Angel Fever

square, firing upwards; others raced for the ladders leading to the roofs.

Seb sent his own angel out. A girl slipped and fell; as an angel swarmed in for the kill, Seb dived to block him. He and the snarling angel battled briefly, wings colliding with sparks. There was gunfire, and the angel vanished in a burst of light.

The girl scrambled up and ran, still firing into the sky – and Seb registered her aura. A second ago it had looked normal; now it had shrunk close to her body. It flickered, growing larger and then small again.

Abruptly, Seb’s attention snapped back to the battle – his angelic body darted aside as a spray of bullets tore past, and his human self shot another angel, catching it as it went high.

Alex was firing like a machine, his finger barely pausing on the trigger. Then he glanced across the square and clapped Seb’s arm. “Come on – they’re heading north.”

They broke cover from the diner and ran, firing upwards. Seb caught a glimpse of Jonah up in the town hall tower, talking urgently into a mic – and then a group of angels converged on him in a frenzy. Seb’s heart sank; he slowed down as he shot at them, but Jonah had vanished in a haze of wings.

Seb and Alex plunged into the streets north of the square; all around, Seb could see auras doing that same flickering. He winced as an angel managed to grab hold of one and rip it away – the fighter fell. But nearby, another angel veered off with a furious screech as an aura shrank to nothing. Willow? Seb thought, dazed.

Quickly, he checked on her again; the energy roaring through her tingled at his scalp. She’d opened the gate, then. You can do it, querida, he thought as he and Alex ran, footsteps pounding as they tried to get ahead of the angels. Just keep going – you can do it.

The street took them to a residential neighbourhood. Alex paused, scanning the sky. Over the centre of town it was still a churning white, the angels now behind them and heading their way.

“We need to get onto a roof, fast,” Alex said. “Damn it, these houses aren’t fortified – how are you at climbing?”

“I was a thief, remember?”

Alex nodded tensely. “Okay, take one of these; I’ll go a few streets over. Just hold them back, no matter what.”

Seb had no intention of doing anything else. He could sense that the angels were looking for Willow – and just then the air started to throb with the force of what she was doing. Seb swore; it wouldn’t be long now before they realized and took off past the town to stop her.

As Alex raced off, other fighters came pouring into the street; Seb shouted out hasty instructions as the first few angels appeared. He quickly chose a house and started towards it – and then a flurry of action caught his gaze.

A tall girl with long auburn hair, sprinting for the houses. She turned and shot at an angel; nothing happened. It dived – her aura was low but not low enough—

With no thought, Seb went hurtling towards her; he tackled her to the ground just as his own angel swooped to defend them. He could feel her heartbeat crashing against his, and then his human self rolled off her, firing upwards. The angel burst into light and vanished.

For a second Seb lay breathing hard. Don’t scare me like that, chiquita – I thought I’d lost you. And then he realized that of course the girl beside him wasn’t Meghan at all.

Rachel scrambled to her feet. “Thank you!” she gasped. “I ran out of cartridges – I thought I was going to die—”

Stunned, Seb got up too. He swallowed hard and glanced behind him. The first few angels, dead now, had been ahead of the others; just behind were a thousand more.

The sight galvanized him. “Hurry! Take cover!”

As Rachel ran off, Seb leaped up onto a window sill; after a quick scramble, he gripped the rough, sloped surface of the roof and pulled himself onto it. Other fighters had gotten onto roofs too; they waited tensely in position all up and down the street.

The angels hit in a rush, turning the sky white even with their depleted numbers. The roof was slick with frost. Seb crouched beside the chimney, bracing himself against it as he shot again and again. More shooting came from the houses nearby – the air was full of confetti, of flashing wings that dived straight at him.

Seb pivoted himself frantically around the chimney as he shot, his feet sometimes slipping a few inches, his angel protecting his back. His jaw was tight. He couldn’t think now about what had just happened; he only knew he felt a raging sorrow inside, a fury at his own stupidity that made him want to tear apart every angel he saw with his bare hands.

Then, for a moment, everything seemed to hang suspended, even the angels. A sense of gathering power grew. Above, the sky lightened to an ominous white; to the north, a swirling vortex had appeared, an angry eye peering down from the heavens.

In the physical world, everything had gone still; on the ethereal level, it felt as if Seb were standing in the path of an oncoming train. The angels seemed to realize all at once what was happening; with roars of rage they began streaming to the north, ignoring the fighters now in their hurry to get to Willow.

Swearing, Seb swivelled around the chimney, firing at the angels as they passed. One of them grabbed for his flickering life force but missed as Seb’s angel quickly shielded him.

Then a burst of gunfire came from across the street, tearing through his angel’s ethereal body. Seb cried out, twisting in agony. At the same moment, the corner of the chimney exploded into flying fragments of brick.

It was like being hit by a truck. Dimly, Seb knew he was slipping down the slick roof – he was falling. The ground slammed into him.

He couldn’t move. Dios mio, the pain – he was broken.

Meggie, he thought in a daze. Oh, my love, please forgive me. I was so stupid – so blind…

His thoughts faded until there was only blackness. Seb lay without moving, his curls damp with blood and melting snow.

At the moment when the world seemed to still, Alex cursed harshly – he had a feeling he knew exactly what was coming next. He scrambled down from the house where he’d been shooting and took off at a run, charging through the streets of Pawntucket as the first faint swirls of the vortex appeared.

He passed a fallen fighter: a girl holding one of the machine guns. Shoving aside his feelings, he snatched up the weapon and kept going, his footsteps thudding through his brain. Somehow he managed to pull ahead of the angels.

In less than a minute, he’d gone beyond the third buffer zone. The streets lay empty. As an ethereal wind began to howl, Alex chose a house on the edge of town and flung himself at it, scaling it quickly. Too late, he realized it was one that had been made unstable by the quakes – the wood creaked alarmingly under his feet – but there was no time to change.

As he hefted himself onto the roof, he caught a glimpse of snowy fields beyond the edge of town – and the hill on the horizon where the girl he loved was fighting for everything they believed in. The vortex moved above her like a pale, swirling bruise.

Hang on, babe, you can do it, he thought hurriedly – then braced himself against the chimney and spun to face the town. He could just see other fighters heading this way, knew they wouldn’t get here in time. Because coming right towards him was a raging river of white, as a thousand angels bore down.

Alex set his jaw; he swung his rifle over his back and raised the machine gun to his shoulder. “You are not getting past me,” he muttered down the barrel. “Try to touch her and you die.”

As the first angels came into range, Alex started shooting, picking off halos – he swept from left to right, then back again, seeing nothing but the gleaming circles. Angels exploded with furious screams; wings seemed to tangle and churn in a maelstrom of white.

The angels at the front burst out in all directions – some went high, some tried to veer around. “Don’t even think it,” murmured Alex.

He shot at a pale blur off to the side; whipped the weapon around to get another; shot at a third with no