by Susan Ee
“No!” Paige’s hands reach up like a little kid trying to get her ball back from a bully.
White Streak slams the smaller locust down against his knee, breaking the beast’s back with a snap.
“No!” Paige screams. Her crisscrossed face turns red, and the cords in her neck stand out.
White Streak tosses the broken locust onto the concrete. Ignoring my sister, he stalks around the broken beast.
The injured locust pulls itself forward by its hands. It tries to get away from White Streak, dragging its dead legs behind it.
White Streak is making a show of it, puffing up and standing tall for all to see as every scorpion-tailed monster watches. He clearly plans to show that he’s the king of the locusts and no one else can challenge him.
That means he’s going to have to kill Paige.
I sprint toward my sister, weaving through the spectators. Although the air boils with locusts, no one else is fighting on the bridge. Doc had warned them that some locusts might be on our side. Now no one seems sure what to do. Everyone on the bridge—locust and human—watches the drama unfold.
Paige’s face crumples as she watches her pet locust drag itself helplessly on the asphalt, unable to move its legs or tail. She starts sobbing.
The sight seems to enrage White Streak. He swipes at her with his tail.
I scream. Every time I’ve seen my sister win a fight, she’s had the element of surprise on her side. But this time, White Streak knows she’s a threat and is out to kill her.
Then someone shouts over the loudspeaker, “They’re coming!”
The dark mass of locusts shifts and churns above the bridge, blotting out the sky. Between the stingers and iridescent wings, I catch glimpses of an ever-growing tide of bird-of-prey wings.
The blood hunt is starting.
I TRY TO slam my fear and anxiety into the vault in my head, but they’re too big.
When I look back down from the sky, Paige is ripping her teeth into White Streak’s arm. She’s alive and fighting.
I run toward her, trying to be as small as possible in case there’s a stray bullet.
In the center of the bridge, White Streak swats and tosses Paige onto the ground like a rabid dog, then he stomps his foot on her chest, keeping her struggling form down as he looms over her.
My sister is unrelentingly furious and thrashing beneath him. Watching her pet be crippled and crawl helplessly must have triggered something in her, something so violent and intense that it might just choke her.
Just as I get close, her remaining two locust pets fly into White Streak. They’re no match for the monster, and he tosses them aside easily.
The rest of the scorpion-tailed locusts fly in nervous, agitated loops above and in front of me, going in every direction and just barely avoiding crashing into each other. They seem confused and upset.
I can’t get past them and have to back off from their shifting barrier.
White Streak lifts his enormous stinger, getting ready to strike at my little sister, who is still thrashing under his foot.
I try to dart in between the swooping locusts, but their stingers are everywhere and I can’t get past. On the other side of the fight, I see my mom having the same problem.
White Streak’s stinger whips down toward my sister.
I scream and take a step toward them. A locust flies right into me, slamming me down onto the concrete.
Amazingly, Paige reacts faster than the stinger. She twists her body out of the way. The stinger jabs into the asphalt, embedding the tip in the bridge.
Before White Streak can pull it out, she bites into his tail. Blood bursts out around her mouth as if she bit into an artery. She rips out a chunk of his tail before he can swat her away.
This time, when he hits her, there’s desperation in his motion. This time, when he hits her, a locust drops from the sky and stings his neck.
White Streak swings and blindly grabs at the traitorous thing. He snaps its neck and tosses its dead body onto the street.
Another locust hits him with his body in a fast flyby. White Streak staggers, taking his foot off Paige for a split second. It’s long enough for her to scramble up.
From above us, two locusts dive to attack Paige.
She ducks from one and runs headlong into the other. My blood freezes as White Streak’s locust shoots its stinger toward my sister.
A shotgun blast hits Paige’s attacker.
The locust falls writhing on the ground. The shooter stands nearby, looking familiar.
Martin nods to Paige, with his rifle still aimed at the bleeding locust. If he keeps this up, I might even forgive him for lassoing Paige for being a monster.
Paige turns around and leaps to rip into White Streak’s throat.
Locusts begin swarming on Paige’s side, swirling above her as she rages. They’re drawn to her furious cries despite whatever influence White Streak has over them.
Another group of locusts swarms on White Streak’s side. I wonder if there is going to be an all-out war among them.
The ones hovering above Paige spin off to attack White Streak. The ones above White Streak drop to attack Paige.
Martin shoots at Paige’s attackers as they come for her.
Locusts clash midair, crashing and stinging until there’s a horde of them engulfing White Streak and Paige.
I can’t see what’s happening as they get buried under a mass of wings and stingers.
I think I stop breathing for a minute. I can’t see anything beyond the seething giant that is the swarm.
The locust cloud lifts from the bridge into the air as everyone watches. The wind generated from their wings buffets our hair and clothes, whipping us all. They float up into the sky until they blend into the mist, making it look like the sky is boiling.
They drift off over the bay, and I can’t see Paige or White Streak anywhere.
There’s nothing I can do for her now.
I have to accept that my sister has to go through her own fight. I just need to survive and be here for her when she gets back.
Don’t think about the possibility of her not coming back.
AS SOON AS the locusts leave, I can see the sky filling with angelic warriors.
I catch myself automatically scanning the sky for Raffe, but I don’t see him in the mass of bodies.
I put my noise-canceling headphones on and shut my eyes to brace for what’s about to hit.
Even through my closed lids, I can see the blindingly intense spotlights turning on everywhere. The lights stab my eyes as soon as I try to open them.
I have to squint and blink several times to adjust to the brightness.
The angels shield their eyes behind their arms and pause in their flight. Several of them crash into each other. Many turn around to get away from the blinding light and fly straight into their buddies.
The lights stab my merely human eyes. I can’t imagine how painful it must be for the angels.
Then the giant speakers screech their feedback—the loudest and most piercing feedback I’ve ever heard, even through my noise-canceling headphones. All that intense noise blasting straight into the angels’ hypersensitive ears.
The angels slam their hands against their ears. With their eyes and ears assaulted, they’re staggering in the air, neither attacking nor flying away.
The angels’ exceptional night vision and sharp hearing is working to our advantage. Their superior abilities are their weaknesses now. They can’t turn it off. The intense lights must be killing their eyes. And that noise—hell, it almost makes my ears bleed with the sharp blast.
It helps to have Silicon Valley geniuses in your crew.
Freedom fighters with rifles pop up everywhere—beside the stage, along the bridge walkways, and behind the bridge supports. Although I can’t see them, th
ere should also be snipers settled beside each spotlight and on platforms hidden beneath the bridge.
Gunshots ring through the night.
While the angels are staggering in midair, trying to see and think enough to get away from the god-awful noise, our fighters are shooting them down into the water. After what I saw when we fought angels in the sea the other day, it’s a good bet that most of them can’t swim.
By now, the great white sharks of Northern California should have found their way to the bloody bait we cast into the bay during the show. Here, sharky, sharky . . .
The feedback from the speakers changes and begins blasting death metal music so loudly into the sky that I swear the bridge suspensions are vibrating.
The twins were in charge of the music selection.
I catch sight of them on the side of the bridge, each with an arm raised, holding up their forefingers and pinkies in a devil sign, head-banging to the beat. They’re mouthing the words to the garbled voice screaming over the intense electric guitar and drums blasting out of the speakers. They might look pretty badass if it weren’t for their hobo clown outfits.
It’s the loudest party the Bay Area has ever heard.
THOSE OF US on the ground crew help reload the bullets for the gunners. The goal is to try to knock the enemy out of the sky and into the shark-infested waters, but if some of them happen to fall onto the bridge, we’ll be ready for them.
I hope.
The lights turn off all together, plunging us into darkness. Doc and Sanjay insisted the lights flash to keep the angels from adjusting to the light and to continue to keep them blind. So the lights are on timers to turn off and on according to their guesses as to the angels’ ability to adjust.
Our snipers have infrared goggles to see in the dark, but there weren’t enough to go around to the ground crew. With all the death metal blasting through the air and my double-layered soundproofing, I can’t hear anything either.
We’re in the middle of a battle for our lives—blind and deaf. I freeze, desperately trying to sense something. It feels like we stand vulnerable in the dark forever.
Then the lights turn back on, blasting our eyes with their intensity. I squint, trying to see through the blinding glare.
Angels begin to fall onto our bridge. We work in groups to shove them off the edge while they’re still debilitated. Let the sharks sort them out while they thrash in the water.
I’m hoisting a net with a team of guys, ready to toss it over an angel, when I see my mom wandering around in the middle of all this, shouting to herself. I drop the net, letting the three other guys handle it, and run over to frantically try to get her under cover.
She’s too busy to listen to me. After a few seconds, I realize she’s shouting commands to the shaved cult members.
The cult members are tackling the newly landed angels off the edge of the bridge. Their robes flutter in the air as they wrestle and fall over the edge with them.
They also swan dive from the bridge as the angels fly low and get near. They grab onto the angels in midair like human projectiles. The angels, not expecting the extra weight of someone dragging on their wings, plunge into the water—pinwheels of arms and legs and wings. I hope those bald people can swim.
My mom shouts out commands like a general in battle, even though no one can hear her. Still, her message is clear if only because of her arm motions as she rhythmically dispatches her people into graceful swan dives off the bridge.
For those who dive, there’s good motivation in catching themselves an angel, because the angel will slow down their fall, and they will have a chance of surviving the dive. The ones who miss their aim are on a suicide mission.
I worry about my mom diving as well, but she seems to have no shortage of volunteers waiting for her command. The woman has a job to do in the middle of all this battle, and she doesn’t look like she’s about to abandon it.
Hopefully, her job will keep her from obsessing over what’s happening with Paige. As worried as I am, I know that if my sister weren’t fighting to win over the locusts, they’d be attacking us right now along with the angels.
We’re doing way better than I imagined, and I’m beginning to let myself believe that we might have a shot at winning this battle. I can almost hear the people cheering in my imagination when I see the sky darken with more angels.
It’s a new wave of them. And it’s a much larger group than the one that’s already here.
On the way toward us, some of the angels swing low over the water, capsizing boats and giving their drenched and wounded comrades a hand. The winged warriors in the bay climb onto the capsized boats as the humans frantically swim away. They cling on awkwardly like drowning hawks, shaking their wings out and spraying the bloody water off them.
The gunners follow the new angels with streams of bullets. Angels continue to get shot out of the sky and into the shark-infested bay, but the new group hovers out of reach like spectators. They see what’s happening with their fellow warriors, and they stay back.
I’m wondering what they’ll do next when I notice that the angels are split into three groups. The first is the one that came right after the locusts. I catch glimpses of Uriel shouting in that group. The second is the mass of wings hovering at a higher altitude than Uriel’s group. I can almost feel their cold eyes glaring down at us, watching and judging.
Then there’s the smallest group. Their wings are dark and tattered. They could hardly be called angels. A white-winged Adonis swoops across them.
It’s Raffe with his Watchers.
If one group is Uriel’s and the other is Raffe’s, then who are the others? Are they spectators here to watch the blood hunt?
It hits me that the real battle is only just beginning.
Even if Uriel wanted to back off and try again another time, he can’t now, not without everyone in the host knowing that he backed down. What kind of blood hunter would he be?
Uriel and his angels must realize it at the same time I do, because they suddenly dive-bomb us.
The music is still blaring. The closer they get, the louder it is for them, but they commit to their attack.
The lights turn off, pitching us into the dark.
I feel the makeshift stage thunking with the weight of bodies landing hard around me.
The lights turn back on.
Around me are three angel warriors. They leap up, punching blindly as they spin in place with their eyes shut. They can’t see, and the noise must be pounding their heads into mush, yet they’re ready to fight.
Angels land all over the bridge. Some are crashing, lying broken on the concrete. Enough of them make it, though—uninjured enough to kill the nearest human even as they’re adjusting to the light and recovering from their impact.
A bloody fight erupts on the bridge. People everywhere are running or fighting. The gunners aren’t sure what to do, and they stutter in their aim. They can’t open fire on the bridge without hitting our own people, and the angels above us are mostly out of easy range.
The angels don’t even pull out their weapons. Either they’re worried about my little trick with the sword I no longer have or they’re so confident that they don’t bother with weapons.
We can’t beat angels one-on-one. We had anticipated the ground crew having to fight some angels who landed or fell onto the bridge, but not the entire angel host. That was as far as our planning skills and time allowed.
People are getting slaughtered as angels punch our fighters off the bridge or break their backs or kick them into oblivion. People use their handguns or rifles to shoot at the angels despite the risk of hitting other people.
I raise my knife against an angel who heads my way. It feels really flimsy compared with the sword I used to have. I don’t know if he can see me now or not, but he has murder in his eyes. He knows he’s going to kill. It’s just a qu
estion of who.
If I’m super lucky, I might be able to fight him off and maybe even the warrior after him, but it’s not a long-term survival strategy. By long-term, I mean the next ten minutes.
We’re screwed.
KNOWING WE SIGNED up for this doesn’t help even if we all knew our chances of survival were close to zero. Actually being faced with death is totally different.
My hands are trembling and clumsy as I brace for a fight. I try to calm down so I can fight effectively, but adrenaline screams through my veins, making me jittery.
As I calculate my best options, I see motion out of the edge of my vision. Another angel has snuck up on me. His wings are golden and his face chiseled, but he looks at me with the cold eyes of a killer.
Before I can figure out what to do, snowy wings blot out the angel.
It’s Raffe.
And he has two of his Watchers backing him up.
My heart races even though I thought it was already going full speed. He has his back to me as if completely confident I won’t attack him, despite the fact that we’re enemies.
He punches the attacker, then grabs him and tosses him off the stage.
I let out a deep breath. My hands shake with relief. Raffe is fighting another angel, not humans.
He whips out his sword, ready to strike. I step back-to-back with him, slicing at the other angel coming at us. His Watchers step to each side of us, making a defensive perimeter around us.
The angel I’m fighting leans back to avoid my slice. I swipe my feet under his, and he goes down, landing hard. He’s probably not used to fighting on his feet.
My opponent rolls away from me, blindly finding a new place to fight.
Raffe turns to me.
It’s the first time I’ve seen his face look less than perfect. He’s squinting in pain and blinking rapidly.
He came to help me.
Through all the screaming noise and blinding lights, he came.
