Blest (15 page)

Jim thought for a second. Was he happy, being an angel? Even though his heart was breaking over what had happened with Claire, he knew he had made the right choice. The Feather would stand by him. He finally had a family. And he had embraced the truth about himself, not run from it.

“I
am
happy,” he said, the words lingering in the silence.

Michael nodded. “I’m proud of you. I’ll always be proud of you, no matter what.”

Claire studied the knife carefully, watching her face slide across the sleek metal blade. She broke into a grin and looked up at Carlos. “Thanks.”

He nodded, returning the grin. His red scales rippled across his cheek and disappeared. She remembered last week, when the same expression had terrified her. What had she been thinking? The scales were power. Carlos was powerful enough not to let anyone hurt him, ever. Instead, he did the hurting. Claire admired that.

Carlos turned and paced between the other demons, who all watched him with rapt attention. They had gathered at the edge of Claire’s driveway underneath the rising moon. “Now that everyone has their own Shredder, you can cause as much havoc as you want. If angels come to stop you, well . . .” He whipped his own knife from his belt and cut in a fierce, downward arc. “You shred their wings.” Ben hooted in delight. Carlos tapped the fine point of the knife and slid it back into the scabbard at his belt. “But remember that you can’t start the fight. They have to attack you first. Cause enough chaos, and that’s bound to happen.”

“Why can’t we just stick them when no one is looking?” Erik asked, frowning.

“Alas, my young, bloodthirsty friend,” Carlos said in a mournful voice. “If it’s a clear-cut case—no pun intended—of an angel getting attacked first, the Tribunal will imprison you in Slag. They’ll open up a Portal and banish you if you cause too much trouble.”

“So?” Erik challenged. “I’m not afraid of the Tribunal. Or Slag.”

In one stride, Carlos stepped in front of him and lowered his face to Erik’s. His voice was a deadly whisper. “You just said two very stupid things. I hope you never find out how stupid they are.” Erik shuddered as Carlos pivoted to face the group again, raising his voice. “We can’t risk breaking the Pact without knowing where the Portal to Glisten is. Once we find the Portal, it won’t matter. Because when we get to Glisten, we’ll be as powerful as the Tribunal and we’ll be able to free all of the demons who are imprisoned in Slag.”

His black eyes swept across them. “A very reliable source told me the Portal is in Pearlton, but we need to find out where. Cause enough chaos in town and we’ll see where the angels get most defensive. We’ll bring them out of their holes. I’ll observe where the angels are coming from, and where they go when they think demons are loose. Now . . . go. Be wild. Be free.”

With a flap of his wings, Carlos shot off into the sky, quickly fading against the yellow half-moon. The demons stared after him for a while before Gunner clapped his hands. “All right, you heard him. Let’s go.” He marched off into the gloom, then paused in a neighbor’s driveway, leaning against the hood of a red car. He flipped his Shredder in his hand, tossing the blade handle-first in long loops.

The rest of the demons reached the driveway, muttering to one another. All of a sudden, when the knife landed back in Gunner’s hand from one last spin, he smashed the driver’s window with the hilt. Glass shattered, tinkling onto the pavement. The lights on the house next to the driveway flashed on, and a dog barked. Gunner gave a war-like
whoop
, unlocked the door, and ripped open the compartment beneath the steering wheel. A few seconds later, the engine started.

“All aboard!” Gunner cried.

Claire scrambled into the passenger seat, leaving Erik, Ben, Julia, and Maria to smash clumsily into the back. The door to the house opened and a man emerged in a bathrobe, shouting something. Gunner laughed and reversed into the street. Everyone jerked backward and then forward as he sped off, out of Lakewood Drive and toward St. Louis.

“That was,” Claire said, trying to catch her breath. “That was . . . was . . .”

“Ballsy,” Ben bellowed. “Gunner, you the man!”

“Have you done that before?” Claire asked. Her heart pounded. She felt lightheaded, knowing that the guy in the house had probably already called the police. It was a good feeling.
Carlos was right
, she thought. Chaos was freedom. No rules, no laws. You just did whatever you wanted, never thinking about anything but the present.

Gunner shrugged. “I watched a video on YouTube.”

Ben high-fived him from the back.

“This isn’t the Field,” Claire said aloud. “This is the
Playing
Field. We can do whatever the hell we want.”

Gunner looked at her, a big grin on his face. She hadn’t been on the receiving end of that kind of smile in weeks. “Now you’re getting it.”

They were still in Pearlton when a police car screamed up behind them, siren blaring and red-blue lights flooding the backseat. Gunner veered around a corner near Pearlton High School. The car jumped over a pothole, but the cruiser behind them followed easily. The officer in the car roared at them through a megaphone to pull over.

Erik panicked. “What are we going to do, man? What are we going to do?”

Julia lit a cigarette and blew it out the open car window, her hair snaking in the breeze. Ben howled in delight, peering out at the cop car behind them. Maria stared straight ahead. Since Shane’s death, she had become silent, like she was only halfway present.

“These idiot humans,” Gunner growled. “This is annoying.”

Claire looked out the window and realized they were passing the water tower. Jim’s water tower. She caught sight of the wooded trail leading up the hill to it. “If everyone thinks they’re fast enough, I’ve got an idea,” she said.

The rest of the Scale murmured their agreement. The officer yelled something else through the megaphone. Ahead of them, another cruiser’s red-blue lights whirled out of the darkness, trying to block them off.

“Unlock the car doors,” Claire said breathlessly. “Everyone in the backseat, get ready to rip those things open and jump. And Gunner . . . turn to the left and drive as fast as you can, now!”

Gunner didn’t hesitate. The car squealed to the left and flew over the curb of the sidewalk, rumbling up over the grassy hill leading to the trail. “Everyone out!” Claire shouted. Gunner slammed his foot on the acceleration, the car jumped over the jagged incline leading to the trail, and everyone threw open the car doors. The demons leaped from the car and soared into the air just as the car hit the trees with a resounding crunch. The two cruisers had stopped at the curb. As Claire rose into the air, she watched as the police officers charged at the broken car and threw open the doors, puzzled. They shouted and blindly ran toward the forest trail. Expecting to find the hijacker.

She grinned.

“Regroup at the water tower!” Gunner called from somewhere in the gloom.

Claire winced. She hadn’t really meant to get this close to the tower, but maybe it was for the best. She could replace the stinging memory of Jim with something more powerful, more meaningful. Jumping from the car had ignited a fire in her heart, something that burned away all of her worries, her anxieties, the hurt she still felt deep in her chest from when Jim had broken up with her.

She circled around the back of the tower as the Scale gathered on the platform. And there, in the moonlight, Jim’s mural had come to life, shimmering silver. For a second, Claire felt a whirlwind tear through her mind, the memory of that image of Sydney and Jim haunting her.

Something new had been added to the graffiti: red and white feathers, falling like rain across the horizon. A pile of the feathers had been painted underneath the massive Gateway Arch of the St. Louis skyline, the upside-down U-shaped building that Julia said used to be a Portal to Glisten. The picture filled Claire with fury. Why was Jim still painting this? He shouldn’t be allowed to make her think of him.

Claire swallowed past her rage and flew around to the other side of the tower, landing quietly between Gunner and Julia. The Scale had their eyes on the cluster of red-blue lights at the edge of the woods. Ben and Erik were laughing and calling the police officers names under their breath. Maria had a twisted smile on her face.

Beyond the woods, the skyscrapers of the city gleamed in buttery golds and ambers in the night. Gunner stretched against the water tower. “Good call on the car. You finally seem to have embraced who you are,” he said, turning to Claire. “I knew you’d find your way.”

She thought about her tattoo of the cage like Gunner’s and her new nose piercing. She had turned all of her sorrow about Jim into rage, just like Carlos had told her to do. She smiled as she thought of Jim’s face when she looked right through him during the lab yesterday. He could paint all of his emotions on the side of a building, he could bare his soul in colors, but all it did was make him weak.

“I’m just getting started,” Claire said. “Let’s draw the angels to the city, so Carlos can really see where they’re all coming from.” She hopped onto the railing of the tower’s platform, balancing precariously, and then spread her wings and dropped into the air. She didn’t look back.

• • •

When the Scale reached St. Louis, they kept their eyes open for more cars to hijack. Claire’s head hummed with a new sense of power. She and Gunner flew together, leading the rest of the demons. When Gunner dove down to a narrow side-street where a car was parked, she followed. He took his knife out and was about to smash the car window, but he stopped at the last second. He lowered his arm. “Care to do the honors?” he asked.

Claire chewed on her lip and withdrew her knife, feeling the leather-bound hilt, cool in her hand. She ran at the window and swung the hilt straight into the glass. Her arm felt like it belonged to someone else, someone who took control of situations, who made things happen. The glass shattered like water rippling, the shards reflecting the orange street lights.

Gunner whistled. “Good one.” He ripped open the door and, with a few deft movements, popped open the compartment under the steering wheel. The engine roared to life. Gunner flipped his hair out of his eyes and lifted himself over the console and into the passenger seat. He patted the driver’s seat.

“It’s nice to do things as a family again,” Claire said, sliding into the driver’s seat. Gunner laughed. She saw Ben and Julia in the rearview and unlocked the backdoors so they could jump in. Farther ahead, Erik and Maria had just smashed another car window. The car’s alarm blared in the empty city streets.

“I taught Maria how to do it, so they’ll be fine,” Gunner said. “Hit the gas.”

Claire stomped on the pedal as hard as she could, sending the car flying down the street. She ripped the wheel to the right at an intersection and ran a red light. A truck squealed to a stop, blowing on the horn, and she laughed wildly. The wind from the broken window caught her hair, making it dance.

“Whoa!” Julia said, gripping the back of the driver’s seat to steady herself. “Are you actually having fun, Claire?”

“It took a while.” Claire swung the wheel to the right and the car jolted down an alley, bouncing into another street.

“I always said you’d come around,” Ben said eagerly. “You get a taste of what it’s like, to live free in the chaos of the Field, and you never go back.”

“Carlos helped me understand,” Claire said, weaving between two stopped cars and running another light. “It’s . . . I just can’t believe he’s our dad.” The rest of the Scale knew by now, and had accepted it without much surprise. She and Gunner were the strongest of them, after all.

Gunner nodded. “Finally,” he said in exasperation, “a parent who actually takes charge.”

“Seriously,” Claire replied. She turned into a dilapidated part of town, where old brick buildings with boarded windows hulked along sidewalks. She heard sirens in the distance, somewhere, and wondered if the police were coming after her or Maria and Erik. She didn’t feel threatened or panicked. Not by the humans. The only thing that made her panic was when she thought about Jim. Because, somehow, he still had a grip on her and she couldn’t slip away.

They blew by a tattoo parlor with buzzing neon lights flickering against the heavy gloom of the streets. Clare glanced at it and gingerly touched her neck, where she had gotten the tattoo of the cage last week. A thrill coursed through her. What if she got something that reminded her of Jim, so she could look in the mirror and deny it, like all of her other fears and anxieties?
White wings
, she thought. She would get a pair of white wings tattooed on her shoulders.

As the tattoo parlor faded behind them, Claire opened the door as the car was still moving, letting it coast. “This is where I get off,” she said, laughing. She leaned out of the car and uncurled her wings, catching the headwind and rushing out of the car. Gunner yelped and grabbed the steering wheel, veering to the left and hopping into the driver’s seat. The gust of wind carried Claire up and over a broken old warehouse. She drifted for a while, letting the air carry her, marveling at the feeling of freedom. Eventually, she floated down into the middle of an alley full of scattered old car parts, rusted gold-red.

Claire caught her breath, still laughing quietly at the memory of Gunner’s face when she jumped out of the car. He had been right all along, being a demon was fun. She had been so busy denying her nature for Jim’s sake that she hadn’t even thought about what it really meant. She couldn’t wait to see the rest of the Scale’s faces when she came home with angel wings tattooed on her back.

She headed out of the alley toward the street. Without the thrum of the car engine and the wind in her ears, the city lay silent before her, like a dream. But then she heard a quick pattering of feet from just ahead. A tall, imposing woman with silver-blond hair and broad shoulders rushed past. A broad pair of white wings gleamed from the back of her shoulders.

“General Lumen,” Claire muttered. She crouched and ran to the edge of the alley, clinging to the foul-smelling dumpster and poking her head out. She tried to get another glimpse of the woman. What was she doing in this part of town? At this time of night? It had to have something to do with the Portal. Claire imagined reporting back to Carlos that she had found the Portal by herself. Her dad would be so proud. More than that, he would tell her the secrets to being even more powerful, so that she could never, ever be hurt again.