“Lindsey, take the kids upstairs.”
The woman picked up the younger girl, and the three rushed up the stairs.
The man stepped aside, gesturing to the open door. “You can’t stay here.”
“Of course. I wasn’t gonna, sir. I was just… Thank you,” I said as I walked by him. When the door closed, I turned and banged on it. “My backpack,” I said. “I left my backpack.”
“Go away before I call the Guardians.”
Did he mean cops? Damn it, I should’ve swiped a jacket or at least begged for one, because outside was a frickin’ icebox. I rubbed my shoulders and winced when I touched the wound, but otherwise, I felt much better now than when I’d entered last night, and my belly was still full. I hadn’t eaten that well in over a month.
On the street, a few people stared but kept moving in one direction, north from here. I didn’t want any trouble with cops or whoever patrolled this place, and I doubted the guy would open the door again. My home was southeast of Bel Air, so I moved down the street in that direction.
Townhomes. Rows of townhomes. Family homes, judging by the people coming in and out of them. Kids yelled, dogs barked, cats sat at the windows, so this was no fantasyland. It was LA, albeit with some modifications. As I rounded yet another sharp corner, I spotted the Pacific. I paused, relieved and grounded in the familiar. I am sane.
The street I came into was wide and much busier than the ones before. The cars, nothing more than plain metal boxes with a few windows, glided about a hundred feet over the unpaved roads. No wheels. Nothing under the metal boxes. In the ground, thin metal poles had been installed that blinked on top. These seemed to guide the car air traffic.
Underneath the cars, people walked. Nobody looked surprised. Only I gaped, because above the air traffic, angels flew northbound, hundreds of them. A legion. They made my heart race. I better get moving. I crossed the street and headed toward where I imagined my home would be.
And I kept walking for what felt like an hour in the freezing cold. Nothing looked familiar. Not the coffee shops I passed, not the restaurants or traffic, not even the way people dressed. The men wore those tall hats one would see in a historical movie, and only a few women wore pants rather than long skirts. My teeth chattered, and I stopped, mad, desperate, confused. “What is going on here?” I shouted.
A man bumped into my arm. Ouch. He kept running, throwing a “Sorry” over his shoulder. More men ran up the street. People moved about their business.
An angel landed in front of me. He wore a gold-plated breastplate and black leather pants. I backed away and patted my back pocket, only then remembering I was unarmed. Suppressing the urge to flee, I remained in place.
“Regiment number?” he demanded.
“What?”
“The number of your regiment?”
“I don’t have a regiment.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-one.”
He whistled, and another angel joined him. He looked me up and down, stroking his chin.
“Light brown medium-length hair, brown eyes, looking lost and confused.” He smiled. “Great find, brother. I’ve searched the entire city for her.”
Nervous, I smiled back.
“Let’s go.” He grabbed my arm, and I yelped in pain as his fingers dug into my wound.
“Hey, don’t touch me.”
The other grabbed my other arm, and as I struggled against them as they dragged me, I forgot about the wings—until they spread them wide and over my head, and we lifted. I kicked and screamed. This was how humans died. Angels played around and then dropped people, watching us splatter our brains out on the pavement.
They flew fast and high and hard. The wind blew my hair and chilled my bones, and I screamed above the traffic. That was when I saw it. All of it.
There was one wide street where people walked away from a single massive fortress in place of that Bel Air house I’d left. My neighborhood, a block away from a huge high school stadium, should’ve come into view.
This was no Los Angeles, though this city might be sitting at the edge of the Pacific. It wasn’t Long Beach, Santa Clara, San Diego, or even San Francisco. The entire city sat on a mountain with the houses bunched together in a dark-gray, snow-topped cluster.
As the wind whipped my hair back, I still hoped I’d find my street, my house, Lucky, the three-legged dog two houses down from me. He used to pee on our lawn every morning. Sometimes he pooped too, and Mr. Rogers picked it up with a plastic bag.
Instead, I spotted a marching army. Rows and rows of humans all dressed like me, white on white against the snow-covered roads. Armed with spears instead of guns, they followed on foot as a legion of angels flew overhead toward the ocean.
Everyone in the city seemed to be moving south.
The angels were carrying me north, toward the damned fortress.
This couldn’t be good for me.
Chapter Four
The angels ascended toward the structure I’d come from yesterday, the house in Bel Air that was no longer the house or Bel Air, the last place I wanted to be. When one angel called the place the House of Command, it definitely sounded like I was living a nightmare in a military angel-occupied city, where humans on the ground weren’t afraid of angels above.
This hadn’t been the case only last month or even yesterday, when humans scattered the second they spotted an angel in the sky. If they got one of us, we fell and broke, and they laughed and laughed, their voices musical and beautiful, like the laughter of the man I met last night. Except, he didn’t have wings.
The angels flying me flared out theirs. Fearing they’d drop me, I closed my eyes.
We jerked back.
“We’re landing,” one explained. “Feet up and out of the way.”
Snapping my eyes open, I bent my legs at the knees,
