Natural Born Angel (31 page)

Jackson was so close as he looked down at her, their hands clasped, that she could feel his intoxicating breath on her. His face was expectant. Waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know, Jacks,” Maddy finally said, breaking away. “I need to think . . . it’s just . . . I need to think.”

“We have only days, maybe only hours.”

Maddy knew it was true. She nodded.

“I need until tomorrow morning. Can you give me until then?”

After sneaking back home – this time through the back door of the diner – Maddy went directly upstairs and shut herself in her room. She saw she had a missed call from Tom, but she just had to ignore it for the time being. Maybe for ever.

The room was stuffy, almost confining. She threw open the window to let a breeze in as night began falling on the Immortal City, the street lights slowly flickering on along the thousands of streets, one by one. Maddy took off her shoes and lay down on her bed, toes pointing to the ceiling. Her mind moved back and forth, back and forth, over the choice that Jacks had set before her. And she knew there was no sidestepping it. She had to make the decision. Whether right or wrong. She had to make it. Across Angel City, law enforcement and military were preparing to do anything to stop Angels from breaking the law. And that could very well include her.

Raising her arm straight up above her, and then bending her wrist so her hand was parallel to the bed, she looked at the Divine Ring on her finger. As if it had its own energy source, it glowed. She pulled her father’s Divine Ring from the hollow of her neck, where it hung on her mother’s beautiful necklace that she now wore all the time. The two Divine Rings seemed to glow more strongly as they neared each other. Maddy had never noticed it before. She played with moving the rings back and forth, watching the glows change. Her father. What would he want her to do?

Maddy reached down, fishing for the Hermès bag that seemed to have replaced her old Jansport for a lot of things, including carrying books around. She found it and pulled out her father’s old leather notebook Uncle Kevin had given her. She hadn’t looked at it since she passed recommendation for Guardianship.

She flipped through the pages, marvelling at the wide range of her father’s knowledge, his passions, and his wittiness. For maybe the millionth time, she wished to herself that somehow she could have got to know him. That they could have spent time together. Maddy had a strange feeling they’d have got along just fine.

Throughout the notebook were peppered little sayings or riddles her father had inscribed. Just as she was about to put the notebook away, she came across one that caught her eye.

Neither Angel nor Man Can Escape Their Destiny. That Is Both Their Gift and Their Curse.

Closing the notebook, Maddy placed it on the side table and then looked for her phone.

T
he first light of day began creeping across the top of the hills, filtering on to Angel City, a purple glow that slowly grew, piercing the darkness in the still-sleeping metropolis. Fingers of red began peering over the ridges, casting Angel City in a luminous dawn light as the city slowly began to stir at its corners.

Maddy’s Audi threaded its way along the still-dark Mulholland Drive, her headlights slashing around the dark corners as the rosy morning light began filtering from above. She had been up all night; her eyes were red and weary as she drove along the windy road. She swerved to miss a jackrabbit that dashed in front of her wheels, and then was back on course. Maddy knew the way, almost by heart, although she hadn’t driven it too many times. She and Jacks had needed a place they could go where they could be alone. There were too many eager eyes and photographers out there. They needed privacy.

Gravel crunched under her wheels as she pulled off to the side of the road. Maddy turned off the engine, and all was silent. Crickets were still chirping in the sparse underbrush, although a chorus of noisy birds was signalling the coming morning.

Jacks was there already. His Ferrari was parked on the other side of the road, the side that dropped steeply off down into the lower foothills and ravines. The Angel was standing outside his car, his hands thrust in the pockets of his jacket as he waited for Maddy. He turned towards Maddy as he heard her drive up, then turned back to gazing at the view as the lights twinkling in Angel City slowly gave way to dawn.

They were at the lookout where Jacks had taken her on their first date, just before they’d gone flying. A lifetime ago. The dawn light continued stretching further across the Angel City basin, although the imposing hill behind her was still blocking the early sun. It was still quite dark. She could see Jacks standing next to the Ferrari. She could also see the bench they’d been sitting on when Jacks put his coat around her that night. Maddy crossed the dark road and approached the Angel.

“Hi,” Maddy said quietly.

“You’re late,” Jackson said.

“Not too late, Jacks,” Maddy said softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Me neither.” Jacks’s body seemed tense, coiled, waiting for Maddy to speak. He kicked a stone, and it tumbled off the precipice into the dark void that plummeted below.

Maddy stood next to the Angel at the edge of the lookout. Pockets of mist in the ravines were illuminated by the emerging rays of the dawn, and Angel City lay just beyond. An Angel City on the brink of battle.

“Who would have thought that all of this could have happened since we were first here, Jacks?”

Jackson remained silent, his neck tense, his cheekbones taut.

“I didn’t mean for things to happen this way,” Maddy said. “I really didn’t, Jacks.

“I never asked to be this, Jackson. I could have just stayed Maddy Montgomery, waitress at the diner. I never knew what was in me. You helped show me. You showed me until I believed in myself. And then, in the process, I found things I never knew I had, both good and bad. It’s true, I found my inner Angel.

“But someone very important to me once said that the strength of a hero isn’t in her weapons or abilities, but is in an idea. The idea of the right, triumphing, no matter what. He also said that in defence of this idea, she’s willing to put herself in mortal danger. After what happened two days ago, I know now more than ever what that idea was and always should be.

“I’ve always been more human than Angel. I will always be a half-human, half-Angel. The Angels will never fully welcome me into your world. You know it as much as I do. I could never betray my uncle Kevin or Gwen or my mother’s memory,” Maddy said, tears starting to well up in her eyes. “I love you, Jacks, but you have to understand – I have to choose the mortals.”

Jacks’s tense face shifted imperceptibly as Maddy’s words fell upon his ears. He closed his eyes for a moment, slowly, as if physically taking the blow.

Silence hung like a deadly snake in the space between them.

Cautiously, deliberately, Jackson’s eyelids opened. There was something newly dead and dangerous in those blue eyes. His strong hands curled into fists at his sides.

“It’s
him
, isn’t it?” Jacks said. His voice dripped with pain and bitterness.

“Jacks, you’re not understanding. This isn’t about Tom— ”

“I understand pretty clearly, Maddy,” he threw back at her. “You’ve made your choice.”

Maddy felt her body ripple with sadness as she looked at the figure next to her, his nostrils flaring. “Something’s happened to you over the past few months, Jacks. You were never so . . . hard.”

“Something did happen to me, Maddy, remember?” Jacks spat back.

“I’m sorry,” Maddy said, fighting back the overwhelming emotion that just wanted her to break down, fall on her knees, beg for Jacks to forgive her. “I’m sorry for . . . everything.”

Jacks didn’t respond. By now the sun had fully risen over the ragged tops of the hills, bathing all of Angel City in the golden morning light. Buildings glinted in the sun. Jackson took one last look out at the Immortal City before walking to his car. Maddy stood rooted to her spot.

Jacks stopped just before opening his car door and turned back to Maddy.

“Do you want to know why it’s different?” Jackson asked.

“Why what’s different?”

“You asked me in the diner. Our unsanctioned saves. The difference between when I saved you, and when you saved the girl. What’s different?”

“I don’t know, Jacks.”

Jackson’s eyes were unblinking as he looked at Maddy.

“It was different because I loved you,” Jacks said.

The car door closed with a hollow thud as Jacks got in. Snarling to life, the sports car screeched its way down Mulholland, throwing dust and gravel high in the air as Jackson disappeared.

*

The neon sign for Kevin’s Diner had been shut off, and the placard in the window read “CLOSED”. The diner wouldn’t be opening today. Barely even registering the crowd of paparazzi and news vans across the street, Maddy slipped her key in the steel lock and opened the glass door. The bell chimed. Maddy stepped into the restaurant.

Tom got up and gave her a tentative hug. As their bodies touched for a bittersweet, painful moment, she just wanted to cry. She was thinking about the Angel at the outlook, and what she had done to him.

Kevin stood up from the booth where he and the pilot had been sitting over two steaming mugs of coffee, waiting for his niece.

“It’s . . . it’s done,” Maddy said, burying her face in Tom’s shoulder.

“You did the right thing, Maddy,” Tom said, lowering his eyes to her with gentle concern. “You did the right thing.”

Jackson’s footsteps echoed in the great hall as the near-translucent young woman in the fine gold-threaded robe led the young Angel into the chamber. The Council of Twelve rose from their seats as he walked in. His stepfather, Mark, was already there.

“Jacks,” Mark said, embracing his stepson.

Jackson’s face remained strangely neutral.

The enormous televisions mounted on the front walls of the chapel played incessant coverage of the standoff between the U.S. government and the Angels, showing military and police units preparing to occupy NAS offices throughout Angel City and the country. The problem was, they had no idea where the Council was.

“We heard the good news about your wings, young Godspeed,” Uriah said, nodding in his golden robe. “We had nothing but hope for this new technology. And now it has come just in time.”

Gabriel stepped forward, his perfect, ageless features looking at Jackson.

“And so you are sure?” Gabriel asked. “This would be of greatest service to us and your fellow Angels. The act of a true hero, befitting your father.”

Jackson nodded.

The image of Maddy leaning her head against Tom’s shoulder flared again angrily in his mind. She was doing it for
him
. For Tom. She had left Jackson for the human pilot. Jacks’s mind became murky and deadly, pulsing with quick anger and pain whenever he thought about it. He shook his head slightly to get rid of the sensation.

The ADC agent standing to the side handed Jackson one piece of armour at a time. Jacks put each section on deliberately, coldly. Making sure each joint was snapping together, all the seams correctly aligned.

When he was finished, Jackson stepped back and looked at himself in the full-length mirror. His broad shoulders were pronounced, his muscles defined by the contours of the sleek shell. He looked formidable. He was dressed in the sleek, black, modern armour of a Battle Angel.

“It fits you perfectly,” the agent said.

Jacks looked at Gabriel and the Council. A bead of sweat emerged on his forehead. He trembled for a moment, the muscles straining in his neck. Concentrating.

Suddenly, razor-sharp, Jackson’s new wings ripped forth from underneath the battle armour, a full three metres of them, with an enormous
whoosh
. They were bigger than ever. The famous wings glowed blue once again, but this time they were built out partially with titanium, and golden threads of circuitry ran and glowed throughout. The part-Angel, part-robotic circuitry was visible just underneath the strange, translucent skin. They grew brighter and dimmer with each breath he took in and let out. Hot to the touch, the wings were bristling with strength, their metal steaming. They were stunning, utterly intimidating.

“Your Angelic perfection had been sullied, broken,” Gabriel said, admiring the wings. “And you now might be different with these wings on your back. Not entirely Angel. But they might make you better than perfect, my son.”

Jackson turned to Gabriel, cold anger in his voice. “We all have to make sacrifices. As one of the Godspeed class, I am now ready to make mine. We must win. There is no other option. They’ll take away our way of life, if given a chance. We can’t let them do that.”

To Jackson’s side, Mark nodded slowly. Knowingly. “It’s true. We all must fight for what we want to keep.”

Jackson’s shocking blue eyes were distant, bitter.

“I will do it. I will lead us against the humans.”

I
t was dark and cold in the concrete pit known as the Angel City River. What had once been an actual river was now nothing more than a filthy cement gutter running through the overpopulated sprawl of the Angel City basin. Mist hung heavy in the air, forming ghostly halos around the street lamps that lit the river’s graffiti-covered banks. Clusters of insects circled around the lights in the restless night.

Tonight, like most of the year, the river was almost entirely dry, causing the sound of Detective Sylvester’s and Sergeant Garcia’s footsteps to echo eerily in the emptiness as they clambered down the gently sloping concrete. The two carefully made their way down the concrete ravine. The leather of Sylvester’s shoe sole slipped as he descended further towards the bottom, but he steadied himself on a faded and mangled Big Wheel.

Gerald Maze
. The name Minx had given him, weeks ago. It had been a dead end. The detective and Sergeant Garcia had run the name through all the databases, but the most recent data that came up was from eight years ago, and that was out in Imperial County, not Angel City. Maze was likely just one in a sea of nameless nomads, pitching tents at night in the squalid alleys of downtown Angel City, living day by day, bottle by bottle. They’d put out an all-points bulletin on him in the database. And nothing. Then, miraculously, on a stop-and-search by a uniformed cop downtown, he’d popped up. Disturbing the peace: he’d been hollering at passersby while drinking beer out of a Styrofoam cup. He had been prophesying mankind’s doom. He said he’d seen it. Looked into the eyes of doom and lived to tell the tale. ACPD had him drying out in a cell downtown in the Twin Towers jail. Sylvester and Garcia were there in twenty minutes.

The man was borderline delusional, a drunk and a crackpot. A few days in jail would probably improve his situation. Or at least the shower, complimentary from the county, would improve his smell a bit. He may have been antisocial and slightly crazed. But there was something in his eyes that told Sylvester to believe him.

At first, Gerald was suspicious of Sylvester, his eyes rolling wildly in his head. But once he realized the detective might take him seriously – and that he could maybe shave a few days off his jail time – he began talking.

Gerald told them a story. A story about how he’d been down in the dry ravine of the Los Angeles River, looking for something he’d hidden. A bottle, if you must know. He’d hidden it a week ago. Or maybe a month. He couldn’t remember. But he was looking for it.

And that was when he saw
them
.

And smelled them.

The doom. Fire and smoke. He’d heard the men’s screams. Their pleas. Begging to just kill them. He’d seen it all with his own two eyes.

He hadn’t stopped running until he’d reached Santa Fe and Third.

When Sylvester asked him exactly where this happened, Gerald was able to give them specific directions by landmarks. The detective wrote them down. On his way out, he put in a good word for Gerald with the duty officer. “See that he’s out tonight.”

Now Sylvester and Garcia found themselves following Gerald’s path. They were close – Sylvester could somehow sense it. He just needed to see it for himself. He recalled his infuriating meeting with the Council. Gabriel’s flippant attitude. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he just needed to be doing
something
. He just couldn’t sit and wait for it.

Rats large enough to be small cats scattered as Sylvester and Garcia made their way along the river’s left bank, their shoes squishing and crunching over God-knew-what. The hazy blue light of one of the men’s mobile phones glowed in his hand as GPS showed a map of where they were.

The men navigated around myriad bizarre items dumped down the river’s banks and forgotten. A baby carriage. A couch. A mannequin. A boat full of old tyres.

“There’s the boat he mentioned, detective,” Garcia said, motioning.

Sylvester nodded. It was here. Somewhere near.

“Let’s cover this ground here; we’ll move in squares. Something’s got to turn up.”

The two began inspecting the concrete ground in front of them. They moved methodically back and forth across the dry riverbed. Nothing was coming up.

Suddenly, near the bank, Garcia stopped: “Jesus.” The sound of crickets hung in the night. “You’d better come here, David.”

Detective Sylvester walked near the bank. There, on the concrete, was a deep, dark stain. Maybe six metres across. It was blood. The stain was deep, not fresh. It extended to the bank. To a circular opening, one of hundreds that lined the river’s shore.

The cement tunnel was about three metres high, overgrown with algae and mould, and absolutely filthy. Putrid sewer air wafted out at him as Sylvester peered into the tunnel’s gaping mouth.

Garcia’s eyes grew wide as he saw the tunnel. “Are we going in there?”

Sylvester nodded. He wiped his glasses with his shirt. “I am. You don’t have to come, Bill. I’d understand.”

Sergeant Garcia put a hand on the detective’s shoulder. “If you think I’m letting you go in there alone, you’re crazy.” He drew his service revolver.

Sylvester put his hand in the pocket of his overcoat and gripped for comfort the King James Bible he had. Then he, too, drew his pistol.

He turned on a small torch, cutting the darkness with a delicate white beam, and, trembling with anticipation, stepped carefully into the tunnel.

Water sloshed around their feet, and the smell that drifted up to his nose nearly made him gag. Still, they pressed on. The splashing of the water echoed in the tunnel.

Something was different about this tunnel. Something unusual. As he made his way deeper into its stinking blackness, he realized the air was getting . . .
warmer.
The cold, dark air of the river was quickly becoming hot – startlingly hot – and muggy. Beads of sweat jumped out on Sylvester’s forehead and he wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket. His glasses were becoming fogged, difficult to see through. Steam thickened in the air with each step until it was nearly too painful to breathe. Finally, just as Sylvester was thinking about turning back, he saw that the tunnel opened up into a larger, cavernous space, like a large concrete box.

Sylvester put his arm across Garcia’s chest. “Stay here, Bill.”

One step, then another. Sylvester crept towards the open cavern just ahead. He held his breath and stepped forward.

He shone his light into the cavern. The stark beam revealed a steaming charnel house. Sylvester gagged. All around were the filthy rags of the homeless men, their grisly, rotting carcasses somehow stacked into the walls and ceiling, dripping. Half-eaten skulls, rotting limbs, a severed foot still in a shoe. There were dozens upon dozens. A mass grave.

They’d been feeding.

Garcia had approached behind Sylvester. He looked at the scene. The sergeant quickly retreated, stumbling backwards away from the shocking, gory sight. The detective could hear him retching down the tunnel. After finishing, the sergeant walked back to Sylvester.

“They’re not fresh. Couple days, at least,” Sylvester said.

Punctuating the walls were smaller tunnels, all draining their contents into a shallow pool at the bottom of the room. Although the heat remained, there was no sign of the demons. And something in Sylvester’s gut told him they were gone. Had been called. For something else.

“They’re gone?” Garcia said.

“Yes, they’re gone.”

“Maybe they went away for good?” Garcia said.

Detective Sylvester shook his head slowly. Before turning to leave the tunnel, he crossed himself. “May God help us all.”