Immortal City

The refrigerator whirred back on, and the TV in the living room blinked to life.

“—Manhunt under way for Angel Jackson Godspeed. .” a reporter was announcing under a scrolling breaking news banner.

Outside, the neighborhoods of Angel City lit up one by one along the grid as power was restored. The man with the dog suddenly looked directly at Maddy standing in the open window and vanished. He disappeared in a literal blur and was gone, leaving the dog to look around inquisitively and sniff at its lifeless leash.

Maddy turned toward Jacks, breathless.

His face was twisted in sudden despair.

“How much time do we have?” she asked.

He grabbed her by the back of her hoodie and pulled her away from the window.

“It’s already too late.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

From Maddy’s point of view, three things seemed to happen simultaneously. First, the house itself seemed to simply explode. The windows, which a moment before had been cold and still and covered in raindrops, suddenly disinteg-rated into a thousand glittering pieces. The front door disappeared, blown into razor-sharp splinters that knifed their way through the living room. In the kitchen, utensils, tea-cups, and plates were tossed into the air like lethal confetti.

Second, something collided violently with Jacks.

Maddy saw it only out of the corner of her eye. It came through the window, moving so fast it was nothing more than a blur in her peripheral vision. A blur with wings.

Jacks was propelled backward through the furniture and in-to the old TV, which gave a buzzing death cry as it shattered.

Third, as she turned to look back at Jacks, Maddy felt the fingers of an iron grip wrap around her throat. Another winged blur had come through the living room window, and this one had come for her.

She flew backward like a pinball, hitting the wall of school photos and sending most of the frames shattering to the floor. The impact was so violent she was momentarily disoriented. Angel blood. . perversion of nature. . Council will kill you if they can. The words mixed with a strange image of a dark figure with glowing eyes. She must be dreaming. She had to be imagining the phantom before her.

The need for oxygen brought Maddy suddenly, painfully back to the present. She was staring into an expressionless black mask with gleaming, computerized eyes. The Angel stood larger than Jacks by nearly a foot, was muscularly built, and wore some kind of futuristic black armor that covered his entire body. His wings were armored too and black, like bat wings. Whatever Maddy had imagined Angel Police would look like, it wasn’t this. The mask made the Angel look like a ghoulish robot.

Her mouth opened to scream, but the vise-like hand that was around her throat simply tightened and choked off the sound. She flailed. She clawed at the enormous arms and willed her feet to move, but the Angel’s grip constricted like a snake. Her knees buckling under her, Maddy felt her body surrender. The Angel lifted her by her neck and threw her against the far wall.

She heard the crack as her head smacked against the stone fireplace. A high-pitched ringing began in her left ear.

She tried to roll over and scramble away, but the Angel was over her at once, pinning her to the ground. His speed and strength were spectacular. Overwhelming and absolute. She saw a heavy glass paperweight sitting on a stack of bills on the corner table, grabbed it, and swung it at the Angel’s head. He caught her arm midswing. She heard the crackle of a radio from somewhere within the mask. The voice was cold and indifferent.

“I have the girl. Prepare for extraction.”

It was already over.

Behind her, in the direction of the kitchen, Maddy heard a male scream. She recognized it at once. Kevin. She had never heard him scream before. The sound made her blood run cold. This was all her fault. She had led them to a trap.

Maddy looked into the masked Angel’s glowing, electronic eyes. His mouth was hidden, but Maddy had the strangest feeling that he was grinning at her.

In an instant, the glowing eyes looked up, as if in surprise.

Jacks’s hand whistled through the air, catching the Angel’s arm and bending it in an impossible angle. Jacks’s other fist blurred, his Divine Ring a flick of light in the dark room, landing a crushing blow into the black mask.

The look on Jackson’s face was something she had never seen before. His eyes flared, ferocious. They burned with a kind of fire. Maddy could only think of one word to describe it: wrath. His mouth opened to release an inhuman roar. Wings burst from behind him, broad and menacing. Maddy’s mind flickered back to what Jacks had told her at the outlook: a Battle Angel’s wings.

The black Angel came at Jacks again. He thrust his hand forward as she had seen Jacks do in the diner and at the street corner, but Jacks was faster. For a moment the Immortals shimmered in time, flickering like television static. Maddy saw Jacks blur a hand around the Angel’s leg, and with a howl of rage on his lips, he threw the winged creature into the wall.

Jackson’s murderous eyes shot back to Maddy.

“Are you okay?” he thundered.

“I think so.”

The sound of Kevin’s screams came back to her. She struggled to her feet and stumbled into the kitchen.

Maddy found Kevin sitting against the cabinets below the sink. A jagged cut on his forehead had begun to ooze blood. The candles that he had so carefully set up were now cracked and broken on the floor around him. The scrapbook sat mangled in the corner, its pages wrenched out, pictures scattered everywhere. One of the photos had caught on an overturned candle and was starting to burn.

“Kevin!” Maddy screamed.

“I’ll be fine!” Kevin yelled. Another explosion shook the walls as more winged silhouettes crashed into the house.

Steps thundered on the stairs as they swooped down from above. The siege’s noose was tightening around them.

“You have to go now,” Kevin said, and looked at Jacks. “Fly!”

They would only have a moment to escape or never.

Jacks’s wild eyes were on Maddy, but he didn’t move.

He waited for her decision. Maddy looked in Kevin’s eyes.

Something in them didn’t want her to go, but begged her to all the same.

“Okay,” Maddy said, turning to Jacks. “Let’s go.”

She felt his heavy arm scoop her up and had only a moment to dig her nails into his skin before they were torn skyward. They shot through the jagged opening of the window, Jacks’s wings thrashing the air, and climbed into the foggy night.

The wet rushing air burned against Maddy’s face.

Compared to now, the first time they had gone flying had been a leisurely stroll. Now they rocketed through the night, ferociously, painfully. Angel City receded below them until it was nothing more than an indistinct glow. The night fog enveloped them.

The muscles of Jacks’s back rose and fell with the exertion of his wings. Maddy looked back through the lashing air. She saw nothing at first, just the fog and inky black night. Then the unmistakable outline of Angel wings emerged. Three dark shapes were coming toward them in the dark, their yellow eyes glowing like banshees’.

“There are three of them!” she yelled over the rush of the wind. Slowly, surely, the pursuing Angels seemed to be nearing. Maddy watched helplessly as they began to close the gap.

Then, through a break in the fog, she spotted it. The Los Angeles skyline. In the foggy night the twinkling