Jacks screamed as he felt his wings emerge from his back and catch fire. The licking black flames left no burns. The fire wasn’t consuming his body. It was consuming his immortality. It was literally eating the Angel inside him. The pain was like glass coursing through his veins.
The beast threw him back down on the roof. He crumpled against the concrete, helpless. He could suddenly feel his mortal body. It felt feeble. Breakable. Even the ground underneath him was all of a sudden hard and uncomfortable. He watched as the figure approached, eyes dark and pitiless.
“What’s the matter, Jacks, aren’t you going to resist?
Aren’t you going to fight back?” Jacks said nothing.
“You surprise me, Jackson. I thought you had more in you, but, I guess, well. .”
The fist smashed into Jacks’s face, sending his head violently against the ground. Something wet dripped from his nose. Then he felt the kick of a boot up under his rib, snapping it. He cried out. He couldn’t help it. He had never felt his body break.
“The great Jackson Godspeed.” The figure laughed.
“Look at him now.”
Jacks’s eyes grew distant as he was beaten. His mind left this place, left this rooftop, and went to the only place he wanted to be. With her. He imagined they really had gotten out on that train. He imagined they had escaped. He thought about sitting next to her, watching Angel City slip away outside the window. He would have joked about getting used to life without his Ferrari, and she would have rolled her eyes and given him a hard time. In the end she would just look into his eyes like she always did. She would look into his eyes and only see him. Not the famous celebrity, just him.
White-hot agony finally broke through the fantasy.
His head was being pushed into the concrete again and again. Blood streamed from his mangled lips. He let the pain flow freely though him now. Welcomed it. Yearned for it. It wouldn’t be much longer now. The end would come soon.
He was pulled onto his knees, and the figure stood over him, a brutal grin on his face.
“Don’t worry,” the voice said. “Despite your really pathetic performance tonight, I’ll still make sure your wings get to your star.” Jackson looked up through blurred eyes and saw a vicious-looking knife. The ten-inch blade glinted in the moonlight.
Maddy sprinted up the stairs as fast as her feet could move, her sneakers skipping up the concrete steps. Adrenaline rushed into her veins as she saw a pale shaft of moonlight filtering down from up ahead. She was close. Finally, she saw a door at the top of the stairwell with a sign that warned ROOF ACCESS. CAUTION: HELIPAD. No time to think now. No time to imagine what might be waiting for her on the other side of the door. She reached for the door handle and exploded out onto the rooftop.
She saw the moon, pale and huge as it rose behind the tower. Then her eyes adjusted, and she saw Jacks. He was on his knees, as if praying or kneeling before an altar. What was left of his clothes hung in tatters around his shattered body, and his wings were draped limply across his back.
Their beautiful blue luminescence had almost totally faded to nothing.
“Jackson!” she screamed.
He didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to hear her. The Jacks she knew had gone out of him. Then she saw the shadowy figure standing over him. As she watched, the figure turned and looked at her.
Maddy was so shocked it took her several seconds to speak.
“Ethan?” she finally gasped uncomprehendingly.
Ethan straightened, and the cast of the moonlight fell fully on his face. He was wearing his usual ripped jeans, and his sandy hair whipped in the wind. Maddy’s mind reeled.
The puzzle pieces refused to fall into place. She couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing.
“Maddy?” he said, surprised. His expression turned almost thoughtful, apologetic. “I. . I didn’t want you to see this.”
“What are you doing?” she said through the numb shock. Conflict played in his eyes. The Ethan she knew fighting with some other part of him she did not. Then he looked down at Jacks, and his expression hardened.
“I’m doing my duty.”
Raising the knife over Jacks’s back, he brought it swiftly down. There was a sound like a pop as the blade sank into the Angel’s flesh at the base of the wing, then a wet snap as the knife severed the wing from the body. It went lifeless and fell to the concrete with a thud.
“No!” Maddy screamed. She reacted on instinct and ran toward Jacks. At once a black shimmer crossed her vision. A low, inhuman growl made her blood run cold. The last time she had heard it, she had been in the high school.
The demon emerged from the night in front of her. It was large, at least ten feet tall, but it had no definite features. Its shape kept shifting and changing. Maddy froze, her limbs refusing to move.
“I see you’ve already met my Guardian Angel,” Ethan said, smiling. Maddy realized the thing was hard to see because its skin really was shimmering. It was more than just shimmering. It was on fire. The creature was literally burning; the licking flames were black instead of orange. The fiery monster circled around Ethan and then crouched next to him, ready to strike.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Ethan.” Maddy shook with fear and fury. “Do you think you can control that thing?”
“If people can hire Angels, why can’t I hire a demon?”
Ethan said. “The price may be different, but. .”
He began to raise the knife again.
”Leave him alone!” Maddy screamed through numb lips. Ethan’s eyes flashed with anger.
“Why should I!?” he demanded. “What about our discussions at the diner and at school? Angels are all the same, Maddy, shallow, vapid, overly privileged creatures who do more harm than good.” His tone had a note of hysteria now.
His mask of calm was beginning to crack. “Don’t you understand? They aren’t the heroes, they’re the villains. I’m giving them what they deserve.”
“Why Jacks?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper now. “He never did anything to you. Or to your dad.”
She could see Ethan wince at the mention of his father, but he quickly recovered, his mouth turning into a cruel grin.
“I have you to thank for that, Maddy. At first I just wanted to kill Angels, any of them. Make them suffer.
They’re all guilty. Then I saw you with Jacks.” He sneered, standing over Jackson’s trembling form. “I wanted you, Maddy. We were supposed to be together, but you didn’t see it — yet. Was I not good enough for you? Not enough of an Angel?” Ethan spat the word out like venom. “You wouldn’t have me, so I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t have him, either.”
The words stabbed like knives.
Maddy struggled for breath as the truth sank in and the world began to spin around the rooftop.
“It’s been you all along. Not the NAS. You’ve been murdering Angels on the boulevard.” Her entire body shook as the final pieces fell into place. “We came to you for help, and you sent the demon after us at the school.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed.
“Don’t blame me, Maddy. Blame yourself. It was you who did this. The truth is, he’s far too powerful. If you hadn’t abandoned him at the train station, none of this would’ve been possible.”
Maddy blanched. He was right. It was all her fault.
Ethan seemed to smile at this.
“I know all about it. I know how you left him standing at the platform like he was nothing to you, left him to be delivered into the hands of the Archangels.” He shrugged. “I thought about just letting the NAS mortalize him, but I don’t know. I guess after I saw him with you again, I took it a little personally.” He raised the knife over Jacks’s maimed and bleeding back. “So anyway, since you obviously don’t care about him, let’s get on with it, shall we?”