Angel Fire
Page 10
Page 10
Especially now. My cheeks heated slightly; I smiled to myself as Alex’s breath stirred my hair. We’d been taking things slowly since we first got together, and then earlier tonight. . . well, basically we’d both been kicking ourselves that Alex hadn’t made another purchase along with the hair dye and scissors at the drugstore. We’d managed to hold back, though, and meanwhile it had still been just –incredible, and wonderful. I kissed his shoulder, feeling the warm weight of his bare leg looped over mine.
Okay, forget the part about the boy, I told myself. That was just the dream disintegrating into weirdness. But the rest of it. . . I frowned as I went over the images: the endless city; its huge square pulsing with music and people. Then the twelve fiery angels exploding – the heaviness of my wings, the millions of angels screaming. Remembering it all, urgency tugged at me even stronger than before – along with a cold dread that coiled in my stomach.
The dream was a premonition, I was sure of it. Wherever this city was, Alex and I had to go there.
THE ANGEL DRIFTED IN AND out of consciousness, memory mixing with the now.
He was lying in bed in his chambers; the covers were soft. Sometimes there was the hum of the central heating as it came on, then the faint click as it went off again. Over and over Raziel saw the assassin: the dark-haired youth who stood pointing a gun at him, his arm around the half-angel abomination. The girl’s face was pale, her green eyes wide.
The knowledge that he was the thing’s father had rocked him. But there was no doubt; he’d felt the unmistakable echo of his own energy as their angel selves had fought. Plus she looked almost exactly like Miranda, the young music student he’d once enjoyed – though nothing like him, thankfully. Raziel groaned aloud, seeing the assassin again. Next time he would move faster. Next time he would tear the energy forces from them both and watch them crumple into lifeless heaps on the ground. . .
“Hush, hush,” whispered a voice. A young human woman was there. She stroked his arm, and even in his current state, Raziel found this irritating and wished she would stop. More voices:
“Is he coming out of it yet?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know what to do for him; they’re so different from us. . . ”
The assassin’s finger, pulling the trigger. The searing wrench as the bullet hit his halo. His wings going into flapping, helpless spasm; his body shuddering, closing down in protest – and the anger that had seethed through him as he collapsed to the floor and the world turned black. The Second Wave was arriving, and instead of being there to greet them and show off his status in this world, he’d been brought down by the very assassin whose life he’d so stupidly spared for his own purposes. He’d thought he’d been so clever, using Kylar to kill the angelic traitors, letting him think he was following standard orders from the CIA. Who’d have guessed that the young assassin would have such a mind of his own?
It was a mistake Raziel would soon rectify. Oh, yes; he’d relish every second of it. But it was the girl who incensed him the most – the girl who caused his fists to clench beneath the covers. He’d been told she was dead, and instead she’d had the gall to actually try and stop the Second Wave from arriving.
“Shh,” soothed the woman’s voice. A cool, damp cloth brushed across his forehead. If the girl had succeeded it would have meant death for them all: Paschar’s vision fulfilled. And even though she’d failed, Raziel still burned with humiliation – the entire angel community knew that Willow Fields was the half-angel he’d been trying to find for weeks. They’d know exactly what she’d been trying to do in the cathedral; would know he’d been deceived and nearly bested. It was this that made him long to kill his daughter slowly, listening to her screams. And she felt so close now – so infuriatingly close. Raziel’s head turned restlessly on the pillow. He could sense her energy, even though she was hundreds of miles away, in a sleeping bag with the assassin. The knowledge felt fuzzy; he wasn’t sure how he knew it. Why, why, hadn’t he managed to kill them both when he had the chance?
“Can’t we at least make him more comfortable?” pleaded the woman. “He seems so distressed. ”
“Let’s try this – it’s very mild, but it might help. ”
A pinprick of pain in his arm. It did nothing, of course; angels were unaffected by either stimulants or relaxants. Raziel found himself drifting deeper anyway, exhausted by his own thoughts. As he did, other knowledge came to him. . . the most unwelcome knowledge he could have imagined.
Though individuals, angels were also all linked as if by an invisible web; when one died, they each felt it. Now, with the arrival of the Second Wave, the angelic energy in this world had more than doubled, humming with new life. And at its heart there pulsed a purposeful presence that Raziel recognized all too well.
In his long life he’d only rarely felt fear, but he felt something akin to it now – a jolt of shock and wariness so great that for a moment he almost surfaced back into full consciousness. No one had told him this. It was inconceivable that none of the other angels in this world had known, but the information had not been shared with him. The fact held ominous implications. He hadn’t expected this to happen for several more years at least; he’d thought the Council would wait until the last Wave to make their move, holding reign in the angels’ old world for as long as possible.
But no, they were here – and it could not bode well for him.
The Twelve had arrived.
Manhunt for Terrorist Suspects Continues, read the headline.
They’d stopped at a small 24-hour service station near the Mexican border; dawn was still an hour away. As he glanced over the story, Alex was relieved by its lack of details – not to mention the photo of Willow with her long blonde hair spilling past her shoulders, reassuring him again just how different she looked now. The picture of Raziel was an old one, he noticed. He felt a grim satisfaction, knowing the angel was probably still incapacitated from the bullet that had nicked his halo. Alex would have far preferred to have killed Raziel, but knocking him out for as long as possible would do for second best.
“Pump three,” he told the guy behind the counter. He put down two styrofoam cups of coffee, too.
Willow was waiting beside the motorcycle as he went back outside, her short red-gold hair spiking in the breeze. She had on faded second-hand jeans that she’d bought the day before, and a tight, pale blue shirt with long sleeves that looked great on her. Behind her, the night sky was starting to lighten, the stars fading to the east. Alex smiled, his blood warming as he remembered the silky feel of her in his arms the night before. It had taken a serious effort to get going that morning; all he’d wanted to do was stay in the tent with Willow for a while – like, the rest of his life.
She stood looking off into the distance as he walked up, frowning as if she were thinking about something. She seemed to shake it away when she saw him. “Thanks,” she said, taking one of the coffees. “And here, you take this. I hate even holding it. ” With a quick glance at the empty service-station forecourt, she covertly handed him the pistol.
Alex never felt good about giving Willow the gun. Handing a loaded weapon to someone who’d never shot one before, and was nervous of them anyway, wasn’t really the best plan in the world. But it was a million times better than her not having a weapon if any trouble happened. He tucked the gun away in his holster, keeping his back to the camera that he knew would be perched on the roof of the service station.