buildings hovered like ocean liners on a sea of mist. When Jacks spoke again, his voice was little more than a whisper in the wind.
“Listen. This will probably be the worst pain you have ever experienced in your life. Everything in your body will tell you to let go, but you have to hold on. You have to hold on, Maddy, no matter what. No matter how badly it hurts.
You can never, never let go. Can you do that for me?”
Maddy nodded. She crossed her arms around his neck and gripped her elbows with as much strength as her hands would bring to bear. Jacks wrapped his arms around her arms, pulling them so tightly around his body she winced.
Banking steeply, they soared toward the towers of glass.
The Angels behind them had gained. Maddy didn’t need to look back. She could hear the hiss of the wind over their wings. Jacks rushed forward with disorienting speed.
She watched as a towering building emerged from the fog like a ghost. It quickly eclipsed her vision, a wall of glass rushing eagerly to greet them. Jacks didn’t change course.
He didn’t slow down. Maddy felt a primal panic well up inside her. She watched the wall approach until she could see her reflection in it. The raw terror overpowered her rational thinking, and she screamed. In that exact instant, Jacks buckled at the waist, pumped his wings, and wrenched Maddy straight down.
They dove. Viciously. The thrust nearly tore her off Jacks’s back. It was like the first big drop of a roller coaster — except excruciating instead of fun. Every cell of her body screamed at her to let go. Pleaded. The tearing sensation in her arms and fingers was overwhelming. Blood drained from her head.
They flew directly down the tower’s surface, so close she could touch it, so fast it appeared as a single, unbroken sheet of glass. A strange popping noise filled her ears, and she realized the windows were exploding as they passed. A wave of shattering glass pursued them as they rushed toward the fast-approaching ground.
Maddy’s eyes opened in agonized slits and she saw the street. It was like death itself rushing up at her. Then, with impossible precision, Jacks leveled and shot straight forward over the ground. Streetlights, signs, cars: all flew by at deadly speeds, missing them by inches.
The acceleration bled away and Maddy found she could breathe again. She looked back. Sure enough, the first Angel had been pulled into Jacks’ trap. He was not as nimble — or as strong — as Jacks, and as he leveled, his wing caught on a streetlamp, sending him tumbling over the pavement and taking several parked cars with him.
“Are you okay?” Jacks’s voice was strained with exertion.
“Yes,” Maddy gasped. She hazarded another look behind her.
“There’s two now!” she shrieked.
“Hang on.”
Zigzagging through the jungle of downtown, Jacks banked hard and low. Maddy looked up at a gaping concrete mouth. They were going into a tunnel. She heard the snap of air as one of the Angel agents swooped in right behind them.
The tunnel was bathed in an eerie blue-green. Headlights reflected off the tunnel’s glossy ceiling, giving it a cold, futuristic feel. Up ahead Maddy could see a row of orange lights coming right at them. She heard the blare of the semitruck’s horn. The sound seemed to come from everywhere all at once. Jacks put on more speed. The big rig bore down on them, filling the claustrophobic tunnel, its trailer only a few feet from the tunnel’s ceiling. Maddy realized with sickening certainty they were going up over the top.
They would have to squeeze through the tiny gap between the top of the truck’s trailer and the ceiling of the tunnel.
“Do you trust me?” Jacks yelled. Maddy pressed her lips against his ear.
“Yes!”
In an instant, Jacks rolled so they were flying flat against the ceiling. Maddy pressed her body against Jacks’s chest, knowing that if she moved, she would be killed. They slipped over the top of the truck, instant death mere inches away. Maddy felt, more than heard, the impact behind them as the agent collided with the semi. The shock of the Angel’s body against the windshield clapped her ears like a bomb.
Jacks rolled level as they soared over the tops of the cars behind the semi. They approached the end of the tunnel, the damp night air getting closer.
Maddy looked back. Nothing.
“I don’t see anyone!”
“What?!” Jacks yelled.
Maddy squinted to be sure.
Before Maddy could respond, she felt the crushing impact from above.
A gloved hand wrapped around Maddy’s wrist. The crackling voice was older and surprisingly genteel through the black mask.
“Hello, Madison.”
Jacks thrashed his wings and rammed hard against the Angel, then dove. The agent’s grip on Maddy’s arm ripped loose painfully, and he fell back behind them. As he flew in evasive maneuvers, Jacks’s eyes scanned the sky, his head darting back and forth, until he trained on a hazy, blinking light above them. A chance.
“Maddy,” he yelled, banking sharply and preparing to climb. “I need you to hang on for me one more time. Will you do it for me?”
“I’ll try,” she said weakly.
Jacks wrapped her arms in his vise-like grip and, using his last ounce of strength, climbed straight up like a rocket into the night sky. The weight of the acceleration was crushing against Maddy’s small frame. Faster. Higher. Her eyes became long tunnels as the blood rushed out of her head.
Jacks’s voice echoed somewhere far away.
She simply didn’t have any more strength in her fingers as they began slipping. The world began to recede. Her eyes closed as the blackout swept over her. She barely heard the sound of the jet engines growing closer or felt the sizzling heat as they passed through the jet wash. The next thing Maddy knew, she could feel metal below her feet.
Groggy, she opened her eyes. She saw riveted metal and glowing, round windows. They were on the wing of an airliner. Jacks maintained balance on the wing as the 747 banked to land at LAX. He pulled Maddy close against the side and they waited there, unmoving. The metal of the roaring aircraft was frigid against Maddy’s skin. She watched a woman inside the plane as she glanced out her window. The passenger’s eyes grew wide, and her mouth hung open as she took in the image of the two of them on the wing.
They left the airliner moments before the 747 touched down. Jacks flew them low over the palm trees until black, silent canals came into view. The pungent smell of stagnant water filled Maddy’s nostrils as they landed and Jacks pulled her under a white footbridge. They sat there next to the water, listening for anything. The lap of the canal was the only sound. Otherwise it was silent. Nothing.
For the moment, they were safe.
“Are you okay?” Jacks asked, panting, exhausted.
“I think so. What about you?” Maddy asked.
“I will be.”
“Was that. .?”
“Yes,” he said. “Those were Council Disciplinary Agents.”
“This is all my fault,” Maddy said quietly.
“No, it’s not. You had no idea.”
“I forced you to go to see my uncle when you knew the danger, and now”— her breath caught—“I’ve put him in danger too.”
“He’ll be okay, Maddy.”
They sat there listening to the lap of the water.
