As if that isn’t bad enough, I haven’t seen a single hint of batwings attached to an Adonis-like body anywhere along the way. Not that I expected to see Raffe.
“That’s it. Glasses or no, it’s Sanjay’s turn.” I slide down from my perch and sink into the back seat as Sanjay climbs up to sit in the open window on his side.
We’re approaching the Financial District from a different direction than Raffe and I had a couple of days ago. This part of town looks like it wasn’t the nicest part to begin with, but a few buildings still stand with only their edges singed.
Colorful beads are splashed over the sidewalk in front of a store with a sign reading Beads and Feathers. But there’s not a single feather in sight. The bounty that someone has put out for angel parts must still going strong. I wonder if all the chickens and pigeons have been plucked? Their feathers might be worth more than their meat if they could be passed off as angel feathers.
My stomach feels full of ice as we near the disaster zone that was once the Financial District. The area is deserted now, with not even scavengers looking for bits of usable supplies or scraps of food.
“Where is everybody?”
The Financial District still stands, or at least a few blocks of it does. In the center, there’s a gaping hole in the skyline where the aerie used to be. A couple of months ago, it was a high-end, Art-Deco hotel. Then the angels took over and turned it into their aerie. Now it’s just a pile of rubble from when the Resistance crashed a truck full of explosives into it.
“Oh, that’s not good,” says Dee-Dum, looking up into the sky.
I see it the same time he does.
A funnel of angels swirls from the place where the aerie used to be.
“What are they doing here?” I whisper.
Dee-Dum pulls the SUV over and turns off the engine. Without a word, he takes two pairs of binoculars out of the glove compartment and hands one to me. Obi already has his so I guess I’m supposed to share mine with Sanjay.
Obi grabs his rifle and gets out. I follow with my heart pounding in my chest.
I worry that the angels heard our engines, but they continue to fly without looking toward us. We zigzag on foot from car to car toward the old aerie. It doesn’t seem to occur to Obi or Dee-Dum to run away.
An angel with snowy white wings takes off into the blanket of clouds. My eyes follow him even though I know Raffe doesn’t have those wings any more.
As we near the destroyed building that was once their aerie, everything is covered in dust. The pulverized concrete fell all over the cars, the streets, and the dead bodies. Cars lie strewn upside down and sideways on the sidewalks, on top of other cars, and partway embedded in nearby buildings.
Our feet crunch over broken concrete as we dart between the cars and debris. The angels were not pleased about the attack in the middle of their party, and they left the scene the way a child would leave a Lego town after a tantrum.
There are bodies lying in the street and they’re all human. I get the sick feeling that the attack didn’t do as much damage to the angels as we had initially thought. Where are the angel bodies?
I glance over at Dee-Dum and see from his eyes that he’s wondering the same thing. We pause close enough to see what’s going on.
The old aerie is just a pile of broken boulders and bent rebar. The steel rods that used to support the high-rise hotel now stand broken and exposed like bloodstained bones.
I expected the aerie to be a mountain of rubble. Instead, the rubble is spread everywhere.
The place is swarming with angels.
Winged bodies lie haphazardly in the wreckage while some are arranged in a row on the asphalt. Angels dig up enormous boulders and toss them away from what was once the aerie. A few of them drag angel bodies and line them up on the road.
My heart is racing so hard I swear I have to swallow to keep it from galloping out of my mouth.
A warrior with spotted wings walks out of one of the nearby buildings with a bucket in each hand, sloshing water with every step. He kicks the nearest body.
The supposedly dead angel groans and starts to move.
The warrior tosses water onto the bodies in the street. They were wet from the drizzle anyway but now they’re soaked.
As soon as the bodies get splashed, they begin to move.
“WHAT THE—” says Sanjay, too startled to remember to be quiet.
A couple of the angels lying on the asphalt immediately resurrect and vigorously shake the drops out of their hair like dogs. The others groan and move sluggishly as if the morning alarm went off sooner than expected.
Some of them are clearly shot up with bullets. Their wounds have ugly entry points and even uglier exit points that look like raw hamburger flowers.
The warrior with spotted wings grabs his other bucket and tosses the water onto the rest of the “bodies.” He also kicks a few of the wounded still lying on the asphalt.
“Get up, maggots! What do you think this is? Naptime? You’re an embarrassment.”
Apparently, Sanjay’s not the only one who forgot to be quiet because one of the angels grabs a chunk of broken concrete and throws it at a car the way someone might throw a stone at a rat. And just like rats, two of our men scamper out of the way as it smashes into the car that they were hiding behind.
A couple of other angels grab chunks of broken fixtures and rebar and throw them at us. I barely have time to dive to the sidewalk as the car windows shatter.
I jump up and run so hard I’m hyperventilating by the time I hide in the doorway of a building. I peek at the angels. They’re not chasing us any more than we would chase rats in a garbage dump.
Obi and Dee-Dum see me from their hiding place behind a truck and sprint to my doorway. We huddle and peek through our binoculars.
A group of angels digs into the center of the rubble, tossing debris left and right. As they find bodies, they leave the dead humans and pull out limp angels who might wake at any moment.
The angels doing the digging are larger than the ones who are being dug out. The big ones carry swords around their waists, which I assume means that they are warriors. From what I can see, all the victims are smaller and don’t carry swords.
Now that I think about it, just how many warriors did I see at the aerie when Raffe and I walked through it? There were the guards. A few in the hallways. And that table full of warriors where that scumbag Josiah the albino stood. Aside from them, no one else carried swords. Did they bring administrators and other non-fighting types to our world? Cooks? Medics? And if so, where were the warriors when the aerie was attacked?
I groan out loud.
“What?” mouths Obi.
I try to figure out how to talk to them without being overheard. Dee-Dum must have an idea of what I want because he pulls out a pad of paper and a pencil and hands it to me.
I write, “How many warrior angels did you see at the aerie last night?”
Dee-Dum shakes his head and puts his thumb and forefinger only an inch apart, telling me very few.
He glances over at the angels and I can see understanding dawning in his face. He writes, “More here now than during our strike.”
“Maybe they were on a mission?”
He nods.
By sheer luck, it looks like the Resistance hit the aerie when almost all the fighters were gone. No wonder so many of the angels went down without a proper fight. I remember the chaos in the foyer as both humans and angels ran in every direction at the beginning of the attack. There were angels who ran out into the machine-gun fire to try to take flight. I thought it was sheer daredevil behavior but maybe it was simply inexperience and panic.