Battle Angel (16 page)

“Testing us?” the captain murmured. “More like they’re toying with us. Like a cat with an injured mouse.”

One by one, Angels started to land on the deck, several of them wounded.

“See where all our boys are. Let’s get them back, stat, and see where we’re at.”

Maddy strained to see Jackson and Tom come in. The sun had dropped very low in the sky, and neither of them were anywhere in sight.

“Captain Blake, all our remaining jets are inbound,” the radioman informed his commander.

“All right, get ’em all home safe now.”

A voice on the radio suddenly crackled in the control room.

“Giant Killer, I am in pursuit of a retreating demon that has separated from the main group.”

Tom?

“Return to the carrier. I repeat, return to the carrier.”

“Negative, I think I got this one.”

The captain snatched the radio out of the sailor’s hand. “Return to the carrier, Lieutenant Cooper. That’s a direct order!”

“
Giant Killer, engine number one is down!
” the voice said.

“Which jet is that?” Maddy asked.

“Cooper, come in, over. Cooper, come in, over.”

“Engine number two down! Entire fuselage is on fire, Giant Killer!”

Maddy turned, eyes wild, to the crewmen in the room. “What’s going on?”

All the crewmen focused on their radios, ignoring Maddy, who was growing more and more frantic.

Blake grabbed the microphone off the flight control deck table. “Ditch the aircraft, Cooper! Eject!”

“
Copy that
,” the voice said before it suddenly broke off into a terrible squeal of static.

“Did he make it? Did he make it?” one of the crewmen asked.

The radarman looked at the screen. “We do not have a location on Cooper. Repeat, do not have Cooper’s location, Captain.”

“How incompetent can you people be!” the captain growled.

Maddy grabbed the nearest crewman. “Tell me what’s happening!”

“Miss, we need you to calm down,” he said, guiding her to a chair.

“We have lost all contact with the aircraft,” the crewman at the radio announced.

He reached forward out the clear board and grasped the miniature plane that represented Tom’s jet. Slowly, mournfully, he turned the jet over, signifying it was lost. The room was silent. Maddy stood stock-still and quiet, her breathing coming quick, her eyes wide and wild.

“Did Cooper eject, Goddammit?” the captain asked.

“Sir, we don’t know.”

A soft cry escaped Maddy’s lips.

“Well, you better find out,” the captain said. “And quick. The navy’s lost too many good men already, and there’s no way in hell we’re ready to mourn our best one.”

• • •

The smoldering wreckage of Tom’s jet floated on the water, rolling with the waves. The aircraft had broken into hundreds of pieces, splintered into clusters of multimillionaire-dollar junk, smoldering flotsam in the ocean. Flames burned in the oil slick on top of the water, a strange sight to see. Their flickering fire lit the sea, giving it an eerie orange glow against a backdrop of endless black water and twilight sky as night approached. A chunk of the jet’s stealth steel skin bobbed in the current. Through the char of the fire, some stenciled words were visible: F
IRST
L
IEUT
ENANT
T
HOMAS
C
OOPER
. The only identifying piece from the shattered plane.

A tangled white parachute drifted on top of the water some distance away. Tom’s unconscious body floated face down next to it, caught in the ropes. Lifeless.

Suddenly, with a gasp, the pilot came to consciousness. He rolled over onto his back and immediately started ripping his helmet off. Tom’s chest heaved as he choked, his body grappling with the water in his lungs. He kept coughing and coughing, the seawater burning as it streamed out of his throat and nostrils, until finally he felt he could breathe. Tom began extricating himself from the parachute ropes, which could drag a man down to the depths with surprising force. It would be far better to die in an explosion than to drown slowly, Tom thought grimly. At least an explosion would be instant. Drowning, you would have far too long to suffer as the water slowly entered your lungs, searing through your body with unbearable pain, bringing on the darkness, excruciatingly inevitable. Finally, the pilot broke free of the knotted parachute and started swimming, strong strokes, away from the dangerous snare. He sparked the waterproof flare attached to his vest. It burned bright white in the dwindling light as he held it up.

His head. It felt as if a hammer were raining on it in steady blows. And it felt strangely warm. Reaching up, he felt a huge swell, and blood pouring out. He must have been struck on his head during the ejection. Blood kept streaming down his face and neck, turning the water crimson.

Using his flare to light the sea, Tom scanned the waters for telltale signs of a shark: a dorsal fin knifing through the waves, an eerie black shadow rising from below to strike. The sharks would smell his blood soon enough, and then they would come to feed. He unsheathed the knife he kept inside his flight suit and saw the blade’s jagged edge shine in the reflection of the flames. The sharks wouldn’t get an easy meal out of him. He would take some with him if it came to that.

Pulling back his life vest, Tom checked the emergency locator transponder. Where a steady blue flash should have been transmitting, it was blank. Dark. Broken. Tom cursed under his breath. Night was falling. How would his men find him?

Tom listened for a rescue helicopter, dying to hear the steady thrum of its rotor blades across the sea. The sound of safety.

But none came.

From the corner of his eye, Tom saw some movement, causing him to twist around quickly with a startle, expecting to meet a shark. But it was merely a gull skimming across the water, unworried, heading to its next destination as darkness fell.

He chuckled at the absurdity of his response, blood still streaming down his face from his head wound. It hurt to laugh, and he began choking again.

The currents drew him away from the plane’s wreckage and out into the pitch-black sea. He rolled with each swell that passed, his only light the flare. And the flare would not last forever. He had fifteen minutes, maybe.

He struggled to stay awake. It was suicide to give into the darkness out here in these waters. He needed to keep conscious. He knew he had a concussion, and if he went out now, it could be hours until he awoke again. By then it would certainly be too late, with his emergency transponder not working. And with the demons liable to attack again at any moment.

He splashed his face with the cool seawater. And then he even took to slapping himself.

But the darkness was so warm, so inviting.
Why not just close your eyes? Just for a moment.
He knew he shouldn’t; they always told you not to when you hit your head. But just for one teensy second, he told himself, then you could wake up again. How could it hurt? Just a little nap. The warm darkness rushed into his field of vision, until all was black again.

• • •

A luminous image of Maddy’s face rose in the front of his mind, but soon it turned to wisps, then nothing. Tom opened his eyes—or was he still dreaming?—and looked down into the depths below. A calm, blue-green light shone. An enormous whale, peaceful and silent in the deep, slowly drifted underneath him. A leviathan. Tom wanted to follow it. He knew it had something to tell him. It had something to say that was more important than anything up here, on the Earth’s surface. He thought he could hear beautiful music emanating up from below. There were voices, too. Were they calling him? They sounded as if they’d been waiting for him.

He could just follow the voices . . . just slip right down to the depths. It’d be so easy. Effortless, even. Why not?

• • •

The same blue glow crept back behind the black walls of his eyelids again. Opening his eyes, Tom saw two wings. Wings spread wide, the moon just behind them as the seawater lapped and splashed.

“Maddy . . . ,” Tom moaned. “I’m sorry. I promised I’d . . .”

“Be quiet. . . . Don’t move,” a voice said. “You’re badly hurt.”

He closed his eyes again, and he felt a pair of arms wrapping around him.

And then he succumbed to the darkness once again.

T
he flight deck of the aircraft carrier had transformed into a triage area for casualties of the demon attack. Bandaged-up navy enlistees were being led around by their arms to the sick bay and an Angel doctor tended to the stunned and battered Immortals. They had never before met such an enemy—such sheer evil and tenacity. It had been breathtaking in the most horrible way. Although medics were yelling and crewmen were shouting to each other over the radio, the air over the flight deck was filled with a deep, hollow hush. A solemn reflection over what they had just faced. And what was yet to come.

Things were looking grimmer and grimmer. Once again, the demons hadn’t even hit them with a full attack before they moved back for reasons still unknown. During the first wave, it had seemed that their goal, aside from causing general terror and inflicting death, was to stop anyone from leaving Angel City. But this time, it almost seemed as if the Dark Angels were testing them—both the humans and Jackson’s Battle Angels alike. More than ever Maddy was convinced there really was a head demon, and that it was clever, persistent, and patient. She knew the demons wouldn’t hold back next time. Almost everyone knew that.

There was an unspoken feeling, a reverence for those already lost and those who would still be lost. The final battle would be a great sacrifice for both humans and Angels—and they would ultimately be defeated.

There was almost something noble in the inevitable.

• • •

The first thing Tom saw was Maddy’s face, peering over him.

“Shhh . . .” Maddy ran a comforting hand through his hair.

Tom tried to sit up, but as soon as he did, he fell back on the pillow, dizzy, his head throbbing terribly. Glancing to the side, he saw he was in the sick bay of the aircraft carrier. He put his hand to his head and felt a large bandage.

“How . . . ?” Tom asked, his thoughts still muddled. Slowly, he pieced the past several hours together. He had seen the wings. And now he was waking up here, with Maddy. He tried to sit up again, but a shooting pain winced through his entire body.

He managed a weak smile. “Ow. Won’t try that again.”

Maddy gave a light smile back.

Tom looked up at her. “You saved me?”

Maddy shook her head.

“I tried, Tom, but we couldn’t find you,” she said. “As soon as they said you went down they had to stop me from just leaving right there and then, totally blind into the night. I could see you were in danger, but you kept moving in and out of consciousness and I’d lose your frequency. Never long enough for me to find you. But we waited to see if we could get a read on your location. The transponder was gone. We started looking for you. But it was so dark. It seemed impossible.” Maddy’s face quavered with emotion as she recalled the failed search.

“Then who . . . ?”

Maddy gnawed on her lip slightly. “Jackson found you, Tom. He brought you here. He saved you.”

“Him?”
Tom’s face was cast over with shock.

Maddy was silent.

Tom tried to sit up again, with more success this time. But he still groaned in pain as he moved.

“No . . .”

The darkness took him again.

• • •

After some searching, Jackson found Maddy leaning against the railing along the rear deck of the ship.

His approach was quiet, but Maddy still turned around at the sound of his footsteps. She broke her expression of deep thought with a faint smile, but in a moment it was gone and she turned back to look out to the sea. She had seen so many injured fighters, both Immortal and human. And she had seen Tom.

“Hi,” said Jacks gently.

“Hi.”

“How is he?”

“Sleeping again,” Maddy said.

“He’ll be all right,” Jacks said. “He’s stubborn. Like you.”

“I just wanted to . . . thank you,” Maddy said. “I don’t know when Tom will be able to himself, and—”

Jacks interrupted her. “You don’t need to get into it,” he said. “I was just doing my duty.”

“How are your Angels?” Maddy asked.

“We lost five, and four are injured,” Jacks said. “That leaves thirty-one of us. We’re going to do our best.”

“Five,” Maddy said almost under her breath, shaking her head. And it wasn’t even a full attack.

“We need to slow the demons down, even more than we already have. I’d like to give Linden time to set up defenses across the country. The longer we keep them from totally overrunning Angel City, the better chance he has of slowing them before they take over the next city. And the more chance Detective Sylvester has of finding out how to get to the head demon.” He looked back toward the land. “Angel City won’t last long. But the resistance can. There has to be a way to stop the demons before they take everything.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Maddy said. “Sylvester and Susan said that if we could find and kill the head demon, we could stop the assault. Without their leader, their forces would fall apart.” Maddy looked out across the sea again and thought of all the people still left in the city. Including her uncle Kevin. They needed hope, now more than ever. “We need to find it, Jacks. For the city. For everyone.”

Jacks nodded. “It would. I do believe what Sylvester says, Maddy,” Jackson said. “But we need to find out how to get to it first. And we won’t know if there’s enough time. I’m sending a couple of my Angels to Linden right now, even though we really can’t spare anyone. If we fail, Sylvester and Archson, along with those Angels, will have to keep the resistance alive as the demons move forward. Maybe they can figure out how to get at the leader of the demons in time to save other cities, other nations, before the Darkness falls on everyone.”

“You’re
not
going to fail,” Maddy said. “We’re going to find the leader. And we’re going to bring it down, Jacks.”

Jacks looked at her, a brave smile on his worried face. “You’re right, Maddy. We have to find it. It’s our only hope,” he said. “But, Maddy, there are just so many of them. So, so many. For every one demon we were getting, there were four more coming to take its place. The harder we fought . . .” He just shook his head, chasing away his pessimism.

Maddy recalled her recurring nightmare. More and more Dark Angels were plaguing her dream; now there were dozens tormenting her.

“We’re going to do it,” Maddy said. “We have to. Even if . . . we don’t make it. We have to stop them.”

Jacks squeezed her hand in his and looked out toward the boundless ocean, which held the awaiting army of Dark Ones.

“No matter what happens, we’ll take as many of them with us as we can,” Jacks said.