by Susan Ee
Everyone below the bridge is in a panic. They crawl over each other, trying to get away from the spot where the sixer appeared.
How long has this been going on?
Jumping up, I rush over to the ladder that was pulled up to try to keep the talent show audience hidden beneath the bridge. A thought pops into my head – what if Doc was wrong and humans are not immune to the sixer’s plague?
I can’t let all those people die just because there’s a chance of something going wrong. I unlatch the ladder and drop it down the side. They need to get out of there. They are now almost literally the low-hanging fruit in this war.
Our people scramble to the edges of the nets, some of them climbing over each other. There are as many people who fall into the water trying to escape as there were people who were taken by the monster.
The water churns again, and another sixer jumps up from the water. The distance they can jump is astounding. It greedily grabs people with its six jaws and drags the screaming, squirming people down below, into the depths.
‘Come on! Get back up here!’ I wave to the nearest people on the nets. They may be safer on the battlefield than where they are now.
As people begin climbing back up, I run through the chaos to the other escape routes around the bridge and lower the ladders. People begin streaming up the ladders as soon as they’re in place.
The music stops.
We all look up. Even the angels and locusts pause midfight to look. What now? When this is all over, I never want another exciting moment in my life ever again.
Someone in a white suit flies above the stage. It’s Uriel. His wings look off-white in the bright artificial light with a web of stark shadows.
My ears ring from the lack of sound. I peel back my headphones.
‘The trial by contest is over.’ He speaks in a regular voice, but in all this silence, it sounds like he’s shouting. ‘Raphael has proven himself a traitor. I am now the undisputed Messenger.’
Just as he says that, someone screams. A sixer climbs over the edge of the bridge. People back away as soon as they see the six heads with the seventh lying limp on its shoulder.
An angel near the sixer crashes onto his knees. His face is turning red, and he’s sweating. Blood dribbles out of his mouth.
Another sixer climbs over the other edge of the bridge.
More people scream as they frantically try to get away from the sixers, but we can’t go far on our bridge island. We herd together like frightened animals.
Two locusts near the sixer begin coughing. Then choking. They try to flap their wings, but they tumble to the concrete.
Blood begins dripping out of their mouths, their noses, their eyes. They make pitiful mewling and choking noises as they writhe on the bridge.
It’s the apocalyptic pestilence.
66
‘Raffe!’ I try to get his attention. ‘Get off the bridge! These monsters have angelic plague!’
A low-flying angel falls out of the sky, moaning like his insides are churning. Blood drips out his mouth, ears, nose, and eyes as he writhes on the concrete.
Angels take to the sky, avoiding the sixer. The words angelic pestilence are whispered in the air along with the whoosh of wings.
Every winged creature flies off the bridge, away from the infected angels and locusts. But only the winged ones can get away from the sixers.
If Doc is right, we humans are immune to this plague. But we’re certainly not immune to a sixer killing us by force.
‘Penryn!’ Raffe calls to me from above, floating on his snowy wings. ‘Jump off the bridge. I’ll catch you.’
I rush over to the edge of the bridge where my mom is. Maybe the Watchers can catch her and whoever else is willing to jump. Luckily, my sister is in the air, far enough away to be safe.
An angel who hovers too close to the bridge screams. He convulses in the air as he begins crying blood tears.
Another sixer climbs over the edge of the bridge near Mom. She runs toward the center of the bridge like everyone else. How many of these monsters are there? I scramble to the side, yelling for my mom to head for a different part of the bridge.
‘And his number is six hundred threescore and six,’ says Uriel from the air, his voice booming through the panic. If he’s surprised by the plague, he’s not showing it.
As I near the edge of the bridge, I see more of the bay. The bloody seawater is peppered with sixers swimming toward us.
Two more climb over the edge. All around us, more sixers reach up and climb on top of each other to get on the bridge.
Six hundred sixty-six. It’s not just the number tattooed on their foreheads. It must be how many of them there are.
I look up.
Raffe floats above me.
The angel just below him begins to writhe in pain. His nose begins bleeding.
I wave to Raffe to get away. ‘Go!’
Raffe hovers. Two of his Watchers grab his arms and drag him up.
All around, people run every which way. Guns fire. Screams everywhere.
‘I’ll save your Daughter of Man’s head to graft onto one of the beasts,’ says Uriel to Raffe. He’s flying well above us where he has a good view of the slaughter.
Sixers pour in from every edge of the bridge.
We humans back into the center as they lumber toward us. I have my knives out, but they might as well be toothpicks pointed at an army of grizzlies.
‘Penryn!’
I look up to see Raffe watching me with anguish in his eyes as his Watchers hold him at a safe distance from us.
Raffe grabs the dried fruit hanging off his neck and brings it to his lips.
He bites into it.
It bursts between his teeth, oozing what looks like thick blood down his lips.
67
The bitten fruit smokes.
The smoke takes shape into the Pit lord we fought in hell.
He looks worse than I remember. Although the pieces I sliced have grown back, his wings still look like old charred leather, now covered in layers of scars. There’s a new chunk missing out of one wing, and he has a gnarled gash through his lips that makes him look like he has two mouths.
He leans over to Raffe in midair as the Watchers bristle and form a protective line near Raffe.
After that, I can’t watch anymore. The sixers are attacking around me.
For a while, I’m lost in the screams and sprays of blood from the massacre. Bullets fly everywhere, but I don’t have time to worry if I’ll get hit by a stray as I slash at a sixer’s head with everything I’ve got.
The screams intensify. At first, I assume people are getting slaughtered. But there’s something about the pitch that sounds inhuman.
The sixer that I’m fighting suddenly gets hit with three whip heads.
I have to blink to make sure I’m seeing what I’m seeing. Are those the Consumed whip heads from the Pit? I look around, trying to see what’s going on.
Under the spotlights, the shiny sea is covered with the Consumed propelling through the bay. They converge on the sixers that are still in the water.
Heads shoot up out of the water, screaming with their razor hair shooting out in front of them.
Their teeth latch onto the sixer in front of me and immediately begin chewing their way in.
The sixer writhes in pain, trying to scrape off the heads. More land on its shoulder and burrow.
Everywhere, the sixers are being attacked by whip heads. They’re ignoring the people around them as we huddle in the center.
I look up. The Pit lord with the charred wings looks down at us with a satisfied look on his face. He’s very pleased with himself.
Beside him, Raffe watches me. I can’t read his expression. What did he do to make this happen?
‘Are you all right?’ he shouts.
I nod. I’m covered in blood and cut up, but I can’t even feel the pain, not with all this adrenaline flowing through me.
All around, the whip hea
ds are chewing their way out of the sixers. The sixers’ living heads are being chewed off and are thudding to the concrete. In their place, the whip heads sprout, taking over the bodies.
Their screams turn into shrill laughter. Mad. Intense. Gleeful.
The possessed sixers lumber off the bridge and into the water.
It occurs to me that if the real apocalypse ever starts, these Consumed sixers might come back from the bloody sea as the real beasts of the apocalypse.
68
‘A pair of archangel wings and a new army,’ says the Pit lord.
‘What have you done?’ Uriel flies over to Raffe. ‘Do you know how hard—’
Raffe whips his sword across Uriel with intense fury. Uriel barely manages to get his own sword up to block, but he gets hurled by the force of Raffe’s blow.
Uriel tumbles out of the sky, landing hard on the bridge.
He staggers up, bleeding and holding his shoulder. It looks crushed. Before he can regain balance, a crowd of people rush him.
A woman slaps him, screaming about her children. Then another comes and kicks him. ‘That’s for my Nancy.’ She kicks Uriel harder. ‘That’s for little Joe.’
Another person jumps in and begins wailing on him as a fourth runs up and begins plucking his feathers. After that, Uriel disappears under a mob of angry humans.
Feathers fly. Blood spurts. Knives slash up and down in the spotlights as arms pump, covered in blood.
Everything else has stopped – the music is off, the lights stay on, the angels have stopped fighting, and the Consumed sixers have quieted.
There’s only the eerie glow of the spotlights beaming in every direction and Uriel’s screams.
The angels look confused, unsure of what to do next. Maybe if Uriel’s supporters had actually been loyal and cared about him, as opposed to following him because of what he could do for them, maybe they would risk themselves to save him. But before the uncertain angels can make a move, the crowd over Uriel begins to disband.
Several people hold up grisly parts of him as trophies. Bloody feathers, clumps of hair, a finger, and other parts too bloody to recognize.
Okay, maybe we’re not the most civilized beings in the universe, but then, who is?
69
‘I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain, Archangel,’ says the Pit lord. His burned wings sweep back and forth lazily in the air. ‘I saved your pitiful Daughter of Man and her family. Now it’s your turn.’
Raffe hovers on his beautiful feathered wings in front of the Pit lord. He nods with a grim expression.
‘No.’ The word slips out of my mouth as I watch, mesmerized.
Two hellions with black axes fly in from the dark outside the spotlights. Their axes are stained with layers of old blood. They position themselves behind either side of Raffe’s wings.
There’s a moment when I think Raffe will come up with a way out of this as he stares down the Pit lord.
Then he gives a single nod.
Without warning, the two hellions simultaneously lift their axes and slice through Raffe’s wing joints.
They lift their axes and slice through Raffe’s wing joints.
They lift their axes and slice through Raffe’s wing joints.
They lift their axes and slice through Raffe’s wing joints.
They . . .
. . . his wings . . .
I don’t know if Raffe yells out in his pain, because all I hear is my own scream.
Raffe falls.
Two of his Watchers swoop down and catch him before he can crash onto the bridge.
Raffe’s snowy wings land with a thud on the concrete.
A second after that, his sword clatters onto the ground, cracking the concrete with its weight.
70
The morning light tinges the sky above the San Francisco skyline. It’s forever changed, but I’m starting to find it familiar, if not comforting.
Boats roam the bloody bay, collecting the last of the drowning angels and humans. The boat guys wanted to put the rescued angels into cages and shoot them to debilitate them for a while. I’m sure they would have been happy to gauge how long it would take for them to recover and maybe even see whether they can recover on their own without food and water. But not surprisingly, Josiah and the Watchers insisted that the best they can do is deprive them of blankets and the warm drinks the rescued humans get.
Now that Uriel is dead, they have a shortage of archangels. Raffe seems to be unofficially in charge by default, only he’s going in and out of consciousness as we race down the bay to the nearest working – or at least standing – hospital.
The Watchers are executing Raffe’s orders and reporting back to him when he’s conscious. The angels are so shell-shocked that they’re just following orders.
I get the impression that so long as it sounds reasonable to them, they’ll do what Raffe says, at least for now. This is a group that’s so used to following orders that they probably wouldn’t know what to do without someone in charge.
The humans have mostly left the bridge. I’m using Josiah and the Watchers to relay messages for me too, just because it’s easy for now. I’m too worried about Raffe to help much with the logistics of making sure the humans get to shore. In theory, they’re following my orders, but in reality, they’re doing whatever the Tweedle Twins tell them.
I glance over at Raffe for the hundredth time as I huddle with Pooky Bear beneath a coat that someone gave me. I’m shivering as if it’s zero degrees, and no matter how much I hug myself, I can’t get warm. I can barely see his dark hair blowing in the wind among all the Watchers and angels surrounding him. He’s lying on one of the bench seats of the speedboat that the twins found for us.
The angels and Watchers move aside and look at me expectantly. Then they all take off into the blue sky. Raffe is conscious and looking at me.
I walk over to him. I’ve been trying not to be a big baby by insisting on holding his hand in front of the angels, but the urge is strong. I don’t want to embarrass him even when he’s unconscious.
But now that the others are gone, I sit beside him and hold his hand. It’s warm, and I pull it to my chest to warm me up.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask.
He gives me a look that makes me feel guilty for reminding him about his wings.
‘So? What’s the deal? Are they making you the new Messenger?’
‘Hardly.’ His voice is raw. ‘I fought against them, then conjured up a Pit lord. That’s not much of a campaign for election. The only thing that saves me in their eyes is that they think I sacrificed my wings to save them from the angelic pestilence.’
‘You could have had it all, Raffe. Once Uriel was out of the way, you would have been back with the angels. And they might have voted you in as their king.’
‘Messenger.’
‘Same difference.’
‘Angels shouldn’t have a Messenger who used to have demon wings. It’s unseemly.’ He winces and closes his eyes. ‘Besides, I don’t want the job. We’ve sent word out to Archangel Michael to get his stubborn ass back here. He doesn’t want the title either.’
‘There sure was a lot of fuss over a job that no one wants.’
‘Oh, lots of angels want the job, just not the ones who should have it. Power is best held by the ones who don’t want it.’
‘Why don’t you want it?’
‘I have better things to do.’
‘Like what?’
He opens one eye and looks at me. ‘Like convince a stubborn girl to admit she’s madly in love with me.’
I can’t help but smile.
‘So if it’s not a pig farm that you want, what is it?’ he asks.
I swallow. ‘How about a safe place to live where we don’t have to scrounge for food or fight for it?’
‘It’s yours.’
‘That’s it? All I have to do is ask?’
‘No. There’s a price for everything.’
‘I knew it. What is
it?’
‘Me.’
I swallow. ‘I need you to be very clear right now. I haven’t slept in forever, and I’ve been living off of adrenaline, which isn’t the best lifestyle for humans. So what are you saying?’
‘Are you really going to make me spell it out?’
‘Yes. Spell it.’
He stares deep into my eyes. It makes me squirm but also makes my heart flutter like a schoolgirl’s. Oh, wait. I am a schoolgirl. I blink a few times, wondering if that’s how I’m supposed to bat my eyelashes.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What?’ Ugh. I suck at this.
‘Are you batting your lashes at me?’
‘What, me? No, of course not. What . . . spell it.’
He squints his eyes suspiciously at me. ‘This is awkward.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?’
‘You’d lose all respect for me if I did.’
‘I’d make an exception for you.’
‘Quit stalling. What are you trying to say?’
‘I’m trying to say that I . . . that I . . .’
‘Yes?’
He sighs. ‘You’re very difficult, you know that?’
‘You’re trying to say that you’re what?’
‘OkayIwaswrong. Now let’s move on. Where do you think would be the best place for the angels to stay until they leave?’
‘Whoa.’ I burst out laughing. ‘Did you just say that you were wrong? Was that the word? Wrong?’ I smile at him. ‘I like the sound of that coming out of your mouth. It’s lyrical. W-r-o-n-g. Wroooong. Wrrrrong. Go on, sing it with me.’
‘If I didn’t love your laugh so much, I’d kick you off this extremely noisy and bumpy vehicle and let you shiver in the freezing water.’
He loves my laugh.
I clear my throat. ‘What were you wrong about?’ I ask in all seriousness.
He throws me a glare, looking like he might not answer. ‘About Daughters of Men.’
‘Oh? We’re not all freakish, repulsive animals who sully your reputation?’
‘No, I was right about all that.’ He nods. ‘But it turns out that’s not always a bad thing.’