by Scott Speer
“What do you think you’re doing?” Maddy gasped.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Gwen said.
Maddy opened the door. “No way. I don’t want you getting involved.”
“You need all the help you can get,” Gwen hissed. “Seriously, get in.” Then she put both hands on the wheel. “God, this car is so sexy.”
“Move over, then,” Maddy said as she got in, pushing Gwen into the passenger seat. “I’m driving.” She might not have a car of her own, but she’d never gotten less than an A in any class she’d ever taken, and that included driver’s ed.
She fed the key into the ignition and adjusted the rearview mirror. In the reflection, she could see Kris’s husband looking in her direction. She might only have seconds. She punched the start button on the Ferrari and six hundred horses roared to life. The machine crouched like a wild animal, ready. Maddy depressed the clutch and moved the manual transmission into first. The Ferrari purred with anticipation. Gwen lifted an instructorly finger.
“Always adjust your side mirrors before putting the car in drive—”
Maddy released the clutch and shoved her foot down on the gas. The Ferrari lurched forward much faster than Maddy thought possible, throwing both girls violently into their seats. Maddy heard a voice behind her but didn’t dare look back.
“Put your seat belt on,” Maddy commanded. Gwen immediately obeyed. Maddy pushed the clutch in again, shifted to second, and smashed the accelerator. The Ferrari shot down the driveway like a whip and cleared the gate like a red marble out of a slingshot. She threw the wheel over, pivoting the screaming race car on its front right tire, and stomped on the gas again. In an instant they were rocketing down the street in pursuit of the caravan.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Maddy didn’t look back to see if she was being chased. It didn’t matter now. This was her only chance.
“Okay, but his house was, like, so amazing, right?” Gwen said again as she looked in the rearview.
“Need to concentrate,” Maddy said curtly.
Maddy downshifted and the Ferrari’s engine snarled. Needles jumped on the gauges as they roared down Outpost, glimpsing the caravan of black Escalades and then losing them again on the winding road. Sparkling Angel mansions flew by in a blur.
“So would now be an okay time to ask what is going on?” Gwen asked, holding on desperately to the door handle.
“They’re taking him,” Maddy said miserably.
“Who’s taking him?”
“The Angels. The deal must have been a lie and now they’re taking him.”
“Deal?”
“Jacks saved my life, which is against their law. Mark supposedly made a deal with the Council and the Archangels for Jacks’s life. But the deal was a trap and now they’ve caught him and they’re going to kill him and it’s all my fault.”
“What?” Gwen choked in bewilderment on all the information. “But they can’t kill him. He’s an Angel!”
“They’re going to make him mortal,” Maddy said. “Then they’re going to kill him.”
Maddy caught a glimpse of the caravan again. They had reached the bottom of the road and were turning left onto Franklin.
“Angels can be mortal?” Gwen gasped. “And there’s a law? And wait, who’s Mark again?”
“Honestly, Gwen,” Maddy quoted as she braked for the turn, “how can you live in this city and not know these things?”
She threw the wheel over and they roared off the winding road onto the trafficked street.
“OMG, are these seat warmers?” Gwen asked as she fiddled with the buttons on the dash.
“If you could just not touch anything . . . !”
Gwen frowned and folded her arms across her chest. Maddy squinted into the glare of the late-afternoon sun, panicking. She had lost sight of them. Maddy ground the gears into fourth and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The engine screamed a high-pitched whine as they streaked forward like a crimson bullet.
“Hold on to something!” Maddy commanded.
The light had turned red. They flew into the intersection. Tires squealed as cars swerved, missing them by inches as they careened through the light.
“Where are they?” Maddy’s eyes scanned the street ahead as they tore past the other cars, horns blaring. “I’ve lost them!” she shrieked. “I’ve lost Jacks!”
“Just keep going straight!” Gwen said, her neck craning. “Maybe they’re going to the freeway.” Maddy swung into the bus lane and blew past the tourist traffic.
“Right there! Right there!” Gwen shrieked as she pointed to where the Escalades were turning up the on-ramp onto the Angel City Freeway. “They’re getting on the freeway! Going south!”
Maddy threw the wheel over. Horns roared in protest as she swerved in front of oncoming traffic, across the lanes of traffic toward the rushing on-ramp.
“We’re going to make it, hold on!” Maddy said. Their heads snapped back as they clipped the curb at the corner of the on-ramp, but Maddy straightened the wheel and they sailed up toward the elevated freeway. Gwen had gone white in the passenger seat.
“You are so losing your license after this!” she said.
Downtown lay ahead in the red haze of the dusk as they merged into freeway traffic. The sky itself seemed to be burning.
The caravan moved into the fast lane. Maddy followed. She could count five cars between them. She began to weave through traffic using the left two lanes, methodically closing the distance.
“How did you learn to drive like that?” Gwen yelled over the howl of six hundred horses.
“Watching Jacks.” She gunned the engine and slipped around another car.
“What?”
“You know, watching his shifting.”
Gwen gasped. “You’ve been looking at his shifter?”
“Would you just shut up!” She swerved around another car.
They were only three cars back. She looked at the back of the Escalade with its tinted black windows. The license plate had no numbers on it. It sent a chill down her spine. She wondered where they were taking him. Out of the city, maybe. It didn’t matter. The beginnings of a plan were forming in her mind. It was simple, but effective. She would offer them something. Something, she was sure, they would be interested in.
Maddy changed lanes and jumped another car length ahead. The Escalades were only two cars ahead, although traffic was teeming.
“We’re almost there,” she said, feeling a sudden surge of hope.
Then it happened.
What Maddy saw, her brain could not process at first. Her mind registered it only as a shape, a dark shape landing on the roof of the last Escalade. She heard the crunch of collapsing metal, followed by a rain of broken safety glass that pelted against the Ferrari’s windshield.
Slowly, slowly, her brain began to accept the images her eyes were sending, and the shape became clearer. It had a shimmering black body and vast, bat-like wings.
It had more than one head, she realized, like black snakes bursting forth from its body, horns that erupted out of its back like twisted tree limbs. A long, black tail whipped against the palm trees. Framed by the famous skyline, looming over the busy freeway traffic, the burning thing turned to look at her with strange, iridescent pairs of eyes. A sudden, overwhelming feeling hit her. It was the same feeling she had felt in the bio lab that previous night. A kind of mortal, suffocating dread.
Maddy now knew what she was looking at. She knew what had just landed on top of the Escalade. She froze in the driver’s seat, paralyzed by terror.
“What is that?” Gwen cried, the sound of her voice like tearing metal.
“Dark Angel,” Maddy whispered.
“What?” Gwen shrieked.
Maddy watched as the demon leapt off the moving Escalade and onto the next. The Escalade buckled and spun wildly against the concrete median before rolling back into traffic, right at them.
“Maddy!” Gwen yelled.
The destroyed SUV tumbled toward them like a bowling ball of death. Maddy snapped the wheel to the right and the Ferrari swerved. The car growled like a wild animal as they swung around the rolling vehicle.
Gwen started screaming something, but Maddy couldn’t hear her. She was hypnotized, riveted with fear. She watched the demon tear open the roof of the SUV with its various mouths and begin pulling Angels out of the vehicle and tossing them onto the freeway. Guardians were torn to pieces, their wings ripped from their bodies. Immortal parts rained down on the road. The demon reached in and pulled a struggling Angel out like he was a doll. Maddy’s heart hammered in her chest.
“Jacks!” she screamed.
She could see him now. He was in the arms of that burning thing, his eyes wild. It’s taking Jackson. It was the first rational thought Maddy had since the demon appeared. It’s got him now and it’s going to take him.
The demon lifted off the SUV and rose. Ascending over Angel City in the twilight, it was gone.
Maddy could barely focus through the fog of shock and terror as the second Escalade clipped the first and both vehicles rolled over and tumbled across the freeway, knocking cars into one another.
There was no time to think anymore, only to react.
“Crashing car!” Gwen yelled as a Civic ricocheted toward them.
“I see it!” Maddy yelled, and yanked at the wheel.
“Another crashing car!” Gwen yelped, and pointed at a truck that was hurtling toward them. Maddy veered around it; the twisted metal missed them by inches.
“Tell me where it is, Gwen,” Maddy said, keeping her eye on the chaos in front of her, trying to snatch glimpses up at the sky.
“Where what is?!” Gwen panted, her fingernails digging into the leather seat.
“The demon. Tell me where it is.”
“It’s a demon?” Gwen gasped in horror, “Like in the olden days?”
“Yes! Now tell me where it is!” Maddy shouted. Gwen squinted up through the sunroof.
“I don’t see anything, Maddy,” she said breathlessly, peering out the window to where the demon had disappeared with Jacks. “It’s gone.”
Maddy’s heart bottomed. Despair radiated through her as the Ferrari continued snarling down the freeway. Despite everything, she had failed. Even the Angels couldn’t protect Jacks from the horror that had come for him.
“Wait, I see it!” Gwen suddenly shrieked. “It’s ahead of us!”
Gwen pointed out the windshield. A dark image was crossing the still light sky.
“Which way is it going?”
“Toward downtown. It’s moving so fast.”
Maddy’s mouth became a grim line of determination. She mashed the gas pedal to the floor and the Ferrari sang as the speedometer climbed past 100. Cars swerved all around them, drivers no doubt transfixed by the image of a demon flying over Angel City.
“I . . . I think it’s going to the top of that really tall building ahead of us,” Gwen announced.
“Which building?”
“The . . . the tallest one. Maybe it landed, ’cause I can’t see it anymore.”
Maddy squinted up at the looming, semicircular skyscraper towering above the rest of the buildings on the skyline. At its top was a design of windows like a crown. Maddy couldn’t see if anyone was up there, but she thought of Sylvester’s words again. They would hire someone, or something, to do their dirty work for them. Whatever trick of the Archangels this was, Maddy was about to see the endgame.
With a flick of the wheel the Ferrari tore down the exit ramp for downtown. Maddy whipped through the streets, ignoring stop signs, lights, and oncoming traffic. All around them, sirens began to ricochet off the buildings. She could see the lights in the rearview. The police were after them now.
The tower’s entrance came into view. Maddy downshifted and hurtled toward it, braking hard to a halt right in front of the building. Her heart was galloping uncontrollably in her chest. She looked out at wide marble stairs leading up to the lobby.
“Come on,” Maddy yelled as she threw her door open. Gwen jumped out with her, leaving the Ferrari still rumbling behind them.
They ran up the stairs toward a row of glass doors. Maddy didn’t need to turn around to know police cars were pulling up behind them. She heard the footsteps and shouts of the officers as they emerged from their vehicles. Reaching the glass doors, she furiously tugged at the handles until she found one door all the way to the left that was still unlocked.
She ripped it open as the footsteps pounded up the stairs.
Gwen turned to her, out of breath.
“Go. I’ll slow them down,” she panted.
“What? No!” Maddy cried.
Gwen’s eyes were suddenly, inexplicably calm.
“Maddy, I’m your best friend, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. There is something you can do to help him. I’ve always been amazed by you, Maddy, you can do anything you put your mind to. I know you’ll think of something. Now go to him. He needs you.”
Maddy met Gwen’s eyes. The unexpected words had tightened her throat.
“Gwen—” she started.
“Don’t say anything, just hurry,” Gwen said, and shoved Maddy inside the lobby. Closing the door, Gwen wrapped her arms through the handles, using herself as a human shield. Maddy could see police streaming up the steps. They slowed, advancing on Gwen.
Maddy turned and ran toward the gleaming bank of elevators.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Sylvester tore down Wilshire Boulevard in his unmarked cruiser, weaving around the teeming Beverly Hills traffic. Overhead, palm trees swayed anxiously in the wind, leaves glinting orange in the fiery dusk. Careening across oncoming traffic on Beverly, not bothering with the red light, he pulled into the NAS building, scraping the belly of the car on the garage ramp. He screeched into the valet parking and left the car without waiting for a ticket. He took the stairs up to the lobby.
The chirpy receptionist seemed startled to see him again as he strode across the sleek lobby.
“Can I help you, sir?” she said in her pseudo-polite tone.
“Save it, honey,” Sylvester grumbled as he passed her. She rose out of her chair, sending her latte spilling all over the desk.
“Wait! You can’t go in there!” she shrieked. He ignored her.
Turning the corner, Sylvester blew past the rows of assistants on their headsets. They gave him curious, uncomprehending stares as he passed. He could hear the receptionist’s clacking stilettos on the tile behind him, most likely trying to raise an alert, but he didn’t bother to look back. He reached the end of the hall, turned, and threw open the glass doors of the conference room.
The Archangels were sitting around the conference table in intense discussion. Their jackets were thrown over chair backs, their ties loosened. An assistant had apparently brought in coffee and trays of sushi that were set in the middle of the table, along with glasses of imported sparkling water. On the flat screen, news chopper footage of the attack on the freeway was playing.
At Sylvester’s entrance the Archangels fell silent, looking up at him with surprised expressions. Sylvester glared back. He looked at the faces of the Archangels, backbone of the NAS. His eyes found Mark, who still wore his suit jacket and appeared stunned.
Finally, Mark spoke.
“What can we do for you, David?” he said calmly.
Sylvester came into the room, letting the door close with a clang behind him. Outside, assistants watched through the glass, horrified. One of the Archangels held up a hand to them, as if to indicate everything was all right.
Sylvester felt suddenly unsure of himself. His hands instinctively went to his glasses to polish them, but he caught himself, and instead he let them drop back to his sides. He took a shaky breath and spoke.
“You know how I feel about you and the NAS.”
He paused. They were silent.
“You know I believe all of this is wrong,” he said, motioning around at
the lavish surroundings of the conference room. “I believe it was never supposed to be this way, saving mortal lives for mortal money, for mortal vices. I believe you have led us astray. I believe your greed and corruption is directly responsible for the threat this city faces.”
Mark was silent, scrutinizing Sylvester intensely.
Sylvester felt his passion loosening his tongue.
“Now I want you to prove me wrong. I want you to prove to me that you still remember the old ways. That you still remember who you are. I want you to prove to me that you can defend those who can’t defend themselves, the victims, the sufferers, and the mortally endangered. Prove to me you can do your duty.” He looked around at their flawless faces. “This city needs you. Now rise up and protect it.”
A blond, chisel-faced Archangel rose.
“David. We’re working on it. These things have to be discussed first. Plans have to be approved with the city, as well as, of course, a price.”
Sylvester’s face darkened.
“You have to understand we can’t just ask Guardians to risk their lives—”
But Sylvester had stopped listening. Reaching down to his waist, he drew his service revolver.
The blond Archangel’s eyes grew wide.
Sylvester pointed the pistol at the large glass display case in the corner, the case holding the ancient armor and sword of a Battle Angel, and fired. The glass fell instantly in a cascade of ringing pieces. The bullet ricocheted off the armor and buried itself in the ceiling tiles. The room went deafeningly silent.
The armor and weapon stood in the shattered case. Ready.
Sylvester reached in and closed his grip around the hilt of the ancient sword. The weight of it was heavy in his hand as he brought it out. He turned to the Archangels and threw the sword onto the conference table, sending sushi rolls scattering, water glasses shattering under its tremendous weight.
