World After (30 page)

W
E
’
RE
IN
THE
AIR
.

I cling tighter, and he shifts me so that I’m holding on like a kid with my legs wrapped around his middle. He’s warm even as the ocean wind blasts against my back. We pick up altitude to a frightening height, but his arms around me are secure and I can’t help but feel reassured.

That feeling doesn’t last long. Between Raffe’s wings, I get glimpses of what’s behind us.

Tipsy or not, the angels have no trouble lifting off into the air. The sight of demon wings must have incited them because there are more of them chasing us than we saw on the beach. They fly up through wisps of fog lit by pinpoints of firelight as we glide over the black waves.

Angels are supposed to be beautiful creatures of light but the ones chasing us look more like a cloud of demons spewing forth from the mist. Raffe must be thinking something similar because he tightens his grip around my waist as if to say, “not this one.”

He banks into a turn, flying farther away from the shore to where the mist turns into a blanket. He glides lower toward the water where the fog is thicker and the waves are louder.

We’re so low, the sea sprays over me as it surges. Water swells, turning into whitewater and rolling below us. It feels like mile after mile of black and raging surf.

Raffe zigs one way, then the other. He makes sharp, unexpected turns after going straight for a while. Escape maneuvers.

The fog is so thick that there’s a chance the angels are chasing shadows. The roar of the waves and wind means the angels can’t hear Raffe’s wings as they pump powerfully through the air.

I’m shivering against his body. The icy spray and ocean wind are freezing me to the point of not being able to feel my arms around his neck or my legs around his torso.

We glide along in silence, slicing through the night. I have no idea how close the angels are or whether they’re even on our tail any more. I hear and see nothing in the fog glow. We take another sharp turn toward the ocean.

A face pops up in the fog.

Behind it, giant wings with feathers the color of mist.

He’s too close.

He slams into us.

We spin out of control, bat wings tangling with feathered ones.

Raffe whips his wing with its extended scythes and gouges into the feathered wings. The blades rip through the layers of feathers until they catch on the angel’s wing bone.

We all tumble together in a mass as we fall through the air.

Raffe stabilizes us with great sweeps but he can’t fight with his wings and fly too. He untangles their wings as the angel reaches for his sword.

Raffe doesn’t have a sword.

And he has me—a hundred pounds of dead weight that can only mess up his balance and fighting technique. His arms are holding me instead of being free to fight. His wings need to work that much harder to keep us in the air.

My only thought is that I am not going to end up truly dead this time in Raffe’s arms. I am not going to be one more wound on his soul.

The angel pulls out his sword.

Having trained with the staff, I know there are weapons that need distance to be used effectively. The sword is one of them.

Right now, the angel has enough space to reach back and skewer us or raise his sword and slice us. But if he was hugging us, a feeble cut would be the most he could do.

It’s just water. It’ll be cold as hell, but it won’t kill me if I fall.

Not right away, anyway.

It’s amazing how many times we have to go against our survival instincts to survive. I grip my legs even tighter around Raffe’s middle and push my upper body away from him.

His arms give way in surprise before they tighten back around me. That’s enough time for me to lean out and grab the angel’s sword arm in one hand and his high-collared tuxedo shirt in the other.

I lock my elbow and hold his sword arm to keep him from swinging toward us. I sure hope he’s not strong enough to crush my shoulder socket. With my other hand, I yank him forward.

It all happens within a second. If the angel had been expecting that move, there’s no way he would have let me do it. But what attacker expects his victim to pull him closer?

Without his wings fully in his control to balance him, I manage to pull the exceptionally light angel toward us.

Up close, his sword is less of a threat for skewering, but Raffe is forced to fly awkwardly to avoid shredding his wing on the blade. We teeter in the air, not far above the black waves.

Raffe holds me tight with one arm while using the other to fend off the angel who is trying to punch him.

I lean over and grab the sword’s hilt. I don’t have a chance of getting it away from him, but I might be able to distract him from
his fight with Raffe. And if I’m really lucky, I might even convince the sword that an unauthorized user is trying to lift it.

We grapple in the air, awkwardly dipping, then gaining a little altitude, bobbing and twisting up and down above the water. I manage to grab the sword’s hilt with both my hands and although I can’t move it from the angel’s grip, I can angle it.

As soon as I do, the sword suddenly becomes heavy, so heavy that the angel’s arm flags.

“No!” the angel cries. There’s real horror in his voice as the sword threatens to drop from our hands.

Raffe slams him with the fist of his free arm. The angel lurches back.

His sword drops. And disappears into the water.

“No!” he cries again, horrified disbelief in his eyes as he looks at the dark water where his sword sank. I guess they don’t have scuba-diving angels to retrieve swords and other valuables from the bottom of the ocean.

He roars a war cry at us, bloodlust in his contorted face. Then he charges.

Two more angels appear out of the thick mist.

Not surprising, with all the noise the first angel is making, but my heart jumps anyway when I see them.

All three come at us. Raffe spins around and flies toward the open sea.

There’s no way he’s going to outfly them with me weighing him down.

“Let go,” I say into his ear.

Raffe holds me tighter like there’s no room for discussion.

“We’ll both be safer with me in the water than weighing you down during a fight.” Still, he holds on. “I can swim, Raffe. It’s no big deal.”

Something large slams into us from behind.

And Raffe’s arms jar loose. I shove away.

That first moment of falling feels like slow-mo, where every sensation is amplified. A sheer knee-jerk survival reaction makes me flail and grab the first thing I can.

One hand grabs air. The other hand grasps the tip of a feathered wing.

Having my entire weight on one wing, the angel twists and goes out of control. I channel all my panic into the grip.

We plunge into the ocean together.

E
VERY
CELL
in my body freezes, then explodes into ice shards. The ice needles pierce and collide all through me. At least, that’s what it feels like.

It’s the most intense when the water engulfs my head, as if the top of my head was the last bastion of warmth in my body. I need to shriek from the shock of it but my lungs are so frozen and contracted that shrieking is beyond me.

Dark turbulence rolls me around as I cannonball down. I lose all sense of body and direction.

I eventually stop tumbling but as soon as I stop, I’m not sure which way is up. My body tries to thrash around as the stopwatch on the air in my lungs ticks away.

I never would have thought that I might not know up from down but without gravity and light, I can’t tell what’s what. I’m terrified to pick a direction.

Bubbles brush by me and I have thoughts of horrible things coming at me from the watery depths of hell. All those half-lucid nights with Mom chanting away in the dark, painting images of demons dragging me into hell, come flooding back in the enormous coffin that is the sea. Are those dark shapes moving in the water or—?

Knock it off.

Air. Swim. Think.

No time to get sucked into a swirl of pointless drivel that isn’t going to help in any way.

Bubbles.

Something about the bubbles.

Don’t bubbles float up?

I put my hand to my mouth to feel the bubbles and let a precious bit of air out of my burning lungs. They tickle as they float across my face and past my ear.

I follow them sideways, or what feels like sideways. Water currents can drift bubbles in any direction but eventually, they go up, right? I certainly hope so.

I let out more bits of air, trying not to let out more than I need to, until the bubbles consistently touch my nose on their way up. I kick as hard as I can, following the bubbles as fast as my burning lungs can drive me.

I begin to despair that I’m going the wrong direction when I notice that the water is becoming more iridescent, lighter. I swim harder.

Finally, my head breaks through the surface and I take a huge gulp. Salty water pours into my mouth as the choppy sea slaps me in the face. My lungs constrict and I desperately try to control my coughs so that I don’t breathe in another mouthful of water.

The sea erupts beside me and something bursts up.

Head, arms, wings. The angel I tangoed with has found his way up too.

He thrashes, desperately gulping air and splashing all over the place. His feathers are drenched and he doesn’t look like he can swim very well. His arms flounder and his wings flap, slapping the water pointlessly.

He’s being kept afloat by his thrashing but that’s a very exhausting way to swim. If he was human, he would have spent all his energy by now and drowned.

I turn away and kick the water. I’m so cold I can barely lift my arms.

The angel’s wing sweeps forward and blocks me. It corrals me into him as he thrashes.

I fumble for my knife, hoping it’s still stuck in my nylon band. My hand is so frozen, I can barely feel it but it’s there. It’s just a regular knife, not an angel blade, but it’ll still cut him. He’ll still feel the pain and bleed. Well, maybe in this cold, he won’t feel much but I have to try.

He reaches for me and I slash at his hand.

He pulls back, then reaches for me with his other hand, grabbing my hair. I stab into his forearm. He lets go but grabs me with his slashed hand as he splashes about.

He pulls me in toward him, his arms climbing over me and pulling me down in the classic drowning thrash that water safety instructors warn you about.

I take a deep breath. He shoves my head into the icy water and it engulfs me again.

I don’t know if he’s trying to drown me in a final I’m-taking-you-with-me gesture or if he’s just thrashing on instinct. Either way, I’ll end up dead if he has his way.

I slash with all the panic I have of my own, cutting him deep across his torso and arms. Over and over again.

Blood warms the water.

His grip loosens and I manage to bob my head up to gulp a lungful of air. He’s not pushing me under any more but he’s still holding onto me.

“You’re not the only monster in this world,” I gasp. There are great white sharks in northern California. Our surfers and sharks seem to have a truce for the most part, except for the rare shark attack. But no one would ever go into our water while bleeding.

I slash hard across his chest. Ribbons of blood flow out around him.

My eyes meet his. He thinks I’m talking about me being the monster. Maybe he’s right.

I’m no great white but all this knife stabbing and slashing is reminding me of Mom and her victims. For once, I’m okay with the similarities. For once, I hold onto her craziness for strength. Sometimes, I just have to let go and let my inner Mom out.

I slash repeatedly like a madwoman.

He finally loosens his grip on me.

I kick away as fast as I can. I wasn’t bluffing about the sharks.

The knife makes swimming harder but I keep it in my hand until I’m out of reach of the bleeding angel. Then, I stash it again in my nylon band.

I’m so worked up that it takes a few strokes before I notice the freezing cold again. My breath mists in front of my face and my teeth chatter but I force myself to keep moving.