Natural Born Angel

by Speer, Scott

  Maddy got up and went to the window, looking out at glittering Angel City far below. A steady rain had begun pounding the streets outside, and the bright lights of the glorious playground of the Angels smeared through the wet window.

  She knew the Archangels and the Council wouldn’t just sit back. They had too much to lose.

  Maddy knew the Immortals would not just give in.

  CHAPTER 34

  The next morning was bright and unbelievably clear, only the lightest white wisp of a cloud in the sky. The rain overnight had washed the Angel City streets clean and new and had drawn pollution out of the air, leaving the city feeling fresh. Maddy woke in her old bed at Uncle Kevin’s, looking out of the window. She had fallen asleep before drawing the blinds and was greeted by the Angel City sign, which used to meet her every morning.

  Getting up out of bed, Maddy checked her phone: still nothing from Jacks. They hadn’t had contact in two days, since he left the diner after her illegal save. She realized with a pain that this was the longest they’d gone without talking since they’d met.

  Maddy stayed downstairs all morning, curled up on the couch in an old sweatshirt, drinking tea and watching the developments on Kevin’s new TV. It kept her mind off Jacks. And Tom. There had been no official response from the NAS about the signing of the Immortals Bill, which seemed strange. The world was on the edge of its seat, waiting for a response from the Angels. The networks were still covering Maddy’s save, and there were many interviews with Lauren, the girl whose life she had saved.

  “She’s a real hero,” Lauren said, tears in her eyes. “She could’ve let me die like any other Angel would have, but she didn’t.”

  The footage cut to a reporter standing across the street from Uncle Kevin’s house. If Maddy had opened the curtains, she would have seen herself appear in the image.

  The reporter spoke: “And ‘hero’ Maddy Godright still keeping quiet, today, two days after her electrifying save of both her Protection, billionaire Jeffrey Rosenberg, and her unsanctioned save of Lauren Donnell.”

  Footage showed Maddy, in sunglasses, driving her Audi into the parking garage at her apartment building. A thousand bulbs flashed as she drove slowly forward.

  The reporter standing outside Uncle Kevin’s house continued. “Sources say she’s keeping close to relatives and friends in this trying time, as we all wonder what will happen next.”

  All of a sudden, the footage awkwardly cut from the reporter back to the studio.

  On ANN, a snowy-bearded anchor in the studio seemed unprepared for this development. He shuffled papers in front of him and looked into the camera.

  “We are, ahem, getting word that the Angels will be making a statement on President Linden’s ban of all Angel activities. In an unprecedented move, the Council themselves are said to be delivering a statement. It’s been forty years since the Council of Twelve has done anything public except for their annual endorsement of the nominees for Guardianship, or the very occasional appearance. And in the past twenty years, they’ve disappeared from the public eye almost entirely. And, yes, I’m getting word that we are getting a live feed right now via the NAS.”

  The picture on screen cut to a close shot within the larger chapel that the Angels had been in during the footage from the Commissioning. Dark marble Ionic columns ran along each side, a shaft of light falling somewhere from the ceiling upon a stark podium that had been placed in the centre of the white marble floor. Instead of being seated, as the public was normally used to seeing them during Commissioning ceremonies, the Twelve were actually standing, as if to represent a united front. Their golden robes almost seemed connected in one glowing whole.

  The graphic on the screen read: LIVE – Council of Twelve Chapel.

  The anchor back in the studio whispered: “It seems the Council is in the newer chapel. And it looks like Gabriel is walking to the podium. Let’s listen in during what could be a historic moment for human- and Angelkind alike.”

  One True Immortal stepped forward. It was, of course, Gabriel. He seemed even taller, more impressive than usual as he walked to the podium with the microphone. The Immortals behind him closed ranks, shoulder to shoulder, to fill the hole he left. Gabriel’s piercing eyes and sharp features, framed by his famous white hair, looked straight into the camera.

  He began speaking.

  “It is with true sadness that I have to stand here today. Unwarranted aggression, envy and spite have brought us to this point. For almost a hundred and fifty years we Angels have existed with humans in harmony, doing our divine duty: saving lives. Throughout, we have found a willing and reasonable partner in the United States government, which has always appreciated the invaluable services we provide.

  “Recent developments have strained that bond to the breaking point. It is true that mistakes have been made. The deplorable behaviour of Archangel Churchson shocked us on the Council as much as it surely did you. And there is certainly room for . . . adjustments within the National Angel Services.

  “But I am not lying when I say that this is not the way to help us reform. And we will not stand by as our divine rights are trampled upon by a newcomer president and his lackey Congress. We have been here far too long for that, I assure you.

  “Thus it is with great reluctance, but also strong resolve, that I now say we will not allow any action to be taken against Angels. Retribution will be swift, effective and immediate. We are a united front of supernatural stature. Humans have yet to see an Angel at war, but if President Linden and his Global Angel Commission have their way, they shall see one soon enough.

  “Thank you. And good afternoon.”

  The almost empty bowl of granola and yoghurt Maddy was holding on her lap fell out of her hands. Her eyes were wide in total shock. The bowl rattled on the floor but didn’t break.

  On screen, Gabriel stepped back into the shadows towards his fellow Council members as they nodded in assent, his skin nearly luminescent. The footage from the chapel began to fade to black.

  The bearded anchor back in the studio was in disbelief as they cut back to him, his mouth hanging wide open. “We’re back on. OK, we’re back on. And, yes, an official statement from Gabriel and the Council of Twelve. And it seems . . . it seems, folks, that Gabriel just threatened some kind of Angel . . . military action against the government if the international ban is enforced. Marcy, can we confirm that with the NAS? OK, yes, and you saw it here, Gabriel promising, quote, ‘swift, effective and immediate’ retribution.”

  Maddy’s hand managed to find the remote and mute the TV. An Angel war? What would that even look like? Maddy asked herself.

  Her iPhone buzzed on the table in front of her. Jacks was calling.

  Maddy looked at the black vibrating phone like it was a snake about to bite her. Her mind raced immediately to what had happened with Tom the night before. After the second ring, she picked up.

  Jackson’s voice was serious, urgent. “I need to see you.”

  “OK.” She breathed the word out before she even knew it.

  “Is there any way you can get out without being followed?”

  Maddy peered through a crack in the brown curtains and saw the three-ring media circus still set up outside. “I don’t know, maybe. They’ll see my car.”

  “Slip out on foot. Meet me just up the hill on Ivar Avenue in twenty minutes.”

  Putting on an old pair of sweatpants and an even older hoodie, Maddy was able to walk straight out the front of the diner and sneak out the back of the car park between the bushes before anyone across the street noticed. Her pulse was beating harder and harder as she slipped on to a street parallel to Ivar and began walking a few blocks north, her sneakers crunching the fallen leaves underfoot.

  Jacks’s voice had been urgent, distraught: I need to see you.

  What could he say?

  Maddy didn’t even know where her
feet were taking her, they just kept moving. But as her feet moved, one after the other, she felt somehow as if they were leading her to some kind of destiny. The residential street was quiet in the early afternoon, and she didn’t have too much trouble keeping herself unrecognized.

  She reached the meeting point, slightly up the hill on the tree-lined street. She anxiously looked around, not seeing Jackson. Just a minute later, Jackson’s cherry red Ferrari squealed to a stop next to her.

  “Get in,” Jacks said. Sunglasses hid his blue eyes as he opened the passenger door from the inside for her. Maddy got in the car and felt the six hundred horses roar under the engine as they peeled their way further up the street. After a little searching, Jacks found a dead end further up the hill and pulled to a stop. The engine died, and he stepped out of the car. Maddy soon followed.

  Jacks stood there in a T-shirt and jeans, pacing back and forth at the end of the shabby road. It dead-ended to a guardrail, beyond which was grass and a gentle slope down to some houses below. No one was near. Jacks ripped the sunglasses off his face and looked at Maddy. Maddy had never seen his beautiful eyes set in such gaunt pain and anxiousness.

  “You know the Council— ” Jacks started.

  “I saw,” Maddy said sadly. “I saw Gabriel.”

  “So then you know . . . war is inevitable.”

  She looked at him uncertainly. “Does it have to be, Jacks?”

  “Maddy, under the GAC ban, if you or I even flew right now, we could be taken by the police or military. Technically if we even had our wings out. Do you understand what that means? We can’t be Angels. This is about Angel rights.”

  Jacks paced again, then stopped by Maddy’s side.

  “I came here for one reason and one reason only. To get you. I cut a deal. For you, Maddy. So you could stay with us. I can guarantee your safety. Amnesty with the Angels. The unsanctioned save forgotten.”

  Maddy was stunned. It took her a moment before she could find herself, but her response was sharp. “No one asked you to do that!”

  “I knew you wouldn’t. So I had to do it myself, I. . .” Jacks trailed off, leaning forward and putting his hand on the guardrail. Maddy came closer to Jacks. His energy, which she always felt so clearly, and which was normally so calm to her, was abrupt, scattered. She reached a light hand towards his muscular shoulder to calm the pain.

  He turned at her touch, and before they knew it they were kissing, his lips smashing against hers in the overwhelming moment. Jacks locked Maddy in his strong arms and she pulled up against him, running her hand behind his neck.

  She pulled back. “No, Jacks, I. . .”

  Jacks looked at her incredulously. “What’s wrong, Maddy?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” She ran the back of her hand across her lips. “Nothing’s wrong, Jacks. I just need to think. It’s hard to when we’re doing . . . that.”

  “Maddy, I’m offering you a chance to be saved. To be safe with us. You have no idea what could happen,” Jackson said darkly. “This is your chance.”

  She looked at the Angel she had loved for a year, his perfect features contorted with anguish as he looked down on her.

  “A line has been drawn in the sand, Maddy. You belong on our side,” he said. “There have been problems, but we can fix them. Together, Maddy. The Council and the Archangels are willing to do that. But humans are greedy, impatient, jealous. You belong on the side of good. On the side of Angels.”

  “But, Jacks . . . I don’t know what side I’m on,” Maddy said with doubt.

  “Maddy, you swore to uphold the ideals of being a Guardian. You made an oath. Don’t forget that!”

  “But am I really an Angel? Or just an ‘abomination’?”

  She turned away, watching as a calico cat surreptitiously dashed across the empty street, its paws barely touching the asphalt.

  Jacks walked towards Maddy, tiny pebbles crunching under his feet. He took her face in his hands. “Maddy, you are the best Angel I’ve ever seen. I watched the footage of your save. The skill there. There’s no doubt in my mind: you have more Angel skill than they could ever imagine.

  “Don’t you see? Doesn’t the Angel in you see? We can bring Angels to a new era – there must be reforms. But you’re an Angel. They’ll turn against you, the humans. You’re too much of an Angel now.”

  “How do you know you’re right, Jacks?” Maddy pulled away again, studying the grooves in the asphalt at her feet. “I finally realized what becoming a Guardian made me. What I had become. You tried to warn me, but I couldn’t hear you. The whole time I thought I was somehow keeping true to my purpose, but I was getting further away. And I would have let her die for a fashion line and the cover of Angels Weekly.” Maddy turned her face up to Jacks. It was a bitter mask of anger and regret.

  “I don’t love you because you’re an Angel!” Jacks said. “I love you because you’re Maddy. But you are an Angel now. It’s no longer a choice. It’s a fact.”

  He took Maddy’s hands in his, and she felt the jolt of electricity, the same she had felt the first night they met, in the back of the diner.

  “What would I have to do?” Maddy asked.

  “Come over to our side, in support of the Angels.” Jackson squeezed her hands in his. “I know it’s difficult, almost unthinkable. But you have to make a decision: do you stand with us or the mortals?”

  Jackson was so close as he looked down at her, their hands clasped, that she could feel his intoxicating breath on her. His face was expectant. Waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t know, Jacks,” Maddy finally said, breaking away. “I need to think . . . it’s just . . . I need to think.”

  “We have only days, maybe only hours.”

  Maddy knew it was true. She nodded.

  “I need until tomorrow morning. Can you give me until then?”

  After sneaking back home – this time through the back door of the diner – Maddy went directly upstairs and shut herself in her room. She saw she had a missed call from Tom, but she just had to ignore it for the time being. Maybe for ever.

  The room was stuffy, almost confining. She threw open the window to let a breeze in as night began falling on the Immortal City, the street lights slowly flickering on along the thousands of streets, one by one. Maddy took off her shoes and lay down on her bed, toes pointing to the ceiling. Her mind moved back and forth, back and forth, over the choice that Jacks had set before her. And she knew there was no sidestepping it. She had to make the decision. Whether right or wrong. She had to make it. Across Angel City, law enforcement and military were preparing to do anything to stop Angels from breaking the law. And that could very well include her.

  Raising her arm straight up above her, and then bending her wrist so her hand was parallel to the bed, she looked at the Divine Ring on her finger. As if it had its own energy source, it glowed. She pulled her father’s Divine Ring from the hollow of her neck, where it hung on her mother’s beautiful necklace that she now wore all the time. The two Divine Rings seemed to glow more strongly as they neared each other. Maddy had never noticed it before. She played with moving the rings back and forth, watching the glows change. Her father. What would he want her to do?

  Maddy reached down, fishing for the Hermès bag that seemed to have replaced her old Jansport for a lot of things, including carrying books around. She found it and pulled out her father’s old leather notebook Uncle Kevin had given her. She hadn’t looked at it since she passed recommendation for Guardianship.

  She flipped through the pages, marvelling at the wide range of her father’s knowledge, his passions, and his wittiness. For maybe the millionth time, she wished to herself that somehow she could have got to know him. That they could have spent time together. Maddy had a strange feeling they’d have got along just fine.

  Throughout the notebook were peppered little sayings or riddles her father ha
d inscribed. Just as she was about to put the notebook away, she came across one that caught her eye.

  Neither Angel nor Man Can Escape Their Destiny. That Is Both Their Gift and Their Curse.

  Closing the notebook, Maddy placed it on the side table and then looked for her phone.

  CHAPTER 35

  The first light of day began creeping across the top of the hills, filtering on to Angel City, a purple glow that slowly grew, piercing the darkness in the still-sleeping metropolis. Fingers of red began peering over the ridges, casting Angel City in a luminous dawn light as the city slowly began to stir at its corners.

  Maddy’s Audi threaded its way along the still-dark Mulholland Drive, her headlights slashing around the dark corners as the rosy morning light began filtering from above. She had been up all night; her eyes were red and weary as she drove along the windy road. She swerved to miss a jackrabbit that dashed in front of her wheels, and then was back on course. Maddy knew the way, almost by heart, although she hadn’t driven it too many times. She and Jacks had needed a place they could go where they could be alone. There were too many eager eyes and photographers out there. They needed privacy.

  Gravel crunched under her wheels as she pulled off to the side of the road. Maddy turned off the engine, and all was silent. Crickets were still chirping in the sparse underbrush, although a chorus of noisy birds was signalling the coming morning.

  Jacks was there already. His Ferrari was parked on the other side of the road, the side that dropped steeply off down into the lower foothills and ravines. The Angel was standing outside his car, his hands thrust in the pockets of his jacket as he waited for Maddy. He turned towards Maddy as he heard her drive up, then turned back to gazing at the view as the lights twinkling in Angel City slowly gave way to dawn.

  They were at the lookout where Jacks had taken her on their first date, just before they’d gone flying. A lifetime ago. The dawn light continued stretching further across the Angel City basin, although the imposing hill behind her was still blocking the early sun. It was still quite dark. She could see Jacks standing next to the Ferrari. She could also see the bench they’d been sitting on when Jacks put his coat around her that night. Maddy crossed the dark road and approached the Angel.