Angel

74

THEN A SORT of riot broke out, but it wasn’t the outraged, we-don’t-want-to-die kind we’d hoped for. A bunch of the One Lighters jumped onstage and made a beeline for us, mumbling about “merging with the promise of enhancement.”

Truly horrific.

Nudge and Iggy were going all Fight Club on some of the DG guards, who were heavily muscled, as if they’d already received enhancements. But it wasn’t those dudes that were giving them trouble. My flock were pros. A roundhouse kick here, a karate chop there, and the guards were toast. It really was just like riding a bicycle.

No, it was the kids—the culties—who were the real problem. Picture Michael Jackson in that “Thriller” video, surrounded by flesh-craving zombies closing in. That was us, but our dead-eyed suicidal zombies all had angelic grins pasted on their faces as they pawed at our wings. It was like they wanted to claim us. Ick.

The mob was a living, breathing sponge, hundreds of kids deep. And after spending my developmental years in a cage… Claustrophobia? I has it. They were clutching at us, pulling on our feathers, touching our arms and our faces. How do you fight a swarm of sickos who want to die and don’t mind taking you with them?

And all this while the countdown to D-day continued.

I was panicking, really panicking, for the first time in… at least a few days. And as I glanced around, the overwhelmed faces of Dylan, Iggy, and Nudge were not the least bit reassuring.

Right on cue, Maya showed up, gang in tow. They were able to rip through the crowd, in part because at first the culties didn’t seem to understand that the gang was enhanced as well.

Kate grabbed armfuls of Doomsday kids, four or five at a time, and hurled them out the exits. When she’d cleared a pathway through the crowd for us, she picked up two huge, lumbering guards and swung them upside down by their feet, one in each hand, while Nudge boxed their noses, dodging the rush of blood. With space cleared, we could use our wings again and attack from above.

Meanwhile, Ratchet seemed to sense every attacker coming his way, and, on top of that, seemed to be kicking it at some old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat. He had teamed up with Iggy, who was a natural spinning, whirling dealer of pain as he punched, kicked, and chopped his way through an onslaught of guards. They both looked pretty happy.

And Star, the blond girl, had hit on the biggest jackpot of all, sort of by accident. She was using her hummingbird speed to flit in circles around the guards, who looked so dizzy and confused that it was almost kind of pathetic.

But the key thing was that when she was zipping around, she was making this high-pitched noise—a supersped-up “Aiiyah!”—that seemed to crack the Doomsday code of brainwashing. The kids were covering their ears, but that sound, and some common sense, was getting through. Star had done for these kids in ten seconds what it had taken Angel hours of mind-coaxing to accomplish: They were… snapping out of it. And running for the exits.

Huh. Wish we’d figured that out sooner!

With the mob no longer singing Killmas carols, maybe we could wrap up this little party and make sure Gazzy and Angel were safe. Though with Fang there, of course they were. He wouldn’t have left them—

Right then, Ratchet signaled to us, and Dylan spied something I couldn’t quite see off to the side of the stage. His face twisted with rage as he pushed me out of the way.

“Look—” he started to say, then suddenly his voice cut out, and I saw him spin like a top. Blood started flowing to the ground, spurting like drops of rain.