by Scott Speer
“If it’s not enough, I’m sure we can do a little better.”
“I don’t want your money,” Kevin said. “I told you and your boy to stay away from my niece. That was the agreement.”
The silence hung heavy between them.
“I didn’t come here to fight, Kevin,” Mark said. “What’s done is done. Let’s talk about what we can agree on.”
“And what’s that?”
“I think we can agree that we both didn’t want this to happen. Any of it. And we both don’t want it to go any further. Am I right?”
After a moment Kevin nodded reluctantly.
“So please, Kevin, just tell me where they were going. Any clue you may have where they could be, where Maddy could have led them, would be vital. Anything that could help us.”
“Why? So you can hunt them both down? Finish what you started twenty years ago?”
Mark leaned back in the booth, exasperated. He took a long breath, eyes intense. “I just want things to go back to the way they were before, Kevin. Before Angel wings started turning up on the boulevard, before police were chasing my stepson and he was taking waitresses to Commissioning parties.” Kevin seemed to bristle at the word waitress, but he stayed silent. “Please,” Mark went on, almost imploring, “don’t you want her back in here? Working the morning shift? Going to school, getting ready for college, living the life she was meant to live?”
Kevin held up his hands in defeat.
“Yes, Mark. Of course. But the truth is I don’t know where they went or what they were planning. We hadn’t gotten that far when your agents came smashing in. That’s the truth.”
Mark nodded, accepting this.
“Does she know now?” he asked.
“Yes. She knows everything now,” Kevin said, pausing. “And so does Jackson.”
Mark’s body stiffened almost imperceptibly.
“What are you going to do when you finally catch him?” Kevin asked.
Mark’s expression hardened, and he looked out the window and into the darkness. Another silence settled over the booth as Kevin watched the Archangel. Kevin’s eyes followed Mark’s out to the parking lot, where there was some movement—more Council Disciplinary Agents arriving. What looked like maybe a girl, together with a broad-shouldered guy, neither in uniform but both clearly Angels, were lit for a moment by the light above the lot. But they disappeared back into the shadows. Kevin rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted.
“You haven’t changed at all, have you, Mark?” Kevin said. “Your own stepson. Your wife’s child. How could you?”
“Jacks was Commissioned a Guardian Angel and, as such, is subject to the same laws that govern all Guardians. Including me.”
“Get out of here,” Kevin said. “Take your bribe with you.”
Mark regarded him coolly, then tucked the envelope back in his jacket.
“It’s not as simple as that, Kevin,” Mark said as he slid out of the booth and rose. “The situation has changed. I can’t discuss it, but all I can say is I hope we find them. I hope we find them before something else does.”
Kevin’s face darkened in confusion and concern.
“Something else?”
But Mark turned without replying and disappeared into the darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Maddy woke in utter darkness. A few moments passed before she remembered where she was. The gym. Angel City High. She was hiding with Jacks, and they both must have fallen asleep. Something was different from when they went to sleep. Then she realized it: all the lights were off. Reaching for Jacks, she discovered, with sudden panic, he wasn’t there. The air around her suddenly felt harder to breathe. Her hands groped in the darkness. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, she felt a finger press delicately, but firmly, to her mouth.
It was Jacks. Silencing her.
She could just barely see him now in the dim light that crept in from the cracks under the gym doors. He was sitting up and utterly still. Something was wrong. In that same moment Maddy realized it hadn’t just been her panic—the air around her really was harder to breathe. It scorched her lungs as she sucked it in. The entire gym had grown blisteringly hot while they slept. It was stifling. What was going on? A bead of sweat rolled down Maddy’s forehead and splattered against the mat. Her hair was damp and sticky. She turned to Jacks.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“I’m not sure,” Jacks whispered back. “Something’s in here with us. I turned the lights off, but it knows we’re in here.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s like pure evil. It’s not friendly,” Jacks said.
Maddy began to tremble. Taking her hands, Jacks wrapped them around the ring on her neck.
“We’re going to go into the hall together, and then I want you to run. Don’t look back. No matter what you hear, just keep running.”
“What? What are you going to do?”
Jacks was silent.
“You’re saying goodbye, aren’t you? You’re going to try and fight it.”
“Whatever it is, it knows we’re in here. It will never let us just walk down the hallway and out of here. It’s our only chance.”
“What if there’s another way out?”
“A way we can go without using the halls?”
Maddy willed her terrified mind to think logically. Rationally. Then she saw it.
“Yes. Some of the classrooms connect. If we go out through the locker room, we could cut through the classrooms to get to the other side of the school. Once we’re there, let’s just hope the gate is open.”
She could barely see the silhouette of his face in the darkness.
“Which way is it?”
Maddy led them silently toward the girls’ locker room door. When they had passed through it, she made sure the latch reengaged without making any noise.
In the dark, the silent rows of lockers seemed alive and menacing, like some kind of horrific, hallucinatory maze. Fog covered all the mirrors. Condensation dripped down the glass, reminding Maddy of rivulets of blood. Could something be hiding in this labyrinth, waiting for them? She looked at the lockers hanging open, the few towels left on the ground. Everything was utterly still. Maddy took Jacks by the hand and led him down one of the rows. They passed the coach’s office.
A voice called out to them from the darkness.
Maddy felt Jacks’s hand crush down on hers. He turned to shield her from whatever might leap out at them from the darkness.
“Baby, when I think of you-ou-ou, I get so blue-ue-ue.”
It was the gym coach’s radio, no doubt left on by a custodian after cleaning up the locker room. Jacks relaxed his grip on her hand.
“Ain’t gonna just stand around while you run off with somebody new-ew-ew.”
Then, from the opposite side of the gym, they heard the click of the door latch. This was no radio, no TV. Something was trying to get into the locker room.
Maddy pulled Jacks through the dry showers.
She could see, for the first time, a glint of fear in his eyes.
The door to the gymnasium began to open. Whatever was out there, in another second, it would be in the room with them. They rounded the shower stalls and Maddy spotted the door at the end of the short corridor. It had a small, square window in it, which let in light from the hallway outside. They were close. And that’s when Maddy heard it.
Footsteps in the locker room behind them. Panic surged up her throat. Whatever it was, it had feet. There was a thump, followed by two clicking sounds, like knife blades against the linoleum tile.
Step, click click. Step, click click.
Jacks squeezed her hand and mouthed a single word.
“Go.”
They glided over the floor in silence. Maddy reached the door and applied just enough pressure on the handle to check the lock. The handle depressed and the door moved effortlessly out of the jamb. It was unlocked. She swun
g the door open and they slipped through, leaving whatever it was—the thing—behind them in the locker room. They emerged into the hallway next to the vending machines. The whir of the refrigerators made it impossible to hear behind them. Maddy scanned down the stifling hall. The heat and humidity had fogged the windows to the classrooms. There was no way of seeing inside them.
“Come on,” she whispered, moving to the nearest door. “I have class in this room. I think it connects to the bio lab. The lab goes to a hall that can take us to the other side of the school.”
“Go, go,” Jacks whispered urgently. They went.
Maddy put a hand on the door handle and steadied her trembling heart. Cracking it open, she peered inside. Silent. Nothing. She swung the classroom door open. The empty desks cast long shadows in the light from the hallway. It was her AP History class. On the board the assignment for the weekend was still written there:
Read New History of Angels, pages 220–256
They moved into the classroom and Jacks shut the door silently behind them. Maddy could almost hear the chatter of her classmates as she moved through the desks and the drone of Mr. Rankin at the board. They were the sounds of safety, the sounds of wonderfully commonplace well-being. If she ever got out of this alive, she promised never to take those mundane sounds for granted again.
They passed Mr. Rankin’s desk and suddenly Jacks grabbed Maddy by the hoodie and yanked her down to the floor. His eyes darted to the window, where a black silhouette moved across the light. It was large, taller than the windows. Big. Maddy held her breath as it passed the classroom. Her heart was pounding. Then it stopped and came back, shadowing the windows again. It was smelling, Maddy thought. Hunting. The latch on the door began to turn.
“Don’t look back,” Jacks whispered as they moved toward the door at the far end of the classroom. Jacks pulled the door shut behind them just as the entrance to the hallway swung open.
It knew where they were now, Maddy thought. It was closing in.
Jacks pulled Maddy down behind a long counter. She listened to the sound of her shallow, quick breaths, trying to control them. The lab was divided by four counters running the length of the room, bordered by narrow alleys on either side. Test tubes, beakers, and other glassware sat atop the tables awaiting next week’s use. Maddy peered at the far door, across the room. She could see the hallway through the door’s square window. The hallway, she knew, led directly out the school’s side entrance to the street.
“Let’s go,” Maddy said. “We can make it if we run.” Jacks held her arm with an iron grip.
“No. We can’t,” he said quietly.
“Why not?” she whispered, almost pleading.
“Because it’s in here with us.”
Maddy heard the door to the classroom click shut. The darkness felt suddenly alive all around her. Then she heard it. The faintest sound of air.
She could hear the thing breathing.
A suffocating heat permeated the darkness like growing fire that gave off no light. The pungent smell of earth, decay, and something worse wafted out of the darkness toward her. It smelled like death, Maddy thought. Stinking death itself.
A scream rose up her throat and she slapped her hand over her mouth. It took all her strength to stop it.
Maddy listened as the thing began to move through the room.
Step, click click. Step, click click.
Jacks held up one finger. Maddy stared at the silent signal, willing her terrified mind to understand. Then she got it. One. It was behind the first counter. Jacks crouched with his feet under him and beckoned her. Maddy shook her head. She was frozen with fear.
Jacks pointed toward the door. Through a red fog of terror Maddy realized what he was indicating. They had lured the thing into the maze of the lab, and they were going to slip out while it searched for them. They crawled on their hands and knees, listening to the steps of the creature.
Step, click click. Step, click click.
Then the footsteps stopped.
Silence descended over the room. Jacks put a hand on Maddy’s forearm, an indication to be absolutely still. She held her breath. At last, Jacks pointed up.
It was right above them, on the counter.
Maddy felt the scream rising up inside her again, and this time she didn’t know if she could stop it. She pressed her trembling lips together, but they were numb. She felt herself losing control of her body. Her mouth opened to scream.
Jacks’s hand closed around her mouth like a vise. His other hand wrapped around her waist and pulled her toward him. He held her in the darkness as the scream died silently in her mouth.
The second passed like hours. After what seemed like an unbearable length of time, Maddy heard two footfalls as the thing stepped off the counter.
Step, click click. Step, click click.
It was back on the ground, continuing its methodical investigation of the lab. Jacks released Maddy from his grip and mouthed a single word.
“Move.”
On their hands and knees again, they circled around the second counter and headed for the third. Maddy saw they were close to the door now. A tiny spark of hope leapt inside her. They could do this, she thought. They could make it. She scooted quickly around the corner and her shoulder collided silently with the counter, jarring it.
Perrrring.
It sounded like the ring of a delicate bell. The sound seemed to roll and then disappear. In the rush of adrenaline, Maddy recognized the sound instantly. A test tube had just rolled off the counter in front of her, and it was heading toward the floor. She thrust her hands out blindly in front of her. She was terrible at any sport that involved catching anything—or really, any sport at all. Miraculously, she felt the slap of the delicate glass cylinder against her palm. It leapt up again, and for a single breathless moment it danced across her reaching fingertips. Then it was gone.
The sound of the tube shattering was like a gunshot in her ears. It was followed by the most awful, inhuman sound she had ever heard. It sounded like tearing metal, like the growl of some rabid animal, hungry and guttural. It was so loud it was painful. Instantly Maddy felt something grab her by her hood. She heard fabric tearing.
It was a claw.
Maddy shrieked and threw her arms backward, wriggling out of the hoodie as the claw cut it cleanly in half. She felt Jacks’s strong hands around her waist, pulling her away from the beast.
“Run, Maddy!” he yelled.
Maddy tore into the black hall. She was alone now, terrified and blind, running through the darkness. Arms that were not Jacks’s wrapped around Maddy. She screamed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” a voice whispered. “You’re okay now.” Maddy looked up at the man who was holding her. He was older and wore glasses. His face was creased and worn.
“It’s got Jacks!” Maddy protested, her voice muffled against the man’s jacket. “We have to help him.” Maddy twisted away from his grasp and ran back down the hall. The man followed quickly. They found Jacks crouched like an animal waiting to attack. His wings trembled in the air, ready. In a blur, he had thrown the man against the lockers. The Angel’s eyes burned in fear, almost unrecognizable.
“Jacks, wait!” Maddy said.
“It’s . . . gone . . .” the man choked. “Please, it’s gone.” It was several seconds before Jacks released his grip on the man’s throat. The man slumped, coughing, against the lockers. Jacks’s chest was heaving. His eyes darted to Maddy and then back to the man.
“Wait a minute, I know you,” Jacks said furiously.
“My name is Sylvester. I’m a detective with the ACPD. We met when I interviewed you at your house earlier this week.” Jacks’s face tensed. Sylvester held up a hand in surrender. “I’m alone. If my intention was to arrest you, this place would be swarming with police right now.”
“What are you doing here?” Jacks asked. Sylvester rubbed his throat.
“Up until tonight I was lea
ding the investigation into the Angel attacks on the boulevard. I started tracking the demon two days ago. I tracked him here.”
Demon, Maddy thought. She had heard the word before but never thought they were real.
“It just left,” Jacks said, his eyes bewildered. “It was right there, facing me, and then it just disappeared.”
Sylvester nodded. “I was hoping this would work if I ever made contact, and it did, but it likely won’t again.” He opened his fist. A small amulet with an ancient inscription sat on the palm of his hand. He retrieved the brass ornamental box from the pocket of his jacket and carefully placed the object on the crushed purple velvet inside. He closed the box securely.
Jacks studied the tall, tired man before him. His eyes narrowed.
“You’re an Angel,” Jacks said in disbelief.
Sylvester nodded again. “Yes, I am.”
“How is that possible?”
“Not every Angel is still a Guardian, Jackson,” Sylvester said, “and not all Angels are loyal to the Council.”
Jacks stepped back. Sylvester straightened up and smoothed his coat.
“You have a theory?” Jacks said. “About this . . . this thing?”
Sylvester shrugged. “It’s just a hunch.”
Jacks considered his words. “We need to talk,” he said after a moment.
Sylvester’s brow furrowed. “Technically I should be bringing you in.”
“But you’re not going to do that,” Jacks said carefully. “Are you?”
Sylvester sighed.
“No, I’m not,” the detective said. He removed his glasses and rubbed his face. He looked between Jacks and Maddy.
“My car is parked out front. I’ll pull it around.”
They rode in the back of Sylvester’s unmarked cruiser through the sleeping streets of the Immortal City. The car tracked past the pockets of nocturnal homeless and criminals, fluorescent-lit twenty-four-hour donut shops, the occasional fogged window with lights creeping out from behind drawn curtains. Unsavory business getting transacted. The Angel City underworld. In another hour or so, it would start to get light, street sweepers would scour the roads and alleys, and the Immortal City would be camera ready again.