Natural Born Angel (Immortal City 2)

After a couple of minutes, they levelled off, heading north-west along the coast towards Ventura County and Santa Barbara. Tom turned to her again.

“OK, I’m going to let you take the controls.”

“What?” Maddy said incredulously. “I thought— ”

“You’re flying the plane now,” Tom said, letting go of the controls in front of him.

“Are you crazy?” Maddy said, slightly panicking. The yokes floated in front of them, untouched. The plane continued flying straight ahead.

“You’d better fly, or we’re going to have some problems.”

“I can’t— ”

The plane began tilting slightly, and Maddy instinctively reached forward, grabbing the controls to right the plane.

And it was incredible.

Maddy could feel the plane respond. Tom was right.

When flying with her own wings, Maddy had tried to figure everything out, because it didn’t feel natural to her. But now, holding the controls of the plane in her hands, she was able to understand the natural way wings kept aloft – whether on a plane or an Angel.

“This is amazing!” she yelled. She felt an invigorating sensation of freedom.

“You’re doing great. Hold it steady,” he answered, a grin in his voice.

Maddy pulled the yoke back, and they began climbing even higher. She tilted it right, and the agile plane banked right.

“OK, easy, easy. Now feel the lift. You know it from the books and what I’ve told you. But just let the lift keep us up. Get familiar with it, at ease.”

“It feels so strange . . . but so right!”

“Maybe you were born to fly after all,” Tom said, the slightest smile spreading across his face.

Patiently, Tom walked her through the applications of the basic flying principles as they continued northwards. After a while he looked out west to the seemingly unending Pacific Ocean as the last of the light began vanishing in the distance

“Naval twilight,” Tom told her. The glimmering edges of purple and red were fleeting on the horizon. “Time to go home. Can you get us headed there?”

Gripping the yoke harder, Maddy pressed on it, banking them back around towards Angel City.

The dark churning waves of the Pacific crashed on the beach below them as the plane gracefully soared in a circle back to the invisible lights of the Immortal City. How different it was from her flying with her wings earlier in the day! The grace and ease she experienced was incredible. She felt as if she had control. Maybe even a little bit of skill. She couldn’t believe it – it was like something had shifted in her brain and body when she took control of the plane. She somehow intuited what was needed for her to fly with her own wings. It was going to feel natural. Like this, she told herself.

Tom took back the controls as they neared the city and potential air traffic. It was entirely dark as he finally touched the plane down on the runway with a screech of tyre on the tarmac.

In the truck on the way back, Maddy let the bouncing of the pickup soothe her as they drove along. Traffic was bad on some of the freeways, and Tom turned the radio on, tuned to the news station.

“Expect delays with protests across the city this evening, starting at ACX airport as presidential candidate Senator Ted Linden arrives for a two-day fundraising tour through Southern California. And his first stop? Angel City, the worldwide centre of Angel culture and home to those Senator Linden has targeted with his anti-Angel Immortals Bill.”

“Linden’s coming here?” Maddy asked, thinking of the party at the Godspeed house and Archangel Churchson’s cold statement. “Pretty bold.”

Tom merely raised an eyebrow. He looked for an exit off the trafficked freeway.

“The Immortal City, home of the gorgeous Angels and legions of fans who love them, may seem an unlikely place for the senator to raise funds for his presidential run. But spokesmen for Linden say anti-Angel sentiment in the region is only growing by the day as the Council makes threats against humans. An official Angel statement denounced the visit by the senator as yet ‘another stop on Teddy Linden’s hate-filled agenda.’”

As he whipped the truck off the freeway, Tom turned the radio off and the two rode in silence. To avoid traffic, he took them through a beautiful back route around Griffith Park, the trees lit by the spearing headlights of the old truck. The traffic seemed a world away. Tom was quiet, and they just enjoyed the drive after the flight.

After the winding drive, Tom pulled the truck into the side street near the diner where Maddy’s Audi was surreptitiously parked.

“Tom, er, Lieutenant Cooper, thank you so much,” Maddy said as he put the pickup in park, the engine idling. Steam rose from the exhaust pipe in the early autumn evening. The inside of the cab was dark, but they were lit by the glare from the street light. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much you’ve helped me.”