Angel Fever

pause. A fourth, a fifth…twenty…fifty shards of light rained down as he fired, not bothering to check if he’d missed or not. They would not reach Willow – there was no other option.

The angels behind hurtled towards him in a steady stream. When Alex had shot the machine gun dry, he swung the rifle into position; he moved mechanically across the halos again, firing over and over. The falling light was a blizzard now. Angels darted out from its depths.

Alex somehow held them off again and again – but they were advancing steadily; he felt his control slipping – and suddenly they were on him in full, screaming force.

Shit. He flung himself onto the cold, frosty roof; with an outraged groan, it buckled under him. As he struggled to hold on, a hundred angels surged around him, all straining for his life force. He couldn’t shoot the rifle single-handed; he swore and let the weapon drop – briefly considered letting himself fall, too, though the floor below him was gone.

No. If he was going to die, he’d go out fighting. And though he could barely see through the haze of wings, Alex reached in his waistband for his pistol.

37

I STOOD POISED BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.

It felt as if my hair were crackling with electricity. The energy surged through me – that of the angelic world strengthening our own, rushing out over the planet. In both dimensions, willow branches stirred in the cold wind as I rode the energy’s crest…and used it to reach out to all humanity.

Millions of people. Billions. Lives, names, images flashed past too quickly to take in: damaged with angel burn, undamaged, young, old, of every colour and creed. Slowly, as the power increased even more, my arms spread out from my sides. My angel lifted up out of me and hovered above, bright and shining.

Let me help you, I thought, and didn’t even know where the words had come from. Please. It’s time.

I stood caught in the hurricane between worlds; I was the centre of everything. I felt detached, focused – even though I somehow knew that Raziel was racing towards me, his wings eating up the miles as he was carried along by the surging energy. Even though I knew that in my hometown below, a thousand angels had started heading my way.

It didn’t matter. Because now it wasn’t only those who’d once been near me whose energy was straining towards me – it was all humanity’s. And this time I was taking control, doing exactly what needed to be done.

The energy seethed across the earth, leaping from person to person. It felt as if dazzling light was streaming out from my fingertips – though when I risked a dazed glance, my hands looked the same as always. Dizzying swathes of information were roaring past – knowledge of every person on the planet. Blurred images of spiral ladders: the building blocks of humankind, morphing and shifting under my direction along with the very earth itself – the boundaries of our dimension.

In the angelic world, an enraged crowd of angels had gathered, kept at bay by the swirling power. And though I was shifting things in their world too…I knew it wasn’t me they wanted.

My outspread arms began to shake as the energy force whipped around the planet again and again, using me as a conduit. I cried out as its raging power almost knocked me off my feet; I couldn’t control this for much longer…

My angel quickly took the bulk of it on herself. The powerful force screamed past, howling through both her ethereal body and my physical one – if I moved even an eyelash now, I’d be torn to shreds. I gritted my teeth, trembling, as oceans raged and lashed at me. I could feel my angel being battered – hurt – yet still she stayed in place. Oh god, how much longer? I couldn’t hold on – I couldn’t—

And then…it was done.

I let out a gasping breath. Somehow I knew not to break the connection yet. Instead, I gradually let the power recede: the angelic energy field was still connected with our own, but it was more placid now. My angel crept feebly inside me.

The last vestiges of power still sizzled around me, holding back the angels in the other world. The massive army from town hadn’t reached me yet and I dimly wondered why. If they had, there’d been enough of them to break through – they’d have killed me in seconds.

But another angel had arrived.

I opened my eyes and saw Raziel standing just outside the bare branches of the willow tree, his face contorted in fury. My muscles shuddered with exhaustion as we regarded each other. I knew that the second I dropped hold of the energy, he’d try to kill me. Because he knew exactly what I’d done – I’d made sure that every angel in existence knew.

“How dare you?” he hissed.

“There are lots of other gates now,” I said levelly. “I’ve opened them all around the world. They’ll close in a minute – and when they do, they’ll draw every angel here right back through them. You’re never coming back here again.”

Around us, the willow branches rustled – the same branches that had moved around him and my mother that winter night twenty years ago. Raziel’s eyes burned into mine.

“I had an empire here – an empire!” he spat. “A minute will be more than enough time to kill you, my darling daughter. And I plan to do it with my bare hands.”

His bare hands. The same ones that had plunged so eagerly into my mother’s life force. My spine turned to steel.

“You know, you were right,” I told him quietly. “Genocide isn’t something I’m capable of. But patricide…I think I can live with that.”

I dropped the energy and stepped away from the gate.

With a quick shift to his angel form, Raziel lunged at me – and then jerked back with a yelp as the river of attacking angels surged through from the other world. I could feel their rage that they’d been stranded, left to die. Raziel disappeared under a frenzy of wings; the willow’s ethereal branches churned, while the physical willow tree shifted gently, stirred only by the breeze.

Below, I could see the army of angels now, their bodies shining as they neared the park. I still couldn’t turn away from the melee before me. My arms prickled as Raziel screamed – a high, terrible sound that was cut short. Then snowy fragments came drifting on the air, glinting as they caught the light…like the rainbows my mother had loved so much.

I let out a long, ragged breath.

“Goodbye, Father,” I said.

The words had barely left my mouth when the gate’s surface churned and yawned open. I jogged a few hasty steps back. An immense rushing noise came, like the ocean crashing over a ship.

And then the gate started to do exactly what I’d designed it to.

The angels who’d attacked Raziel vanished first, the energy reeling in their bright, struggling bodies almost lazily; then it picked up speed, and the angels who’d been surging towards me from Pawntucket were drawn through in a panicked tumble of wings. Angelic screams, glimpses of stunned, frightened faces.

The noise grew deafening, a roar that shook the ground, as the gate pulled them in faster and faster – I fell to my knees, crying out and clapping my hands over my ears. I couldn’t even see angels any more: just a sparkling river of light that led into the willow tree as thousands were drawn through, from miles away.

But I could sense their despair – their certainty that what had happened here was a judgement on them. In their gamble with our world, they’d lost almost everything that had made them angels.

When it was all over, there was silence.

I rose slowly, staring at the willow tree, with its shimmering, frosty branches. Ice skirted the edge of the pond; above, a few patches of blue were showing through the clouds. It all looked just the same. As if the last half-hour had never happened at all.

Then, with a chill, I realized something had changed. My angel. Oh god, the way the energy had battered so fiercely at her – I reached for her in a panic. In