by Scott Speer
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 tremend-ous weight.
Sylvester looked around at the startled faces of the Archangels. They had all gone silent.
“Now,” he said, his tone resolute, “where are the others?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The cold against his face. That was the first sensation he felt, the first coherent thought Jacks had since riding in the back of the SUV. His fingers became aware of the ground, cold and absolute beneath him. The wind whistled in his ears. As he lay there, fragments of a nightmare began to return to him. Terrible images swirled in his consciousness.
Archangels ripped out of their seats next to him. Cars colliding violently with one another. Black-orange fireballs of death. And some kind of terrible thing. A monster. But the worst image of all was simpler than all the others. It played over and over like a horrible movie, refusing to stop.
A train station and a goodbye.
He opened his eyes and looked out at a sideways world. The lights of the Immortal City twinkled all around.
The moon, pale and bloated, had begun to rise. He must be on a rooftop. Then he realized he was not alone. The presence of the demon surrounded him. He could feel the heat of its horrific body and make out its shimmering presence.
It was only then that he noticed the other figure standing silhouetted against the moon, framed by the enormous rising disk. The figure stepped forward into the light and smiled.
“You. .” Jacks murmured in disbelief.
“Yes,” the figure said. “Me.”
Maddy paced back and forth in the claustrophobic elevator car, listening to her pounding heart and the mechanical whir of her seventy-three-story ascent. The mirrored walls created endless reflections of her. She looked around at all the Maddys staring back. Their hair matted, their faces lined with fear and determination, pain and guilt. Jacks’s Divine Ring dangled near her heart. She hit the palm of her hand against the gleaming steel of the compartment’s wall.
“Come on, come on!”
Trapped in the elevator, there was nothing to do but face her racing thoughts. No matter who, or what, was up there, they wanted Jacks mortal and dead. She made her decision. It really wasn’t a hard choice at all. She would offer herself. Her life in exchange for his. Instead of making Jackson mortal, she would offer them a mortal life. On some strange level, it seemed to make sense. . She had never imagined the end coming this way, and this soon, but she was surprised to find she was okay with it. Really, what else was there for her?
She was kidding herself if she thought she could go back to her old life of high school and Kevin’s Diner. Not with the knowledge of what really happened to her parents, who she really was. Yet there was no going forward, either.
To the Angels she was a perversion of nature, a revolting half breed, and to everyone else she was a now-infamous tabloid joke. It was a bitter truth to face: she could never be accepted by anyone. Maybe she really was an abomination.
If the world was better off without her, at least she could cause some good with her death.
Without warning the whir of the elevator quieted.
Maddy’s stomach leapt into her throat as the car slowed and came to a stop. The floor numbers paused at 60 and the doors slid open. Maddy punched the button for 73 again and again, but the car didn’t move, and the button would no longer light up. The elevator chimed and the doors began to close. The top floors must be restricted, she thought in a panic. It’s going to take me back down to the lobby. With a gasp Maddy leapt forward and slid between the doors just as they clamped shut.
The hallway she found herself in was dark, cool, and quiet. Motion- sensor security lights blinked on with her presence. Her eyes searched
wildly for a stairwell door as precious seconds ticked by. Nothing but drab, unmarked office doors. She bounded down the hall and around the corner. More office doors, but at the end of the corridor she saw the green glow of an exit sign. She sprinted toward it and threw her shoulder into the door, nearly falling into the dark stairwell. Then she steadied herself with the handrail and began to climb.
The burning pain was everywhere, indescribable. The demon was engulfing him, smothering him in flaming arms.
Jacks screamed as he felt his wings emerge from his back and catch fire. The licking black flames left no burns. The fire wasn’t consuming his body. It was consuming his immortality. It was literally eating the Angel inside him. The pain was like glass coursing through his veins.
The beast threw him back down on the roof. He crumpled against the concrete, helpless. He could suddenly feel his mortal body. It felt feeble. Breakable. Even the ground underneath him was all of a sudden hard and uncomfortable. He watched as the figure approached, eyes dark and pitiless.
“What’s the matter, Jacks, aren’t you going to resist?
Aren’t you going to fight back?” Jacks said nothing.
“You surprise me, Jackson. I thought you had more in you, but, I guess, well. .”
The fist smashed into Jacks’s face, sending his head violently against the ground. Something wet dripped from his nose. Then he felt the kick of a boot up under his rib, snapping it. He cried out. He couldn’t help it. He had never felt his body break.
“The great Jackson Godspeed.” The figure laughed.
“Look at him now.”
Jacks’s eyes grew distant as he was beaten. His mind left this place, left this rooftop, and went to the only place he wanted to be. With her. He imagined they really had gotten out on that train. He imagined they had escaped. He thought about sitting next to her, watching Angel City slip away outside the window. He would have joked about getting used to life without his Ferrari, and she would have rolled her eyes and given him a hard time. In the end she would just look into his eyes like she always did. She would look into his eyes and only see him. Not the famous celebrity, just him.
White-hot agony finally broke through the fantasy.
His head was being pushed into the concrete again and again. Blood streamed from his mangled lips. He let the pain flow freely though him now. Welcomed it. Yearned for it. It wouldn’t be much longer now. The end would come soon.
He was pulled onto his knees, and the figure stood over him, a brutal grin on his face.
“Don’t worry,” the voice said. “Despite your really pathetic performance tonight, I’ll still make sure your wings get to your star.” Jackson looked up through blurred eyes and saw a vicious-looking knife. The ten-inch blade glinted in the moonlight.
Maddy sprinted up the stairs as fast as her feet could move, her sneakers skipping up the concrete steps. Adrenaline rushed into her veins as she saw a pale shaft of moonlight filtering down from up ahead. She was close. Finally, she saw a door at the top of the stairwell with a sign that warned ROOF ACCESS. CAUTION: HELIPAD. No time to think now. No time to imagine what might be waiting for her on the other side of the door. She reached for the door handle and exploded out onto the rooftop.
She saw the moon, pale and huge as it rose behind the tower. Then her eyes adjusted, and she saw Jacks. He was on his knees, as if praying or kneeling before an altar. What was left of his clothes hung in tatters around his shattered body, and his wings were draped limply across his back.
Their beautiful blue luminescence had almost totally faded to nothing.
“Jackson!” she screamed.
He didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to hear her. The Jacks she knew had gone out of him. Then she saw the shadowy figure standing over him. As she watched, the figure turned and looked at her.
Maddy was so shocked it took her several seconds to speak.
“Ethan?” she finally gasped uncomprehendingly.
Ethan straightened, and the cast of the moonlight fell fully on his face. He was wearing his usual ripped jeans, and his sandy hair whipped in the wind. Maddy’s mind reeled.
The puzzle pieces refused to fall into place. She couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing.
“Maddy?” he said, surprised. His expression turned almost thoughtful, apologetic. “I. . I didn’t want you to see this.”
“What are you doing?” she said through the numb shock. Conflict played in his eyes. The Ethan she knew fighting with some other part of him she did not. Then he looked down at Jacks, and his expression hardened.
“I’m doing my duty.”
Raising the knife over Jacks’s back, he brought it swiftly down. There was a sound like a pop as the blade sank into the Angel’s flesh at the base of the wing, then a wet snap as the knife severed the wing from the body. It went lifeless and fell to the concrete with a thud.
“No!” Maddy screamed. She reacted on instinct and ran toward Jacks. At once a black shimmer crossed her vision. A low, inhuman growl made her blood run cold. The last time she had heard it, she had been in the high school.
The demon emerged from the night in front of her. It was large, at least ten feet tall, but it had no definite features. Its shape kept shifting and changing. Maddy froze, her limbs refusing to move.
“I see you’ve already met my Guardian Angel,” Ethan said, smiling. Maddy realized the thing was hard to see because its skin really was shimmering. It was more than just shimmering. It was on fire. The creature was literally burning; the licking flames were black instead of orange. The fiery monster circled around Ethan and then crouched next to him, ready to strike.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Ethan.” Maddy shook with fear and fury. “Do you think you can control that thing?”
“If people can hire Angels, why can’t I hire a demon?”
Ethan said. “The price may be different, but. .”
He began to raise the knife again.
”Leave him alone!” Maddy screamed through numb lips. Ethan’s eyes flashed with anger.
“Why should I!?” he demanded. “What about our discussions at the diner and at school? Angels are all the same, Maddy, shallow, vapid, overly privileged creatures who do more harm than good.” His tone had a note of hysteria now.
His mask of calm was beginning to crack. “Don’t you understand? They aren’t the heroes, they’re the villains. I’m giving them what they deserve.”
“Why Jacks?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper now. “He never did anything to you. Or to your dad.”
She could see Ethan wince at the mention of his father, but he quickly recovered, his mouth turning into a cruel grin.
“I have you to thank for that, Maddy. At first I just wanted to kill Angels, any of them. Make them suffer.
They’re all guilty. Then I saw you with Jacks.” He sneered, standing over Jackson’s trembling form. “I wanted you, Maddy. We were supposed to be together, but you didn’t see it — yet. Was I not good enough for you? Not enough of an Angel?” Ethan spat the word out like venom. “You wouldn’t have me, so I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t have him, either.”
The words stabbed like knives.
Maddy struggled for breath as the truth sank in and the world began to spin around the rooftop.
“It’s been you all along. Not the NAS. You’ve been murdering Angels on the boulevard.” Her entire body shook as the final pieces fell into place. “We came to you for help, and you sent the demon after us at the school.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed.
“Don’t blame me, Maddy. Blame yourself. It was you who did this. The truth is, he’s far too powerful. If you hadn’t abandoned him at the train station, none of this would’ve been possible.”
Maddy blanched. He was right. It was all her fault.
Ethan seemed to smile at this.
“I know all about it. I know how you left him standing at the platform like he was nothing to you, left him to be delivered into the
hands of the Archangels.” He shrugged. “I thought about just letting the NAS mortalize him, but I don’t know. I guess after I saw him with you again, I took it a little personally.” He raised the knife over Jacks’s maimed and bleeding back. “So anyway, since you obviously don’t care about him, let’s get on with it, shall we?”
“I love him!” she screamed. The words just came out.
She had never spoken them before. She looked from Ethan to the trembling Angel below him. “Do you hear me, Jacks?
I came back to tell you that I love you.” She saw a glimmer of recognition in Jacks’s eyes. The gray had turned the palest shade of blue again.
Ethan smiled like the devil himself.
“So much for true love.”
He brought the knife swiftly down again. Maddy heard the whistle of the blade through the air.
Then the slap as Jacks caught Ethan’s arm midswing.
Ethan grunted. A surprised, painful sound. Jacks’s hollow eyes had filled with color. The blueness blazed. The Angel’s fist collided with Ethan’s jaw on the left side and shattered it. The knife dropped from Ethan’s hand and skittered harmlessly to the floor.
The black shimmer crossed Maddy’s vision almost instantly as the demon lunged at Jacks.
“Jacks, look out!” Maddy yelled.
Then it happened.
As the demon sprang forward, it was hit rapidly by something that came out of the sky, something moving so fast it was no more than a blur in the night. The demon tumbled back across the roof, growling and snarling. Ethan crumpled like a rag doll to the rooftop and Jacks was on top of him at once, his fists raining down.
The demon rose up but was hit again by a blur, this time from the other direction. The blur stopped on the roof only for a moment, and Maddy saw the Angel. He was dressed in matte black ADC battle armor. He unsheathed a primeval-looking sword. A sword? Maddy looked up.
They came streaming down through the night, seemingly from nowhere, a legion of Battle Angels in close formation. All wore the futuristic, black battle armor of the ADC.
