Maddy screamed. “Jacks, no!” Yet even as the words came out of her mouth, she knew Tom wasn’t in danger. Jacks could have killed Tom in the time it took the soldiers on the carrier to react. Even in his rage, he was choosing to restrain himself. For me, Maddy thought. Because he cares about me.
The soldier shouted again. “Get back or you will be fired upon!” Maddy watched Jackson eye the carrier, then slowly release his grip, leaving Tom gasping on his knees. Maddy took a step toward Tom, but he waved her back, almost violently.
“I’m fine,” he sputtered, and stood.
Hate and anger radiated off Jackson. And something else as well, Maddy thought. Fear. Fear for her?
“The humans can’t win,” Jacks said, his expression hard. “Make the smart choice, Maddy.”
“What about Uncle Kevin? What about Gwen?” Maddy’s voice came out almost as a wail.
“Why don’t you ask your president-elect?” Jacks shot back, then caught himself and softened. “Linden made their choice for them already, Maddy. It’s too late for them to be helped. But it’s not too late for you.”
“Everyone can be helped.”
“No! There is no hope!” Jacks’s voice was raw, naked.
“There is always hope,” Maddy cried. “And even when there’s not, we still stand with each other, because that’s what people do.” Maddy looked to Tom, who had quietly lifted a hand to tell the soldiers to stand down. He returned her gaze. Resolute. Determined.
“Explain that logic to me,” Jacks grumbled.
“It’s not logical,” Maddy said. “It’s human.”
“You are not human!” Jacks roared. “You are a Guardian Angel! You belong with us!”
“My place is by my uncle’s side. By Kevin’s side. By Tom’s side. My place is beside anyone who isn’t strong enough to protect themselves. My place is beside anyone I can help.” Maddy was gasping for air. “That is the true purpose of the Angels.”
Jacks shook his head. “Your human side . . . ,” he muttered to himself. Then he looked to Tom. “They turned their backs on us, Maddy,” Jacks said. “We don’t owe them that. You don’t owe them that. We don’t owe them anything.”
“Spoken like a true Immortal. You’ve got quite a sense of duty, Guardian,” Tom quipped.
Jacks ignored him and instead did something Maddy didn’t expect. The anger in his face flickered away, leaving only that raw helplessness Maddy had glimpsed before. Jacks let the helplessness wash over him and fill out his features completely.
“Please, Maddy,” Jacks said quietly. “Why don’t you get it?”
He was whispering now.
“I can’t lose you.”
Even Tom’s confidence seemed to waver for a moment. There the Battle Angel stood, guard down and emotionally naked. Jacks looked at Maddy, and Maddy felt herself being pulled into one of their moments, where the outside world just slipped away, leaving only the two of them. She could not let it happen. She set her feet, moved her shoulders back, and pushed the words out in breathy, raw bursts as a new tidal wave of emotion broke over her.
“I will always cherish what we had, Jackson, but I don’t feel that way about you anymore. Too much has changed. You have changed. And my place is here with Tom.” She stood firm as a sudden sea gust blew her hair forward and whipped it around her face. “I love him,” she whispered.
Jacks flinched and spoke through his teeth. “I will not come for you. Neither will any of the others. The demons will make sure you’re torn apart. Limb by limb. Your wings will be ripped out of your back—”
“That’s enough, Godspeed!” Tom barked. Maddy felt Jacks’s words prickling her skin all over. Torn. Ripped.
Jacks yelled. “You are choosing death, Maddy!”
“Then I choose it!” Maddy choked, and the tears finally spilled over. She didn’t bother to stop them. “This is my decision.” She reached out to him and let her fingers rest on the armor covering his arm.
Jacks pulled his arm away as if she had burned him. Shocked, Maddy watched as something changed behind his eyes. An uncoupling. Just then, an image jumped into Maddy’s head, of a train that uncouples from a car and leaves it behind on the track. Before, whenever Jacks was angry with her or felt betrayed by her, his eyes had always burned with a kind of frustrated loyalty, a refusal to give up on her. But Maddy saw now that those fires had been snuffed out. She watched, helpless, as Jacks unlinked her from his life, and from his heart. It only took an instant, and it gutted her completely. Jacks’s eyes were cold now and held nothing for her. She knew it just as sure as she knew anything.
She had done it. She had lost him.
“It’s time for you to go now,” Tom said, his tone even, or as even as it could be after Jacks’s vise-like grip around his throat.
“Don’t worry, I’m going,” Jacks said. Maddy lifted her gaze to meet his, and for the first time, it wasn’t waiting for her. “There’s nothing for me here.”