one of these; I’ll go a few streets over. Just
hold them back
, no matter what.”

Seb had no intention of doing anything else. He could sense that the angels were looking for Willow – and just then the air started to throb with the force of what she was doing. Seb swore; it wouldn’t be long now before they realized and took off past the town to stop her.

As Alex raced off, other fighters came pouring into the street; Seb shouted out hasty instructions as the first few angels appeared. He quickly chose a house and started towards it – and then a flurry of action caught his gaze.

A tall girl with long auburn hair, sprinting for the houses. She turned and shot at an angel; nothing happened. It dived – her aura was low but not low enough—

With no thought, Seb went hurtling towards her; he tackled her to the ground just as his own angel swooped to defend them. He could feel her heartbeat crashing against his, and then his human self rolled off her, firing upwards. The angel burst into light and vanished.

For a second Seb lay breathing hard.
Don’t scare me like that,
chiquita
– I thought I’d lost you.
And then he realized that of course the girl beside him wasn’t Meghan at all.

Rachel scrambled to her feet. “Thank you!” she gasped. “I ran out of cartridges – I thought I was going to die—”

Stunned, Seb got up too. He swallowed hard and glanced behind him. The first few angels, dead now, had been ahead of the others; just behind were a thousand more.

The sight galvanized him. “Hurry! Take cover!”

As Rachel ran off, Seb leaped up onto a window sill; after a quick scramble, he gripped the rough, sloped surface of the roof and pulled himself onto it. Other fighters had gotten onto roofs too; they waited tensely in position all up and down the street.

The angels hit in a rush, turning the sky white even with their depleted numbers. The roof was slick with frost. Seb crouched beside the chimney, bracing himself against it as he shot again and again. More shooting came from the houses nearby – the air was full of confetti, of flashing wings that dived straight at him.

Seb pivoted himself frantically around the chimney as he shot, his feet sometimes slipping a few inches, his angel protecting his back. His jaw was tight. He couldn’t think now about what had just happened; he only knew he felt a raging sorrow inside, a fury at his own stupidity that made him want to tear apart every angel he saw with his bare hands.

Then, for a moment, everything seemed to hang suspended, even the angels. A sense of gathering power grew. Above, the sky lightened to an ominous white; to the north, a swirling vortex had appeared, an angry eye peering down from the heavens.

In the physical world, everything had gone still; on the ethereal level, it felt as if Seb were standing in the path of an oncoming train. The angels seemed to realize all at once what was happening; with roars of rage they began streaming to the north, ignoring the fighters now in their hurry to get to Willow.

Swearing, Seb swivelled around the chimney, firing at the angels as they passed. One of them grabbed for his flickering life force but missed as Seb’s angel quickly shielded him.

Then a burst of gunfire came from across the street, tearing through his angel’s ethereal body. Seb cried out, twisting in agony. At the same moment, the corner of the chimney exploded into flying fragments of brick.

It was like being hit by a truck. Dimly, Seb knew he was slipping down the slick roof – he was falling. The ground slammed into him.

He couldn’t move. Dios mío,
the pain
– he was broken.

Meggie,
he thought in a daze.
Oh, my love, please forgive me. I was so stupid – so blind…

His thoughts faded until there was only blackness. Seb lay without moving, his curls damp with blood and melting snow.

At the moment when the world seemed to still, Alex cursed harshly – he had a feeling he knew exactly what was coming next. He scrambled down from the house where he’d been shooting and took off at a run, charging through the streets of Pawntucket as the first faint swirls of the vortex appeared.

He passed a fallen fighter: a girl holding one of the machine guns. Shoving aside his feelings, he snatched up the weapon and kept going, his footsteps thudding through his brain. Somehow he managed to pull ahead of the angels.

In less than a minute, he’d gone beyond the third buffer zone. The streets lay empty. As an ethereal wind began to howl, Alex chose a house on the edge of town and flung himself at it, scaling it quickly. Too late, he realized it was one that had been made unstable by the quakes – the wood creaked alarmingly under his feet – but there was no time to change.

As he hefted himself onto the roof, he caught a glimpse of snowy fields beyond the edge of town – and the hill on the horizon where the girl he loved was fighting for everything they believed in. The vortex moved above her like a pale, swirling bruise.

Hang on, babe, you can do it,
he thought hurriedly – then braced himself against the chimney and spun to face the town. He could just see other fighters heading this way, knew they wouldn’t get here in time. Because coming right towards him was a raging river of white, as a thousand angels bore down.

Alex set his jaw; he swung his rifle over his back and raised the machine gun to his shoulder. “You are
not
getting past me,” he muttered down the barrel. “Try to touch her and you die.”

As the first angels came into range, Alex started shooting, picking off halos – he swept from left to right, then back again, seeing nothing but the gleaming circles. Angels exploded with furious screams; wings seemed to tangle and churn in a maelstrom of white.

The angels at the front burst out in all directions – some went high, some tried to veer around. “Don’t even think it,” murmured Alex.

He shot at a pale blur off to the side; whipped the weapon around to get another; shot at a third with no pause. A fourth, a fifth…twenty…fifty shards of light rained down as he fired, not bothering to check if he’d missed or not. They
would not
reach Willow – there was no other option.

The angels behind hurtled towards him in a steady stream. When Alex had shot the machine gun dry, he swung the rifle into position; he moved mechanically across the halos again, firing over and over. The falling light was a blizzard now. Angels darted out from its depths.

Alex somehow held them off again and again – but they were advancing steadily; he felt his control slipping – and suddenly they were on him in full, screaming force.

Shit.
He flung himself onto the cold, frosty roof; with an outraged groan, it buckled under him. As he struggled to hold on, a hundred angels surged around him, all straining for his life force. He couldn’t shoot the rifle single-handed; he swore and let the weapon drop – briefly considered letting himself fall, too, though the floor below him was gone.

No. If he was going to die, he’d go out fighting. And though he could barely see through the haze of wings, Alex reached in his waistband for his pistol.

I
STOOD POISED BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
.

It felt as if my hair were crackling with electricity. The energy surged through me – that of the angelic world strengthening our own, rushing out over the planet. In both dimensions, willow branches stirred in the cold wind as I rode the energy’s crest…and used it to reach out to all humanity.

Millions of people. Billions. Lives, names, images flashed past too quickly to take in: damaged with angel burn, undamaged, young, old, of every colour and creed. Slowly, as the power increased even more, my arms spread out from my sides. My angel lifted up out of me and hovered above, bright and shining.

Let me help you,
I thought, and didn’t even know where the words had come from.
Please. It’s time.

I stood caught in the hurricane between worlds; I was the centre of everything. I felt detached, focused – even though I somehow knew that Raziel was racing towards me, his wings eating up the miles as he was carried along by the surging energy. Even though I knew that in my hometown below, a thousand angels had started heading my way.

It didn’t matter. Because now it wasn’t only those who’d once been near me whose energy was straining towards me – it was all humanity’s. And this time I was taking control, doing exactly what needed to be done.

The energy seethed across the earth, leaping from person to person. It felt as if dazzling light was streaming out from my fingertips – though when I risked a dazed glance, my hands looked the same as always. Dizzying swathes of information were roaring past – knowledge of every person on the planet. Blurred images of spiral ladders: the building blocks of humankind, morphing and shifting under my direction along with the very earth itself – the boundaries of our dimension.

In the angelic world, an enraged crowd of angels had gathered, kept at bay by the swirling power. And though I was shifting things in their world too…I knew it wasn’t me they wanted.

My outspread arms began to shake as the energy force whipped around the planet again and again, using me as a conduit. I cried out as its raging power almost knocked me off my feet; I couldn’t control this for much longer…

My angel quickly took the bulk of it on herself. The powerful force screamed past, howling through both her ethereal body and my physical one – if I moved even an eyelash now, I’d be torn to shreds. I gritted my teeth, trembling, as oceans raged and lashed at me. I could feel my angel being battered – hurt – yet still she stayed in place. Oh god, how much longer? I couldn’t hold on – I couldn’t—

And then…it was done.

I let out a gasping breath. Somehow I knew not to break the connection yet. Instead, I gradually let the power recede: the angelic energy field was still connected with our own, but it was more placid now. My angel crept feebly inside me.

The last vestiges of power still sizzled around me, holding back the angels in the other world. The massive army from town hadn’t reached me yet and I dimly wondered why. If they had, there’d been enough of them to break through – they’d have killed me in seconds.

But another angel had arrived.

I opened my eyes and saw Raziel standing just outside the bare branches of the willow tree, his face contorted in fury. My muscles shuddered with exhaustion as we regarded each other. I knew that the second I dropped hold of the energy, he’d try to kill me. Because he knew exactly what I’d done – I’d made sure that every angel in existence knew.

“
How dare you?
” he hissed.

“There are lots of other gates now,” I said levelly. “I’ve opened them all around the world. They’ll close in a minute – and when they do, they’ll draw every angel here right back through them. You’re never coming back here again.”

Around us, the willow branches rustled – the same branches that had moved around him and my mother that winter night twenty years ago. Raziel’s eyes burned into mine.

“I had an empire here – an empire!” he spat. “A minute will be more than enough time to kill you, my darling daughter. And I plan to do it with my bare hands.”

His bare hands. The same ones that had plunged so eagerly into my mother’s life force. My spine turned to steel.

“You know, you were right,” I told him quietly. “Genocide isn’t something I’m capable of. But patricide…I think I can live with that.”

I dropped the energy and stepped away from the gate.

With a quick shift to his angel form, Raziel lunged at me – and then jerked back with a yelp as the river of attacking angels surged through from the other world. I could feel their rage that they’d been stranded, left to die. Raziel disappeared under a frenzy of wings; the willow’s ethereal branches churned, while the physical willow tree shifted gently, stirred only by the breeze.

Below, I could see the army of angels now, their bodies shining as they neared the park. I still couldn’t turn away from the melee before me. My arms prickled as Raziel screamed – a high, terrible sound that was cut short. Then snowy fragments came drifting on the air, glinting as they caught the light…like the rainbows my mother had loved so much.

I let out a long, ragged breath.

“Goodbye, Father,” I said.

The words had barely left my mouth when the gate’s surface churned and yawned open. I jogged a few hasty steps back. An immense rushing noise came, like the ocean crashing over a ship.

And then the gate started to do exactly what I’d designed it to.

The angels who’d attacked Raziel vanished first, the energy reeling in their bright, struggling bodies almost lazily; then it picked up speed, and the angels who’d been surging towards me from Pawntucket were drawn through in a panicked tumble of wings. Angelic screams, glimpses of stunned, frightened faces.

The noise grew deafening, a roar that shook the ground, as the gate pulled them in faster and faster – I fell to my knees, crying out and clapping my hands over my ears. I couldn’t even see angels any more: just a sparkling river of light that led into the willow tree as thousands were drawn through, from miles away.

But I could sense their despair – their certainty that what had happened here was a judgement on them. In their gamble with our world, they’d lost almost everything that had made them angels.

When it was all over, there was silence.

I rose slowly, staring at the willow tree, with its shimmering, frosty branches. Ice skirted the edge of the pond; above, a few patches of blue were showing through the clouds. It all looked just the same. As if the last half-hour had never happened at all.

Then, with a chill, I realized something
had
changed.
My angel.
Oh god, the way the energy had battered so fiercely at her – I reached for her in a panic. In my mind’s eye, I could see her: my radiant, winged twin. Her head was bowed…and one of her wings lay crumpled and useless at her side.

“No,” I whispered, gently reaching out to her. Our hands touched with a soft glow as her eyes met mine. They were sad, resigned – and in a daze I knew that this was not an injury that could be healed.

Angrily, I wiped away tears. No – no, this couldn’t be true. I switched my consciousness to hers, longing to sense that everything was all right. Instead it felt as if my ethereal body were bound down by tethers, unable to break free.

My angel couldn’t fly any more.

I stood motionless beside the tree, trying to take it in. She’d never leave my body again – never lift away and send me soaring through the stars. At first I’d spent so long hating my angel self, wanting her to go away for ever. Yet now that she’d been diminished, it felt as if part of me had been chopped off.

The willow tree shifted gently in the breeze as I gazed at the spot where I’d been conceived – the place where the angels had disappeared, for ever. After what seemed a long time, I felt my shoulders straighten a little.

If this was the price I had to pay, then okay – I can live with it,
I thought finally.

I turned and made my way back down the hiking trail, listening to the tread of my footsteps against the snow and damp earth. And somehow, despite Mom, despite my angel…I felt strangely at peace. Already what had happened felt like a dream, yet at the same time everything was so clear now, as if the world were brand-new. I tipped my head back as I walked, gazing at the frost sparkling on the pine trees.

When I reached the parking lot, my truck was still there. I got in and started the engine – and glanced at the picture of Timmy.

“Let’s go home, kid,” I murmured.