Battle Angel

by Scott Speer

  She dipped down farther, below the rooflines, ducking under power lines and shooting down alleys. And yet the demon stayed on her. There was going to be no outrunning him.

  She reached back to feel for her sword.

  As she grabbed the hilt and pulled up, the force of gravity was incredible, like the slow climb after a huge drop on her favorite roller coaster, except about five times more intense. Every muscle in her body strained to hold her weapon as she climbed . . . climbed . . . climbed.

  Below her in the dark air, she saw the demon overshoot her. He was trying to recover, flapping his shimmering, scaly, massive wings to follow her up. She would only have a few seconds. . . .

  She reached the peak of her climb. For a moment Maddy was entirely weightless—her body, clothes, and hair hanging in midair. Then she began pitching backward, and she let gravity pull her down again. She simultaneously began shooting back like a loop-de-loop, while reaching behind her and pulling the sword from its sheath.

  Jackson had been right! The once-cumbersome sword suddenly felt easy and nimble in her hand, now that she needed it.

  As she got the Dark Angel in front of her in her sights, Maddy let out her own battle cry. It may not have been as terrifying as the demon’s, but it made her feel better.

  With her backbreaking climb, she had managed to loop back on the Dark Angel. Furious, the demon realized what had happened and screamed as it tried to turn around in midair. It sensed the sword, but it was too late. Maddy’s blade and Divine Ring grew brighter and brighter as she sped toward the demon. She raised the sword and swung it down with all her might, catching the demon’s right arm and wing.

  A flash of light shot across the black-vermillion sky as the blade connected. The demon howled, leaving Maddy’s ears ringing as she flew past, drawing the sword close to her body again. The Dark Angel began tumbling downward, but then managed to slow its descent. She had winged it, and it was now far, far below her. The creature dropped farther and farther down into the dark streets until it disappeared completely. She heard a crunching smash below her as it landed on the top of a parked car.

  Panting from the chase, Maddy stopped and circled in the air, looking at the spot below where the Dark Angel had disappeared. The sword suddenly felt incredibly heavy again, and she grunted as she shifted her grip on it. She couldn’t believe she had done it! All those agility drills during Guardian training had definitely paid off. If she ever saw him again, she’d have to thank her teacher, Professor Trueway. And Tom, of course. With a pang, she thought again of Tom, whom she’d abandoned on the aircraft carrier. She had broken her promise. But then again, she knew in her heart that she’d simply had to. She owed it to Jackson.

  Maddy chased these thoughts from her mind; she had a half-dead demon to think about. Flapping her wings to hover, she peered down from her perch but could see nothing among the buildings below.

  Was it dead? Would she have to go down and find out? It seemed to Maddy that it would take more than just a few blows to the body to kill a demon. And wouldn’t a wounded Dark Angel be even more furious and dangerous than a healthy one?

  Under normal circumstances—or, at least, as “normal” as circumstances can get in the midst of an apocalyptic demon battle—she’d certainly go down and check it out. But she had more important things to think about now.

  Maddy began rising again, flying in the direction where, before the demon had interrupted her, she’d last been able to sense Jacks’s frequency. All around her in the distance, Angels and humans were waging battles. Were the demons winning? She couldn’t tell, and part of her didn’t want to know. She just kept rising, her wings glowing purple in the hazy, dark sky.

  Suddenly, unbidden, a flood of relief washed across her as she began to realize that she had just not only survived a demon attack, but had also taken out a Dark Angel. Maddy could barely believe it. She felt that sensation of lightness and near-giddiness that comes when you survive a traumatic event. She almost felt like laughing. She had faced off against a Dark Angel and had won.

  Relishing these thoughts in the sky high above the smoke and chaos, she drew in a deep breath of crisp air. It felt fresh—she felt alive. It was a grateful breath and she was thankful for every second of it.

  Then, like a flash, it came upon her. She saw Jackson’s frequency. Immediately her mind clouded over with indistinct waves of abstract images and feelings. The vision she was drawing from Jacks was unclear.

  And she felt pain.

  He needed her. And now she knew where he was going to end up. His final destination. She’d seen it, for a split second. Even if she couldn’t believe it. It was worse than suicide.

  Veering left, she set her course toward the Angel City Hills. Her wings pumped powerfully as she tried to gain speed.

  Then, in the distance, although it seemed impossible at first, like some trick of the imagination, she saw it. From her soaring vantage point, she watched a fleet emerging from the clouds, flying toward the heart of the battle. It was unbelievable. The Angels! The rest of the Angels were here!

  Maybe they could lead her to Jacks before it was too—

  Maddy didn’t even realize what had happened until the blow had struck her. A ferocious demon claw swatted at her from the side, crushing her right wing with immense force. She gasped in surprise and pain. The demon had just materialized out of the darkness, like a phantom. A hissing, smoldering nightmare.

  Screaming in agony and seared by the touch of dark fire, Maddy crumpled, her body reduced to a lump of pain. She tumbled downward, her right wing useless. Downward and downward she fell, into the pitch-blackness below.

  Until all was finally black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Laptops were packed up, documents shoved into bags, hard drives stacked into boxes. It was time for the resistance to move. If there was still any time at all.

  A loud explosion tore through the streets outside. The entire office rumbled, some dust falling from the ceiling tiles.

  Detective Sylvester was dumping out the dregs of his coffee into a wastebasket and shredding documents. Pinned on the wall beside him was the enormous map of the Angel City basin. The Angels were broadcasting information through a radio while a woman listened and plotted out the demon attacks, wave by wave, with multicolor pushpins. They were trying to find a pattern. Anything to give them the upper hand to find the head demon and stop the war.

  Susan came up to Sylvester, a box in her hands. She was ready to go. “I know it may not seem like it right now,” she said as she looked around at the room of people getting ready to flee, “but this is a victory. The Angels came.”

  “A victory, sure, but it might be short-lived,” Sylvester said. “We don’t know if even the entire Battle Angel battalion can hold them long enough for me to figure out how to get at the leader. And on top of everything, our office is right in the line of fire, and now we have to move again.” The detective gestured to the chaos around them as two resistance members started taking down the pin-riddled maps.

  “That comes down last!” the detective said.

  The two staffers nodded silently and backed away.

  “Sylvester, listen to me. They finally came,” Susan said.

  Sylvester nodded. “Jackson was the key the whole time. I should have known to focus on him from the start.”

  “You know what they say about hindsight,” Susan said.

  “That it’s twenty-twenty?”

  “Something like that.”

  He allowed himself a slight smile at Susan.

  “Louis and our other sources say that almost all the Angels have turned,” Sylvester said. “If this is true, then that’s huge. That’s a crucial feather in our cap. But, even so, don’t think it will just be over like that. There are still many factions. Gabriel and the Council won’t stand down quietly. This is just the beginning. But at least the ti
de has shifted.”

  “You don’t have to tell me about Angel politics,” Susan said, winking. “I’m an Archangel, remember? Listen, though. Silver linings are pretty hard to come by these days. Can’t you just enjoy this for a second?”

  Another loud explosion shook the building. Sylvester smiled grimly. “For you, Susan, I’ll try my best.”

  “Archangel Archson! David!” Bill Garcia shouted. The two turned quickly to the sergeant at the door, where people were rushing around, shuttling things out into the convoy of cars.

  Garcia was helping someone in. The man was walking slowly, clearly old or injured and in need of Garcia’s assistance. Sylvester saw that he had a jacket thrown over his back, and with dread, he noticed that a tiny trail of droplets followed the huddled figured as he entered the room. Droplets of blood.

  The man looked up.

  It was like peering into the face of a ghost. Susan gasped.

  “Louis!”

  Detective Sylvester rushed a chair over so Louis Kreuz could sit down. His face was pale and unshaven; he was a haggard shadow of his former natty self.

  “You’re alive, thank God,” Sylvester said.

  “You’re hurt,” Susan said, stepping up close to Louis.

  “They got me before I could get out, after the Godspeed kid warned me,” Kreuz said. “I was able to escape during the confusion when the Battle Angels deserted, thanks mostly to the sympathetic guard assigned to watch me. The other guard, not exactly sympathetic.” The anguish written all over Louis’s face showed that he had a much larger, more violent story to tell. Sylvester removed the coat that had been draped over Louis’ shoulder.

  Louis’s upper back was a bloodied, bandaged mess, and lower down there was another, even deeper wound. Susan cried out before she could stifle it.

  They had taken his wings.

  “Oh, Louis . . . ,” she said, tears flowing.

  “This? It’s just a scratch,” Kreuz said, breathing deeply through the pain. He coughed, and the effort and force of it caused him to double over. His face was rapidly losing color and had turned almost gray.

  “We need to get you to a doctor,” Susan said.

  Louis just looked at them and shook his head. He pressed his hand against the wound—a gory mess, the bandage not stopping the blood. “I’m a goner. I know it. You know it,” Kreuz said.

  “Don’t say that, Louis. You don’t know that’s true,” Susan said, tears still welling up in her eyes even though she was trying to maintain her Archangel calm.

  With his fading strength, Louis pressed his hand to Susan’s arm. “My ticket’s been punched, Sue.”

  Looking into his eyes, Susan didn’t want to believe it. But Louis still just silently nodded. Kreuz coughed again, and Sylvester had to help him back up to sitting. He was fading fast.

  “I know this isn’t the best time,” Kreuz said with a slight, pained smile, “but right now we got some more pressing matters. The demons.”

  The boom of another explosion punctuated his words.

  “What do you mean?” Sylvester said.

  “We can stop those bastards,” Kreuz said, looking them squarely, resolutely, in the eyes. “And I know how.”

  Sylvester and Susan waited while Kreuz slipped into another coughing fit. When he was finished, he looked back up at them, his normally jovial and ruddy face now wan and deathly.

  “I know how to get their leader.”

  • • •

  Louis died just shortly after giving the resistance the most important information it would receive in the course of this tumultuous battle for humanity. It was information that could turn the tides, and Kreuz had sacrificed his life to deliver it. Sylvester just hoped it wasn’t too late.

  The loud battle outside raged incessantly, just blocks from the resistance office. Soon the office would be reduced to rubble, and the group’s time to move was running out. The radio lines had gone dead. There was no longer any way to communicate. Chaos reigned outside, and those who’d stayed behind or who were left without shelters were streaming in panic in the streets as far as they could go before hitting the imposing Hills. The demons pressed farther and farther into the city, but the Angel and human forces weren’t making it easy for them. Still, the Dark Ones kept advancing. West Angel City, with its boutique hotels and exclusive restaurants, had been flattened, and now the demons were only a mile from the heart of Angel City, the Walk of Angels. Before long the battle would be pitched on that famous street.

  Detective Sylvester drew his revolver and checked to make sure it was loaded. It was. He opened the locked drawer in his temporary desk, retrieved a cardboard box full of extra ammunition, and dumped it in the side pocket of his old overcoat. The rest of the office had already been packed up, and everyone was ready to move somewhere safer.

  Susan approached Sylvester, her eyes red from weeping over Louis. She had known Louis Kreuz for centuries, had worked with him in the secret resistance for many years. She’d trusted him with her life, and he had trusted her with his. And now he had paid the ultimate price.

  “David,” Susan said softly, “promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “Of course,” he said, not meeting her eyes.

  “I mean, for me.” This made him look up. There was something left unspoken, something tender in her eyes that took Sylvester by surprise. “I—can’t lose you,” she said.

  The odds were long. But Sylvester just knew he had to do something, that he would have to be the one to put Louis’s intel to good use. He’d been tracking this theory, had put his heart and soul into it, and they were so close. Communications were down, and no one else knew the truth. He would have to be the one.

  Sylvester quietly nodded.

  “I promise, Susan,” he said. “But I have to do this myself. The phones are down and the radios are jammed. We can only send messengers and hope they can find Jacks and bring reinforcements. Get the others as soon as you can, then wait for my signal. If you don’t hear from me, you’ll know what to do.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” Susan said.

  Susan reached for him and placed her lips on his, and Sylvester felt a shock run through his body. The detective and the beautiful Archangel both closed their eyes, letting themselves get lost in this brief, heavenly moment. It was a moment that they had perhaps waited too long to seize.

  Finally Sylvester woke from the spell and forced himself to pull back. Gazing at Susan, he placed a hand to her forehead and brushed her hair behind her left ear, something he hadn’t done to a woman for years. But with Susan, it still felt like second nature.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Susan said, smiling.

  “See you soon, Archangel Archson,” Sylvester said.

  It was time to go.

  Time to take down the head demon and honor Louis’s legacy.

  Sylvester turned back to Susan to indulge in one last, long gaze before he opened the door to the outside. The roar of battle overtook any other words they might have said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Only darkness remained. Darkness throbbing on and on, like an ache that will never end.

  Maddy tried to figure out where she was, what had happened, but everything was jumbled and foggy. A silent stream of images flowed through her mind. Tom lying in a hospital bed. Jackson standing in a Battle Angel suit. The golden hilt of a sword. Kevin shouting at her from the porch as demons speared the darkening sky above. An aircraft carrier. She couldn’t open her eyes. And still, the darkness throbbed.

  Slowly, one eye fluttered open. Then the other. The coal-black darkness bled into a slightly diluted hue, but she could still see nothing. Her eyes tried to focus on something, but it was an impossible task.

  Maddy’s head was pounding. Every cell in her body screamed in agony as she tried to lift her head just one millimeter before setting it down again
. But all of this was nothing when compared with the excruciating pain in her right wing.

  One by one, the memories began flitting back. Leaving the carrier to follow Jackson. Chasing and fighting with the Dark Angel. The relief at having survived. Then the vision of Jackson needing her, cut short by the awful claws of another demon she hadn’t even been aware of until it was too late. The overwhelming pain as it struck her. And then the darkness as she fell.

  Still immobilized, Maddy tried again to adjust to the lack of light and get her bearings. She could tell that she had landed on top of a pile of rubble near a narrow street between two buildings. The rubble must have been a building just hours ago. No one seemed to be around; everyone else must have fled the destruction. Or suffered an even worse fate than Maddy had.

  Tears streamed down Maddy’s face as she propped herself up slowly, painfully, on one elbow, then the other. She sat up like that for a few moments as she waited quietly for the sharp pain to cool down to radiating ache. Then, with a shock, Maddy realized she hadn’t heard a single noise since waking up. She was deaf. It didn’t take long for the fear to settle in as she realized exactly how in dire straits she was. Looking out from the rubble, she saw a golden retriever barking hysterically on the street, its mouth opening and closing as it yelped. But Maddy couldn’t hear any of it. The dog wore a collar and was dragging around the shreds of a blue leash.

  Maddy sat still and watched the dog, thinking about its owners. She wondered if the leash was frayed because the dog had gnawed through it to get free from wherever it was tied . . . or from whatever poor hand had been holding it. Funny, Maddy thought. The survival instinct is popping up in even the most domesticated of America’s pets. Then, slowly, the slightest bit of hearing came back. Maddy felt a bit like she was underwater, trying to listen to someone talking on land. The dog was so close, but the barking sounded distant. Feebly, she snapped her fingers, straining to hear the tiniest of sounds. Little by little, the sounds around her grew louder, until she could hear jets flying far, far overhead. Then an explosion somewhere not too far away, confirming the battle was still raging.