Natural Born Angel

by Speer, Scott

  In a sight that seemed out of some surreal nightmare, the screen showed footage of tanks rolling down Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, palm trees waving above them. The tanks settled outside the NAS headquarters, which the military had isolated and surrounded with weaponry and troops.

  “And just an hour ago, Madison Montgomery Godright, the half-Angel, half-human who sparked the final stage of the human-Angel crisis and who has become a symbolic leader of this movement against Angel corruption, finally made a brief statement on the front lawn of her uncle’s house. In addition, Tom Cooper, U.S. Navy pilot, was with Godright during her statement.”

  “Maddy, here you are,” Tom said, watching the TV. She stood up from the booth and looked at the screen.

  At first, it showed stock footage of Maddy on the red carpet at her Commissioning, Jacks at her side. A knife of ambiguous pain plunged into Maddy’s heart. But the footage quickly cut to video of her statement an hour earlier.

  The screen showed Maddy walking to a makeshift podium in Kevin’s front garden, under the morning sun. The podium teetered under an improbable number of microphones as news agencies around the world eagerly awaited word from America’s sweetheart. Behind her stood Uncle Kevin. And just off to the side, Tom stood stoically in his service dress uniform.

  Maddy looked around at the sea of reporters on the street, all waiting for word from her.

  “As you all know, I have roots in both the human and the Angel world. Any violence on either side would sadden me deeply. That being said, I support the abolition of Protection for Pay and a return to the Angelic ideals that preceded the National Angel Services. Angels once stood for an idea of good and justice, and they can do it again. I ask the Angels to compromise and meet with President Linden and the GAC to come to a peaceful conclusion. No blood needs to be spilled. There is time to avert catastrophe. Thank you.”

  On screen, Maddy stepped away from the podium, flanked by Uncle Kevin and Tom. The reporters began shouting rabid questions at her, but Maddy paid them no mind as she re-entered the house.

  Tom turned the volume down.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Maddy asked uncertainly.

  “No one knows,” Tom said. “We wait.”

  The pilot turned to Maddy. He seemed taller and even more striking in his service dress uniform, his wings gleaming, pinned above the breast pocket of his shirt. Stepping closer, he was against Maddy. In this swirling series of events, somehow he seemed the only thing that was remaining real. Something she could count on.

  “I have to go now,” Tom said. “I only had a few hours off; we’re on standby. According to my commander, the situation is expected to escalate within hours.”

  “Be careful, Tom,” Maddy said.

  He squeezed Maddy tightly for one brief second, and, needing the comfort, she let him.

  “Mr Montgomery,” he said, nodding to Kevin as he left. The uniform made him strangely more formal.

  Maddy watched him get in his pickup and leave the car park. Her heart sagged as she watched him depart, knowing the danger he might be heading into. And yet she also felt deeply sad for Jackson. She had known he was going to be angry, bitter, disappointed, but she had never imagined that he would volunteer to lead the Angels against the humans. He and she were now enemies. Maddy suddenly felt very tired.

  “I’m going to go upstairs and rest for a bit,” Maddy said to her uncle.

  “OK, Mads, let me know if you need anything,” Kevin said with concern.

  Maddy made her way past the oak, almost bare of its leaves now, up the back path to Kevin’s house. The stairs creaked in a familiar way as she ascended them; she hadn’t realized how much she had missed the old house.

  Lying on her bed, Maddy was asleep within minutes.

  The window rattling woke Maddy from her slumber. First a pen, then her bottle of water, then an old framed photo of Maddy and Gwen from sophomore year slowly shook and tumbled off her desk and on to the floor with a clatter.

  Maddy’s eyes opened in confusion. One, then the other. What was happening, and where was she? What time was it? Suddenly her eyes focused, and she realized she was in her old room at Kevin’s. Her entire bed was shaking. She jumped up in a panic before realizing it was a small earthquake. It slowly faded.

  She’d been taking a nap. How long had she been out? It had been a strangely dreamless sleep. Clear and endless. She could’ve been asleep for hours. She checked the clock and saw it had only been a full two hours.

  BZZZZ. BZZZZ.

  BZZZZ. BZZZZ.

  Her phone was on the bedside table, dancing and rotating as it vibrated. She fumbled for it and looked at the caller ID: TOM.

  “Hello?”

  Tom’s voice was quick and sharp. “Are you by a TV?”

  “No . . . I mean, yes, just wait a second,” Maddy said, pushing her hair behind her ear and walking downstairs. “What’s happening?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Tom said. “It seems so incredible.”

  “Have the Angels attacked?” she asked, breathless. “Are we at war?”

  Tom took a breath. “There is no Angel war any more,” he said.

  She bolted up. “What?”

  There was a crackle on the line. “Maddy, I think it may be worse. Something worse than we could have ever imagined. Get to a TV.”

  Maddy scrambled downstairs, still on the phone with Tom.

  “Did you feel that earthquake, Kevin?” Maddy asked. “Kevin? What’s going on?”

  Uncle Kevin was standing in the living room in his jeans and tucked-in polo shirt, frozen, open-mouthed, looking at the TV.

  On-screen it looked like a giant whirlpool in the middle of the ocean. It was grim and terrifying, spinning slowly, like the eye of some dread hurricane. Its dimensions were enormous – a helicopter flying near it seemed like just a speck. It must have been over a kilometre across. The water was frothy and almost black as it slowly turned counterclockwise. And Maddy could swear she was seeing smoke and steamrise from its dark centre. The walls of the hole were steep, and it seemed to extend for ever downward into the churning depths. The news helicopter was directly above the hole but could not see to the bottom of its pit.

  “Tom, what is it?!” Maddy brought the phone up to her ear and asked in panic, her hand fumbling for and finally finding the remote to turn up the volume on the television.

  Tom’s voice was strangely detached. “I can’t say for sure. The people on TV know more than I do. It’s close to Angel City, though. Too close.”

  Kevin moved closer and embraced Maddy as they watched the horrifying footage unfold on screen. The cameraman in the helicopter was talking.

  “Within recent hours, this enormous sinkhole has appeared just fifty kilometres off the coast of Angel City, swallowing everything in its sight. It was discovered in the past hour, when a freighter bound for the Oregon port of Astoria was suddenly drawn into the pull of the hole and has since disappeared. Scientific assessment of the atmosphere shows that incredible heat and sulphuric gases are escaping from the hole, and it is expanding at an astonishing rate. And moving directly towards Angel City. For you viewers at home, I cannot explain the scope and terror of this sight. Although there has been no official confirmation, many believe this is indeed the coming of the often-doubted revelations from the ending chapters of The Book of Angels. And I, for one, am not about to doubt it.”

  On-screen another helicopter dipped closer down into the swirling sinkhole. The rotating water walls became blacker and blacker as it dropped below sea level. The aircraft seemed like a mere toy against the massive swirling walls of the cone. Black brine and foam began splashing towards the helicopter’s blades.

  “And it looks like they are trying to get a closer read on what is happening down there, and – oh my God, get out of there! Get out of there!”

  Suddenly it
seemed as if the swirling black watery walls of the sinkhole bulged and grew, drawing the observation helicopter into its grasp. The helicopter teetered slightly and then suddenly was pulled into the foaming, glistening black water. It crumpled and twisted in on itself, instantly bursting into hot flames as the waters drew it into the bottomless pit that had opened.

  Kevin pulled Maddy closely, drawing her face against his chest as she hid her eyes.

  “And we are back in the studio after shocking footage of what, well, of what appears to be some kind of portal. Questions of the Angel-human war have immediately disappeared as humanity turns to this great threat from the ocean.”

  Behind the anchor, TV-station workers were running around in pandemonium.

  “President Linden, the GAC and military are reallocating all resources to fight the demons. No one’s even talking about the Angel-human war any more,” Kevin said. “But where are the Angels? Shouldn’t they be helping?”

  Maddy dashed outside and looked at the skies. Off towards the ocean, aircraft were converging towards the sinkhole. No Angels flying, though. Neighbours were coming out on to the street, watching the skies as strange clouds seemed to be rolling off the coast. The clouds shimmered grey with the slightest hint of portentous red. The weather was becoming humid, sticky. Strange for Angel City. Suddenly, what looked like a compact fireball emerged on the horizon, sailing east. Maddy remembered the terror of last year and knew in her gut it must be a demon. The neighbour’s dog began barking incessantly. For once it was barking at real danger.

  The fiery demon ball sailed over the hill, barely clearing the Angel City sign before heading into Burbank. Panicked, Maddy looked out in the distance towards the ocean, where it had come from. But it was the only one she saw. An early scout?

  Maddy ran back inside, where Kevin was still watching reports.

  “Are they saying anything about the clouds or . . . any demon sightings in the city?” Maddy asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Now, we cannot say for certain that this is what is happening, but we have the world’s foremost Angel expert and philosopher from Harvard University, Professor Paul Kemper, with us via satellite. Professor Kemper, what do you have to say about this sinkhole?”

  The man on screen was wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches and a white button-up without a tie. He seemed calm, almost unnaturally so. As if resigned to his fate. He began speaking.

  “Susan, we are undoubtedly witnessing the somewhat unexpected fulfilment of one of the most terrible of prophecies we have, that of the coming of the ‘Darkness’. Although many in the fringe communities have been monitoring world events and predicting this for months, it was ignored by the mainstream media. It all seems so clear in hindsight now.

  “As many know, it states in The Book of Angels, ‘And then when the seven burn across the earth, evil will rise upon humanity from the West. The Darkness will come from a pit in the Great Ocean, out of which no light has ever been seen, straight from the depths of the other world. Death will surely find a home with you, and mercy shall be driven out by the hordes of doom. And you will beg for the end’.

  “Given the early scientific evidence of what we are seeing, and its clear connection with the prophecy, it seems that we may be experiencing it at this very moment.”

  The woman in the studio looked in disbelief at the professor. The bedlam was still occurring on screen behind her in the studio.

  “What does it mean, the ‘Darkness’?”

  The professor cleared his throat.

  “That has been debated for some time among scholars. But after last year’s incidents with the demon in Angel City, it has been considered almost conclusive that it would be some kind of Dark Angel contingent. And from my confidential sources in both the Angels organization and the ACPD, we are almost certain it is demons. I just spoke with President Linden and urged him to focus all our available military resources, and those of all our allies, on meeting this threat. But conventional weapons will have limited effect on our supernatural enemies. Given the rapid growth of the hole, I would say we have twenty-four hours at most before the full attack begins. And we still have no idea what its form will take, or who or what is leading it.”

  The anchor posed a question: “What would you have viewers do?”

  The professor almost laughed, but then just shook his head slowly, sadly. “Do? I would say it is an important time to be with your loved ones. That’s what I will be doing.”

  Maddy heard a small voice, distant. She realized it was Tom on the phone still.

  “Maddy? Maddy?”

  She slowly lifted the phone back to her ear. “I’m here, Tom.”

  “We just got the order from Linden.” His voice was tense, focused. “I’m on my way to the carrier. We’re deploying within the hour, Maddy.”

  “But the professor just said that conventional weapons won’t do anything against the demons. You don’t know what you’re up against!” Maddy protested, her voice quaking with emotion as she remembered once again the terrible sight of that demon careening along the freeway, and then atop the library tower. Smoke, fire and the emissary of hellishness. She imagined an army of them and shuddered.

  After the destruction last year in Angel City with just one demon, what was an army of thousands upon thousands of demons going to do?

  “We have to, Maddy. The war on Angels is over. Now we’re just fighting for our survival,” Tom said. “I’m doing my duty.”

  “Tom,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “I’ll come see you. Before you leave. To say goodbye.”

  “I would” – she could hear the fighter pilot’s voice quavering slightly – “I would love that. I will see you there, then. I need to go now, Maddy. I’ll be at Dock 2.”

  The phone went silent. “Tom’s going to fight them, Kevin.”

  “Sit down for one minute, Maddy,” Uncle Kevin said, putting a kind hand on her shoulder as she sank down to the couch. He came back shortly with two cups of tea. The warm smell of the tea filled the living room, a stark contrast to the darkness they were feeling.

  “There are still the Angels,” he said. “They can fight. For earth.”

  Maddy looked up at her uncle with uncertain eyes.

  “Well, they can’t just stand by. How could they?” Kevin said.

  “The demons, they’re here for the mortals. Not the Angels,” Maddy said. “The Angels know that. According to the prophecy, this coming of the demons has one purpose: to overtake the world and enslave mankind. Now, after we were at the brink of war, the Angels . . . they’ll be too proud to help us now.”

  Maddy’s mind cast back to her final meeting with Jackson. His bitterness. Her heart ached.

  Suddenly, from the kitchen, they heard the faint tinkling of glasses in the cupboard. The pictures on the mantle started to shift slightly under the vibrations. The windows rolled under the trembling. Maddy steadied herself by putting a hand on the side of a chair. It was another small earthquake, and it quickly faded. But Maddy could only assume that it wouldn’t be the last.

  Maddy and Kevin faced each other.

  “Tom’s waiting for me,” she said.

  Squeezing Kevin’s hand, she stood up. Here, in this incredible time of uncertainty, doubt, and darkness, she was sure of one thing, at least: she had somewhere to be, someone to see.

  *

  The last tremors of the quake had faded by the time Archangel William Holyoake recorded the brief video statement to be released to President Linden, the GAC and the worldwide media. Simple, to the point and brutal: “We regret to inform you that we will not intercede on the humans’ behalf in this conflict with the demons.”

  Just behind the Archangel, to his left, stood Jackson Godspeed, wearing his advanced, matte-black battle armour. His daunting wings remained sheathed for now. Jackson’s eyes remained neutrally focus
ed forward towards the camera as Holyoake spoke. Emotionless. Other Guardians were also collected near the podium, including Mitch, Steven Churchson and Emily Brightchurch, in a show of strength and solidarity. Emily stood just beside Jackson in black leggings and a loose, low-cut tank top, and, on her right wrist, a ton of bracelets that matched her Divine Ring.

  The statement was being recorded and transmitted from what looked like little more than a glass cube perched in a grove of trees in the middle of the Angel City Hills. The glass cube was simple: it had a marble floor and an elevator. An elevator that led down to a complex underground system that humans had never laid eyes on. A contingency plan for something exactly like this.

  Archangel Holyoake finished his statement and began walking away from the podium. The low buzz of conversation filled the glass room as Guardians began speaking to each other.

  Jackson felt his hand getting squeezed. He looked down and saw it was Emily. She smiled at him.

  “I’m with you, Jacks. I’ve always believed in you. No matter what state your wings were in. You aren’t weak. We Angels aren’t weak.”

  “Oh,” Jacks said without too much enthusiasm. “Thanks, Emily.”

  “Now that Maddy’s not in your life, if you ever need anyone to talk to . . . to keep you company, let me know,” Emily said. “I’m strong. Like you.”

  “OK,” said Jacks, but his mind seemed elsewhere, and his stare remained distant.

  Suddenly a few Guardians shouted and pointed to the horizon. It was another demon scout, sent to Angel City from the growing sinkhole.

  The demon, curled tightly into a ball, an emissary of smoke, fire and death, roared overhead, leaving a contrail of ash to float down in the sky. It smashed into the hillside closer to the Angel City sign. The fireball exploded in a maelstrom of flame, and in the distance one could see the limbs of the demon expanding out from the ball. Fire started spreading up the hill with the wind. The demon screamed, and its screech echoed down across the Angel City basin.