Battle Angel (5 page)

I
n the ocean below the navy surveillance helicopter, the demon sinkhole spun and boiled. The blue-green whirlpool of the massive, mile-wide sink appeared to extend downward infinitely. Its watery walls were steep, dropping into the darkest of pits, opening up a fissure to a demonic portal.

And no one knew what was waiting at the bottom.

U.S. military helicopters, flying from a nearby aircraft carrier, took shifts monitoring the site, but were staying much higher than their first patrol crafts had. At the very beginning, when they hadn’t understood the danger, at least three helicopters had been drawn into the orbit of the whirlpool and had been lost. They weren’t making that mistake again.

“Hey, Chen. I’m beginning to wonder if these demons are ever going to come,” Private Dee Jacobson said to the guy next to him. “How long have we been up here, anyway?”

“Too long,” Private Chen said, yawning. He checked his watch. “And we got another three hours. And I’m hungry. You got anything to—?” Then his eyes grew large as he looked out the window at the swirling pit underneath the helicopter. “Jacobson, what’s that?”

The crewmen looked out into the dangerous waters. Below, the sinkhole seemed to be shrinking before their very eyes, growing smaller and smaller with every passing moment. They watched with hope as the swirling waters seemed to fold in on themselves.

Jacobson leaned out the window. “Is it going away? Is it?” He laughed in relief. “It’s going away! Chen, you see this?”

An enormous gust of air blew up toward the helicopter from the pit below as the sinkhole kept shrinking inexplicably.

“Hold on!” a shout came from the cockpit. The chopper shuddered and tilted sideways, violently, before the pilot steadied them again.

Jacobson radioed back to their carrier. “Giant Killer, we have action here at the sinkhole site,” the crewman said. “It almost looks like, well, you’re not going to believe this, but it looks like the sinkhole’s disappearing!”

“
Go again, Charlie Niner Niner?
”
the voice from the carrier responded in disbelief. Below, the water had become darker and darker, until almost black.

The crewmen hadn’t noticed the change and were still laughing. But Chen was quiet as he looked once more out the window. “I have a bad feeling about this. . . .”

The others followed his gaze and saw the problem. For several moments, all the crewmen on the helicopter held their breath. The water below became still. Silent. The pool had become smaller than ever. It all looked so harmless, except for the inky black spreading out from its center like an oil spill.

Suddenly the pit began spiraling again. Faster, faster this time. The whirlpool started developing rapidly, expanding and expanding, and growing faster by the second.

“What the hell is that?” Jacobson screamed.

Crimson red tendrils began spiraling up from the bottom of the sinkhole into the churning black waters. More and more red frothed up to the top until the entire roiling waters spiraled into a giant, frothy sinkhole.

Of blood.

One lone demon emerged slowly from the bloody froth. It was enormous. Its black skin, rugged with scales, seemed to actually be
on fire
, a putrid mass of black flame and smoke roiling off its body. In fact, its skin most certainly
was
afire, shifting, moving, and searing with dark flames. Enormous spiny protrusions ran along its back, terrible and murderous. Multiple heads gnashing black teeth emerged from its chest, jaws snapping and snarling at the sun itself. The Dark One beat its scaly wings once, then twice, circling the sinkhole in a counterclockwise motion.

Then another demon emerged.

And another.

Soon, dozens rose up, all dripping fire, bloodred and blood-black, from the terrible waters.

“Dear God,” Chen said.

“Get us out of here, now!” Jacobson shouted frantically to the pilot.

The military surveillance copter fought against the storm winds and rose higher and higher, away from the pit.

“
Charlie Niner Niner, achieve safe distance!
” the voice from back on the carrier yelled over the radio.

Suddenly, an F-18 shot across the sky, deafening as it roared overhead and began to circle back.

“
Boys, the cavalry has arrived. Proceed back to bearing zero-niner-twenty-four
,” a voice from the fighter jet said over the radio.
“We’ll take it from here.”

“Roger that, we are heading back,” Chen said. “Gladly. You watch your six out here, Trav.”

“Roger that. Getting a read on the enemy.”

The helicopter moved toward the relative safety of the carrier and battleships, some miles away.

“Will you get a load of that,” the copilot of the fighter jet said in disbelief and practical wonder as he looked at the sight below.

The demons were flying just above the surface, still in the shelter of the swirling pit, circling in the opposite direction of the roiling black and red froth.

“Looks like they’re not coming out to play,” the pilot said.

Suddenly, one demon rose up and skimmed just meters above the surface, advancing toward the fighter jet, which was trying to get a position on the hole.

“We have a bogey,” the copilot said. He leaned down and took a picture of the demon below with his iPhone as the jet banked hard right.

“I’m not scared or nothin’,” he said over the radio. “But that’s one ugly sucker.”

“Focus, man, focus,” the pilot said.

“Got it,” the copilot said. “Okay, move in tighter. Let’s see how he likes a taste of Uncle Sam’s medicine.”

“Moving in,” the pilot said, speeding up until they were right behind the Dark Angel as it roared across the ocean surface.

Beeeeeeeeeeep
. The targeting screen turned red as it locked onto the demon’s heat source.

“Missile lock! Missile lock! Let’s smoke this demon right now!”

“Engaging,” the pilot said, flipping up the trigger guard and pressing the missile button.

The missile fired—and flew right over the demon’s shoulder.

“Damn!”

The Dark Angel spiraled its body around, shooting left. It looked only mildly irritated.

“Giant Killer, we need some backup firepower!” the copilot shouted.

The answering voice came from flight control over the radio:
“Roger. Incoming. Course set to niner-eight-four-niner.”

All at once, four surface-to-air missiles launched from a tactical battleship in the strike group with the aircraft carrier, leaving wispy jet trails as they flashed toward their target. At the same time the jet spiraled to follow the demon and launched another missile its way.

The Dark Angel only had a half second to look sideways, its expression almost curious. First the jet’s rocket struck, and then, a split second later, the ship’s missiles seared the sky and collided with the demon as it skimmed along the surface of the ocean. One shot after the other.
BOOMBOOMBOOM BOOMBOOM.

The force of the explosions was visible in the orange fire below, which flared back in the tinted glass of the pilots’ helmets.

“Target hit. Bull’s-eye,” the pilot confirmed.

“Did it work? Did it work?” The copilot’s voice was calling frantically. The F-18 circled around, and from the billowing smoke of the explosion, not a demon was seen. Only a disturbance in the water where the flaming wreckage of the missile lay.

“Roger that,” the pilot said coolly.

“Holy crap, it worked! We got the bastard! Giant Killer, we have downed our first Dark Angel,” the copilot said. “Ha-
ha
!”

Screaming against the g-forces, the jet banked backward, away from where they had struck at the demon.

The navigator checked his green radar screen. “Giant Killer, looks like we have three bogies on radar. Hell’s bells, this is going to be
fun
.”

Suddenly, behind the jet, the demon that had been struck by the missiles emerged from the water. And it looked angry.

“
Pull up, pull up, pull up!
” the copilot screamed. “Bogey is back, bogey is ba—”

In what seemed like a mere blink of an eye, the Dark Angel was on the jet, colliding in a cataclysm of fire and fury against the wing. Jet fuel incinerated as the aircraft crumpled into destruction. The demon continued flying up even as the fiery wreckage of what once was a mighty fighter jet arced toward the ocean at 200 miles per hour. The flaming ball impacted the blue-green surface so immediately that it appeared as if it had hit concrete. It shattered instantly into a million pieces, taking the lives of the pilots along with it.

“
Do you read, over? Do you read, over? Dammit, Trav, answer me!
” the control tower called from the carrier.

But there was no answer.

From the sinkhole, even more demons began to rise, circling.

They looked to Angel City.

• • •

Maddy’s gaze was focused on a small fly on the inside of the kitchen window. The insect beat itself against the glass as if striving for the sun outside, launching itself again and again, its wings flapping more desperately now. Even though it was a few feet away, this fly seemed to take up every inch of Maddy’s field of vision. Suddenly, the bright sun outside dimmed dramatically until it cast off the glow of a very red sunset. But it was still two in the afternoon, hours from dusk. The fly was now bathed in a bloodred light as it even more frantically tried to escape, too insignificant to realize it was trapped inside the glass. Maddy was transfixed.

The earth shook again, snapping her out of her reverie.

“Maddy!” Kevin shouted as a cupboard door swung open and a stack of plates was hurled toward her. He pushed Maddy out of the way as the plates smashed to pieces on the linoleum.

They were coming. She’d had the vision of the demon bearing down upon her, so strong that she was still reeling, only half-conscious to this world, the real one. That image of the Dark Angel was burned into her mind, still appearing before her in a slightly faded form, like the trace of bright light that followed everywhere she looked. A nauseating pit had been dug into her stomach, settling in with a hollow, sickly feeling.

Turning toward the window again, Maddy realized that her mind hadn’t been playing tricks on her; the sky really had taken on a sunset-red hue. She had a bad feeling that this wasn’t going to be the strangest thing she saw all day.

The earth shook again.

“Kevin! Listen to me! You have to stay inside like we planned,” Maddy shouted, adrenaline rushing upon her.

“What? Where are you going?” Kevin asked.

“I have something to do,” Maddy said.

“Maddy!” Kevin yelled as she dashed to the back door. Without another word, she was gone.

With bounding strides Maddy rounded the large oak she loved from her childhood to get to the front of the house. She peered into the distance and, with a sinking heart, saw activity across the darkening ocean horizon.

She could hear the distant rumble of fighter jet engines miles off, toward Santa Monica and the ocean, and could make out small specks in the distance. Whether they were demons or fighter jets, or both, she could not say.

She immediately tried to key into Tom’s frequency, but in bitter disappointment she found she couldn’t. Straining again to find Tom’s frequency emanating from the carrier, she still felt blocked. She had just felt it minutes before. But now it was gone, and there was no way for her to know what was happening to him.

With so much confusion and fear bubbling up all at once in the city, her neural circuitry was getting overwhelmed, even though she was superb at frequencing, something Susan Archson, her favorite Angel professor at Guardian training, had taught her. Maddy had excelled in the course, and Susan had been really impressed with her talent. Maddy had had visions since she was just a little girl, but had never known what they were. When people in her proximity were going through extreme situations, Maddy had thought she was just different or weird, and she’d kept the disturbing premonitions to herself.

But now the entire city seemed to vibrate with terror and confusion, and she couldn’t do a damn thing. It was flooding her all at once, and trying to focus on one frequency was impossible. The overwhelming static from all the panic of the people in the city swamped her senses.

And yet she still would try to focus on Tom’s, if she could.

In the distance there were the flashes of explosions. The distant rumble of booms rolled through the air from the ocean, indicating the first line of defense against the demons. But it was all too far away for Maddy to see what was really going on.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The reports of the far-off bombs continued to roll in.

With hope rising in her chest, Maddy realized that she hadn’t yet seen an actual demon. Maybe the humans could repel the Dark Angels after all. Maybe they could save themselves. If anyone could stop the demons, wouldn’t it be the biggest and most capable military in the world?

Then, with bitter disappointment, Maddy saw one, then two burning black shapes in the distance. They were growing closer, closer as they streaked across the sky toward Angel City. Dark Ones. All the hope that had just been glimmering inside her crumpled up in an instant. They had already broken through!

She could see that the defenses had slowed them down a bit, but clearly some demons had already made their way through the first line of defense along the coast. Maddy heard some terrified yells from the neighbors as they stumbled out of their homes and stared with wide eyes and gaping mouths at the reddening, darkening sky.

It was really happening.

Blood pounded in Maddy’s ears as she flashed back to the night she saw her first demon in the high school lab. How much damage just that one had caused. She felt half here and half there, somehow still trapped in that terrifying world of blood and fire that had struck her vision. She shuddered as she realized that the real world and the world from her premonition were soon to collide.

Suddenly, as she still stood on the front lawn, her senses returned to the present. She noticed the neighbors outside again, their jaws dropped open, their feet rooted to the ground as they watched the Dark Angels move in across the darkening sky: small spots of fire and smoke growing closer.