Battle Angel (Immortal City 3)

The wind whipping in his ears, Jackson neared Emily—or perhaps she just let him get near—and she giggled as she darted out of his grasp, her red hair streaming behind her. “Can’t you keep up with me?” She laughed.

Then Jackson looked below. The Angel City basin was burning. As far as he could see, hundreds of fires had sprung up, and the freeways looked all but destroyed. The city he had known his whole life had received its first blow.

And it was devastating.

His throat plummeted into his stomach as he soared over the destruction. Looking out, he could see the demons were barely visible as they retreated to their ocean sinkhole.

“I’m going back,” Jacks shouted at Emily, turning back.

“Why?” Emily shouted, oblivious to what was going on below them. “Don’t you like stretching your wings?”

Jackson didn’t answer, just turned and soared back to the hidden glass box on the hill. Biting her lip in disappointment that he had so quickly ended their game, Emily followed closely behind. By the time she landed, Jacks was standing at the sanctuary entrance, staring with faraway eyes at the Immortal City. Somehow, his mind was blank. His emotions were inaccessible. He didn’t know what he felt. In this hollow space, his mind turned to his discussion with Gabriel. This was the tragic, inevitable fate of the humans.

During their talks, Jackson had been struck by how hard all this was for the True Immortal: Gabriel had spent his entire life—lifetime upon lifetime in human years—guarding mankind. And then they had turned on the Angels. Jackson could relate to Gabriel’s sadness, more than Gabriel might even know.

“They should’ve known a good thing when they had it and just let us alone,” Emily said as she walked up to Jacks. “Now, without their Angels, who’s going to save them? It’s their own fault, Jackson. Not ours.”

As if suddenly broken from a spell, Jacks turned away from the carnage outside the window.

“I know it’s not our fault,” he said. “I’m just curious about what’s going on. And you’re right. They brought it on themselves. We gave them a chance. We gave them multiple chances. But they disappointed us.” His face twisted bitterly into a grimace, and he turned back toward the elevator, Emily still following close behind.

She wound her arm in his as they entered the elevator. He didn’t take it away.

CHAPTER EIGHT

On that crisp night, moonlight spilled down off the side of a cluster of classic tan stucco buildings in old Angel City. Aside from the occasional bold person wandering around after dark despite the citywide curfew and the chilling reports of random, isolated demon assaults during the first wave just one day earlier, the rest of the street remained dark and silent.

“Disappearances” would be a better way to put it, rather than isolated “attacks.” No one ever survived to tell anyone what actually happened.

But everyone knew what was happening.

A terrified silence hung in the air over this city under siege, its freeways and only exits to the outside world destroyed. The city could do nothing but wait for the next attack.

Off in the distance, silhouetted against the clear moonlit sky, stood the spire of the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, a holdout in what had been the hub of ultramodern, glitzy Angel City. The church had been devoted to the worship of the Angels and all their products, perfect skin, and high-profile lifestyles. Now the noise and glamour had subsided, the lights extinguished by electricity rationing, and the cries of the paparazzi had been silenced. Only the spire broke the skyline, jutting into the night.

Nearby, a figure walked quickly along a pitch-black street lined with darkened palm trees whispering above in the wind. The footsteps were quick and furtive as the figure moved along the sidewalk, barely sounding. Head covered, the figure kept looking over the left shoulder, as if suspecting a tail. The shadowed person made a sharp turn into a doorway and disappeared from the street.

The door swung open, casting dim light onto the otherwise blacked-out sidewalk. The figure stopped, frozen.

A man was silhouetted inside the doorframe.

“Here,” he said. He leaned forward to quickly usher the person in off the street. His face was lit by the weak indoor bulbs, and a glare glinted off the lenses of his glasses.

“David,” said the figure from the street as she entered the room. Relief tinged with something else, something vague, colored her words.

“I was afraid you might have trouble finding it,” Detective Sylvester said. “We had to change locations so fast this morning. I was . . . worried.” Sylvester quickly looked up and down the street before pushing the door closed behind him, plunging the outside back into utter darkness.

Inside, the woman from the street pulled the shawl off her head. It was Archangel Susan Archson, the professor who had encouraged Maddy so much in Guardian training. As she unfurled her hair, her beauty shone full force in the small hallway. Even in this time of crisis, she radiated the mature beauty and charisma for which older female Angels were famous.

The detective’s breath caught for a moment. Sylvester’s and Susan’s eyes locked.

“It’s good to see you,” Sylvester said. His eyes flashed behi

nd his glasses, and a slight glow of red appeared on his cheeks.

“It’s only been since last night at the office,” Susan said, smiling.

“Like I said,” he said quietly, “I was worried.”