I want to beg him not to leave. Tell him that I’m still here. But I lie frozen. All I can do is watch as he gets up.
And disappears from my view.
Then, there’s nothing but the empty sky reflecting the firelight.
CHAPTER 45
Somewhere in the city, a dog howls. The hollow sound should have been lost in the clamor of the battle, drowned in my fear and pain. Instead, my mind draws it out until it eclipses everything else.
As I lie paralyzed on the cold pavement, all I can think is that it’s the loneliest sound I’ve ever heard.
My mother rushes toward me, still screaming. She throws herself on me, sobbing hysterically. She thinks I am dead, but she is still afraid. Afraid for my soul. After all, she just saw a demon deliver my dead body.
Around us, people burst into frightened conversation.
“What the hell was that?”
“Is she dead?”
“Did he kill her?”
“You should have shot it!”
“I didn’t know if she was dead.”
“Did we just see the devil?”
“What the hell was he doing?”
He was delivering my body to my people.
He could have been shot. He could have been attacked by other angels. If I was actually dead, he should have left me in the basement to be buried in rubble. He should have chased after Beliel and taken his wings back. He should have thwarted Uriel and avoided being seen by the other angels.
Instead, he delivered me to my family.
“It’s her. Penryn.” Dee-Dum comes into my line of sight. He’s smudged with soot, looking exhausted and sad.
Obi comes into view. He looks down at me solemnly for a moment.
“Let’s go,” Obi says wearily. “Move it!” he yells to the group. “Let’s get these people out of here!”
People shuffle past me onto the trucks. They all stare down at me as they walk by.
My mother grips me tighter and continues sobbing. “Please, help me get her on the truck,” she wails.
Obi stops and gives her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry about your daughter, ma’am. But I’m afraid there isn’t room for…I’m afraid you’ll have to leave her.” He turns and calls to his soldiers, “Someone help this lady onto a truck.”
A soldier comes and pries her away from me.
“No!” She screams and wails and twists in the soldier’s arms.
Just when it looks like the soldier is about to give up and let her go, I feel myself being lifted. Someone is carrying me. My head lulls back and I get a glimpse of who holds me.
It’s little Paige.
From my angle, I can see the crude stitches along her jawline leading up to her ear. Mom’s cheery yellow sweater lies askew along the stitches on her throat and shoulder. I’ve carried her like this a thousand times. I never thought we would switch places one day. She walks at a normal pace rather staggering the way she should with my weight.
The crowd goes quiet. Everyone stares at us.
She places me onto a truck bed without anyone’s help. The soldier standing in the bed grips his rifle in the ready position and backs away from us. The people who are already on the truck back up into each other like animals herding together.
I hear Paige grunting as she climbs into the truck. No one helps her. She bends over to pick me up again.
She smiles a little when she looks at me, but it turns into a wince once it gets big enough to shift her stitches. I catch a glimpse of raw meat fibers caught in her even rows of razor teeth.
I wish I could close my eyes.
My baby sister places me along a bench on the side of the truck bed. People shift out of our way. My mother comes into view and sits by my head. She props my head onto her lap. She is still crying but no longer hysterical. Paige sits by my feet.
Obi must be nearby because everyone on the truck looks past the truck bed as if waiting for a verdict. Will they let me stay?
“Let’s get out of here,” says Obi. “We’ve already wasted too much time. Get these people on the trucks! Let’s go before she blows!”
She? The aerie?
The truck fills with people, but somehow, they manage to leave some space around us so we’re not crowded.
Gunshots pop among the shouting. Everybody hangs on, preparing for a rough ride. The truck lurches forward, weaving through dead cars as it speeds away from the aerie.
My head bounces on my mother’s thigh as we run over something. A body? The machine-gun popping of bullets shooting into the air never stops. I can only hope that the wild spray of bullets misses Raffe, wherever he is.
Not long after we leave, a large truck crashes into the building in the false dawn of the firelight.
The first floor of the aerie explodes outward in a ball of fire.
Glass and concrete spray in every direction. Through the fire, smoke and debris, people and angels fly away from the aerie like scattered ants.
The majestic building teeters as though in shock.
Fire flickers out from the lower windows. My heart constricts, wondering if Raffe stayed out of the aerie. I didn’t see where he went after he left me. I can only hope he is safe.
Then, the aerie slowly collapses on itself.
It comes down in a heap with a puff of dust billowing out in slow motion. The accompanying rumbling sounds like an endless earthquake. Everyone stares in awe.
Hordes of angels circle the air, viewing the carnage.
When the dust mushrooms toward them, they back off, spreading out, looking sparse and dispersed. When the crown façade of the aerie topples onto the broken heap, there is an awed silence.
Then, in twos and threes, the angels scatter into the smoky sky.
Everyone around us cheers. Some are crying. Others are hollering. People jump up and down, clapping. Strangers who would have pointed guns at each other on the street are now hugging.
We have struck back.
We have declared war on any being that dares to think they can wipe us out without a fight. No matter how celestial, no matter how powerful they are, this is our home and we will fight to keep it.
The victory is far from perfect. I know that many of the angels have escaped with only minor injuries. Maybe a few have been killed, but the rest will heal quickly.
But to look at the people celebrating, you’d think the war has been won. I understand now what Obi meant when he said this attack was not about winning over the angels. It was about winning over the humans.
Until now, no one, certainly not me, believed there was even a chance at fighting back. We thought the war was over. Obi and his resistance fighters have now shown us that it’s just beginning.
I never thought about it before, but I’m proud to be human. We’re ever so flawed. We’re frail, confused, violent, and we struggle with so many issues. But all in all, I’m proud to be a Daughter of Man.
CHAPTER 46
The sky glows with a blend of bloody red and soot black. The bruised light gives a surreal glow to the charred city. The soldiers have stopped shooting, although they continue to scan the skies as if expecting to see an army of demons bearing down on us. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of machine-gun fire echoes down the streets.
We continue to weave through dead cars. The people in our truck talk excitedly in hushed voices. They’re so pumped up, they each sound ready to take on an entire legion of angels all by themselves.
They still stay as much on their side of the truck as possible. It’s a good thing they’re so excited and happy; otherwise, I’m afraid they might just burn us all at the stake. In between the chatter, they keep glancing our way. It’s hard to say whether it’s my mother in her speaking-in-tongues prayer trance, or my sister with her disturbing stitches and vacant stare, or the dead body that is me that keeps them glancing our way.
The pain is fading. It’s starting to feel more like I was hit with an economy car running a stop sign as opposed to an eighteen wheeler on the freeway. My eyes are beginning to come a little under my control again. I suspect some of my other muscles are thawing too, but my eyes are the easiest to move, if you call shifting a fraction of an inch moving. But it’s enough to tell me that the effects of the venom are wearing off and that I will probably be okay.
The streets have turned desolate and empty of people. We are out of the aerie district and in the demolished zone. Miles of burnt-out car husks and wrecked buildings flow by. The wind whips my hair around my face as we drive through the charred and broken skeleton of our world.
We occasionally stop, blending in with the other dead cars. At one point, Obi shushes us, and we hold our breath, hoping nothing finds us. I assume angels have been spotted above and we are camouflaging ourselves.
Just when I think it’s all over, someone in the back shouts, “Look out!”
He points above him. Everyone looks up.
Against the wounded sky, a lone angel circles above us.
No, not an angel.
Light glints off curved metal on the edge of his wing. The shape of the wings are not shaped like a bird’s wings. It’s a giant bat-wing shape.
My heart speeds up with my need to shout out to him. Could it be?
He circles overhead, each pass spiraling him down closer. The spirals are wide and slow, almost reluctant.
To me, it’s a non-threatening look at our truck. But to the others, especially in their adrenalin-fueled state, it’s an enemy attack.
They heft up their rifles and point them up at the sky.
I want to shout for them to stop. I want to tell them they’re not all out to get us. I want to slam into them and mess up their aim. But all I can do is watch as they point and shoot into the air.
The lazy circles turn into evasive maneuvers. He is close enough for me to see that he has dark hair, and now that he’s doing more than gliding, the way he moves seems awkward. As though he’s just learning to fly with his wings.
It’s Raffe. He’s alive.
And he’s flying!
I want to jump up and down, waving and yelling up to him. I want to cheer him on. My heart soars with him even as it is gripped with fear that he’ll fall out of the sky.
The soldiers are not expert enough with their rifles to hit a moving target from that distance. Raffe flies away without injury.
My face muscles twitch a tiny bit in response to my inner joy.
CHAPTER 47
It takes another hour before I thaw out completely. All the while, my mother clenches her hands and prays desperately over my body in the low guttural sounds that is her speaking-in-tongues. They are her unique perversions of words that are undoubtedly disturbing to hear, but she chants them in a cadence that’s somehow lulling at the same time. Leave it to Mom to be simultaneously frightening and soothing, as only an insane mother can be.
I know I’m getting my body back but I just lie there until I can sit up. I start to occasionally blink and breathe normally long before I sit up, but no one notices. Between my sister’s stitched and automaton-like presence at my feet, and my mother’s non-stop prayers over my head, I suppose my still body is the least interesting thing to look at.