by Susan Ee
When she doesn’t drop to the ground, he closes his eyes in relief. His unguarded expression makes me understand that he hadn’t made a move to take her back because he wasn’t sure if she would accept him.
All those years when he was alone, he had nothing but his sword for company. I hadn’t fully understood how hard it must have been for him to lose her.
It’s good to see him happy, but it’s bittersweet. ‘Goodbye, Pooky Bear.’ I stroke my fingers along the sheath.
Raffe pulls off the stuffed bear with its wedding-veil dress. ‘I’m sure she wants you to have this.’ He smiles.
I take it and hug the bear to my side. The fur is soft but doesn’t feel right without its steel core beneath my hands.
We reach the truck, and I slide into the driver’s seat. Raffe looks into my open window as if he has something more to say. The dried fruit the Pit lord gave him swings back and forth below that vulnerable spot between his collar bones as he leans toward me.
He gives me a kiss.
It’s slow and silky, and it makes me melt all over. He caresses my face, and I tilt my head into his touch.
Then he steps away.
He opens his beautiful snowy wings and takes off into the air to meet his Watchers.
Chapter 48
I watch Raffe and his soldiers head toward the aerie along the blue sky and wonder what will happen there. A part of me wants to see this contest, while another part wants to run and hide. It’s bound to be violent. And I’m not sure I could handle watching, knowing Raffe’s team is the underdog.
I take the wheel, still preoccupied. Before I can start the engine, Mom curls up on the seat like a girl and lays her head on my lap. She rubs my leg as if reassuring herself that I’m really here.
Her breathing becomes deep and steady as she falls asleep. How long has it been since she slept? Between worrying over Paige and me, she hasn’t had much chance to rest. I’ve been so obsessed with finding Paige and keeping her safe that I haven’t had much room for Mom.
I put my hand on her coarse hair and stroke it. I hum her apology song. It’s haunting and brings up all kinds of complicated feelings, but it’s the only lullaby I know.
My mother hasn’t asked the questions that a normal person would ask, and I’m grateful for it. It’s like the world has become so crazy that it makes sense to her now.
I turn on the engine and drive us out.
‘Thanks, Mom. For coming to rescue me.’ My voice comes out reedy and a little wobbly. I clear my throat. ‘Not every mom would do that in a world like this.’
I don’t know if she hears me or not.
She has seen me in the arms of a demon, or what she thinks is a demon. She has seen me pop out of Beliel, riding a creature from hell. She has seen me in the company of a group of tortured, half-skinned Fallen. And she just saw me kiss an angel.
I couldn’t blame even a rational person for believing I was now deeply involved with the devil, or at least the enemy. I can’t even fathom what goes on in her head. This is a scenario she’s always feared, always warned me about. And here we are.
‘Thanks, Mom,’ I say again. There’s more to be said. And in a healthy mother–daughter relationship, more probably would be said.
But I don’t know how to begin. So I just keep humming that haunting lullaby that she used to sing to us when she was coming out of a particularly bad spell.
49
The road is empty of life. As we drive, I see nothing more than a deserted world of abandoned cars, earthquake-damaged landscape, and fire-gutted buildings.
The similarities between our landscape and the Pit are becoming disturbing.
We’re halfway to the Resistance camp when I see a growing speck in the sky behind us. It’s a single angel.
I debate whether to speed up or stop. I pull over and hide among the dead cars on the road. My mom and I slide down in our seats. Paige has already moved ahead of us.
I watch through the rearview mirror as the angel nears. He has bright white wings with a torso to match. It’s Josiah.
I make sure he’s alone before I get out and wave him down.
‘Raphael sent me to tell you not to go to the Resistance camp,’ says Josiah as he lands. He sounds out of breath.
‘Why? What’s going on?’
‘You need to stay away from any concentration of people. The trial by contest is going to be a blood hunt.’
‘What’s a blood hunt?’ Just saying those words makes me want to run and hide.
‘Two teams hunt as much game as possible,’ says Josiah. ‘It starts at dusk and ends at dawn. At the end, whoever has the most kills wins.’
‘What kind of game?’ My lips are numb, and I’m vaguely surprised the words come out.
He has the decency to look uncomfortable. ‘Uriel insists there’s only one prey worth hunting. The only one that’s attacked back.’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Raffe wouldn’t do that.’
‘He has no choice. No one backs out of a blood hunt.’
I have to lean against the truck.
‘So Raffe is going to slaughter as many humans as he can? You too?’
‘Whoever wins the contest wins the trial. If Raphael wins, he’ll be in charge, and everyone who survives the blood hunt will be better off.’
My stomach feels like an acid volcano, and I swallow hard to keep it down.
‘But it’s a long flight to victory,’ he says. ‘A blood hunt includes everyone who wants to join. All of Uriel’s angels will join him. A Watcher can kill three times the game that a regular soldier can, but we’ll still need to go to the most populated area if we have any shot at beating Uriel’s team.’
‘You do know that you’re talking about killing my kind, right? We’re not prey, and we’re not game.’ I can’t get away from the thought that I helped Raffe get his team together.
Josiah’s look softens. ‘Your orders are to survive. Run as far away from populated areas as possible. Then hide in the most buried, most secure place you can find. You’ll have until sunset.’
There’s only one place that’s densely populated now. The Resistance camp.
And Raffe knows where it is.
Because I showed it to him.
It feels like the acid in my stomach is boiling and bubbling up to my throat. I can’t seem to get enough air into my lungs.
‘He wouldn’t do that.’ My voice comes out choked and wobbly. ‘He’s not like that.’
Josiah just gives me a look filled with pity. ‘Raphael wants you to run as far away as you can. You and your family. Go. Survive.’
Then he leaps into the air and flies back toward the aerie.
I take a deep breath to try to calm myself.
Raffe wouldn’t do it.
He won’t hunt people. Slaughter them like they’re wild pigs. He wouldn’t do it.
But no matter what I tell myself, I can’t blot out the image of him watching angels fly in formation without him. All I hear in my head is someone saying that angels weren’t meant to be alone. The main reason he so desperately needed his wings back was so he could return to the angels, right? Be one of them? Take his rightful place in their ranks as an archangel?
He wants to be accepted back into the angel world as much as I want to keep my family safe. If I had to kill a few angels to keep my family safe, wouldn’t I do that?
Absolutely. No-brainer.
Then I remember the look of distaste on his face as he talked about the dissection tables at the Resistance camp. He wouldn’t want to wipe out the camp or kill anyone. I’m sure of that. But if he had to? If it was the only way to take his rightful place as an archangel and save his angels from falling?
I slide down the side of the truck and hug my knees.
I took Raffe to the Resistance camp. Knowing he was an angel, I showed him where the largest surviving group of humans was hiding.
A memory of the ruins of the Pit runs through my mind. Did the original hellions have some lo
vesick teenager who betrayed them too? The thought of a perfectly chiseled ex-angel falling in love with a hellion is laughable. But I’ll bet the teenage hellion didn’t think so.
I shut my eyes.
I feel sick.
Beliel’s words after he showed me what happened to his wife echo in my head. ‘I once thought of him as my friend too . . . Now you know what becomes of people who trust him.’
I climb back into the truck and sit there with my hands gripping the steering wheel. I take a deep breath and try to think things through.
My mother watches me with trusting eyes. I don’t know how much she heard, but she wouldn’t believe anything he said anyway. Even if she worked with him to rescue me, she would never trust him. Maybe I should be more like her.
Ahead of us, down the road, my sister perches on a tree branch, ready to follow my lead.
My family is here with me, and all we have to do is drive away. North or south – either way, we could be far away from the fight if we drive all day. We are about as safe in this moment as can be expected during the End of Days.
It makes perfect sense for us to head away from where the angels will be.
Perfect sense.
I start the engine. We head east. Toward the Resistance camp.
50
We see smoke in the distance long before we reach Palo Alto. Paige flies ahead with her locusts while we continue to weave through dead traffic.
The angels shouldn’t be attacking until dusk. People should still be safe. But by the time we reach the Resistance camp, I know I’m only telling myself fairy tales.
I park the truck on El Camino and get out of the cab. The buildings are intact except for one, which is on fire.
There are bodies strewn across the street. The cars and walls of the school are splashed with blood. I hope it’s not people blood, but I’m not confident about that.
‘Stay here, Mom. I’ll see what’s going on.’ I check the sky as I get out of the truck to make sure Paige hid in the trees like I told her to. She and her locusts are nowhere in sight. The Resistance probably would have seen her coming if they weren’t so preoccupied.
I walk toward the school, trying to see if anyone is alive. I only take a few steps toward the carnage before I stop. I’m afraid I might see someone I know among the bodies.
The wind blows leaves and bits of garbage. People’s hair flows in the wind, thankfully covering some of their faces. A piece of paper tumbles by and lands on a body that is staring at the smoke-filled sky.
The paper plasters itself against the body’s shoulder, right beside the pale, dead face staring blankly into the sky. It’s a flyer for Dee and Dum’s talent show.
Come one, come all
To the greatest show of all!
A talent show. Those guys actually thought we could have something as silly and frivolous as a talent show.
I scan the faces of the bodies draped across the hoods of cars, the road, the schoolyard, hoping I won’t see Dee or Dum. I walk slowly through the parking lot. A few people are whimpering, curled and crying on the asphalt.
In the school, the windows are smashed, the doors are unhinged and broken, the desks and chairs are thrown all over the yellow grass. There’s more life and motion here, though. People cry over bodies, hug each other, walk dazed and in shock.
I stop to help a girl who is trying to stop the blood flow from a man’s severed arm.
‘What happened?’ I ask, bracing myself to hear a horror story of angels and monsters.
‘Dead people,’ she says, crying. ‘They came shambling in after a bunch of our fighters left for a mission. We just had a skeleton crew to defend the rest of us. Everyone freaked. It was a bloodbath. We thought it was over. But word must have got out that we’ve been attacked and defenseless, because then the gangs came.’
People did this? Not monsters, not angels, not Pit lords. People attacking people.
I shut my eyes. I could blame the angels for turning us into this, but we were doing stuff like this long before they came, weren’t we?
‘What did the gangs want?’ I ask, reluctantly opening my eyes to face the world again.
‘Whatever they could get.’ She wraps a ripped shirt around the unconscious guy’s severed arm. ‘Some of them kept yelling that they wanted their food back. The stuff we took from them when we took over their store.’
The memory of the bloody handprint smeared across the nearby grocery store’s door comes back to me. I had guessed the Resistance had taken it from a gang.
When an older guy comes over to help, I drift off into another group carrying the wounded into the main building.
I came here to say a quick warning and then head north or south with my family. But we end up helping out while I look for Obi. No one knows where he is.
My mom rushes to our old classroom for her stockpile of rotten eggs. Not surprisingly, they’re still there. I guess no one wanted to clear out that mess. She hands out cartons of them just in case hellions come. People gather around her to take them.
‘They’re coming back!’ someone yells.
On the edge of the grove, shadows lurch toward us.
Everyone who is mobile stampedes toward the nearest building. A few stand by the injured, pointing guns or lifting shovels or knives as they get ready to defend their loved ones.
It’s the locust victims who were dubbed the resurrected by Uriel. Their shriveled bodies shuffle toward us in a strange, zombielike fashion. It’s as if they’re so convinced that they’re dead and resurrected that they play the part. It’s as if being treated like monsters convinced them that they’re supposed to behave like monsters.
But before they get close enough to begin a fight, my sister circles overhead with her locusts. There are only three of them, but if there’s one thing the locust victims fear, it’s the locusts.
As soon as the resurrected see them, they scatter back into the grove across the street and disappear, no longer shuffling like zombies.
The Resistance people stare at the fleeing attackers, then at Paige and her pets as they fly low overhead. Some of the people give up on their injured and take cover, apparently more afraid of the locusts than of the resurrected.
The rest, though, stand firm and point their guns at Paige.
One of them is the guy who was in the council room with Obi the last time I was here. The one who lassoed Paige like an angry villager chasing after Frankenstein’s monster. I think Obi called him Martin.
‘She’s here to help.’ I put my arms out to try to calm everyone. ‘It’s all right. She’s on our side. Look, she scared the attackers.’
No one lowers their gun, but no one shoots either. That probably has more to do with not wanting to attract angels with the noise than believing anything I said.
‘Martin,’ I say. ‘Remember what Obi said? That my sister could be humanity’s hope.’ I point to Paige. ‘That’s her. You remember her?’
‘Yeah, I remember her,’ says Martin. His gun is firmly aimed at Paige. There are two others near him who look familiar. They were part of the group that held Paige down with ropes when they caught her. ‘I remember she has a taste for humans.’
‘She’s on our side,’ I say. ‘She came out into the open to protect you. Obi believes in her. You heard him.’
Everyone watches Martin to see what he’ll do. If he shoots, they’ll all shoot.
He maintains his aim on Paige as if fantasizing about shooting her.
‘Hey!’ he yells to Paige. ‘The gangs who hit us went that way.’ He swings his rifle to point north up El Camino Real. ‘I shot several of them. They should be easy pickin’s for you and your pets.’
He lowers his rifle and slings it over his torn shirt. ‘Never let it be said that we didn’t feed our honored guests.’
There’s a moment when everyone watches Martin. Then one by one, the Resistance people lower their guns.
Paige looks down at me from the sky as her locusts circle low above us lik
e vultures. She looks both eager and confused, like she’s not sure what she’s supposed to do.
She’s looking to me for answers, but I don’t know what to do either.
‘Yes!’ says my mother as she runs toward Paige, waving her arms in the direction that Martin pointed. ‘Go, baby girl. It’s lunchtime!’
That’s all the permission they need. The locusts fly north along the road with my sister.
‘Be careful,’ I call out.
I’m horrified. Relieved. Scared. Confused.
Nothing is as it’s supposed to be.
51
I keep expecting Obi to show up and take charge, but I still don’t see him. Not knowing what else to do, I continue to help carry the wounded while looking for Obi.
The injured sometimes scream and are sometimes too silent as we carry them into the main building. I have no idea if there’s even a doctor there, but we carry injured people in as though there were a full hospital in there.
We act as if this Spanish-style high school building is full of doctors and equipment. We tell the patients they’ll be okay, that the doctor will be with them soon. I suspect that some of them die while they wait, but I don’t stop to confirm as we lay down the wounded and head out for more.
There’s a rhythm to it, this task of carrying the injured. It gives us all something to do, something that feels organized and proper. I shut my brain off and just move like a robot, one wounded after another.
Surprisingly, everyone else behaves as though there’s order as well. Some bring water to people who need it, others gather crying children and reassure them, while others put out the fire still lingering in one of the buildings. There are people who stand guard with their rifles pointed at the sky, protecting the rest of us.
Everyone steps into a role to help without being told what to do.
That sense of organization falls apart, though, as soon as we find Obi.
He’s in bad shape. His breathing is shallow, and his hands are freezing. He has a wound in his chest that has soaked his entire shirt in blood.
