World After (9 page)

The squirrel has scampered into a tree and is watching me. It looks puny and insignificant after the things I’ve just seen.

I let go of the sword and land on my butt.

I don’t know how long I sit there panting, but I suspect it’s a long time. There’s nothing but the blue October sky, the smell of
grass, and the unusual quiet that’s been everywhere since people abandoned cars.

Could the sword be communicating with me? Sending me the message that it was made for epic battles and glory, not for chasing squirrels and being dressed up as a cutesy stuffed animal?

Of course, that’s crazy talk.

But no crazier than what I just saw.

I want to bury my train of thought. Anything that smells remotely insane is a scent I don’t want to follow. But I let myself do it just this once.

Raffe said the sword was sort of sentient. If by some truly bizarre chance that’s true, then maybe it has feelings. Maybe it has memories that it can share with me.

On the night those men attacked me, did it get frustrated that I had no idea how to use it during the fight? Is it embarrassing for a sword to be wielded by someone who swings it like a bat? Was it actually trying to teach me how to use it through my dreams?

The thing freaks me out. I should switch over to a gun or something that’s a little less invasive and has fewer opinions. I actually get up, turn my back on it, and take a couple of steps away.

But of course, I can’t leave it.

It’s Raffe’s sword. He’s going to want it back someday.

O
N
MY
way back, I hesitate near the food line. It’s a new group of people but the line is about the same length. The Resistance is setting up a system that includes limiting food to two meals a day. But while that’s getting set up, the newcomers are still hoarding and spending a good deal of their time standing in the food line.

I sigh and go to the back of the line.

When I get back to our room, it’s empty. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for Paige to be out in public but I assume they’ll be back
soon. I put three burgers on the teacher’s desk. I didn’t ask what kind of meat it was but I doubt it’s cow.

I had asked for the patties to be super rare, specifically mentioning the word “bloody,” thinking that’s as close as I could get to raw without raising suspicions. But I’m disappointed to find that the meat’s hardly pink in the middle.

I cut away the cooked portion from the pink center and set it aside for Paige. I can at least try to see if she can hold down pink meat. I try not to think too much about it.

I suspect she hadn’t been out of the lab in her new form before we found her, otherwise, she’d know what she could eat. If I had found her a day earlier, could I have saved her from this?

I shut away those thoughts in the old mind vault and methodically eat my burger. The lettuce and tomato are reconstituted from something that’s probably not what it’s pretending to be, but it reminds me of greens and that’s good enough. The bread, though, is fresh out of the oven and delicious. The camp lucked out and found somebody who knows how to bake bread from scratch.

I pull out Raffe’s sword and put the naked blade on my lap. I stroke my fingers along the metal. The light hits the liquid folds along the steel, showing the bluish-silver waves that decorate it.

If I relax, I can feel the faint flow of sorrow coming from it. The sword is in mourning. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who it’s mourning for.

“Show me more,” I say, even though I’m not sure I can handle more right now. My knees are already weak and I’m feeling drained. Even in a world where angels exist, it’s still a shocker to have one of your possessions share its memories with you.

“Tell me about Raffe.”

Nothing.

“Okay. Let’s practice fighting,” I say in an enthusiastic voice as if I’m talking to a little kid. “I could use more lessons.”

I take a deep breath and close my eyes.

Nothing.

“Right. Well, I guess I have nothing better to do now than to decorate the teddy bear with ribbons and bows. What do you think of dusky pink?”

The room wavers, then morphs.

T
IME
HAS
a way of being funny in dreams and I’m guessing it’s the same with memories. For what feels like a decade, I practice with my sword, fighting enemy after enemy by Raffe’s side.

The hellions must have been furious that he snatched some of the wives from their jaws and took what they thought belonged to them. They’ve been tracking him down ever since, hunting anyone who might have been a companion to him. I’m guessing that demons aren’t the type to forgive and forget.

Era after era throughout the world, it’s the same everywhere. Medieval villages, World War I battlefields, Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, speakeasies in Chicago. Raffe follows rumors of the nephilim, kills hellions and anything else that terrorize the locals, then disappears into the night. He flies away from anybody he might have connected with in the process to avoid getting them killed.

Alone.

Just Raffe and his sword.

And now he doesn’t even have that.

Just when I think the lessons are over, the sword’s memory flips to a situation that almost breaks me.

As soon as I arrive, I’m slammed with the intensity of it.

Raffe roars with outrage and agony.

He’s in serious trouble. The pain is excruciating. The shock is worse.

My phantom body sways as it loses its boundaries, making me feel totally disoriented. Raffe’s experience is so intense, my own thoughts and sensations are overwhelmed by his.

His ragged breathing is all I can hear. It’s all he can hear.

Hands and knees hold him down but blood makes their hands slip over his skin. Raffe is drenched in his own blood.

Pain radiates from his back through his entire body. Crushing his bones. Stabbing his eyes. Pummeling his lungs.

Blood spreads over asphalt.

Large hands move something white into the corner of his vision. He desperately doesn’t want to look but can’t help himself.

Wings.

Snow-white wings.

Severed and lying on the dirty road.

His breathing becomes harsher, and all he can see are those white feathers lying limp on the black asphalt.

A drop of blood from someone’s hand drips onto a feather. Beliel the demon stands over Raffe’s wings like he owns them.

It dimly registers with Raffe that someone yells, “Hey!”

He forces himself to look up.

His vision is blurred through the pain and sweat. He blinks several times to try to focus beyond the screaming pain in his back.

It’s a skinny Daughter of Man, looking tiny beside one of his attackers. She’s half-hidden behind the warrior’s burnt-orange wings, but Raffe sees her and knows she’s the one who yelled.

That’s me. Do I really look that insignificant beside an angel?

She throws something at him with all her little might.

His sword? Could it be?

He doesn’t have time to marvel. His sword would do anything for him, even let a human bond with her to help him.

A surge of fury lends him a shot of strength. He bursts out of his attackers’ hold and raises his hand. His arm trembles with the effort.

His world shrinks down to his sword, Beliel, and the angels before him.

He catches the sword and in the same motion slices the demon Beliel in the stomach. Raffe almost loses his balance in the process.

He then manages to use his momentum to cut into the angel beside him.

The scene doesn’t slow down like the other fights. It doesn’t have to. I feel every trembling muscle, every staggering step, every struggling breath.

He’s dizzy and barely managing to stay upright. As the attackers fly off, he sees the warrior with the burnt-orange wings smack the girl. She slams against the road, and Raffe thinks she must be dead.

Through the haze of agony, he wonders who she is and why a Daughter of Man would sacrifice herself to help him.

He forces himself to stay on his feet. It takes everything he has to hold his sword ready as Burnt assesses him. Raffe’s legs tremble violently and he’s losing consciousness, but he stays up out of sheer stubbornness and fury.

Burnt, obviously too cowardly to face him alone, gives up and flies off. Raffe collapses onto the asphalt as soon as Burnt leaves.

Lying on the road, the world blackens with only occasional splotches of color. His breath fills his ears, but he concentrates to hear sounds in the surrounding area.

Feet scuffle behind closed doors. Inside the buildings, humans whisper and argue about whether it’s safe to come out. They talk about how much Raffe would be worth if they tore him to pieces.

But they’re not the ones who worry him. There are more subtle scuffling, slithering noises. Soft clicking, like cockroaches in the walls.

They’re coming for him. The hellions have found him. They always do eventually.

But this time, they’re in luck. This time, he’s utterly helpless. They’ll be able to drag him down into hell and slowly torture him over the ages while he lies hopeless and wingless.

He desperately tries to stay alert, but the world melts into darkness.

Someone is calling out for her mother. The voice is strong and determined.

It must be a fever dream because no one would be that stupid in a place full of human gangs. But the footsteps in the building stairwells quiet. The human rats whisper, sure that the girl who calls out for her mom must have her gang nearby. What else would make a girl that bold?

The hellions stop their slithering too. They’re not smart enough to figure out much, otherwise they would have gotten to him ages ago by coordinating a real attack rather than just diving at random opportunities. They’re confused. Attack or run?

He tries to pull himself away from the exposed road, but black spots bloom across his vision and he fades out again.

Someone flips him over. Pain screams and claws into his back.

A small hand slaps him.

He opens his eyes for a moment.

Against the glow of the sky, dark hair flutters in the breeze. Intense eyes fringed with long lashes. Lips so red the girl must have been biting them.

It takes him a moment to realize she’s the Daughter of Man who risked herself to help him. She’s asking him something. Her voice is insistent but melodic. It’s a good sound to die to.

He fades in and out as she moves him. He keeps expecting her to cut him up or for the hellions to leap on her. Instead, she bandages him and lifts him into a wheelchair that’s too small.

When the girl grunts and overacts to indicate that he must be heavy—probably to show how strong she is—he can’t help but be amused, even through the haze of pain. She’s a terrible actress. Daughters of Men are notoriously dense and heavy compared to angels, and there’s something deliriously funny about her pretending.

Maybe his Watchers married their wives because they found them entertaining. Not much of a reason to be condemned to the Pit but it’s the first one he’s thought of.

Shoes slap on the sidewalk as human rats run toward Raffe. Emboldened by the rats, the hellions slither toward him too.

He tries to warn the girl.

But there’s no need. She’s already running into the shadows, pushing him as fast as she can go. If she can stay ahead of them long enough, the hellions will get distracted by the juicy human rats.

His last thought before he blacks out is that his Watchers would have liked this girl.

T
HE
SHADOWS
through the windows are long by the time I jerk awake. I’m still shaking from Raffe’s experience. I didn’t just know what he was thinking; I actually felt what he felt, thought what he thought.

Was the sword really that close to Raffe? Maybe only in extremely intense times. The whole experience was bizarrely freaky at every level.

I run my trembling hand over the warm blade, telling my body that it’s okay.

I’m starting to put some pieces together. Some of Raffe’s actions make more sense now.

He couldn’t jump in to help me during my public fights at the last Resistance camp without rumors spreading about us. The hellions always tracked him down eventually, and it was probably a combination of luck, tracking, and listening to human gossip. A story about a fight like that would definitely be talked about. He bet against me to announce to everyone that we weren’t friends, that he didn’t care what happened to me.