An old man stumbled over the gleaming stars, the streetlights casting looping streaks in his vision. Pockets of people were outside clubs farther down the boulevard, but most everything else shut down at dark, the crowds moving west to the Halo Strip. The man steadied himself against a trash can, then peered in. It was the usual. Angel maps and tourist brochures and fast-food wrappers. If you want to know the character of a people, he always said, look at their trash. He dug his hand down through the garbage until his fingers closed around the smooth, curving surface of a beer can. He pulled it out and leaned back, letting the remains of its contents dribble into his mouth and over his chin. Then he tossed the can back at the trash. He missed and the can rolle
d across the sidewalk and into the gutter.
He didn’t bother picking it up. If the Angels wanted their boulevard to be clean, he told himself, they could come and do it themselves. They’d be cleaning a long time to get the dirt off this city.
He walked over and sat heavily in the doorway he had picked out for the night. It smelled vaguely of urine, but that didn’t bother him. It was out of the wind, and out of the way of the shop owners and the straggling tourists who would still be walking by. With any luck, he wouldn’t be kicked out tonight. He leaned drunkenly against the doorway and watched the glittering lights of the Immortal City spin around him. He smiled. If you had to be homeless, you might as well be homeless in the glorious City of Angels.
His eyes closed, and before he was even aware of his exhaustion, he fell asleep.
When he woke again, he wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but the boulevard had gone eerily silent. Even at night he could usually still hear the birds in the trees or the occasional stray dog looking for scraps. Tonight, nothing was making a sound. Nothing seemed even to move, apart from the palm trees trembling in the breeze. He sat up and blinked.
Something was wrong.
He was still drunk, that was for sure, but less so now. He could tell he was coming out of it because he could feel the first twinge of what would be his usual headache. This wasn’t an alcohol-induced paranoia, he was pretty sure; something just seemed . . . off. He tried his best to focus his bleary eyes and looked around.
He saw only darkness. Nothing. But something was definitely wrong. He didn’t know it consciously so much as instinctively. As his eyes searched the dark he was suddenly reminded of something he hadn’t thought about in years. Even decades. He remembered being a kid and being afraid of the dark. That’s what it was. It was a feeling. A feeling coming from the dark itself. The night around him seemed to be full of a feral, primitive presence, a gnawing, sweating animal instinct, like fear itself.
Then he heard the breathing and realized he wasn’t alone.
“Hello?” he said nervously.
Someone was out there. In the dark.
“Is someone there?”
There was no response, but the breathing continued. A deep, rattling respiration. His eyes looked around wildly.
Then he saw it.
Even at his drunkest, he could never have imagined something so horrific. He opened his mouth, and the boulevard filled with the echoes of his screams.
CHAPTER SIX
Maseratis, Lamborghinis, and limousine car services jammed Sunset Boulevard, stacking up in a long line in front of the Chateau Marmont Hotel, bringing traffic on the glittering Halo Strip to a standstill. Dozens of personnel scrambled to control the scene, directing traffic, holding back the crowds, and coordinating the arrivals. Ranks of spotlights illuminated a red-carpet arrival area and a large white wall with the Halo Magazine logo repeated over and over on it. Nearby was an oversized blowup of the Halo Magazine cover featuring Jackson Godspeed crouching on a rooftop, wings out, the wind in his hair, under a caption that read “HOT HERO: Jackson Godspeed prepares to make the leap into Guardianship.”
Directly across from the wall and the display, an army of photographers, reporters, and journalists waited. Jamie Campbell, the life and style correspondent for ANN, set the glamorous scene as she stood breathlessly in front of her camera.
“We’re here, live at the Halo Magazine Commissioning Week release party, one of the hottest events in the Immortal City this week, so much so that word is Angels are stuck up and down Sunset Boulevard just waiting to get in. Jackson Godspeed and his famous wings are on the cover this month, and the rumor is he’ll be arriving anytime now!”
Like a procession of supernatural perfection, the Angels began to arrive on the carpet—Guardians in sharp suits with their Divine Rings glinting in the lights and lady Angels in backless dresses that showed off their Immortal Marks. Fans swelled against the barricades and screamed their throats raw. Pedestrians passing by stopped and stared, either incredulous at the glamour before them or transfixed by it. Security was thick: last year during Commissioning Week an operative from the fringe radical anti-Angel group, the so-called Humanity Defense Front, or HDF, had actually made it onto the carpet. Dressed up as a Guardian, he’d covered himself in fake blood and made a run for the cameras, holding a sign that said THEY’RE NO ANGELS. He’d quickly been carted off, but the incident had left its mark. The European branch of HDF had made an armed attempt to kidnap an Angel in Munich five months earlier, a plot foiled when the Angel overpowered his attackers. The HDF had never gotten violent in Angel City, but they were always making some kind of threat, and the Angels were taking no chances.
Love the Angels or hate them, you couldn’t help but feel the excitement in the air, like a kind of electricity, as if their very Immortal presence could be felt.
The world seemed to explode as Jackson Godspeed stepped out of his car and into the lights. The sound hit his ears like a drawn-out thunderclap. He wore a gray Gucci suit, white shirt, and slim black tie. The paparazzi swarmed, and Jacks took a deep breath and smiled his practiced smile as the cameras devoured him. From behind the barricades hysterical fans screamed things like “Save me, Jackson!” and “I want to be your first Protection!” Jacks turned and made sure to wave at them. A tightly wound middle-aged woman in an all-black pantsuit hustled over to him. Jacks grinned in relief at the approach of Darcy, his publicist ever since he could remember.
“You look incredible,” Darcy said, giving him the once-over. “I couldn’t be happier if you’d shown up naked.”
Jacks cracked up. His stepfather liked Darcy because she had, hands down, the most elite client list in the business. Jacks liked Darcy because she was crass, honest, and unrelenting. Sometimes her antics were the only thing that got him through these events.
“It’s the usual press, Access Angels, Angels Weekly, Angel News Network, oh, and A!” Darcy punched something in on her BlackBerry as she talked. “Vivian’s already here, so remember”—she stopped typing and pointed her Berry at him like a weapon—“do not answer questions about your status. Be vague.”
Jacks shrugged unhappily. “Is it really that big a deal?”
“Buzz is the really big deal, Jackson. Talk. Tweets. Gossip.” She smoothed the lapel of his jacket. “If it creates buzz, then it’s a big deal, and it does, so it is. For both you and Vivian. You want this cover to sell well? Just keep them guessing, okay?”
Jacks searched the carpet up ahead until he found Vivian. There she was in a one-shoulder dress that was probably from her fashion line. As much as he might try, Jacks couldn’t deny it. Vivian looked incredible. He would have to remind himself to keep his distance. They weren’t getting back together, he had decided. No matter how happy it would make Mark.
“You okay?” Darcy asked, snapping Jacks out of his reverie.