Angel Fever

Seb shook his head. “I didn’t come in here to argue with you, querida. I’m sorry; I’m just making things worse.” He started to get up. “If you need me, I’m here. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Oh, wait, so you’re not going away after all?” I said, my voice so innocent that it was snide.

Seb stood very still as he regarded me, his jaw tight. “No. I am not going away,” he said.

I stood up too, my head throbbing – and all I could see was the camp, blown to pieces so thoroughly that I didn’t even know if there was anything of Alex left. How could I have been jealous over Seb for even a second, how?

I gripped the table edge; my voice shook. “If you’re staying because of me – then don’t bother, okay? Because I’m sorry, but the answer is no. You can’t be my brother again. Not now, not ever.”

I lay on my bed without moving, still fully dressed. Hours had passed – my brain felt dried out, numb. Propped onto the pillow next to me was one of the photos of Alex. I’d been staring at it for a long time.

His slow, lazy grin. The way his blue-grey eyes had lit up whenever he’d seen me. Even our occasional arguments were moments I’d give anything to have back now.

You promised, I thought bleakly. Alex, you promised that you wouldn’t put yourself in danger again without telling me. Were they just words? How could I love him so much and be so furious with him?

How could I be furious with him at all when he was dead? I shuddered and curled into the fetal position. Slowly, I traced my finger over his mouth in the photo.

“What happened?” I whispered.

Trying to take control of the world’s energy field – it was just insane. Had he wanted to die? I rubbed my temples with cold fingers. No. Alex wouldn’t do that, no matter what. But he’d done something else, hadn’t he?

That emotion I’d sensed when he kissed me before he left: I hadn’t been able to place it then, but I could now. It had been goodbye. Not Goodbye, I’ll see you soon – something far more final. He’d known exactly what he was doing, and what the odds were.

And he’d told me to trust him and left anyway.

With a wordless cry, I wrenched myself up and hurled the pillow across the room. It smashed into the desk, sending the lamp clattering to the floor.

“How could you do this to me?” I screamed. “I wouldn’t have you back now for anything. You lied to me; you broke your promise!”

The black shirt lay nearby; I screwed it into a ball and threw it too. It landed in a puddle of fabric. Not nearly enough. I lunged off the bed after it, started to tear it in half, and then reality hit me: This is almost all I have left of him – and I began to cry instead.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed, clutching the shirt to my chest. “Oh, god, Alex, of course I’d have you back – I want to die without you…”

I lay on the rough carpet and cried until there were no tears left. Finally I sat up and slumped wearily against the desk. My eyes felt gritty, swollen – my hair wild and tangled. Around me, the room was silent, the lamp still lying where it had fallen.

It would stay there until I picked it up: I lived alone now. I could rage, scream, cry all I wanted – Alex would never hear me, and he’d never come back.

16

RAZIEL GLIDED OVER THE RUINS of Chicago, his winged shadow growing larger and then smaller as mounds of rubble rose and fell beneath him. The remains of Navy Pier lay half submerged in Lake Michigan, the girders of a Ferris wheel rusting where they reared up from the water. As Raziel circled it, lyrics from the old human song went through his head: Chicago, that toddling town…

Scattered through the wreckage were campfires and makeshift shelters. Raziel took in a shattered Dunkin’ Donuts: inside were camp beds, stacks of canned food. He’d never understood why some humans were so determined to stay in the ruins of the destroyed cities, but their energy tended to be quite delicious.

Cruising over a few people fishing with makeshift poles, he chose a man with a ponytail and an aura of vibrant blue. Scant moments later, the fishing pole had been dropped and the man was gaping up at him.

“Keith, you okay?” said someone.

Keith blinked as Raziel, sated, finally withdrew. “The angels love us,” he murmured, and then began shouting, scrambling up the debris-covered bank. “Guys, you guys! We’ve all been wrong! We need to go to an Eden and let them take care of us—”

Raziel was already soaring away. Inspecting a new Eden being built in Joliet had given him the chance to come here and indulge, to take his mind off things: there was nothing like the energy of a free thinker. Even so, he had plans to clamp down soon on the humans who resisted his Edens – their failure to comply irked him.

Failure to comply brought Kara Mendez to mind; he scowled as the half-finished walls of the new Eden came into view.

When it had come time to transport Kara to Salt Lake Eden, Raziel had, just as he’d planned, engineered things so that she could make a run for it. For if Willow and the others were still alive, why not let feisty little Kara lead him to them? If they weren’t, it would be simple to recapture Kara and present her to the Salt Lake hordes after all.

Except that it hadn’t been simple – because her microchip hadn’t worked.

He’d been in his Denver office when he got the news. “It what?” he’d asked, stunned.

“It, um…appears to have malfunctioned,” repeated the miserable lackey at the other end. “She got away like you told us, but now there’s no trace of her.”

“How?” Raziel had demanded from between clenched teeth.

“We don’t know. I promise, sir, we’ve had no problems at all with these chips before. It’s as if she was… was protected from it somehow—”

He’d hung up, uninterested in pointless excuses. And scarcely an hour later, he’d authorized for that particular lackey to enter the general feeding pool. No point sheltering an imbecile.

That had been over six months ago; no sign of Kara since. Not technically a defeat – hardly anyone knew he’d had her – but it grated.

More than grated, it was unnerving: far too reminiscent of other things that seemed to be slipping from his control. There were definitely murmurs of dissent now from the other angels. Not many, perhaps, but enough to bother him, enough for him to keep Bascal’s force well-maintained and ready to defend his empire at a moment’s notice. Yet he did not want this to happen. For if there was civil war, then what exactly would he be left in charge of?

It won’t happen – they wouldn’t be that stupid, Raziel told himself, and wished he believed it. He glided into the high, peaked roof of the newly completed church and changed back to his human self. He was now in a luxurious apartment of muted blues and golds, with an office adjacent. In every Eden, they completed the church first, with special quarters for him.

He went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He studied himself.

Seven months after the Separation, he was finally getting used to the silence inside his head. But some angels had refused to try – the loss of their psychic connection on top of the Council members’ deaths had apparently been too much.

Raziel had seen footage of one of the now-infamous “final parties”: a group of over twenty angels, at first simply enjoying a lavish gathering. Then they’d all stood in a circle, their shining wings touching, and one by one had stated their names:

I am Vardan. I cannot live this way.

I am Dascar. I cannot live this way.

And at a given signal, each angel had taken a knife and reached for the halo of the angel next to them.

There’d been dozens of these suicide parties; maybe more that Raziel hadn’t heard about.