Angel Fire (50 page)

Seb sped back to the offices; as he merged, his human self was already lunging towards the filing cabinet. “Willow, we’ve got to go!”

She shook her head anxiously. “Wait, this file might have something – it feels important—”

Seb heard the door crash open down the hallway, the echo of shouts. “
Now!
” He pulled Willow bodily from the filing cabinet; she resisted for a second, hanging back to yank the file out, and then they were both running, Willow with the file clutched to her chest.

They raced back out into the narrow hallway. Around the bend, it sounded as if the rioters were ripping the paintings down from the walls and smashing them. Then came running footsteps, heading their way. Seb and Willow were already tearing down the corridor in the opposite direction, her angel flying overhead to light their way down the dim, windowless passage.

As they turned another corner, Seb saw that the fire exit he’d remembered was still there, its sign looking blessedly ordinary as it beckoned to them. He threw himself against the door’s metal bar and they spilled out into the cool twilight of a car-lined street behind the cathedral.

There was no time to be relieved – they’d burst out into another battle. Crusaders and Faithful were fighting each other in a seething mass, at least a hundred of them: fists swinging, the sticks from placards being used as weapons. Angels with enraged faces flew overhead, occasionally ducking down to rip away the life force of a Crusader. A man screamed, clutching his chest as he fell to the ground. The fighting continued around him like churning water.

Seb and Willow ran along the side of the cathedral. Her angel had returned to her, leaving them bathed in shadow. All at once, Seb stopped short, feeling both Willow’s sudden, pulsing fear and a rushing sensation like a wind tunnel: a huge flock of angels was heading right towards them. Oh god, their half-angel energy – Seb didn’t know if the angels would stop long enough to sense them; couldn’t take the chance. Too hurried to be gentle, he shoved Willow up against the rough stone wall of the cathedral, his body hiding hers as he grabbed hold of both their auras with his thoughts – struggling through sheer force of will to bring them so close to their bodies that they couldn’t even be seen, so that he and Willow were only shadows in the darkness.

Their auras seemed to scream in protest; Seb’s muscles shook with the effort to hold them in the unnatural position. Energy roared over his senses as more than fifty angels sped past barely a wing’s-length away, soaring over the cathedral.

The rushing faded. Mental silence, with only the physical sounds of fighting still going on. Abruptly, Seb became aware of how closely he was pressed up against Willow – the warmth of her body next to his. Letting go of their auras, he pulled away, feeling drained and trembling.

Willow’s eyes looked huge as they stared at each other. He saw her swallow. “I – I didn’t know you could do that,” she said. Distantly, the wailing of sirens filled the air.

Seb shook his head. “No, me neither,” he got out.

Behind them, the fighting was still going strong, though the angels who’d been joining in had departed, apparently joining the larger flock. There was the sound of breaking glass nearby; in the distance he saw a pack of dark figures running. A car on fire.

Suddenly Willow gasped. “Oh my god – Alex! I totally forgot—” She fumbled in her jacket pocket for the cellphone, then searched her other pocket, her expression turning frantic. “My phone’s not here! It must have fallen out in the cathedral—”

Seb slapped at his trouser pocket, but knew already he didn’t have his phone, either; he was so unused to carrying one that he always forgot it. The thought faded as he stared at the burning car. Without answering Willow, he reached for his angel self and flew upwards into the night, hovering above the cathedral as he scanned the streets around them.

The
centro
was on fire.

Or at least that’s how it looked at first glance. Riots had broken out all around them – people were surging through the streets, breaking store windows, setting things alight. The sound of gunshots echoed from somewhere; more sirens. The Zócalo appeared to be a single heaving mass of people; Seb could hardly even see the Metro entrance. It was the same in almost every direction he looked. And the AKs’ house lay over a mile to the south, just past the thick of it all – attempting to go back there now would be madness.

Willow’s angel had joined him in the air; she swooped in a circle, her lovely features distraught. On the ground, Willow’s human self was staring at him. “Where are Alex and the team?” she said in a strangled whisper. “I can’t see them anywhere! Do you think—” She broke off.

Seb gripped her hand. “Can’t you sense them?” He meant,
Can’t you sense Alex?
He himself wasn’t close enough to any of the team to bother trying. The only person to whom he’d ever been close enough to sense was Willow.

As their angels returned to their human bodies, Willow closed her eyes tightly. Finally she gave a small nod. “They’re alive,” she said. “I think...I think they’re all okay. I can’t really tell; I’m too upset to get much.” Her expression was pained. Seb knew she was thinking about Alex, and dread kicked through him as he remembered what he still had to tell her.

The shouts behind them intensified; more people were throwing themselves into the fray. Glancing back, Seb could hardly even tell if it was still the Crusaders fighting the Faithful, or just herd mentality turned vicious. With a chill, he remembered the angel wings they were both wearing. “Come on, we’d better get these off,” he said, yanking the elastic straps from his shoulders. A moment later both pairs of wings lay on the ground beside the cathedral.

“What now?” asked Willow in a tiny voice. She was still clutching the file to her chest, and Seb could sense she was barely holding onto her composure – that the deaths they’d witnessed were battering at her, threatening to take her down. She cleared her throat. “I...I don’t think we’re going to make it to the house anytime soon.”

“No, it’s not safe,” agreed Seb. He felt bludgeoned by what they’d seen too; he ached to take Willow in his arms and just hold her for ever, comforting them both. But they needed a safe place to go until this was over – and given the way Céline and the others had almost recognized Willow, none of the city’s devout-filled hostels or hotels would be it.

The only direction that had looked relatively clear was to the north.

As the answer came to him, Seb’s jaw tightened with grim humour. He might have known that he wouldn’t get out of going there – that somehow events would herd him to the place like a dog herding sheep. Only with the
centro
literally in flames would the neighbourhood of his childhood ever seem like a safe haven, so that he could even consider taking the girl he loved to it.

Willow touched his arm. “Seb, what is it? Where are you thinking of going?”

“Tepito,” he said. He took her hand; barely resisted the urge to kiss it. “Come on – I know someplace there we can go.”

A
LEX STOOD WITHOUT MOVING AS
Willow and Seb headed across the square. Willow looked amazing in the short skirt, but he wouldn’t have been able to take his eyes off her even if she’d been wearing her usual jeans and sneakers. He watched her figure grow smaller as she and Seb neared the cathedral, her legs striding briskly in the heeled sandals.

She didn’t look back. He hadn’t really expected her to. As the two of them disappeared into the line of waiting people, he let out a breath.

“You okay?” asked Kara.

“Yeah,” said Alex shortly. For a second, he longed to go running after them; to draw Willow to one side and...what? She’d made it clear there was nothing more to say, that she cared more about her friendship with Seb than her relationship with him. Deep down, he knew it wasn’t so simple – that there were shades of grey, among the stark blacks and whites that had kept him awake, staring into the darkness, these last two nights. He felt incapable of untangling them. All he could see was Willow’s pink cheeks when he’d accused her of always thinking about Seb – the look on her face as she’d touched the sleeve of his sweater that night. He was still so in love with her that it hurt, but he had no idea where her head was any more.

Forget all of this – just forget it. He was sick of his own stupid thoughts.

“Come on,” he said to the team finally. “Let’s make a move.”

Half an hour later they were standing in front of the cathedral, listening to an angelic hymn drifting out. Behind them, someone was yelling through a megaphone about the inequity of a city that would spend money on angels, and not beds for its dying. As the crowd roared in approval, the Faithful screamed their protests, trying to get past the security guards – who looked pitiably few in number now, shouting unheeded orders at Crusaders and Faithful alike.

“Man, they’re going to lose that battle any second now,” murmured Kara, watching the guards struggle. “And when they do, that’s going to turn nasty.”

Alex nodded; just being near the scene was making him jumpy. The AKs couldn’t have chosen a worse time to be here if they’d tried. He took out his cellphone again and glanced at the screen. No call from Willow.

“Wait, what’s happening now?” Brendan peered down the dark steps to the entrance. “The singing’s stopped.”

Alex couldn’t make out the preacher’s words, but it seemed about the right time for the blessings to be taking place.
Be careful, babe, please be careful
. He was helpless to stop the thought. Hands jammed in his pockets, he stood against the outside wall of the cathedral, resisting the urge to look at his phone again.

He jerked upright as an explosion rumbled, the force of it trembling the ground under his feet.

“What the hell—” Sam’s eyes were wide; his voice drowned out by the thunder of several more explosions.

Oh Jesus, there
had
been an attack, and Willow was in there—Alex bolted for the entrance while the explosions were still going, hurled himself down the steps. He met a stampede head-on – thousands of shrieking, panicked people, all fighting to get out. The metal detector was trampled to the floor with a crash; people were pushing at him, shouting, forcing him back up the stairs in the swell of humanity.

“Let me through!” he yelled in Spanish. He propelled himself into the hysterical crowd. “Let me
through
!” Three crying girls shoved forward, shouting in French. Alex lunged past; found himself grappling a man with a frantic face. Howling obscenities, the man threw a punch that connected hard with his chin; Alex punched back without thinking and was past him in a second, battling his way against the tide. Willow was in there, Willow—

Others were fighting to get in too – there were shouts of “Kill the angels! Kill the angels!” as some of the Crusaders barrelled through in a group. A dark-haired woman clutching a baby stood crying in fear, battered from both directions; he saw her start to go down. Despite his own frenzy to get inside, Alex couldn’t ignore her – she and her child were seconds from being trampled.

Gritting his teeth, he got over to the woman and put his arms around her, then fought his way across to the wall with her, shielding her. He could feel the woman shaking as he was pounded from side to side, rocked by the crowd. “It’s okay, you’ll be okay,” he kept repeating in Spanish, and all he could think was,
Willow, please god, let her be alive
.

Finally the crowd thinned; an opening appeared on the stairs behind him. “You’ll be all right now,
Señora
,” he said quickly, stepping back. She threw herself at him, kissing his cheek.

“
Gracias, Señor, gracias
—” She turned and ran, holding her child tightly; she hadn’t even made it to the first step before Alex was racing into the smoking cathedral. Several of the pews were crackling with flames; bodies lay scattered like abandoned toys, surrounded by hymn books and debris. The rioters were everywhere – pulling statues over, smashing paintings into splinters, shooting at the stone columns that marched down the centre aisle. With a cheer, a gang threw a pew through a stained-glass window; it crumpled into brightly-coloured fragments.

Alex drew his gun and made his way, coughing, to the front, checking out every body that he passed – terrified that one would be Willow, her green eyes empty and unseeing.
Oh god, Willow, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything I said – please, just be alive, we’ll work it out, I promise
—

In front of the altar, near the charred and crumpled balustrade, he found Willow’s phone lying on the floor, its screen cracked. He gripped it hard as he looked wildly around him. Had she dropped the phone while escaping? Or had she been so close to this bomb that there was barely anything left of her? He shoved the thought away. The office; maybe they’d searched the office – he ran towards it, weaving past the sprawled, lifeless bodies.

The office door had been shot open by rioters. Suddenly he was in a smoke-filled tunnel. He plunged forward, eyes streaming as he held his arm over his face.