Blest (17 page)

“It would help, um, ma’am—General—if we knew where the Portal was,” Leo said.

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“Oh,” Leo mumbled, “uh, okay.”

“With those Sky Knives in your hands, you’re all Guardians of the Portal,” General Lumen said simply. “All you need to know is what’s at stake if the demons get into Glisten. Do you understand?”

One by one, they nodded.

“Good,” she said. “Because the more you know, the more dangerous it is for all for you.”

Claire was speeding toward the Sunner Tower, where Gunner had texted her that the rest of the Scale had gathered. She needed something, anything to distract herself from the look Jim had given her, his blue eyes boring into her as if he could see into her very soul.
I don’t love you
, he had said. She had to keep repeating that in her head, or risk feeling something for him again. It felt like her heart was in a container, beating furiously, and she had to press hard to keep the lid down.

The Scale sat on the ledge where Shane and Miles had performed the Drop, heads hanging, their eyes pointed down past their dangling feet to the cement below. Claire dropped onto the roof behind them and Gunner twisted his head.

“There she is,” he said. “Where’d you go off to?”

“Oh,” she said, struggling to regain her mask of detached carelessness. Or was it a mask? Being a demon was who she really was.
Be strong
, she told herself, thinking of her father. “I was looking for angels,” she said.

“Angels?” Maria grimaced.

“I saw General Lumen.” Something reeled in her stomach, urging her to tell the Scale about seeing Jim, too, but the instinct to protect him won out.

“Lumen!” Gunner shot to his feet. “What was she doing out here?”

Claire shrugged. “I tried to follow her, but I lost her.”

“You shouldn’t have just jumped out of the car,” Maria said disapprovingly. “You could have let everyone know and we could have gone after her.”

“Well, I was going to—” Claire chewed on her lip. She had forgotten her stupid idea about getting angel wings tattooed on her back. What would that have even accomplished? A real demon wouldn’t want that kind of weakness inscribed on her skin. No, the real strength was in throwing all of those emotions into the fire. “Yeah,” she said.

“Yeah what?” Gunner echoed.

“Yeah, I probably should have told you. I got caught up in the moment.”

Gunner frowned a little, his piercing brown eyes evaluating her. Claire kept her expression carefully blank. Back before Pearlton, Gunner could always tell when she was lying. But now he just shrugged. “Whatever. We couldn’t have done much with her, anyway.” He motioned to the rest of the Scale. “We did a lot of good work today. Six stolen cars, a few police chases. Carlos will be proud.”

“I broke the window on a store, too!” Ben added, his face brightening.

Claire didn’t say anything. She didn’t feel proud. She felt like all of her efforts to release her rage through the chaos, like Carlos had suggested, were just making her even angrier. “So, what now?” Claire asked, pacing the length of the roof. “Is that it? Do we call it a night?”

Ben slipped his phone from his pocket. It flashed up at him. “It’s almost nine on a Friday. I’d say we’ve got a lot of the night left to . . . you know. Do stuff.”

Julia nodded. “If we’re going to pry the angels from their holes, we need to keep pushing at them.”

Maria clenched her fists. “I’ll do anything.” She was trembling, her eyes red-rimmed. For a brief flash, Claire felt a tug of pity. Maria had lost Shane to the Feather. She might even hate them more than Claire did.

Gunner snapped his fingers. “The riverboats!”

“What?” Erik asked skeptically. “How’s a cruise going to cause chaos?”

“No, you idiot.” Gunner turned to look out at the Gateway Arch. “We can go meet up with the boats when they’re already on the water. They always have those touristy booze cruises at night. They’ll never see us coming.”

“They better not,” Julia hissed. “Or the Tribunal will come after us.”

“The humans will only see us if we do a bad job of it. We can stay hidden, rock the boat back and forth, cause a little panic.” Gunner grinned. “Carlos said as long as we force some kind of confrontation with the angels, he can get a better idea of what the Feather looks like. He wants to measure what the angels can throw at us and where they seem most defensive. Claire?” he said, turning to her. “Sound like something you’d be interested in?”

“Why not?” Claire smiled at her brother, then took off without waiting for the rest of the demons. The cold wind whipped through her hair, and her anger pumped hot and fast through her veins. She felt invincible.

“I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for this,” she shouted to Gunner as they flew to the Gateway Arch.

“To toss around some riverboats?” Gunner asked.

She laughed. “No. To be free, to be alive. To take risks.”

“You’ve always taken risks, Claire,” Gunner replied. “You’re one of the bravest people I know. It’s just taken you a while to realize it.”

They flew over the Arch and slowed as they went over the dark, choppy waters of the Mississippi River, which rippled like a purple blanket beneath them. The rest of the demons caught up. For a moment, they hovered in the air, red wings flapping lazily, and surveyed the waters. Then, Erik pointed at a blur of amber lights bobbing on the river. “There! The late-night Mississippi Cruise!” Sounds drifted on the breeze, shouting and laughing and music.

“They sound like they’re having fun,” Julia said.

Claire shot her a look. “Then let’s turn their fantasy into a nightmare,” she growled, and shot forward like a bullet. The wind screamed in her ears as she dipped to skim the water, feeling the spray of the waves on her cheeks. She didn’t wait to see if the Scale followed. She didn’t care. A couple leaning against the railing caught her eye. The girl was laughing and had a champagne glass in one hand. The guy had his hand against the railing, confidently leaning toward her. Both were dressed in expensive clothes: a beautiful black gown for the girl, an expensive blazer for the guy. Claire grinned and arced straight up along the hull of the ship. As she passed them, she grabbed the girl by the back of her arm and yanked her straight over the railing.

The girl fell into the water, screaming all the way down. The guy blinked in drunken shock, then rushed over to peer over the railing, shouting the girl’s name. Claire grinned. Carlos wanted chaos? She’d give him chaos.

She dove back down and grabbed the collar of the man’s blazer, pulling him out over the water before vanishing into the gloom. He fell next to the girl with a satisfying splash. Their screams carried on the wind, and other people on the deck hurried over to check on them. Everyone on the boat started shouting. The music hit an off-note and then stopped, leaving only the wind and the waves.

“Whoa, Claire,” Gunner said, coming to fly beside her. “You didn’t waste any time.”

She didn’t respond at first. She was too busy reveling in the rush of power. The humans could do nothing to stop her. Nobody could. “My whole life I’ve been getting pushed around!” She shouted. “Now I want to do the pushing! Are you going to help, or what?”

The Scale hovered around the other side of the ship, right below the railing. When it sounded like most passengers had gone to look at the couple who had fallen, the demons rushed upward and grabbed the people left on the railing. With Julia’s help, Claire tossed three people off in one quick swoop, gliding along the length of the cruise ship and shoving them overboard.

Before long, all the demons were laughing in glee. Claire laughed loudest of all, listening to the pitiful cries of the humans treading water. She felt like more than just another demon. She felt like a leader.

Sydney’s knife was flying straight at Jim. He desperately tried to hop out of the way, but staggered over his foot and fell hard to the rubber mat on the floor. Sydney didn’t stop coming. She fluidly leaned over, the knife at Jim’s heart, and jabbed him repeatedly with the hard, wooden stub.

“Dead, dead, dead!” Sydney proclaimed with each thrust.

Jim frantically waved his hand over his throbbing chest, where there was definitely a bruise forming. “I get it, I get it.”

“Jim, dude, I liked that move where you didn’t dodge the knife and tripped over yourself at the same time,” Miles said from his chair, his ankle propped up on an exercise ball. “What do you call that one?”

Sydney helped Jim up. He hopped to his feet. “Don’t be jealous, you’ll be as good as I am someday,” he said. Miles laughed.

Nora and Leo’s wooden training daggers clacked furiously on the other side of the gym as the pair weaved between each other on the other mat. Leo had surprisingly good reflexes, despite his broad frame. After another minute, he batted Nora’s knife straight out of her hand and lunged at her. She squeaked in terror, closing her eyes, but he slowed the knife’s momentum until it just gently bumped her forehead.

“I win,” he said.

“Switch!” Sydney said, panting.

Jim wiped sweat from his eyes. They had been practicing for two hours, nonstop. His arms were sore and his chest ached where he had been struck with the heavy, blunt training knives. The real Sky Knives were piled in a corner, still in their leather scabbards. General Lumen had said that there was no telling when Carlos would try to strike the Portal, so they had to be ready for anything. Apparently that meant spending the rest of Friday night training in the sour-smelling gym on top of Sydney’s garage.

Miles’s ankle was still hurt, so he couldn’t practice with them. Instead, he had assumed the unofficial role of coach, tossing out helpful remarks like, “Whoa, what were you aiming at? The wall?” and “You all have the reflexes of cats! If the cats were blind.”

Despite the jokes, Jim could hear a bitterness boiling away underneath his words. Miles was the best flier of the group, but he was indefinitely earthbound thanks to the demons. Until his cast was off, he couldn’t even train with the rest of the group.

As Jim narrowly ducked a swipe from Leo, Sydney finally called for a break. The Feather practically fell to the ground, exhausted and wheezing. Miles took the opportunity to stumble over to the pile of Sky Knives and take his out of the scabbard, so he could sit in his chair and admire it.

“No one gets these things this early,” he told Jim, lost in the blade’s gleaming white steel.

“What do you mean?” Jim asked, taking a gulp of water and trying to ignore the throbbing in his sternum where Sydney had jabbed him.

“Well, we’re not really Guardians yet,” Miles said. “That stuff all comes later. If you talked to a real Guardian, they would just call us Fledglings.”

“Geez,” Jim said, leaning his head back against the wall. “When will I finally be done learning all this angel slang?”

“When I’m done making it up?” Miles teased.

Sydney rolled her eyes. “Jim, Fledglings are just angels who got their wings recently. You’re not a Guardian until you graduate from the Academy. You train there for two years when you’re eighteen, then you serve on the Field for ten years. A lot of angels choose to stay here, though.”

“But isn’t Glisten supposed to be, like, paradise?” Jim was thinking of his parents, of how they had chosen a life here on the Field over returning to Glisten.

Sydney frowned. “I don’t know. My mom doesn’t really talk about it. She was born there and never went back. I think because she wants to . . .” She looked down at her hands. “After my dad . . .”

“Our parents were born on the Field,” Nora interjected. “They’re researchers for NASA and their observatory is in St. Louis. They use their equipment to track wherever Slag and Glisten really are, spatially, I mean. They track the dimensions and stuff, and how angels and demons are moving within them. They say there’s a lot more to the Planes than we think.”

Jim wondered what other angels were like. How many angels were there on Earth? When he went to the Academy, would angels who had grown up in Glisten look down on them for having been born on the Field? Would they be weaker?

Abruptly, the door to the garage blew open. All the angels jumped to their feet. General Lumen stood before them, her face flushed. “They’re attacking!” she roared.

The angels stared back, speechless.

“The demons!” Lumen barked. “We have to stop them, they’re attacking some river cruise on the Mississippi!”

Sydney nodded. “What are they doing?”

“If they’re attacking humans, you need to stop them,” General Lumen said, her voice urgent and deadly. “But I’m not going. I think this is one of Carlos’s tricks.” The way she said the Planewalker’s name made it sound like she had known him for years. Jim’s blood raced at the sound of the name. The demon who had killed his mother.

“You’ve been training all night,” General Lumen said. “I know you’re tired, but I don’t think the demons are that well-trained. All you have to do is scare them off.”

Sydney walked to the pile of scabbards and tugged hers from the corner, strapping it around her waist and adjusting the Sky Knife at her hip. Nora and Leo did the same. Jim went last, buckling the scabbard back around his belt and touching the shining, blue handle hesitantly. Just brushing it with his fingers sent a surge of power through him, swirling in his head and sending his doubts scattering. He was an angel. A Guardian.

There was a scraping noise behind him. He turned and saw Miles struggling to stand without one of his crutches, his wings fluttering overtime just to keep him upright.

“Miles,” General Lumen said gently. “You’re staying here.”

Miles slouched back to the chair, a look of defeat on his face. Jim walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. We’ll get them for you. You’ll come next time.”

Miles looked up. “Thanks.” He sighed, then broke into a wry grin. “Give ’em hell for me, Blest. Or, better yet, send them all to Slag.”

Jim nodded, his grip on the Sky Knife tightening. He wanted nothing more than to fight the demons now. For what they had done to Miles . . . and for what Carlos had done to his mother.