Blest (18 page)

The screams filled the air, floating in the wind. Claire laughed in delight. She and Julia had become a tight, coordinated duo, streaking across the railing and tugging people overboard when they tried to look down at the passengers in the water.

“These people needed a wake-up call!” Julia said, her eyes glowing. “They’re pathetic, it’s like they think they can all escape reality by cruising on the river and getting drunk.”

Claire agreed. Every time she’d seen a couple dancing, heard a girl laughing at a guy’s joke, or watched as they snuggled together against the cold wind off the river, she’d felt a flash of anger. These people didn’t deserve to be happy. Really, she was doing them a favor. Didn’t they know that they would all just betray one another eventually?

Julia nodded at her, and they both shot into the sky, observing from above. Gunner and Maria glided somewhere to the left, dark figures against the pale moon. Erik and Ben had taken it upon themselves to drag a few people in the water even further from the ship.

“They’re trying to get some kind of rescue team going,” Julia observed.

Claire squinted in the darkness. A few humans were lowering one of the orange inflatable rafts into the water. She rubbed her hands. “We can’t let them do that, can we?”

Julia grinned. “No.”

As they dove toward the humans by the raft, Claire caught a flash of white from the corner of her eye. She spread her wings, catching the current and letting the air pull her backward. “Julia!” she hissed.

The other girl turned and stopped a few feet away, flapping her crimson wings languidly. “What?” she asked.

“Look.” Against the horizon, the Feather was streaking toward them, their long, white wings sparkling with the moonlight. As they got closer, Claire saw Sydney and Jim flying side-by-side at the front of the group. All of the sudden, her sense of power shattered like glass. She gasped, furious that the sight of them together could do so much damage, so quickly.

She growled and looped over to the rest of the Scale. They hovered at the other end of the boat, watching the Feather approach. The humans treading water were still squealing for help. The passengers on the boat had managed to lower an inflatable raft into the choppy, moon-streaked waves.

“What do we do?” Maria asked. “Carlos didn’t want us to actually fight them.”

Claire couldn’t tear her eyes from Sydney and Jim. Every few seconds, the picture of them kissing flashed in her mind, like a burst of blinding light.

“Claire?” Gunner asked. “What do you think? Should we book it out of here?”

She gritted her teeth. All she wanted was to scream, to destroy Sydney and Jim, to make them suffer the way they’d made her suffer. But what could she say? The rest of the Scale didn’t know anything about her and Jim. The only thing worse than the hurt was that she had to hide it, to pretend that Jim was nothing more to her than another face. Another angel.

“I think we should fight!” Ben suggested, pounding his fist into his hand.

The angels swooped down low, skimming the water and keeping their distance from the humans in the water, like they were trying to assess the situation. Claire thought about Ben’s idea. She felt the weight of the Angel Shredder tucked in her belt like it was a brick.

“It’s not worth it,” a quiet voice said beside her.

She startled, looking to her left.

Julia stared out at the boat. “We’re not here to start a war,” she said. “We don’t want to break the Pact if we don’t know where the Portal is.” She breathed a long, slow breath. “When we fight the angels for real, we have to be ready.”

Claire chewed on her lip. She remembered Julia talking about the anger that seemed to guide all the demons, that irrational instinct to always make the wrong choices, because they were blinded by their hate. A slow smile spread on her face. Julia was half-right. The hate could cloud your vision. But the anger, that was the source of a demon’s power. And suddenly, she had an idea.

“We’re out!” Claire yelled, turning back toward the St. Louis skyline. She didn’t wait to see if the rest of the demons followed. She was a leader, not a follower.

• • •

Carlos waited in the living room with a smirk on his face. On the TV, a reporter was doing her best to look concerned as helicopter footage showed humans in blankets, drinking tea. A picture of the cruise ship was superimposed on the footage. “The annual Lose Your Mind Booze Cruise had an unexpected party guest tonight—stronger-than-expected headwinds that tossed more than a dozen passengers overboard,” the woman said. “Luckily, no one was harmed and the celebration itself was the only casualty of the night.” The camera cut to some fat guy on a beach, his shoulders draped with a yellow towel, his white Polo shirt drenched against his skin.

“That was one of mine,” Ben said, whistling. “He was a tough one to push over.”

The rest of the Scale laughed as another reporter stuck a microphone in the guy’s face and asked about the cruise. “I just wanted to go there and lose my mind!” he huffed indignantly. “You better expect I’m suing Festivals Without a Cause Cruise Lines, along with whatever company manufactured those railings!”

Carlos turned off the TV and crossed his arms. “Nice work. I assume the angels swooped in?”

The Scale nodded.

“Perfect. As long as you keep distracting them, I can keep looking for the Portal without interference. While you were out there, I waited by Lumen’s house. She sent the Feather to the river, but she flew somewhere else. Somewhere around Pearlton High School. I haven’t found anything yet, but I know that I will. Now get some rest, you’ve earned it.”

“No!” Claire snapped, her mind still seared with Jim and Sydney, like the image had been stamped onto her heart like a brand, burning hot.

Carlos raised an eyebrow. The rest of the Scale gaped at her. There was a good chance she was the first person to defy Carlos, ever. She didn’t care. She needed more. She had lost that feeling of power and she wanted it back. Now. “Tossing humans overboard is just a game,” she said, staring at Carlos evenly, not breaking his gaze. “We need to do more.”

Carlos regarded her for a moment. She thought she saw a twinkle of pride in her father’s eyes. “What did you have in mind?”

“The angels are probably still flying back from the city. They cut our time at the cruise ship short. I want to fight fire with fire.” She leaned closer and told the Scale her new plan.

“I still can’t believe you hit some of those humans,” Jim said to Leo, flying with the others back to Sydney’s house.

“What else was I supposed to do?” Leo exclaimed. “I just gave them a little friendly tap. Otherwise, they’ll go yapping about how someone with wings saved them. This way, they’ll think it was a dream of a guardian angel, and if they tell anyone they’ll just get laughed at.”

Jim shrugged. His arms still hurt from lifting people out of the water and carrying them to the beach. Leo had been the one to smack them all in the head, until Sydney reasoned that most of them were too drunk to be taken as credible sources of information anyway. “The police and reporters will think strong winds carried them overboard and they’ll think the same winds pushed them to shore,” she said.

“The Pearlton Feather,” Leo had proclaimed. “Heroically breaking wind.”

Jim had laughed, but Nora and Sydney had glared at both of them and they’d gone quiet. Without Miles acting as the resident jokester, the Feather felt empty, less light-hearted and more grim. Jim remembered Miles’s face when they had left him behind. The reality of his injury was setting in for everyone. It would be months before Miles was back to his full strength. And at this rate, who knew what would happen by then?

The crown of trees circling the lake came into view. Clouds hovered in the sky, gray blurs backlit by starlight. As they got closer, Jim noticed that one of the houses was growing brighter than the others, burning a bright orange in the night. Just when he was about to ask Sydney what the light was, he saw the smoke.

“
Sydney!
” he cried, pointing frantically. “Your house!”

Sydney gasped. “The Scale!” she shouted. “Quick, my mom could be in there!”

“Miles!” Nora shrieked.

The four of them dove down over the trees. As they got closer, the roar of flames filled the air. Sydney’s house was consumed by fire, smoke billowing from the open windows to twist like gray snakes into the sky. Nora landed on the porch outside the living room and ripped open the door.

“Miles!” she screamed.

“Nora, don’t!” Sydney reached for her.

But Nora jumped into the blaze, flying above the flames and into the smoke. Jim hesitated for a moment, then burst into the house after Nora, hearing Sydney shout his name behind him.

Inside, the churning smoke was billowing into noxious clouds. The staircase had collapsed, and the couches and the rug had curled into blackened husks. There were empty gas canisters scattered about the room. This fire was no accident.

Nora flitted back down from the stairs, coughing into her hand. “He’s not up there!” she screamed.

A beam above them groaned loudly as fire rippled across it. Jim looked up at it, then down at the flames licking at his feet. They probably had about a minute before the whole house collapsed. He hovered over the trail of flames that crackled along the hallway rug and ducked into Sydney’s room, then General Lumen’s. There was no sign of Miles or Lumen in either.

“
Jim!
” He heard Nora’s voice in the kitchen, and shot out to find her.

“He’s here!” Nora crouched on the marble counter in the kitchen, yanking Miles up by the arms from some hiding spot by the cupboards. Miles was conscious, but barely. His head lolled back and forth. In the living room, there was a huge crash as a beam caved in, taking part of the roof with it.

“The front door!” Jim helped Nora carry Miles through the kitchen. Both of them were coughing hard. Jim felt like his lungs were going to burst. Just as he was about to lunge for the door’s handle, a shudder ran through the ceiling and the walls, like an earthquake. He looked up, puzzled.

“No!” Nora tugged him back just as the ceiling in front of him caved in, burying the front door in an avalanche of plaster, dust, and smoke. A splintered wooden beam stuck out from the wreckage like a broken bone, glowing with red-orange flames.

Jim shielded his eyes with his forearm, coughing and squinting into the cloud of black smoke. “We have to get back to the living room!” he choked. He felt dizzy, unable to flap his wings. He wondered in an almost abstract sort of way how much it would hurt to burn alive. There was a ringing in his ears, blackness prickling along the edges of his vision.

“Get to the floor!” Nora urged.

Jim followed her lead, dropping to his hands and knees. The smoke chugged above them, swirling like dragon’s breath. The heat made his skin prickle. Something else was creaking around them, but Jim wasn’t sure what it was. All he knew was that they had to get out of the house as fast as possible. He grabbed Miles’s right wrist and Nora grabbed his left. They dragged Miles along with them to the hallway, keeping their heads under the heaviest smoke. The carpet was blackened with ash and crunched under their feet. Something collapsed in General Lumen’s room, erupting with a deafening boom that echoed throughout the house.

Nora looked toward the source of the noise. He thought he saw tears at the corners of her eyes.

“We can do this!” Jim told her. The edge of the hallway leading to the living room was alight with flames. “We’re going to have to fly through it,” Jim said. “Are you—”

Part of the roof sagged and tumbled into the living room with a resounding crash. The fire roared over it. Nora screamed and started to sob beside him. Jim couldn’t see the porch anymore, just smoke and wreckage. Behind them, the fire had traveled from the broken ceiling in the kitchen and licked at the other end of the hall.

“Take my hand!” Jim commanded, reaching for Nora and scooping up Miles in his left arm. Nora grabbed his hand, closing her eyes. With all the strength he had left, Jim jumped and flew at the same time, carrying Nora and Miles along like two dead weights.

They spun through the flames burning down the doorway. Jim strained to keep all three of them above the fire in the living room, trying to carry them above the wood and shingles and plaster that burned all around them. “Nora, you’ve got to help me with this!” he said.

Nora weakly flapped her own wings, crying and grappling at his hand. She screamed Miles’s name.

They flew into the cloud of smoke. Jim held his breath, knowing that if he breathed it in, he would get dizzy, maybe even pass out, and all three of them would die. His eyes burned mercilessly and his lungs stung. He couldn’t see anything in front of him. No matter how high he flew, the smoke was everywhere, dragging him down, wrapping around him like hands made out of shattered glass.

He let himself take one, sharp breath, then did the only thing he could think of: dove down as fast as he could and hoped that he hit the porch door, instead of the roaring fire below. His vision was turning black, his strength draining away. His shoulder felt like it was being ripped from its socket. With one final tug, Jim dove, pulling Miles and Nora with him, past the remnants of the living room and the fire crackling in his ears.

Everything howled in his ears as the suffocating blackness took over. Then something shattered around him and he realized he’d pulled them through a window. Jim rolled across the porch and slammed hard into the railing on the far side, dazed and spluttering. His head was spinning. Somewhere beside him, he heard Nora hacking through a cough and Leo calling Miles’s name.

Jim winked in and out of consciousness. Someone scooped him up, carried him through the air, and placed him on cement. Jim’s skin screamed with memories of the fire and he coughed violently, the smoke still tangled in his lungs. He watched with half-opened eyes as the deep blue clouds of evening passed overhead, feeling like he was watching another universe drift by him.

A cool hand found his forehead, and he blinked at a fuzzy face. “Sydney?”

Her face lit up when she saw that he was awake. “You were quite the hero back there.”

He coughed again, doubling over as he scrabbled onto his elbows. “Nora . . . Miles . . .?”

Sydney’s smile vanished. “Nora is okay. Miles is . . . He’s . . .” She looked away.

Jim sat up straighter, looking around in a panic. “What? He’s what?”

Sydney covered her face in one hand and pointed with the other. A few feet away, Nora was hovering over Miles and crying softly. Her clothes were fried around the edges and burnt away in places, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy mourning. But . . . but Miles was alive. Jim could see his chest rising and falling as he breathed.

Slowly, Jim got to his feet and hobbled over to them

“No, no, no,” Nora whispered in a small, broken voice.

As Jim stepped closer, he realized that Miles’s wings had been burnt black. They lay splayed out on the cement behind him, shriveled and useless. Jim couldn’t even match the picture with what Miles had always been before. His wings looked like trees that had lost all their leaves.

“Angels . . . aren’t Durable against fire,” Sydney said quietly. “Miles may never fly again.”

Nora let out a gut-wrenching cry. Jim thought it was a little strange. Shouldn’t she be happy that her brother had even survived the inferno? He looked over his shoulder. Sydney’s house had folded in on itself like cards, the living room flattened and crumbled and smoking. Somewhere, he heard the scream of a fire engine.

Miles opened his eyes sleepily and he smiled weakly at Nora, telling her in a gentle voice that he was okay. The reassurance didn’t stop Nora’s tears. Even Sydney looked like she had gone into shock. Jim remembered them calling his dad a Wingless, telling him that Wingless were even lower than humans. He wondered if that was still true if you lost your wings in battle, not just if you chose to have them removed.

“I’m going to kill them,” Nora said, her face streaked with tears and hardened with a determination Jim had never seen before. “I’m going to find them, and I’m going to make them pay.”