Immortal City (35 page)

“They’re sore,” he said.

“Come here,” Maddy said. She sat cross-legged and held out her arms. He laid his head on her lap.

She sat there holding his head, playing lightly with his hair with her fingers. In response he lifted a hand and ran it along her back.

“Doesn’t it feel strange?” he asked.

“Doesn’t what?”

“Not having wings.”

Maddy considered.

“I guess if you’ve never had them, you don’t miss them.”

Jacks smiled at her. “I guess.”

His breaths became slow and measured. After a minute, Maddy realized he was asleep.
Even Angels have to sleep,
she thought. Then, before she was even aware of it, her head had dipped, her eyelids closed, and she slept too.

T
he neon sign for Kevin’s Diner had long since been extinguished, but the parking lot was populated with ACPD police cars, as well as a number of strangely uniform, black Escalade SUVs. A single light filtered out from the nearly empty dining room.

Kevin sat in one of the booths, the lamp over his head making his eyes look sunken and hollow. He gazed out the window at the dark, foggy city. A patch of gauze was taped over his forehead where the shattering window had cut him, but otherwise, he was okay.

He turned his attention back and looked at the Council Disciplinary Agent sitting across from him. The Angel was imposing, with a build at least a foot taller than Kevin, a perfectly symmetrical face, and a sharp, square jaw. Other agents stood around them or milled about the darkened diner.

Kevin sighed and eyed the Angel, who hadn’t moved.

“Even if I knew where they were going, I wouldn’t tell you. I’ve already told the police everything I know. You don’t even have the right to question me.”

“We’re working with the police now,” the agent said in a smooth, articulate voice. “Jackson is suspected of kidnapping, as well as three homicides.”

“Is that what the police think or the NAS?”

The front door opened with its usual chime. A shadowy figure walked between the dark tables toward them, obscured in the darkness until the cast of the lamplight fell on his face. It was Mark Godspeed.

“I can take it from here,” Mark said to the agent.

The agent nodded and slid out of the booth. Mark sat down in his place.

“How are you, Kevin?”

“What do you want?” Kevin asked icily. Mark regarded him.

“I’m sorry about what happened to the house. The agents, they saw an opportunity, and they took it.” He reached into his jacket. “I think this should probably cover it.” He took out an envelope from his jacket pocket and slid it across the counter. Kevin hesitated, then picked it up and peered inside. It was a check for five hundred thousand dollars. “I put in a little extra for the damages Jacks did to your diner, too,” Mark said, looking around. “I kind of thought this place could use some renovation anyway.”

Kevin looked at the check for a moment, then set the envelope back down on the counter and slid it across to Mark. Mark looked surprised.

“If it’s not enough, I’m sure we can do a little better.”

“I don’t want your money,” Kevin said. “I told you and your boy to stay away from my niece. That was the agreement.”

The silence hung heavy between them.

“I didn’t come here to fight, Kevin,” Mark said. “What’s done is done. Let’s talk about what we can agree on.”

“And what’s that?”

“I think we can agree that we both didn’t want this to happen. Any of it. And we both don’t want it to go any further. Am I right?”

After a moment Kevin nodded reluctantly.

“So please, Kevin, just tell me where they were going. Any clue you may have where they could be, where Maddy could have led them, would be vital. Anything that could help us.”

“Why? So you can hunt them both down? Finish what you started twenty years ago?”

Mark leaned back in the booth, exasperated. He took a long breath, eyes intense. “I just want things to go back to the way they were before, Kevin. Before Angel wings started turning up on the boulevard, before police were chasing my stepson and he was taking waitresses to Commissioning parties.” Kevin seemed to bristle at the word
waitress
, but he stayed silent. “Please,” Mark went on, almost imploring, “don’t you want her back in here? Working the morning shift? Going to school, getting ready for college, living the life she was meant to live?”

Kevin held up his hands in defeat.

“Yes, Mark. Of course. But the truth is I don’t know where they went or what they were planning. We hadn’t gotten that far when your agents came smashing in. That’s the truth.”

Mark nodded, accepting this.

“Does she know now?” he asked.

“Yes. She knows everything now,” Kevin said, pausing. “And so does Jackson.”

Mark’s body stiffened almost imperceptibly.

“What are you going to do when you finally catch him?” Kevin asked.

Mark’s expression hardened, and he looked out the window and into the darkness. Another silence settled over the booth as Kevin watched the Archangel. Kevin’s eyes followed Mark’s out to the parking lot, where there was some movement—more Council Disciplinary Agents arriving. What looked like maybe a girl, together with a broad-shouldered guy, neither in uniform but both clearly Angels, were lit for a moment by the light above the lot. But they disappeared back into the shadows. Kevin rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted.

“You haven’t changed at all, have you, Mark?” Kevin said. “Your own stepson. Your wife’s child. How could you?”

“Jacks was Commissioned a Guardian Angel and, as such, is subject to the same laws that govern all Guardians. Including me.”

“Get out of here,” Kevin said. “Take your bribe with you.”

Mark regarded him coolly, then tucked the envelope back in his jacket.

“It’s not as simple as that, Kevin,” Mark said as he slid out of the booth and rose. “The situation has changed. I can’t discuss it, but all I can say is I hope we find them. I hope we find them before something else does.”

Kevin’s face darkened in confusion and concern.

“Some
thing
else?”

But Mark turned without replying and disappeared into the darkness.

M
addy woke in utter darkness. A few moments passed before she remembered where she was. The gym. Angel City High. She was hiding with Jacks, and they both must have fallen asleep. Something was different from when they went to sleep. Then she realized it: all the lights were off. Reaching for Jacks, she discovered, with sudden panic, he wasn’t there. The air around her suddenly felt harder to breathe. Her hands groped in the darkness. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, she felt a finger press delicately, but firmly, to her mouth.

It was Jacks. Silencing her.

She could just barely see him now in the dim light that crept in from the cracks under the gym doors. He was sitting up and utterly still. Something was wrong. In that same moment Maddy realized it hadn’t just been her panic—the air around her
really was
harder to breathe. It scorched her lungs as she sucked it in. The entire gym had grown blisteringly hot while they slept. It was stifling. What was going on? A bead of sweat rolled down Maddy’s forehead and splattered against the mat. Her hair was damp and sticky. She turned to Jacks.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“I’m not sure,” Jacks whispered back. “Something’s in here with us. I turned the lights off, but it knows we’re in here.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s like pure evil. It’s not friendly,” Jacks said.

Maddy began to tremble. Taking her hands, Jacks wrapped them around the ring on her neck.

“We’re going to go into the hall together, and then I want you to run. Don’t look back. No matter what you hear, just keep running.”

“What? What are you going to do?”

Jacks was silent.

“You’re saying goodbye, aren’t you? You’re going to try and fight it.”

“Whatever it is, it knows we’re in here. It will never let us just walk down the hallway and out of here. It’s our only chance.”

“What if there’s another way out?”

“A way we can go without using the halls?”

Maddy willed her terrified mind to think logically. Rationally. Then she saw it.

“Yes. Some of the classrooms connect. If we go out through the locker room, we could cut through the classrooms to get to the other side of the school. Once we’re there, let’s just hope the gate is open.”

She could barely see the silhouette of his face in the darkness.

“Which way is it?”

Maddy led them silently toward the girls’ locker room door. When they had passed through it, she made sure the latch reengaged without making any noise.

In the dark, the silent rows of lockers seemed alive and menacing, like some kind of horrific, hallucinatory maze. Fog covered all the mirrors. Condensation dripped down the glass, reminding Maddy of rivulets of blood. Could something be hiding in this labyrinth, waiting for them? She looked at the lockers hanging open, the few towels left on the ground. Everything was utterly still. Maddy took Jacks by the hand and led him down one of the rows. They passed the coach’s office.

A voice called out to them from the darkness.

Maddy felt Jacks’s hand crush down on hers. He turned to shield her from whatever might leap out at them from the darkness.

“Baby, when I think of you-ou-ou, I get so blue-ue-ue.”

It was the gym coach’s radio, no doubt left on by a custodian after cleaning up the locker room. Jacks relaxed his grip on her hand.

“Ain’t gonna just stand around while you run off with somebody new-ew-ew.”

Then, from the opposite side of the gym, they heard the click of the door latch. This was no radio, no TV. Something was trying to get into the locker room.

Maddy pulled Jacks through the dry showers.

She could see, for the first time, a glint of fear in his eyes.

The door to the gymnasium began to open. Whatever was out there, in another second, it would be in the room with them. They rounded the shower stalls and Maddy spotted the door at the end of the short corridor. It had a small, square window in it, which let in light from the hallway outside. They were close. And that’s when Maddy heard it.

Footsteps in the locker room behind them. Panic surged up her throat. Whatever it was, it had feet. There was a thump, followed by two clicking sounds, like knife blades against the linoleum tile.

Step,
click click
. Step,
click click
.

Jacks squeezed her hand and mouthed a single word.

“Go.”

They glided over the floor in silence. Maddy reached the door and applied just enough pressure on the handle to check the lock. The handle depressed and the door moved effortlessly out of the jamb. It was unlocked. She swung the door open and they slipped through, leaving whatever it was—the
thing—
behind them in the locker room. They emerged into the hallway next to the vending machines. The whir of the refrigerators made it impossible to hear behind them. Maddy scanned down the stifling hall. The heat and humidity had fogged the windows to the classrooms. There was no way of seeing inside them.

“Come on,” she whispered, moving to the nearest door. “I have class in this room. I think it connects to the bio lab. The lab goes to a hall that can take us to the other side of the school.”

“Go, go,” Jacks whispered urgently. They went.

Maddy put a hand on the door handle and steadied her trembling heart. Cracking it open, she peered inside. Silent. Nothing. She swung the classroom door open. The empty desks cast long shadows in the light from the hallway. It was her AP History class. On the board the assignment for the weekend was still written there:

Read New History of Angels, pages 220–256

They moved into the classroom and Jacks shut the door silently behind them. Maddy could almost hear the chatter of her classmates as she moved through the desks and the drone of Mr. Rankin at the board. They were the sounds of safety, the sounds of wonderfully commonplace well-being. If she ever got out of this alive, she promised never to take those mundane sounds for granted again.

They passed Mr. Rankin’s desk and suddenly Jacks grabbed Maddy by the hoodie and yanked her down to the floor. His eyes darted to the window, where a black silhouette moved across the light. It was large, taller than the windows.
Big.
Maddy held her breath as it passed the classroom. Her heart was pounding. Then it stopped and came back, shadowing the windows again. It was
smelling
, Maddy thought. Hunting. The latch on the door began to turn.

“Don’t look back,” Jacks whispered as they moved toward the door at the far end of the classroom. Jacks pulled the door shut behind them just as the entrance to the hallway swung open.